Archive for the ‘Listings’ Category

Pandora’s Box | Die Büchse der Pandora (1928)


Dir.: G.W. Pabst; Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Götz, Alice Roberts, Daisy d’Ora, Alice Roberts; Germany 1928, 135′.

Based on two plays by the German playwright Frank Wedekind (Earth Spirit/Pandora’s Box), there had been already a stage, screen and even musical version of the story, and Pabst, after having failed to find his ‘Lulu’ was about to cast Marlene Dietrich in the title role.

Luckily for him (and for the millions who have watched the feature), 22 year-old Louise Brooks (a trained dancer), his first choice, phoned from Hollywood just in time, to accept. Pabst had seen her in the role of a circus artist in Howard Hawks’ A Girl in every Port, and Paramount did not even answer his request to borrow her.

Only after she quit Paramount ((“just for the hell of it”), did Bud Schulberg tell her that Pabst had offered her the part. She cabled Pabst her agreement immediately – Marlene Dietrich waiting in the director’s office.

Lulu (Brooks) is a mixture of modern femme fatale and a naïve child. Her allure and seductiveness is apparent from the get go when her lover, Dr. Peter Schön (Kortner) arrives. Meanwhile her first pimp Schigolch (Götz) is hiding on the balcony of her flat. Schön is the editor of a big newspaper and engaged to the aristocratic beauty Charlotte (O’Ora). After spotting Schigolch, the disgusted publisher is delighted Lulu wants to star in a variety show, helped by Schigolch and the strongman Rodrigo Quast. But on the evening of the first night Lulu has a tantrum: she is not going to perform in front of her lover’s fiancée.

When Lulu seduces Schön, Charlotte and Schön’s adult son Alwa (Lederer), who is secretely in love with Lulu, enter through the backroom of he theatre. The editor has no choice now – he has to marry Lulu. On the night of their wedding there is a drunken scene in their boudoir involving Quast and Schigolch.  Lulu’s newly-wed husband, asks her to shoot herself, to save him from becoming a murderer – but in the struggle for the gun he is killed. Lulu is found guilty of manslaughter, but escapes with Alwa, Schilgoch and Quast. The trio soon runs out of money, ending up penniless in London, where Lulu meets her end at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

Not only did Pabst introduce Louise Brooks as the modern sex siren, he also casts, perhaps for the time in film history, a lesbian protagonist: Countess Anna Geschwitz (Roberts) is equally smitten by Lulu. But she is no wallflower – and even ends up murdering Quast, who wants to give Lulu away to the police for money.

Pandora’s Box was not successful at the box office, even German critic of the time Kracauer has nothing good to say: he considered Wedekind’s plays to be “really essays”, lifeless and lacking visual strength. In the USA, the film’s ending was changed: instead of being murdered, Lulu joins the Salvation Army.

Brooks would stay in Europe starring next in Pabst’s Diary of a lost Girl, before returning to the USA, where she ended her screen career in 1938, becoming a writer. Pabst himself would never again reach the same heights, retuning to Nazi Germany in 1939, and ruining his reputation. But Pandora’s Box, a serendipitous meeting of chance and the unique historic constellation of culture, the Weimarer Republic, will live on forever. AS

A BFI RELEASE OF THE NEW 2K DCP OF THE MUNICH FILM MUSEUM’S DEFINITIVE 1997 RESTORATION, WITH SCORE BY PETER RABEN

Edinburgh International Film Festival | 20 June – 1 July 2018

Artistic Director Mark Adams unveiled this year’s programme for Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), with 121 new features, including 21 world premieres, from 48 countries across the globe.

Highlights include Haifaa al-Mansour’s long-awaited follow-up to WadjdaMARY SHELLEY, with Elle Fanning taking on the role of Mary Wollstonecraft, the World Premiere of Stephen Moyer’s directorial debut, THE PARTING GLASS, starring Melissa Leo, Cynthia Nixon, Denis O’Hare, Anna Paquin (who also produces), Rhys Ifans and Ed Asnerand an IN PERSON events with guests including the award-winning English writer and director David Hare, the much-loved Welsh comedian Rob Brydon and star of the compelling Gothic drama THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE, actor George MacKay, as well as the Opening and Closing Gala premieres of PUZZLE and SWIMMING WITH MEN.

BEST OF BRITISH

This year’s Best of British strand includes exclusive world premieres of Simon Fellows’ thriller STEEL COUNTRY, featuring a captivating performance from Andrew Scott as Donald, a truck driver turned detective; comedy classic OLD BOYS starring Alex Lawther; the debut feature of writer-director Tom Beard, TWO FOR JOY, a powerful coming-of-age drama starring Samantha Morton and Billie Piper; oddball comedy-drama EATEN BY LIONS; striking debut from writer and director Adam Morse, LUCID, starring Billy Zane and Sadie Frost; Jamie Adams’ British comedy SONGBIRD, featuring Cobie Smulders. Audiences can also look forward to a special screening of Mandie Fletcher’s delightfully fun rom-com PATRICK.

AMERICAN DREAMS 

This year the AMERICAN DREAMS strand has the quirky indie comedy UNICORN STORE, the directorialOscar-winning actress Brie Larson in which she stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Joan Cusack; the heart-warming HEARTS BEAT LOUD starring Nick Offerman; glossy noir thriller, TERMINAL, starring and produced by Margot Robbie and starring Simon Pegg and Dexter Fletcher; IDEAL HOME in which Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan play a bickering gay couple who find themselves thrust into parenthood; 1980s set spy thriller starring Jon Hamm, THE NEGOTIATOR; and PAPILLON, starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek.

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES

Notable features include 3/4  Ilian Metev’s glowing cinema verity portrait of family life. Malgorzata Szumovska’s oddball drama MUG that explores the aftermath of a face transplant; Aida Begic’s touching transmigration tale NEVER LEAVE ME highlighting how young Syrian lives have been affected by war; actor-turned-director Mélanie Laurent’s fourth feature DIVING, and Hannaleena Hauru’s thought-provoking THICK LASHES OF LAURI MANTYVAARA and the brooding and atmospheric drama THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE starring George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth and Matthew Stagg.

WORLD PERSPECTIVES 

This offer a fascinating snapshot of developing world-cinema themes and styles such as BO Hu’s epic Chinese drama AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL; Berlinale award-winning South American dram THE HEIRESSESGIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY, a touching but darkly funny tale of a Chinese mother and daughter and Kylie Minogue starrer FLAMMABLE CHILDREN , a raucous comedy set in Aussie beachside suburbia in the 1970s. THE BUTTERFLY TREE starring Melissa George and Ben Elton’s THREE SUMMERS starring Robert Sheehan and set at an Australian folk music festival.

DOCUMENTARIES

This year’s EIFF programme features a strong musical theme from Kevin Macdonald’s illuminating biopic WHITNEY, about the life and times of superstar Whitney Houston; GEORGE MICHAEL: FREEDOM – THE DIRECTOR’S CUT narrated by George Michael himself and ALMOST FASHIONABLE: A FILM ABOUT TRAVIS directed by Scottish lead-singer Fran Healy. Audiences will be inspired by the creativity of Orson Welles in Mark Cousins’ THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES; HAL, a film portrait of the acclaimed 1970s director Hal Ashby; LIFE AFTER FLASH, a fascinating exploration into the life of actor Sam J. Jones.

DOWNRIGHT STRANGE

As the sun sets, audiences will be able to journey into the dark and often downright strange side of cinema, with a selection of genre-busting edge-of-your-seat gems including: the gloriously grisly psychosexual romp PIERCING starring Mia Wasikowska; the world premieres of Matthew Holness’ POSSUM and SOLIS staring Steven Ogg as an astronaut who finds himself trapped in an escape pod heading toward the sun; dark and bloody period drama THE MOST ASSASSINATED WOMAN IN THE WORLD and the futuristic WHITE CHAMBER starring Shauna Macdonald.

FOCUS ON CANADA 

The country focus for the Festival’s 72nd edition will be Canada, allowing audiences to take a cinematic tour of the country and its culture, offering insight as well as entertainment, from filmmakers new and already established. HOCHELAGA, LAND OF THE SOULS is an informative look at Quebec’s history; but possibly best to avoid the unconvincing FAKE TATTOOS opting instead for WALL, a striking animated essay about Israel from director Cam Christiansen and FIRST STRIPES a compelling look into the Canadian military from Jean-Francois Caissy.

Weather permitting, the Festival’s pop-up outdoor cinema event Film Fest in the City with Mackays (15 – 17 June) will kick off the festivities early, with the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival running from 20 June – 1 July, 2018.

Tickets go on sale to Filmhouse Members on Wednesday 23 May at 12noon and on sale to the public on Friday 25 May at 10am. www.edfilmfest.org.uk.

 

 

That Summer (2017) ***

Dir.: Göran Hugo Olsson; Documentary with Edith Ewing Bouvier, Edith Bouvier Beale, Lee Radziwill, Peter Beard; Sweden/Denmark/USA 2017, 80min.

THAT SUMMER is a kind of prequel to Albert and David Maysles’ cult documentary Grey Gardens (1975) and is all about the nostalgia for nostalgia. Shot in the summer of 1972, using material by Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Peter Beard and Albert Maysles, bookended (and commentated) by Peter Beard, creates his diary in collage form, this documentary is by far more direct than Grey Gardens, when it comes to its main protagonists Edith Ewing Bouvier and her daughter Edith Bouver Beale, being called lovingly Big and little Edie, who lived alone in splendid isolation in a decaying mansion since the 1930ies.

Using original film material, re-discovered after decades, director Göran Hugo Olsson (Concerning Violence) sets out to describe a magical summer in 1972, when Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her friend the artist and photographer Peter Beard, spent a summer in East Hampton, Long Island. Beard, setting the tone for the feature, calls contemporary East Hampton “Cash” Hampton, a place for the rich and vulgar. But in the early 1970ies, artists like Andy Warhol (who usually preferred urban settings), Truman Capote, Mick and Bianca Jagger mingled with Jackie Onassis and her husband, who paid for the restoration of Grey Gardens, the house Big and Little Edie has lived in. Lee Radziwill directed the work, which included cleaning up cat droppings, which had accumulated during decades. The felines themselves are a main feature always posing attractively. Beard, who now lives in Montauk, not far away from Grey Gardens (which is worth around 18 million Dollar these days) talks about those months in lyrical and poetic terms: Every minute was new, insanely funny, poignant, wild unpredictable and unmatchable… Daily soap operas amongst themselves, the most original scripts, the most paranoid gossip, remarkable historical tales. And the most unforgettable, amazing thing was getting in there – naturally the whole outside world had been padlocked out. Gaining entrance to this world of conscientious objectors: that was the mystery ticket”.

What That Summer underlines is the “castle relationship” between the two Edies: With all the work in the house going on, Radziwill and Beard trying to perform their task of modernisation, whilst mother and daughter continue their role-play like relationship, utterly dependent on each other, yet constantly at odds as they argue the smallest point. They are very much like precocious children, waiting to be asked by the ‘adults’ to perform. Which, in the end they do, singing about autumn and the dwindling, precious days.

Olsson tries very hard to get all different elements to gel but this task is nearly impossible, and what results is a slightly in-cohesive documentary that still manages to keep the audience spellbound. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018 IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS.

My Friend Dahmer (2017) ****

Dir.: Marc Meyers; Cast: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts, Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Harrison Holzer, Vincent Kartheiser; USA 2017, 107 min.

Marc Meyers (Harvest) scores a winner with this brilliant screen adaptation of ‘Derf’ Backderff’s comic book tracing the final year of the legendary serial killer Jeff Dahmer.

Meyers’ work is best known in the US but this fascinating biopic thriller resonates far and wide due to the universal appeal of its gruesome subject matter. Born in Wisconsin, Jeffrey Dahmer grew up in the small town of Bath, Ohio, where Meyers captures the final year at college before his fragmented psyche exploded, leading to the murders of seventeen young men. Disney star Ross Lynch is cast against type turning in an excruciatingly realistic performance that brings with it an understanding of what drove Dahmer to murder, cannibalism and necrophilia. And the idea that society does not produce serial killers, but is in some way responsible for their existence – soon begins to percolate through the subconscious.

Dahmer’s senior year at Revere High School ran from 1977-78. And we learn how his role as an outsider was pre-determined by his dysfunctional family life where the atmosphere was fraught with discord: Father Lionel (Roberts), a chemist, and his wife Joyce (Heche) argue non-stop: Joyce is undergoing psychiatric treatment for her belligerent attitude to almost everything, but mainly her family. Only Jeffrey’s younger brother Dave (who name was changed due to legal anonymity), seems to find parental approval, largely due to the masculine attributes he shares with father: Both revel in the seclusion of the laboratory, avoiding social interaction, despite Lionel asking his son to develop a more outgoing attitude.

At school, Jeffrey’s obsession with dead animals is well known, he collects carcasses and dissolves them in acid, playing with the bones. His three ‘friends’ Derf (Wolff as the future comic book author), Neil (Nelson) and Mike (Holzer) make full use of Jeffrey’s willingness to be the class clown: they even pay him to perform his antics, which run to mock epileptic seizures and cerebral palsy routines in the local Mall. But Jeffrey is no fool: he is perfectly aware that he doesn’t belong and takes to drinking spirits and developing an early gay crash on a jogger (Kartheiser), who nearly becomes his first victim. Aware of his sexual orientation, Dahmer is condemned to silence, since there is no opportunity to discuss or explore his sexuality in this macho mid-western state  – and little has changed, even today. And so, Jeffrey ‘sleep-walks’ into his first murder, picking up a hitchhiker three weeks after his graduation (another milestone unacknowledged by his family).

From today’s perspective, it seems incredible that the early warning signs of Jeffrey’s fragmentation were not picked up at school, and that a court should find him “mentally sane” to stand trial in 1991. His murder by a fellow inmate serves as a sad but logical epitaph to a life in which the troubled 34 year-old actually kept the remains of some his victims for company. Meyers’ detached case study shows Jeffrey Dahmer as a spectator, looking in on his own life. He is unable to identify with anything alive, his sexuality making him even more of an outcast. His cerebral intelligence was no help: his pent up emotions were so over-powering that he could only find an outlet in physical cruelty, in revenge for being locked out of everyone’s life. DoP Daniel Katz’s wide-screen images underline the joyless grey world he experienced, an arctic emotional landscape. Lynch’s peerless performance underlines the fact that Dahmer was actually handsome, but lacked the wherewithal to connect physically or emotionally with anyone alive. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 June 2018

 

The Apartment (1960)***** 4K restoration

Billy Wilder’s comedy The Apartment takes us back to the ordered world of Mad Men when men still ruled the world and the workplace: but it didn’t always work in their favour. There’s so much to enjoy about the sly camaraderie and refreshing lack of political correctness that still make this a winner, and a reminder of the (sometimes) good old days.

And back in the day it won five Oscars at the 33rd Academy Awards, including for best picture, dynamite writing duo Diamond and Wilder (Jewish emigrés from Romania and Germany), The Apartment is a romantic comedy verging on melodrama that trips lightly over a scorching satire of the old school network that still exists today, in a much more covert way than even back then. The movie is positively bristling with social commentary but all of it dressed in a chipper sense of upbeat bonhomie. Sometimes its characters are vulnerable, lonely and frustrated but the humour skips on relentlessly always presenting its best face to a world that knew firmly where and how its bread was buttered, and accepted it with dignity and good grace.

And none more so than Jack Lemmon’s character C C Baxter, a hard-working, hard-done-by corporate servant, who thinks the best of everyone and everything, and is gifted with an enviable optimism and a indomitable will to survive. Lemmon brings an acute sense of comic timing and slapstick skill to his memorable performance. Wilder puts a positive spin on this immoral world knowing that his stock in trade was to entertain not to depress of deflate. Baxter is grafting his way slowly to the top, knowing that his ace card is his Manhattan home, a small but snug pied à terre that provides a priceless bolt hole for his bosses to conduct their extra-marital dalliances. But this cosy corner is somewhat of a poisoned chalice, as even Baxter will admit.

Meanwhile, Shirley MacLaine is the lift lady in the office building where Lemmon works, and is secretly dating one of his married bosses (Fred MacMurray) who makes use of the apartment from time to time. Miss MacLaine (Fran Kubelik) and Lemmon are both likeable losers, disillusioned romantics who finally fall for each other after bonding over Baxter’s meatballs after she tries to kill herself on Christmas Eve, spurned by MacMurray’s Mr Sheldrake (who finally gets his comeuppance at the hands of his secretary Miss Olsen (Edie Adams), one of the five philanders who make use of the apartment. The other are flippantly played by Ray Walston, David Lewis, Willard Waterman and David White. His next door neighbour Dr Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) provides a vibrant vignette featuring the comforting Jewish doctor and his wife Mildred (Naomi Stevens), who save the day with their nous and matzah ball soup.

The script is full of perceptive moments and witty dialogue that plays on a verbal motif using the suffix ‘wise’; when Fran Kubelik asks Baxter if he wants candlelight over dinner, he replies: “it’s a must, gracious living-wise” and this goes on to hilarious effect, as Wilder and Diamond clearly enjoy themselves writing the multi-awarded script.

Joseph LaShelle’s black-and-white Panavision photography glows to great effect in the restoration, picking out the period details and the impeccable fashions of the day (Miss Olsen’s faux leopard hat and handbag combo and her cat’s eyes sunglasses are still on trend today) and this is all set to Adolph Deutsch’s imaginative score, with its jazzy tunes: an Ella Fitzgerald album cover on Baxter’s sideboard provides a perfect cultural counterpoint to an era where to be successful in the workplace was to be male and white; but that was ok. MT

4K RESTORATION by PARK CIRCUS and MGM from an original 35mm print in cinemas later this year. With thanks to Nick Varley and John Letham for Park Circus. 

 

l’Amant Double (2017) ***

Dir: François Ozon | Cast: Jeremie Renier, Marine Vacth | Drama | France | 104min

François Ozon is back with a meandering 90s-style erotic thriller that starts as an upbeat, intriguing psychodrama hinting at hidden depths, but then loses its sting in the final stages. Poking fun at its female-centric themes, the film opens with an eye-watering gynaecological close-up – if only the script was as tight as its heroine’s tooshie.

The female anatomy belongs to pouting pixie-like minx Chloe (Marine Vacth) who is bored in her new job at a trashy art museum. Just as well, because her love life is complex and full of energetic sexual encounters that kick off when she falls for her dishy psychoanalyst Paul (Jeremie Renier). But when they move in together Chloe is alarmed to discover Paul is not who he seems. Firking around in his things she finds his passport with a different name and realises her lover has an analyst twin brother, which at first he denies. Pretending to need therapy, she tracks down the identical sibling (Renier flips deftly between the two), and soon they too are having rampant sex.

Ozon’s twin theme recalls the obsessive psycho thrillers of Brian De Palma and Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and even The Brood, where emotional confusion casts doubt on the central character’s state of mind. This is Marine Vacth’s second collaboration with Ozon since she sprung to fame in his 2013 drama Young and Beautiful, and here she plays a similar type who is slightly disdainful and dissatisfied with her life. Despite Paul’s amorous and easy-going nature, Chloe is curiously drawn to the more difficult character of his brother – Jeremie Renier excels in both roles. Ozon, as playful as ever, then resorts to his box of kinky tricks as Chloe turns dominatrix, in a twist obviously worked into the narrative to delight French audiences – who love this kind of thing. From then on L’AMANT DOUBLE broadens into an exploration of Chloe’s gynaecological and psychosexual issues, scuppering the suspense and  the impact of the ultimate reveal.

Thank God for Jacqueline Bissett whose vignette spices up the dragged out denouement, and Myriam Boyer who brings some light relief as the nosy neighbour with a penchant for cats. If only Ozon would return to his more satisfying early thrillers, such as Under the Sand (2000)Swimming Pool (2003) or the serious dramas such as Frantz (2016).

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

 

Ismael’s Ghosts (2017) **

Dir: Arnaud Desplechin | Cast: Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric | Hippolyte Girardot, Alba Rohrwacher | Drama | 110min | France

Cannes 70th Anniversary got off to a wildly pretentious start with Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling fantasy melodrama made watchable by sparkling performances from two of France’s leading female stars: Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The histrionic storyline follows Matthieu Amalric, in his usual tortured turn as a neurotic chain-smoking writer whose wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) was declared missing 20 years previously. Emotionally unstable, he falls for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s charming and calming single astrophysicist, whose cross to bear is raising her disabled brother – who never actually appears.

Into this budding romantic mêlée plops the delicately distraite adventurist Carlotta who has been wandering the globe, much to the chagrin of her dying father and her husband.  She now turns up out of the blue to reclaim her husband and have his baby. Is she a ghost or a real person, do we really care? She puts a spanner in the works for all concerned – and only to illuminate Ismael’s ambivalence about what he really wants from a partner, and out of life in general. At this point Desplechin’s adds a exotic twist to proceedings involving Louis Garrel, who plays a diplomat hired by the French government, to a mythical North African country with his new bride, a playful Alba Rohwacher. And this is where the film loses its way (and our interest) as it slips backwards and forwards, careening between sparks of quirky humour, wild reverie and erotic moments where Cotillard reveals all but, judiciously, Gainsbourg remains gracefully un-décolletée – and strangely more interesting and appealing – as Ismael’s true love).

Funny how Déplechin’s female characters are eminently more interesting but only ever exist to serve his one-dimentional men. That said, there is much to admire in this hotchpotch: a sweepingly romantic score that punctuates the occasional moments of intrigue, Irina Lubtchansky’s intricate camerawork that conveys claustrophobia in tight corridors, and soaring delirium in widescreen shots; but nothing ultimately hangs together. ISMAEL’S GHOSTS is best remembered as a vehicle for Garrel, Gainsbourg, and Cotillard, and some flashes of momentary brilliance in a rather disturbed nightmare . MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 JUNE 2018

Fred (2018)*** | DVD release

Dir: Paul Van Carter | Doc | UK |

Paul Van Carter (The Guv’nor) spills the beans in this solemn non-judgemental exposé of Kray Twins associate Freddie Foreman – or Brown Bread Fred, as he’s known in the trade. As biopics go this is a stealthy but straightforward affair heavily controlled by Foreman’s brooding and rather swarthy presence as he sits facing Carter, only sharing what he wants to – and that’s not a great deal, in the scheme of things. Most of the detail surrounding this ruthless villain’s bloody past is in the pubic domain, including his part in the grizzly demise of Jack the Hat McVitie – for which he served ten years behind bars, and Freddie openly admits to this. But by the same token, he describes himself as a family man who never really wanted to harm anyone unless they got out of hand. Foreman has been accused of over forty murders, yet he’s not troubled by his gangland past: heartache comes only in the shape of memories of the Blitz and his Wartime childhood. And he certainly has a way with words, and a calm economy of movement when alluding to his misdemeanours, in phrasing that could be described as euphemistic. As a figure he very much calls to mind Bob Hoskins’ character in The Long Good Friday but Foreman has a brutal hard-edged quality that not even Bob could muster in his superlative performance. Foreman blames his criminal past on his impoverished upbringing as one of five boys in London’s Battersea, long before it became posh. And despite his shrewd entrepreneurialism – he went straight for two years in the US and Spain – he still reverted to his recidivist ways: clearly crime runs in his blood, even when the money flowed too. In his 80s and with strained family relations, Foreman now lives in a care home, where no doubt he is getting a taste of his own medicine. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 28 MAY AND ON 4 JUNE DVD

This is Congo (2017) ***

Dir: Daniel McCabe | Doc | 91′ | Congo

Magnificent landscapes give way to mass murder and mayhem in This Is Congo, Daniel McCabe’s cinematic documentary that follows several of his compatriots surviving twenty years of conflict in this war-torn nation. Congo’s leaders have chosen war in place of an intelligent way of harnessing the country’s abundant mineral wealth, and ensuring peace and prosperity for its people.

Most of us have never been to this lush mid-African country three times the size of Texas. Fertile soil encourages agriculture and provides a rich cocoa-dusting for the country’s ample mineral reserves of tourmaline, manganese, copper, bauxite and gold.

McCabe knows from experience that filming will be dangerous here and certainly gives a flavour of the perils in the opening scene where booming mortar fire sends tremors through our seats while onscreen the fleeing Congolese protect their kids and livestock  on the run.

Bordered by Rwanda and Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo sounds like a country of the free and enabled. It is quite the opposite: a place divided by macho rebel forces, such as the M23, who compete with rival militia groups while the government-led forces continually strive to keep control and calm the masses under the auspices of Colonel Mamadou Ndala who eventually loses his battle – in the surprising final scenes – not to the enemy but to his jealous officers threatened by his energy and charisma.

Voiced by the melodic tones of Isaach de Bankole), the real heroes of the Congo are not the generals and fighters but the enterprising civilians: voluptuous business woman Mama Romance who trades precious gems in the main port of Goma and tailor Hakiza Nyantaba who traipses from village to village with his trusty Singer sewing machine. With great sensitivity and dispassion, McCabe shows us a nation surviving against the odds, its people forced into a peripatetic mode of existence, cheerful and philosophical despite their trial and tribulations. MT

THIS IS CONGO | IN CINEMAS | ON DEMAND FROM 25 MAY 2018 | DOGWOOF

 

 

Zama (2017) Bfi Player

Dir: Lucrecia Martel | Argentina, Brazil / 115’ | cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín

Argentinian auteuse Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman) makes a welcome return with a subtle and sumptuously beguiling fantasy peepshow where one man’s mind unravels in mysterious 18th century South America.

Tired of waiting for the King to transfer him to his wife in Buenos Aires, a Creole officer of the Spanish Crown embarks on a perilous bid to return to his family while around him his fellow officers scheme and disemble. Based on an adaptation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s 1956 Latin American classic, this cinematic soupçon offers creative insight into Spanish colonial history through its central character Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who slowly loses his grip on reality and descends into paranoia in a remote and savage outpost somewhere in Paraguay.

Sensually deprived and desperate for home, Zama falls prey to the South American sirens including Lola Duenas’s lacivious noblewoman, and a local Indian with whom he fathers a crippled child. Martel seduces with her gorgeously costumed cavalcade as we strain to make out the enigmatic storyline through a closeted and voyeuristic lens amid exotic birdsong and strange beasts including a volatile pet llama. Beyond the invidious perils of the settlement lies a land of savagery populated by dangerous masked tribes and a wild Portuguese warrior named Vicuna, whom Zuma is tasked with capturing in a perilous final attempt at a glorious transfer back to civilisation in Spain.

Drawing comparisons with other recent films from South America such as Jauja (Lisandro Alonso) and Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra). ZAMA is an extraordinary historical adaptation. Gleaming like Pandora’s Box and striking like a cobra, Martel offers a dizzyling distallation of the dying days of Don Diego de Zama. MT

ON BFI PLAYER

1987: When the Day Comes (2017) Korean Film Festival

Dir: Jung Joon-hwan | Political Thriller | South Korea |

With an impressive ensemble cast and polemic real-life story, director Jang Joon-hwan’s powerful portrayal of the events that led to Korea’s historic June Democratic Uprising was as much a hit with audiences as it was with critics when it stormed the box-office at the start of this year.

In 1980s South Korea, the military regime of President Chun Doo-hwan pushes the masses to breaking point with its widespread corruption and oppression. In 1987, a series of events will be set in motion through which the heroic actions of ordinary people from all walks of life result in nationwide protests, altering the course of the nation’s history forever.

When a student protester dies under police interrogation, the order is given to quickly cremate the body, effectively burying the evidence. Unfortunately for Director Park (Kim Yoon-seok, The Fortress), the head of the Anti-Communism Investigations Bureau in Seoul desperately trying to cover up the crime, Prosecutor Choi (Ha Jung-woo, Assassination) is not playing ball. Suspecting foul play, Choi refuses the request and insists on an autopsy. When it’s discovered torture was the likely cause, the race is on to bring the crime to light. Prison guard Han (Yoo Hai-jin, Confidential Assignment) his niece Yeon-hee (Kim Tae-ri, The Handmaiden) and idealistic student Han-yeol (Gang Dong-won, A Violent Prosecutor) are just some of the ordinary people who put their lives on the line to uncover the truth.

Highly regarded director Jang Joon-hwan (Save the Green Planet, 2003) has made his most ambitious film to-date with this fast-paced, tightly plotted political thriller based on the shocking true events of 1987 Korea. Like last year’s A Taxi Driver, 1987: When the Day Comes gives the blockbuster treatment to a turbulent period, resulting in an exciting thrill-ride of a film that never loses sight of the human drama at its core. Korean Film Festival Review

HEADLINING UK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | Teaser Screenings | Monday 18 June  | Picturehouse Central

Lazzaro Felice | As Happy as Lazzaro 2018 | Best Script Cannes 2018

Writer/Dir: Alice Rohrwacher | Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Luca Chikovani, Sergi Lopez | Italy | Drama 125′

Al Rohrwacher brings tenderness and curiosity to her delicately compelling fables set amongst rural communities in her homeland of Italy. Her latest Lazzaro Felice won Best Script at Cannes this year, her previous a languid pastoral The Wonders (2014) followed a family of beekeepers in 1970s Tuscany. In her debut Corpo Celeste (2011)  a young girl challenges religious morality in the southern town of Reggio Calabria.

Happy as Lazzaro is time-bending tale that uses poetic realism to enliven the rather depressing theme of corruption and crime in contemporary Italy. Again Rohrwacher uses Super 16mm to establish a retro aesthetic of sepia and muted senape and to re-create a nostalgic feeling for the past and times gone by in the dilapidated village of Inviolata where a traditional family of sharecroppers still serve the Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna. Although sharecropping has been illegal since the 1980s, their loyalty to their corrupt mistress is born out of habit, and because it suits them to maintain the status quo: It’s what they’ve always done. This recalls a past (and possibly a present in some areas) where a feudal system of sorts still exists, and Italy’s now decadent royal family (Vittoria Emanuele) are still acknowledged, paid homage to and addressed by their titles. So the villagers go about their leisurely business lacking the imagination or motivation to move on, and respecting the powers that be in this remote, sun-baked backwater that seems stuck in the past. And Lazzaro is the man with a heart of gold who is simply too good for this world, let along for this job. As saintly soul, Lazzaro is left the duties no one else wants to do, such as picking giant guarding the chicken coop from wolves. The Marchesa’s fecklessly lazy young son Tancredi, decides to play a trick on mother, for not giving him his inheritance early, and he sees that Lazzaro’s gentle nature and naive nature will make him perfect for a plan to defraud her. Lazzaro is naturally in thrall to the boy, out of deference, to his status. Tancredi then fakes his own kidnapping, hiding out in the undergrowth around the village expecting his mother to cough up the million lire ransom he has demanded. Naturally things don’t go according to plan and Lazzaro falls through a time-warp – in a tonal shift that Rohrwacher pulls of with aplomb – ending up in another world, set against a corrupt urban sprawl where he wanders dreamlike (and there is a certainly a surreal quality to these sequences) amongst unscrupulous characters as a nightmarish future unfolds around him. Lazzaro at this point takes on the semblance of a Christ-like figure – and it’s a performance of great subtlety and placidness that has to be seen to be believed. This transformation to saint, or even ghost seems to represent the soul of the Italian nation overcome by decadence and the perils of modernity. It also raises the everlasting conundrum: how long can a person continue to be good when continually challenged by evil. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 9 – 21 MAY 2018

BlacKkKlansman (2018) | Cannes Film Festival | Grand Prix winner

Dir: Spike Lee | Cast: Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Corey Hawkins | Biopic Crime Comedy | US |

Spike Lee’s latest film follows Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, who successfully managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan.

BlacKkKlansman, champions the Black Lives Matter brigade and is Spike Lee’s most engaging film in years, playing out as a straightforward 1970s style tale that sees a Black rookie detective get close up close and personal with the KKK, by posing as a potential punter over the ‘phone then sending his white colleague along to do the honours. Adam Driver plays game in fine form. 

There shades of Shaft here and other blaxploitation films of the era, but the accent is on comedy and irony rather than outright thriller, although Lee has done his research seriously offering plenty of historical detail and some archive footage from the Charlottesville riots from August last year, and the camera swivels firmly in focus of President Trump, and DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

The white supremacists are a nasty bunch, as you can imagine, and no one escapes their vitriol which is aimed at Jews and anyone not of Aryan blood. Topher Grace plays David Duke, the head honcho of the local branch, the film also features Black characters who are racist such as Patrice..

After joining the surprisingly racist Colorado Springs Police department, his first mission is to attend a Black Power meeting addressed by Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture. Here he meets and falls for Angela Davies Patrice (Laura Harrier). The film then charts his progress to infiltrate and bring down the KKK organisation in scenes where the tone is taut but always firmly upbeat. With lowkey natural performances from leads Adam Driver and John David Washington, and a stellar score of ‘70s hits, this is an enjoyable, informative and undivisive drama and certainly worthy of winning the Palme d’Or. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | GRAND PRIX WINNER 2018

Foam at the Mouth | Ar Puma uz Lupam (2017) *** | Cannes Market 2018

Dir.: Janis Nords; Cast: Vilis Daudzins, Ieva Puke, Raimonds Celms, Indra Brike; Latvia/Poland/Lithuania 2017, 80 min.

After tackling the thorny subject of child crime in his Berlinale Grand Prix winner Mother I love You, Janis Nords comes to Cannes Market with an atmospheric thriller that scratches at the edges of horror set in a remote Latvian community where women are the only civilising influence in a community where man and beast converge.

The women here are a tough bunch and none more so than physiotherapist Jana (Puke), whose ex-cop husband Didzis (Daudzius) has lost part of his left leg is and only employable as a dog handler. To makes matters worse, the challenge to his masculinity has reduced Didzis to an hostile neurotic who feeds off his three Alsatians’ aggression, showing them affection in return, particularly his favourite Gina. The neglected Jana is surprised by her own sexual frustration that surfaces while treating seventeen year old Roberts (Celms) at the gym where she practices, and this incident provides a inventive vein of dark humour and tension to the intriguing narrative. Driving home one night, Jana and Didsis collide with a rabid boar which leaves its infected blood dripping from their truck bumper, and the dogs sniff this out. What follows is a harrowing hunt for the rapid beasts, which attack some students of the school. Meanwhile, Didzis tracks down an enemy of his own, in the shape of Roberts, whose mother soon emerges as a repressive zealot, as the grim storyline reveals that everyone’s life in danger from either from the animal kingdom or the human one.

Matthew A. Gossett’s script is taut and mischievous complimented by DoP Tobias Datum suggestive images, mainly shot at night and in the gloaming when the difference between dogs and humans is distinguishable only by their form. This is a thriller where testosterone driven males and infected dogs seem to be at war at all costs. Foam is more than just symbolic: under the superficial veneer of civilised society, men are deteriorating into atavistic creatures, just like local wild dogs. Made a shoestring, and none the worst for it, FOAM is really frightening at times, as Nords plays on the darkest fears of the human psyche in this tense little B-picture, which would make Sam Fuller proud.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | MARKET SECTION | Winner of the Moscow Critics’ Award

Jeune Femme (2017)

Dir.: Leonor Serraille; Cast: Laetitia Dosch, Gregoire Monsaingeon, Soleymane Seye Ndiaye, Natalie Richard, Erka Sainte, Lila-Rose Gilberti; France 2017, 97 min.

La Femis graduate Leonor Serraille, won the Camera d’ Or at Cannes 2017, is a for this wild debut: its main protagonist Julia  – an excellent Laetitia Dosch – is nothing like the fragile, delicate damsel in distress of countless French features, but a steamroller of a personality: ready to bury anything in her way – including herself.  

Serraille introduces her heroine head on, literally: splitting her forehead, ramming it against the door of her ex-lover Joachim Deloche (Monsaigeon), a photographer, who had made a career modelling her, but has now discarded the young woman on their return to Paris. After a decade in Mexico, Julia has returned to France broke, homeless and looking after Joachim’s cat, a fluffy Persian. She is picked up and rescued, by mistake, by a young woman who believes she is a former school friend, who had heterochromic eyes, just like Julia, whose irises are green and hazel. 

After Julia’s rescuer discovers her mistake, she and the cat are homeless again Thus begins an emotional rollercoaster ride, in which Julia has to adapt like a chameleon to ever changing situations. Her mother (Richard), blames her: “you are just like your father, you leave me alone”. Finding a place to sleep on the sofa of an elderly man, is no solution either; after being told, that he does not like to sleep alone, Julia tells him “to buy himself a teddy bear” and moves out. Answering an ad, Julia then gets a job as a baby sitter, and is allowed to sleep in the maid’s chamber in the attic. This is eventful film full of gleeful energy but Seraille avoids romanticising the predicaments Julia finds herself in. The gender relations are always at the centre, ranging from rough sexual harassment to absurdity (Ousmane falling asleep whilst Julia is undressing him). Serraille, who was pregnant during shooting, never idealises her main protagonist: Julia is not a victim, but her stubborn fight for absolute autonomy results in her having sometimes a part in her own downfall. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 MAY 2018

A Cambodian Spring (2017)

Dir.: Chris Kelly; Documentary; UK/Canada/ROI 2017; 120 min.

Chris Kelly six year long journey into contemporary Cambodian life is a trip into the Heart of Darkness, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad.

To fully comprehend the horrors unfolding it is necessary to bear in mind that Cambodia is ruled today by the Cambodian People’s Party, led by Prime Minister for life, Hun Sen since 1985 – and this is the same Party of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, changed only in name to the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party, having renounced Communism and genocide and claiming the lives of over two million citizens, is never far from the surface.

Kelly started out in 2007 with what seemed then a local conflict: Once a retreat in the capital Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak Lake has become a wasteland having been filled steadily with sand. The World Bank sponsored project was carried out by the Shukaku Company with strong ties to the government. In the process of draining the lake, the houses of the surrounding area were flooded. Those dwellings still standing would soon be demolished. But the inhabitants of the waterlogged houses have little choice but to stay put, since the compensation offered by the government is so meagre they cannot afford to buy any replacement homes.

Working class mothers Tep Vanny and Toul Srey Pov (who would later fall out for personal reasons) take up the unequal fight with Shukaku and the government, fighting for a fair compensation. Both will be imprisoned on trumped up charges, but they are joined by a surprising ally, The Venerable Luon Sovath, a Buddhist monk from the province of Siam Reap. Mediagenic and charismatic, he is under duress from the Church leadership, since the Supreme Patriarch of the Cambodia is appointed by the government – clear parallels with China, undermining the struggle for religious freedom in Tibet.

The documentary takes its title from the return from exile in July 2013 of the opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who would found the Cambodian National Rescue Party. In 2010 Rainsy was sentenced to ten years in prison and had to leave the country. The opposition CNRP gained 55 sets in Parliament in the 2013 election. But both Rainsy and his successor as Party leader, Kem Sokha accused the ruling party of vote fraud. Rainsy again had to leave the country in 2016, after he accused a high official of the CPP of being a torturer in the prisons of the Khmer Rogue. His political future is uncertain, since he was banned by the CPP from political activities for life.

There is no overriding narrative here, more a gathering of moments, subjectively collected, very much like a “Fly on the Wall”. In a certain way Kelly’s style recalls Tarkovsky’s “visual fugues”; abstract visual sequences that are thematic strains. Water, grass and flames contrast with the clashes of the demonstrators with the heavily armed forces of the government. State corruption, supported by the Church, is not easily broken because, as Toul Srey Pov puts it: “It’s easy to wake a sleeping person, but you can’t wake them up when they are only pretending to sleep.” AS

ON RELEASE FROM 25 MARCH 2018

On Chesil Beach (2017)

Dir.: Dominic Cooke | Cast: Saoirise Ronan, Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Samuel West, Anne-Marie Duffy, Adrian Scarborough | UK 2017 | 110′

According to debut film director Dominic Cooke, and Ewan McEwan who wrote the script for this melancholy love story, based on his novella, England is still a country of emotional repression and class prejudice, and nothing has changed since Brief Encounter.

ON CHESIL BEACH explores this romantic disillusion through a poignant love affair between Florence Ponting, (an outstanding Saoirise Ronan), and historian Edward Mayhew (Howle) who meet and fall for each other. Ponting’s father Geoffrey (West) is a wealthy industrialist married to Violet (Watson) an Oxford lecturer. Mayhew’s mother Marjorie (Duff) is brain-damaged after an accident at a railway station: she has lost all inhibitions, making her a brilliant painter, but she often runs around the house naked and Edward’s primary school teacher father (Scarborough) is out of his depth which reflects in Edward’s emotional distance. Florence copes well with Marjorie, and is ‘in love’ with being in love with Edward but can’t cope with a physical relationship. Their wedding night is a hotel in Dorset, is fraught with sexual difficulty, and the pair end up arguing, Edward, accusing her of frigidity. She offers him unconditional love, even agreeing that he could have lovers, he goes off in a strop and leaves her for good, forfeiting a life’s happiness that unravel in epilogues set in 1975 and 2007.

On Chesil Beach could be sub-titled love in a cold climate. Women in the Sixties were still “le deuxieme sexe”, expected to be their husband’s appendages. Sex was rarely discussed in polite homes: do-it-yourself handbooks – as read by Florence and her sister – were common. There sex is described “as the woman being the doorway for the man”. Edward, who is also a virgin, is unable to put his feelings into words,expecting her to be his little dormouse – even though, as the leader of an aspiring string-quartet, she has obvious qualities he lacks. But Edward is painted as a man of principle; when walking with a Jewish friend, who is abused by a passer-by, Edward corners the aggressor. Florence too, mentions anti-Semitism in her family, wishing that her father would stop his tirades against Jews. DoP Sean Bobbitt (Queen of Katwe) conjures up an England of delicate beauty in soft colours, very much in contrast with the emotional turmoil unfolding. Cooke directs with great sensibility and the supporting cast, particularly Duffy as Marjorie and Watson as the classist ice-maiden, are very convincing. But Saoirise Ronan claims this utterly forlorn and heartbroken story of diminution for herself. AS

SCREENING IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 19 MAY 2018

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Stanley Kubrick; Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack; UK/USA 1968; 141 min.

Christopher Nolan presents a Warner Bros 70mm print struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative in Cannes this year. This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits. Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, Katharina Kubrick, his coproducer Jan Harlan and director Christopher Nolan were in attendance.

But who better to define Science Fiction than Arthur C. Clarke, co-author of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, on whose short story of the same name Kubrick’s film is based: “Science fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen – though often you wish it would”. This rather cautious outlook is also at the heart of Kubrick’s film, which does not engage us with the thrills of conventional Sci-Fi films – neither Clark nor Kubrick could come up with plausible aliens and the film is the better for it – presenting, rather, a visual/philosophical treaty. To start with, 95 of the 141 minutes are without dialogue, dominated by classical music and/or images – the dialogue could have easily been written on the inter-titles used in silent films. Needless to say, there are no statements or solutions just questions about a future, which remains enigmatic and open to all sorts of interpretations in the final images.

The first Homo-Sapiens opens the proceedings: some apes are thrilled by the appearance of a strangely glittering monolith – inspired by his awe. One of them uses a bone as tool, jubilantly throwing it into the air, where it transforms into a spaceship. Part two opens with the discovery that the same monolith has been found on the moon. It transpires that it is sending electronic signals to Jupiter. We witness space flights, as ordinary and routine as rail travel. Part three is set in 2001, when a secret mission is send to Jupiter, to find out if Aliens are responsible for the signals from the moon. There are five astronauts on board of the spaceship; three of them are scientists, kept in coffin-like boxes, put into an artificially induced coma. Commander Bowman (Duella) and his deputy Poole (Lockwood) are keeping an eye on the instruments, but their work-rate is minimal, since the super-computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), who is infallible, is in charge of the journey. When Bowman and Poole find out that HAL is malfunctioning, they huddle in a closet to resolve the matter, but HAL is able to lip read and tries to do away with the whole crew. Firstly he kills the three scientists, then he cuts Poole’s air supply off when he is out in space. Bowman tries to rescue him but HAL sabotages his efforts. The computer than locks the space ship, to leave Bowman in space, but the commander outsmarts him and switches him off, HAL pleading like a human, for his life. After a journey illuminated by whirling colours, Bowman ends up in a flat full of Louis XV furniture, where he quickly grows old and dies. At the foot of his bed stands the monolith like a sentinel.

Music plays a central role in decoding the film: The opening scene is dominated by Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathrustra” (a re-occurring theme of the film; the docking sequences of part two are accompanied by the Johann Strauss’ waltz “An der schönen blauen Donau”; Bowman’s and Poole’s lonely life on board of the spaceship is mournfully underscored by Aran Khatchaturian’s “Gayane’ Ballet Suite and György Ligeti’s Requiem is the leitmotif of the whole film.

Even after 50 years, and without any CGI, the images of A SPACE ODYSSEY are still fresh and do not give away the real age of the film. Kubrick used simple tricks, like the scene with the ballpen in the spaceship, which seems to float, but was in reality only glued to a plate of glass. The images of the astronauts floating in space were achieved with circus equipment and models in real size, filmed against a black background, the camera shooting from the floor upwards. This way, the ropes under the ceiling were hidden by the body of the stuntman; the audience has the illusion, to watch him floating from a sideways position. Music and visuals are dominating; the underlying philosophical questions, particularly the role of the computer, are still  topical and evergreen and overall 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY still feels modern and wonderful to watch. AS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | SPECIAL SCREENING

Bergman: A Year in the Life (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Jane Magnusson | Doc | Sweden | 116’

Documentarian Jane Magnusson takes a swipe at Ingmar Bergman’s memory in her sprawling in-depth documentary that marks this year’s centenary of the birth of the Swedish legend. It is an informative expose that lays bare the lesser known side of Bergman and follows on from her 2013 outing Trespassing Bergman where Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen appraised the filmmaker’s staggering oeuvre.

In this current climate of moral rectitude, your judgement of the film will be guided by whether or not you think an artist’s work should stand apart from their personal life. Predicably it emerges that Ingmar was his father’s favourite and  his brother Dag Bergman reveals other intimate details about their childhood together, including his brother’s neurosis that led to stomach pains and sleepless nights.

Opting for a thematic rather than chronological narrative allows Magnusson to zoom in on Bergman’s personality, family and the women in his life in a revealing expose of a man who seemed entirely focused on his own needs. Yet he also emerges as a director who worked closely and intensively with his actors creating female roles that were appealing as well as emotionally and intellectually challenging.

So many documentaries about Bergman have been hagiographic tributes to the national hero, and when a filmmaker reaches these heady heights it becomes difficult to be critical. Since the dawn of time creators have been philanderers and poor parents, driven by their obsession with emotionally consuming work. Does this mean that they should be metaphorically ‘taken out and shot’ or have their work shunned and demonised?

Magnusson’s film is observational in style, cleverly focusing in on 1957, Bergman’s most prolific year as a filmmaker on television and the big screen, with the release of Wild Strawberries and the Seventh Seal, his most autonomous work. It was also the year of his involvement in four theatre productions – including the massive almost unstageable endeavour that was Peer Gynt. 1957 heralded the arrival of his sixth child, with wife Gun Grut, and romances leading to marriage with Käbi Laretei and Ingrid von Rosen, including an affair with actor Bibi Andersson, who starred in the year’s two films. 

Enriched by a wealth of personal photos and footage, there are informative talking heads from the world of film, theatre and literature making this a definitive and ambitious piece of work that reveals a complicated but endearing genius, despite its provocative stance. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018

 

Ash is Purest White (2018) Mubi

Dir: Zhangke Jia | Cast: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Xiaogang Feng | Drama | China | 140’

ASH IS PUREST WHITE portrays the eventful relationship between a Chinese petty criminal and the woman whose loyalty to him never dies. This rolling contemplative saga occasionally veers off the beaten track with its indulgent running time of 141 minutes but will still appeal to the director’s ardent followers, featuring the same rough-edged characters who we first meet in 2001 and follow until the bittersweet denouement on New year’s Eve 2018.

Star of Shanxi’s creative community, Jia Zhang-ke trained as an architect near his native mining town of Fenyang, just South of Beijing, and brings his aesthetic flair and some magnificent landscapes to this lasting love story set in a dying era. The director’s forte is his graceful way of portraying China’s traditional way of life with its penchant for ceremonial drumming and white-gloved officials, with the chaotic new era vibrantly captured in Eric Gautier’s resplendent camerawork.

Opening in 2001in his Shanxi homeland, his wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao plays the confident delicate local beauty Qiao, who frequents the nightclub of her boyfriend Guo Bin (Liao Fan/Black Coal, Thin Ice). And she is no arm candy, establishing herself as a keen advocate of the traditional jianghu codes of loyalty while embracing the modern world, spryly dancing to Village People’s YMCA. 

Respectful of her ageing father she is more playfully assertive with Bin, and when he is assaulted by thugs on motorbikes, she manages to save him by firing shots into the air in a brutal scene that really takes your breath away, but also secures her a spell in prison where she is unwilling to grass on her boyfriend about the ownership of the firearm.

The second act is an upbeat affair that follows Qiao’s release in 2006, and treats us to a sumptuous journey down the Yangtze River in another nod to the sinking glory of the old China versus the brash new world. Qin has proved a feckless boyfriend and is no longer on the scene, but Qiao is keen not to let him slip away so easily, after her sustained loyalty. And when she is robbed of her cash and passport, she bounces back cleverly in some amusing scenes where she gate-crashes a wedding to enjoy the banquet, desperate for food. Qiao finally confronts Bin in a soulful and moving episode that is visually captivating for its exquisitely calm contemplation of the end of their romance. 

As we leave Qiao she is running a gambling hall, and Bin is back in her life, attracted to her strength of character and tenacity. The two actors are mesmerising to watch in their commandingly restrained yet natural performances, exuding a fascinating chemistry that will remain in the memory for a long time after the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

Foam at the Mouth | Ar Puma uz Lupam (2017) *** | Cannes Market 2018

Dir.: Janis Nords; Cast: Vilis Daudzins, Ieva Puke, Raimonds Celms, Indra Brike; Latvia/Poland/Lithuania 2017, 80 min.

After tackling the thorny subject of child crime in his Berlinale Grand Prix winner Mother I love You, Janis Nords comes to Cannes Market with an atmospheric thriller that scratches at the edges of horror set in a remote Latvian community where women are the only civilising influence in a community where man and beast converge.

The women here are a tough bunch and none more so than physiotherapist Jana (Puke), whose ex-cop husband Didzis (Daudzius) has lost part of his left leg is and only employable as a dog handler. To makes matters worse, the challenge to his masculinity has reduced Didzis to an hostile neurotic who feeds off his three Alsatians’ aggression, showing them affection in return, particularly his favourite Gina. The neglected Jana is surprised by her own sexual frustration that surfaces while treating seventeen year old Roberts (Celms) at the gym where she practices, and this incident provides a inventive vein of dark humour and tension to the intriguing narrative. Driving home one night,  Jana and Didsis collide with a rabid boar which leaves its infected blood dripping from their truck bumper, and the dogs sniff this out. What follows is a harrowing hunt for the rapid beasts, which attack some students of the school. Meanwhile, Didzis tracks down an enemy of his own, in the shape of Roberts, whose mother soon emerges as a repressive zealot, as the grim storyline reveals that everyone’s life in danger from either from the animal kingdom or the human one.

Matthew A. Gossett’s script is taut and mischievous complimented by DoP Tobias Datum suggestive images, mainly shot at night and in the gloaming when the difference between dogs and humans is distinguishable only by their form. This is a thriller where testosterone driven males and infected dogs seem to be at war at all costs. Foam is more than just symbolic: under the superficial veneer of civilised society, men are deteriorating into atavistic creatures, just like local wild dogs. Made a shoestring, and none the worst for it, FOAM is really frightening at times, as Nords plays on the darkest fears of the human psyche in this tense little B-picture, which would make Sam Fuller proud.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | MARKET SECTION

Cannes Classics 2018

 

This year’s Cannes Classic sidebar has one or two priceless gems glittering in its antique crown. Apart from well-known legends: Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Wilder’s Apartment, Varda’s One Sings, The Other Doesn’t and Bondarchuks’ War and Peace, there are some worthwhile lesser known features not be missed.

To start with, there is Henry Decoin’s Beating Heart from 1940, a fitting tribute to leading star Danielle Darrieux, who died last year aged 100. The couple were married while filming this screwball comedy, which was remade in Hollywood in 1946. Darrieux plays Arlette, a young girl running away from a reform school, only to join a school for pick-pockets, run by a Fagin-like character. He instructs her to steal an ambassador’s watch, but Arlette falls in love with him. Like in most of Decoin’s well-structured films, the tempo plays a big role. Decoin was often overlooked as a director, largely because of his rather uneven output, but his post-war noir masterpieces like La Chatte (1958) are really stunning. 

Jacques Rivette is famous for his playful features such as Céline and Juliette go Boating, but his one and only excursion into mainstream, La Religieuse (1966), based on a Diderot novel, is full of anarchic fun. Suzanne Simonin (Anna Karina), is incarcerated in a cloister against her will, and soon falls foul of not one, but three Mother-Superiors: they 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 who finally got a divorce from JL Godard after having acted in their final collaboration, Made in USA, in the same year.

Hyenas (1992), directed by Senegalese filmmaker Djibri Diop Mambety (1945-1998), is a re-telling of the Durrenmatt play ‘Der Besuch der alten Dame’ (Visit of an old Lady). Set in an impoverished African village, the old lady in question is very rich – but she has not forgotten how her lover (now the Mayor) had treated her when she was pregnant with his child. She asks the townsfolk a simple question: do they want to participate in her wealth and punish the guilty man, or would they prefer clean hands and poverty. Colourful and very passionate, this adaption of a Swiss play works very well in its African setting.

Diamonds of the Night. Adapted from a short story by Arnošt Lustig, Diamonds in the Night follows two boys (Ladislav Jánsky and Antonín Kumbera) on the run through the forest after escaping a train taking between concentration camps. Showing in the Cannes Classics sidebar, it tributes the Czech New Wave director Jan Nemec whose concept of “pure film”, urged audiences to relate their own experience to the ephemeral fractured narrative he masterfully puts together in this cinematic wartime escape drama..

Youssef Chahine (1926-2008), Egypt’s most famous director, was very critical of radical elements of the Muslim faith. Destiny (1997)  is set in the 12th century in the Spanish province of Andalusia, then ruled by Muslims. The Caliph appoints the liberal philosopher Averros as a high court judge. But his wise and humane judgement become the butt of criticism by a group of radical Muslims, who want to banish the Caliph, using Averros as a means to and end. After a long inner struggle, the Caliph sends the philosopher into exile, but the radicals lose out: Averros’ rule of law has gained popularity all over the province. Chahine, as always, directs with great sensibility, and a brilliant use of colour. 

Finally, there is La Hora de los Hornos (The hour of the Furnace) from Fernando Solanas, a documentary which could only be shown in his homeland of Argentina in 1973, five years after its premiere in 1968. Exploring a central theme of worldwide insurrection, from student unrest in the USA to Czech resistance against the Soviet invasion, Solanas paints a picture of an utopian liberation. Even Argentina, which never really had the slightest hope of a proper democracy – never mind a revolution – is shown as ripe for revolution on behalf of the working masses. Running for over four hours, La Hora is a document of hope, well-structured, passionate and idealistic – but unfortunately overtaken by a grim reality. Still, it is a worthwhile, monumental effort.  AS

THE FULL CLASSICS LINE-UP                 

Beating Heart (Battement de cœur) by Henri Decoin (1939, 1h37, France)
2K Restoration presented by Gaumont in association with the CNC. Image works carried out by Eclair, sound restored by L.E. Diapason in partnership with Eclair.

Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves  by Vittorio De Sica (1948, 1h29, Italy)
Presented by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Stefano Libassi’s Compass Film and Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. Restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Stefano Libassi’s Compass Film, in collaboration with Arthur Cohn, Euro Immobilfin and Artédis, and with the support of Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. Restoration carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

Enamorada by Emilio Fernández (1946, 1h39, Mexico)
Presented by The Film Foundation. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with Fundacion Televisa AC and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funded by the Material World Charitable Foundation. The film will be introduced by Martin Scorsese.

Tôkyô monogatari (Tokyo Story / Voyage à Tokyo) by Yasujiro Ozu (1953, 2h15, Japan)
Presented by Shochiku. Digital restoration by Shochiku Co., Ltd., in cooperation with The Japan Foundation. For the 4K restoration, the duplicated 35mm negative was provided by Shochiku, managed by Shochiku MediaWorX Inc. and conducted by IMAGICA Corp. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films.

Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (1958, 2h08, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus. 4K digital restoration from the VistaVision negative done by Universal Studios. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

The Apartment by Billy Wilder (1960, 2h05, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus with the co-operation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 4K digital restoration from the original camera negative. Digital restoration completed by Cineteca di Bologna, Colour Grading by Sheri Eissenburg at Roundabout in Los Angeles. Supervised on behalf of Park Circus by Grover Crisp.

Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night) by Jan Němec (1964, 1h08, Czech Republic)
Presented by the National Film Archive, Prague. The restoration was done by the Universal Production Partners studio in Prague, under the supervision of the National Film Archive, Prague.

Voyna i mir. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky (War and Peace. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky) 

by Sergey Bondarchuk (1965, 2h27, Russia)
Presented by Mosfilm Cinema Concern. Digital frame-by-frame restoration of image and sound from 2K scan. Producer of the restoration: Karen Shakhnazarov.

La Religieuse (The Nun)

by Jacques Rivette (1965, 2h15, France)
Presented by Studiocanal. 4K restoration from the original camera negative. Sound restauration from the sound negative (only matching element). Works carried out by L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory under the supervision of Studiocanal and Ms. Véronique Manniez-Rivette with the help of the CNC, the Cinémathèque française and the Fonds culturel franco-américain.

Četri balti krekli (Four White Shirts) 

by Rolands Kalnins (1967, 1h20, Latvia)
Presented by National Film Centre of Latvia. 4K Scan and 3K Digital Restoration from the original 35mm image internegative and print positive materials mastered in 2K. Restoration financed by the National Film Centre of Latvia, the restoration made by Locomotive Productions (Latvia). Director Rolands Kalnins in attendance.

La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) 

by Fernando Solanas (1968, 1h25, Argentina)
Presented by CINAIN – Cinemateca y Archivo de la Imagen Nacional. 4K Restoration from the original negatives, thanks to Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), in Buenos Aires. With the supervision of director Fernando “Pino” Solanas. French Distribution: Blaq Out. Fernando Solanas in attendance.

Specialists / Gli specialisti)

by Sergio Corbucci (1969, 1h45, France, Italy, Germany)
Presented by TF1 Studio. Full version previously unseen restored in 4K from the original Technicolor-Techniscope image negative and French and Italian magnetic tapes by TF1 Studio. Digital work carried out by L’Image Retrouvée laboratory, Paris / Bologne. French theater distribution: Carlotta Films. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

João a faca e o rio (João and the Knife)

by George Sluizer (1971, 1h30, the Netherlands)
Presented by EYE Filmmuseum, Stoneraft Film in association with Haghefilm Digital. A full 4K restoration of the original 35mm Techniscope camera negative shot by Jan de Bont. By bypassing the originally required analogue blow up to Cinemascope, this digital restoration presents a direct-from-negative colour richness and image sharpness never seen before.

Blow for Blow

by Marin Karmitz (1972, 1h30, France)
Presented by MK2. Restoration carried out by Eclair from the original negative in 2K with the help of the CNC and supervised by director Marin Karmitz. The film will be re-released in French movie theaters on May 16th, 2018. Marin Karmitz in attendance.

L’une chante, l’autre pas (One Sings the Other Doesn’t)

by Agnès Varda (1977, 2h, France)
Presented by Ciné Tamaris.
The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with Agnès Varda in attendance.
2k digital restoration from the original negative and restoration, color grading under the supervision of Agnès Varda and Charlie Van Damme. With the support of the CNC, of the fondation Raja, Danièle Marcovici  & IM production Isabel Marant, with the support of Women in Motion / KERING. International Sales MK2 films. Distribution in theaters: Ciné Tamaris (the film will be released in France on July, 4th, 2018).

Grease

by Randal Kleiser (1978, 1h50, United States of America)
Presented by Park Circus and Paramount Pictures. 4K digital restoration from the original camera negative. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with John Travolta in attendance.

Fad,jal

by Safi Faye (1979, 1h52, Senegal, France)
Presented by the CNC and Safi Faye. Digital restoration carried out from the 2K scan of the 16mm negatives. Restoration made by the CNC laboratory. Safi Faye in attendance.

Five and the Skin (Cinq et la peau)

by Pierre Rissient (1981, 1h35, France, Philippines)
Presented by TF1 Studio. 4K restoration from the original camera negative and the French magnetic tape by TF1 Studio with the support of the CNC and the collaboration of director Pierre Rissient. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films. Pierre Rissient in attendance.

A Ilha dos Amores (The Island of Love)

by Paulo Rocha (1982, 2h49, Portugal, Japan)
Presented by Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema. 4K wet gate scan of two 35mm image and sound interpositives struck in a Japanese film lab in 1996. Digital grading was made by La Cinemaquina (Lisbon, Portugal) using a 35mm distribution print from 1982 as a reference. Digital restoration of the image was made by IrmaLucia Efeitos Especiais (Lisbon, Portugal).

Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Café)

by Percy Adlon (1987, 1h44, Germany)
Presented by Studiocanal. 4k Scan and restoration. Work led by Alpha Omega Digital in Munich and carried out under the continuous supervision of director Percy Adlon. Original negative, kept in Los Angeles in excellent condition, processed in Munich for scanning and image by image restoration. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach) with Percy Adlon in attendance.

Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue)

by Luc Besson (1988, 2h18, France, United States of America, Italy)
Presented by Gaumont. A 2K restauration. Image work carried out by Eclair, sound restored by L.E Diapason in partnership with Eclair. A screening organized to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the screening of the film opening the Festival de Cannes in 1988. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

Driving Miss Daisy

by Bruce Beresford (1989, 1h40, United States of America)
Presented by Pathé. 4K restoration made from 35mm original image and sound negatives. Restoration carried out by Pathé L’image Retrouvée laboratory (Paris/Bologne) with the collaboration of director Bruce Beresford.

Cyrano de Bergerac

by Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1990, 2h15, France)
Presented by Lagardère Studios Distribution. Scan from the original negative and 4K restoration carried out by L’Image Retrouvée for Lagardère Studios Distribution with the support of the CNC, the Cinémathèque française, the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain, Arte France–Unité Cinéma, Pathé et Mr. Francis Kurkdjian. French distribution in theaters: Carlotta Films (in progress). Jean-Paul Rappeneau in attendance.

Hyenas

by Djibril Diop Mambety (1992, 1h50, Senegal, France, Switzerland)
Lamb

by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1963, 18 min, Senegal) Presented by La Cinémathèque de l’Institut français, Orange and PSV Films. Digital restoration made from 2K scan of the 35mm negatives. Restoration carried out by Eclair.

El Massir (Destiny) 

by Youssef Chahine (1997, 2h15, Egypt, France)
A preview of the full retrospective which will take place at the Cinémathèque française in October 2018, the film will be presented by Orange Studio and MISR International films with the support of the CNC, fostered by the Cinémathèque française. 4K restauration at Éclair Ymagis laboratory by Orange Studio, MISR International Films and the Cinémathèque française with the support of the CNC. The film will be screened at the Cinéma de la Plage (Movies on the Beach).

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 71st EDITION | 8 -19 MAY 2018

Wildlife (2018) | Critics’ Week | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Writer|Dir: Paul Dano | Cast: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould | Drama | US | 105’

A teenage boy experiences the breakdown of his parents’ marriage in  Paul Dano’s crisp coming of age family drama, set in 1960s Montana, and based on Richard Ford’s novel.

Although once or twice veering into melodrama, actor Dano maintains impressive control over his sleek and very lucid first film which is anchored by three masterful performances, and sees a young family disintegrate after the husband loses his job.

WILDLIFE has a great deal in common with Retribution Road (2008), its similar theme of aspirational hope for a couple starting out on their life in a new town, in this case Great Falls, Montana. But here the perspective is very different – in Wildlife, the entire experience is seen from the unique perspective of a pubescent boy, Joe, played thoughtfully by young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould (The Visit).

There’s an old-fashioned quality to the film that very much works to its advantage. The date is 1960 and in the mountains behind the family house a forest fire is raging, with warnings that it could well spread to the town centre if not controlled by rangers, who Jerry Brinson (Gyllenhaal) decides to join at a wage of only a dollar an hour, after much moping around the house when he loses his job on the local golf course. This comes as a big surprise to his wife Jeannette (Mulligan), an earnest homemaker who believes in her husband’s desire to make more of himself, and she sees this as a step backwards, career-wise. Meanwhile, Joe signs on as an apprentice to a local portrait photographer, a part-time job he takes to while doing very well in his school work.

Dano and his co-writer Zoe Kazan, stick to a clean, straighforward narrative but there’s a subtle brooding tension at play, and while Joe seems emotionally grounded and resilient (a tribute to his parents), Jerry and Jeannette are less so: although Jerry’s character is the most underwritten of the three, there’s a haunted quality to him as a straightforwaed dad who suddenly implodes after the shock of his firing. Jeannette also starts to lose her own sense of equilibrium:. “What kind of man leaves his wife and child in such a lonely place?,” Jeanette casts around for emotional ballast in an much older wealthy man, Warren Miller (Bill Camp), who she meets while giving swimming classes.

In some ways this fragmented behaviour is character-forming for Joe, his parents have clearly given him a rock solid babyhood, and so he can weather the shocking fliration scenes that take place between Millar and his mother, and his loss at his father’s temporary abandonment, although he finds it all difficult to fathom. This is not a film about adult infidelity and abandonment, but about how a teenage perceives and deals with it, and as such it is beautifully restrained and supremely elegant – the audience is required to suspend disbelief and take a trip back to teenagehood and the bewildering experience it offers. Dano makes the denouement an enigmatic affair, leaving the door open to hope, while acknowledging the inevitable. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-19 MAY 2018 | CRITICS’ WEEK |

 

Filmworker (2017)

Dir: Tony Zierra | With Leon Vitali, Ryan O’Neal, Danny Lloyd, Matthew Modine, Stellan Skarsgard, Pernilla August | Doc | US  | 94′

Director Tony Zierra (My Big Break) shows how easy it was for one actor to become obsessed by the legend that was Stanley Kubrick, becoming his right-hand collaborator and dedicating his life to Kubrick’s films, and even now, 18 years after the director’s death, working to transfers the master’s oeuvre onto 4K material.

In 1975, actor Leon Vitali (287), a young man with a great future ahead of him on both screen and stage – he had offers from the National Theatre – landed one of the main parts as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s epic Barry Lyndon. Vitali admired Kubrick so much that he soon abandoned his acting career to learn about filmmaking, finally talking Kubrick into getting him a job on The Shining (1980). And Vitali was so quick to earn Kubrick’s trust that he was tasked with casting the child parts for the Cult horror feature, discovering little Danny Lloyd. For Full Metal Jacket (1987), Vitali’s main contribution was enabling the actors to live up to the harsh and exacting demands of the director. Whilst returning to his acting career in Kubrick’s final feature Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Vitali also helped with various technical tasks. 

Well that’s the nuts and bolts of this well-made and engaging documentary, enriched by archive footage and photographs including informative talking heads who enlighten further on one of the World’s most outstanding 20th century filmmaker. Kubrick was a perfectionist and control freak, and working with him often meant putting in 16 hours a day; Vitali became  the trusted adjutant and their two often working round the clock often even worked around the clock. Kubrick’s three children, who are interviewed, make it quite clear that they came second in the pecking order for Dad’s attention. Other interviewees, like Ryan O’Neal and Matthew Modine, talk about Vitali’s obsessive relationship with Kubrick, who was often bad-tempered when Vitali did not follow his orders. And clearly this obsessive relationship has taken its toll on Vitali, physically as well as psychologically. He looks much older than his actual age, haggard, and still driven by fulfilling the tasks he sets himself as Kubrick’s personal assistant for life.

Filmworker is a haunting portrait of a man who has submerged his own identity to serve another in a near religious case of submission. But when it comes to posterity, he couldn’t have chosen a more rigorous genius to learn from. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 18 May 2018

 

Youth (2017) | Bluray release

Dir: Feng Xiaogang | China | Historical Drama | 148′

Feng Xiaogang (I Am Madame Bovary) is widely considered as China’s answer to Stephen Spielberg, and he certainly proves himself in this crowd-pleasing if over-ambitious drama that straddles an entire generation of young Chinese, caught in the vortex of political and social change.

Setting off in the 1970s this magnificently-mounted saga tries – and initially – succeeds in being all things to all people: a musical laced with political commentary; a tragedy of war and of first love all narrated by Xiao Suizi (Chuxi Zhong) a dancer in a military troupe where another young woman He Xiaoping (Miao Miao) has just arrived determined to escape her troubled background by making a name for herself. The professional dancing standards are exacting even by Chinese considerations but He does her best for the national cause despite bullying from the other girls. Feng (Xuan Huang) takes her under the wing and the two grow close.

While the dizzy backdrop of political events unfolds – Chairman Mao’s death is a highlight – the troupe (the the drama) powers on at a relentless pace amid rivalries, and romantic crushes all masterfully recorded by Pan Luo whose energetic camerawork darts around taking it all in.

With Chairman Mao gone, a new sense of confidence invigorates the troupe and, slowly, materialism rears up in the face of the previous hardships as the film segues into a bloody depiction of the Vietnam War and its salient Chinese protagonists. Meanwhile, our own heroes don’t get away lightly during the decades – and we feel for them, especially Liu Feng whose dedication and sacrifice shines through, while He seems also to be misunderstood. As time marches relentlessly on, the film loses momentum as the focus becomes more scattered, its previous authenticity turning soapy in contrast to the convincing earlier scenes.

Overall this is an entertaining romp through the Chinese history books, its schmaltzy score milking the memorable moments with a rousing gusto that Chinese audiences will relish and take to their hearts. MT

NOW AVAILABLE ON BLURAY/DVD | Reviewed at PINGYAO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | YEAR ZERO | 28 OCT – 4 NOV 2017

The Poetess (2017) ****

Dir: Stefanie Brockhaus, Andres Wolff | Cast: HIssa Hilal | Drama | 89′ | Saudi/Germany

Hissa Hilal, Saudi poet and political activist in her forties, has made some ground-breaking literary efforts to push out the boundaries for women in Saudi Arabia. Veiled in her burqa she is a vehement critic of fundamental fanatics and Islamist terrorism. To be an outspoken woman and a poet in the Muslim world is an act of courage on its own, but to attack the predominantly male audience in the studio on live TV, goes a step further.

Ms Hilal is the focus of this enlightening documentary from Stefanie Brockhaus (On the other Side of Life) and Andy Wolff. We learn how she became the only woman competitor in the “Million’s Poet Show” 2015, televised to an audience of 70 million from Abu Dhabi (United Emirates). Remia (her mother does not let her use this name on TV), is married to another journalist and poet, who stands by her during the crisis following her appearance in the reality show, filmed in a TV studio with the most garish and gilded decor known to the modern world. It is a miracle in itself that she even reaches the grand final, where she will compete against five men. Covered in an abaya hijab and a burqa, Hissa attacks the unfaithfulness of men, and even more daring, she condemns the muftis, the issuers the Fatwa, all through her clever poetry. Needless to say, a Fatwa has been issued against her, a death threat, for which she is prepared: “If they kill me, I will be a martyr for humanity”.

For Hilal, “religion is a private matter, but is manipulated today for political ends”. Clips from documentaries from the early 20th century support her thesis clearly stating that a hundred years ago, Bedouin women could move around freely, have their own business and did not wear the burqa, which was only introduced later, “because beautiful women caused conflicts in the desert”. She remembers her youth, when Saudi Arabia was a much more liberal country. She watched television in the 1970s “when the parents forbid them to watch Egyptian movies. But we stayed up, until the parents were asleep and then enjoyed the forbidden features”. The change in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world came in late 1979, with the Juhayman incident in Mecca when 270 people were killed and over 500 were injured. The revolt was lead by Juhayman al-Oteibi and Mohammed Abudl al-Qahtan, the latter claiming to be the Mahdi. The Saudi monarchy, feeling threatened by the clerics who accused them of selling out to Western culture, placated the religious leaders by giving them control over the whole of society: media, culture, education, everything. The interaction of genders was the first victim: even in the TV studio, genders are separated.

One of the most interesting elements of the film is seeing the contrast between the cities of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and more liberal Oman, which is photographed both from an aerial perspective and with the camera moving freely through the streets and malls, evoking a authentic feel for Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman.

Tension builds in the grand finale “Million’s Poet Show”. The audience are clearly rooting in Hilal’s favour, but there’s bound to be some manipulation behind the scenes to ensure a male wins. She does not expect to be victorious and sadly her fears are realised. “They like to see me defeated, it’s really hate”. Her income from writing enables her to buy herself a house in Abu Dhabi; in the capital Riyadh this would not have been possible, and certainly not in the UK. She might have avoided the consequences of the Fatwa, but is not sure, when she will see her family again. This real eye-opener should be screened globally for all to see. MT

THE POETESS | NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW |

Mansfield 66/67 (2017) * *

Dir: P Ebersole and Todd Hughes | US Documentary with Kenneth Anger, Richmond Arquette, Ann Magnusson, John Waters, Mary Woronov | 84′

The real Sixties sex symbol Jayne Mansfield is never really revealed in this frivolously flirty film that floats around aimlessly in exploring her ill-fated final years.

Mansfield 66/67 is all bells and whistles as it careens chaotically through the blonde bombshell’s short-lived career – she died aged only 34 in 1967. Taking as its informative talking heads John Waters, Mary Woronov, and Kenneth Anger (et al) this is a light-headed piece of entertainment from the pair who brought us Hit So Hard that explored musician Patty Schemel’s descent into drug abuse.

It turns out that Mansfield was not just a pretty face or a stunning figure, for that matter: She was a polished publicity machine. Beyond that we learn nothing about her formative years or her movie career, although her death in Louisiana in a freak car accident in 1967 is much discussed and debated, along with her “Faustian” association with the Satanist Anton LaVey. It comes as no surprise to find out she very much enjoyed sex: “it should be animalistic, it should be sadistic, it should at times be masochistic…There are few rules and moral conventions”.  She also loved being a mother to her five kids, starting at age 17. According to her (convincing) funeral embalmer she was not de-captitated, contrary to popular belief, but she did dabble in witchcraft (the louche LaVey was variously blamed for her death); and live in a pink palace; and drive a pink Cadillac, during a decade long Hollywood career that hit its peak in the late 1950s.

But this film is so busy flitting through its different styles of presentation – that include dance routines by a bizarre bewigged foursome and Pink Panther style animations – that the thrice-married curvaceous kitten Jayne Mansfield almost takes a back seat in her own vehicle, and ranks secondary to the stylistic flourishes of this quasi vanity project. Ironic, considering that Mansfield’s career was defined exclusively by her desire for publicity “at any cost”. Public property during her lifetime, post mortem Mansfield still maintains her mystery. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 13 APRIL 2018

 

 

Anon (2017) **

Dir.: Andrew Niccol; Cast: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried, Colm Feore, Sonya Walger; Germany 2018, 100 min.

New Zealand born director/writer Andrew Niccol (The Host) has managed to create the ultimate misogynist feature where baddies rule the world, and women are just sex objects. On the same lines as his previous features, Gattaca and In Time, Anon is set in an imagined future, where crimes are unheard of due to a surveillance system that records everyone, and digital footprints are freely available to the law enforcers whose brains have been computerised. 

In this dystopia we meet Sal Frieland (Owen) is a detective working for the squad who tracks murderers by accessing the cloud-based visual memories of killers and their victims. He encounters a woman, known as Anon (Seyfried), who has no digital identity so threatening their security. Unleashing a sting operation he pretends to be a potential client but in so doing exposes his own troubled past. But The Girl soon finds out his profession and intention, and makes life hell for him. As the situation escalates, Anon leaves the audience with more questions than answers.

Apart from the gratuitous sex scenes and the nearly all-male police squad, Niccol manages to ruin the images with a bombardment of graphics and texts, keeping the audience reading instead of watching. DoP Amir Mokri (Transformers) finds inventive angles to show this absurdist functional world, which looks like laboratory for animal research. But Anon is, at the same time, frightfully old-fashioned when it coms to vices: Sal and his pals smoke, drink and snuff Coke, somehow the male dominated future world is as unbearable for the buddies, as the present. Hint: there are other emotions apart from guild and paranoia. AS 

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 4 MAY 2018

Tully (2018) ***

Dir.: Jason Reitman; Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston, Elaine Tan; USA 2018, 96 min.

Tully, the third cooperation for director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody – after Juno and Young Adult – is a realistic, bitter-sweet study of suburban family life near New York, and a flirt with the supernatural, which will not be disclosed (no spoilers). Apart from the lame ending, the two strands form an exciting unity, held together by the female leads Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Mackenzie Davis (Always Shine).

We meet Marlo (Theron) heavily pregnant in her third trimester – and not loving it at all. Theron was either over-committed to her role, or her fat-suit is superior to anything seen so far. But Marlo has to carry the whole weight of the new arrival, the third, and not a happy accident. “I feel like an abandoned trashbag” and My body looks a relief map for a war-torn country” are some of her choice comments. The reason for the overload is mainly husband Drew (Livingston), who is more absent than present, and has substituted their sex-life for nocturnal marathons on the Play Station. Her brother Craig (Duplass) is higher up the bourgeois ladder, and offers to pay for a night time nanny; whilst his perfectly trim wife Elyse (Tan) puts her foot in with comments “I had to crawl to the gym in my last month of pregnancy”. Needless to say, Craig and Elyse have a couple of perfect children, who love their greens, whilst Marlo’s daughter Sarah and son Jonah would prefer something more filling like pizza. Sarah’s reaction to the new arrival is a loss of self-esteem, and to compound matters, Jonah is about to be kicked out of kindergarten because his parents pretend that he is just “quirky”, rather than on the autism spectrum.

After the birth of Mia, and some sleepless nights amidst the rising domestic chaos, Marlo decides to accept her brother’s offer of help: Enter Tully (Davis), an optimistic, practical angel of competence, who not only liberates Marlo from the nightly child duties, but brings order into the household.. But there is a slight android quality about Tully, enhanced by her androgynous looks. We suspect the worst, when Tully helps Marlo to spice up her sex-life, wearing a waitress uniform, one of Drew’s beloved fetishes. But nothing comes out of this encounter, and soon Marlo and Tully become a unit. After a night-out in Brooklyn, Marlo’s old haunt, Tully announces suddenly, that she has to leave.

Certainly, Cody’s script is the soul of this feature, her dialogue is witty; and well-informed by her own experience of motherhood. One of her next projects, titled Barbie, is a live action film about a doll from Barbie Land, who is expelled from this universe and has adventures in the real world. With Tully Cody asks whether motherhood has to be the end of an independent life – is the old Marlo of Brooklyn dead or, can she be re-animated?

DoP Eric Steelberg’s images work best during the chaotic time in Marlo’s household and the confrontations between Marlo and the kindergarten teachers. But sometimes, like the whole project in the end, he finds too many comprises, choosing soothing colour schemes, avoiding more innovative angles. Tully could have been a great feature, but taking back so much of the critique at the end, spoils the whole enterprise. 

OUT ON RELEASE THIS FRIDAY, 4 MAY 2018

The Young Karl Marx (2017) ***

Dir: Raoul Peck |France / Germany / Belgium | Drama | 112 min · Colour

Interesting to discover that, according to Raoul Peck (I am Not Your Negro), the young and unemployed Karl Marx lived on the money of a capitalist he despised, while writing his community treaty Das Capital, and fathering two children. This is one of many revealing facts uncovered in this worthy period drama – which is rather pleased with itself despite being about as enjoyable as a wet weekend with Diane Abbott and one of her migraines.

Played convincingly by August Diehl (Salt), the 26 year old lived with his heiress wife Jenny in exile in Paris, where he is pictured as a rather arrogant flaneur habitually in debt and plagued by existential anxieties. Initially dismissing German factory heir Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske) as a dandy, the pair go on to develop a veritable bromance when Marx discovers Engels has just published a study on the miserable impoverishment of the English proletariat, and has distanced himself from his father – despite remaining on the payroll, hence financing Marx.

From then on this becomes a political procedural as the pair, assisted by Jenny and Engel’s factory shop steward wife Mary Burns (Hannah Steele), continue to work tirelessly and admirably to provide a theoretical foundation for revolution and to improve workers’ rights and abolish child labour. Soon their aim is not merely to interpret the world, but to change it with a work entitled Critic of the Critical Critique and subsequently, the Communist Manifesto.

Pascal Bonitzer’s brisk workmanlike script follows a linear narrative; Alexei Aigui (I am Not Your Negro) and animates it with an earnestly dramatic score, with unimaginative visuals conveying the drabness of Victorian England to great effect in a rather lacklustre but informative period drama. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 MAY 2018

 

Canada Now | 3-6 May 2018

CANADA NOW 2018 is a showcase of New Canadian Cinema in the UK, beginning with a weekend of screenings and events from the 3rd – 6th May at the Curzon Soho, featuring outstanding new pieces of filmmaking alongside a brand new digital restoration of a repertory classic. From Sunday July 1st 2018, in celebration of Canada Day, the films will begin a nationwide tour of cinemas and venues across the UK. Here is the line-up in full. 

ALL YOU CAN EAT BUDDHA | Ian Lagarde, 2017 85′

This oddball vacation comedy curio starts off well but rapidly goes pear-shaped, largely due to the flaccid pacing and increasingly imploding narrative that follows a holidaying man who develops a mysterious appetite and supernatural powers in an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEZOCD_ufk

BLACK COP  | Cory Bowles, 2017 – 91′

A black police officer turns activist and seeks revenge on his own colleagues after  being egregiously profiled and assaulted by them, in this stylish and intermittently engaging political satire by actor-director Cory Bowles (Trailer Park Boys). 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHLDGsZRELA

CARDINALS | Grayson Moore & Aidan Shipley, 2017 – 84 mins

Years after murdering her neighbour under the guise of drink driving, Valerie returns home from prison to find that the son of the deceased has lingering suspicions. An impressive, well-acted debut despite its tonally uneven denouement.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjOw0ug3Bqw

HOCHELAGA, LAND OF SOULS, HOCHELAGA, TERRE DES ÂMES | François Girard, 2017 100 *

Oscar winner François Girard (The Red Violin), returns with an ambitious time-travelling fantasy spanning eight centuries of layered indigenous, colonial, and contemporary histories. Starring Vincent Perez and Linus Roache, this works best as an intriguing piece of historical voyeurism rather than as a cogent drama exploring the aftermath of a sinkhole opening up in a downtown Montreal football stadium causing the city’s past and present to intersect.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oArz1hEwwtY

*Touring programme only

I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING  | Patricia Rozema, 1987 – 81′

Patricia Rozema’s Cannes-awarded debut feature – a charming, whimsical story about a waifish daydreamer with artistic aspirations – is now an arthouse classic and one of the most profitable Canadian films ever made, and an important milestone in both queer cinema and the development of Canadian film industry.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzNbLSo7A4

LET THERE BE LIGHT  | Mila Aung-Thwin, Van Royko, 2017 – 80′

Directed by Mila Aung-Thwin (The Vote) and Van Royko (Kodeline), this unconvincing documentary attempts to explore fusion research and how it may help solve the global energy crisis.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IicYGhFEII8

MARY GOES ROUND  – Molly McGlynn, 2017 – 87′ 

Establishing Molly McGlynn as a talent in the making, her debut feature centres on a substance abuse counsellor (Mary/Aya Cash) with a drinking problem. After getting arrested for drink driving and losing her job, Mary returns to her hometown where she is forced to come to terms with her estranged father and form a bond with her teenage half-sister whom she’s never met. Although over-melodramatic at times, Mary Goes Round has its heart in the right place. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqI4pQh1jEA

MEDITATION PARK | Mina Shum, 2017 – 94′

The reason to see this upbeat relationship drama is for Cheng Pei Pei’s superb turn as a devoted wife and mother, who questions her marriage when she discovers an orange thong in her husband’s pocket. Her efforts to find out the truth send her on an unexpected journey of liberation. Sandrah Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) is also terrific.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQhbqJcjjM

RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD | Catherine Bainbridge & Alfonso Maiorana, 2017 – 103′

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World is a well-structured, resonant music biopic to light a profound and missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. Featuring music icons Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, Buffy Saint-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo and Taboo, RUMBLE shows how these pioneering Native musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hovJUoyxulc

VENUS | Eisha Marjara, 2017 *

Eisha Marjara’s articulate, absorbing, and lively gender shifting comedy, Venus, is the witty tale of Sid (featuring New York-based actor Debargo Sanyal in a brilliant performance), a transitioning woman whose life takes a surprising turn when a 14-year-old boy named Ralph arrives at her door with the surprising announcement that he is her son.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsL6QLUae8o

*Touring programme only

CANADA NOW | 3-6  MAY 2018 | CURZON LONDON | 1 July onwards NATIONWIDE TOUR

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2018) **** | Meari to Majo No Hana

Dir.: Hiromasa Yonebayashi; Anime with the voices of Hana Sugisaki, Ryonosuke Kamiki, Yuki Amani, Fumiyo Kohinata; Japan 2017, 102 min.

In 2014 the worldwide fanbase of the much-loved Studio Ghibli was saddened to hear of its demise. Three years later, we’re delighted (and relieved) to confirm that its successor Studio Ponoc has produced a knockout first outing: nearly all the crew of Mary and the Witch’s Flower are Ghibli veterans, starting with director/co-writer Hiromasa Ynebayashi (The SecreteWorld of Arietty, When Marnie was There).

Like many other Ghibli productions, Mary and the Witches Flower is based on a children’s novel by British/American women writers – this time Mary Stewart’s The little Broomstick (1971). It follows Howl’s Moving Castle (Dianna Wynne Jones), Ursula K. Le Gun’s A Wizard of Earth Sea (filmed as Tales from Earthsea), Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (filmed as The Secret World of Arrietty) and Joan Robinson’s Marnie was There. 

In this contemporary soci0-political allegory, Mary Smith (Sugisaki) is living with her great aunt Charlotte (a former witch) in the placid backwater of Redmanor, where all the local kids are on vacation and Mary’s parents are working on a project far away. Mary encounters Peter (Kamiki), who is a few years older than her and has more freedom to roam around town. She also meets cats Tib and Gib who lead to her finding the broomstick and the equally potent magic flower, setting her on the way to a kingdom in the clouds, ruled by the malicious Madam Mumblechook (Amani) and her evil sidekick Doctor Dee (Kohinata). They are running a school of magic – Mary is initially mistaken for a new student – but their real goal in their Frankenstein-like laboratories, is to put the whole universe in danger by changing animals and humans alike into ugly zombie-like creatures who will obediently following their command (anyone read The Bell Curve?). Although Mary has rather low self-esteem, she soon discovers her fighting spirit, rescuing Gib and Peter from being transformed into zombies, finally taking on the deadly duo in a splendid takedown finale.

The character designs and certain action scenes are familiar from former Ghibli productions but, contents-wise, there is a stark difference: the antagonistic forces of many Ghibli productions where never as evil as Mumblechook and Doctor Dee, who are truly Bond villains, ready to put the whole World in danger; their schemes of biological mutations reminding us of the worse medical ‘experiments’ in the Nazi camps of WWII and some of today’s political regimes.

But this rather harder edge does not deflect from the overall impression of wonder and magic and when the heroine starts believing in herself, she soon becomes a building light and inspiration for others. After thirty years of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli,  his former collaborators now carry the flame to a new beginning in the form of Pomoc studio. AS

Altitude Film Distribution and Studio Ponoc are proud to present, Mary and The Witch’s Flower is releasing in UK and Irish cinemas nationwide, in both dubbed and subtitled forms, from 4th May, with a One Night Only preview of the subtitled version on 10th April 2018.

Cannes Film Festival 2018 | On the Croisette – off the cuff update

Festival bigwig Thierry Frémaux warned us to expect shocks and surprises from this year’s festival line-up, distilled down from over 1900 features to an intriguing list of 18 – and there will be a few more additions before May 8th. The main question is “where are the stars?” or better still “Where is Isabelle Huppert” doyenne of the Croisette – up to now. The answer seems to be that they are on the jury – presided by Cate Blanchett, who is joined by Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Denis Villeneuve, Robert Guédiguian, Ava Duvernay, Khadja Nin, Chang Chen and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Last year’s 70th Anniversary bumper issue seems to have swept in a more eclectic and sleek selection of features in the competition line-up vying for the coveted Palme D’Or. There are new films from veterans Jean-Luc Godard (The Image Book), Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) and Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War), and some very long films – 9 exceed two hours. Three female filmmakers make the main competition in the shape of Caramel director Nadine Labaki with Capernaum, Alice Rohrwacher with Lazzaro Felice and Eve Husson presenting Girls of the Sun. Kazakh filmmaker Sergei Dvortsevoy rose to indie fame at Cannes Un Certain Regard 2008 with his touching title Tulpan, and he is back now in the main competition line-up with a hot contender in the shape of AYKA or My Little One. 

Scanning through the selection for British fare – the Ron Howard “directed” (Thierry’s words not mine) Solo, A Star Wars Story stars Thandie Newton, Paul Bethany and Emilia Clarke but no sign of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo. And although Matteo Garrone’s Dogman is there and is a hot contender for this year’s Palme, the much-awaited Jacques Audiard latest The Sisters Brothers, and Joanna Hogg’s hopeful The Souvenir Parts I and II are nowhere to be seen- but Lars von Trier is still very much ‘de trop’ on the Riviera, or so it would seem. Thierry is still thinking about this one. And on reflection he has now added The House That Jack Built – out of competition.

Apart from Godard, there are two other French titles: Stéphane Brizé will present At War, and Christophe Honoré’s Sorry Angel – in competition, and these features will open shortly afterwards in the local cinemas – to keep the Cannois happy. The Un Certain Regard sidebar has 6 feature debuts in a line-up of 15. And the special screening section offers Wang Bing’s Dead Souls with its 8 hour running time  allowing for a quick petit-dej on the Croisette before the following days’ viewing starts!

It Follows director David Robert Mitchell will be in Cannes with his eagerly anticipated follow-up Under the Silver Lake. And Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke  brings another Palme d’Or hopeful in the shape of Ash is Purest White, starring his wife and long-term collaborator Tao Zhao.  First time director A B Shawky presents the only debut feature in the competition strand Yomeddine – a leper road movie from Egypt – and it’s a comedy!. Iranians Jafar Panahi (Three Faces) and Asghar Farhadi (Everybody Knows) also make the list – with Farhadi’s film starring Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem and opening the festival this year.

So out with the old guard – Naomi Kawase included – and in with the new – is Thierry’s message this year. Let’s hope it’s a good one. And stay tuned for more additions and coverage from the sidebars Un Certain Regard, ACID, Semaine de la Critique and Directors’ Fornight. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8 -22 MAY 2018

COMPETITION LINE-Up

EVERY BODY KNOWS – Asghar Farhadi

AT WAR - Stéphane Brizé 

DOGMAN – Matteo Garrone

LE LIVRE D’IMAGE – Jean-Luc Godard

NETEMO SAMETEMO (ASAKO I & II) (ASAKO I & II) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi

SORRY ANGEL – Christophe Honore

GIRLS OF THE SUN – Eva Husson

ASH IS PUREST WHITE – Zia Zhangke

SHOPLIFTERS – Kor-eda Hirokazu

CAPERNAUM – Nadine Labaki

BUH-NING (BURNING) – Lee Chang-Dong

BLACKKKLANSMAN – Spike Lee

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE – David Robert Mitchell

THREE FACES – Jafar Panahi

ZIMNA WOJNA/Cold War – Pawel Pawlikowski

LAZZARO FELICE – Alice Rohrwacher

LETO – Kirill Serebrennikov

YOMEDDINE – A B Shawky

KNIFE + HEART – Yann Gonzalez

AYKA –  Sergey Dvortsevoy, director of Tulpan, winner of the Prize Un Certain Regard in 2008.

These two films by Yann Gonzalez and Sergey Dvortsevoy are both directors’ second feature. It will be their first time in Competition.

AHLAT AGACI (THE WILD PEAR TREE) – Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Palme d’or 2014 for Winter Sleep.

The Competition 2018 will be composed of 21 films.

SHADOW – Zhang Yimou (out of competition)

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT – Lars von Trier (out of competition)

_______________________________________________

 71st CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 8-20 MAY 2018

 

 

Lean on Pete (2017)***

Dir: Andrew Haigh | Great Britain / 121’ | Cast: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny

Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) directs Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny in a rather uneven rites of passage Pacific western about a boy who bonds with an old racehorse, and based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.

This is a film to be seen for its captivating performances rather than its meandering narrative that abandons the central soulmates (fifteen year old Charlie and his horse Lean on Pete) midday through to explore how the teen resorts to petty crime in order to survive as an orphan. We first meet him living alone with his sweary Dad Ray (Fimmel) in Portland,Oregon; Ray loves his sensitive son, but is too selfish to care for him since his mother left town due to Ray’s philandering. So when a vengeful husband kills Ray, Charlie is left alone and desperate to find his aunt Margy, who fell out with Ray, for obvious reasons. Teaming up with the disreputable horse trainer Del (Buscemi in fine fettle), the two are soon joined by jockey Bonnie (Sevigny), leaving Charlie in the cold again, when Bonnie takes over Del’s attention. So Charlie sets off on a mission to save the ageing racehorse, Lean on Pete, who is bound for Mexico – an euphemistic term for the slaughter house. Their soulful journey across the luminous desert landscape is painful for both, and ends in tragedy, leaving Charlie on an elusive quest for aunt Margy in Laramie, Wyoming.

LEAN ON PETE is a lightly-plotted family film, apart from the animal tragedy. Magnus Nordenhof Jonck’s stunning images make up for an unsatisfying storyline that starts full of promise then Peters out, limping aimlessly for two full hours. Haigh tries to see the good in everyone, often stepping over the line to out-and-out sentimentality, but his central character does not deliver. Professionally produced and well-acted, particularly by Plummer, who won the De Laurentis Prize in Venice for Best Newcomer Actor, LEAN ON PETE is not only lean of plot; but all the social realist rough edges are polished too: Charlie keeps a stiff upper lip and takes it on the chin, but somehow his soul takes a short cut into rocky terrain rather than finding redemption in pastures new. Some critics called it “a modern Huckleberry Finn” – but that would be insulting to Mark Twain.

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 27 APRIL 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) | Cannes Film Festival 2018

Dir: Ron Howard | Writers: Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan | Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany | US | Action adventure | 135′ 

In 2002, it was Star Wars – Episode II – Attack of the Clones and in 2005, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. In 2018, what is one of the greatest legends in the history of cinema has returned to the red carpet here at Cannes, presented Out of Competition.

The saga’s second spin-off is the latest film of the Star Wars galaxy by Ron Howard bringing together Han Solo, his faithful Chewbacca, the crooked Lando Calrissian, the Millenium Falcon and of course the droids. This adventure takes us back to the youth of the famous smuggler, ace pilot and charming scoundrel, Han Solo. Written by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and directed by Ron Howard, who starred in George Lucas’ classic American Graffiti and directed numerous popular and critical hits such as Apollo 13 (1995) or A Beautiful Mind (2002, Oscars for best film and director).

Alongside Alden Ehrenreich (Blue Jasmine, 2013) who plays Han Solo, it has local Hampstead resident Thandie Newton (Jefferson in Paris); Woody Harrelson (No Country For Old Men), Emilia Clarke (Terminator Genisys), Donald Glover (The Martian), , Phoebe Waller-Bridge (The Iron Lady), Joonas Suotamo (Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi) and Paul Bettany (Dogville).

The Wound | Inxeba (2017)


Dir: John Trengrove | Writers: John Trengove, Thando Mgqolozana, Malusi Bengu | Cast: Nakhane Touré, Bongile Mantsai, Niza Jay Ncoyini (Kwanda) | DoP Paul Özgür | Music
João Orecchia |South Africa | 88 min · Colour

Best known for his TV series Hopeville and his short film iBhokhwe (The Goat) that tackled the subject of male circumcision, this is John Trengrove’s feature film debut and explores the experiences of a typical young factory worker in an extraordinary contemporary story that feels as if it could have taken place a hundred years ago. THE WOUND proves that an all-male environment can generate a dramatic range of tender and aggressive emotional expressions, where the taboo of homosexuality and masculinity are concerned.

Xolani (played by singer Nakhane Touré) is from the Xhosa, a South African tribe inhabiting the areas round Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. Every year he travels to a remote region in the mountains to take part and act as a care-giver in an annual circumcision ceremony. Women are not permitted to join the activities where the men paint their bodies in alarming designs using white ochre, as they immerse themselves in a coming of age rites of passage. One of the men Xolani meets is Kwanda, a middle class boy from Joburg undergoing his initiation, sensitive and perceptive, the young man quickly picks up on Xolani’s own homosexual identity.

This a gripping and immersive film that slowly generates tension from the mens’ needs to comply with their traditional environment while also satisfying their own emotional and sexual impulses. It gradually emerges that the melancholy Xolani is also there to cement his rather one-sided relationship with fellow married care-giver Vijami. But contrary to our expectations, Kwanda actually supports Xolani’s secret and idolatrous bond with Vijami rather than exposing him, adding another twist to this textured storyline. The magnifcent scenery, compelling narrative and subtle characterisations make this a watchable drama and a strong directorial debut for Trengrove. THE WOUND would make in interesting companion piece to Ousmane Sembene’s female circumcision story MOULAADE. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 27 APRIL 2018 | NAKANE IS PROMOTING HIS NEW ALBUM ‘YOU WILL NOT DIE’

 

 

 

 

Modern Life is Rubbish (2017) **

Dir: Daniel Jerome Gill | Cast: Josh Whitehouse, Jessie Cave, Ian Hart, Steven Mackintosh, Freya Mavor, Tom Riley | Musical Drama | UK | 114′

Daniel Jerome Gill is clearly a fan of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Modern Life  is Rubbish makes a brave attempt to re-create Stephen Frears’ 2000 cult classic drama, that sees a young couple come together through their shared love of music, only to part ten years later, falling out of love.

Gill’s endearing but lightweight film lacks the charisma and zinging chemistry brought to the original by John Cusack and Iben Hjelje – not to mention the sensational script – to make it another breakout hit. Modern Life works best as a stinging reminder of the economic climate of its time as the world entered the late 1990s recession, Its sparkling string of musical hits by Blur, The Smiths, Oasis, and Radiohead considerably enhance the film’s entertainment and nostalgia value.

As Liam and Natalie, Josh Whitehouse and Freya Mavor are gently appealing: he, an old-school struggling musician who believes in his worth and his art; and she, an uptown aspiring art designer (of album covers) who lacks conviction, despite a megawatt smile. We first meet them in the rather morose opening scene whence the drama sashays backwards and forwards – to the time they first clapped eyes on each other, in a record shop, gradually showing them falling in love, as opposites attract. Liam’s inability to embrace the modern corporate world make him an appealing embodiment of anti-corporate culture, his disdain for social media is palpable: He refuses to own a smartphone or an iPod and is proud of his tangible record collection on vinyl. Natalie is more pragmatic, casting aside her artistic hopes for the advantages of pecuniary gain, to work in advertising. But her heart is clearly not in it – at the opening night of her first gig in an art gallery, the two realise they are not quite cut out for each other when Natalie explains: “We’re doing a viral campaign for the gallery” and Liam chips in: “a load of wank, if you ask me”. That said, the soundtrack that first defined their relationship keeps pulling them back together.

Taking its title from Blur’s 1993 album, the film is a pure satirical trip to its era, working best as a testament to the late 1990s, rather than as a believable story of frontman Liam and his weak attempts to make it with his band Headcleaner, his lack of finances being the major cause of the pair’s eventual rift. The scenes involving Steven Mackintosh, Will Merrick and Ian Hart feel laboured and generic (although Hart gives a stonking turn as the band’s agent), but when Whitehouse (a real guitarist) takes to the stage in a live performance, the film gets a shot in the arm, in lucid sequences filmed by cinematographer Tim Sidell.

Strangely, it’s the viral success of the band that finally makes Liam a name, and this leads to the inevitable, and a rather bittersweet, finale for the lovers in this ultimately enjoyable trip down memory lane. MT

OUT ON RELEASE from 4 May 2018

 

 

 

The Deminer (2017) ****

Dir.: Hogir Hirori (Co-director Shinwar Kamal); Documentary with Fakhir Berwari; Sweden/Iraq 2017, 83′

This is one of the few films has the audience in an emotional grip that lasts long after the credits have rolled and having watched Hogir Hogir’s  documentary about Colonel Fakhir Berwari, who defused thousands of explosive devices in a wartorn Iraq, one is left with admiration – but also with a feeling of huge inadequacy, however misplaced.

Fakhir Berwari, a Kurdish father of eight, was a man with a mission, or better, an obsession: he wanted to save as many lives as possible, and when he was demobbed by the Iraqi army after he losing a leg in an explosion, he became morose. Only after DAESH started its terror regime in and around his hometown of Dohok, did he find his equalibrium. And he joined the Kurdish Peshmerg army in 2014. Attaching a simple prosthesis to his stump allowed him to do what he was best at: defusing the deadly legacy of DAESH, using his bare hands to rip the mines apart, and de-activating the boob-trapped bombs in the houses with a pair of pliers and a wire cutter.

The filmmakers got access to video material from Berari’s son Abdulla, who found a cache of tapes in his father’s briefcase. These documents are from the time when Fakhir was a major, serving in the regular Iraqi army, learning his craft, being christened “Crazy Fakhir” by the American allies, whilst he disposed of bombs and mines left by supporters of the by now executed Saddam Hussain. To quote Abdulla “These tapes are action movies, but for real”. They are filmed by either Berwari himself, or his closest assistants – and capture the assault that occurred when the car carrying Berwari and his team is thrown into the air, like a toy. There are other near misses, and the tension becomes more and more unbearable, convincing that there will be no happy-end.

The DAESH troops who plant the deadly weapons, wear black, and one is immediately reminded of the Nazi black-shirts in their SS uniforms. To mine the houses of civilians is an act of pure evil, blowing them up with a signal from a mobile. But ordinary life goes on for the Berwari family: in between these rescue missions, Fakhir is phoned by a creditor, who demands payment. Then he defuses a mine, which would have blown up the whole street. It is difficult to sum up The Deminer – which won the Special Jury Price at the Amsterdam IDFA in November 2017 – so overwhelming are the images, comment is redundant. Perhaps, the joyful expression on Fakhir Berwari’s face, after re-joining the army in 2014 and returning to his mission, is the best way to remember him. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE from Friday 27 April 2018

Beast (2017) ***

Dir: Michael Pearce | Cast: Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Trystan Gravelle | UK | 107′ | Thriller

Two troubled souls are drawn together in this twisted and intriguingly intelligent psychological thriller debut from British TV director Michael Pearce.

On a Jersey beach during her birthday celebrations, Moll (Jessie Buckley) breaks away from the fraught family gathering drawn to a tousled-haired wayfarer Pascal ((Flynn) who is implicated in a series of murders rocking the island. Tour guide Moll is far from squeaky clean but her vulnerable, wide-eyed appeal provides a suspenseful counterpoint to Pascal’s sensitive knowingness; such a breath of fresh air compared to her boring police officer boyfriend Cliff (Trystan Gravelle). Moll still lives at home with her dementia-ridden father and dominating martyr of a mother Hilary, a feisty Geraldine James, who is holding everything together – including the church choir – while clearly favouriting supercilious brother Harrison (Oliver Maltman). To add insult to injury, sister Polly (Shannon Tarbet) has just announced her twin pregnancy on Moll’s special day. Clearly there is more to Moll than meets the eye, but Pearce keeps us guessing about her dark secret which is cleverly reflected through her family’s harsh and controlling attitude towards her. There is also something gently sinister about the prickly Pascal who prowls around with a hunting rifle while the two grow closer complicit in their shared orbit of shadowy darkness; Moll’s unhappiness piqued by the sense of danger and romantic thrill that gradually comes to a head in the final beachside denouement. BEAST is a subtle thriller that skates around the edges of melodrama and horror primped by Benjamin Kracun’s luminous images and superbly nuanced performances from Geraldine James, Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn as the tense lead trio. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 27 April 2018

 

 

 

Sundance London 2018 | 31 May – 3 June

Once again Robert Redford brings twelve of the best indie feature films that premiered in Utah this January, with opportunities to talk to the filmmakers and cast in a jamboree that kicks off on the long weekend of 31 May until 3 June.

Desiree Akhavan picked up the Grand Jury Prize for her comedy drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post in the original US festival, and seven films are directed by women along with a thrilling array of female leads on screen, and this year’s festival champions their voices with Toni Collette (Hereditary) amongst the stars to grace this glittering occasion taking place in Picturehouse Central, Leicester Square. Robert Redford will also be in attendance.

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (Director: Jim Hosking,

Screenwriters: Jim Hosking, David Wike) – Lulu Danger’s unsatisfying marriage takes a fortunate turn for the worse when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform an event called ‘An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn For One Magical Night Only’.

Principal cast: Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Jemaine Clement, Matt Berry, Craig Robinson

Eighth Grade (Director/Screenwriter: Bo Burnham) – Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

Principal cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton

Generation Wealth (Director: Lauren Greenfield) – Lauren Greenfield’s postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, image-obsessed culture. Simultaneously personal journey and historical essay, the film bears witness to the global boom–bust economy, the corrupted American Dream and the human costs of late stage capitalism, narcissism and greed.

Principal cast: Florian Homm, Tiffany Masters, Jaqueline Siegel

Half the Picture (Director: Amy Adrion) – At a pivotal moment for gender equality in Hollywood, successful women directors tell the stories of their art, lives and careers. Having endured a long history of systemic discrimination, women filmmakers may be getting the first glimpse of a future that values their voices equally.

Principal cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Babbit, Emily Best

Hereditary (Director/Screenwriter: Ari Aster) – After their reclusive grandmother passes away, the Graham family tries to escape the dark fate they’ve inherited.

Principal cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, Milly Shapiro

Leave No Trace (Director: Debra Granik, Screenwriters: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini) – A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. A small mistake tips them off to authorities sending them on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

Principal cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Director: Desiree Akhavan, Screenwriters: Desiree Akhavan, Cecilia Frugiuele) –1993: after being caught having sex with the prom queen, a girl is forced into a gay conversion therapy center. Based on Emily Danforth’s acclaimed and controversial coming-of-age novel.

Principal cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher Jr., Jennifer Ehle.

Never Goin’ Back (Director/Screenwriter: Augustine Frizzell) –Jessie and Angela, high school dropout BFFs, are taking a week off to chill at the beach. Too bad their house got robbed, rent’s due, they’re about to get fired and they’re broke. Now they’ve gotta avoid eviction, stay out of jail and get to the beach, no matter what!!!

Principal cast: Maia Mitchell, Cami Morrone, Kyle Mooney, Joel Allen, Kendal Smith, Matthew Holcomb

Skate Kitchen (Director: Crystal Moselle, Screenwriters: Crystal Moselle, Ashlihan Unaldi) – Camille’s life as a lonely suburban teenager changes dramatically when she befriends a group of girl skateboarders. As she journeys deeper into this raw New York City subculture, she begins to understand the true meaning of friendship as well as her inner self.

Principal cast: Rachelle Vinberg, Dede Lovelace, Jaden Smith, Nina Moran, Ajani Russell, Kabrina Adams

The Tale (Director/Screenwriter: Jennifer Fox) – An investigation into one woman’s memory as she’s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive; based on the filmmaker’s own story.

Principal cast: Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Ellen Burstyn, Common

Yardie (Director: Idris Elba, Screenwriters: Brock Norman Brock, Martin Stellman) – Jamaica, 1973. When a young boy witnesses his brother’s assassination, a powerful Don gives him a home. Ten years later he is sent on a mission to London. He reunites with his girlfriend and their daughter, but then the past catches up with them. Based on Victor Headley’s novel.

Principal cast: Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, Fraser James, Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Cleary

SURPRISE FILM! Following on from last year’s first ever surprise film, the hit rap story Patti Cake$, Sundance Film Festival: London will again feature a surprise showing.  No details as yet, but it was a favourite among audiences in Utah, and with just one screening this will be among the hottest of the hot tickets. The title will be revealed only when the opening credits roll. My bets are on Gustav Möller’s The Guilty, which picked up the World Cinema Audience Award back in January; or possibly Rudy Valdez’ drug documentary The Sentence, or it could even be Burden, which took the US Dramatic Audience Award for its story of a love affair between a villain and a woman who saves his soul. 

SUNDANCE LONDON RUNS FROM 31 MAY – 3 JUNE 2018 | TICKETS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obey (2018)| *** Tribeca Film Festival 2018 | 21-28 April 2018

Dir.: Jamie Jones; Cast: Marcus Rutherford, Sophie Kennedy Clark, T’Nia Miller, James Atwell, Sam Gittins; UK 2018, 93 min.

Jamie Jones’ feature debut takes place during the London riots in August 2014, after the police killing of Mark Duggan in North London. Black teenager Leon has a hard time, seeking refuge in a small gang, while his mother sinks deeper and deeper into alcohol dependency. But when Jones introduces Twiggy, a young white middle-class woman, who supports the urban youth, the narrative takes a radical change from the usual “hard-luck” story of young black males.

Until he meets Twiggy, the only thing Leon (Rutherford) enjoys is boxing in a dilapidated local gym. His mother Chelsea (Miller) has shacked up with a violent boyfriend called Chris (Atwell), who beats up both mother and son. Meanwhile, Twiggy (Kennedy Clarke) meanwhile, runs around with a camera, taking photos of the gang and police violence. Living in a squat with boyfriend Anton (Gittins), she makes a wild entrance, kissing another woman at a party – but this does not deter Leon from falling for her. Being mocked by his gang members for fancying “Blondie”, Leon goes on a houseboat trip with Twiggy and Anton, interrupting the near-permanent street violence for a romantic outing. After a fight with Chris, Leon enters Twiggy’s flat, and she looks after his wounds, whilst Anton has a deep post-coital sleep. When the police storm the squat in the morning, Anton is arrested, but Leon and Twiggy escape, indulging in alcohol and weed in Leon’s flat where they consummate their relationship. But when Leon wakes up, Twiggy is gone and he later discovers the truth about his lover as the story down-spirals into a violent finale.

DoP Albert Salas handheld camera captures the chaotic violence and Leon’s emotional turmoil. The moment he leaves the security of his gang, he loses his personal perspective and self esteem. Seeing Twiggy as a sort of life-boat, which might take him out of the permanent misery, he fails to grasp that this woman is not only white (which makes him a traitor in the eyes of his peers), but a middle class one at that – one of the do-gooders, who protest against their own privileged status by making a guest appearance in the ghetto-like slums, before returning with her boyfriend to the safety of suburbia when the going gets too rough. Obey is by no means perfect, but superior to many features of the same sub-genre. AS

WORLD PREMIERE IN COMPETITION AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL | NEW YORK 2018

The World is Yours (2018) ***


Dir: Romain Gavras | Writers: Noe Debre, Romain Gavras, Karim Boukercha | Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Vincent Cassel, Francois Damiens, Karim Leklou, Norbert Ferrer | Comedy Crime | France | 100′

Romain Gavras’ rambunctiously glossy gangster comedy is stashed with French household names and beats as it sweeps towards a preposterous finale. Best known for his music videos for the likes of Jaz-Z, this energetically stylish comedy is full of French verve and punchy argot making it less accessible for non-French speakers with its raucous, over-the top absurdity. Isabelle Adjani and Vincent Cassel boost a brash and ballsy plotline that sees a North African crime syndicate dream of better things from their humble Paris council flats. A Prophet‘s Karim Leklou (Fares) is the surprising standout as a feisty grifter who is desperate to make some cash so he can retire to the sun. Meanwhile his unmanageable matriarch Danny (Adjani) has her own hair-brained schemes, so it’s up to mid-mannered Fares and his motley crew to make it all happen. Bonkers but delightful if you like this kind of French caper. MT

NOW SHOWING AT CINE LUMIERE FROM 25 APRIL 2019 | QUINZAINE 2018

The Isle (2018)

Dir: Matthew Butler Hart | Fantasy Horror | Conleth Hill, Alex Hassell, Tori Butler Hart, Fisayo Akinade, Alix Wilton Regan, Emma King, Graham Butler | 96′ | UK

Matthew Butler Hart crafts a beautiful and believable horror fantasy set in nineteenth century Scotland and exploring a mythological folk tale of sirens and succubi. Although lacking the weighty social themes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch this is an impressive period piece that delivers an ominous sense of dread throughout its well-paced and compact running time.

On a remote island off the Scottish coast three sailors find themselves washed ashore after a mysterious shipwreck. They soon meet the four remaining islanders who are living with a terrible secret history that has haunted their dwindling community. Clues to the mystery are telegraphed by eerie sound effects and subtle visual cues, and a satisfying conclusion is delivered in the film’s final reveal.

Tori Hart’s imaginative script conflates Greek mythology with British folkloric tales such as The Wicker Man and nautical literary fare such as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) to develop its own distinct narrative based on a community struggling to survive its unsettling past. This is a classically-styled quality British production with convincing performances from Alex Hassell (Suburbicon) as Captain Oliver Gosling, and Tori Butler Hart who plays the enigmatic female lead Lanthe, one of the island’s four remaining residents who holds the key to the weird goings on, along with her father Douglas (Games of Thrones’ Conleth Hill). Peter Wellington makes atmospheric use of the misty, wind-swept seascapes of Scotland and Suffolk to create an affective fantasy horror story. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 3 May 2019 NATIONWIDE

Never Steady, Never Still (2017) ****

Dir/Writer: Kathleen Hepburn | Cast: Shirley Henderson, Nicholas Campbell, Theodore Pellerin | Canada. 2017. 110′.

At the heart of this haunting portrait of family dissonance is Shirley Henderson’s dramatic performance as a dignified independent woman brought to her wits’ end by Parkinson’s disease. And if ever there was a location the echoed the mournful storyline it is the alienating lakeside landscapes of snowbound British Columbia, Canada, where this intimate exploration of strained but resilient kindred spirits unfolds in Kathleen Hepburn’s resonant debut, brought to life by DoP Norm Li’s impressive 35mm camerawork.

As films go this is a gruelling and devastating watch despite its worthwhile intentions. Judy (Henderson) is only in her fifties but has been struck down with the debilitating neural affliction and inured to the constant suffering since early in her marriage to  to Ed (Nicholas Campbell). And the pair live in mutual affectionate acceptance of one another despite the restrictions Judy’s illness has posed on their relationship. Not so their 19-year-old son Jamie (Theodore Pellerin) who is a sexually frustrated angry young man, at odds with himself and everyone round him in his male-orientated work in Alberta’s oil business. And in some ways this makes a man of him, although he is clearly troubled and drifting aimlessly through life, occasionally seeing his only friend Danny (Jonathan Whitesell). When he does meet a girl his opening gambit is along the lines of “do you like to fool around?”.

When his parents come under pressure at home, it’s clear that Jamie must knuckle down and offer support. In some ways Jamie’s mental state (never steady, never still) seems to channel his mother’s physical disability but clearly he’s been affected by the restrictions of his upbringing in feeling affection for his mother, but repelled by physical contact with her. So his attempts to engage with women his age are fraught with ambivalent awkwardness. He has brief encounters with a prostitute and local school girl local girl Kaly (Mary Galloway). Hepburn avoids sentimentality or melodrama using instead the quietly moving emotional heft of Judy’s devastating illness and compassion for her son as the dramatic counterpoint to his deeply troubled mental state in this stunning first feature. MT

PREVIEWING AT EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 15 APRIL 2018 and On general release from FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018

https://youtu.be/3a6ca9bm6NA

One or the Other (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Adam Kossoff; Documentary; Israel/UK, 60 min.

Adam Kossoff’s (The Anarchist Rabbi) illuminating essay film about the titular question of homeland versus nation state, researches this topic with references to the building and existence of the State of Israel, using different forms of images to explain the difference between official and personal history. To illustrate his point aesthetically, Kossoff often uses 8- or 16 mm home movies inserted in the middle of the main images.

Whilst watching images of fleeing Palestinians during the Israeli/Arab War of 1948, Kossoff also shows example of Hollywood style movies, showing Israelis as heroes. He references the many Jewish organisations in the diaspora who asked their own governments for financial support for a country they did not want to live in. The saying “Next year in Jerusalem” clouded many a European Jewish childhood in the 1950s and 60s, leaving the younger generation in limbo between their native country, and the mythical Jewish nation of Israel, their parents never intended to join.

Kossoff is very strong on emblematic issues; whilst Israel has declared the olive tree the symbol of the State, it has never the less destroyed over 800 000 Palestinians olive trees since 1967, together with many Palestinian homes in Haifa and Tel Aviv, the owners fleeing to save their lives. The same home are now being sold to Israelis because their former owners do not currently possess the finance required by the Jewish Trust administering the properties. So, when these buildings are sold, it is a final act. Kossoff comments “the nation state is not interested in justice, but self preservation”.

In the “Battle of Jenin” in April 2002, when IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) flattened the refuge camp which existed since this 1948 War, about 50 people were killed, most of them in their own houses. The actually casualty figures is still in dispute, but one of the bulldozer drivers showed no regret, blaming Palestinian “terrorists” for the fighting, and telling gruesome stories about him drinking whiskey to last the three day battle. Official films of the D9, praising this vehicle of destruction for its invulnerability, are gut-wrenching in their bellicose language. In another newsreel excerpt, the commentator points to Arabs reading their own newspapers, commenting “they have newspapers in their own language, even though they are a minority, when they had once been a majority”.

Finally, a reminder that Israel replaced Yiddish, spoken by many of the first wave settlers with a modern version of ancient Hebrew. Criticism came from many writers and Rabbis warning “those who had forced this biblical language on to the people, do not believe in the biblical meaning of it. It might lead to their destruction. This language has been reconstructed to define itself against others”.

Ending on a long shot of an old postcard “Visit Palestine”, over which the credits roll, this essay with texts by Walter Benjamin, Mahmood Darwish, Tanya Reinhart and Susan Sontag ends on a melancholic note. It certainly points to the evils of the Nation State, its only fault is in failing to mention that Israel is not alone in annexing territories and burying the history its citizens. AS

22 April 2018 |THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Marriage (2017) East End Film Festival 2018


Dir.: Blerta Zeqiri; Cast: Alban Ukaj, Adriana Matoshi, Genc Salihu, Vjosa Abazi; Albania/Kosovo 2017, 97 min.

Blerta Zeqiri’s debut feature is set in Kosovo’s capital Pristina and features – surprisingly – a gay/straight ménage-a-trois. Shot in warm colours by the handheld camera of DoP Sevdije Kastrati, The Marriage always comes up with new twists, keeping us engaged throughout

We first meet Bekim (Ukaj) and his finance Anita (Matoshi) at the border between Kosovo and Serbia, where this Kosovar couple is waiting to identify the bodies Anita’s parents, who were killed in Kosovo War of 1999. This gruesome scene in a makeshift tent is a pitiful sight especially as Anita cannot identify her parents. On the way home in their car to Pristina, were Bekim runs a bar and Anita works in fashion shop, they discuss of Nol (Genc), a musician, who had a successful career in Paris and has now come back to their village. Anita is well aware of the friendship between the two men, but does not know that they have been lovers for a long time. In Bekim’s bar, both men lie to Anita, claiming hat they are depressed because Nol had to give up the love of his life – the implications are clear, that this person is a woman. Later Bekim goes a step further, and tells Anita that Nol is the lover his married sister Zana (Abazi).

What emerges is a story of lies and obfuscation based partly on shame – Islam takes a hard line decrying homosexuality – but this is compounded by a man’s inability to be straight and honest with his wife. Nol too is clearly is confused and is unable, despite his feelings, to be frank with Bekim, refusing to leave the village with and start again in France.

The gay sex is very graphic, on the whole Blerta never shrinks from showing a realistic picture of the male relationship. The atmosphere in the bar scene is testosterone-laden, and when Bekim is approached by a  man who wants to use his bar for an LGBT celebration, Bekim refuses and leaves the table angrily. Neither Bekim’s nor Anita’s extended family has an idea about Bekim’s sexual orientation, gaydom is unacceptable for them. Zeqiri never shrinks from showing the duplicity, Bekim’s fear and betrayal are always played out in the crassest possible way. This is a very brave debut, with brilliant ensemble acting and realistic ending. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Dir: Mike Newell | Writer: Kevin Hood, Thomas Bezucha, Don Roos, Annie Barrows (novel) | Cast: Lily James, Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Findlay, Michiel Huisman, Tom Courtney, Katherine Parkinson, Glen Powell, Penelope Wilton | 124′ | UK

Mike Newell’s screen adaptation of a chicklit novel is as over-stuffed in the early scenes as its title suggests, but stick with it and you’ll be won over by this moving story of book club camaraderie made memorable by its dazzling performances and appealing characters. What’s more, you’ll be rushing to visit the picturesque island in the English Channel, and you might even join a book club.

It all starts in 1946, when an plummy young novelist Juliet Ashton (James) is struggling for inspiration and about to set off on a book tour with her agent Sidney (Matthew Goode in superb form). A surprise fan letter or sorts from a Guernsey resident Dawsey (Michiel Hiusman) captures her imagination, so leaving Sidney and her American boyfriend in the lurch, she sets off instead to the former Nazi-occupied Channel Island, intrigued by this interesting man and his book club with a rather strange name. It soon turns out that Dawsey is rather a dish himself, and his potato pie society was formed out of necessity during an encounter with German soldiers on a post-curfew night out.

Newell and his team have captured the verdant lushness of summer and the settings and period details are ravishingly recreated, and its inhabitants turn out to be delightful as well. Plot-wise there is sufficient intrigue and dramatic heft to keep our interest stimulated, the dialogue delicately pokes fun in all the right places, and the support cast are really charming and genuine: Katherine Parkinson is convincingly amusing at an loopy earth-mother and Tom Courteney as the amiable postmaster. Penelope Wilton overdoes it slightly as the mother who’s lost her daughter, in a lukewarm subplot that whilst adding a scintilla of wartime intrigue and realism, feels somewhat submerged by the upbeat nature of the main storyline. This is about the positiveness of collaboration and community, rather than the negativeness of division and conflict.

And although Juliet’s enthusiasm and free-spiritedness drives the narrative forward at first, the romance that develops at its heart untimately feels unconvincing as lovers have no palpable chemistry whatsoever. Luckily the strength of the other performances generates enough enjoyment to carry this through, despite this rather fluffy and schematic ending. MT

The Leisure Seeker (2017) ***


Dir: PAOLO VIRZÌ | Drama Italy / 112’ |cast: Helen Mirren, Donald Sutherland

Paolo Virzi’s drama is based on the novel by Michael Zadoorian and stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland in a timely tale about an elderly couple looking for one last hurrah on a bittersweet final road trip that gives full throttle to Dylan Thomas’ redolent words: “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Those on their last legs will heartily appreciate the sentiment  embodied and expressed here with feeling by Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren, who share a palpable onscreen chemistry as the amiable pair embarking on their odyssey with the full knowledge that this is likely to be their last together, and is fraught with ups and downs, and memories both good and bad.

The English-language debut of Italian director Paolo Virzì (Like Crazy), The Leisure Seeker sees Ella (Mirren) dying of cancer and John (Sutherland) stumbling on the foothills of Alzheimer’s disease. Neither is remotely interested in quietly fading away in a nursing home or hospice, at least not until they are forced to. So they hit the road in their vintage car on a trip from Boston to Florida with John behind the wheel. This is a tribute to a life lived to the fullest by people who have are cognisant of their plight; it is never maudling or downbeat but admits the inevitable with grace and good humour. The film also offers up an eventful travelogue of this part of America, brimming with insight into how the world has changed as they pass through the cities that have shaped and punctuated their time together. Keats put it rather well when he said: “Live life to the lees” – it’s a quote that acknowledges a life lived pleasurably and with gusto, and this is the feeling that permeates this entertaining tribute, offering a little taster of what’s come for all of us, and a timely reminder to make the most of it while we can. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE |

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | IN COMPETITION

 

Let the Sun Shine In | Un Beau Soleil Intérieur (2017) Mubi

Writer|Dir: Claire Denis, Christine Angot | Cast: Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu, Valéria Bruni Tedeschi | 94min | Comedy drama

Claire Denis’ talents extend across the genres – her terrific comedy debut Un Beau Soleil Intérieur starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu and Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi sees a trio of Parisians keen to find love the second, third (or possibly even) twentieth time around. Previously known as Des Lunettes Noires, a more edgy and intriguing title that conveys the romantic pleasures of the time discretely known as ‘un certain age’, this drôle and triumphantly upbeat satire will make you chuckle knowingly, rather than laugh out loud.

Binoche plays Isabelle, a recently divorced mother in her early fifties keen to rediscover the buzz of sex and lasting love again and all the other things that make ‘la vie du couple’ worth living, after the pressures of raising a family or struggling to build a life. Surrounded by a series of smucks – to put it politely – she feels that romance is already a thing of the past. Isabelle is ‘special’ in that mercurial way that becomes amusingly familiar as Denis’ insightfully intelligent narrative unfolds. She has reached a time when wisdom and experience enriches everyday life, but when it comes to love we are still often teenagers.

Isabelle welcomes the familiar routines of daily life, but so do the men she encounters, particularly one pompous banker (Xavier Beauvois) who is the ultimate control freak and useless in bed. But she falls in love all the same, due to her newfound ability to tolerate even the worst of what’s left men-wise. The banker is clearly unable to leave his wife, so Isabelle moves on to Sylvain (Paul Blain), a louche and sensual man she meets in a bar where they dance to they strains of “At Last’  – and of course you know this is just another dream. Then there is alcoholic actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who satisfies her sexually but is too fond of himself to far for anybody else. Isabelle is looking for chemistry but also someone from her ‘milieu’, but at this stage in the game most  available men are single for a reason: they are either geeks or deeply unattractive, but totally unaware of it. And ex-husband François (Laurent Grevill) still serves as a ‘friend with benefits’, occasionally popping back on the scene, although her daughter is only glimpsed briefly.

Apart from the acutely observed witty script, the emotional nuances of Binoche’s performances are what makes this so enjoyable. Un Beau Soleil never takes itself too seriously, and is a complete departure from her dramas such as Beau Travail and White Material, and is probably most like her 2002 outing Friday Night. And the final scene where she visits Gerard Depardieu’s psychic is such a perceptive interplay between clever dialogue and intuitive performances it’s a joy to behold. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

 

The Ballad of Shirley Collins (2017) | Home Ent


Dir: Rob Curry | Tim Plester | Musical biopic Doc | UK | 94′

Rob Curry and Tm Plester (Way of the Morris) retain a 1970s aesthetic for this lyrical paean to Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born Sussex 5 July 1935) the English folk singer who, along with her sister Dolly, is widely regarded as the mainstay of the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. After leaving school at 17, she often performed on the banjo and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose piano accompaniment created unique settings for Shirley’s plain and often plangeant singing style. She first met Communist activist and eminent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax at a party Ewan MacColl held in the early 1954, fell in love and followed him back to Kentucky in 1959 where he had been under surveillance during the McCarthy witch-hunt. The two made recordings under Atlantic Records under the title Sounds of the South (some were re-enacted in the Coen Brothers’ Oh Brother Where Art Thou). But the focus here is largely on Shirley and her life experiences up to the present day, and there’s a distinct feeling of loss and redemption that runs through it.

Shirley Collins comes across as vulnerable but warmly down to earth telling how she briefly lost her singing voice after a relationship ebded, but she has certainly recovered it now – she looks and sounds stunning at 82 – as she performs informally. Shirley is also a lively raconteur adding a touch of wry humour when recalling letters to her family back home, written from her time in Mississippi with Alan, which she describes as ‘quite domestic’: “I must finish now as I have to go and syringe Alan’s ears”.

Narrated by Hannah Arterton (The Five) and enlivened by original black & white footage, audio archives, and colourful filmed excerpts from Arundel and the countryside around East Sussex where she grew up, this enjoyable and informative biopic raises the profile of this little known era of English folk singing with a distinct pagan feel to it. THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS is fascinating and gorgeously framed and captured in Richard Mitchell’s limpid visuals. MT

DVD ON RELEASE FROM AMAZON.CO.UK

Truth or Dare (2017) **

Dir.: Jeff Wadlow; Cast: Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, Violette Bene, Hayden Szeto; USA 2018, 100′.

Director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow is behind the popular Purge franchise with together  Blumhouse Productions, and has tried the same thing with Truth or Dare with an that ending hints at a sequel, but is its audience gullible enough. On present form, the answer is probably yes.

On their final Spring Break, a group of college students take a vacation in Mexico, where they are lured into a Truth or Dare game by a mysterious stranger in a spooky church cellar. Retuning home, they soon discover that the game has followed them. If any of the participants refuses a challenge; lies or fails a dare task, she/he is dead. The first victim, Ronnie sets the tone: he is dared to show all, standing up on the pool table, but chickens out. The demon punishes Ronnie with sudden death: he falls of the table and crashes his head in. Perhaps not the most sensational start to a killing spree; but even though blood is not spared, it soon turns out that Truth or Dare is more interested in the hidden secrets of its participants. Does goody-two-shoes Olivia (Hale), who rather would have rather spent a week doing humanitarian work than go to Mexico, really fancy Lucas (Posey), the philandering boyfriend of Olivia’s best friend Markie (Beane)?. And has Olivia also a hand in the suicide of Markie’s father? And then there is Brad (Szeto), who can’t confess to his homophobic cop-father that he is gay, and is duly killed by his Dad’s fellow-cop. Finally. Olivia gets on a trip to Mexico to interview a mute ex-nun, the sole survivor of a massacre in the church where the ordeal first started.

Symbolic for the whole enterprise is a scene where one of the afflicted has to drink a bottle of spirits whilst walking on the roof of the house, spikes looming, and her helpers running along the house with a mattress. Truth or Dare is anything but frightening – very much Scooby Doo meets Gossip Girl. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

Big Fish and Begonia (2017) *****

Directors: Xuan Liang, Chung Zhang | Chinese Anime | Mandarin | 106′

A delicately drawn and ravishingly beautiful Chinese anime enveloped in the same social concerns and passion for folklore as Studio Ghibli and drawing comparison with Spirited Away. The shape-shifting fantasy tells a tender rites of passage tale of love and yearning between the spiritual and animal kingdom. With good triumphing over evil, Big Fish & Begonia is a fable with weighty themes that will enchant and absorb adults, but with a cute and lovable story for younger audiences with its subtle blend of 2D and CG animation, superbly rendered in a rainbow palette of hand-drawn images.

Epic in its thematic richness, Xuan Liang and Chung Zhang’s indie project is very much a labour of love that gradually came together over a period of 12 years due to financing constrictions . This version is in Mandarin with English subtitles gives a more atmospheric feel to the piece and follows the aged narrator as she looks back wistfully at her teenage years, and the time when she as Chun (Guanlin Ji) was forced to leave her spiritual home and return for a week long ‘rite of passage’ back to the real world where she takes the form of a dolphin. Shortly arriving beaming up to this surprisingly beautiful human kingdom she gets trapped in fishermen’s nets and is rescued by a soulful human man called Kun (Xu Weizhou) who tragically perishes during the ordeal leaving Chun moved to repay him for his sacrifice and bravery by seeking the help of the spirit world, and leaving a MacGuffin in the shape of a small mouth organ.

What follows is both touching and mesmerising: Chun is given the chance to forfeit part of her own life and she diligently searches for her saviour in a magical repository for human spirits, guarded by a one-eyed mahjong-playing old hag, who rules the territory and bristles with wickedness. Chun’s spiritual connection with Kun (who takes the form of an adorable baby dolphin) drives the narrative forward – the two’s souls are intertwined in a love match that very much captures the words of Noel Coward and could serve as an alternative retro title: “Time and Tide can never sever Those whom love has bound together”. And this is the bond that keeps the pair united throughout all their endless trials and tribulations. Themes of fate and destiny come into play again and again, and the mesmerising storyline delivers a powerful message: that mortals must make sacrifices on a spiritual level if they want to change the course of destiny.

Meanwhile, Chun has an admirer in the real world (Shangqing Su), a young man who travels with her for her week’s trial, and stays by her side, hoping for his love to be reciprocated by his acts of derring-do and sacrifice: he wrestles a two-headed snake and dives into a disgusting cesspit – but Chun regards him as a brother figure, her heart is already taken by Kun, and she is totally absorbed in her selfless efforts to get him back into her human world.

Xuan Liang and Chung Zhang have together created a fabulous fantasy fable based on Chinese Daoist culture and folklore, complete with traditional temples and furniture inspired by the Southern Chinese traditional design and architecture (although it’s filmed in Beijing and much of the settings also echo this region). Chun even wears earrings made of jade. Water is once again the symbol of emotion, re-birth and creation and forms a nurturing and flexible conduit between the real and spiritual world we inhabit. This is an awe-inspiring and adorable anime, the final scene leaves us with a message of hope: in a tribute to both the strength and the everlasting tenderness at the heart of true love. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 APRIL 2018

 

 

Canada Now Festival | 3-6 May 2018

CANADA NOW festival brings the best of new Canadian cinema to the Curzon Soho London, before a ten-film national tour of the UK .

The festival opens with the London premiere of RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD, a searingly entertaining feature documentary exploring the Indigenous influence on blues, folk, jazz, rock, rap and metal. The Festival will close with LET THERE BE LIGHT, a documentary based on the true story of how scientists from 37 countries have come together in the south of France in an attempt to build the most complex machine ever attempted: An artificial sun.

Alongside seven premieres, CANADA NOW also includes a repertory screening of Patricia Rozema’s 1987 masterpiece I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING. 

This second edition tackles a broad range of stories, from issues of race in BLACK COP, to matters of the heart in MEDITATION PARK and from addiction drama in MARY GOES ROUND to matters of divine intervention in ALL YOU CAN EAT BUDDHA.

CANADA NOW | MAY 2018 | NATIONWIDE 

A Gentle Creature (2017)

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa | Cast: Vasilina Makovtseva |143min | Drama

A Gentle Creature is a short story by Dostoevsky, narrated by a middle-aged pawnbroker whose wife kills herself. The tale was first adapted by Robert Bresson in 1969 as his first colour film. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s sombre screen adaptation is a disquieting psychodrama that imagines the bitter frustration of a descent into Hell for its central character, an earnest young woman trying to track down her husband in the intractable Russian prison system.

This parable about contemporary bureaucracy and human rights it is also a cynical takedown of ‘everyman’. The woman, played thoughtfully by Vasilina Makovtseva, has decent intentions that lead her into a nightmarish journey that never ends. The film works on two levels: as a Kafkaesque psychological thriller and a brazen indictment of Russian society. A bit long at over two hours but deadly potent none the less.

From her ramshakle cottage in the middle of nowhere, the woman sets off to personally re-deliver a parcel of homemade food and clothing, returned to her by the prison authorities. The claustrophobic bus journey is fraught with vile and unhelpful characters who bicker and bait each other, spouting vile opinions that provide rich insight into Russian society and its current concerns. The most memorable scene is a mesmerising dream sequence that glistens with shades of Kubrick s Eyes Wide Shut offering the characters she meets along the way an opportunity to expound on the greatness of Mother Russia, but this culminates with a brutal rape scene as the woman is driven away in a van, full of misguided hope of visiting her husband. Loznita’s  modern day ‘Dante’s Inferno’ has no happy end. It is a mournful but moving reflection on the misery of mankind and the unkindness of strangers populating our broken society. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

 

 

 

 

Custody (2017) ****

Dir|Writer: Xavier Legrand | Denis Menochet, Lea Drucker, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveu | 93’

A broken marriage leads to a bitter custody battle in this intense family drama than won the coveted Best Director award at Venice for Xavier Legrand.

There have been some superb movies made about custody battles. This riveting drama from French actor-director Xavier Legrand is certainly among the best, braced by the filmmaker’s unerring authority and sense of what to do next, scene after scene, as the family at its centre splinters into chaos.

As Custody opens, Miriam and Antoine Besson have just divorced. Their young son, Julien, sits in family court reading out a letter denouncing his father. His sister, Josephine, having recently reached the age of majority, is not part of the dispute. Antoine is described as a violent monster, yet in court appears to be a model of calm reserve. Despite Miriam’s appeals for sole custody — also Julien’s preference — the judge gives the parents shared custody. And Antoine is not a two-dimensional beast. He tries to re-establish a relationship with a son who feels paralyzed by the competing emotional demands of his father and his mother, who will stop at nothing to remove both Julien and herself from her ex-husband’s life.

Custody is harrowing and complex, a domestic nightmare that unfolds to reveal an inventory of abuses both overt and subtle. Denis Ménochet and Léa Drucker are finely attuned to these demands as Antoine and Miriam, while Thomas Gioria inhabits the haunted Julien with heartwrenching naturalism. Legrand dissects the Bessons’ family dynamic coolly, with impressive restraint and intuition, yet still evokes profound sympathy for his protagonists. The result is mesmerizing.

Xavier Legrand is a French actor, writer, and director who received his training at the National Conservatory of Paris. His short film Just Before Losing Everything (13) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. Custody (17) is his debut feature film.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 APRIL 2018

 

House Without Roof (2017) **** | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Soleen Yusef; Cast: Mina Sadic, Sasun Sayan, Murat Seven, Wedad Sabri, Ahmet Zirek; Iraq/Germany/Qatar 2016, 117 min.

Writer/director Soleen Yusef was born to Kurdish parents, and emigrated to Germany with her family when she was nine. The intricate script is one of the highlights of this self-assured and densely plotted debut, a convincingly fraught road movie, which is actually her graduation film from the Baden-Würtemberg Film School.

After the fall of Sadam Hussein, Kurdish siblings Liya (Sadic), Jan (Sayan) and Alan (Seven) are not getting on well in their new life in Germany. Their mother Gule (Sabri) wants to go back with them  to their Kurdish homeland, but the rather wayward Alan will have nothing of it. Gule dies suddenly and her Will reveals the request to be buried next to her husband – a hero from the war against Iraq in 1990 – on Kurdish soil. The three siblings cannot agree about anything so make their separate ways back to Duhok, where Liya meets a taxi driver, who will play a significant role in the forthcoming odyssey. They all finally come together in the house of uncle Ferad (Zirek), and it becomes clear that well-balanced Jan (whose wife is expecting a child back in Germany) has a secret. When Ferad categorically denies the siblings the right to bury their mother next to their father, the real facts starts to emerge about this so-called father who was anything but a hero: he was a traitor who took his own life. Their final journey back to the village is fraught with ups and down as the truth is finally revealed.

Yusef deftly masters her material, keeping the plot together, despite near-surrealistic incident made more bizarre by the awkward trio conversing in German. Liya, whose name means ‘Patience’ in translation, is just the opposite. DoP Stephan Burchardt’s lively handheld camera creates the right look for this topsy-turvy family drama, mixing close-ups mixed with long panning shots over the glorious landscape. Sadic leads the brilliant cast, never wavering from her efforts to put her foot down in a male dominated society – even if she has to copy some bad habits of the opposite sex. AS

SCREENING DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017) **** | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir: Mouly Surya  Writer: Rama Adi| Drama | Indonesia | 92′

There a dark humour to this feminist parable set in the enchanting widescreen skyscapes and exotic shady interiors of a remote Indonesian village in the South Pacific, where revenge is a dish best served with calm and a dash of strychnine by the central character Marlina, played gracefully and with deadpan conviction by Marsha Timothy.

Although Mouly Surya’s third feature is a modern story from a Muslim country it feels distinctly stuck in the Dark Ages, certainly where attitudes towards to the fairer sex are concerned. Played out in four segments, as the title suggests, the film explores how a young widow deals with the aftermath of being robbed of her livestock and then raped by seven bandits who seem to think they have done her a favour. Clearly the pleasure is hers, as we discover early on in this amusingly arcane tale.

Yunus Pasolang’s limpid lensing and Zeke Khaseli and Yudhi Arfani’s redolent trumpet soundtrack often bring to mind a Sergio Leone Western, albeit one set in Sumba Island, to the north east of Australia. This languid drama takes its time and is surprisingly gentle and poetic in contrast to its violent subject matter. There are also touches of surreal artistry at play: in one scene Marlina is followed down the dusty road in the sweltering heat by her headless rapist – or perhaps it’s just a mirage. But the tone is gently upbeat, the pace leisurely but bristling with a low level tension as the story unfurls in a seemingly lawless community where casual violence is prone to rear its head at any given moment, and not just on the part of the male population.

Indonesian men clearly think themselves the superior sex, and are a querulous and unsympathetic lot, but women are not always supportive of each other either, in the Solomon Islands. Marlina is plainly irritated by the heavily pregnant Novi (Dea Panendra) who talks none stop and insists on following her to the Police station in the hope of protection and further attack from the rest of the gang. Marlina’s gruesome package is clearly a talking point amongst locals during their bus journey — but the pair eventually reach their destination despite in an eventful journey that’s as breathtaking as it is satisfyingly weird. MT

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 2018 | 12 April 2018

The Legend of the Ugly King (2018) | East End Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Hüseyin Tabak; Documentary with Yilmaz Güney, Fatos Güney, Elif Güney-Putün, Nebahat Cehre, Donat Keusch, Serif Goren, Costa Gavras, Patrick Boussier, Canan Gerede; Germany/Austria 2017, 122 min.

German born director Hüseyin Tabak (Deine Schönheit ist nichts wert) treads a careful line in this frank portrait of the Kurdish film director and political activist Yilmaz Güney (1937-1984) – a man with personal flaws but undeniable talent.

Yilmaz Güney was born in Andana, Anatolia in Southern Turkey to Kurdish parents – and heritage he was proud of for he rest of his life. After studying economics at Istanbul University, he became a screen actor in as many as 111 features and later gained the sobriquet ‘The ugly King’, after playing a gangster in the 1967 film of the same name. In 1960 and 1962 he was imprisoned for political reasons, and directed his first feature in 1965. After establishing his own production company with early 1970s social realist fare such as Umut (Hope), Agit (Elegy), Aci (Pain) and Hopeless – far removed from the entertainment films he had starred in beforehand. In 1972 he was arrested again for harbouring radical students, and was later imprisoned during pre-production of Zavallilar (The Miserable) in 1975. The timing of his arrest was crucial, since he was completing his 1974 film Endise (Worry), which was finished by his assistant Serif Gören, who would become a regular stand in during his prision stays, particularly during Güney’s long internment between 1974 and 1981. The filmaker was released under an amnesty in 1974, but re-arrested in the same year for shooting dead a district attorney near his birthplace of Adana. In the trial, it became clear, that the incident was part of a drunken brawl, and Güney had absolute no intention of killing his victim. But he state judiciary changed trial judges three times, and finally Güney was convicted for murder and sentenced to 19 years in prison. In his cell, he wrote his masterpieces directed by Zeki Okten: Suru (The Herd), 1978 and Dusman (The Enemy) 1979. A year later, the new military Junta declared all of Güney’s films banned, and a year later the director escaped from prison, helped by the American director Canan Gerede, and his Austrian producer Donat Keusch, who bribed prison wards and border soldiers with “whores and money”. Güney was being granted asylum in France by President Mitterand, after Germany and other West European countries had refused to grant him this status. In the following year, at the Cannes Film Festival, Güney’s Yol (directed again by Goren) won the Golden Palme, sharing it with Costa-Gavras’ Missing, the latter having fled from the Greek Junta to France. A year before his death of cancer in 1984, Güney directed his last feature, Duvar (The Wall) in France.

Güney’s first marriage was to the Turkish actress Nebahat Cehre, who had co-starred in many of his films. The marriage only lasted from 1966 to 1968, after which Cehre asked for a divorce, after her husband had tried to run her over with his car after an argument, breaking her collarbone in the process. Interviewed, she stated, that her ex told her in hospital “that I could be sure, that he did not wanted to hit me with the car”. Güney had a daughter from a former relationship, Elif Güney Putun, whom he hardly ever saw. But Tabak quotes from one of Güney’s film’s, were a child is called Elif, and her (film) fate bears resemblance to the one of his neglected daughter. When shooting The Wall in 1983, French filmmaker Patrick Blossier was allowed to shoot a documentary of the making of the feature, and was surprised, how much freedom Güney gave him. The excerpts we see are rather frightening: he making a big scene with the translator, after the latter misheard Güney’s directives. Worse, the latter shouts and raves at an actor, a young boy, who tried in vain to cry. After the day’s shooting, Güney tried to make up for his brutal behavior, telling the boy, how much he loved him.

Tabak, who discussed the structure of the film with fellow director Michael Haneke, tries his best to give the professional the personal Egos of Güney enough space, sometimes one feels his embarrassment at this ‘hero’s’ vicious machismo. But Tabak delivers a very satisfying statement on filmmaking, history and the male psyche. AS

ON RELEASE DURING EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 April 2018

Even When I Fall (2017)

Dir.: Sky Neal/Kate McLarnon; Documentary with Saraswoti, Sheetal; UK 2017, 95 min.

Sky Neal and Kate McLarnon’s incredible documentary explores how victims of child trafficking manage to build new lives out of their tragic past in Nepal’s first circus.

That said, the facts are pretty grim: human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal activity on the planet: 20.9 million people are used for slave labour of different kinds, 10 000 women and children are trafficked from Nepal to India a year.

One of these kids was Saraswoti, abandoned by her family at the age of eight, she ended up working in an Indian circus along with many other trafficked children from Nepal. She married the owner’s son when she was 14, and had three children at the age of 17. The death of her father-in-law and husband finally set her free, after the circus went bankrupt. Sheetal does not know her exact age, but she worked eight years in a circus in India and cannot remember any members her family after being re-united – she is sensitive enough to pretend otherwise. Situations like this lead to the stigmatisation of the children, since the parents easily transfer their guilt (often claiming naivety, when they deny their guilt), to the returning survivors.

Furthermore, the circus milieu has a very negative, sinful connotation in Nepal, which made it even more brave for Saraswoti and Sheetal to found the first Nepalese circus in Khatmandu with eleven other young survivors of trafficking. But their circus work is only part of their fight-back to create a new identity; they combine their performances with outreach work, leafleting extensively in the visiting towns where they meet with parents to warn them about the false promises of modern slavery’s gang-leaders.

After a long fight with the authorities, Circus Kathmandu finally secured visas to perform in Dubai and Glastonbury. But the triumph was short lived, because the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015 worsening the situation at home again, escalating poverty and given the traffickers carte blanche to recruit.

Six years in the making, this is an illuminating testament to the circus-workers suffering. Robbed of their childhood and education, they have fought back: the graceful images of Sarwoti performing, and Sheetal’s poise when freefalling from the titular silk robes, will stay longest in the memory.

Most documentary filmmakers leave their subjects behind for good after finishing their feature. But this film team has raised funding at the end of 2017 from Comic Relief: the Circus Kathmandu can thus continue their outreach work, travelling to areas known for trafficking: performances and education will go on hand-in-hand. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 APRIL 2018

 

London Spanish Film Festival | 13-15 April 2018

The Eighth London Spanish Film festival takes place in London from 13-15 April offering a chance to see recent festival outings that may only get a limited release in the UK

MAY GOD SAVE US | Que Dios nos perdone ****
Dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen, with Antonio de la Torre, Roberto Álamo, Javier Pereira | Spain | 2016 | 127 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Two detectives work out their own troubled relationship when investigating a series of brutal crimes against elderly women. The rather aggressive Alfaro and the stuttering, insecure Velarde are played convincingly by Álamo and de la Torre respectively. Set during the Pope’s visit to Spain in the hot summer of 2011, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s crime drama is a rich character study, examining social tensions, the role of the police and Spanish Catholicism.

Friday’s screening will be followed by a Q&A with Antonio de la Torre

Fri 13 April | 6.10pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema Sun 15 April | 5.45pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

THE BOOKSHOP ***

Dir. Isabel Coixet, with Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, James Lance | Spain/UK/Germany | 2017 | 113 min. | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Vertigo

Isabel Coixet’s rather turgid drama is enlivened by three superb performances from Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson in this screen adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 feminist novel that sees a young widow (Mortimer) struggling with the ruthless opposition from a local grand dame (Clarkson) when she opens a literary emporium in a small English town, tempting an elegant batchelor out of reclusive retirement and into her arms. Enriched by a voiceover from Julie Christie and Alfonso de Vilallonga’s score, the film garnered several Goyas for Best Film as well as Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards for Coixet.

Fri 13 April | 8.50pm | £12, conc. £11 | Regent Street Cinema

CAN’T SAY GOODBYE | No sé decir adiós ***
Dir. Lino Escalera, with Juan Diego, Nathalie Poza, Lola Dueñas | Spain | 2017 | 96 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish with English subtitles | London premiere

Anchored by a standout performance from Nathalie Poza, Lino Escalera’s award-winning feature debut is an intense and emotional road movie that explores contemporary and traditional Spanish values through the story of a young woman and her estranged and ailing father.

Sat 14 April |6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

ABRACADABRA

Dir. Pablo Berger, with Maribel Verdú, Antonio de la Torre, José Mota, Josep Maria Pou, Priscilla Delgado, Quim Gutiérrez, Julián Villagrán | Spain/France/Belgium | 2017 | 96 min. | In Spanish with English subtitles

Maribel Verdu stars as a long-suffering football widow in Pablo Berger’s zany domestic melodrama with touches of magic realism and horror thrown into the mix. An intense and inventive follow-up to his 2012 hit Blancanieves.

Followed by a Q&A with actor Antonio de la Torre
Sat 14 April | 8.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Regent Street Cinema

SUNDAY’S ILLNESS | La enfermedad de los domingos

Dir. Ramón Salazar, with Susi Sánchez, Bárbara Lennie, Greta Fernández, Miguel Ángel Solá, Richard Bohringer, Manuel Castillo | Spain | 2018 | 113 min. | cert. 15 | In Spanish and French with English subtitles | UK premiere

A mother and daughter reunion is at the core of Ramon Salazar’s thematically rich character drama that explores the complex tensions and the mixed love-hate emotions between a daughter and her stoic mother. Barbara Lennie and Susi Sanchez acts their hearts out supported by Ricardo de Gracia’s photography, Sylvia Steinbrecht’s art direction and Clara Bilbao’s costumes.

Sun 15 April | 4.30pm | £12, conc. 11 | Regent Street Cinema

LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE | Muchos hijos, un mono y un castillo

Dir. Gustavo Salmerón, with Julieta Salmerón, Gustavo Salmerón | Spain | 2017 | 90 min. | doc | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | Special preview courtesy of Dogwoof

Lots of kids, a monkey and a castle were Julieta Salmerón’s dreams as a little girl. And she got them all. Gustavo Salmerón, better known in Spain for his work as an actor, this is a documentary tribute to his mother who emerges a delightfully pragmatic woman, optimistic and somewhat extraordinary as well as eccentric; she keeps some of her grandfather’s backbones and her parents’ ashes and teeth at home.The film garnered several awards including Best Documentary at the Goyas and Karlovy Vary, a became a box office hit in Spain.

Sun 15 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL | 13-15 APRIL 2018 

Tigre (2017) | East End Film Festival 2018 ***

Dir: Silvina Schnicer/Ulises Porra Guardiola | Drama | Arg | 90′

Although a mother and son reunion is at the heart of this atmospheric debut from Argentinian duo Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola, it is the rapport and shared histories of the female characters that makes this so engaging and enjoyable.

TIGRE follows sixty-something Rina and her friend Elena back to the ramshackle family estancia where they hope to enjoy an extended get together in the Tigre Delta. The sweltering humidity and local mores of the lush tropical river setting lend a surreal almost sinister undertone to proceedings. But this is not just a summer retreat, Rina needs the help of her estranged son to stand firm against the developers, who are threatening to take over land which has always been in their family and part of their heritage. And it’s this thorny thread that drives the narrative forward, providing an astringent tension in contrast to the relaxed reveries of the female characters.

TIGRE  shares similar thematic concerns with fellow Argentinian Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Idea of a Lake and there are also comparisons to be drawn with Jorge Thielen Armand’s recent docu-drama La Soledad in which a family’s last bastion, a dilapidated villa in Caracas, provide a fitting metaphor for Venezuela’s current economic crisis. Armand’s poetic paean to his grandparents home is a mournful one full of exotic birdsong, and here too the ambient sounds of nature provide the necessary calm to comtemplate this issues at play. Clearly, property and home are the salient elements in a woman’s life when menfolk are absent or unreliable, as they appear to be again here in Argentina. Unfortunately, the directors weaken the film’s dramatic heft with a preponderance of disparate elements, that while offering intrigue, detract from the central narrative. Despite all this and the film’s rather tricksy ending, TIGRE is a beguiling and lushly cinematic feature underpinned by its weighty social and cultural themes. MT

SCREENING AT EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 APRIL 2018

Ash is Purest White (2018) ****

Dir: Zhangke Jia | Cast: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Xiaogang Feng | Drama | China | 140’

ASH IS PUREST WHITE portrays the eventful relationship between a Chinese petty criminal and the woman whose loyalty to him never dies. This rolling contemplative saga occasionally veers off the beaten track with its indulgent running time of 141 minutes but will still appeal to the director’s ardent followers, featuring the same rough-edged characters who we first meet in 2001 and follow until the bittersweet denouement on New year’s Eve 2018.

Star of Shanxi’s creative community Jia Zhang-ke trained as an architect near his native mining town of Fenyang, just South of Beijing, and brings his aesthetic flair and some magnificent landscapes to this lasting love story set in a dying era. The director’s forte is his graceful way of portraying China’s traditional way of life with its penchant for ceremonial drumming and white-gloved officials, with the chaotic new era vibrantly captured in Eric Gautier’s resplendent camerawork.

Opening in 2001 in his Shanxi homeland, his wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao plays the confident delicate local beauty Qiao, who frequents the nightclub of her boyfriend Guo Bin (Liao Fan/Black Coal, Thin Ice). And she is no arm candy, establishing herself as a keen advocate of the traditional jianghu codes of loyalty while embracing the modern world, spryly dancing to Village People’s YMCA.

Respectful of her ageing father she is more playfully assertive with Bin, and when he is assaulted by thugs on motorbikes, she manages to save him by firing shots into the air in a brutal scene that really takes our breath away, but also secures her a spell in prison where she is unwilling to grass on her boyfriend about the ownership of the firearm.

The second act is an upbeat affair that follows Qiao’s release in 2006, and treats us to a sumptuous journey down the Yangtze River in another nod to the sinking glory of the old China versus the brash new world. Qin has proved a feckless boyfriend and is no longer on the scene, but Qiao is keen not to let him slip away so easily, after her sustained loyalty. And when she is robbed of her cash and passport, she bounces back cleverly in some amusing scenes where she gate-crashes a wedding to enjoy the banquet, desperate for food. Qiao finally confronts Bin in a soulful and moving episode that is visually captivating for its exquisitely calm contemplation of the end of their romance.

As we leave Qiao she is running a gambling hall, and Bin is back in her life, attracted to her strength of character and tenacity. The two actors are mesmerising to watch in their commandingly restrained yet natural performances, exuding a fascinating chemistry that will remain in the memory for a long time after the credits have rolled. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 26th APRIL 2019

 

The Big City (1963) (Mahanagar) | Bfi Big Screen Classics

Dir/Writer: Satyajit Ray (Based on a short story by Narendranath Mitra) | Cast: Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee, Haren Chatterjee, Sefalika Devi, Prasenjit Sarkar, Vicky Redwood | 131′   Drama | Bengali with English subtitles

Satyajit Ray found international fame with his 1955 Palme D’Or Winner Pather Panchali. Sombre in tone and intimate in feel, The Big City is another of the director’s big screen classics: an enduring story with universal themes that carries a message of hope.

 

In 1950s Calcutta, a simple family’s dynamic shifts gradually when the wife and mother takes a job to supplement the family income during a period of social and economic upheaval. In her debut role for the legendary director, Madhabi Mukherjee is quietly appealing and brings a warmth and authenticity to her role as a woman whose primary aim is to be loving and supportive to her son Pintu (Prasenjit Sarkar), husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) and his elderly parents. But Subrata’s ego and pride are challenged by Arati’s new-found confidence in the workplace, placing a strain on their homelife and calling into question his status as breadwinner and head of the household. With great subtlety and perception and an atmospheric score, Satyajit Ray tenderly evokes how change can affect the status quo in a marriage, sending ripples of discontent that are capable of causing family breakdown. Arati is a sensitive and unselfish woman, and with her considerable charm Ray illustrates how she cleverly keeps the family together by massaging men’s egos, without rocking the boat. A low-key delight. MT.

from JULY 22 AND SELECTED UK WIDE CINEMAS  BFI SOUTHBANK 

 

Look Back in Anger (1959) | Woodfall – A Revolution in British Cinema

Dir: Tony Richardson | Script: John Osbourne, Nigel Neale | Cast: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Mary Ure, Edith Evans, Gary Raymond, Donald Pleasance | Drama | UK | 98′

In the 1950s the disaffected English working class had nowhere to vent their bitterness but their own cramped front rooms. And this is where Tony Richardson’s New Wave slice of social realism unspools (1959), based on John Osbourne’s original play, written three years earlier. The pair had just formed Woodfall Film Productions with their producer Harry Salesman, and LOOK BACK IN ANGER was Woodfall’s debut and Richardson’s first feature film and part of the so-called sub-genre of “Kitchen sink dramas” – a phrase coined by critic David Sylvester in his 1954 article about English trends with particular reference to an expressionist painting by John Bratby. The description somehow travelled over to the medium of film.

Electrifying in its portrayal of a marriage on the rocks in a squalid London attic, the film represented British kitchen sink drama at its most vehement; a scorching script and convincing characters fleshed out by Richard Burton’s tour de force, as the miserably chippy Jimmy Porter, who takes out the frustration of his mindless existence as a market trader on his long-suffering and gentle wife Alison (a suitably worn down Mary Ure) whose twee friend Helena, is a budding actress (Claire Bloom is perky form). Keeping the peace, or at least trying to, is his amiable but rather dozy lodger, Cliff (Gary Raymond), the perfect foil for Jimmy’s cantankerous mien. We all know the scene, it’s a rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but read the papers and drink tea. Alison, to her credit, is doing some ironing, while her husband rants and raves in despair and intellectual frustration, their once passionate union has hit the buffers, mired in Jimmy’s resentment of her background of privilege, and sheer hatred of Phyllis Nelson Terry’s ‘Mummy’. But Jimmy is rude just for the sake of it. An endless drivel of mocking rhetoric pours out of him for want of anything better to do, apart from lazily playing his trumpet. Rather than channel his fury into a worthwhile cause, he rails at the darkness of his perceived hopelessness, seeking the monopoly on suffering, bereavement and the moral high ground on personal loss.

Richard Burton feels far too old for the part, but turns in a blazing portrayal of sheer malevolent anger, couching – as it often does – a deeply depressed individual desperate to make something more of his life, yet capable of individual acts of decency, such as his defence of market trader colleague Kapoor against the spiteful racism the Hindu untouchable encounters on the part of Jimmy’s compatriots, policed by Donald Pleasance’s officious warden Hurst. In actual fact, Jimmy is a poster boy for 21st century social media outbursts, a man with an erudite opinion on everything, but with little real life experience. At the opposite end of the scale is Edith Evans’ glowing portrait of Ma Tanner, a woman from the Victorian generation whose cheerful puritan work ethic and public-spiritedness was honed by her wartime experiences. This Victorian theme is further amplified by the moving musical interlude featuring the Salvation Army Band: William Booth’s Methodist/Christian humanitarian organisation. ‘The Sallies’ captured the zeitgeist of that post war era, alongside the film’s everlasting themes of racism, class, social deprivation and misogyny. At the time, Tony Richardson’s iconic film was viewed as ground-breaking and revolutionary, whereas now it seems rather a quaint and purist representation of England in the late Fifties. MT

LOOK BACK ANGER in cinemas from 8 APRIL 2018

WOODFALL – A REVOLUTION IN BRITISH CINEMA | A season of films defining the BRITISH NEW WAVE‘s incendiary brand of social realism | Bluray releases from 5 June 2018 

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) | April on MUBI

Dir.: Douglas Sirk; Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, Joan Bennett, Gigi Perreau, Judy Nugent, William Reynolds); USA 1955, 94′.

Douglas Sirk’s reputation soared after the end of his Hollywood career in 1959 –the German born émigré’s melodramas of the 1950s German became the blue print for many filmmakers in the 1970s, one of them being Rainer Werner Fassbinder. There’s Always Tomorrow had already been made in 1934 by Edward Sloman, Sirk’s version is based on the novel by Ursula Parrot, who had ten of her books adapted for the Hollywood screen. Whilst Sirk is mostly remembered for Imitations of Life, this feature, as subversive as anything shot in the 1950s in the dream factory, is sadly neglected.

Metty’s grainy black-and-white photography, his expressionistic use of angles, are one highlight of this feature, but let’s not forget Ursula Parrot, the novelist. Apart from being extremely successful, she was also quite a tearaway. In 1943, at the age of 43, she went off with a soldier who was about to be locked up for narcotic offences, right under the nose of the Military Police. Later released on bail, when cross-examined, she said that she  “acted on impulse, and anyhow, the soldier in question was a damn good guitar player”. Somehow, it makes sense that Sirk, another outsider in Hollywood, should be the one to bring her work onto the screen.

Clifford Groves (McMurray) runs a toy factory and is married to Marion (Bennett); their three children Vinny (Reynolds), Ellen (Perrault) and Frankie (Nugent) complete the happy middle-class family. Vinny, their oldest, is a mixture Playboy version of James Dean; Ellen is a fashion-obsessed teenager and Frankie, the youngest, a precocious wannabe ballet dancer. But whilst Clifford is in control of his work life, his emotions are all over the place – and not always with his family. Sirk often depicted his child characters as selfish, materialistic and obnoxious: shades of Veda in Curtiz’ Mildred Pierce. Whilst a voice-over recounts  the narrative, DoP Russell Metty’s camera pans in on opulent middle-class suburbia where shadows gradually loom, with a distinct whiff of noir. The weather is lousy – California, no less – and Clifford sets out for Palm Beach to secure a lucrative contract. Enter Norma Vale (Stanwyck), an ex-flame of Clifford, who is now a successful fashion designer – and a divorcee. At this point, Double Indemnity comes to mind, and Sirk makes this very clear: the feeling is very much like The Clock (1945), another noir feature. Norma is everything that Marion is not: lively, vivacious and more importantly, full of praise for Clifford and his achievements. Whilst they are sipping their cocktails poolside, Norma has become the dream girl for Clifford. But the audience knows that dreams rarely come true. And soon Vinnie appears with his girl friend Ann, and another couple. The foursome soon leave, but it is too late. Back home, Clifford feels the boredom even more, but worse, Vinnie wants to know the details of his father’s relationship with Norma, seeking the help of his sister Ellen. His insolence nearly costs him his girl friend Ann, who warns him to lay off. Like his father, Vinnie is clearly inferior to the woman in his life. At one point, Clifford looks at his children through the bannister of the staircase: we do not know if they are in prison, or the other way round. Tears signal the end: in this case Norma’s, in a plane flying over the Groves house. AS

IN THE REALM OF MELODRAMA: MUBI IS HOSTING A RETROSPECTIVE of DOUGLAS SIRK’s FILMS IN APRIL

Wonderstruck (2017) ***

Dir: Todd Haynes | Cast: Julianne Moore, Toby Jones, Michelle Williams | Amy Hargreaves | US | Drama | 120min

Scripted by Brian Selznick based on his 2011 novel, Todd Haynes follows his gorgeously sumptuous Carol with twee and self-indulgent schmaltz. It follows similarly nostalgic lines, the childhood wonder and magic connected to happy memories of the past. But the retrospective often magical reveries finally emerging in a narrative voiceover require us to marvel at the serendipity of fate. Often we remember what we chose to and clothe it in swathes of golden glory. Wonderstruck is by no means a bad film but it often feels disingenuous and sentimentally saccharine – it is a film that congratulates itself it a glow of smugness composed of an intertwining narrative that sashays back and forth about two aurally-impaired children who grow up at different moments in time, who are lonely and head for the bright lights of the city away from the unhappiness of their rural homes.

Ben (Oakes Fegley) is a troubled kid from Gunflint, Minnesota whose single mother (Michelle Williams) was killed in a car crash before he got to know the identity of his father. When he hits the big time arriving in 1970s New York (a lovely imaginative scenes and one of the best in the film) he finds a book with a message to his mother from a person called Danny and decides to follow up on the address written there. The narrative then flips back to 1927 where Rose (Millicent Simmonds) is entranced by a Hollywood silent movie star Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). Rose also makes her way to the big City to see her idol perform on the stage. And the two stories collide through their characters’ mutual fascination with the Museum of Natural History. Rose’s strand is the weaker and least convincing of the two. To say that her love of silent movies is connected to her deafness is rather glib and completely overlooks the vital component of orchestral accompaniment that brings this form alive. Although Ben’s strand is more engaging it lacks the ability to deal with major plotholes and inconsistencies that culminate in its absurd denouement. Wonderstuck is certainly well-meaning but ends up being worthy and caught up with its own importance in some of the longueurs in the museum. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018

 

 

Walk This Way | European Hidden Gems Collection 2018

Walk this Way brings a new season of selected arthouse titles to enjoy at home on VoD. These are films that have found critical claim on the festival circuit and are now available to view online before they get a theatrical release.

HOME (Belgium 2016) sees 17 year old Kevin out of prison and into his aunt’s house where he starts an apprenticeship in her local store. Kevin gets on well with his cousin Sammy and his circle of friends, and soon meets John whose mother is in a crisis. From Venice Orizzonti Best Director  Fien Troch

Renars Vimba’s impressive debut MELLOW MUD (2016) deals with the loneliness, disillusionment and first love as seen through the eyes of an orphaned teenager living in the remote rural beauty of Latvia with her grandma and young brother. But when tragedy strikes out of the blue, Raya (Elina Vaska) is forced to face consequences that even an adult would find challenging. Crystal Bear Winner | Generation 14plus Berlinale |  

WALK THIS WAY WILL DISTRIBUTE 34 FILMS IN 8 COUNTRIES ON GLOBAL PLATFORMS ITUNES, GOOGLE PLAY, AMAZON, SONY in the Original Versions with English Subtitles | from 9 April 2018 

 

Thoroughbreds (2017) ***

Dir.: Corey Finley; Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francis Swift; US 2016, 91′

THOROUGHBREDS is an impressive debut by director Corey Finley, who adapted the stylish neo-noir thriller from his own play. It’s a razor sharp portrayal of the set it sends up, but just a little bit to sleek to be totally convincing.

In wealthy, rural Connecticut, school friends Amanda (Cooke) and Lily (Taylor-Joy) are re-united by Amanda’s mother (Swift), who has sensed that Lily is an outcast after killing a sick horse in a very gruesome way. Amanda is fully aware of this, and she tries to lure Lily into a plot to murder her obnoxious stepfather Mark (Sparks) who wants her to go to a college for mal-adjusted students instead of one of her choice. Lily comes up with a great idea involving local lowlife Tim (Yelchin, superb in his last role). The pair try to trick Tim into doing the deadly deed, but he gets cold feet at the last minute. After accusing Amanda of being “not high on empathy” – fair statement – Lily is asked not to drink a knock-out cocktail by Amanda, who mixed it. But Lily is hell-bent on proving that she can outdo her friend.

The teenagers are a merciless duo, not really evil but full of malicious intent stemming from the privileges of their upbringing. There is also a good amount of believing all sort of half-baked theories, and finally, in Lily’s case, a sense of morbidity – drawing comparison with Heavenly Creatures. Yelchin is brilliant in the role of the sex-offender who seems to fall into the trap set for him, but just in time gets his neck out of a noose so carefully designed for him by the girls. Amanda’s step-dad is very menacing, the sounds of a rowing machine he seems to be addicted to, mix eerily with Erik Friedlander’s atonal score. Lyle Vincent’s handheld camera shows the teens’ disturbing dialogues against the opulent backdrop: the night time is their favoured setting, during the day they fade, like vampires, into a washed-out blue. Finley directs with great panache, his characters all more or less damaged, are trapped from the get-go. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2018 NATIONWIDE

120 BPM (2017) ***

Dir: Robin Campillo Writer: Robin Campillo | Cast: Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adele Haenel, Yves Heck, Coralie Russier | 135min | Drama | French

Robin Campillo’s follow up to Eastern Boys is a cinéma vérité style drama that reflects  his own years as an AIDS activist during Mitterand’s 1990s government. It makes a brave and honest attempt to communicate the frustration felt by many sufferers of the disease through an organisation that calls itself Act Up.

120 BEATS feels quite conventional in style, and clearly Campillo feels so strongly about the film’s themes that he has decided not to be too ambitious artistically – the result is rather bland and overlong at 142 minutes, but certainly valuable as a lasting testament to the era, and a fight that continues. Most impressive are the naturalistic performances, particularly from Hanaele as the strong-minded Sophie, and the evocative score with tunes from Bronski Beat.

The film opens with during a rowdy meeting of Act Up in a brightly lit venue where clicking of fingers replaces clapping as a signal of approval. The group’s members, not all sufferes, are encouraged to be vocal and expressive. There follows a raucous demonstration in the offices of a drug company refusing to release its test results. There are romantic interludes with rather overplayed graphic sex that takes place between the feisty young Chilean French Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who has fully blown Aids,  as he falls for HIV-negative Nathan (Arnaud Valois). Their relationship is only really examined in the light of Sean’s illness and none of characters is fleshed out enough for us to engage with their plight, which is a shame.

Artistically there are one or two inventive flourishes such as when the sparkles from the disco lights are transformed into the virus, but it’s clear that Campillo does not want to cloud his central message with aesthetic mastery. Also, the aggressive energy generated by some of the more unappealing characters make it difficult for us to feel for them in their plight, despite Campillo’s witty script. Beats per Minutes has garnered much critical acclaim for its important subject matter, but a worthy theme alone does not make film brilliant and this is a decent but unremarkable third feature from Campillo. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 6 APRIL THROUGH CURZON | PREVIEWING AT BFI FLARE

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco (2017)

Dir.: James Crump; Documentary with Antonio Lopez, Juan Ramos, Corey Tippin, Karl Lagerfeld, Jessica Lange; USA 2017, 90 min.

James Crump (Black White + Gray) pays homage to one of the most original fashion illustrators of the last century: Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) and his creative partner Juan Ramos (1942-1995) revolutionised not only the way fashion designers and illustrators worked together, but how they discovered models like Jerry Hall and Grace Jones, who might otherwise have never become world famous.

Meeting at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the 60s, and pair set up shop in a studio above Carnegie Hall. Antonio was the extrovert artist, Juan the “art director” who stood behind his creative partner to provide structure and ideas. Although both men came from Puerto Rico, the were products of their unique New York milieu: Antonio grew up in Brooklyn and Juan in Harlem. Max’s Kansas Hotel and Hotel Chelsea feature heavily here. As does Andy Warhol who was a rival for a long time, before he exchanged portraits with Juan.

Their social ‘sets’ were strictly separated, with the exception of Donna Jordan. One could not think of more different characters: Warhol, the observer who waited until a situation developed, and Lopez, who worked for hours feverishly, needing only his muses like Jessica Lange, Patti D’Arbanville and Grace Jones (to name a few) for inspiration – and Juan for “editing”.

Lopez brought fashion to a new level: streetwise, sexy and extravagant. At a time when counter-culture exploded onto the scene these were heady times: the LGBT movement was making its mark and the Vietnam War brought millions of protesters onto the streets. The bi-sexual Antonio was a “sex machine”, changing partners on a regular basis, but often staying friends with his past paramours. His relationship with Jerry Hall – the two even got “married”, was one of the most enduring.

In 1969 Antonio and Juan moved with their entourage to Paris, where they worked with Carl Lagerfeld, an intimate enemy of Yves-Saint Laurent. The duo helped Lagerfeld to establish a pret-a-porter culture, signalling the end of the classical fashion industry – particularly the mannequins, who had hardly moved on the catwalk, now walked at a funereal pace. Antonio’s fashion models danced like disco queens. Racial taboos were broken too: Pat Cleveland was perhaps the first ever black super model.

Given access to Lopez drawings, photographs, 8-mm and 16-mm films by the designer’s heir, Paul Caranicas, Crump has realised the fantasy of his teenage years in rural Indiana, “when Lopez magical life and milieu aroused me to no end and made me fantasize about the early 1970 in New York and Paris”.

With music by Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes, this feature is a hell of a ride: the dawn of a new style of living, the innocence of this first generation, who challenged gender as well as art, their innocence and unawareness of the future would bring Aids, and both Antonio and Juan would become victims. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Brasilia: Life After Design (2017) *** | East End Film Festival 2018


Dir: Bart Simpson | Doc | US | 90’

In Brasilia: Life After Design, Bart Simpson takes a novel approach in  exploring the social, economic and political aftermath of modernist ‘starchitect’ Oscar Niemeyer’s inventive urban planning project that created Brazil’s new national capital in 1960, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located on high plateau in the country’s centre-western region, it comprises a metropolitan area now estimated to be the Latin American country’s third most populous. It is divided into various economic districts (Banking, Embassy etc) it moved the seat of government away from Rio de Janeiro and into a more central location. The film asks the question? Can you create a perfect city from scratch? What emerges is interesting. Although you can in theory, when the human element is added, it doesn’t always go according to plan.

Niemeyer and his partner Costa wanted to create a utopian city, designing Brasilia on a cross-axial grid and allowing for generous green areas where mid-sized trees where planted into aligned avenues to give a ‘ready made’ environment from the outset. A Monumental Axis accommodated government, monuments and institutions and a Residential Axis housed the inhabitants. Costa’s intention with housing superblocks was to have small self-contained and self-sufficient neighborhoods and uniform buildings with apartments of two or three different categories, where he hope to facilitate the integration of upper and middle classes sharing the same residential area. But sadly Brasilia has not been the success story originally intended for various reasons.

And this is in part due to the region’s hostile landscape. Niemeyer and Costa worked with government support to create the ‘Plano Piloto’, an innovative built environment intended to reshape the way people interact and behave within its confines. Rather than an organic city, Brasilia was imposed on its terrain, over a period five years. And despite its sophisticated architecture and status as a capital city, all the problems of contemporary Brazilian society soon surfaced there despite best laid plans – from unemployment to crime and social divide. Brasilia has failed to accommodate its burgeoning population.

So how is life after design for the people that live there? We meet a street vendor who is struggling to find a clientele due to the vast open boulevards; a mother whose job is a difficult commute to from her kids’ school; economic instability and social alienation and a general lack of neighbourly-ness induced by the built environment, despite high quality architecture. A building can look good but be impractical or hostile to live in. So a success on the drawing board, can actually be a disaster when it hits the reality of the streets.

Stunningly shot on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, Simpson’s documentary is chockfull of sophisticated facades and impressive building designs, capturing the city’s geometric shapes, pleasing symmetry and glamorous skylines. But on a personal level there are clearly concerns for those who have made it their home. Simpson’s film offers fascinating insight for travellers, historians, designers and those interested in its themes, although thr lack of a distinct dramatic arc may make it less absorbing for mainstream viewers. MT

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2018

https://vimeo.com/213263235

 

Between Land and Sea (2017) ***

Dir: Ross Whittaker | Doc| Ireland |87′

Between Land and Sea shows how a little village can change from one season to the next and from a generation to the one that follows as its population struggles not only to survive but to make the most of a sustainable existence. There are only so many crashing waves, glorious sunsets and smiling locals one can admire for 96 minutes, and whether Whittaker’s film can sustain interest in the absence of an engrossing narrative arc is the only criticism here.

Once famous for its golfing activity, Lahinch, Co. Clare now buzzes during the summer months when surfers flock to its wild Atlantic seascapes featuring the cliffs of Moher to capture the mammoth waves. At the end of the season the place recedes back into the emerald landscape taken over by its regular population, nature and the elements.

The film opens as the New Year descends on Lahinch, shops boarded up but behind closed doors villagers who have decided to make their lives to this ravishing part of Ireland are eeking out a meagre existence preparing for the coming season when the Easter weekend will see the return of tourists to fill their coffers once again. We then get a close-up view of the villagers’ lives in and out of the water: Tom Doige-Harrison (and his Spanish wife Raquel Ruido Rodriguez), Ollie O’Flaherty, Fergal Smith, John McCarthy and Dexter McCullough, along with Pat Conway and get to learn how they are make ends meet in this glorious back to nature idyll. Champion surfer Shane Dorian also makes an appearance.

If nothing else, Between Land and Sea serves as an imressive travelogue for those interested in the popular destinations of Riley’s Wave and Aileen’s Wave on this stunning Atlantic coastline captured in Kevin Smith’s impressive aerial and in-water camerawork which provides some breathtaking shots. MT

ON RELEASE AT CURZON BLOOMSBURY + SELECTED SCREENS

 

Mellow Mud | Es Esmu Seit (2016) | European Hidden Gems Collection

Dir.: Renars Vimba; Cast: Elina Vaska, Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls, Edgars Samitis, Ruta Bitgere, Zane Jancevska; Latvia 2016, 106 min.

Renars Vimba makes his filmmaking debut with an intense coming-of-age story, brilliantly acted by Elina Vaska who brings emotional depth to the subtle changes between tomboyishness and womanhood. Vimba too directs with a spare economy that never overstates the pent-up emotions of his heroine.

Seventeen-year old Raja (Elina Vaska) and her much younger brother Robis (Andžejs Jānis Lilientāls) are left to fend for themselves after tragedy touches their modest life in rural Latvia, leaving them bereft of their parents and at the mercy of their difficult grandmother (Bitgere), who soon after succumbs to a heart attack. Raja decides to bury the old woman, telling nobody of her demise, not even their social worker (Jancevska). But sudden responsibility for her brother and the family’s orchard, which she takes over at the expense of her education, is a sobering experience. With a bit of resourcefulness and strong English skills Raja decides to enter a nationwide English competition which she wins, to surprise of everyone, apart from herself. The prize is a trip to London and a short-lived affair with her teacher (Edgars Samitis), which is doomed, largely due to their age difference. Baffled and hurt, Raja sets off to London to find her mother, who left her address on an envelope. Meanwhile, Robis is taken into an orphanage after the social worker finds out they are both orphans.

Drawing comparisons with the work of Ian McEwan (Cement Garden), the Dardennes Brothers, and the black-and-white images of 1960s British Realism, DoP Arnar Thor Thorisson uses bleached, muted colours, and shades of grey to underpin this lean affair that tackles thorny issues of childhood abandonment and prescient resignation. The London scenes are extremely powerful, Raja shrinking literally in the harsh and hectic life of the metropolis. This is a melancholic journey about loss, disillusionment and the total absence of adult responsibility.

SCREENING DURING THE EUROPEAN HIDDEN GEMS FILM COLLECTION

 

 

 

 

Crowhurst (2017) ****

Dir: Simon Rumley | Cast: Justin Salinger, Amy Loughton, Haydn May, Marcus May, Austin May, Agatha Cameron Kettle | UK | Drama | 104′

Following on from Colin Firth’s portrayal of Donald Crowhurst in The Mercy, comes Simon Rumley’s biopic drama casting Justin Salinger in the role of the lone British yachtsman who disappeared while sailing round the world in 1968.

This is the strange but true story of a wannabe hero who bottled out without leaving a message when his attempt to circumnavigate the globe hit troubled waters. His poorly prepared vessel and delayed late autumn start didn’t help matters. Marooned in the middle of nowhere he threw in the towel when the elements conspired against him. James Marsh’s The Mercy was a decent stab at the story and enjoyable enough largely due to Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz in the lead roles. But Rumley’s low budget psychological drama is by far a better film. Leaner, meaner and infinitely more moving, it cuts straight to the chase with some salient, snappily edited opening scenes that see the entire endeavour from Crowhurst’s unique point of view. Spare on dialogue, it’s a plucky prequel to the descent into doom. Salinger’s Crowhurst is a pullover-ed Walter Mitty character whose ambition far outreaches his talent. With an ailing business on his hands, his first concern is winning the money, and his ego explodes buoyed up by the prospect of being a hero – from the safety of his chintzy armchair in Teignmouth. While Firth’s Crowhurst was more internalised about the drawbacks, trying to contain his anxiety and hide it from his family; Salinger bluffs things over with a misplaced bravado that often gets the better of him in the wee small hours when he sobs into his wife’s comforting bosom.

After the stress of the preparation, the bleached out sailing sequences are the dreamlike impressionistic focus of this trip to the nightmarish depths of claustrophobic despair. Told through the intricate details of his domestic hell inside the boat: sleepless nights, tinned food, broken equipment and flooding – all this is set to a minimal ambient score of electronic beeps and echoes as the haunting loneliness of his dread and anxiety eventually leads to the epiphany moment where he morphs into maniacal Mitty mode before madness and misadventure eventually blow his mind and puncture his spirit after a solitary slap up lunch on Christmas Day. While, on dry land, his bloated agent, wife and back-up team give rousing renditions of “Jerusalem”, ” Silent Night” and “I Vow to the My Country”, Mr Mitty is having a ghostly last tango in Argentina. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 23 MARCH 2018

 

 

The Batchelors (2017) **

Dir.: Kurt Voelker; Cast: Josh Wiggins, J.K. Simmons, Julie Delpy, Odeya Rush; USA 2017, 97 min.

Kurt Voelker follows Park with the ultimate phoney Hollywood tearjerker that spouts endless American optimism totally ignoring any basic psychological principles on its way to its sugar coated happy-end, which is revealed shortly before the story has got underway.

After the premature death of his wife, Bill Ponder (Simmons) decides to take up a teaching job at a friend’s school in California, along with his teenage son Wes (Wiggins). No sooner have they arrived before Wes takes a shine for beauty-queen Lacy (Rush), when Julie Delpy’s French mistress (Carine) puts the two of them in a homework team. After a punch up in the cafeteria. Lacy leaves her macho boyfriend for Wes and Bill eventually falls for Carine after an unbelievably ignorant psychotherapist prescribes one drug too many drugs – and electro-shock treatment also fails – Bill is ready for a foursome in the sun – but not before Wes has won the cross-country run against the odds and has Lacy to promise him to stop self-harming. Yes, the production values are passable, but any film featuring a classroom nervous with the victim (Bill) foaming at the mouth, cannot be taken seriously. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 29 MARCH 2018

The Third Murder (2017)

Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda | Thriller | Japan | 120′
Festival favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Nobody Knows) offers an engrossing murder mystery about a defence lawyer who believes that his client — a self-confessed killer — is the fall guy for a conspiracy. A lengthy crime procedural provides the backbone to this luminously filmed but alienating arthouse affair that asks the question: who is judging the judges?

The central character is the suave and convincing lawyer Shigemori (Fukuyama Masaharu/Like Father, Like Son) who is called to investigate the case of a man who has spent three decades in prison for a double murder and has subsequently confessed to killing his factory-owning boss and burning his body. We witness the murder in the opening scene, so clearly Misumi (Yakusho Koji) must be guilty; strangely, it is Shigemori’s father who handed him a life sentence, instead of the death penalty, but times have changed.

The problem is that Misumi keeps changing his story, making things difficult for
Shigemori, the son of a retired judge, who is forced to keep writing and re-writing his script in order to get the most plausible defence for the murderer. To make matters worse, his own personal life is fraught with problems: estranged from his daughter, who is caught for shop-lifting, he is also separated from his wife. As he gets to know Misumi over their constant meetings, it soon emerges that their behaviour is very similar, they appear to be one in the same person, on different sides of the law.

This is a subtle but thematically rich crime thriller, brilliant in concept but less so in execution, despite Takimoto Makiya’s stunning camerawork, and Ludovico Einaudi’s moody score. The fault, at least for non-Japanese speakimg audiences, is its dialogue-led narrative which keeps us glued to the subtitles while scanning up and down the screen in case we miss vital clues, making it heavy-going, despite its universal themes rippling out to provide endless food for thought. MT

Hirokazu Kore-eda was born in Tokyo, where he studied literature at Waseda University. He is a master dramatist whose features include Maborosi (95), After Life (98), Distance (01), Nobody Knows (04), Hana (06), Still Walking (08), Air Doll (09), I Wish (11), Like Father, Like Son (13), Our Little Sister (15), and After the Storm (16), all of which have played the Festival. The Third Murder (17) is his latest film.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Oddsockeaters (2017) **** DVD release

Wri/Dir: Galina Miklinova | Animation | Czech Rep | 83′

This Czech animation cleverly makes a strangely endearing storyline out of the sock that routinely go missing in the wash, while the other sits forlornly at the back of the airing cupboard waiting to be reunited with its other half.

Clearly this is an annoying scenario, and one that has worried Galina Miklinova enough for her to make a feature length musical Noir set in a dystopian corner of modern Prague, where its invisible sock inhabitants have been successful dubbed into English – with Brooklyn accents – and its central character little Hugo (Christian Vandepass) is a cute and curious stripy blue sock who has stolen not one, but an entire pair of socks to give to his grandpa Lamor on his deathbed: “baby socks give you the best nutrition” says Hugo as his grandpa’s life slips away, telling him to seek out his uncle, a gang leader, Big Boss (Gregg Weiner), the only family he has left.

The street recreations are absolutely terrific as the film deftly mixes 3D computer animated adventure with themes of alienation and homesickness, not unlike a sort urban-based and more nefarious version of The Clangers. What follows is a fascinating survival story where Hugo and his twin cousins, Ramses and Tulamor have to compete with their arch rival Professor René Kaderábek, who also shares their attic abode by the river in Prague, while drawing courage from the rules his grandpa has told him. It turns out however, that their biggest enemy is a gangster named Sid who head another gang of Oddsockeaters. The two rival gangs sock in out an this inventive and enjoyable urban adventure that never outstays its welcome during its modest running time. MT
OUT ON DVD FROM 27 MARCH 2018

Battle of the Sexes (2017) | **** | Bfi Flare Film Festival

Dir: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton | Writer: Simon Beaufoy | Cast: Steve Carell, Emma Stone | Sport Biopic
Emma Stone and Steve Carell star as sparkling adversaries in this colourful period recreation of the legendary 1973 tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King that made public her fight for equality in women’s tennis.

Battle of the Sexes engagingly captures the zeitgeist of the era focusing on the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs which was a turning point in the politics of their game, flagging up a protest over the pay gap between men and women on the professional circuit. Scripted by Academy Award winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (Little Miss Sunshine), Battle of the Sexes is a fitting tribute to that iconic moment.

Stone is impressive in the role of King who had decided to fund her own tour with Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) as her manager. Carell plays the suitably back-footed Riggs whose finances were depleted since his previous championship. His troubled emotional life also haunts his game and he misguidedly proffers a publicity stunt in the shape of a challenge involving a $100,000 winner-take-all match.

Beaufoy’s script cleverly contrasts the game’s blatant sexuality during a ‘pioneering era of sexual revolution’ with King’s extraordinary talent as a player – along with likes of other female champions of the time such as Yvonne Goolagong and Virginia Wade. MT

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 21 MARCH – 1 APRIL 2018 

 

Returning the Colonial Gaze

Focusing on Francophone African and French cinema, the Barbican presents Returning the Colonial Gaze showcasing works by bold filmmakers who, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, reversed the “colonial gaze” to interrogate the former occupying nation from the perspective of their own countries.

The five-part season features films by directors from Mauritania, Senegal, Morocco, and Niger, using their art to reclaim the right to represent their cultures and histories, which had been undermined by years of colonial rule – helping to shape the national identities of their countries in the process. Also included are works by French directors who challenged and critiqued colonial narratives.

Returning the Colonial Gaze is part of the Barbican’s 2018 The Art of Change season, which explores how the arts respond to, reflect and potentially effect change in the social and political landscape.

Soleil O (18*)
Wed 2 May 8.45pm
Mauritania 1970 Dir Med Hondo 105 min Digital presentation
A key work of postcolonial cinema, this film follows the experiences of Mauritanian-born accountant Jean, who arrives in Paris to pursue his dreams. Told with caustic humor in a non-linear style, inspired by the European avant-garde as much as by West African oral traditions, his story explores many of the challenges facing immigrants in France: menial jobs, unacceptable living conditions, naked racism and bureaucratic indifference. The accumulation of injustices finally breaks his composure and leads to a political awakening.
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in collaboration with Med Hondo. Restoration funded by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.

Afrique 50 (18*)
France 1950 Dir René Vautier 17 min Digital presentation
Film restored by the Cinémathèque de Bretagne
+ To Be 20 in the Aurès (18*)
France 1972 Dir René Vautier 93 min Digital presentation
Film restored by La Cinémathèque française
Wed 9 May 8.45pm
This double bill presents two anticolonial films by French activist filmmaker René Vautier, the self-described “most censored director in France”. Afrique 50 is a scathing expose of French rule in West Africa. Censored for over 40 years in France and even landing its director in jail, the short work is paired with To Be 20 in the Aurè. This is a searing critique of the Algerian War, which follows seven days in the life of a military unit composed of young French conscripts. Held first at a harsh training camp then sent off to fight in the desolate Aurès Mountains, they become ruthless killing machines.

Afrique sur Seine (15*)
France 1955 Dirs Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Mamadou Sarr 21 mins Digital presentation
+ Little By Little (15*)
France 1970 Dir Jean Rouch 96 min Digital presentation
And introduction by Barbara Knorrp
Tue 15 May 6.15pm
In this double bill, France, its inhabitants and traditions are discovered by visitors from Senegal and Niger. Afrique sur Seine, by Senegalese directors Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and Mamadou Sarr, adopts the style of contemporary ethnographic documentaries to lead us on a tour of Paris, investigating the customs of the local tribe – the Parisians. The second film in the double bill is part comedy, part docu-fiction Little by Little by French director Jean Rouch. Featuring Nigerien film stars Damouré Zika and Lam Ibrahim, it follows an African man as he travels to Paris to learn about the construction of tall buildings, only to be taken up by the oddities of French life. Introducing the double bill is anthropologist Barbara Knorrp.

Si Moh, The Unlucky Man (18*)
France 1971 Dir Moumen Smihi 17 min Video presentation
+ The East Wind (18*)
Morocco 1975 Dir Moumen Smihi 80 min 35mm presentation
Wed 23 May 6.30pm
The Barbican presents two attempts by Moroccan director Moumen Smihi to make films in a new way, closer to the local culture, and more distant from the Western tradition. Si Moh, The Unlucky Man depicts the lives of migrant workers in France, as Si Moh lives in the industrialised suburbs of Paris while longing for Maghreb and sharing experiences of alienation with his fellow migrants.
Following Si Moh, The Unlucky Man is The East Wind. Set in Tangier in the mid-50s, when the city was still an International Zone, the film portrays a place at the eve of its independence, as Aïcha resorts to magic to try to prevent her husband from taking a second spouse. Around her, a society of women creates its own form of active resistance as the larger independence movement grows around it.
Screening materials courtesy of the director, subtitles with thanks to Peter Limbrick of University of California Santa Cruz

An Adventurer’s Homecoming (18*)
Niger 1966 Dir Moustapha Alassane 34 min Video presentation
+ Touki Bouki (18*)
Senegal 1973 Dir Djibril Diop Mambety 85 min Digital presentation
Restored in 2008 by The World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with the family of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Restoration funding provided by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
Wed 30 May 8.45pm
This double bill includes works from directors from Senegal and Niger focusing on alienated young protagonists in thrall to Western pop culture. In An Adventurer’s Homecoming, a young man returns from a trip to the US with a suitcase full of cowboy outfits for himself and his friends. In their new get-up, they transform into a gang of swaggering bandits: barroom brawls and shoot-em-ups ensue. In Touki-Bouki, two young lovers, Mory and Anta, wander the streets of Dakar hatching wild schemes to raise money for their escape to Paris, the city of their dreams.

BARBICAN | RETURNING THE COLONIAL GAZE | 2-30 MAY 2018 

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) ****

Dir: Lorna Tucker | With Vivienne Westwood | Biopic | 83′

British anti-establishment icon Vivienne Westwood is known for her avant-garde and inspirational designs. But ironically what comes across in Lorna Tucker’s enjoyably brisk debut documentary is Westwood’s utter straightforwardness and lack of guile: qualities so refreshing in the self-regarding world of fashion, making her popularity no surprise. While her minions prance and pose, Vivienne Westwood calls a spade, a spade – in her syrupy Derbyshire accent:”Let me just talk and get it over with, I will get into it, but it’s all so boring” she complains at the start of this linear look into how she became the ‘wild child’ of the British fashion world, ‘inventing’ Punk and taking 20 years to gain official recognition for her creative talents, before turning her pioneering gaze towards saving the planet and climate change. Defiant she may be, and she certainly takes no prisoners, describing Johnny Rotten’s ageing anarchy as distinctly démodé. Westwood’s ideas are progressive; she has no desire to rest on her laurels or even accumulate wealth: what excites her is making choice garments for her clients, rather than further expanding the self-made empire over which she has still complete financial and artistic control. Dialling down to quality rather than up to quantity is the watchword, Westwood-wise. But she realises that her expanding workforce entirely depends on her and that’s a concern she now wrestles with.

In her lifetime Westwood has so far had two epiphany moments that have given rise to her defiance. The first was discovering that the sweet baby Jesus sold to her by her parents later died tragically on the Cross, forcing her to question every figure of authority going forward. The second was discovering that climate change was actually here to stay, causing her to become an environmental activist.

This desire to both protect and protest seems to be at the core of Westwood’s being. But despite her individuality she has always worked closely with her partners: first with music impresario Malcolm McClaren who was the catalyst for the establishment of her Kings Road shop ‘Sex’ as the two struggled to create the global brand that Westwood now admits is becoming unwieldy. She currently enjoys a productive partnership with her third husband, and former student, Austrian designer Andreas Kronthaler, who confesses his near obsessive love for every part of her. It’s clear the two share the same values despite their 25 year-age gap. And Westwood is honest and genuine as she talks candidly about her fears for her business, and disenchantment with some of her workers’ lack of focus. Talking heads are minimal but include her younger son Joseph Corre, founder of Agent Provocateur, and the Westwood CEO Carlo D’Amario, a former carpet impresario with sterling contacts in the international fashion world.

But Westwood is the shining light here: her honesty and inspirational charisma make us genuinely warm to her especially as the pathway to success has been beset by those who would do her down: as evidenced in a clip from TV. Lorna Tucker has certainly done a great job in uncovering the real Vivienne Westwood for those who found her image difficult to engage with. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist covers all the bases in just over an hour, and will go down well with fans and those with a penchant for British eccentricity in modern design. MT

AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE 23 MARCH 2018 | COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

 

I Got Life | Aurore (2017)

Dir.: Blandine Lenoir; Cast: Agnes Jaoui, Sarah Suco, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Pascale Arbillot, Thibault Montalembert; France 2017, 89 min.

French cinema continues to cock a snoot at the popular myth that cinematic love affairs end in middle age with this typical Gallic story centred around 50 year old Aurore, whose daughters leave the nest, only to return, and whose best friend is a raving feminist. Aurore’s answer to all this is to go for broke and re-connect with the love of her life, after her husband leaves her in the lurch. I GOT LIFE  is a deft mixture of comedy, farce and feminism. The characters are stronger than the uneven plot, with an episodical structure not helping this rather lightweight affair, despite some great comedy turns. Agnes Jaoui is particularly good as the menopausal mid-lifer whose attempts at getting back on the career ladder have been scuppered by her husband clearing off – and taking with him her unpaid job as his administrator. A job in a bar turns out to be a disaster: the owner insisting on calling her Samantha, “because it’s more sexy”. A string of disasters happen, one after the other. First of all her oldest daughter Marina (Suco) tells her that she is pregnant (“you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did” Aurore mumbles – making herself about as popular as Marina’s expanding girth). Then her youngest daughter Lucie (Roy-Lecollinet) decides to decamp to Barcelona with her boyfriend, abandoning her studies. And being with best girlfriend Mano (Arbillot) is not always fun either: Aurore has has agreed to help Mano sell flats by pretending to be an interested client in a bid to attract some real applicants. But when events spiral out of control Aurore settles for the charms of her first love Totuche (Montalembert), her first love,  who turns up like a bad penny – as Marina’s gynaecologist doctor. And although Totuche is reluctant to play romantic ball second time around, it all pans out well in this watchable romcom, photographed by Robert Guediguian regular Pierre Milon (The House by the Sea). Sadly, the jokes are very much hit and miss. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH 2018

Gholam (2017) ***

Dir.: Mitra Tabrizian; Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Nasser Memarzia, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Tracie Bennett; Iran/UK 2017, 89′

Exile and alienation are at the heart of Mitra Tabrizian’s impressively stylish debut. This existential London drama is shot with mostly natural light, at night and dusk very much  along the lines of Melville’s The Samurai. 

Gholam (Hosseini) is an Iranian ex soldier who makes a meagre living as a cab driver who occasionally helping his mechanic friend out (Memarzia) in his spare time. He keeps very much to himself but often eats at his uncle’s restaurant, where he meets two different sets of Iranian exiles who are keen to muscle into his life. At a price, they would guarantee him a return to Iran to be re-united with his family. But Gholam rejects all offers, and prefers the company of strangers, like an elderly black woman (Skinner-Carter), who he often gives a lift in his cab. Waiting in front of her house, he meets Mrs. Green (Bennett), who looks after a broken-hearted old lady who has recently lost her grandchild. The two rival exile groups become more and more assertive in their pursuit of Gholam, even contemplate his assassination. But Gholam choses his own fight: and after he loses his job over a petty customer complaint,  he goes after them.

DoP Dewald Aukema paints a saturnine portrait of London’s twilight zone where the gloomy streets are often deserted as cars and creatures of the night hurry by – Gholam is one of them; either driving his cab, or drifting aimlessly, his zest for life gradually seeping into the pavement cracks as nightmare and reality fuse into a dreary existence. Only the music of the childhood can comfort him, but his search for self-annihilation is a noble one: his life has been lived, and he does not want another chapter of this ghostly existence.
Rather like her compatriot Abbas Kiarostami, Tabrizian is a famous photographer who regularly exhibits in Tehran. This stunning debut marks her out as the most remarkable newcomer in a long time, directing with great sensitivity and aesthetic aplomb. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 23 March 2018

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion I (2017) ***

Dir.: Gorö Taniguchi | Anime with the voices of Jun Fukuyama, Takahiro Sukurai, Ami Koshimizi, Kaori Nazuka, Yukana; Japan 135’

The first part of the Gorö Taniguchi’s revenge trilogy has a complex backstory and a massive body-count. Overwhelming fight sequences feature incredibly tall and alluringly pretty warriors: most of the characters are strangely androgynous, targeting the teenage audience. The technical excellence is underpinnedwith some serious themes about fundamentals, aimed at more adult viewers. It all kicks off in 2010 when three Super States rule the world: Britannia (Europe and Africa), Chinese Federation (Asia) and Japan. Prince Lelouch (Fukuyama), suspects that his father, the Emperor of Britannia, has murdered his mother Marianne. His sister Nunally (Nazuka) witnessed her mother’s shooting and was caught in the crossfire and rendered lame and blind by the trauma. The siblings are sent to Japan by their father, to spy on the enemy. Lelouch is a placid boy at school but when he puts on his mask he becomes Zero, a murderous vigilante, and soon with the help of C.C. (Yukana), a mysterious girl, who gives him the power of Geass, making him more or less superior to all enemies. Together with C.C. and female sidekick Kallen Kouzuki (Koshimizu) – who also has identity problems – Lelouch/Zero sets out to take revenge on his father. Code Geass is a bit of lurid fun that cuts both ways in giving adults something to chew on intellectually while their teenage kids can enjoy the remarkable visual antics. AS

OUT ON 21 MARCH 2018 FOR ONE DAY ONLY

The Islands and the Whales (2017) ****

Director/DoP:Mike Day | Doc | 84′

This breathtaking but often heart-rending eco-doc about the Faroe Islands connects to the increasingly urgent global narrative of survival for a community of around 48,000 people whose traditional food source for the past thousand years is now under threat from environmental realities.

Filmmaker and photographer Mike Day’s film has an atavistic quality that reflects both the magnificence of its setting and also the enormity of its subject-matter. But it’s not an easy film to watch. Images of 15-foot pilot whales, some of them babies, being driven into the shallows where they are dragged ashore squealing desperately before being hacked to death on the beaches as the sea turns red with blood, along with those of gannet chicks looking up appealingly as their remote roosts are ambushed and their parents are strangled and slaughtered will remain in the memory for a long time afterwards. But that’s not the point here.

Ironically this age-old tradition is not being threatened by PETA or direct human interference but by coal-burning activities that generate electricity and pollute the surrounding sea with mercury that gradually enters the food chain. Failing whaler Pal Weihe has turned his efforts to monitoring the locals toxicity levels and trying to encourage them to pursue an alternative diet. But nothing grows on the islands, so people continue to eat blubber and whale meat and endanger their children’s lives.

All this is enriched with impressive images of the islander’s highly traditional daily lives. Seeing them setting out in their boats in the windswept seas, or silently plundering clifftop bird nests in the hours of darkness, makes for extraordinary viewing, but are not for the feint of heart, or animal-lovers who might prefer to see their food killed in a more humane way by these otherwise thoughtful and quietly-spoken, fresh-faced islanders in their Fair-Isle sweaters. Interweaving their contemporary story is a more ancient thread voiced by an old man who refers to the legend of the “huldufolk”, a mythical people who disappeared with the advent of electricity to the islands. Perhaps history will eventually repeat itself and return these people to their past. MT

THE ISLANDS AND THE WHALES is released in UK cinemas 29th March http://theislandsandthewhales.com/

 

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The Structure of Crystal | Struktura Krysztalu (1969) | Kinoteka 2018

Dir.: Krzysztof Zanussi; Cast: Barbara Wrzesinska, Jan Myslowicz, Andrzej Zarnecki; Poland 1969, 75 min.

In his feature debut, Polish veteran Krzysztof Zanussi examines the nature of friendship and male rivalry and explores whether a bond of shared history can still reunite us years later, or whether change and the passage of time is destined to drive us apart. The Structure of Crystal is an caustic psychodrama that has been compared to the work of Bresson, a filmmaker Zanussi very much admires.

Jan (Myslowicz) is a highly regarded chemist who has left the fast lane and competitive life of Warsaw behind to marry a local schoolteacher and earth mother, Anna (Wrzesinska) in a country village. Anna’s remote family home provides an idyllic retreat for the couple and their two children and for a time life is good. Until they invite another chemist and former colleague, Marek (Zarnecki), to stay. Marek has worked in the USA, and his photos of New York provide a bracing contrast to the couple’s placid rural existence. But the two men are soon arguing over work issues and Anna is a little bit too flirty with this man from ‘the big smoke’, although she also complains about the men’s “egoistical” attitude. Jan starts to come over as a martyr, trying to justify his country existence on environmental grounds, over his life in Warsaw. He tries to undermine  his rather racy city colleague taking the moral high ground– the usual male rivalry is played out but Jan is unsure whether he’s made the right choice. Zanussi, who studied chemistry himself (“I loved chemistry, but it did not love me”) was a documentary filmmaker before he turned his talents to filmmaking and this is borne out in DoP Stefan Matyjaszkiewicz’s long panning shots that circle the protagonists, showing them as objects in the domestic environment – the human interaction intruding upon the peaceful, balanced rhythm of the setting. A reflective and humane ‘Kammerspiel’. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | LONDON

2 Films by Marta Meszaros and Miklos Jancso

Although Bela Tarr is perhaps the most widely known Hungarian film director, arguably the greatest Hungarian filmmakers of all time are Marta Meszaros (Diary for my Children) and Miklos Jancso (My Way Home), who died in 2014. Married between 1958 and 1968, they had three children: one of them, director of photography Nyika Jancso (Jancso’s son from a former marriage), who worked regularly for both directors, and the couple’s granddaughter Anna Jansco, a producer, introduced these two films at a recent screening laid on in London by the Hungarian Cultural Forum.

It was interesting to hear that both Meszaros (*1931) and Jansco (1921-2014), had started out as Newsreel directors, followed by many years as documentary filmmakers before they embarked on features. Meszaros had a particularly hard time getting into film school, and women directors were more or less unheard of in 1950s Hungary. The fact that she had her youth in the USSR worked to her favour, and she was given a place at the prestigious VGIK film academy in Moscow. Diary for my Children (the first part of the trilogy Diary for my Lovers and Diary for my Father and Mother) was finished in 1984, but languished on the back shelf as its harsh critique of Stalinism was deemed not suitable for Hungarian audiences. Luckily, it was screened for the selection committee of the Cannes Festival, were it was shown in competition, winning the Grand Prix (and runner-up to Wenders’ Paris, Texas) in 1984. Meszaros, who had already won the Golden Bear in Berlin 1975 for Adoption, was now, together with her ex-husband Jansco, the new face of Hungarian cinema.

DIARY FOR MY CHILDREN (NAPLO GYERMEKEIMNEK) | Dir.: Marta Meszaros; Cast: Zsuzsa Czinkoczi, Anna Polony, Jan Nowicki, Pal Zolnay; Hungary 1984, 106 min.

With its strong autobiographical undertones Diary for my Children opens with a homecoming: young Juli (Czinkoczi), her ‘aunt’ Magda (Polony) and ‘grandfather’ Nagypapa (Zolnay) land in 1947 Budapest on their return from exile in the USSR. But Juli’s real parents are dead: her father (Nowicki), a well-known sculptor, has vanished in one of Stalin’s purges, her mother has also perished. Somehow Nagypapa and Magda, who is a very committed Stalinist, bought their survival with an oath of silence, but Juli holds Magda responsible for her father’s death. Magda’s friend Janos, also played by Nowicki, has chosen to work in factory, instead of for the Party, a mistake that will cost him dearly. Meanwhile, Juli steals Magda’s cinema pass, and spends her days in the cinema, instead of at school. Janos is finally arrested for not toeing the Party line, and Juli moves out of Magda’s opulent apartment, to look after Janos wheelchair-bound son, working in a factory. Originally, Meszaros had planned to end with a scene from Mikheil Chiaureli’s 1950 propaganda film The Fall of Berlin, (showing Stalin, played by regular ‘Generalissimo’ actor Mikheil Gelivani, as a God-like figure in his white uniform) – but the feature had since been banned, and the authorities did not wanted to be reminded of the situation. Diary is shot in impressive grainy black-and-white by Nyika Jansco, who remembers to this day how nervous he was about doing his best.

MY WAY HOME | Dir.: Miklos Jansco; Cast: Sergei Nikomenko, Andras Kozak; Hungary 1964, 108 min.

Miklos Jansco’s work is usually very symbolic and inaccessible, often getting him into trouble with the censors for the dreaded ‘Formalism’. My Way Home, his third as a director, is one of the most personal features.  Set during the last days of WWII near the Hungarian border, it tells the story of the teenage Hungarian soldier Joska (Kozak) who is captured first by the fleeing Nazis, then the advancing Russians. Whilst serving the Russians as an agricultural worker, he befriends the Soviet soldier Kolja (Nikonenko), who is dying slowly and painfully from a stomach wound. They herd the cows together, but when Kolja starts bleeding internally, Joska is unable to get to a doctor in time due to his being mistaken for a German national. Shot in the black-and-white with a austerity that echoes the work  of Bresson, My Way Home is a reflection on humanity’s capacity for violence as well as forgiving. AS

 

Bestia (1917) ** | Kinoteka London 2018

Writer-Director Aleksander Hertz | Cast: Pola Negri, Witold Kuncewicz, Jan Pawłowski, Maria Dulęba, Mia Mara. Melodrama | Poland / 67 min (incomplete)

Aleksander Hertz’s Bestia was one of the last of several films made by his company Sfinks starring his protégé Pola Negri under her real name Apolonia Chałupiec before she left for Germany in 1917, and, alas, the only one still surviving. Released in America in 1921 and slightly re-edited as The Polish Dancer to herald Negri’s arrival in Hollywood after making her name internationally in the German films of Ernst Lubitsch; it is to this version that Bestia owes its survival, and this was the version screened at Ognisko Polskie in partnership with this year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival.

Although popular playing A Woman of the World, (which became the title of one of her Hollywood vehicles), Negri in The Beast (to give it it’s literal title in English) proves far more sinned against than sinning; her choice of male company having done her no favours.

Bestia starts well with Miss Negri staying out late carousing with a bunch of drunken ne’er-do-wells (showing that Polish youth were as interested in the same things a hundred years ago as they remain today), and before long she has the world (and various men) at her feet as a raunchy cabaret dancer. Unfortunately she falls for a spineless stage door Johnny named Alexi, who neglects to inform her that he’s married, while the film’s emphasis shifts from Negri to Alexi’s dithering over whether or not to leave his wife. Negri’s honorable decision to reimburse money she’d earlier borrowed without permission from an oaf called Dimitri meanwhile seriously rebounds on her to her cost and it all ends in tears, with retribution meted out that bears little relation to the sins actually committed. RICHARD CHATTEN

KINOTEKA LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 7 -29 MARCH 2018

Krzysztof Zanussi | Retrospective | MUBI January -March 2018

Krzysztof Zanussi

Born in 1939 in Warsaw, Poland, Krzysztof Zanussi is s documentary and feature film director. He studied Physics and Philosophy at University and graduated from Lodz Film Academy in 1966. Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1981. Member of the jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986.

We recently talked to Krzysztof whose latest film FOREIGN BODY was released in 2015. A retrospective of his films is currently showing on MUBI.

F  Let me first say how much I enjoyed ILLUMINATION (1973) I take it you didn’t have any issues with the censors on this film?

KZ Oh, but yes I did. There was a whole scene cut from it. In the original film, there was a scene of university demonstrations, from 1968, where the students demonstrated in support of their tutors.  I wrote it in and got it past the script censor, because it is easy to disguise things in a script, but then the film is screened in the Ministry of Culture too and then they make cuts. There still remains a still (photograph) of Retman demonstrating in the final film, which I argued to keep and anyone who knew those times would understand the context when they view the film.

F I understand ILLUMINATION isn’t autobiographical(?) but you were filming about things you knew about.. studying Physics as you did..

Illumination_6 copyKZ Yes, my life is very different, the film does not reflect what was happening to me at all, but of course I knew Physics.. you meet a partner…

F Why did you study Physics?

KZ I studied Physics, as in fact the lead character Retman states in the film ILLUMINATION, because I felt I wanted something that was certain in life. Then I moved over to Biology, as many of us did then.. I did get interested in Genetics, right back then, at the start of things and could already see the great good it might potentially do, but also of course, the great bad too. My father used to say to me ‘don’t believe anything any tutor tells you, except the Maths and the Physics teacher’. I like Biology …and many other subjects, but they are all supposition and opinion.

F You have a very interesting look to ILLUMINATION your DoP was very good…

KZ: Yes, yes (Edward Klosinski); he was wonderful. He also shot The Promised Land. He passed away recently (2008).

F Wonderful film. Starts out like a Chekov play and then just opens out to something massive. You met at film school?

KZ Yes, we studied together.

F And the style.. it appears to me that you were juxtaposing a cinéma verité with a highly stylized form: something quite revolutionary then

KZ Yes, I had been very influenced by the French New Wave… I wanted a documentary feel for some of it; to make it feel real.

F And what did you shoot on?

KZ: 16mm blown up to 35mm. We always shot 16mm as it was much cheaper. We had access to Kodak Eastman stock, which we loved. We felt very lucky. With only a very limited ratio. We only had enough (film) for 1 or 2 takes, so if nothing went drastically wrong, you moved on.

F This must have been good for the actors.. focussing them too when there was a take..?

KZ: Well, of course the actors knew this was always the case, so… (they were used to it). One time I was working with a famous French actress and we did a couple of takes and we were moving on and she said ‘was that ok’? And I said ‘yes, of course’, because she wasn’t convinced… she had stumbled over a line, but she soon learnt how it was to film in Poland! 

Camouflage_12F: Also in the “Martin Scorsese Selects” strand, tell us about CAMOUFLAGE. How do you see this film in hindsight?

K.Z.: Well, CAMOUFLAGE is one of the about forty films I have directed, and they are all my dear children. And I can say, that I have not any favourites. But CAMOUFLAGE had a very strong resonance from the audience when it was shown, almost forty years ago. And today, I am told by the audience, that it has not lost any of its actuality. And I did hoped so much, that this would not be the case. But when I was young, I was more optimistic, I thought that opportunism and corruption were just part of this particular system we lived in, but now I know better.

F: Yes, one tends to blame the system for what is, unfortunately, human nature. What about THE CONSTANT FACTOR, from about in the same period, the two films only three years apart.

Constant_Factor_3 copyK.Z.: It is somehow the same topic, about an idealistic man, in a corrupt society, who tries to preserve his ideals. Which is very difficult, if you are not a hypocrite. Later on in life, I revised my ideas about this topic, and made a sort of sequel to the old film, five years ago, Revisited, even with some of the old actors. And I thought, I was much too hard in my judgement in CONSTANT FACTOR, not about the main character, but the people caught in the system. Because now, I can, see that the main character in the old film, which whom I identified at the time, is quite inhuman. He loves ideals, but not humans. Today I would be more tolerant towards human weaknesses. If I could speak for this main character in THE CONSTANT FACTOR, I would say now ‘sorry’ to my colleagues, I was too tough on you.

F So, going back, you studied Physics and then you went to Film School…

KZ I went to film school for three years and then they threw me out..

F How long is the course?

KZ Five years. But you see I was studying the Nouvelle Vague, I was on set with Claude Chabrol, Jacques Truffaut… seeing, learning from them how they made films… very fluid, without camera set ups and improvising with actors. Completely different from how we were taught at school. So I came back to film school and made my end of year film using these Nouvelle Vague methods before anyone.. my tutors.. knew what Nouvelle Vague was! So of course they failed me.

F Because you hadn’t used ‘correct’ camera set-ups and lighting and stuff?

KZ Exactly..

F So what did you do?

KZ Oh, well I had to take the year again effectively. And I understood I just had to make a film in the style my tutor wanted and I passed.

F I’m interested in what influenced you.. You were born at the start of the war.. do  you remember much about it? Did it have an impact on you?

KZ Well, I of course made a few films about the war but not many..

F Yes, but I mean personally, did it affect you?

KZ Yes. Very much. I think. I remember walking down the street and the person walking next to me being shot dead and just carrying on walking, knowing that person was dead and would be buried in a few hours. You always remember these things. But the death of animals had a bigger impact than the death of humans.

F What do you mean?

KZ I saw a horse hit by napalm. On fire and you couldn’t tell what was… And a dog.. we were passing by this tall building and there was a fire on the first floor, but up on the fifth floor, on the balcony was a dog and I knew the dog was going to die. That no one was going to put the fire out.

F So, even though you didn’t actually see it happen, see it die, the knowledge that this dog would die in an hour or so..

KZ Yes, exactly. It made a big impact on me.

F What inspires you to make films? You must have been asked this question many times over the years.

KZ Many times.. yes and I have stock answer… but.. Fear. Fear is a great motivator.

F Fear of what?

KZ Fear of many things. Of being lonely… of not connecting with people. I mean, you wouldn’t be sitting here, we wouldn’t be talking, if it wasn’t for the fact that I have made films.

F True..

KZ Fear of not achieving anything. It stopped me being stuck in myself; Got me out there and allowed me to test my version of humanity and ask others whether they saw or felt the same things. How others receive a film is always different.

F Because people bring with them their own filter, their own baggage through which they view the film. When you make a film, it becomes something else, something separate to you, that somehow belongs to others too. You have to let it go.

KZ Exactly. And it is notable sometimes with different countries how they perceive a film. I had a retrospective in Thailand and there the metaphysical aspects of the characters problems didn’t interest the audience at all, but his situation was everything. They related to that, but not at all to the other. But you can’t tell them what your film is about.

F Where else have you been with your films?

Illumination_8KZ Not much to the US or China or Russia, but I went to Cuba. I met Fidel Castro with ILLUMINATION.

F Oh wow. How did that come about?

KZ; Well, they wanted to show the film out there, but it needed to be passed by Castro first, before it could be shown and he didn’t have a screen up at his house, so he came down to see it and I was banned- everybody was banned from being in there, except a few close people, but I spoke a little Spanish, so when I knew there was going to be this screening, I just went along and told them I was invited as the filmmaker and no one could say anything, so they of course let me in, so I sat down and then the worst nightmare of any director happened; Just a few minutes in and the projector broke down, the film broke..

F It just snapped…?

KZ Yes, so the lights come up and Fidel sees me and he is very angry and wants to know what I’m doing there… So I ask him what he thinks of the film and he says he doesn’t like it much, but we talk and he agrees to see some more, so they fix it and he watches some more and then he sees it all the way through to the end.

F And..?

KZ Well, he still doesn’t like it and he cannot understand how the Politburo in Poland has allowed me to make it, but he likes that it is about science… about Physics. So, he decides to let them screen the film, in the hope that it might persuade people to study science.

F  That’s amazing. So.. he’s quite open-minded then, to allow it, even though he didn’t like it…

KZ Well, I think he is more just a pragmatist.

F Do you have a favourite film?

KZ Ah. No. it isn’t fair. All films are like your children and you love them all.

F: In 1982 you won the “Golden Lion” in Venice for A YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN. This film seems somehow forgotten today.

K.Z.: I don’t know. It had a very good run in the United States, but it might not have been so extensively shown in Great Britain. But A Year of the Quiet Sun is one of my dearest films.

F.: You stated in an interview, that when you were a producer at “Tor” Studios in the 1980s, you had, despite the censors, a partial autonomy. How come?

K.Z.: Yes, from 1956 onwards, this is true. Before that, we had the Marxist system really implemented one hundred percentage. But that system was falling apart, it was really brutal. But afterwards it became more tolerant, lenient and flexible.

F.: So, as an artist, where did you think you had the greater freedom, under the communist system or the capitalist one?

K.Z.: (laughs) You should never compare one disease with another. First of all, the free market economy produces more chances for everybody. But, we have to find another way of life, because we cannot go on growing like we do. The planet will not stand for this. We will have to concentrate more on spiritual growth, than on material.

F: In 1996 you made your most autobiographical film, AT FULL GALLOP. How did it feel, revisiting your childhood?

K.Z.: I wanted to make this film much earlier, but after I wrote the first 30 pages of he script, it became clear, that this would never pass the censors. But it was very exciting, as it must be for every artist, to re-visit his youth. I had another script, about a different time of my life, which the BBC was interested in, but it came never to fruition. But coming back to At Full Gallop, it was ridiculous was happened in those early years after the war in Poland. Even horse riding was forbidden, because it was deemed to be bourgeois. You could breed horses, but riding was forbidden, because it was supposed to be repressive: the human was on top of the horse.

Foreign Body_1

F: Your newest film, FOREIGN BODY, which was premiered in 2014, caused quite a commotion. Why?

K.Z.: Well, I never thought I could be so angry again, I thought, in old age, I would get more tolerant. But there it is: in the old days, we were really fighting for freedom, and today the young people are selling their freedom to the corporation. What for? They are selling their souls, not their work. So, this film is the voice of anger. Because human relationships are suffering because of this attitude, people become inhuman. But there were great protests against the film, because people like to work for the corporations, and for the material freedom they gain this way. And I also made references to Judeo-Christian ethics, which are not as dried up, as some think. So, that’s the bone of contention.

F.; So you were disappointed in global capitalism?

K.Z.: No, I never had any illusions, about the perfect system. I believe that every person has a space, and he has to be as human as possible. And the fabulous rich ones do not need to be so rich, to have a human space they can live in satisfactory.

Citizen3F.: Finally, a question about the ‘ordinary’ anti-Semitism in Poland. I have watched Jerzy Stuhr’s CITIZEN which I very much liked. I believe that this was the first Polish film to confront ‘ordinary’ anti-Semitism, for a very long time.

K.Z.: That is a very complex question. There are explanations, not excuses. Poland had a huge minority, nearly three million Jews, ten percentage of its population. This is incomparable with any other nation in Europe. The ugly part of anti-Semitism in Poland is that many peasants got richer because of the victims of the holocaust. This sense of guilt makes people aggressive again. You hate somebody you profited from.

F.: And the role of the Catholic Church in this question?

K.Z.: Until ten years ago, when Pope John-Paul II died, there was no anti-Semitism, but now, there are some parts of the Catholic Church, who regrettably, are indulging again in anti-Semitism.

A RETROSPECTIVE OF ZANUSSI’S FILMS ON MUBI | JANUARY – MARCH 2-18 | HIS LATEST FILM ETER IS IN POST PRODUCTION 

BFI Flare Film Festival | 21 March – 1 April 2018

London is the setting for the UK’s longest running LGBTQ film event which began in 1986 as Gay’s Own Pictures. Since then it has also become the largest LGBTQ film event in the UK with this year’s edition boasting 56 feature films, an expanded industry programme, selected films on BFI Player VOD service, and a series of special events and archive screenings. With its partner fiveFilms4freedom it offers LGBT short films for free across the world and promoted through the British Council’s global networks.

Opening the festival this year is Talit Shalom-Ezer’s poignant lesbian love story MY DAYS OF MERCY written by Joe Barton, who scripted TV’s Troy, and featuring Kate Mara and Ellen Page. The European premiere of moral fable POSTCARDS FROM LONDON is the closing gala, telling a revealing story of a suburban teenager (Harris Dickinson) arriving in the West End where he falls in with a gang of high class male escorts ‘The Raconteurs’. Set in a vibrant, neon-lit, imaginary vision of Soho, the film works as a beautifully shot homage to the spirit of Derek Jarman and a celebration of the homo-erotic in Baroque art, and is Steve McLean’s long-awaited follow-up to his 1994 Sundance and Indie Spirit-nominated drama POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA. This year ‘Second Chance Sunday offers the opportunity to watch the on-demand repeat screenings of the audience festival favourites.

Other films to look out for are Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde-themed passion project THE HAPPY PRINCE in which he also stars alongside Colin Firth and Emily Watson. Robin Campillo’s rousing celebration of AIDS activism 120 BPM. MAURICE, a sumptuous restoration of the 1987 adaptation of E M Forster’s gay novel starring James Wilby and Rupert Graves. THE WOUND, an illuminating South African story of initiation in a rural village.

On the documentary front it’r worth seeing TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS that explores how a transgender Alzheimer’s patient deals with the harrowing inevitable, and ANTONIO LOPEZ 1970 a compelling and vibrant portrait of the bisexual illustrator who changed the fashion world. 

Avant-garde Berlinale Teddy feature HARD PAINT presents a startlingly cinematic look at how a college drop-out deals with his needs, and Locarno favourite, a saucy Sao Paolo-set vampire drama GOOD MANNERS approaches its love story with hand-crafted tenderness and visual allure.

There will also be another chance to see Francis Lea’s Berlinale awarded GOD’S OWN COUNTRY; Billie Jean King’s thrilling account of her fight for equality in women’s tennis BATTLE OF THE SEXES and the one of the best films of 2017 CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. 

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | LONDON 21  March – 1 April www.bfi.org.uk/Flare

 

 

A Love that Never Dies (2017) ***

Dir.: Jimmy Edmonds, Jane Harris; UK/India/USA/Vietnam 2017, 75 min.

Seven years after their son Josh was killed in a road accident in Vietnam, Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris set out on a personal journey across the USA, to talk to bereaved parents, who have lost their children suddenly to accidents or untimely illnesses.

Grief is a personal matter, and as the filmmaker couple observe, has no closure. And rightly so; there should be no closure, but an ongoing process of coming to terms with an horrific bereavement – it is traumatic to lose a loved one of any kind, but for parents to lose a child, makes even less sense. Grief becomes more bewrwble with the passage of time and the documentary shows some ways forward: one family is active in a charity, bearing the name of their lost child, another one is very supportive of each other, even though their son’s death was caused by a gun in their own home, which was supposed to protect them from harm. But most of them agree with the filmmakers, who simply want to have their lives back “before” the tragic loss.

Edmonds and Harris travel to Vietnam, and visit the place of the accident, supported by locals, who have marked the spot with gifts. Their way of turning back the clock, is to start their journey in New York, which they visited with Josh before his death. The point of this documentary is not to find answers, but to share experiences of a journey can only have one end. AS

Mary Magdalene (2018) **

Dir.: Garth Davis; Cast: Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Tamar Ramin, Chiwetel Eljofor; UK/Australia 2018, 120’.

This biblical story about the first Christian proto-feminist must at one time have seemed a very good idea for a run at the Oscars’ in a drama that re-unites Australian director Garth Davis, star Rooney Mara and producer Harvey Weinstein of Lion’s fame. Unfortunately, we all know what happened, and Mary Magdalene gets re-scheduled fo the run-up to Easter, hoping that audiences will fall for the total elimination of the Prince of Darkness’ central role in this feature.

Mary Magdalene (Rooney) is a public-spirited member of the small Jewish fishing community in a country invaded and ruled by the Romans. She works hard, delivers babies and has a social conscience – but she does not want marriage, even though her father has tried his best. The Talmud supports the total subservience of women and Mary yearns for a way out. Then along comes Jesus of Nazareth (Phoenix) and his band of apostles, who preach social justice and a religion of love and understanding instead of the old-fashioned God of Thunder and Wrath. Mary Magdalene becomes Jesus’ confidant, and the males, particularly Peter (Eljofor), becomes jealous: “You are weakening us Mary” exclaims Peter. Mary Magdalene is very much into a more soul-centred revolution, not the violent social uprising the apostles have in mind. On the way to Jerusalem, we witness the usual miracles such as the raising of Lazarus, before things go wrong in the capital city. Interestingly, Judas is not so much a traitor in this version of the gospel, as rather an ambivalent character. In the end, after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene is expelled by the male apostles – only for Peter to found a Christian religion repressing women as much as Judaism, with one of the early Popes in 591 declaring Mary Magdalene a prostitute, a slanderous lie which was overturned by the Catholic Church only in 2016.

Davis goes for dignity – the opposite of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ – and (the real life couple) Rooney and Phoenix act accordingly, all looks and whispered wisdom. But the result is a badly under-cooked, anaemic feature, with no intellectual or emotional impact. DoP Craig Fraser makes atmospheric use of the landscape of Sicily and Southern Italy: the bleached colours and the black granite are perfectly captured – but Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett’s script is simply too tame to rouse the audience from a bemused detachment. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 MARCH 2018

The Square (2017) Bfi player

Dir|Writer: Ruben Ostlund | Cast: Dominic West, Elisabeth Moss, Terry Notary, Linda Anborg, Claes Bang | Drama | Sweden\Denmark\US | 131′

Swedish director Ruben Ostlund won the Palme D’Or in 2017 with this startling satire on modern society, the moral of which is simplistically: don’t lose your mobile phone. Not a very helpful caveat but one that leads to the downfall of the film’s central character, a suave gallery owner who provides the prism through which Ostlund explores the state of Sweden’s art world and, more widely, its sociopolitical and national identity, going forward – as they say.

This is a frightening and ambitious thriller not only for its thematic richness but also for its resonant characters, darkly comic moments and relevance to modern life. As in his 2014 hit Force Majeure, Ostlund’s is a tale of guilt and responsibility but also political correctness and freedom of speech in the light of Sweden’s influx of migrants, and all this conflates for provocative watch but also a nail-bitingly tense one that will possibly leave you shattered and shaken – it did me.

Claes Bang plays the aptly named Christian, a sympathetic, sophisticated and broadminded gallery owner keen to keep at the cutting edge of art world. But several of his outré ideas backfire leading to a catastrophic chain of events and his downfall. The first is connected to an iniative called The Square: a space in the museum’s courtyard which allows ‘freedom of expression’ for all, provided that they abide by society’s ‘rules’. But a shocking PR stunt upsets the status quo, and he is forced into fire-fighting mode to save the reputation of the museum. The second leads to one of the most unsettling scenes in the film – and this occurs during a high level fund-raising dinner – calling into question his integrity.

It all starts when Christian discovers his wallet and mobile have been stolen while he is protecting a woman from the advances of a hostile man, outside Stockholm’s central station. Encouragingly, sources provide a catchment area – a block of flats – where his stuff is supposedly located and after requesting his belongings be returned they miraculously emerge leaving him with a feeling of largesse towards mankind. But after an ill-advised one night stand with Elizabeth Olsen’s American journalist, who has interviewed him that day, things start to go awry in a bizarre way, and seem linked to the robbery, highlighting the film’s racial dimension. As the museum director Claes Bang is suberb in a difficult and nuanced role where he is required consistently to present a professional face in the light of personal controversary and workplace mayhem, and we feel for him. Without disclosing the entire storyline, this is an intriguingly complex and shocking thriller, sumptuously crafted and full of inventive elements and subtle performances that will stay in your memory for a very long time. MT

ON BFI PLAYER FROM 19!May 2022

 

 

Plot 35 | Carre 35 (2017) ****

Dir.: Eric Caravaca; Documentary with Angela Caravaca, Gilberto Caravaca | France 2017, 65′.

This small gem of a documentary proves the point that a huge impact can be made without the need for a multi-million budgets or indulgent running times: Actor Eric Caravaca, who is better known for his performance in the recent Lover For a Day), uncovers a tragic family secret which sees him diligently tracing the short life story of his sister Christine, who had been mysteriously written out of the family history since childhood.

Christine was born in 1960, the first child of Angela and Gilberto Caravaca, who had emigrated from Spain to Morocco, where they would marry in Casablanca. The 8mm wedding footage shows them happy with no inkling of the tragedy to come. When asking his parents about his sister’s life span and illness, which led to her premature death, Eric gets contradictory answers: his mother claims that Christine lived to be three years, a healthy child who then died of ”Blue Baby” Syndrome. Father Gilberto (who dies during filming) states that Christine died aged four, after potentially suffering from Down’s Syndrome. with neither his wife nor himself present. All photographs and home movies of Christine have been destroyed by mother Angela who candidly opines: “What should I do, cry over it?”.

Eric’s investigation eventually leads him to ‘Plot 35’, in a cemetery in Casablanca. But when he gets there, Plot 35 no longer exists, he does however find Christine’s grave, minus a photo, which has been removed. His research further reveals that both his parents were right: Christine died age three with relatives in Casablanca, and she was suffering from a congenital illness. But the mystery then deepens: why is the grave so well tended when the family no longer lives in Casablanca? Eric soon finds the answer, bringing his search to a satisfactory end. This narrative of denial and neglect is so sad and moving because it reflects on Eric’s parents desperate desire not not to be marginalised in their new home of Morocco. During their peripatetic life in France, after moving back from Morocco, Angela would even changed her name again twice, keen to bury the past and her own trauma for good. A child with special needs was simply too much to cope with – therefore Christina was placed with relatives, far away from their new start in life.

The director uses shocking footage from the French Repression during the Moroccan War of Independence to put his family’s story into perspective. But most traumatising of all are excerpts from Nazi Euthanasia propaganda films. Plot 35 cannot be praised enough: this is a labour of love, of “un-forgetting” the past, and it deserves an audience. AS

NOW SHOWING AT THE ICA LONDON  | 12 MARCH 2018

Butterfly Kisses (2017) **** Kinoteka Film Festival 2018

Dir.: Rafael Kapelinski; Cast: Theo Stevenson, Rosie Day, Liam Whitling, Byron Lyons, Thomas Turgoose, Charlotte Beaumont; UK 2017, 89 min.

Polish born director Rafael Kapelinski, who studied with Andrei Wajda in Lodz and got an MA from the NFTS, has directed a disturbing, haunting debut feature, which in many ways – not least due to Nick Cooke’s brilliant black-and-white images DoP Nick Cooke – resembles Michael Winterbottom’s first feature Butterfly Kiss from 1995.

Written by Greer Ellison, Butterfly Kisses is set in a South London estate where the three main characters, teenagers Jake (Stevenson), Kyle (Whiting) and Jared (Lyons), spend their days aimlessly gorging on internet porn and in a bar run by Shrek (Turgoose), which has an in-house drug dealer. This is mainly about showing off to each other, and, like a couple after 40 years of marriage, scoring points. Fathers are absent in the army, or literally dying. But Jake is worse off, because his friends know that he is still a virgin – the only one of the trio – in spite of his rather pretty good looks. When Zara (Day) moves into the tower block, Jake, ogling her from his window, gets a part-time job looking after her much younger sister Amy (Beaumont). After Kyle and Jared talk Zara into sleeping with Jake, we learn his dark secret: From here on onwards, Butterfly Kisses steams like a derailed train into oblivion.

Saving us from any graphic horrors, Kapelinski makes watching this even more painful. Nathan Klein’s score relies heavily on the organ, underlining the apocalyptic narrative. A voice-over by Kyle at the start of the feature, tells us about a day in school, when everyone put an anonymous confession  into a box, the contents were then read out aloud, each not knowing who had written what. Stealing Mars bars from the old owner of the corner shop seemed just like the internet porn – a mild transgression compared with Jake’s dark secret. Butterfly Kisses shows us that the clichés of life on council estates, are just the fruits of juvenile neglect – not the true evil lurking behind Jake’s boyish features. AS

KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 29 MARCH 2018

My Golden Days | Trois Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse *** (2015)

Dir.: Arnaud Desplechin | Cast: Mathieu Almaric, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Quentin Dolmaire, Pierre Andrau | France 2015 | 123’| Drama

Arnaud Desplechin is certainly one of the most maddening European directors: His idiosyncratic style, extreme detachment and hyper-ambivalent narratives always miss perfection by a small fracture – but it is a decisive one. And that is probably why this has simmered on the back burner for three years before its current release. Desplechin never seems to mature: his newest film MY GOLDEN DAYS, a sort of prequel to Ma Vie Sexuelle (1996), is once more an example of unfulfilled promise.

In chapters and an epilogue, we learn everything about Paul (Quentin Dolmaire): his unstable mother, who committed suicide when he was eleven, his father, who never got over the tragedy, young Paul’s adventure in the USSR, when he helped a Jew to emigrate, donating his passport. Set in Roubaix, were the director grew up, the main chapter is about the relationship between the teenager Paul (Almaric) and Esther (Roy-Lecollinet in a stunning debut). Paul falls in love with Esther, who has many suitors, but is still very insecure. Paul fights off rivals like Kovalki (Andrau), but when he goes to Paris to study, Esther, becoming more and more fragile without Paul, goes to bed with Kovalki – not so much for passion, but reassurance. In the epilogue, Paul accuses Kovalki of being traitorous, never seeing the point that he left Esther alone. Paul too is unfaithful (seven lovers), but this hardly counts – Desplechin’s misogyny is unruffled after all these years.

Mathieu Almaric is again Paul Dedalus, but Emannuelle Devos’ part of Esther is taken up by the young Lou Roy-Lecollinet. It says much for the film, the director and the male star that Roy-Lecollinet, born in the year Ma Vie Sexuelle was made, comes over hardly any more immature than Almaric, who is thirty years her senior. Whilst Almaric should get all the praise, Desplechin falls into the same trap once again: his witty and perfect dialogues only carry the film so far and the make-believe, that the protagonists resemble human beings, wears thin after an hour.

The leads display fantastic insights into each other lives, but their letters are incredible immature context wise – written by the urbane 54 year old director, and not starry-eyed lovers from the provinces. Further more, Desplechin mentions topics like the cold war, anthropology and the problems of the developing world with encyclopedic knowledge, displaying a wisdom which has no place in the world of his teenage lovers. As in most of Desplechin’s films, the characters are treated like rats in a laboratory, the all-knowing voice-over representing the director’s point of view.

It is sad that these great actors and the wonderful images of Irina Lubtchansky are in the hands of a man who believes in his own perfection, but lacks basic empathy with anyone else: Arnaud Desplachin’s aesthetic brilliance will never be enough, his near-autistic inter-activity with real humanity stands between him and real greatness. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 16 MARCH 2018

Macbeth (2018) ***

Dir.: Kit Monkman; Cast: Mark Rowley, Akiya Henry, Al Weaver, Dai Bradley; UK 2017, 12

Kit Monkman creates a MACBETH for our times: part-experimental arthouse-cinema, partly a futuristic version of Games of Thrones, his adaptation of the Scottish play is shot entirely on green screen, with background matte painting effects and CGI creating a fleeting world where the camera roves seemingly at will through multiple stages, the action unfolding simultaneously.

Although this film’s aesthetics are anything but realistic, but the acting is physical to the point of open brutality. Macbeth (Rowley) and Lady Macbeth (Henry) are madly obsessed with each other: their lovemaking and post-coital deliberations make them look very much like the Noirish coupling of Laurie and Bart in Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy: Sex and violence rule their lives in equal parts, and once again, it is the female who is more dangerous than the male. That said, Macbeth does not need any encouragement, he is, after all, a young, successful general. His relationship with Banquo (Weaver) is that of rivalry and hidden admiration. Both are entrenched in violence. But Macbeth not only murders centre stage, but also casually: the slaying of Macduff’s wife is shown at the margin of the frame (again shades of Lewis).

Diverse themes often intermingle: sex and battlefield scenes are woven into each other, the audience always alerted to new thrills that dovetail into one another. Sometimes we lose lose perspective altogether: is the moon inside our outside Macbeth’s bedroom? Then there is the projectionist/porter (Bradley) running a 1909 silent film version of the play directed by Mario Caserini. He seems to function solely in his role as keeper of the past while the main-action might be set any time in the future. Grey and green pre-dominate, the blood-red crimson spurts like arrows into the murky mire of Scotland’s winter. Still looking for a distributor, Monkman’s visionary version of MACBETH is a worthwhile addition to the Scottish play’s canon. AS

SCREENING FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY 23 APRIL 2018 | SHAKESPEARE’ BIRTHDAY HERE   

My Generation (2017) ***

Dir: David Batty | Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais | Cast: Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Lulu, Paul McCartney, Twiggy, Roger Daltrey, Marianne Faithfull, Sandie Shaw, Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki | UK | Doc | 85′ |

As narrator and co-producer, Michael Caine turns the camera on himself for a filmic flip through the Swinging Sixties, showing how he and his talented contempories transformed Britain.

Assembled over two years, MY GENERATION is directed by David Batty, with scripters Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement ensuring an enjoyable ride through enjoyable archive footage showcasing Caine’s contempories: photographer trio: Terry Donovan, Duffy and David Bailey; fashion models such as Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Joanna Lumley and musicians: Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.

Caine, now 84, contemplates the factors that caused the loosening up in the postwar set-up citing The Pill and the advent of Grammar schools as primary factors for change, while Marianne Faithfull suggests it was all down to an improved diet. Whatever the case, they were all determined to have a good time and break down barriers, bringing in a more colourful era and putting London on the map as a beacon of youth culture, as everyone flocked to the capital. Caine, who rose from solid working class stock as Maurice Micklewhite, uses the film to attack posh middle class acting talent, ridiculing the likes of cult classics Brief Encounter (1946) and taking a swipe at  Norman Wisdom who he claims was not generous to work with despite his humble origins. Paul McCartney comes up with the chestnut, “suddenly people realised the working class wasn’t as thick as it looked and it had talent.” Chippy Britain at its best.

Caine goes on to suggest that the advent of drugs brought an end to the Swinging Sixties although stresses he only smoked marijuana once as it made him laugh for five hours so he couldn’t remember his lines. To his credit Caine avoids mawkish sentimentality: “I don’t feel nostalgia. I never look back. I feel extraordinarily lucky, not about my talent or anything, but about the timing,” MY GENERATION is an entertaining romp showing how these legendary characters made the Sixties happen and made their vast fortunes into the bargain.MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 MARCH 2017

Wonder Wheel (2017) ***

Dir/Writer: Woody Allen | Cast: Kate Winslet, Jim Belushi, Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, Jack Gore, David Krumholtz | US | Melodrama | 101′

When the world desperately needs a slice of his comedy genius Woody Allen delivers a miserable melodrama, a metaphor for modern life – or perhaps it’s just the mood he is in with the current wave of abuse allegations rocking Hollywood.

So he returns to the 1950s and his childhood days in Coney Island where sad and frustrated housewife Ginny (Kate Winslet) is living out her life, but not her dreams. The Neon-lit shadow of the Ferris wheel sheds a Lucozade-tinged light on the chintzy interiors of the home she shares with her pyromaniac son (Jack Gore), obese husband Humpty (Belushi) and his newly-arrived daughter Carolina (Juno Temple), a marked woman who has just left her gangland husband. Ginny and Humpty are overblown alcoholics and there’s no joy in their lives, but while he is content with his fishing trips and games with the guys, Ginny is an unfulfilled actress wasting her life waitressing in their boardwalk clam diner. Then she falls for a perma-tanned literary-minded lifeguard in the shape of Micky, a desperately miscast Justin Timberlake.

To be frank, this is Ginny’s fillm and without the voluptuous emotional heavyweight Winslet, the film would fail to resonate. She is the meaty Maine lobster in this claustrophobic clam bake-off, with Belushi the French fries, Timberlake the healthy salad and Juno Temple the frothy vanilla milkshake. We’re persuaded that Mickey lives in Greenwich village where he reads Eugene O’Neill, but he’s strait outta modern Memphis and unconvincing in this role. The two fall in lust until Ginny gets heavy and Carolina frolics into focus whereupon Mickey is smitten, realising the reality of the age-gap. “When it comes to love, we often turn out to be our own worst enemy” is one of the more telling lines.

Wonder Wheel is a shade overlong with some scenes lingering uncomfortably, but the redolent musical choices and perfect-pitched performances are convincing and heartfelt. Vittorio Storaro’s wizardry with his colour wheel bathes everything in a neon-suffused technicolour rainbow tracking Ginny’s emotional ups and downs as the wheel spins from orgasmic bliss to histrionic meltdown. The placid rain-soaked beachscapes provide thoughtful contrast and relief to this bold and believable portrait of a woman driven to the edge. And you feel for her. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 9 MARCH 2018

Mom and Dad (2017) ****

Dir.: Brian Taylor | Cast: Nicholas Cage, Selma Blair, Anne Winters, Zackary Arthur, Robert Cunningham, Samantha Lemole | USA 2017 | 86′.

Director/writer Brian Taylor, co-creator of Gamer and Crank, delivers the perfect American nightmare: what would happen TV stations all gave up the ghost, and sent coded messages ordering loving middle-class parents to kill their off-spring?. This is not simply a schlock horror movie: it is set very much in the psychological reality of suburban America, where parental love and even sacrifice is the stable diet of all sugar-coated Hollywood films.

Parents Brent (Cage) and Kendall (Blair) are fighting middle-age disappointment: he is frustrated by his reduced means:“Ten years ago I earned 145 000$, now it 45 000$”), she is driven crazy by her attempts to look twenty again. Meanwhile son Josh (Arthur) is still in pre-puberty, and daughter Carly (Winters) drives her parents mad, as the teenager from Hell, her placid boyfriend Damon (Cunningham) is the only one not getting in her way. When the TV incident occurs, Kendall is in hospital, where her sister Jenna (Lemole) is giving birth to a baby – which she immediately tries to kill – Kendall, not yet affected by the curse, helps to save the newly born. But at home she joins her husband in a mad pursuit to kill Josh and Carly – their rage so virulent, that they overlook the body of the housekeeper’s child, murdered by the mother. Damon does his best to defend the children, who are locked in the cellar, while Mum and Dad come up with a new idea: poisoning by gas. When Brent’s parents arrive in midst of the chaos, the former finds out, that old age is not a barrier to child murder.

What make Mom and Dad so realistic is the use of exactly the same aesthetics used by Hollywood to promote the nuclear family: all is clean, antiseptic, feelings (apart from Carly) are repressed, everything is secondary to getting the show on the road every morning: impressing the neighbours and keeping up the gold-standard of superficiality and intellectual banality. This dream, perpetuated in the media, is now simply turned on its head: It is now the most efficient child killer who is top of the ratings. This is a role written for Nicholas Cage, who rises demon-like to the occasion, with Blair not far behind. The American home is a battle-field devastated by the forces of parental revenge. DoP Daniel Pearl indulges in a pastel colours prelude to the gory terror of the uprising: the schoolyard scenes are a terrific example of parental mob violence. Even the ending delivers a refreshing twist – anything but a new beginning. Provocative and brave, Mom and Dad is a incendiary tour-de-force of America’s middle-class dreams descending into Hell. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 9 MARCH 2018

You Were Never Really Here (2017) ***

Dir: Lynne Ramsay | Writer: Jonathan Ames| Lynne Ramsay | Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Manette, John Doman | Thriller | 95min

New York is the setting of Lynne Ramsay’s claustrophobic psychodrama about a troubled soul who brings his abusive past to bear in his work as a hit man. Featuring a tortured performance from Joaquin Phoenix, it glimpses a world much darker and more deadly that the woozy snapshot we get here. Ramsay is more interested in probing the inner workings of her character’s mind than focusing on the sordid underworld of ‘private security’ and directs from a script adapted by Jonathan Ames from his original novel.

Phoenix plays Joe, a damaged Travis Bickle-like loner and former soldier who would have us believe there is a righteous place in the world for him that is hitherto undiscovered. But until that moment arrives he is tasked with rescuing a teenager whose wealthy father wants to avoid contact with the authorities. Teenager Nina (a fragile Ekaterina Samsonov) is the daughter of minor politician Votto (Alex Manette), a sidekick in Alessandro Nivola’s election campaign for senator, and has been lured into a sex-trafficking ring. Joe is tasked with getting the teen back to Votto, in a local hotel. But the scheme backfires when other criminal elements infiltrate the ring and the film descends into a hazy contemplation of Joe’s broken psyche that gradually melds with the ambiant violence of the botched release.

Ramsay’s effort to blend a crime thriller with claustrophobic character study is a brave one that feels much more nuanced and tuned-out than Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, but sadly lacks the resonance and gutsy sense of time and place. That said, it’s a well-crafted thriller with an auteurish, almost poetic feel that contrasts impressively with the stark stabs of savage violence that punctuate this tawdry twisted tale. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 9 MARCH NATIONWIDE

Hedy Lamarr – the Woman who invented Wifi

Alexandra’s Dean biopic: BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY looks back over the outstanding career of a Hollywood star with intellect as well as high octane chutzpah.
Far more people are likely today to heard of Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) than to have ever actually seen any of her movies. Already notorious for skinny-dipping and simulating orgasm in the Czech independent film Extase (1933), she remained popular tabloid fodder for the rest of her life, and in the thirties & forties was by common consent considered the most beautiful woman in the world.
Although her film career was over by the end of the fifties, her name has remained stubbornly familiar down the years; and 1966 in particular proved a busy year for her for all the wrong reasons. In January of that year she was arrested for shoplifting in Los Angeles – which served as the basis for a film by Andy Warhol that year called Hedy, with Mario Montez in the title role – and she then unsuccessfully sued to attempt to prevent the publication of a lurid ghost-written autobiography, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, condemning it as “fictional, false, vulgar, scandalous, libelous and obscene.”.
During the seventies her name remained well enough remembered for the villain in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974) to be named “Hedley Lamarr”; although that she was not amused is indicated by a $10 million lawsuit she filed against Warner Bros (who eventully settled out of court). Still more recently, Anne Hathaway studied Ms Lamarr’s films as preparation for her role as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In 1997 came a revelation more remarkable than anything contained in Ecstasy and Me that with the avant-garde composer George Antheil she had developed a “frequency hopping” radio guidance system for torpedoes that they patented – she using her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey – on 11 August 1942. (When told that their idea had finally received public acknowledgement, the 82 year-old Lamarr barked “Well, it’s about time!”)
As an actress, Lamarr herself described herself as “a cross between Judy Garland and Greta Garbo”. By her own admission she had the reputation in Hollywood of being “difficult”, and her films were in the main a rum bunch – including the handful she produced herself – not helped by the fact that she turned down Casablanca and Gaslight. But in the past decade she has received the accolade accorded to few of her Hollywood contemporaries: two biographies, and now a feature-length documentary entitled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (one of whose executive producers is Susan Sarandon).
Bombshell predictably doesn’t actually concern itself too much with her movies; so here are five that she made that are still worth a look:
Extase (Gustav Machatý, 1933). Largely shot silent with a synchronised music track, Extase can still be appreciated on its own terms as a fanciful continental art movie by the interesting Gustav Machatý (and can be enjoyed on YouTube). Shortly after making it, it’s 18 year-old star Hedwig Kiesler married a millionaire munitions manufacturer named Fritz Mandl who unsuccessfully attempted to buy up all the copies, but fortunately failed, and the film opened in New York in 1937; the same year she divorced Mandl and was signed up by MGM, who changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and excitedly promoted her as “the new Garbo”.
Algiers (John Cromwell, 1938). She started in Hollywood at the top co-starring with Charles Boyer in this lavish remake of Pepe le Moko (1936), which had starred Jean Gabin and Mireille Balin. It was both a critical and financial hit, and inspired the cartoon character Pepé le Pew; but unfortunately presently exists only in dreadful public domain prints, so few people today have actually seen it and the French original is more familiar today than the remake.
H.M.Pulham Esq. (King Vidor, 1941). As forgotten today as most of Lamarr’s other films – and ignored by Bombshell –  this adult, well-acted adaptation of John P. Marquand’s novel was the second of two films she made with the great King Vidor, and is probably her best. Both she and Robert Young in the title role give excellent performances, and the film deserves to be much better known.
Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). A gaslit Victorian melodrama set in London in 1903 containing her own personal favourite of her own performances, as a mysterious beauty being plotted against by her scheming and manipulative husband, played by Paul Lukas.
Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. DeMille, 1949). Hedy’s first film in Technicolor is a glorious piece of kitsch in which Angela Lansbury – who was 12 years her junior – plays her elder sister. The film is probably best remembered today for Groucho Marx’s response to DeMille at the premiere that “No picture can hold my interest where the leading man’s tits are bigger than the leading lady’s!”. But it was the top-grossing film of 1950. RICHARD CHATTEN
BOMBSHELL is now on PRIME VIDEO

A Fantastic Woman * * * (2017) | Bfi Flare Film Festival 2018

Dir: Sebastián Lelio | Chile / USA / Germany / Spain | Spanish | Drama | 104′ · Colour

A story of love and loss is a wrapped around a gutsy portrait of transgender alienation in Sebastian Lelio’s fifth feature and follow-up to his Golden Bear winner Gloria. It has won him considerable acclaim including an Oscar (2018) since its Silver Bear win at Berlinale 2017.

Suave middle class business man Orlando (Francisco Reyes) has left his attractive wife for a strong-jawed woman 20 years his junior. Marina (Daniela Vega) is a talented singer and transgender. After a romantic birthday celebration together the two return home where Orlando is taken ill and dies on the way to hospital. This is naturally a terrible shock for Marina but nothing compared with what is to come in the aftermath of the tragedy. The whole family are clearly threatened by Marina’s sexual identity and the way Orlando has abandoned them. Soon she is under police scrutiny and vilified by all his family who want her out of his home and barred from the funeral tribute.

Daniela Vega gives an impressive central performance venting powerful expression to the full emotional spectrum experienced by the newly bereaved, as well as humiliation over the treatment she receives from his family. Marina is not a particularly likeable character – the strong and convincing support cast even less so – but she expresses dignity and forbearance given the circumstances and the acts of cruelty that follow. This is a watchable and intriguing drama where once again Lelio displays a natural understanding of female characters who are at odds with mainstream society in contemporary Chile. Santiago provides a lush backdrop to the action and the musical choices suffuse the film with a melancholy that permeates through to the final resonating scene. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL ON 1 ST APRIL 2018

Erase and Forget (2017) ****

Dir: Andrea Luka Zimmerman | US Doc | With Ted Kotcheff, Tudor Gates | 88’

Ten years in the making, Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s investigative thriller-style documentary examines the success of the Rambo films in exemplifying the frontier mentality of an America embodied by decades of militarism, gun culture and social unrest, represented here by officer Bo Gritz who claims to be the inspiration for John Rambo. In a recorded interview, Tudor Gates (Barbarella) describes him as “the apotheosis of a US war hero”, and he is one of the most decorated Vietnam vets.

But behind the articulate and indomitable figure of Gritz, now 79, who admits to sleeping with an arsenal of guns and night vision equipment at his side, more sinister themes are at play. Like prisoners who have served time, a whole generation of soldiers are unable to relate to their country or compatriots when they return from state-sanctioned combat. Ted Kotcheff describes this as like introducing a bacillus that then poisons their new environment. So Gritz turned whistleblower when disenchantment set in at covert methods of suppression by the authories and exposes high levels of corruption in the US government, that have turned him into a official outcast, while he continues to support gun-carrying and anti-government conspiracy theories in his stance as action hero for the people.

Gritz claims that his mistress is still the Special Forces, and in some ways it’s not surprising that his Vietnamese wife – brought back from the war – soon ran off with a handyman. Gritz claims to have killed more than 400 people in the military, and has even run for presidential office. This illuminating portrait of a rather broken champion is enriched by extraordinary archive footage. As he states himself: “You take someone who could be a credit to mankind and you turn them into garbage” MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 2 MARCH 2018

Kinoteka 2018 | 7 – 29 March 2018

London hosts KINOTEKA Film Festival for the 16th year running. This year celebrates 100 years of Polish independence with the latest cutting edge cinema and some lesser known archival gems now ripe for rediscovery, along with Q&As, masterclasses and musical entertainment. The festival also offers unique insight into Poland’s rich cultural history through cult classics, biopics, women in cinema and a drama from the liberated Nazi concentration camps. And some distinctly contemporary drama that captures the zeitgeist of Poland in the 21st century such as Rafael Kapelinski’s 2017 scabrously dark drama Butterfly Kisses.

The Opening Night Gala commemorates the life of Krzysztof Krauze and his fruitful partnership with wife/co-director, Joanna Kos-Krauze with a screening of Karlovy Vary Award-winning Birds Are Singing in Kigali, a film exploring the life of two women who escape the genocide in Rwanda. There will also be a another chance to see her 2013 biopic drama Papusza that follows the rise and fall of gypsy-poetess Bronislawa Wajs, widely known as Papusza. And Urszula Antoniak’s award-winning drama Beyond Words.

NEW POLISH CINEMA IS A WOMAN:

This year’s contemporary strand has a particularly focus on female directors. Anna Jadowska’s Wild Roses depicts a mother’s loneliness and struggle to come to terms with her life. Kasia Adamik’s Amok follows the true story of a committed murderer who incriminates himself by writing a novel revealing the killing. There will also be a chance to see the UK premiere of Maria Sadowska’s biopic Sztuka Kochania about the Polish sexologist Michalina Wislocka, who wrote the bestseller The Art of Loving – the first published guide to sexual health from behind the Iron Curtain.

#PL100INDEPENDENCE

This strand offers an opportunity to delve into the archives for some cult classic dramas, comedies and rare Polish silent films. Aleksander Hertz’s Bestia (1917) stars Pola Negri as a wild girl who escapes her parents’ clutches only attract the attentions of a married manJan Nowina-Przbylski’s black and white comedy Love Manoeuvres (1935) sees a couple desperate to get out of an arranged marriage, in a fitting double bill with Juliusz Gardan’s cross-dressing comedy Is Lucyna A Girl? (1934) about a young woman who defies social norms to become an engineer. The celebration will also include an immersive 1920s style ballroom party, featuring special cocktails and a DJ.

CELEBRATING JEWISH-POLISH CINEMA

This year’s festival showcases the rich contribution of Jewish talent in Polish cinema. Kinoteka joins forces with Polish National Center for Jewish Film, to screen a 1937 Yiddish film (Der Purimshpiler) The Jester. The Southern Polish interwar story follows a troubadour who who arrives  in a small village where he upsets the status quo by falling for his new employer’s daughter. Wartime is also the central theme in The Reconciliation, Maciej Sobieszczański’s post-war drama set against the backdrop of the recently liberated Nazi concentration camps that were then used by the Communist party to imprison and eliminate traitors.

Krzysztof Zanussi will be back again this year ‘in conversation’ about one of his earliest films, The Structure of Crystal (1969) (17 March, ICA). Andrzej Klimowski, one of Polish most celebrated graphic designers will be in town for a masterclass aimed at new and emerging filmmakers looking to create poster artwork. He designed this year’s festival poster.

SUPPER CLUB CINEMA

On 23 March, Kinoteka hosts a gourmet evening featuring the delicious cuisine of rising chef Flavia Borawska, accompanied by a film screening of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s classic Double Life of Veronique.

Closing Night Gala – Henryk Szaro’s epic love story The Call of the Sea (1927) has been digitally restored and will play with a specially-commissioned live score performed by a five-piece ensemble led by pianist and composer Taz Modi, at the Barbican.

FESTIVAL GUESTS 

Jakub Gierszał (TBC)

The leading man in three films in this years’ New Polish Cinema segment. In 2012, he won the EFP Shooting Star prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and since then has worked steadily in both Poland and abroad.

Joanna Kos-Krauze

With only four director and writer’s credits in her dossier, Kos-Krauze is already one of the most talked about Polish filmmakers working today. She tells truthful stories about times gone by and people who made a small but culturally significant impact. Kos-Krauze will introduce Papusza (2013) and take part in a Q&A following a screening of My Nikifor (2004) at BFI Southbank on Thursday 8 March.

Maria Sadowska

Director, writer and actress, Sadowska is a triple threat in the industry today. Her latest film, The Art of Loving will be screened at Regent Street Cinema on 11th March. The Story of Michalina Wisłocka (2017) was nominated for a Golden Frog and Golden Lion at the Camerimage and Polish Film Festivals respectively.

Krzysztof Zanussi

Director, writer and Polish film legend, Krzysztof Zanussi has been making films since he was nineteen years-old and now at seventy-eight he’s showing no signs of stopping. The director has eighty-one credits to his name so far, including Ether which he’s currently filming.

KINOTEKA 2018 | 7 -29 MARCH 2018

The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) * * * *

Dir.: Tarik Saleh; Cast: Fares Fares, Maher Kamal, Mari Malek, Ahmd Selim, Hania Amar; Sweden/Denmark/France/Germany 2017, 106 min.

Pre-revolution 2011 and Egypt is a place of corruption, greed and violence – or so Tarik Saleh would have us believe in his bleak neo-noir  that unfurls in Cairo’s shady world of police and state security. In actual fact, Saleh and DoP Pierre Aim transferred the shoot to Casablanca after the Egyptian authorities closed the film down.

In January 2011, Captain Noredin (Fares) is used by his corrupt Cairo Police Chief uncle Kamal (Maher), to cover up a murder in the Nile Hilton, where a young singer had her throat slit. Noredin takes bribes and stores the money in his fridge, but he still has a conscience when it comes to people, and manages to unearth a witness in the shape of Sudanese refugee Salwa (Malek), a maid in the hotel. Noredin is desperate to solve the case, even if it means disobeying his uncle and confronting the prime suspect, property developer Shafiq (Selim), who is also a member of parliament and friend of the president. It turns out that Lalena worked as a singer/call girl for Nagy, an enigmatic Moroccan. When Naredin meets and sleeps with Gina (Amar) who also works for Nagy, and sends the incriminating photos of her clients to state security, Noredin sets up a stream of violent events which culminate with the initial demonstrations that would eventually go on to topple president Mubarak.

Fares’ Noredin is the archetypal noir hero who has given up on life after losing his wife in a car crash. Somehow, the death of another innocent woman (Lalena) reminds him of his duties as a policeman and unleashes memories of his love. He starts a one-man crusade against a system which has degenerated into an evil empire. Saleh shows the exploitation and mistreatment of foreigners like Salwa, whose lives don’t count for much in the local scheme of things. Whilst the upper classes live in Switzerland, ordinary people often lack the basics. Egyptian society is on the brink of revolt, with police and security forces shooting down unarmed demonstrators without a by your leave. This is not a new story, but one that’s well told: the atmosphere alone keeps you in its thrall. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 2 MARCH 2018 NATIONWIDE

Cinema Made in Italy Festival 7 -11 March 2018

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY returns to London’s Ciné Lumière, showcasing the latest releases from Italy complete with film-maker Q&A sessions. This year’s line-up includes eight new Italian films and a 1977 classic title A SPECIAL DAY (Una Giornata Particolare), directed by the late maestro Ettore Scola and starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

SCREENING PROGRAMME – CINEMA MADE IN ITALY 2018

RAINBOW – (UNA QUESTIONE PRIVATA)  6.30 pm  | 7 March           

Intro and Q&A with Paolo Taviani (director)

AMORI CHE NON SANNO STARE AL MONDO | 6.15 pm | 8 March

Intro and Q&A with Francesca Comencini (director)

HANNAH | 6.30 pm  | 9 March 

Intro and Q&A with Andrea Pallaoro (director)

LOVE AND BULLETS | 8.40 pm  | 9 March 

Intro and Q&A with Antonio and Marco Manetti (directors)

THE INTRUDER | 6.30 pm  | 10 March               

FORTUNATA | 8.40 pm | 10 March 

 

Intro and Q&A with Jasmine Trinca (actress)

A SPECIAL DAY | 2.00 pm | 11 March 

CINDERELLA THE CAT | 4.00 pm | 11 March         

Intro and Q&A with Alessandro Rak (director)

UNA FAMIGLIA | 6.30 pm  | 11 March 

Intro and Q&A with Sebastiano Riso (director)

VENUE AND BOX OFFICE INFORMATION

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | LONDON 7-11 MARCH 2018 

 

 

 

Touch Me Not (2018) Berlinale 2018 | Winner Golden Bear

Dir.: Adina Pintilie; Cast: Laura Benson, Tomas Lemarquis, Christian Bayerlein, Grit Uhlemann, Adina Pintilie, Hanna Hoffman, Seani Love, Irmena Chichikova; Romania/Germany/France/Bulgaria/Czech Republic, 2018, 123 min.

Written, directed and edited by first time feature filmmaker Adina Pintilie, this surprise winner of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival has split critics and audiences alike. The key to the mis/understanding of this fictional sex-based documentary may lie in Pintilie’s own background. At 38, she is the director of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF). Her award-winning short films fall into the category of “Fine Art” documentaries.

In this unique film the focus is Laura Benson and her exploration, through sexual therapy, of her deep-held anger and frustration. Pintilie does away with the fourth wall, participating both behind and in front of camera. The colour white dominates giving the feature a documentary feel, only disrupted by the soundtrack which destroys the illusion of realism, although the naturalistic performances make us feel like voyeurs in a candid and highly intimate sexual interaction. This is an uncomfortable film to watch. Many may find the degree of physical and emotional oversharing deeply off-putting, 

Laura visits a tattooed male prostitute who undresses for her and later masturbates. Laura looks on in barely disguised lust, and later smells his sperm in the bed. Then Laura meets Hanna Hoffman, a transsexual prostitute who also doubles up as Sex-Therapist. Hanna playfully romps on the bed, talking about her breasts who are named Lilo and Gusti, the former being the more sensitive one. She also fondles her penis through a pair of Y-fronts. Hanna is also involved in music and appreciates Brahms, like Laura’s hospitalised father. In a clinic two mwn who feel let down by their bodies: Christian Bayerlain, who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and is visited by Tudor (Lemarquis), who has been completely hairless since the age of 13, due to Alopecia Universalis. Tudor (if I had a choice, I would choose not to have hair, because it’s just another form of disguise”) is still in love with his ex-girl-friend (Chichikova), whom he sometimes stalks at night.

Ironically, Christian’s penis is one of the parts of his body which functions perfectly, and he is keen on sex, because before it makes him feel more than just “a brain, floating around with no body”. After meeting an other sex-therapist (Love), who brings out in predilection for strong physical interactions, suddenly asks the director to change places with her. Pintilie acquiesces, admitting “that this a tough place to be in. I feel lots of fear, of being looked at, judged. When you screamed with anger, I knew the feeling very well.” To which Laura answers “Did I scream for you?”.

The only criticism here is a rather superfluous scene in a sex club where some of the participants meet. Otherwise Pintilie stays the course in this permanently questioning roleplay of transference and projection: like an orthodox Freudian, she claims sex to be the the centre of our lives. Sex being influenced by our hopes and denials –  foremost, of our past, parental and otherwise. There is no escape, and Pintilie is brave enough to join the fray in a film that teeters of the brink of but never oversteps the mark. Where the demarcation lines of documentary and fiction are, is never revealed. But the director, with the help of DoP George Chiper-Lillemark – who punctiliously clinical images give the impression of ongoing scientific research in some futuristic laboratory – succeeds in bringing in bringing Laura’s odyssey to a successful, surprising and moving conclusion. AS

BERLINALE GOLDEN BEAR WINNER 2018 | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2018

Generation Wealth (2018) **** Berlinale 2018

Dir.: Lauren Greenfield; Documentary; USA 2018, 106 min.

Filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield (Queen of Versailles, 2012) has put her whole working life of 25 years into this mammoth project, which is accompanied by a book and an exhibition – just to make the point. But it is not only the wealthy who are the objects of her research: Greenfield freely admits to something a woman in her documentary Thin(2006) pointed out to her: Your addiction is work.

The quote from Thin is not the only revisiting Greenfield does: the high-octane-living teens of FastForward fame are also back to report about their life thereafter. These new additions fall mostly into the category of ‘obsession’. Self-obsession usually involves finding an outlet in which to prove yourself: hedge fund manager Suzanne is not only status obsessed, but after having nearly missed the boat in having children, her latest obsession is to have a child – whatever it takes.

Kacey Jordan, an adult film star famous for her relationship with Charlie Sheen is repentant – but not before filming her own suicide attempt. Florian Homm, a hedge-fund manager who once had 600 M Euros to his name, fell foul of the US regulatory system and cannot now leave his native Germany, after having been imprisoned in Italy. He calls Germany “a prison”, but is truly proud of the fact that he bought his teenage son a prostitute in Amsterdam, “to make a man out of him”. His son watches on with his current girl friend, blushing. But there are also examples of redemption such as when Iceland’s economy boomed, a young fisherman suddenly found himself behind a desk in a bank. After the bust, he is back proudly fishing with his son, happy to have escaped the big time.

The pusuit of beauty has always been a major topic for the director (Beauty CULTure, 2011), and it is frightening to see the young Kardashians in their early teen years. But even more harrowing is Eden wood, ‘trained’ by her lower-middleclass Mom from Arkansas to win and compete in “Toddlers and Tiaras”, wishing for nothing more than a whole room full of money. Six years later, Eden has somehow managed to morph into a cheaper model of the Kardashians. Finally Cathy Gant, has spent all he money on beauty treatments in Brazil whilst neglecting her daughter, who now suffers from body dysmorphia with terrible results.

The lost American dream – lost to a mixture of capitalism, narcissism and greed is there for all to see. Nobody looks at the Jones’ next door any more, but at the Kardashians on TV. “In my work, I often look at the extremes to understand the mainstream”, says Greenfield. Perhaps she should have added “at myself”. Her interviews with her sons Noah Gabriel are as heart-breaking as her professional portraits. Cool teenager Noah puts it simple but devastatingly: “I got used to growing up without you around. The damage has been done”.

The hyper-saturated colours and absurdist wide angle-effects give the documentary a carnival-like atmosphere: this is a bonfire, not only of vanities, but also the last roll of the dice of a global civilisation (China and Russia having successfully joined the club), hell bent on destroying itself. Just asthe pyramids with all their splendour were the last gasp of the Egyptian pharoahs; in the make-believe world of TV, everyone is measuring themselves against each other with tragic consequences: the death of family, traditions and even human emotions. Unlike Egypt, this will not be the end of one civilisation, today’s humans are determined to take the whole planet down with them. AS

NATIONWIDE FROM 20 July 2018

The Happy Prince (2018) *** Berlinale 2018

Dir: Rupert Everett | Cast: Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Emily Watson

Rupert Everett has made no secret of his appreciation for the British playwright Oscar Wilde having played him in various film and stage adaptations with The Happy Prince being the latest. His debut as director and writer draws comparisons with the theatre outing The Judas Kiss where the focus is Wilde’s controversial relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas – better known as Bosie – a crime that led to several years in a hard larbour camp for which the writer received a posthumous pardon last year.

Taking its title from Wilde’s fairy tale parable about the friendship between a statue and a swallow finding the Kingdom of Heaven after sacrificing their worldly treasures – Wilde is pictured in the opening scene reading this bedtime story to his children in flashback, and at the end, to his protégées, a pair of French urchins (Benjamin Voisin and Matteo Salamone).

In between Everett avoids a straightforward narrative opting for an impressionistic hagiographic hotpotch of visually alluring vignettes that follow Everett’s Wilde as the self-indulgent raconteur of his own decadent final years as a raddled Victorian roué in exile roaming the flesh pots of France and Italy on a flight of fancy, courtesy of a generous allowance from his estranged and undeservedly berated wife Constance (Emily Watson). During this interlude, Wilde emerges as a bloated narcissistic lush mourning his unfinished love affair with the rather fey Bosie (Colin Morgan), while dallying with the more reasonable Robbie Ross, his literary agent. He eventually reunites with Bosie in scenes that suggest their affair is fired as much by lust as by mutual understanding. Everett makes the decision to flip from French to English accentuating the rather pretentious tone of the piece and detracting from the moments of coruscating wit that pepper Wilde’s caustic repartee.

Although the result is an ethereal feast for the eyes this is a film far too floaty and dramatically unsubstantial to sustain the attention for its 103 minutes, despite some sterling underpinnings from Everett himself, Colin Firth as Wilde’s old habitué Reggie Turner and a thoughtful but underwritten Emily Watson. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 18 June 2018 | Berlinale 2018 review

The Touch (1971) * * * | Ingmar Bergman Retrospective 2018

Dir.: Ingmar Bergman; Cast: Bibi Andersson, Elliot Gould, Max von Sydow, Sheila Reid; Sweden/USA 1971, 115′.

Sometimes, a ‘neglected’ feature is in fact no masterpiece, even if directed by a genius like Ingmar Bergman: THE TOUCH, the director’s first English language film has not aged well, and suffers from an unevenness which is a-typical for the filmmaker. But despite its flaws this tale about a three year long ménageà-trois, featuring a bourgeois Swedish couple from a provincial town, and an enigmatic, slightly disturbed Jewish archaeologist, caught the headlines nearly fifty years ago.

Karin (Andersson) and her husband Andreas (von Sydow), a doctor in the local hospital, live with their two children and a cute dog named Bobby in a clean and modernist style house outside the town’s medieval walls. Karin is house-proud and obsessed with running the household, often to the point of caricature. Andreas is a workaholic, who is as self-contained and detached as the house and as clean as his operating theatre. He loves his wife but their relationship is traditional  – he is the breadwinner, she the hausfrau who looks after their well-behaved children, all fitting in with his working hours. In this perfectly orderly set-up comes David Kovac (Gould), an English-speaking archaeologist, who is working at a site in the town. He falls in love with Karin, who meets him for the first time, in floods of tears, after the death of her mother. For Karin this is an exciting escapade rather than a passionate sexual adventure. Their sexual relationship is procedural rather than lustful at first, and the relationship is anything but smooth: the self-obsessed David (who tried to commit suicide just before meeting Karin), is moody as well as (self)destructive, and Karin has the direct, ingenuous approach of the true ingenue. Karin seems fascinated by him, because he is the total opposite of her husband, needy and out of control. He becomes another child, awakening in her feelings of motherhood, and in the end, she is pregnant, and follows David to England, where she meets his sister Sara (Reid), who suffers from a muscular disease, and is totally dependent on her brother. Perhaps, Karin can see her own position reflected in Sara, because she finally comes to a decision.

THE TOUCH suffers from Gould’s overplaying his part, whilst Andersson and von Sydow are just perfect. The constant chance from Swedish to English feels unnatural. But it is mainly Bergman’s script, which is also much too overwrought and verbose, undermining the emotional credibility of the narrative. We are never really convinced that a rational and unemotional woman like Karin, could fall for a man-child like David and tolerate his moods for such a long time. She might see in the younger man a son, she never had – but again we cannot believe, that she would fall so completely apart like she does. The few scenes with Sara seem like an appendix, somehow one expects her to contribute more to shed light on her brother’s simply too enigmatic personality. It is perhaps also the timing, that explains that THE TOUCH is so overlooked – it was followed by two Bergman masterpieces: Cries and Whispers and Scenes from a Marriage. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI INGMAR BERMAN RETROSPECTIVE JANUARY – MARCH 2018 when it will simultaneously be available on BFI Player, The Touch will be released on DVD/Blu-ray by the BFI on 23 April. This will be the first time that it has ever been released on DVD anywhere in the world. For more information on all the BFI’s Ingmar Bergman activity see here.

 

The Ice King (2018)* * * *

Dir.: James Erskine; Documentary with John Curry, Heinz Wirz, Christa Fassi, Robin Cousins; UK 2017, 88’.

James Erskine’s documentary of the life of British ice-skater John Curry (1949-1994) is told as a classical Greek tragedy – which in many was it really was. Over one thousand letters by Currie and many witnesses tell a story of sporting triumph and a lonely private life leading to premature death due to complications of HIV and Aids.

Born in Birmingham, John suffered from an abusive father who forbade him ballet lessons, and continuously told him “something is wrong with you”. Luckily, John was allowed to take ice skating lessons, since this counted as a sporting activity. John’s father committed suicide when his son was fifteen. Soon John’s talent required him to leave Great Britain, to train in the USA with Carlo and Christa Fassi, a wealthy patron sponsoring his move. The British Ice-skating authorities ware not very helpful, they reminded Curry “not to skate so graceful”. Whilst male ice skating had for a long time been a mixture of running fast and jumping high, Curry innovated the sport by incorporating ballet moves in his free skate programme, a fore-runner of the Torvil/Dean partnership. In 1976 Curry won the European and World Championship and the highlight of his career, the Olympic Gold Medal in Innsbruck. He outed himself as gay shortly afterwards, and retired from the sport, to found his own Skating Company, performing in a West End Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall in 1984. World renown choreographers like Kenneth McMillan were instrumental in Curry’s success. “Scheherazade” (1980), was a great success, but “MoonSkate”, performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1984, was certainly the artistic highpoint of his latter career. Financially, not everything worked out, and Curry also became known to be a difficult director of his shows, particularly with female members of the cast. In 1987 he contracted HIV, and four years later Aids. Before living the final years of his life with his mother, his swansong on ice was a all male show of “The Blue Danube” to the music of Johann Strauss II.

Whilst his professional peers from the amateur days speak highly of Curry, such as Christa Fassi (“He was never a problem, we became friends”) and Robin Cousins (“He revolutionised the sport”). The ice-skater Heinz Wirz, who had an relationship early on with Currie, but stayed a friend and pen partner for the rest of the latters life, tells of Curry’s loneliness. It seems, that he wanted the perfect relationship, like the perfect skating troupe – and neither materialised. He also showed signs of bi-polar, certainly related to his deeply unhappy childhood. Erskine too often oversteps the borders of objectivity and delivers an hagiographic approach, which sits uneasily with the audience, since Curry was certainly not only the victim of others, but was unable to come to terms with the human fragilities of others, expecting always perfection on all levels. THE ICE KING is a moving document of the man who changed ice-skating for the better, and whose Ice Shows were a spectacular delight.AS

SHOWING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE FROM 23 FEBRUARY 2018

https://youtu.be/gEOUyzi6zeE

 

Black 47 * (2018) Berlinale 2018

Dir: Lance Daly | Cast: Hugo Weaving, James Frecheville, Stephen Rea, Barry Keoghan, Freddie Fox | Ireland | Drama

Lance Daly’s dreary historical revenge drama revisits the peak of Ireland’s potato famine (1847) from the perspective of a raw and wretched Irish ranger who has served the British Army abroad. The malcontent has a particular axe to grind in this story, and his weapon of choice is a vicious shortened sabre that slices through anyone who gets in his way when his plans to escape the rain-soaked Emerald Isle for pastures new in America are scuppered.

Martin Feeney (a deeply sinister looking Frecheville), has deserted the Imperial army and finds his way back to Ireland to find his family has been largely wiped out and his brother hanged by the local English judge. His neighbours are now outcasts in their own country and Feeney launches a bitter vendetta, clearly posing a a threat to the powers that be. So along comes Captain Hannah (Hugo Weaving) who is tasked by the English, against his will, to track Feeney down.

If Daly’s plan was to worsen British Irish relations further by drudging up a miserable period of the nation’s past, at least he could have made a better more well-balanced job of it than this rather predictable, one-sided and cliche-ridden piece of cinema. The Great Famine was clearly a complete nightmare for both sides. Ireland had become part of the United Kingdom in 1801 but sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics causing religious wars during the 17th century had been made worse by the country’s prevailing economic problems in the 19th century and a general fall in global food prices, and Britain’s change to free trade in the 1840s only really benefited the industrialised North where Protestants predominated. The South relied on agriculture and was badly affected by the Famine which was exacerbated by poor weather. So torrential rain, religious differences and the well-known Colonial arrogance of the era, coalesced to create an unmitigated human disaster. It’s only reasonable that a decent tribute should be made but BLACK 47 was no the way to do it. It shows how Irish families were dying, while the English overlords were mercilessly exporting the little grain that was produced, and to make matters even worse, new eviction laws wreaked havoc among the poverty-stricken population producing the equivalent wide-scale homelessness and mortality seen – on a much larger scale – during Stalin’s policy of collectivism.

In this rather clumsy affair, the English are naturally painted as baddies, the cast are forced to be caricatures of pompous prigs, with the most unspeakably racist dialogue to deliver, which they do with aplomb, but flounder with the native Gaelic. There is the Boris Johnson-quiffed officer Pope (Freddie Fox) and his subaltern (Barry Keoghan from The Killing of a Sacred Deer) ). Even Jim Broadbent plays against his normal liberal type as the sneering snob Lord Kilmichael. Irishman Stephen Rea kisses the proverbial Blarney Stone as a wandering troubadour Conneely, who offers to help the English with his ‘lore of the land’. From the get-go  you wouldn’t trust him to post a letter, and he’s perfect in the part giving a peerless performance as a sly and slippery savant, flight of foot and mind.

And what a gift this story could have been if more equitable hands had mined the rich vein of dramatic potential in this land of misty seascapes, rich folklore and canny characters smouldering in wait for the British army. Instead we get a one-sided and schematic narrative with the English painted as unremitting rogues and a support cast of zombie-like faceless Irish freaks drifting around in bleached-out set pieces. Each scene is as predictable and the last. The only part with any real nuance, aside from Stephen Rea’s, is Hugo Weaving’s Hannah. There is breadth to his character and he plays the dark horse ’til the final hurdle. But what a travesty the rest of it is. Clearly Black 47 is intended as a flag-waving crowd-pleaser for the Irish, but it is a lazy, feel-bad movie for British audiences, opening old wounds and striking another blow for diplomacy, offering little hope for reconciliation over events that happened in the dim and  distant past. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2018

Native (2017) * * *

Dir.: Daniel Fitzsimmons; Cast: Rupert Graves, Ellie Kendrick, Leanne Best. Joe Macaulay; UK 2016, 88 min.

Daniel Fitzsimmons’ low budget, minimalist Sci-Fi debut is not so much a futuristic undertaking, more a here-and-now psychological drama better suited to the stage than the big screen.

Cane (Graves) and Eva (Kendrick) are travelling in a hexagonal space ship to an unknown planet, tasked with killing off the local civilisation with a larva-like virus, stored in their craft. Cane and Eva have a strong telepathic relationship with their respective partners back on Earth, and when Cane’s wife Awan (Best) dies together with four of their unborn children, Cane is gripped by grief, losing all interest in the mission. Meanwhile Eva’s husband (Macaulay) communicates intensely with his wife, keeping an eye on the erratic Cane, more or less suggesting that Eva should terminate him. After a failed suicide attempt, Cane removes the inplant in his neck, freeing himself from his Earth-based controlling authority “The Hive”. After landing on the planet – there are no prizes for guessing which one – Eva kills a female of the species, but starts to become unfocused in her eradication task.  She has to make a decision between the orders of the Hive, and her newly found consciousness.

Set nearly all the time in the cramped spaceship, NATIVE is overly verbose whilst also tying to be enigmatic,  telegraphing the few twists available. Graves and Kendrick do their best to breathe life into the proceedings, but cannot deal with the limpness of it all: too much time is taken up with Eva gyrating like a lap dancer, and Cane walking around endlessly, like a stroppy teenager. DoPs Nick Gillespie and Billy J. Jackson introduce some magical effects with light and forms, but they can’t hide an overriding visual emptiness. NATIVE is a well-meaning nonentity. AS

NATIVE ARRIVES ON SCREENS IN FEBRUARY 2018

Entebbe * * (2018) Berlinale 2018

Dir: Jose Padiha | Writer: Gregory Burke | Cast: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Bruhl, Eddie Marsan | Thriller | 107′

7 Days in Entebbe (July 1976) felt more like 2 weeks in this hard slog of a thriller that cruises rather than soars, never mustering any real suspense. Despite some terrific performances from its stellar cast – and particularly Eddie Marsan for the best Hebrew accent this site of the Mediterranean – the direction is sluggish with most of the film’s running time spent on debate between hijackers and planning on part of bewigged and besuited politicians. Daniel Bruhl is bland as the ideological head of the German Revolutionary Cells that was purportedly one of the nation’s most dangerous leftist terrorists groups. Rosamund Pike does her best with a rather frosty role as his accomplice. Most of the time she looks frightened to death.

Any hostage tragedy offers rich dramatic potential, yet this feels like a detached procedural that fails to excite or entertain. There’s a terrific turn from Nonso Anozie as bumptiously sinister dictator Idi Amin. And the vaguely related dance routine that headlines the start and finale of the film is a welcome idea that gives a kick up the backside to this otherwise lacklustre affair. MT

BERLINALE 2018 | 15 -25 FEBRUARY 2018

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 latest feature, is a silent documentary entitled LONDON SYMPHONY (2017). www.alexbarrett.net.

RICHARD CHATTEN

Richard Chatten has written for Film Dope, The Independent, the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, The Encyclopedia of British Film, The Journal of Popular British Cinema and Cinema: The Whole Story. His favourite film is A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

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 

 

Isle of Dogs * * * * (2018) Berlinale 2018

Dir: Wes Anderson | Jason Schwartzman | With: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton | Comedy Animation | US

Twenty years into the future in an isle in the Japanese archipelago five dogs are relegated to the scrap heap quite literally – a landfill site is no place for man’s best friend. In this richly rendered riotously rhythmic animation, Wes Anderson’s social satire says: man may be master of the Universe but behind every good man is his dog. And every dog here certainly has its day.

ISLE OF DOGS is undeniably a Wes Anderson masterpiece, the finely groomed stop-motion animation chockfull of current day themes such as fake news and Asian ‘flu. The canines are canny and convincing each with its own cute character; in an entirely fitting celebration for the Chinese Year of the Dog. Scenes of sushi preparation, human kidney transplant and Dog flu serum injection are delightfully impressive, all set to Alexandre Desplat’s tick-tocking score.

With its screenplay by Anderson co-scripting with Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartman and Kunuchi Nomura, ISLE OF DOGS’ densely complex narrative beguiles and bamboozles, imagining a day when a dose of Dog Flu dispatches our furry friends to fend for themselves offshore, whereupon the mayor’s 12 year-old adopted son Atari, flies in to retrieve his beloved white guard-dog, Spots (voiced by Liev Schreiber). Delicate artwork raises a paw to Japanese masters Hagusai and Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki’s glowing Anime.

Naturally, dogs are pack animals led here by Edward Norton as Rex, with the runty Duke voiced by Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban is King; Bill Murray, Boss – and Scarlett Johansson the flirty blonde show-bitch Nutmeg. Tilda Swinton plays the TV-watching, Oracle with Harvey Keitel as Gondo. Brian Cranston’s Chief bings up the rear as the black stray who won’t obey. Meanwhile, Greta Gerwig plays a perky student protester, decrying the powers that be on the Japanese mainland.

There is never a dull moment in this often barking mad delight, all bristling with whip-smart wit and deadpan humour that Wes does so well. MT

 BERLINALE FESTIVAL 15-25 February 2018 | SILVER BEAR | BEST DIRECTOR

Museum (20180 | Berlinale Film Festival 2018

Dir: Alonso Ruizpalacios Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Leonardo Ortizgris, Alfredo Castro, Simon Russell Beale, Lisa Owen, Bernardo

 In Alonso Ruizpalacios’ follow-up to his punchy debut Gueros, two wayward young Mexicans from Satellite City are bored with their provincial life so decide to rob the local archeological museum of its Mayan and After treasures in an offbeat but strangely captivating drama that gradually gets more entertaining, although it never quite feels completely satisfying, despite some stunningly inventive sequences and three convincing performances from Gael Garcia Bernal, Simon Russell Beale and Alfredo Castro (The Club).

And it’s largely down to local Mexican incompetence that these two amateurish dudes (Bernal/Ortizgris) get away with their heist in the first place. But what starts as a so-so domestic drama with the same aesthetic as No!, slowly starts to sizzle with suspense as the director deftly manages the film’s tonal shifts to surprise and even delight us – this is a film that deserves a watch for its sheer wakiness and inventive chutzpah. 

It all starts in the early 1970s when Mexico’s rich heritage is being transported from original sites to provide interest in a brand new modernist museum in Satellite. During the Christmas holidays the two sneak away from their families and – in a terrifically tense robbery scene – slowly steal their plunder and make off through ventilation ducts when the alarm finally kick in. One of surreal effects is that Bernal imagines a vision of Pakal, a Mayan king, at the end of the tunnel.

Amazed at how easy it all was, the naive pair then set off to the Mayan site of Palenque to start liquidating funds through their various sources. On the way, they even get through border patrols who are more interested in Bernal’s celebrity (this is all part of Ruizpalacios and his his scripter’s quirky script). But their first hopeful Bosco (Bernardo Velasco), gives them the bum’s rush and they swiftly move on. Acapulco beckons and Simon Russell Beale’s vignette as a wealthy dealer is one of the scenes to savour, adding a certain upmarket whiff to proceedings, and the boys gets their knuckles rapped for wasting his time, retreating to a sleazy  nightclub and more playful fun – thing time involving Sherezada Rios (Leticia Bredice/The Difficult Life of an Easy Woman. 

Bernal plays it all with gusto in a role that sees him flipping from sweet-talking swindler to foolhardy fantasist when he switches off the headlights of their fast-moving car.

Quoting American shaman Carlos Castaneda, he indulges in some very Mexican fantasies about death, invincibility and warriorhood – then stupidly acts them out by switching off his headlights on a pitch-black highway. But reality finally bites in the satisfying denouement when he crashes down to earth with a clip round the ear from his father (a grave Alfredo Castro) forcing him to face his demons, and not only the ones he has stolen. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2018 

The Absence of Love | Antonioni Retrospective 2019

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only when they act in solidarity with their fellow man do they have a chance to become part of something meaningful.

GENTE DEL PO (1943-47), shot not far from where Visconti was filming Ossessione, this is a short documentary, but in spite of its neo-realistic moorings, it is at the same time a personal statement: an effort to comprehend the world via the moving image. Not the other way round. Antonioni’s realism does not attempt to show anything natural, humane, dramatic, and particularly not anything like an idea, a thesis. Just memory forms the model for his art. Memory as images like photos, paintings, writing – they form the basis of his later work – an adventure, where the audience peels off the many layers, like off an onion: a painting, more than once painted over.

On the face of it Antonioni’s debut feature, Chronaca Du Un Amore (1950) is a film noir, like Visconti’s first opus Ossessione. The dominant feelings that would run through all his films are already in place – emotional neglect, alienation, existential angst and loneliness. Set in the director’s birthplace of Ferrara the drama follows ex-lovers Paola and Guido and their desire to do away with Paola’s rich husband Enrico Fontana. This is no crime of passion, because Paola and Guido are unable to make it as a couple  – but what they can do is profit from Fontana’s death. Life in the city is a reflection of the conspirators state of mind. Their neuroses is felt in the chaotic streets and the frenetic buzz of the cafes. The surreal urban jungle is a one of the main themes of Antonioni’s opus. And he observes his main protagonists when they area lone and in the dramatic scenes, creating an elliptical structure with these two dynamics points: action and echo. As Wenders said: “The strength of American Cinema is a forward focus, European cinema paints ellipses”.

I VINTI (1952) is set in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK), exploring the lives of three young criminals who steal not out of material necessity, but just for fun. But their crimes are and the involvement of the Police is just a backdrop to Antonioni’s main focus: his protagonists’ daily lives. As the crimes recede more and more into the background, the investigations peter out – shades of L’ Avventura and Blow Up.

In LE AMICHE (1955) Antonioni finds the structure for his features, seemingly overpopulated with couples and friends – who are all busy, but play a secondary role to their environment, in this case Turin. Clelia has come to open a designer shop and soon meets up with four other young women, all much wealthier than she is. Their changing couplings with men end tragically. Set between Clelia’s arrival in Turin and her leaving for Rome, LE AMICHE is a kaleidoscope of human frailty, in which the audience is waiting for something to happen, some sort of boy meets girl story, but when something really happens, it takes second place to the main thrust of the narrative and we become as disorientated as the characters themselves. Antonioni does not tell a story with a beginning and an end, he informs us, that the world can exist without stories. Because there is so much more to see in the city of Turin, as there will be in Rome: Clelia is only the messenger, sent out by Antonioni to be a traveller, not a story teller. She is his archetypal heroine.

Aldo, the central protagonist in IL GRIDO (1956/7) is the most untypical of all Antonioni heroes: he has been expelled from paradise, after his wife has left him. Refusing to really let himself go he sticks to his environment, travelling with his daughter in the Po Valley. Leaving his home town and looking back over a life dominated by the factory chimney, it is his past history which has forced him to leave. He becomes more and more marginalised: an outsider. And even when living near the river in a derelict hut, he becomes a victim of the environment – the same landscape, seasons and time he spent there. El Grido ends tragically, because Aldo (unlike most other Antonioni heroes) insists on keeping to his past: he does not want to cross the bridges which are metaphorically there to be crossed. And Aldo’s titular outcry becomes a good-bye, even though he is back home. Il Grido is also Antonioni’s return to neo-realism, another contradiction, because he was never really part of it.

L’AVVENTURA (1960) has four main protagonists, three of are human, but are dwarfed by the third – Liscia Bianca, a rocky island in the Mediterranean See. A group of wealthy Italians visit the island but when they want to lead they discover that one of their Anna is missing. Her boyfriend Sandro starts to look around , but soon becomes more interested in Claudia, Anna’s best friend. When they all leave, without having found Anna, Claudia and Sandro are ready to start a new life together. Antonioni is often compared with Brecht. In common with the German playwright, the characters he refuses to dramatise the narrative. Brecht’s actors do not identify with their roles and the audience is not drawn into the play, but left outside to observe. The same goes for Antonioni. Antonioni’s skill is that he first introduces time scale and environment, before developing the narrative, via the actions and words of the protagonists. The island’s waves provide the feature’s ambient score. The fragility of the emotions comes out in the way the protagonists talk –  but mostly they are at cross-purposes. The overall impression is not that of a modern film with sound, but of a very sad silent movie. At Cannes in 1960, the feature was mercilessly jeered at the premiere, but won the Grand Prix nevertheless – a rare case of the jury being ahead of the public.

In LA NOTTE (1960) allows us to share a day in the company of the writer Giovanni and his wife Lydia. When their friend dies in a hospital, they realise that their own love for each other has also been dead for quite a while. Antonioni uses his characters like figures on a chess board. They are real, but at the same time cyphers. He does not tell their story, but follows their movements from one place to an another. There is no interconnection between them and their environment. They have lost all feeling for themselves, others and the outside world. Their world is cold and threatening. Antonioni offers no irony or pity. He is the surgeon at the operating table, and his view is that of the camera: mostly skewed over-head shots. It is impossible to love La Notte. Whilst Antonioni was the first director of the modern era, he is also its most vicious critic.

When L’ECLISSE (1962) starts in the morning, it feels somehow like a continuation of La Notte. Before Vittoria (Vitti) ends her relationship with Francisco, she arranges a new Stilleben behind an empty picture frame. Next stop is Piero (Delon), a stockbroker. Vittoria is like Wenders’ Alice in the City: a child in a world of grown-ups, repelled by their emotional coldness. Piero, very much a child of this world, is all glib superficiality, his friend’s remark “long live the façade” sums it all up. The lengthy panorama shots show very little empathy with the eternal city, the more silent ones seem to convey a ghost town populated by worker ants, dwarfed by huge buildings. The music only sets in after the half way point of the film. The couple’s last rendezvous is symbolic for everything Antonioni ever wanted to show us: none of the two shows up, we watch the space where they were supposed to meet for several minutes. L’Eclisse will lead without much transition to Deserto Rosso, where Monica Vitti is Guiliana, wandering the streets, getting lost in a fog on a very unlovable planet.

DESERTO ROSSO (1963/4)

Guiliana: “I dreamt, I was laying in my bed, and the bed was moving. And when I looked, I saw that I was sinking in quicksand”. Guiliana’s world is threatening, everything is out of scale, the buildings in a nearby industrial estate are unbelievably tall. The machines in the factories, the steel island in the sea, and the silhouettes of the people around her are all closing in. We travel with her from this industrial quarter of Ravenna to Ferrara. She is never still, and by the end she is in front of a factory gate. In Deserto Rosso objects become blurred, they seem to be alive, making their way independently. The camera never leaves Guiliana during her nightmare, and we experience the world through Guiliana’s eyes: “It is, as if I had tears in my eyes”. 

In her son’s bedroom she sees his toy robot, the eyes alight. She switches it off – but this is the only action she is allowed to master successfully. There is always fog between her and everybody else, even her lover Corrado is “on the other side”.  Roland Barthes called Antonioni “the artist of the body, the opposite of others, who are the priests of art”. For once, Antonioni is at one with the body of his protagonist: Guiliana’s body is not like the many others, she will never get lost.

BLOW UP (1966)

A film to be seen only see once – and never again, in case you suffer the same fate as Thomas’ photos: Blow Up. Antonioni to Moravia: “All my films before this are works of intuition, this one is a work of the head.” Everything is calculated, the incidents are planned, the story is driven by an elaborate design. The drama, which is anything but, is a drama, perfectly executed. Herbie Hancock, the Yardbirds, the beat clubs, the marihuana parties, Big Ben and the sports car with radiophone, the Arabs and the nuns, the beatniks on the streets: everything is like swinging London in the Sixties: a head idea. Blow Up is Antonioni’s most successful feature at the box office – but not one of his best.

ZABRISKIE POINT (1969/70)

Given Cart Blanche by MGM, Antonioni produced a feature in praise of American Cinema. Zabriskie Point sees the birth of American Cinema from Death Valley. Antonioni has to repeat this dream for himself. But he had to invent his own Mount Rushmore, his Monument Valley, to make a film about the country in his own image. A car and a plane meet in the desert. The woman driver and the pilot recognise each other immediately. The copulation scene in the sand is a metaphor for the simultaneousness of the act, when longing and fulfilment, greed and satisfaction are superimposed. Then the unbelievable total destruction: the end of civilisation; Antonioni synchronises both events, a miracle of topography and choreography. This is Antonioni’s dream: the birth of a poem.

The TV feature MISTERO Di OBERWLAD (1979) and  IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA (1982) added nothing to Antonioni’s masterful oeuvre. After a massive stroke in 1985, left him without speech and partly paralysed there was BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), a collaboration with Wim Wenders, and Antonioni’s segment of EROS (2004). AS

ANTONIONI RETRO: THE ABSENCE OF LOVE | BFI JANUARY 2019 

 

 

Lady Bird (2017)

Dir.: Greta Gerwig; Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothy Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Odeya Rush; USA 2017, 94 min.

LADY BIRD is a mischievous turn of the century tale of teenage angst and suburban boredom carried with aplomb by a brilliant Saoirse Ronan as young woman beset by a rigid mother and a repressive Catholic childhood.

Gerwig kicks off her semi-autobiographical debut as a writer and director with the quote “anybody who talks about Californian hedonism has never spent Christmas in Sacramento”. Christine McPherson (Ronan) has renamed herself Lady Bird, and lets this be known at home and at school, verbally and in writing. Sacramento is an uninspiring place, particularly if you, like Lady Bird, live on the wrong side of the track. The family is struggling, with mother Marion (Metcalf) often working double-shifts as a nurse – and father Larry (Letts) is a victim of the recession. After finding out that her first boyfriend Danny (Hedges) is gay, Lady Bird makes use of an invitation to his grandmother’s splendid mansion to change her image: not only does she dump her best friend Julie (Feldstein) for the glamorous but superficial Jenna (Rush), she also pretends that she lives in said Gran’s upmarket abode. Obviously, this lie cannot last long, but when all is revealed, Lady Bird has lost her virginity to the politically aware Kyle (Chalamet), who turns out to be a nasty snob and womaniser. Lady Bird’s main target of scorn is her mother, who is desperately trying to hold the family together and just wants her daughter to study close to home. Meanwhile Lady Bird has set her sight on an East Coast university. With Larry backing his daughter’s follies de grandeur, the college search becomes the focal point of confrontation between the two women.

The scenes in the catholic school are often hilarious: a priest is directing a school play of Shakespeare’s The Tempest – but he is the American Football coach, and his directions on the blackboard look very much like the playbook for his usual students. On the TV the McPherson’s watch the first knockings of the Iraq war, but it makes no impression on them: just another war far away from home. Trapped in the1950s, Gerwig’s Californian capital seems to take pride in a provincial anti-intellectualism, and Lady Bird fights it in vain. Religion is still the overriding cultural influence; but materialism is king. Marion’s love for her daughter is expressed in monetary terms rather than emotional values.

Despite a rather soppy ending, Lady Bird impresses with a heroine who is anything but perfect. DoP Sam Levy (Frances Ha) uses sugary colours to highlight the infantile banality of the settings; Ronan’s towering performance leads an outstanding ensemble cast. Gerwig proves undeniably that California has places that can easily compete with the Mid West for American traditionalism. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 16 February 2018

The Shape of Water (2017) * * *

Dir: Guillermo del Toro | USA / 119’ | cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer

Last year’s Golden Lion for Best Film went to Guillermo del Toro for this utterly empty second-hand spectacle THE SHAPE OF WATER in a year where the jury and the programme largely lacked imagination (apart from Susanna Nicchiarelli’s NICO, 1988, who won the Orizzonti Award for her stunning biopic of the final years of the renowned model and musician Christa Pfaffen, played by a feisty Trine Dyrholm).

Del Toro’s very thin narrative of a mute woman falling in love with an amphibious creature, used by the CIA at the height of the Cold War, around 1962, is a total rip-off: it uses the main protagonists of Rachel Ingall’s 1986 novel MRS. CALIBAN, the creature itself is a replica of the titular CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (Jack Arnold, 1954), and the story is a compilation of countless cold war spy movies of the Eisenhower era, when the Red menace was infiltrating the USA. Clearly no money was spared on design and images, but del Toro’s feature might not have won without the help of Annette Bening, Hollywood actress and – first female – jury president.

In a US government laboratory, two workers (Sally Hawkins and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer) uncover an horrendous secret experiment that the lonely and single Elisa (Hawkins) finds strangely alluring. It involves an amphibious creature (played by Doug Jones) who is infiltrated into the installation and comes under threat by the agent in charge (Michael Shannon), who intends to do away with the beast once it serves its purpose. But Elisa falls strangely in love with the sea creature and puts her own life in danger in her bid to ensure its survival, aided and abetted by her colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer); her neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins), and kindly scientist (Michael Stuhlbarg in his second strong role of 2017).

Serving as a subtle social critique, there’s a great deal to enjoy in this fluid fantasy film enriched by Alexandre Desplat’s majestic score, but it is by no means the jewel in del Toro’s crown that includes  gems such as Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Hellboy (04) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), for which he received an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 FEBRUARY 2018 | VENICE 2017 REVIEW

The Mercy (2017) ***

Dir: James Marsh | Writer: Scott Z Burns | Cast: Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewliss, Ken Stott, Mark Gatiss, Finn Elliot | Drama | 101′

James Marsh captures the tragic Englishness of this sad Sixties maritime mystery about a decent man who loses his way.

Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz are utterly convincing as the loving couple at the heart of this watchable biopic about  the doomed attempt of amateur yachtsman Donald Crowhurst to compete in the notorious 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Crowhurst’s story is an evergreen portrait of British sporting failure. Spurred on by middle-class ambition, and the desire to make something of his happy but humdrum existence, the competent sailer gets caught up in the headlights of potential fame, and fails – spectacularly. And somehow, only the English themselves can appreciate this also ran tragedy.

The Crowhurst story has spawned various theatrical and literary adaptations, and even a chamber opera: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. Eric Colvin plays him in Simon Rumley’s upcoming low budget indie thriller Crowhurst which purportedly features the actual vessel that set sail in the endeavour.

Without mining the stormy depths of the tale’s dramatic potential, The Mercy is a poignantly becalmed but strangely gripping family drama with its mystery hanging over us rather like that of the Bermuda Triangle, taking us back down memory lane to the quaint old days of the late 1960s where in the pleasant seaside town of Teignmouth, Devon. the Crowhursts are a respectable family with Donald desperately seeking to shore up his ailing business and educate his kids. Striking a rather bum note in the opening scene, Marsh then guides us through calm waters where Donald attends the annual London Boat Show attempting to sell a special kind of navigation device that nobody’s having. So he decides to turn his sailing hobby into a money-making exercise – the jackpot for the winner being £5,000 – around £70K in today’s money) raising finance via entrepreneur Stanley Best ( a reliable Ken Stott).  It’s an enterprising idea but Crowhurst foolhardily agrees to include his house in the if he fails to complete the race.

Firth is brilliantly cast as Crowhurst – blending just the right amount of pathos and self-belief in his portrait of an unsatisfactory businessman of a rather nervous disposition who can’t take pressure and lacks personal conviction (possibly due to his mother dressing him as a much wanted girl until the age of 17). His marriage is clearly happy and Rachel Weisz plays his wife as a typically supportive English rose, stalwart in her affections and a brilliant mum but rather passive and naive in a commercial sense, as most women were in the those days.

Nagged by doubt, but spurred on by the media circus and a PR man called Rodney Hallworth – a strangely comic turn from David Thewlis – there are clearly technical drawbacks with his boat which looks unsuitable even to cross a puddle let alone the Atlantic – but after ominous delays he finally sets out at the end of October. Follies de grandeur then subside as he encounters his own demons and slowly starts to fall apart off the coast of South America, realising there is no way back or forward in the bathetic denouement, which Marsh leaves suitably vague. We leave overwhelmed with that familiar feeling of sadness mingled with resignation both for Crowhurst and for British sportsmanship, and sympathetic for his wife, not a great role Weisz but one she plays with thoughtful grace. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 FEBRUARY NATIONWIDE

Makala (2017) * * * *


Dir.: Emmanuel Gras; Documentary with Kabwita Kasongo, Lydie Kasongo; France 2017, 96’.

MAKALA confirms Emmanuel Gras (Bovines) as a major talen who “looks for expressiveness, not realism” and achieves just that in this visually stunning Cannes Critics’ week winning film that seamlessly blends documentary and feature.

Kabwita Kasongo (28) is married to Lydie, and they live with two of their kids in the village of Walemba in the Katanga province of the democratic Republic of the Congo. An elder daughter is with Lydie’s sister in the town of Kolwezi, fifty km from Walemba. In Swahili, Makala means charcoal, which Kabwita crafts from cutting and slowly burning a massive tree. Finally, he sets off with an overloaded bicycle, his prize possession, to sell the charcoal in Kolwezi. The three day journey is torturous and dangerous, particularly at night when lorries barrel by, often pushing Kabwita’s bike over, making him lose some of his precious cargo. The dream of owning his own home is far away as the15 sheets of metal required for a roof, would cost more than ten times the amount he gets for his charcoal.

Gras “developed a principle from fiction, of an beginning and an end”. And Kabwita is very much a noir-hero, his profit, and with it, his future, more and more reduced by circumstances beyond his control. In common with American Noirs directed by Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy/The Big Combo), the main protagonist is literally pushed to the margins of screen – contrary to the classic Hollywood films, where the accessible object is positioned front and centre in full view. Like a Lewis’ character, Kabwita teeters on the edge, in danger of falling out of the frame, threatened by the menacing lorries, which look more like robots out of sci-fi feature. Furthermore, Gras creates an aura of mystery (as in Lewis’ films), some parts of the frame are partly concealed, leaving us to join the main protagonist’s struggle to keep up with the ever- shifting sands of the action.

Gaspar Claus’ eerie violin score echoes the distressing mood of intensifying hopelessness. Gras has pioneers a style of his own: richly imaginative in its portrait of poverty and powerlessness. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

Ice Cold in Alex (1958) | 4K Bluray release

 Dir: J Lee Thompson | Cast: John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Anthony Quayle | UK | 122’

1942: The Libyan war zone, North Africa. After a German invasion a British ambulance crew are forced to evacuate their base but become separated from the rest of their unit. Somehow they must make it to Alexandria, but how? Their only hope is a dilapidated ambulance named “Katy” and an irrational, alcoholic soldier known as Captain Anson. Facing landmines, a Nazi attack, suffocating quicksand and the relentlessly brutal and unforgiving Sahara desert, can Captain Anson face his demons and make the road to hell a journey to freedom? Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and nominated for the Golden Bear Award at Berlin International Film Festival, the film was also nominated for 4 BAFTAs including Best British Film, Best Screenplay and Best British Actor for Anthony Quayle on its initial release. Directed by J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear, The Guns of the Navarone) with one iconic set piece after the next and with career best performances from John Mills (Goodbye Mr Chips, Great Expectations), Sylvia Syms (The Tamarind Seed, The Queen) and Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arabia), ICE COLD IN ALEX is a suspenseful, invigorating journey which leaves film fans gasping for breath… and a beer.

Special Premiere Screening at Glasgow Film Festival
Thursday 22nd February, Glasgow Film Theatre 1, 12.40pm

New 4k restoration of ICE COLD IN ALEX (1958) released on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download 19thFebruary 2018

 

The Ninth Cloud (2017) *

Dir.: Jane Spencer; Cast: Michael Madsen, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Megan Maczko, Elena Krausz, Sabina Akhmedova; Switzerland/UK 2014, 93′.

Sometimes films are kept on the shelf for a reason – The Ninth Cloud, a pretentious, verbose Nouvelle Vague rip-off set in Hackney, is a prime example. A male director would be rightly nailed to the cross for this febrile flop.

Three worlds collide when the dipsomaniac ‘damsel in distress’ Zena (Maczko) desperately tries and fails to channel Anna Karina in Band-à-Part (the big coat is a dead give-away). The flat she shares with pregnant Laura (Krausz) and over-sexed Helene (Akhmedova) is a viper’s nest, and no love is lost – later they are joined by a homeless woman.Zena is in love with Bob (Madsen), a pretend gay ‘artist’, who is actually married, but acts out meaningless scripts with his band of followers from the hostel in a derelict warehouse. The third set belongs to posh wannabes  led by Jean-Hughes Anglade (La Reine Margot) who reside in a hotel and fight it out like a bunch of cowboys. As it turns out, Bob is a not gay, and a con-artist to boot, and the scheme to raise money for a boy who lost his leg in the Congolese war is not only in very bad taste, but, like the whole enterprise, gradually peters out.

Bob and Zena talk non-stop about Les Enfants du Paradise with Jean Vigo and Rainer Maria Rilke who both died of broken hearts – but are equally at home on more basic territory: Zena telling her flat mates, that a man told her to touch his penis – the scene is repeated in images for the hard of hearing.

Shooting on the feature should have started in 2008, but the death of its star Guillaume Depardieu (to whom the film is dedicated) in the same year, postponed it for three years, and a two-year post-production did not help either; these may be contributory factors, but do not excuse this train-wreck of a feature. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON ITUNES

Loveless (2017) |

Dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev | 127min |Drama | Russia

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s long-awaited follow-up to Leviathan sees a divorcing couple forced to cooperate in the search for their missing son. LOVELESS is scripted by Oleg Negin who also wrote The Banishment, Leviathan and Elena and once again there is common ground in the alienation and emotional emptiness of the characters. With Loveless Zvyagintsev would have us believe that the Grim Reaper has finally visited Russia and stolen its human soul and spirit. What remains is a collection of spiteful, self-seeking, sociopathic types whose only pleasure is shopping, social media and mindless sex: the result of a culture that forces them into loveless marriages to procreate and conform.

In Moscow a young couple have already been through a bitter divorce but are still sharing a home. Their young son Alexsei sobs silently in his bedroom in one of the most moving scenes in this otherwise sensually barren affair, while his parents, who never wanted him, bicker about how best to sell the family flat. Boris (Alexei Rozin) is a tubby, pasty-faced office worker whose new girlfriend, an aquisitive blond, is needy and close to her conniving mother. His soon-to-be-ex-wife Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is hostile towards her son and husband. A beautician, she is now dating a rich but hard-edged businessman twice her age with a pristine appartment in an upmarket part of town. There is nothing to recommend any of them: physically and spiritually they represent the worse form of life. There is a feeling that this reptilian sub-species is alive and kicking – not just in Moscow – but in much of the civilised world.

When Alexsei disappears during his parents’ separate date nights, the film becomes a police procedural of utter desperation. Moscow looks like a frozen forest filled with creatures from another planet: these s0-called parents are merely psychopaths and narcissists going through their vacuous routine, their only despair is for themselves rather than the loss of their son. This is a bitterly depressing film but visually impressive and inventively framed. If you’re looking for two hours of penetrating desperation and frightening emptiness LOVELESS will do the trick – and it’s coming to a cinema near you. Be warned. MT

LOVELESS IS SCREENING NATIONWIDE FROM 9 FEBRUARY 2018

A Suitable Girl (2017) * * *

Dir.: Sarita Khurana, Smriti Mundhra | Documentary | India/USA 2017, 90′

Sarita Khurana and Smriti Mundhra’s moving debut documentary takes an analytical but sympathetic look at arranged marriages in India, where the 21st century collides with centuries old rituals and morals. The continuing plight of women sits uncomfortably aside its burgeoning economy and scientific advances.

Shot over four years, the interlocking narrative follows the lives of three young women from different backgrounds and intellectual capabilities whose future is entirely determined by marriage. There is Dipti, a homely and kind-hearted girl approaching thirty, whose whole life has been about finding a man. Her ample figure and swarthy looks do not fit the modern trend for slim, pale-skinned Indian girls. She has tried traditional dating sites and matchmakers for years and it seems the lack of a ‘life partner’ rules her every waking hour as she languishes in despair with her despondent parents. Interviews are arranged where parents lay down their requirements, but the kids still have the last word. Dipti’s desperation ends with a miracle. But we are left wondering if such blind faith in one person can be a good thing.

Ritu is aloof and ambitious. Living in Mumbai with an MBA and a career in financial services. She has an independent, Western lifestyle – but her mother Seema, who is a professional matchmaker, puts pressure on her daughter to marry emphasising the importance of a good husband: ‘You won’t amount to much concentrating on your job”. Seema is well aware of the double standard in the marriage industry: girls have to be “fair-skinned, slim, soft-spoken and beautiful, whilst men must have a large income and an important family to back them up. Ritu’s goal has never been to get married but she finally gives in.  Luckily for Ritu, her chosen husband Aditya, who is also working in the finance industry, shares her view on marriage: “In my next life I want to be born in Europe, so I can marry post forty”. After their splendid and very costly marriage, the couple both pursue their careers in Dubai, commuting together to work.

Meanwhile, Amrita has an MBA in business studies but a rather naive view of life. Living in Delhi she is happy to go along with her parents’ arrangement for a marriage to Keshav, a young man set to inherit the family business – “because their horoscopes match”. The couple settle down at the family compound 400 miles from Delhi, where Amrita becomes chief-cook and sari-wearing housekeeper, contrary to her expectations of working in the business alongside him. plans to work together. Her husband’s decisions are final – in the end the disillusioned Amrita comes off worst of the three. “My world revolves around him. You lose your identity, when you marry, and that is one thing I never wanted to do. 80% of people, who come to my home, do not know my name. They are just recognising me as Keshav’s wife”.

A Suitable Girl is informative and enlightening, making us feels for these young women and building an informative portrait of middle class India which sees the large metropolises of Delhi and Mumbai as the most popular cities, and Calcutta and Chennai the least favoured, in modern terms. What emerges is a traditional continent still caught in the Dark Ages from a social viewpoint – where parents still rule the roost and decide the future of their daughters  – often with the help of astrologers and face-readers. AS

A SUITABLE GIRL | Opening on Friday, 23 February | Q&A Screening with co-director Sarita Khurana
http://dochouse.org/cinema/screenings/suitable-girl

Strangled (2016) | Home Ent release


Dir/Writer: Árpád Sopsits | Thriller | Hungary | 118′

For his third feature, director Árpád Sopsits (Videoblues, Abandoned) transports us back to post revolutionary Hungary in this taut and vividly atmospheric historical thriller based on the serial killings of six young women that took place between 1957-67 in the town of Martfű in the South East. The sinister mood of corruption and social unease bleeds into the murder investigation tainting proceedings and forcing local detective Katona (Zsolt Trill) to convict their initial suspect who continued to abused by fellow inmates in prison, while the murders continued.

The tone is cautious and unsettling as gradually events unfold in the industrial town where we first meet unappealing factory-worker Réti (Gabor Jaszberenyi) waiting for his girlfriend, who is later found murdered – but we’re constantly kept unsure of his culpability as he serves his life sentence, remanded from the death penalty, due to his previously clean record. The investigation procedural is complex and fraught with controversy, not least because the head of the inquiry, the rather unsavoury Bóta (Zsolt Anger) is unconvinced they’ve picked the right man, and also fancies Reti’s sister Rita (Szofia Szamosi). Meanwhile factory worker Bognar (Hadjuk Karoly) has been up to no good abusing his wife and attacking other women he meets along the way. His lascivious enjoyment of his victims makes for unsettlingly convincing viewing in Gabor Szabo’s stunning camerawork and lighting, but Sopsits focuses more on evocative sound effects – screams and deep breathing – than vision, keeping us in the dark, quite literally. When Katona’s sidekick Szirmai (Peter Barnai) enters the investigation, scenes of torture and depravity feed into the general atmosphere of corruption, mistrust and unease surrounding the anti-communist uprising of 1956 and there’s much to be admired in Rita Devenyi’s sleek set design. Although overlong, STRANGLED certainly creates an evocative sense of the joyless and sinister era in this small-town microcosm that echoes a wider political landscape. MT

NOW AVAILABLE. COURTESY OF EUREKA MASTERS OF CINEMA | 5 FEBRUARY 2018

Green Book (2018) ****

Dir: Peter Farelly | Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Curry | Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardelini, Sebastian Maniscalco | US Drama | 130′

An African American classical pianist and his Italian working class driver travel towards better understand in this charismatically crafted road movie from Peter Farelly (Dumb and Dumber).

Green Book is the latest in crop of racially aware films and certainly one of the most moving and enjoyable. It sees the suave classical musician and a bulky Bronx bouncer continually at odds in a stylish road movie that travels to greater understanding in the US Deep South of the Sixties. Paradoxically, the bouncer is white, the pianist black. But it doesn’t end there. There is also a delicately handled homophobic issue at play. The movie is given extra mileage and a hint of humour by a distinctive duo of Viggo Mortensen and Ali Mahershala.

The title refers to Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book, which was published annually from 1936-1966 to advise black travellers where they could safely graze and stay during the dangerous days of Jim Crow and the sundown laws. Nick Vallelonga bases his script on a real friendship that arose during a tour made by the regal musician Don Shirley (Ali) and his driver who remained close until their deaths in 2013. Being classically trained, the Jamaican-born Shirley could turn his hand to tinkling the ivories in any musical style from classic to impro music, and prides himself on his aristocratic background and fluency in several languages. But his Southern tour needs the protection of a white man and Viggo Mortensen’s straight-talking family geezer Tony Villalonga fits the bill.

In his latest drama Peter Farelly isn’t afraid to experiment or go to the dark side of racialism but also knows when to pull back. Sean Porter’s luminous cinematography really sets the night on fire with his glowing glimpses of New York, Alabama and Louisiana as the two motor south in their turquoise Cadillac.

Character-wise this is a knockout: Viggo Mortensen really inhabits the short-fused Italian who is never without a cigarette or a meal in his mouth. In contrast Mahershala exudes style and panache as the prim but troubled troubadour who lives in a penthouse above Carnegie Hall, decorated with his personal throne and elephant tusks. 

Musical references are plenty and Shirley “plays like Liberace but better.” and these musical sequences from Chopin to Jazz are so convincing we’re left wondering whether playing the paino is another of this Mahershala’s many talents. MT

Screening NATIONWIDE | MARRAKECH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 premiere

Ingmar Bergman | A Definitive Film Season | January 2018

Ernst Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) was a Swedish director, writer, and who also produced in television, theatre and radio. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential filmmakers of all time, who made over 60 feature films and documentaries during his long career that focused on themes such as death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.

Persona headlines  a short retrospective of the Swedish director’s films to celebrate his centenary year which opens in January. Also released in selected cinemas UK-wide will be The Touch (1971) on 23 February and The Magic Flute (1975) on 16 March. In addition, Summer with Monika (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957/left) and Cries and Whispers (1972) will be available to cinemas through the BFI so that they can mount their own mini-retrospectives during this centenary year.

BFI Southbank’s Ingmar Bergman: A Definitive Film Season, includes virtually everything Bergman wrote for the screen, taking in well-known films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and Wild Strawberries(1957), and ground-breaking TV series like Scenes From a Marriage (1973) to lesser known titles, and those scripted by Bergman and directed by his collaborators. All in all more than 50 films directed or written by Bergman, as well as several TV series, will screen at the BFI accompanied by an ambitious events programme, designed to bring Bergman and his work to life for a new generation. This will include discussions, immersive experiences and talent-led events.

Bergman also directed over 170 plays. From 1953, he forged a powerful creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. In his dramas he regularly cast Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ulmann; Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin. His homeland of Sweden was the setting for nearly all his film; but from 1961 he began shooting on the island of Faro with Through A Glass Darkly.

English film critic Philip French referred to Bergman as “one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition”.

INGMAR BERGMAN RETROSPECTIVE | JAN-FEB 2018 | BFI | NATIONWIDE

Journey’s End (2017)

Dir.: Saul Dibb | Cast: Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany, Asa Butterfield, Toby Jones | UK | 107′

Saul Dibb (Suite Francaise) make great use of Simon Reade’s taut script to depict this gloomy WWI chronicle, set in a dugout at Aisne Northern France over a four-day period in March 1918.

Based on Vernon Bartlett’s novel and the seminal 1930 play by RC Sheriff, JOURNEY’S END is unrelentingly harrowing. And rather than creating a worthy and alienating throwback to the era, Dibb succeeds in connecting us to the present with well-formed and convincing characterisations of real people who we can relate to, an and feel for, rather than relics from another point in time. Powerfully projecting the narrative beyond the confines of its cramped surroundings, he also makes the threat of the impending air strikes ever-present and audible as a force just over the parapet where the men make their final tragic sortie, he also creates a love interest for Captain Stanhope in the shape of Raleigh’s sister who is captured in a pleasant vignette in her country drawing room, adding welcome contrast to the despondency in the dugout. Sam Claflin plays Stanhope, slowly losing his mind in a haze of whisky. But to everyone else he is a hero. The unit is held together by his second-in-command, Osborne (Bettany), a former schoolteacher, who is gentle and understanding, but somehow longs for his own death. Fresh from the training academy, Lieutenant Raleigh (Butterfield) pleads with his uncle, a general, to secure him a posting in Stanhope’s battalion. He admires Stanhope, who was an older pupil at his school, but nothing prepares him for what is to come. The German offensive keeps the tension as tight as the mens’ measly rations, and when Raleigh and Osborne are sent out with a handful of soldiers they manage to capture a German who will be cross-examined to confirm the exact date of the planned attack. This bloody undertaking is only the curtain-raiser for the mass slaughter that was to occur during the German bombardment. There are terrific performances, among them Toby Jones as the cook, trying to please everybody so he can stay out of the line of fire. DoP Laurie Rose (High Rise) captures the tortuous trenches where the men wait for their death. There have been many war films over the past century commemorating the mass slaughter with ultra-realism and picturing those horrifying days. But this is a grim record that really brings home the realisation that none of us is ever ‘entitled’ to peace or to happiness: We don’t have a right to anything. Remembrance is necessary, and every single record of the two World Wars offers another opportunity for us to recall the bitter events that finally united Europe. And how important that union still is. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 2 FEBRUARY 2018

Downsizing (2017) **

Dir: Alexander Payne | Wri: Jim Taylor | USA / 135’ | cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig

Matt Damon headlines a cast that includes Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, and Laura Dern in Alexander Payne’s unconvincing sci-fi social satire about a man who chooses to shrink himself (literally) to simplify his life.

Shot in Toronto the magnificent Norwegian fjords, Downsizing provides a startlingly speculative and outlandish Sci-fi adventure that sounds intriguing on the drawing board but throws up issues that are unattractive and downright unpalatable in practiceAs the film opens, Damon’s amiable character Paul Safranek is hit with a brainwave – downsizing not only his family home – but also himself – will cut costs as his placidly mediocre lifestyle with wife Audrey (Wiig) rapidly becomes increasingly difficult to sustain, let alone finance. Payne widens to premise to include themes of human consumption and depletion of the Earth’s precious reserves with one radical and idiotic solution – miniaturisation, the idea being that a small tin of baked beans can suddenly feed the entire family for a whole week (living in a shoebox in their previous garden). Welcome to the grotesque future of Downsizing, where a wet-wipe will suddenly become an environmental hazard of even greater proportions. Once Paul is reinvented as a midget, there’s something unpleasantly grotesque and indelicate about the whole idea of giant rosebuds and diamonds as big as your head. The phrase “small and perfectly-formed” also loses appeal especially in the pastel world of Paul Safranek. There’s nothing glorious or admirable about his insipid existence as a phone salesman in the new “Leisureland”, where even he takes offence at a customer who says: “Don’t get short with me”. Meanwhile, his rather uncouth neighbours (Christophe Waltz and Udo Kier) feel too far-fetched and glib to make this new existence appealing; a better word would be ‘sad’. There could be some really appealing aspects to Payne’s thoughtful projection, but somehow he and co-writer Jim Taylor settle for a mediocre, mealy-mouthed and small-minded drama rather than a bitingly witty microcosmic satire, along the lines of previous features Sideways, About Schmidt and Nebraska. And given that most of us are already tired of the relentlessly onward march of digital technology and the dehumanisation of our daily lives, the idea that this could be taken further simply has no future in the real world. Thanks Mr Payne, but no thanks. MT

OUT ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 26 JANUARY 2018

Becoming Who I Was (2017) ****

Dir: Chang-Yong Moon. Co-directed by Jeon Jin | 95’ | 2017 | KOREA
After a boy is discovered to be the reincarnation of a centuries-old Tibetan monk, his godfather takes him on an epic and often arduous spiritual pilgrimage through treacherous and magnificent natural landscapes from Ladakh in India discover his Tibetan Monastery in this upbeat and sumptuously filmic Berlinale Generation Kplus winner.
Chang-Yung Moon’s debut doc – eight year’s in the making – is all about profound faith and unconditional love, but not in a worthy, intense way. Infact, this gently amusing and poignant buddie movie shows how a little boy called Padma Angdu gradually rises to his vocation and has great fun in the process with his friends and loving godfather in the remote and snowy mountains region of northern India and Tibet.
Rosy-faced Padma has a lot of spiritual responsibility on his shoulders – in the same way as a Jewish boy studies for his Barmitzvah or a Christian kid prepares for his Confirmation  – Padma must study the holy scriptures in preparation for a formal ceremony from the young age of 6 until he becomes a “Rinpoche’ in his teens when he will rise in rank above his godfather Urgyan Richzan. Sometimes the pressure is too much for Padma and he is driven to tears but Richzan offers calm guidance and support as well as occasionally teasing him.
Moon serves as his own DoP but the striking aerial shots of mountainsides  were actually achieved with the use of drones. There are also intensely personal moments where we see Padma at prayer and instruction in the brightly coloured interiors of his rustic mountain dwelling. Moon gives us access to the private world of the monks in this enjoyable and enlightening documentary portrait that maintains its allure and serenity while bringing us much closer to an understanding of what it is to be a spiritual ‘precious one’ or ‘Lama’ in Tibetan Buddhism. MT
ON RELEASE FROM 22 JANUARY 2018 | BERTHA DOCHOUSE | CURZON BLOOMSBURY

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017)

Dir: MARTIN MCDONAGH | United Kingdom / 110’ | cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage

In Martin McDonagh’s latest pithy social satire a frustrated and grieving mother antagonises her local police force calling to attention the lack of progress in the search for her daughter’s killer.
Confrontation is the name of the game in this unforgiving black comedy set in the Southern United States. Conflict is rife, incendiary arguments erupt, nearly everyone resorts to violence, be it for political or personal reasons. Grudging forgiveness sometimes follows, but not necessarily as a matter of course. Frances McDormand paints the heroine Mildred as an unlovable tyrant, in the smalltime, small-mindedtown of Ebbing. A divorcee, she has lost her teenage daughter, who was raped and left to  die almost on her doorstep. After a month, the terminally ill sheriff (Harrelson) has not come up with any suspects and the trail has gone cold, so Mildred pushes her own agenda forward, renting three billboards with a strong message accusing the sheriff of incompetence. This is not a particularly sensitive move but it’s an effective one, sending the townsfolk into quiet meltdown against the mother of three. Meanwhile, the much-liked Willoughby is dying of cancer. But Mildred’s vendetta knows no bounds and she finally takes her complaint further, leaving DC Dixon (a strong comedy turn by Rockwell) with terrible injuries. Strangely enough, Dixon seems to learn his lesson and channels his energy into re-opening the case. Dixon and Mildred begin a friendship, but not on the lines the late sheriff would be approve of.
McDormand is brazenly brilliant as the hard-bitten Mildred who conveniently forgets that she argued with her daughter on that fateful last evening, jokingly wishing that she would be raped for not following her advice. Race, gender, anger and forgiveness are the are all in the mix in this toxic town where casual violence is par for the course.  The narrative is anger-driven rather than goal-oriented, and the fun is very much in the process rather than the solution: this is no whodunnit. THREE BILLBOARDS is very dark, shot through with brutal stabs of humour: DoP Ben Davis catches the mood with his stark, widescreen images. This is Trump country, and the Confederate Flag rules. God help America. AS

Martin McDonagh was born in London to Irish parents. He is a renowned playwright and filmmaker, and won an Academy Award for his debut short, Six Shooter (06). He subsequently directed In Bruges (08) and Seven Psychopaths (12), which played at the Festival and received the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (17) is his latest feature.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 12 JANUARY 2018

The Cinema Travellers (2017) ****

Dir: Shirley Abrahams, Amit Madheshiya | Doc | 96′

Indians all over the sub-continent have always been united by their love of film. From Bollywood to the arthouse cinema of Tollywood (home of Telugu and Bengal), India has one of the world’s richest and most prolific film industries giving pleasure to young and old, rich and poor alike. THE CINEMA TRAVELLERS is the story of three men and their passion to keep film alive by bringing it to their fellow countrymen, wherever they may be.

Five years in the making, this joyfully touching documentary takes filmmakers Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya on the road with two mobile cinemas that journey across rural India with the men behind the endeavour of offering their films to communities who share their love of the movies. Times have changed since the trio first put the show on the road but it is a show that must go on despite the challenges.

None of them has become rich – most of the time plying their trade to the poorest of the remote communities is a struggle for survival; a labour of love that brings deep satisfaction rather than financial gain, but they make ends meets. We meet the amiable 70-year old projector specialist whose 40 years in the repair business have seen the gradual rise of digital film, and as the future bids farewell to past, his cranky projector is finally put to rest, his rain-damaged stock of magical moving images reduced to a blur. Then there is the cinema manager with a young family clamouring for cash back home, to put food on the table. Both are driven by a desire to work in the industry they love and this authentic cinema verité portrait records their genuine zest, sometimes tempered by moments of sadness at the passing of the old days, but without ever resorting to sentimentality.

In the end, the team are excited by the future of digital projection as they unveil their brand new projector, one comments:”I’m as happy as a man on his wedding day”. There’s a gentleness and philosophy in all these men, and this subtle and atmospheric arthouse gem blends the poignancy of the past with the thrill of the future of film. In India the love of film feels on a par with Britain’s obsession with football. MT

THE CINEMA TRAVELLERS | Bertha Dochouse, The Curzon Bloomsbury at the Brunswick, London WC1N 1AW FROM 26 JANUARY 2018

Birth of the Dragon (2017)

Dir.: George Nolfi; Cast: Yu Xia, Philip Ng, Billy Magnussen, Jingjing Qu, Jiu Xing; China/Canada/USA 2016, 95′.

A disappointing outing for director George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau), featuring a young Bruce Lee and his legendary fight with Shaolin master Wong Jack Man in San Francisco in 1964. Writers Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen J. Rivele are certainly no Philip K. Dick, the novelist of The Adjustment Bureau, and Nolfi seemingly appears only as good as the material he is presented with.

Recut from the version which ran at TIFF 2016, Birth features Steve (Magnussen), a young student of Bruce Lee (Ng)who soon leaves his training with Lee to join Master Wong Jack Man (Yu), who has fetched up in San Francisco after injuring a fellow competitor by delivering a forbidden kick. Wong wants to ‘cleanse his soul’ and become pure again, but is not particularly humble, and soon attacks Lee for his fighting style. The two thrash it out, with Wong sparing Lee’s life. Meanwhile, Steve has fallen for the waitress Xiulan (Jingjing), who is in thrall to a female crime boss (Jiu) who is threatening to put her into prostitution, if she doesn’t cut her ties with the young trainee. Lee and Wong cooperate, to set her free. And whilst the future Kung Fu King changes his fighting style to something less spectacular, Wong returns to his monastery. BIRTH has the feeling of an old-fashioned Hollywood gangster movie, underpinned by the backdrop of an idealised 1970s San Francisco. The “narrative” is as slight as the snake-hipped fighters, and everything is held together by the fighting numbers. For committed Lee/Kung Fu fans only. AS

ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Last Flag Flying (2017) **

Dir.: Richard Linklater; Cast: Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne, Bryan Cranston, J. Quinton Johnson, Yul Vazquez; USA | 124′

It’s difficult to believe that LAST FLAG FLYING was directed and co-written by the filmmaker of Boyhood, Richard Linklater. Based on the 2004 novel by Darryl Ponicsan, who also wrote Last Detail (1970), later filmed by Hal Ashby, This is a tired road movie which vehemently contradicts its opening message in the sentimental closing stages. ‘Doc’ Shephard (Carell) is looking for his Vietnam buddies Richard Mueller (Fishburne), now a Reverend, and Sal Neaton (Cranston), an alcohol dependent bar owner. Shephard wants their support in burying his own son, who has been killed in Iraq, where he was on a tour with the Marines. Doc, who was a paramedic, actually tried to talk his son out of his decision. So the trio set out to bury Doc’s son in Arlington, bickering among themselves and the government, old and new, who send the soldiers into one mess after another. Meeting Washington (Johnson), a fellow soldier of Shephard junior, it then transpires that the young man was killed whilst buying Coca Cola for his buddies (it was actually Washington’s turn) – not the heroic death the army suggested. But slowly, despite being put off by a robotic Colonel (Vazquez), the Vietnam veterans get into the swing of things, and in the end come to an agreement that the young soldier’s death was heroic after all, ”because we are an okay country, even if the government sends young people out to die in foreign countries”. Very much inferior to Ashby’s Last Detail, of which it is supposed to be a sequel, LAST FLAG FLYING is much too wordy, the characters are one-dimensional, and the trip with the coffin across the country feels somehow awkward. A very unfunny road movie, with a dubious final message. AS

SCREENING AT ARTHOUSES NATIONWIDE | 17 JANUARY 2018

The Commuter (2017) Netflix

Dir.: Jaume Collet-Serra; Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern; USA 2018, 104 min.

In his fourth collaboration with Spanish born schlock-specialist Collet-Serra, Liam Neeson, now officially a senior citizen, is still winning every fight to defeat macho males young enough to be his grand children, in a thriller that barely breaks sweat.

Meanwhile COMMUTER‘S writers Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle have clearly binged on classic Hitchcock features to come up with an outlandish premise that suspends reality non-stop. Insurance agent and ex-NYPD cop Michael McCauley (Neeson) is fired from his job five years short of retirement.

Commuting back to his home in Long Island, Michael gets an offer he can’t refuse – or his family will be held to ransom – from the enigmatic Joanna (Farmiga). She will give him $100 000 to identify and place a GPS tracker on a passenger who is not a regular commuter, but who has the McGuffin – a computer drive. After trousering an initial payment of $25 000, hidden in a ‘restroom’, Michael gets cold feet, and wants out. But Joanna is omnipotent, reaching Michael on every ‘phone he uses to call for assistance, and there’s worse: three people Michael had asked for help are killed by Joanna’s  unseen forces. Which begs the question, why does she need Michael at all? As the pace quickens, Michael’s past, in shape of his NPYD partner Alex Murphy (Wilson) and his ex-boss Capt. Hawthorne (Neill) muddy the waters even more. But all will be revealed when the baddies finally catch up with Michael and the rest of his commuters, who are an uninspiring bunch of carbon copies. But there’s no time for details that might actually make us think or feel for this motley crew of suspects (Latina nurse etc). And just as we’ve dropped off, the pyro-technical rail-crash finale then jolts us back to our senses, desperately trying to remember where we parked the car. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

Mirror | Tarkovsky Retrospective ICA London

MIRROR is a stream-of-consciousness, totally without any narrative. The narrator, on his deathbed, looks back on his life. The only structure is the time-setting: pre-war, war and post-war. Mirror is the best example of the director’s  “sculpting in time” approach to filmmaking: images and sound (in this case classical music) melt into a memory lane in which the time frames are interchangeable. Sometimes the film is labelled as metaphysical and it is hardly surprising that the USSR censors even tried to ban any export of the film, helping to make it into a legend.

CURRENTLY IN RETROSPECTIVE AT THE ICA LONDON JANUARY 2018

The Final Year (2017)***

Dir.: Greg Barker; Documentary with Barack Obama, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, Susan E. Rice; USA 2017, 89 min.

There are no surprises in this fascinating but vanilla portrait that echoes the restraint and diplomacy of Obama’s term of office.  

Director/writer Greg Barker (The Thread) follows the foreign policy team during the final year of the Obama administration. What emerges is predictable but certainly worth a watch. Obama, along with John Kerry (Secretary of State), Ben Rhodes (Foreign Policy speechwriter and Adviser), Samantha Power (US Ambassador to the UN) and Susan E. Rice (National Security Adviser)  work well as a team during the low-key administration, in stark contrast to what will follow when Trump takes over the reins.

The most interesting member of the team is Irish born Samantha Power, every step the idealistic academic, wearing her heart on the sleeve. She came to the Obama campaign in 2008 via the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard in 2008; the future president took note of the Pulitzer Prize Winner’s book, Genocide: A problem from Hell. In office, she engaged in the Boko Haram kidnapping, trying locally to negotiate. Juggling the care for her two young children with the demand of her position, she seems to be eternally patient. But she also was a fierce adversary of her Russian counterpart at the UN, whom she attacked for the invasion of the Ukraine, and the annexation of the Crimea. John Kerry is much more the classic diplomat, who can be sometimes be a little pompous. Having served in the Vietnam War, he is still “no pacifist”, and one has to believe him. Kerry has a rather ambivalent position on the Asian territories he helped to invade as a soldier. For example Laos, where the US dropped more bombs during a “dirty”, six year long war in the late ’60s and early ’70s, than the combined load dropped on Germany and Japan in WWII combined. But Kerry has also learned from recent history: when criticised about the lack of military intervention in Syria, he explained that any lasting settlement would have meant a long-term occupation of the country – something which has failed in Iran and Afghanistan.

Ben Rhodes emerges the most pragmatic of Obama’s advisers. He is foremost a journalist, and used to showing critical situations in a more positive light. Always trying to find a positive opening, he sometimes clashes with Power, who is more (self)critical. But Rhodes is also a good team player who does not let his side down. Susan E. Rice has been an Obama confidant since their time in local politics in Chicago. Heavily (and unjustly) attacked by Republicans for her role in the Libya disaster, which ended with the death of the US ambassador, she kept her cool with dignity. Her work on the change of the US Cuba politic cannot be underestimated. On the night of Trump’s triumph, the reaction was very different: Rhodes was so shattered, he could hardly speak and simply gasped for air. Obama, like a teacher, spoke about “history not being a linear development, but an up-and-down process”. Power was all resistance “Well, there is no going quietly into the good night”. How true that turned out to be. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 JANUARY 2018

Suggs: My Life Story (2017) ***

Dir: Julien Temple | Owen Lewis; Drama-Documentary | Cast: Suggs, Perry Benson, Dean Munford; UK 2018, 96’.

Director Julien Temple (Absolute Beginners) creates a wild and anarchic bio-pic of Madness frontman Suggs, using the singer’s performance in a London music hall (these sequences are directed by Lewis) as a background for an energetic trip into Suggs’ past, mixed with satire and cartoons.

Graham McPherson, who was born in Hastings in 1961, grew up with his mother, after his father had to be institutionalised – due to drug abuse – when Graham was only three years old. He got his stage name from the encyclopaedia of Jazz Singer’s, the name at random. The encyclopaedia belonged to his mother, a chanteuse, who worked in London clubs around Soho, after having spent much of her son’s youth in a village in Wales. Young Graham went to a comprehensive school in Swiss Cottage, where he met Mike Barson, who would joined him in 1976 in the ska band North London Invaders, which later morphed into Madness. After splitting up in 1986, Madness re-grouped later, and are still active today, mostly known for hits like “It must be Love” and “Our House”.

After playing for a long time in small basement cellars of pubs in North London (such as the Hope & Anchor), Madness literally caused an earthquake in 1992, when 75 000 assembled in Finsbury Park to hear them play – the noise level reached Five on the Richter Scale. After 1994 Suggs recorded numerous single albums, having worked with Morrissey in 1989/90. Suggs married the singer Bettie Bright (who starred in Temple’s The Great h Swindle) in 1982, the couple nowd have their own kids. The former “Bürgerschreck” Suggs is today a Patron of Children in Need and supports Cancer Research with his performances.

Suggs is very self-deprecating on stage, making fun of himself, when remembering his excitement of starring with Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley in a film – before finding out that he had just one line in the script. His journey into his past was set off by the death of his beloved cat, on his 50th birthday. Travelling to Birmingham to find out more about his father, he had to admit that even a second marriage did not change the self-destructive course his father chose – he died young, his second wife only lasting another year. But Suggs himself seems to have the last laugh: when he travelled with Madness to Paris for a gig in August 2009, the band made a mess of their surroundings “even pinching the contents of the mini bar – which was free.” Oasis lead Liam Gallagher had travelled in First Class, and told the promoter, that they would not share a stage with Madness. After performing on a side stage, said promoter had to beg Madness to perform instead of Oasis – who had broken up after a violent re-concert confrontation between the Gallagher brothers Liam and Noel.

Pianist Dean Mumford and Pierry Benson as the erratic taxi-driver, chauffeuring Suggs around London, complete this mad-cap caper, with impressive images by DoP Steve Organ. And for those not mad on Madness, Suggs: My Life Story, takes us a very worthwhile journey into London’s social and musical history.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2018 NATIONWIDE

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars (2017) Prime Video

Dir: Lili Fini Zanuck | Writers: Stephen “Scooter” Weintraub, Larry Yelen | Music Biopic | 213′

Fans of Eric Clapton will certainly know the facts behind the ’god of guitar’s’ eventful life. In her flawed but emotionally penetrating rock-doc, Lili Fini Zanuck’s poignantly conveys the years of heartache behind this fated and fêted musician.

 

Lili Fini Zanuck and Eric Clapton are longterm friends and collaborators: He provided the score for her feature Rush, back in 1991. And despite the use of a meandering, counterintuitive narrative to tell his, often tragic, story with its ill-judged epilogue feeling more like a cheesy commercial for Clapton’s current project rather than a fitting finale, the study is mostly thorough in its breadth and depth, chronicling the life story of an Englishman who has suffered, been severely tested and has come up trumps.

Life in 12 Bars is an ironic title given Clapton’s years of alcoholism, so let’s hope this is refers to his mastery of the guitar, an instrument that was to be his muse, his whipping boy (we are shown how he uses it as anger therapy), and his saving grace throughout his life. The film opens with a fabulous account of Clapton’s early childhood, his artistic reveries and discovery, aged 9, that his mother had abandoned him: he was brought up by his grandmother Rose Clapp. We learn how Clapton turns his disappointment and rejection into developing his musical technique from his teens to his involvement in blues-based and psychedelic groups. The Yardbirds and The Cream years are covered in compelling depth, and Zanuck shows how Clapton did his bit for the blues, and was headhunted by Mayall who got him playing for the Bluesbreakers. He even moved into Mayall’s home with his family.

But Zanuck and her writers Weintraub and Yelen tend to gloss over certain aspects of his career – probably out of respect to friendship – and it’s Clapton himself who owns up to his behavioural shortcomings as an introvert who couldn’t relate to women but became obsessed by one of them, Patti Boyd, during her mariage to George Harrison.

So although the film goes into almost forensic detail on some aspects of the story, other years are befuddled – almost as if in an booze-fuelled haze – such as his career as a solo recording artist which gave rise to a several salient albums. Pattie Boyd merely serves the narrative as a flirtatious cypher who cannot make up her mind between him and George, while he is yearning for her love, howling at the moon for her to leave George, which she eventually does, but by then too much damage has been done for them to make a go of things. Talking faces are almost entirely absent to give context to this period of his life, particularly his closest friend, Ben Palmer.

Zanuck has a cinematic way of conjuring up the days lost to booze and drugs in Hurtwood, Clapton’s country house in the depths of Surrey. But his romantic affairs take on a rather hazy anecdotal feel, the story often flipping back and forth. And there’s a curious bit where Zanuck suddenly goes back to Clapton’s mother’s second rejection of him, arriving from Canada with her two latest children. And this comes towards the end of the story, father than at the beginning where it would have clearly better informed us of the emotional arc that coloured his career.

Clearly this fundamental rejection was going to lead to a lack of trust, and vulnerability issues that would go on to jeopardise any kind of lasting romantic attachment. But it’s these years that are so movingly conveyed by Zanuck, showing Clapton heartbroken over Boyd after dedicating Layla to her, and retreating into a ‘safe’ world blunted by drugs and alcohol.

There’s much to enjoy here in this freewheeling trip back to a rich and vibrant musical era. And it’s heart-warming to see how Clapton has finally managed to overcome his demons, albeit circuitously, despite a rather cheesy ending which actually has the strange effect of making the legend seem less interesting than he appeared to be at the beginning of his career. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

 

Lover for a Day (2017) ***

Dir: Philippe Garrel | Cast: Eric Caravaca, Esther Garrel | 77min | Drama | French

Philippe Garrel is back With another family affair that brings to a close his trilogy that started with Jealousy. This grainy black and white Parisian story is as sweet and light as a mini croissant and just as innocuous, showing slim insight into the mind of a woman despite a collaboration of four writers, including the veteran Garrel himself. If you enjoy his work it’s watchable enough, but rather too slight and generic to have general appeal. Daughter Jeanne (his own daughter Esther) finds herself at home again with Papa (Caravaca), as her first love affair ends abruptly. But family life is interupted by her father’s young lover Ariane (Chevillotte) who is a philandering part-time porn model. The intimate domestic trio discuss love, fidelity and friendship but not to any degree of satisfaction or insight, and Arianne frequently becomes jealous when father and daughter spend the evening together. There is a candid intimacy to the dialogue but it all feels rather trite. Esther is a natural, as is Caravaca, but Chevillotte’s Arianne struggles to feel authentic and her story is largely hollow and implausible. Even with a running time of 77 minutes LOVER fails to be involving often feeling like an amateur college piece; well-crafted but rather will of the wisp. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSES COURTESY OF MUBI | 19 JANUARY 2018

A Woman’s Life | Une Vie (2017)

Dir: Stephane Brize | Drama | France | 114min

Hot on the heals of his 21st century social drama, The Measure of a Man, that won the Cannes Best Actor Award in 2015, the adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s first novel, is a painterly domestic tragedy set in 18th century Normandy that tackles similar social issues occuring 300 hundred years beforehand.

Intimate in scale (shot on Academy Ratio) and delicately appealing, A WOMAN’S LIFE follows Chemla’s bon chic bon genre heroine Jeanne from her teenage years until her mid forties, echoing the the kind of tortured tragedy familiar in all Maupassant’s work – in some ways he’s the French equivalent of Thomas Hardy in that his stories are firmly rooted in the landscape with a palpable feel for Gallic traditions. We first meet the heroine Jeanne (Judith Chemla) planting lettuces in the pottager of the Chateau she shares with her Baron father (Jean Pierre Darroussin) and Baroness mother (Yolande Moreau).

Brizé’s choice of the Academy ratio – used in silent film – embodies the closeted almost claustrophobic nature of Jeanne’s domestic environment full of love and laughter until she is introduced to her future husband, a flawed and improvished nobleman, Viscount Julien de Lamare (Swann Arland). Her life will never be the same again.

Working with his regular writer Florence Vignon, Brizé condenses the novel into an engrossing drama (just short of two hours) that quails away from the habitual mannered approach of classic period dramas to create a naturalistic and impressionist portrait that retains considerable dramatic heft, thanks to Anne Klotz’ suberb editing, while also being sensitive and delicately rendered in Antoine Heberle’s exquisite visuals that flip from vibrant summer days to the wretched, rain-soaked wintery ones that hint at doom and disaster from the beginning.

The film unravels in a succession of suggestive short scenes that sketch out episodes in the narrative leaving us to fill in the gaps with our own imagination and leave time for Jeanne to contemplate and process her thoughts and feelings. Married life with Julien is no bed of roses : when Jeanne finds her maid Rosalie’s bedroom empty in the night, a brief but melodramtic scene in the garden follows implying that Julien and Rosalie are up to no good. It soon emerges that Julien’s poor family traits are inbred.

True to the page, Brize reworks Maupassant’s mistrust of religion and the church in general: The consequences of Jeanne’s reliance on the family pastor (Francois-Xavier Ledoux) for moral guidance over her husband’s behaviour lead to more heartake involving her seemingly close friend and neighbour Georges de Fourville (Alain Beigel), whose wife, Gilberte (Clotilde Hesme) flirts with the cheating Julien.

The Baron, a strong but largely silent performance from Jean-Pierre Darroussin, is extremely vocal when it comes to his grandson (played by Finnegan Oldfield as a late teenager and beyond) who appears to have inherited his father’s profligacy and lack of integrity, but Jeanne turns a blind eye to these traits, investing her love in him and channeling all her hope for the future in his empty promises.

Judith Chemla (Camille Rewinds) gives a calm but resonating performance as Jeanne generating considerable empathy as she slowly absorbs years of sadness, loss and emotional turmoil to her considerable detriment as she reaches middle age. One again Stephane Brizé has made a powerful and immersive character drama, impeccably crafted and enormously moving. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 12 JANUARY 2018

 

 

Leatherface (2017) | DVD release

Dirs: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury | Writer: Seth M Sherwood | Cast: Lili Taylor, Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Sam Strike, James Bloor, Jessica Madsen, Sam Coleman, Finn Jones | US | Horror | 90′

French directing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who rose to fame with their standout debut Inside, have done their best to give an arthouse twist to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 cult original TCM replacing his pared-down grainy indie look with a grungy green-sheened shocker, blunting facial features and darkening scenes of gory violence and misogyny. It’s a tolerably decent adaptation which echoes Malick’s Badlands.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has so far re-emerged from its blood-soaked stable with seven reimagining of variable quality of which Leatherface is a prequel to the original. Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) was the worst which ironically made a healthy profit unlike Tobe’s original, made on a shoestring budget adding considerably to its appeal; it became a champion of the ‘less is more’ school of horror filmmaking. Although Tobe died as this one premiered, he could go to his grave peacefully in the knowledge that his film will be remembered – the others won’t.

The plot is more sparing than the mostly obscured carnage, but sound effect vividly convey the deep horror of proceedings. A cast of mostly Bulgarian newcomers is led by US stalwarts Stephen Dorff (as seedy sheriff Hinton) and Lili Taylor who plays Verna, a deranged chainsaw-obsessed mother who attempts to pass on her addiction to her son Jed (Boris Kabakchiev) in the family’s wooden farmhouse in deepest Texas, 1955. Jed gradually gets on board with the family’s ghoulish games. But when Dorff’s daughter becomes a victim of the demonic Verna, he punishes her by placing Jed in a draconian remand home Gorman House, where ten years later, under an assumed name for public protection and also as a ploy to keep us on tenterhooks, the long-term inmate has developed into a fully blown psychopath, wreaking acts of unspeakable violent towards the nursing staff.

The horror of Leatherface largely derives from what is insinuated rather than seen. And this extends beyond the classic chainsaw screeching. Although, make no mistake, some of the brutality is hard to watch – if indeed you can glimpse it in the murky darkness – and most of the violence is sadly inflicted on female characters although, parodoxically, Verna is the arch villainess of the piece. But not all the horror is fuelled by gore: There is one particularly unsavoury individual with enormous moobs – did they really have them in those pre-pill days of the 1950s when crops and the water supply was still pure and oestrogen-free?.

ON RELEASE | EST 18 December 2017 | DVD 8 January 2018

Attraction (2017)

Dir.: Fyodor Bondarchuk: Cast: Irina Starshenbaum, Alexander Petrov, Alexander Petrov, Rinal Mukhametov | Sci-fi | Russian Federation 2017, 117′.

Director Fyodor Bondarchuk, son of the late Sergei (Waterloo), has filmed a script by Andrey Zolotaryov and Oleg Malovichko about a Moscow teenager falling in love with a stranded alien as an outlandish extravaganza that completely relies on the brilliant widescreen images of Mikhail Khasaya for its entertainment value.

An alien spaceship is shot down in a suburb of Moscow and teenager Yulya (Starshenbaum), living in a high rise block with her father after the death of her mother, just gets away with her life, being surprised by the attack whilst in bed with her boyfriend Artyom (Petrov). Her father, high-ranking officer Lebeder (Menshikov), is put in charge of containing the space ship, and finding out the intentions of the aliens. Yulya falls in love with Hekon (Mukhametov), one of the alien survivors of the crash, who has saved her life. Meanwhile, Artyom and his group of teenage hoodlums chase the alien, whom Yulya is hiding. In a grand finale, Artyom, having stolen the impregnable shield of Hekon, chases the lovers until the bitter end.

ATTRACTION was a big hit in Russia, earning around a million Roubles at the box office. Undemanding, to say the least, it is just the same eye-candy Hollywood aims for, but is even more prudish than its equivalent US products, and also shares the laborious dialogues about the meaning of it all at the end – these are supposed to be relevant, but are as banal as everything gone before. The characters are one-dimensional, and there are no twists in the narrative, every move is well telegraphed. Even the glittering technology employed cannot hide the emptiness of this spectacle, which is strictly for the genre fans. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2018 | Reviewed at THE UK RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL | 19 NOVEMBER 26 NOVEMBER 2017

All the Money in the World (2017) ****

Dir: Ridley Scott | David Scarpa | Cast: Christopher Plummer, Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charley Shotwell, Andrew Buchan | US | Biopic Drama | 132′

“There’s a purity to things, that I’ve never found in a human being” says the billionaire oil magnate John Paul Getty as he drools over his art treasures in Ridley Scott’s rip-roaring rollercoaster of a thriller that deftly explores the psychology behind the super rich. Yes, they are “different from us, they have more money” and they don’t want to part with a penny. Or so we discover in this lush biopic crime drama that takes us through the events surround the scandal. Apart from mistrust, this cinematic parable also explores the nature of power and of fear – a fear of letting amassed wealth drain away to the next generation.

Getty senior famously refused to pay the ransom demand for the release of his favourite grandson – then only 16. The film opens on a sultry summer evening in Rome (1973), where John Paul Getty III is bundled into a van by Calabrian gangsters. The tough old tycoon suspects the boy of colluding with his mother in the scheme, but also resents the power struggle and wants to avoid setting a precedent for kidnappings everywhere.

Gorgeous to look at – like flipping through a Seventies copy of Vogue or Tatler – this is an intoxicatingly visual romp through events. It also pictures the life of the glitterati at play and under pressure in their plush playgrounds. Richly adapted by David Scarpa from John Pearson’a paperback Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J Paul Getty. The story still has resonance for many who remember the spate of Red Brigade kidnappings (1973 – 1978), when kids of rich Italian industrialists – and often their entire families – were forced into exile in Switzerland.

Extraordinary also that Christopher Plummer was a last minute shoe-in for the disgraced Kevin Spacey: he slips into his role with the consummate ease of a python slivering over a plump leather setttee. Glinting and salivating over his precious art collection – as his oil empire ratchets up another million – he fondles the telex tape as if it were made of satin. There’s a touch of poetic licence to the drugged-up way Getty Senior’s son John (Andrew Buchan) is portrayed – in one scene he is wheel-chaired and comatose, but this gives more importance to Michelle Williams’s role as the smoothly delightful Abigail, his petite but deadly plucky wife and mother of kidnapped Paul (Charlie Plummer in another thoughtful turn). Mark Wahlberg plays his standard role as Chase, Getty’s CIA-trained negotiator and bodyguard. There is also a vignette for Olivia Magnani the silky brunette from Paolo Sorrentino’s sophomore feature The Consequences of Love (2004), she plays the wife of arch mobster Mammoliti (Marco Leonardi). The only slightly bum note is the over-sensationalised Italian kidnap sequences where Roman Duris does his best a good guy/gangster Cinquanta with a French accent and the swagger of League of Gentleman’s ‘Pop’. But that’s a small criticism of this lush and supremely enjoyable way to start 2018 filmwise, smug in the knowledge that money isn’t everything – but it helps MT

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 5 JANAUARY 2018

Rey (2017) ****

Dir: Niles Atallah | Biopic Drama | Chile/France | 91′

California-born, Chile-based Niles Atallah’s King (Rey) is a surreal imagined drama with roots in the largely forgotten history of Patagonia and based on the life of the French country lawyer Orélie-Antoine de Tounens (1825-1878), who travelled in 1860 to a remote part of southern Chile, where Mapuche Indians were in fierce battle for survival with Chilean military forces keen on expansion. Mapuche folklore told them to expect a white visitor who would help them  to unite their native Indian population in the region into the new Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia, and so agreed to make him the hereditary monarch of this realm that is typically accepted as part of Chile and Argentina. The story of how far he got in realising his dreams is shrouded in mystery, but Atallah is not so much interested in facts, but in the mindset of the man who wanted to be King.

Told in five chapters and an epilogue, we first meet de Tounens (Lisboa) riding on horseback through the Patagonian wilderness, holding in his hand a self-made flag: the self-declared King is on the way to meet Mapuche chief Manil, to discuss the foundation of the kingdom. But Manil has died, and his son Quilipan, is not willing to meet Tounens, because he is a white man (winka) and the Gods would be angry if he stayed. Tounens is accompanied by the scout Rosales (Riveros), who soon betrays him to the Chilean authorities. Imprisoned, Tounens is put on trail; in the courtroom, everyone is wearing a mask. Tounens is accused of plotting the overthrow of the Chilean government with the help of France, supported by his fellow countrymen Lachaise and Desfontaines, who are “ministers’ in his cabinet. Threatened with the death penalty, Tounens is finally deported to France.

Atallah asks the question: why would a rather ordinary man from the Dordogne want to become the monarch of a wild region of South America? During his research, Atallah discovered how Tounens had promised the government in Paris a new colony, called “New France”, three times the size of the motherland, and full of mineral wealth. Yet to the director this is only part of the story, because nobody recorded the tale from the Mapuche’s perspective. Even today, along with the other indigenous inhabitants, the Mapuche don’t feel like being part of Chile or Argentina; they are discriminated against, and live in fear of the authorities.

Atallah has created the fictional aspect of history re-told in his own way: in 2011 he buried the film stock of 35mm, 16 mm and Super Eight in his garden, to see for himself what history does to film. Furthermore, he used stop-motion and puppetry in the deliriously feverish passages of his feature; on top, images are scratched and disfigured to give the feature the historic quality he was aiming for. Somehow reminiscent of the work of Guy Maddin, along with Eraserhead, Aguirre and Zama, Rey is inventively creative: a nightmare vision of history with a protagonist who created his own apocalypse. AS

PRINCE ANTOINE IV, the latest heir and pretender to the throne of Araucania and Patagonia died on December 16, 2017 aged 75. 

ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 5 JANUARY 2017

 

Tempestad (2016)***

Wri-Dir: Tatiana Huezo | DoP: Ernesto Pardo | Doc| Mexico | 105′

Tatiana Huezo’s structurally-flawed second feature explores the timely phenomenon of human trafficking and migration through the interweaving stories of two women in Mexico.

While one shares an emotionally subdued story of her conflicted life as circus clown and mother. The other tells of her relief to escape the trauma of a prison sentence for human trafficking that then led to her being locked her away so the government could be seen to controlling the country’s migration issue and keeping it out of the headlines. But although each woman’s story is powerfully emotive in its own right, the individual impact is strangely lost in Heuzo’s decision to disconnect the spoken narrative from the valuable images accompanying them, so limiting the ultimate clout of the revealing experiences central to this female road movie.

TEMPESTAD is a lyrical and often dreamlike socio-political study that speaks from the heart but feels strangely alienating to watch despite its human interest credentials. The visually arresting prize-winning footage of a rain-soaked bus journey through lush landscapes of the massive country bears little relation to Miriam’s voiceover which deals her harrowing time in the confines of a baking-hot male-dominated prison. We hear how she subsequently became one of Mexico’s “pagadores” in a corrupt system where her family was forced to pay for her upkeep in a non-government institution, in order to keep her story from surfacing. Clearly Miriam was unable or unwilling to appear on camera so her words play out on an audio-track over the footage featuring unknown people making their way on a similar journey across Mexico from Matamoros (on the Texan border) to Tulum, over a thousand miles away.

To make things even more confusing, Miriam’s story actually begins in the aftermath to her release from jail and then works backwards to explain how she got there. Then, half an hour into the film, we meet the middle-aged circus clown Adela going about her days combining work and looking after her children. There is no connection between the two women at this stage, but Huezo continues to cut between the two stories without revealing Adela’s involvement in the film, so further weakening the heft of her premise. This all becomes clear in the final denouement. Despite these serious structural errors, Ernesto Pardo’s stunning camerawork is to be applauded in this worthwhile portrait of human suffering that raises the profile of Mexico’s murky past. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FRO, 5 JANUARY 2018

 

 

The Man with the Iron Heart (2017) | Home Ent release

Dir: Cedric Jimenez | Writer: David Farr, Audrey Diwan, Cedric Jimenez | Cast: Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O’Connell, Jack Reynor, Mia Wasikowska, Stephen Graham, Celine Sallette, Gilles Lellouche | Screenplay: David Farr, Audrey Diwan, Cedric Jimenez | France | Biopic Drama | 

Jason Clarke and Rosamund Pike star alongside Jack O’Connell and Mia Wasikowska in this visually impressive but structurally questionable portrait of the rise of Nazism and the Heydrich assassination attempt at derailing its genesis.

Reinhard Heydrich was the leader of Czechoslovakia under Nazi occupation, and also the man behind the Final Solution. Douglas Sirk was the first to make a film about the affair only a year after it happened in 1943. Fritz Lang followed, and 75 years later came Anthropoid (Sean Ellis). But this is a far grander outing with its stellar cast and cool visual style, and unfurls in two sections; the first describing the rise to power of Heydrich, a swaggering libertine whose military career is masterminded by his politically astute wife (a gracefully convincing Rosamund Pike), who suggests he joins the Nazis at a time where they were merely a collection of incongruous agitators where under the control of Himmler (a shify Stephen Graham) he helps the party to the height of its merciless power. The camera then focuses on the group of Czechoslovak Resistance fighters who plot Heydrich’s assassination.

Scripted by French director Jimenez, Audrey Diwan, and British screenwriter David Farr (Hanna), the film opens in dour mood in the run up to the car journey in Kiel where Heydrich (Clarke) was court-martialed and rejected by the army for his sexual misconduct. After his marriage to his then girlfriend, Lina (Pike) he starts to flesh out as an increasingly draconian and ambivalent tyrant in tense and confrontational domestic scenes with his wife and during his professional duties as the Nazi party takes shape in onset of WWII.

The film flips back and forth incorporating photo montage and building considerable tension and feelings of unease as we witness Heydrich’s strict surface persona as a ‘family man’ and respectable officer to his uncontrolled and violent side that frequently often breaks out leading to his nickname “the man with the iron heart”. At first, Lina appears to have the upper hand, having saved his career and agreed to bestow her bounties on him. But she is gradually diminished by his psychopathic personality into a confused and alienated woman. And this is also a reflection of how wives fared under Nazism. The second half feels looser and far more underwritten with the characters of Jan (O’Connell/Anthropoid), and his Czech colleague, Jozef (Jack Reynor/Sing Street), who arrive in Prague to prepare for their mission, abetted by their Resistance colleagues, including Mia Wasikowska as a love interest. There are scenes of cruel brutality, with children being threatened and families taking cynanide tablets as Guillaume Roussel’s rousing score plays up the emotional bits leading up to the final coruscating showdown in the church where Czechs thrillingly give it their all to a mortifying finale. And Despite the strange dichotomy of its two halves and changes in tone, Jimenez pulls it all off with panache. THE MAN WITH THE IRON HEART is a highly entertaining and intelligent film and deeply affecting. MT

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY and VOD FROM 15 JANUARY 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hostiles (2017) ***

Dir: Scott Cooper | Writer:    Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Peter Mullan, Scott Shepherd Rory Cochrane, Jonathan Majors | Western | US | 133′

There’s a lot to be learnt from the legendary Western directors such as Sergio Leone, John Ford, Anthony Mann or  Howard Hawks. Incendiary themes of ethnic cleansing and Colonialism are always ways handled with a touch of charisma or even dark humour that Scott Cooper’s philosophical but often laborious tale of how the West was won, has failed to register. And although Cooper adds a modern twist that sees the US Army acknowledging its racism and   violence towards the frontier tribes, adding a modern twist of reconciliation between the age-old rivals: the white settlers and the Native Americans, HOSTILES is a film that completely lacks charm, although as sly slick of humour is almost perceptible in the final moments. The white characters are emotionally stoic and one-dimensional despite their generous screen time, whilst their Native American counterparts simply serve the narrative as silent underwritten cyphers. To his credit Big Chief exudes tremendous dignity by his presence alone. But has few lines.

HOSTILES is a stunningly mounted and often poetic widescreen frontier epic that thoughtfully explores the fraught tensions between white men and Native Americans, and remains reasonably engrossing throughout its slow-burning 132 minutes. There’s little subtlety to its depiction of the tribal types: Comanche are shown as brutish marauders whilst the Cheyennes appear to have hidden depths of spirituality, despite their bouts savagery. This is hard-edged stuff that opens with the Comanches burning down and looting a ranch belonging to a white family. The father is scalped, the three children shot dead while mother Rosalee Quaid (Pike) embarks on a sole journey for survival where she meets Christian Bale’s retiring Army caption Capt. Joseph Blocker who is tasked, against his will, with accompanying Chief Yellow Hawk and his family, and later a convicted felon across the arid wilderness to safety. Blocker is threatened with losing his pension, and has many reasons to hate the Chief for his barbaric acts towards white men. Few survive the ordeal and although Cooper’s premise attempts have the rivals bury the hatchet through comradeship during their travails, the transition from foe to friendship is unconvincingly portrayed: Pike’s character is one minute mourning her murdered kin, and only a few scenes later accepting an intimate olive branch provided by the Native American Haw.

HOSTILES is based on a ‘manucript’ penned by The Hunt for Red October writer Donald Stewart. And it feels progressive despite its later 19th century setting. One scene features a convivial dinner where Blocker sits through a bleeding Liberal speech delivered by the goodly wife (Robin Malcolm) of Peter Mullan’s Lt. Colonel Ross McCowan.  And there’s quiet contemplation to be found in DoP Masanobu Takayanagi’s glowing landscapes and Max Richter’s lowkey atmospheric score that allow breathing space amidst the worthiness of it all. Rosamund Pike shows a woman’s capacity to thaw and adjust emotionally to her tragic circumstances but then Christian Bale’s crusty Captain offers her protection and potentially something more promising between the sheets once his buttoned up exterior feels the warmth of her appeal. Shame therefore that the Native Americans were so scalped of personalities here despite the initial promise of a progressive Western. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 5 January 2018

https://youtu.be/wuZcyScmW_k

 

Glory (2017)

Dir.: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov; Cast: Margita Gosheva, Stefan Denolyubov, Kitodar Todorov, Milko Lazarov, Ivan Savov); Bulgaria/Greece 2016, 101’

GLORY is a spare and rampantly funny satire on contemporary Bulgarian life – crowned with dynamite double twist denouement worthy of Frank Capra.

Groseva and Valchanov reunite with the cast and crew of their standout debut The Lesson. This time Margita Gosheva, is Head of PR Julia Staikova, for the Minister of Transport Kanchev, who has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. When honest railwayman Tzanko Petrov (Denolyubov) finds a Million Lev in a bag on a deserted railways line and hands the money in, Staikova is all poised for a PR stunt: Petrov will be awarded a medal by the grateful Minister Kanchev (Savov); the whole ceremony captured on TV. But Petrov desperately needs a makeover and Julia’s team sets to work on his stutter. Then Petrov reveals that his fellow workers steal diesel fuel to top up their meagre salaries -, and is prepared to name names. But Kanchev’s lack of diplomacy lets the side down and, to make matters worse, Julia re-styles Petrov with a cheap digital watch, replacing his family heirloom – a Russian ‘Slava’ – which then goes missing. The timepiece is of great sentimental value to Petrov – a metaphor for the traditional Bulgaria – and he won’t be fobbed off with a replacement – that seems to embody all that’s glib about the new. Sadly Julia’s PR stunt goes from bad to worse when a local reporter takes up Petrov’s case. The PR woman emerges a self-seeking, control freak and Gosheva plays her with ruthless inflexibility – giving no quarter to her husband, or gruelling IVF injection schedule. Petrov, on the other hand, hails from a long-gone Bulgaria where Communism and a rural existence are now out of fashion. He’s not after money (just the 85 Lev he had picked up before finding the money bag), but his watch, with an engraving from his father – his only tangible link to the past. Well- paced and punchy, Glory culminates in a well-staged off-camera finale that perfectly caps everything that has gone before in this impressive feature. DoP Krum Rodriquez avoids total realism, always finding new ways to conjure up the cataclysmic difference between the worlds Julia and Petrov inhabit. Finally, the end is a brilliant exercise in off-camera violence, closing this impressive feature. Groseva and Valchanov pull the whole thing off with consummate skill: Who says, that the second film is always the most difficult?

GLORY IS NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES | LOCARNO 2017 REVIEW.

 

Brad’s Status (2017) ****

Dir/Writer:  Mike White | Cast: Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Jenna Fisher, Michael Sheen Luke Wilson | Comedy drama | US | 102′

This welcome addition to the intergenerational conflict genre sees Ben Stiller as a father fraught with past regrets and present doubts on a trips that threatens to sabotage the boy’s hopes for the future.

Although BRAD’S STATUS sounds like a maudlin affair, it turns out to be hilarious, insightful and upbeat. Written and directed by Mike White who also stars as one of Stiller’s old school friends – a gay man who has found the same success on screen as he has in real life – this could turn out to one of best comedies of 2018. Stiller plays Brad with a wealth of subtle mannerisms that succinctly convey the modern angst of his midlife crisis in what White terms as “whiteman’s first world problems”, but we all empathise with him in his constant social-media meltdown. Similar to Stiller’s recent role in Noah Baumbach’s Meyerowitz Stories – here he plays the father rather than the offspring, but he’s a man who is essentially happy with his middle class life as founder of a worthwhile nonprofit group who enjoys a stable marriage and a decent rapport with his talented teenager. But a touch of envy and ego creeps in when he ruminates over the perceived successes of his old friends. Brad feels deflated by their fame and financial status, but also at the feeling of being left out of an invitation to a recent reunion gathering, an omission that he puts down to the fact that: “it wasn’t friendship that bonded them, but a perceived level of success”, in a peer group where he feels the inferior member. All these anxieties are relayed in Brad’s stream of consciousness as the two make their way to Boston and Cambridge (Massachusetts). Son Troy is played thoughtfully by Austin Abrams.

Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson and Jemaine Clement also give flawless performances as his successful friends. The humour lies in the series of comedy scenarios showcasing their ‘perfect’ sex and money-filled lifestyles. In contrast  Brad ‘sees himself soldiering with his sad little life. And there’s a hint of amusing narcissism too in the way he ‘blames’ wife Melanie (Jenna Fisher) for being too content with her life and not being demanding enough about their choices. The only criticism here is the over-grating score. BRAD’S STATUS is a heart-warming film because Brad is just such a convincing character and one who chimes with us all as we overthink and reflecting on our lives, often to our own detriment. This is cleverly brought to a head by an incident involving Troy’s newfound friend (Shazi Raja), who confronts Brad with his own self-pity and solipsism in an ego-crushing moment that he had hoped might lead to an opportunity for an oldest-swinger-in-town flirtation. The final scenes navel-gazing as the regrets of the past meet the hopes for the future. It’s amusing and highly relevant in capturing today’s mood of mindfulness As Melanie so rightly says: “Be present, I love you”. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 5 JANUARY 2018

 

 

 

Napoléon (1927)

Dir|Writer|Prod: Abel Gance | Music: Carl Davis, Carmine Coppola, Arthur Honegger | Silent | 330min

One of the highlights of silent film is the digitally restored version of Abel Gance’s cinematic triumph NAPOLÉON. This magnificent film is enhanced by Carl Davis’ rousing score and technical touches to reveal the original tinting that make it feel edgy and contemporary enough for modern audiences as it approaches it centenary.

It portrays the early life of the legendary French soldier who was go on to make his mark in world for centuries to come. In opening scenes Napoleon Bonaparte is seen playing with his school friends in the snow, already asserting his powers of leadership in an impressive performance by Vladimir Roudenko. Albert Dieudonnéthen plays the adult Napoleon as he forges ahead with a successful military campaign in Italy. Running at over 5.5 hours, this is an absorbing and thrilling experience blending melodrama with moving musical interludes and combining intimate domestic scenes with full scale widescreen historical recreations that offer insight into the French Revolution and Italian campaigns of 1796. MT

Digitally restored by Photoplay Productions and the BFI National Archive, with a newly-recorded score, composed and conducted by Carl Davis, Napoleon (1927) comes to UK cinemas, DVD/Blu-ray and BFI Player | Back this December 2017 

Jupiter’s Moon (2017)

Dir|Writer; Kornel Mundruczo | Cast: Merab Ninidze, Gyorgy Cserhalmi, Monika Balsai, Zsombor Jeger | 110min | Sci-fi | Hungary

After success with his Cannes Un Certain Regard winner White God (2013) Hungarian auteur Kornel Mundruczo mades it into the festival’s main competition last year with this flawed sci-fi thriller that sees a young immigrant shot down while illegally crossing the border into Hungary. Terrified and in shock, he finds his life has mysteriously been transformed by the gift of levitation.

Clearly the director has honed his craft since his previous arthouse winner with its strong amd imaginative narrative . JUPITER is visually more ambitious and technically brilliant but narratively a mess. The bewildering storyline starts off with a great premise – a Syrian refugee becomes an angel in one of Jupiter’s Moons where a cold ocean known as Europa spawns new forms of life. The metaphor is clear and cleverly thought out yet the film tries to be too many things, a political commentary and an action thriller: less would have been far more effective than more. After a blindingly intriguing opening scene, the shaky handheld camera continues in a tonally uniform almost continuous take that eventually feels exhausting, and hardly ever gives up, detracting from the enjoyment of the stunning set pieces.

Zsombor Jéger is the central character but not a sympathetic or particularly engaging one as Aryan, the Syrian refugee who is gunned down by László (György Cserhalmi), the nasty leader of a refugee camp in Budapest. Aryan survives his injuries and then discovers an uncanny ability to float, and from then on desperately tries to find his father with the help of a nefarious doctor, Stern (Merab Ninidze), who has been struck off for medical malpractice. Aryan is inveigled into a plan to defraud Stern’s rich patients into believing he has faith healing properties, but this is a tenuous ploy that again feels too gimmicky.

White God had a believable plot with engaging characters but Jupiter’s Moon, although a far more technically skilful film, feels hollow, glib and also frankly quite laborious despite the arresting visual wizardry of White God cinematographer Marcell Rév. Ninidze Stern’s Gabor is a quixotic and cunning rogue and far and away the most exciting character in an ensemble of cardboard cyphers. Along with the visual mastery there is an impressive atmospheric score that helps to ramp up the tension and also adds a certain gravitas. A shame then that the whole things feels so underwhelming and unwieldy as a story. Clearly the director is trying to up his game but needs to establish whether he wants to go for arthouse audiences or the mainstream crowd. White God was starting to build him a fanbase, but this seems like a step backwards. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 5 January 2018

The Prince of Nothingwood (2017)

Dir.: Sonia Kronlund; Documentary with Salim Shaheen; France/Germany 2017, 85 min.

In her first full length documentary feature, Sonia Kronlund captures the desperate atmosphere in Afghanistan where its most prolific filmmaker, Salim Shaheen struggles to create no-budget movies in this war torn country –  110 so far – and he’s still only in his fifties.

Best known for her work in French television, Kronlund has an in-depth knowledge of Afghanistan and is highly aware of the dangers in following Shaheen on his trip to the mountain region of Bamiyan, where he is going to shoot number 111 of his oeuvre: filming with take place in a safe area, they still need security guards.

Shaheen emerges a fiesty character and a film maniac: as a child he sneaked into the local cinema whence he was sent packing, and punished when he got home. He made his first short films in his mid teens. His brother lost his life in the Soviet invasion of 1980, and forced Shaheen to flee to Iran. Two years later, he joined the Afghan army and was lucky to survive, playing dead during an attack. A year after demobilisation, he married his first wife in 1984 and acquires a VHS camera, directing his first feature The Undefeated. With support from friends and family members in the cast and crew, Shaheen Films was born in 1892, as the Soviet Army was retreating. A decade late he opened a makeshift cinema in his basement. But the 1993  Civil War hampers his film projects: Whilst shooting Gardab, a rocket killed ten of his crew, the director had a narrow escape. With the Taliban is hot on his heels, he continues his filmmaking, but they still burn many of his features. Eventually fleeing to Pakistan, he made a living as an actor, but once again returns to his homeland in 2001, after the Taliban’s fall, undefeated and undefaticable – producing about ten films a year; slowing down to “only’ five features a year from 2009. 

There is a role-play going on between Kronlund and Shaheen: he is the great male leader, she is the very frightened woman, asking for his macho protection. But there are limits even for Shaheen: Kronlund never gets to interview the director’s two wives, or his daughters: they are kept away from the camera. The film’s title is a quote by Shaheen: ‘not Hollywood, not Bollywood just Nothingwood’. And he really makes films out of nothing for a severely curtailed home market, because there are only four functional cinemas left in Kabul. Kronlund’s portrait of Shaheen runs parallel to the war, which has never left the country. Even when shooting in Bamiyan, they discover the Taliban has destroyed the Buddha relics. Shaheen has to be a emotionally resourceful, often masquerading as a clown for the benefits of authorities, flighting to survive and create in this sad, impoverished country. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 DECEMBER 2017 

 

Bingo: King of the Mornings (2017)

Dir.: Daniel Rezende; Cast: Vladimir Brichta, Leandra Leal, Tania Muller, Caua Martins, Ana Lucia Torres; Brazil 2017, 113′.

First time director Daniel Rezende, well known for his editing on features like City of God, offers up a vivid, almost lurid, but essentially empty biopic of actor turned children’s entertainer Arlindo Barreto, known here as Augusto Mendes. Very much in the style of a Tele novela, BINGO (aka Bozo) is larger than life, almost a caricature of his own caricature. In early 1980s Buenos Aires, we first Augusto Mendes (Brichta) getting by as an actor in soft-porn movies and bit-player in Tele novelas. But he craves fame, in order to impress his mother Marta (Torres) and much neglected son Gabriel (Martins). Somehow he lands the role of the clown Bingo in a morning-show for children’s television. Against the will of director Lucia (Leal), a born again evangelical Christian, he spices up his part and becomes an over-night sensation. But drugs and alcohol take their toll, and he gets the sack after nearly losing his life in a drunken debacle . But every cloud has a silver lining, particularly where Bingo is concerned. This Brazilian crowd-pleasing Oscar hopeful (it didn’t make the final list) uses every cliché in the book to put its message across. Certainly BINGO has its merits as a pure spectacle – Lula Carvalho’s eye-catching visuals are ferociously lively and colourful, but Rezende’s simplistic approach to the narrative makes Mendes’ conversion to religious zealot rather unconvincing: underlining the trusted caveat: Beware of features claiming to be “based on a true story”. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 15 DECEMBER

 

 

 

 

Song of Granite (2017)

Dir.: Pat Collins; Cast: Colm Seoighe, Michael O’Conthoala, Macdara O’Fatharta, Jaren Cerf, Kate Nick Chonaonaigh; ROI/Canada 2017, 98 min.

Pat Collins’ portrait of Irish Dean Nos singer Joe Heaney (Seosamh O hEanai) is an exercise in displacement. Elliptically, and often enigmatically, we follow Heaney from the village of Carna on the west Coast of Ireland, where he was born in 1919, to his exile in the United States and Canada – from the mid 1960s until his death in 1984.

Biopics often fall short of our expectations due to endless Talking Heads sharing their own thoughts, but here Collins relies on sound and image to get his subject across, at it works. Heaney is played by three different actors: Colm Seoghe as a boy – by far the most impressive of the trio; Michael O’Conthoala in his forties and Macdara O’Fathharta as the ageing Heaney in his sixties. Heaney lived for a long time in isolation in Carna, he was only “discovered” by the public at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, after which he emigrated to New York. Collins does away with a narrative structure; long shots and many close-up framing of faces are mixed with static shots of landscapes, giving the feature the feeling of a daydream. Sometimes Collins switches to plain naturalism: when an ethnomusicologist visits Heaney’s village, his father sings into an ancient recoding machine, Collins arranges the scene with four villagers in framing his father, the background is made up by a two door-shaped crevice. The camera wanders from back- to foreground, creating a composition, which is conceptual perfect – but creates a feeling of distance. The same can be said for the shots in New York -actually filmed in Montreal: Heaney in his porter uniform, lonely in his basement flat, meeting another Irish musician and the introduction of two females, Rosie (Cerf) and Maire (Chonanonaigh), whose identity remains in the dark – as do many aspects of this docudrama. The Irish folk songs, liberally sprayed throughout, are taken in long takes, performed without instrumental accompaniment, are also part of the overall structure, creating a historical, almost anthropological style.

Whilst Collins aesthetic braveness should be applauded on the one hand, Heaney remains an elusive figure: his feeling of displacement in North America is underwhelmingly documented. We never get any nearer to who Heaney was. He is sucked into the structure of a film whose aesthetics are taken much more seriously than the character it aims to portray. Overall, this leaves a hollow feeling, almost like an idyllic picture postcard from a bygone era. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 15 DECEMBER 2017 NATIONWIDE

Mountain (2017)

Dir: Jennifer Peedom Narrator: Willem Dafoe | Doc | 74′ | Australia

Willem Dafoe narrates Sherpa director Jennifer Peedom’s dazzling documentary about a growing obsession with mountain climbing. And for those seeking a challenge in their otherwise safe lives, scaling great heights is clearly the answer. MOUNTAIN certainly proves a terrifying watch for those who prefer to admire nature’s peaks from ground level.

Dominated by an overbearing soundtrack, this is a magnificent and vertiginous spectacle. The camera sweeps and soars over the heighest heights of the world often leaving us gasping for breath while pondering the psychological states of those who only feel alive when they are dicing with death. While Renan Ozturk’s camerawork is extraordinarily death-defying, Defoe’s gravelly narration is as craggy as a granite rockface.

The film opens in stark black-and-white, accompanied by the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s thunderous tones, before picturing a lone free climber clinging to a cliff face, exhilarated by the view around him. Peedom describes a need to reconnect with nature that began roughly in the last century when war ceased to provide the derring-do missing in these climbers’ lives. Turning historical, the film points out how the desire to conquer and break new ground all started with Hillary and Tenzing. Whereas nowadays scaling Everest has become almost like queuing on the entrance to the M6 on a bank holiday – with a better view, and a more expensive initial outlay – climbing the mountain requires financial outlay equivalent to remortgaging the house. The losers are often the poor Sherpas who risk their lives because this is often their only way of earning a living.

Apart from mountaineering in snowy peaks, dry rocky peaks are also scaled in a film that crosses continents leaving no stone unturned in the extreme sports scenario: BASE jumping, daredevil mountain biking, wingsuiting (that resembles flying around clad in a giant bat suit). Some clever dick is also seen tight-roping across two peaks in Castle Valley, Utah. Eventually we start to tire of these feats and long for serene rolling hills and gentle valleys – even at 74 minutes the film overeaches its wow-factor. And the frequent vignettes of a Buddhist monk praying feel somehow misguided considering the many sherpas and climbers who have lost their lives rather than found nirvana.. Ultimately this is an awesome undertaking from Peedom who deserves to be congratulated although her film feels more of a personal feat rather than a piece of entertainment. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 DECEMBER 2017

 

Mountains May Depart (2015)

Writer| Director: Jia Zhang-ke | Cast: Tao Zhao, Yi Zhang, Zijian Dong, Jing Dong Liang | 131′   Drama  China

“Time will transform mountains and rivers, but our hearts will remain the same “

Jia Zhang-ke’s MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART is an beguiling and ambitious piece of filmmaking from a Chinese director whose previous dramas A Touch of Sin and Still Life have inventively captured the changing face of modern China.

Opening as a feisty arthouse love story in the director’s hometown of Fenyang, in the mining province of Shanxi, south of Beijing, the film gradually morphs into a creatively expansive essay film on the future of a wealthy Chinese family and the challenges it faces in adapting to life in a globalised society of Australia. The narrative unfolds in three parts that take place in 1999, 2014 and finally 2025.

The central character Tao is celebrating the dawn of a new century to the rhythms of an old one, in the ancient streets of Fenyang. China has embraced Western capitalism and fast-forwarded itself into a rapid expansion which will see its economy eventually crash and burn within two decades. The new Gods are technological rather than spiritual: cars, machines and mobile phones: and the alienating power of communicating without interacting is strengthening its soul-destroying grip on society.

The director’s wife and longtime collaborator Zhao Tao (Still Life) plays Tao, a simple carefree country girl, in love with Liang (Liang Jingdong) a coal-miner, but is soon tempted into arms of nouveau rich entrepreneur Jingsheng (Zhang Yi), who takes over the mine where Liang is working and steals his girlfriend in the process. In true ‘Posh and Becks’ style, they name their firstborn “Dollar” in celebration of their wealth in this upwardly mobile lifestyle (Yuan Renminbi would have turned out to be a better name, in hindsight). Eventually the threesome cross paths again in the second act in 2014 where Tao is visibly transformed into a sad and introspective woman who realises the error in her ways, and is reduced to a state of deep depression following her father’s death. Dollar eventually comes full circle into the present day state of economic meltdown as his life spins sadly out of control, alienated from family and country, and working as a Deliveroo-style courier.

Nelson Lik-wai Yu’s visuals illuminate and enliven this powerfully intelligent and prescient indie which, despite an ill-judged English language third act, and a slightly clunky opening, resonates with a superb central performance from Zhao Tao.   MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE | 15 December 2017

Blade of the Immortal (2017)

Dir: Takashi Miike | Writers: Hiroaki Samura, Tetsuya Oishi | Action Thriller | Japan | 140′

Seasoned manga director Takashi Miike seems to be live forever like his hero Manji played by Takuya Kimura in what is purported to be the Japanese director’s 100th film. How can any artist be original with this body of work behind him, Indeed, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL lacks the inventive touches of his earlier work but it’s certainly enjoyable and as highly polished as Majii’s extensive weaponry. Adapted from Hiroaki Samura’s manga of the same name, it follows a Shogunate samurai warrior who is endowed with immortality due to the poisoned chalice delivered on him by a white-veiled Buddist nun in the opening scenes. This curse – or boon – depending on how you look at it, is delivered in the form of ‘sacred’ bloodworms scattered on his fatal wounds inflicted during a fight to avenge his sister’s death at the hands of the ruthless Itto-ryu, a school of fighters led by the weirdly tattooed Anotsu (Soto Fukushi). In this way he is rendered impervious to lethal wounds – which heal at the drop of a sword – severed limbs cleverly finding their back to his body. Initially this sounds just the ticket for a Shogun warrior, but as time goes by he gets sick and tired of the whole charade until he meets cute Rin (teen star Hana Sugisaki), a determined tomboy who iis also seeking revenge for her parents who were also slain by the Itto-ryu. This is flesh on the bloody bones of the saga, which limps on in a gore-fuelled second act which never really develops its existing immortal characters but just keeps on introducing us to other ghoulish weirdos including Sabato Kuroi (Kazuki Kitamura) and mysterious monk Eiku Shizuma (Ebizo Ichikawa) who appears to possess an antidote to the bloodworms  in a series of subplots during its 140 minutes of blood-letting and limp-lopping tempered, with occasional stabs of humour amid the mass slaughter. All good clean fun. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 DECEMBER 2017

 

Finnish Film Season at the Barbican | 29 Nov – 3 Dec 2017

To celebrate the centenary of Finnish independence, the Barbican is hosting a season of films curated by the Midnight Sun Film Festival, an edgy film get-together founded by Mika and Aki Kaurismaki, taking place each year in the heart of Finnish lapland. In London this long weekend opens with Juho Kuosmanen’s remake of the first ever Finnish fiction film The Moonshiners with its live musical accompaniment by Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri and live foley by Heikki Rossi. Finnish film classics capturing the spirit of the Midnight Sun are:

Moonshiners (1) copy THE MOONSHINERS (2017)  + ROMU-MATTILA AND A BEAUTIFUL LADY (2012) | 29 NOV | 18.30

Un Certain Regard 2016 winner Juho Kuosmanen (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki) presents a double bill of his silent shorts Romu-Mattila, a fact-based drama about an elderly man facing eviction, followed by The Moonshiners, a re-make of a long-lost Finnish farce (1907) exploring the subject of liquor distillation.

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL (1990) + LAND OF HAPPINESS (1993) | 30 NOV | 20.45  

A double bill pairing featuring the last in Kaurismaki’s Proletariat Trilogy, along with Markku Polonen’s debut feature. The Match Factory Girl is considered one of Kaurismaki’s best films and stars regular collaborator Kati Outinen in an award-winning performance as a down-trodden working girl who finally gets her own back on her abusive parents and boyfriend. Land of Happiness sees a young man returning to 1960s North Karelia where he falls for a dream lover whose erotic Finnish tango-dancing sets the scene for a passionate liaison fraught with nostalgia.

varastettu_kuolema_2THE STOLEN DEATH (1938)  | 30 NOV | 86′ | 18.30

A poetic thriller conveying the atmosphere during the underground resistance of an Helsinki activist group against the Tsarist government of the early 1900s. Lead Tuulikki Paanananen went on to star in Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man. Director Nyrki Tapiovaara lost his life at only 28, during the Winter War.

The Year of the HareTHE YEAR OF THE HARE (1977) | 3 Dec | 129′ | 14.00 

Based on the novel by Arto Paasilinna, this eco-friendly comedy drama explores an advertising exec’s attempt at escaping the rate race for a life in the Lapland countryside, capturing the spirit of TV’s The Good Life. Sadly, Director Risto Jarva was tragically killed in a car crash while returning home from the premiere.

 

People in the Summer NightPEOPLE IN THE SUMMER NIGHT (1948) | 3 Dec | 66′ | 14.00 

Nobel Literature Laureate F E Sillanpaa’s book is ravishingly brought to life here by director Valentin Vaala. Eino Heino’s images capture the brilliant light of Finland’s ‘white nights’ set to a score by Taneli Kuusisto. Martti Katajisto won Best Actor for his vibrant performance as a log-driver whose tragic fate becomes intertwined with that of a farming family, a lumberjack called Nokia, and a young girl and her lover.

FINNISH FILM FESTIVAL | BARBICAN | 29 NOVEMBER – 3 DECEMBER 2017

Lu Over the Wall | Yaoke Tsugeru Lu No Uta (2017)

Dir.: Masaaki Yuasa | Fantasy | Anime with the voices of: Shota Shimoda, Kanon Tani, Minako Kotobuki, Soma Saito; Japan 2017, 112 min.

Director Masaki Yuasa follows his brilliant The Night is Short, Walk on Girl with another eccentric outing featuring a teenage band and a mermaid. LU OVER THE WALL is a spontaneous combustion of music and waterworks that bursts into action in the seaside town of Hirashi Bay, where sullen teenager Kai (Shimoda) is stropping his way through life, resentful of his mother abandoning the family to work as a dancer in Tokyo. Kai fancies himself as a musician and has secretly been posting his efforts on the internet where he meets fellow musician Yuho (Kotobuki), who talks him into to joining her band with her lover Kunio (Saito). Their lively gigs in an abandoned amusement park awaken the musical mermaid Lu (Tani), whose exotic voice and fins that turn into feet when she dances, make her a winning addition to the band. Soon Lu even liberates the local stray dogs from their home, and they turn into amphibious creatures called ‘merdoggies’.

But the townspeople are suspicious of Lu and blame her for causing floods in the region. According to folklore, mermaids are reputed to steal the locals and change them into fish. But Lu’s father, a shark-like creature, comes to the rescue and Kai and Lu declare their love. But can a mermaid really live with a human, particularly when a jealous human like Yuho is around?

The only trouble with Lu is that Yuasa has trouble fitting all his ideas and characters into this inventive new take on a classic mermaid tale, given the meagre running time of just under two hours. There’s enough material here for many hours of enjoyment and the music and images are beautifully cohesive and delightfully entertaining. We really care about Lu and her friends as they frolic in their marine home. Lu is delicately innocent and misunderstood by the locals, in contrast to the more streetwise Kai and Yuho. But Lu is redeemed in the grand finale of this anime treat made fluid and gloriously flowing by its flash animation style. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | 1st DECEMBER 2017

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)

Dir: Bharat Nalluri | US-Ire-Can | Cast: Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Morfydd Clark | Drama | 104′

The Man Who Invented Christmas is a brave attempt to explore the creative process that inspired Charles Dickens’ to pen A Christmas Carol, offering a behind the scenes look at one of England’s best known and most celebrated writers.

Enlivened by a sterling British cast led by a plausible and personable Dan Stevens as Dickens, Jonathan Pryce as his profligate father and Christopher Plummer as the curmudgeonly Scrooge, this is an atmospheric Christmas story that glows with quaint charm but is completely underwhelming as a dramatic narrative, laden down by wooden clichés that reduce the enduring appeal of the writer and his legendary novella.

In 1843 Dickens has suffered a set-back in his writing career and is casting around for creative ideas to finance his growing family and spendthrift father. In his darkest hour, tormented by his pregnant wife (Clark), beset by childhood fears and cherishing hopes for the future, he is visited by the prickly central character of his budding storyline about a mean old man who is disarmed and reborn by the true spirit of Christmas. Scrooge appears to him in supernatural form – as an embodiment of his past trauma – needling and nudging him into writing his novel, while the wolf is howling at the door.

Based on Les Standiford’s book of the same title, director Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day) does his very best to add another another glowing bauble to the cosy Dickensian Christmas cinema tree with this imagined drama that looks as spectacular as a glass decoration but feels just as hollow. Somehow, the more the film tries to portray Charles Dickens’ human fears and doubts and the methods behind his talent, the less authentic the author actually appears.Creative genius is an intangible and mysterious quality, and should remain just that. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1ST DECEMBER 2017

The Rebel Surgeon (2017) | IDFA 2017

 Dir/Writer: Eric Gandini | Doc | Sweden | 52′

Director, writer and producer Eric Gandini is known for exploring aspects of our highly evolved Western society, first through his documentary debut The Swedish Theory of Love (2015) that delves into the existential black holes in the Swedish lifestyle, and now with his latest documentary The Rebel Surgeon where he takes the debate further by comparing the Swedish medical system with that of a still developing country of Ethiopia, through this slim but heart-warming story of a maverick orthopaedic surgeon, Erik Erichsen.

We hear how Dr Erichsen became so disillusioned by Swedish bureaucracy that he dropped out and moved to the East African country to work as a general surgeon, with his Ethiopian-born wife and partner Sainnat. Amongst the tropical lushness of this magnificent part of the World, he finds professional fulfilment (some might say “playing God”)  as never before, rescuing lives in a small field hospital in the small community of Aira and with very limited resources – there is neither money for, nor access to, decent equipment, so he must be enterprising and creative in his methods. He works with a small domestic drill, plastic strips, jubilee clips, bicycle spokes and fishing lines: he even uses a woman’s hair slide during prostate surgery, and performs life-changing operations on the sick and wounded patients from all over the region. Ethiopians have a tough and uncompromising life but they never die alone, unlike most people in so-called ‘civilised’ societies. Here Erichsen exchanges bureaucracy for a heavy patient list – each person gets a few minutes – but they are grateful as only three doctors are available for every 100’000 inhabitants. Dr. Erichsen and his wife work full on to clear their load, but their work is 100% treatment and diagnostic-based, rather than computer or admin-orientated.

Made on a low budget, and none the worse for it, Gandini’s  film makes for compelling viewing, enriched by images of the magnificent verdancy of the region’s tropical landscapes which contrast starkly with horrific nature of the medical cases presented and the gruesome surgical procedures that follow. Erichsen clearly loves his work and the adulation that comes from his patients, but his dry sense of humour and pragmatism also provide laugh out loud moments, along with some wincing. There is space to reflect on how extreme material hardship is in no way linked to emotional poverty; clearly these rural Ethiopians are a stoic bunch who accept their prognoses without flinching, and who look after each other and are eternally grateful for the Swedish doctor’s help, often returning to visit once they are cured. It’s not all good, but death is part of life for these people, and they appear to accept their fates philosophically, if nothing can be done.

It is easy to see why Erichsen finds the work in Ethiopian so satisfying. Here his opinion is unchallenged (except occasionally by his wife) and he is bound by few rules, hailed as a hero, and gets to make all the decisions. In Sweden  he is challenged not only by the system, but also by the patients themselves who are exacting and whose expectations of life and medical treatment available are extremely exacting, Erichsen insisting that the mindset of the Swedes is far worse than the material poverty of Ethiopia.

After his decade long tenure in Ethiopia, Erichsen must return to life in Sweden, which he does with a heavy heart. And we are left contemplating the future of his Ethiopian surgical team who will battle on without him. Meanwhile, life will never be the same for Erichsen and his wife back in the Northern Europe, but every cloud has a silver lining, as we discover in the finale.

REVIEWED AT IDFA | NOW PREVIEWING ON FESTIVALSCOPE | PENDING DISTRIBUTION

No Stone Unturned (2017)

Dir.: Alex Gibney; Documentary; UK/US 2017, 111 min.

US Oscar winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s fascinating cold-case documentary about a pub massacre in Northern Ireland is more fascinating than any feature film story, and together with the political implications amounts to a Brechtian “Lehrstück” about the uncertain role of the state when it comes to crime and punishment.

On the 18th of June 1994 O’Toole’s Pub in Loughinisisland, County Down, Northern Ireland had a full house enjoying a Football World Cup match between the Republic of Ireland and Italy taking place in New Jersey, USA. The pub was known for its Catholic clientele and shortly after the ROI team scored, two men burst into the bar – one holding the door open, whilst his accomplice killed six men, shooting them in the back with his automatic rifle, injuring many others. This was an exceptional massacre even by Troubles standards (the three decades long civil war between Catholics and Protestants). The citizens of Loughinisisland had enjoyed a peaceable existence up to then, and the shocked community of Catholics and Protestants, attended a funeral for the victims. But for the victims’ relatives, the wait for the identification of the killers would last for over 22 years.

Whilst the Secretary for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew declared shortly after the shooting on TV: “we will left no stone unturned” to put the killers into jail for a long time, the investigation itself was strangely hampered from the beginning. The killers’ get-away car was found a day later in a field nearby, but ended up in a scrapyard; interview transcripts were mysteriously lost, and forensic research was patchy, to say the least. The relatives had no answers for over ten years, and finally they convinced the Ombudsman in 2007 to come up with a report investigating the police procedures. Whilst certain irregularities were noted, no action was taken. Only the second Ombudsman report of 2016 shed light on what really happened in that night in 1994. Although the report did not name any names, Gibney and his team helped to put names to the code figures in the report. As it turned out, the killers were members of the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), who wanted to avenge the killing of Protestants by the IRA a few days earlier. The investigation showed a bizarre picture: the police was given the name of the killer by a female informant, who turned out to be the wife of the perpetrator avenging her husband’s infidelity with his denouncement. These two, still married, continue to live near the scene of the crime, running a business.

At the heart of the matter lays the well-known ‘collusion’ of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) with the protestant paramilitary forces. Often, RUC infiltrators became engaged in killings on both sides, and the police forces had to protect their ‘assets’, even if it meant, like in this case, ‘bending’ the system and leaving the victims and their families without justice. This problem is neither a British one or confined the conflict in Northern Ireland: the State has always used infiltrators in the fight against alleged or real terror. But for the surviving relatives of the victims, this rationale is not enough: “They never lifted a stone, never mind turning it”. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

#Starvecrow (2017)

Dir.: James Carver; Cast: Ashlie Walker, Ben Willens, Jeremy Swift, Sky Lourie, David Bark Jones; UK/Italy 2016, 89 min.

Hailed as the “first selfie movie” or “Hypereal”, director/co-writer James Carver’s debut is more than a gimmick – nor is it revolutionary or innovative.

Cut from a 69 hour shoot in London, Venice Beach, Geneva, Norway and Hastings, it features a cast making use of their mobiles – hacked CCTV camera images are then added to the mix along with hand held camera clips. What makes ♯Starvecrow stand out is not the blend of technology, but the dark content: behind the candidness and their lifestyle dominated by being tech-savvy 24/7, the teenage protagonists hide withering secrets.

Ben (Willens) is a control-freak, charming at first, but we soon learn that his obsession for filming everything with his mobile is a way to manipulate and repress Jess (Walker), who has just returned from rehab. Jess is pregnant, and Ben’s only comment is “get rid of it”. She needs freedom to reflect on her next step, which he is unwilling to give her. When Jess goes with a group of friends to a weekend party in a bungalow near some remote woods, we soon learn that the all these men are only too willing to abuse the girls. There are shades of Blair Witch in the silvan setting, and when the party is gate-crashed by a trio of masked men, things get surreal.
Bookended by a graphic birth scene, ♯Starvecrow tries to shock with its directness, and it succeeds – partly. But overall, the total lack of structure reduces the impact: too often the actors have to explain the goings on. The cast, being their own DoPs, somehow handle both roles more than adequately. In the end, it is the old-fashioned hide-and-seek story which saves the day – technology comes a distant second. But that will not deter countless imitators of trying their luck – alas, they should be warned: Carver succeeded to some degree in spite of his lack of cinematographic know-how, others will not be so lucky, because they will lack the quasi-novelty factor. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 24 NOVEMBER 2017 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

Suburbicon (2017)

Dir: George Clooney | Co-writers: Cast: Julianne Moore, Matt Damon, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe | Drama | US | 105′

Matt Damon and Julianne Moore star in this seductive but flawed satire that touches on social greed, marital dissatisfaction and insurance fraud. Directed by Clooney from a script by Joel and Ethan Coen, Suburbicon parades as a pastel and pristine 1950s family drama, but behind the scenes matters are going seriously awry in the moral compass of its squeaky clean citizens.

Gardner Lodge (Damon) is a family man who is clearly dissatisfied with his seemingly peaceful existence due to his desire for Margaret (Moore), his crippled wife’s live-in sister. Gardner and Margaret form a covert plan to stage a home invasion, collect the insurance money, and clear the decks of his wife (also played by Moore) and run away to Aruba. But the idea flounders due to the interference of Oscar Isaac’s shrewd loss adjuster – echoing TV detective  Columbo – and Gardner’s appealingly astute son (Noah Jupe).

This 1950s pastiche plays out in the style of a Noirish version of Mad Men that reveals a tawdry face racial hatred and marital disquiet behind the manicured gardens of this plastic paradise. Performances are pitch-perfect as the tale’s tone claws at the edges of unsettling paranoia. SUBURBICON is ultimately a suspenseful and highly entertaining film that throws its toys out of the pram in a misjudged melodramtic meltdown  in the final scenes.

George Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He is an Academy Award–winning actor, producer, writer, and director. His filmmaking credits include Good Night, and Good Luck (05), and the Festival selection The Ides of March (11). Suburbicon(17) is his latest film. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 REVIEW

Lost in Paris (2016)

Dir.: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon; Cast: Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, Emmanuelle Riva, Pierre Richard; France/Belgium 2016

Belgium born Vaudeville artist Dominique Abel and his real-life wife Australian Fiona Gordon attempt to bring the world of the MusicHal back to life with moderate success in the quirky LOST IN PARIS. As in Rumba and Iceberg, music once again plays a major role as do Abel and Gordon, who co-write the script.

The film centres on Canadian librarian Fiona (Gordon) who lives in a snowbound kitsch village whence she hops on a plane to Paris to help her ageing mother in distress. Unfortunately, Aunt Martha, who is losing it a bit, is not at home when Fiona arrives so she decides to hit the town and enjoys herself, somehow landing up in the river Seine. She also manages to lose her luggage, which is later found by wayfarer Dom (Abel), who lives in a tent of the river’s edge. He helps himself to her money and even steals her jumper, which actually suits him. As you may have guessed, Dom and Fiona were fated to meet one other; forget about Aunt Martha, whose fake funeral they are attending, she’s actually very much alive and mischievous into the bargain.

Abel and Gordon’s films are very much an acquired taste, and not everyone learns to love their gags, which feature a very tall and slim Gordon, and a Ronnie Baker like Abel. But the main issue here is their scripting: there’s not enough interest to sustain the audience even for 90 minutes, because the episodic structure runs soon out of steam, leaving with long stretches of nothing between the gags. But the great, late Emmanuelle Riva is obviously enjoying herself, and for that alone (and a short appearance of veteran comic Pierre Richard on a park bench), LOST IN PARIS is worth watching.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

IALP_3DDir.: Nicholas Ray Writers: Andrew Solt and Nicholas Ray

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Graham, Frank Lovejoy, Martha Stewart; USA 1950, 94 min.

Based on the novel by Dorothy B.Hughes, and scripted by Andrew Solt with collaboration from director Nicholas Ray and producer Robert Lord, IN A LONELY PLACE was the second time that Ray and Santana, the production company owned by Lord and Bogart, had worked together after Knock on any Door. Shot in the autumn of 1949 at Columbia Studios, with only three days location work in LA, IN A LONELY PLACE has become a true Film noir classic for various reasons not least because the marriage of Ray and the film’s leading actress, Gloria Grahame was on the rocks, rather like that of her relationship with leading man Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart).

Dixon Steele, a Hollywood scriptwriter, “whose last success was pre-war”, is an alcoholic, violent and ageing man. In a nightclub, his agent Mel Lippman tries to interest him in an adaptation of a novel. Steele is grumpy and bored, and asks the hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson (Stewart), to come home with him to read the final part of the novel for him while he relaxes at home. Next morning, Steele is visited by his friend and army buddy, Detective Sergeant Brub Nicolai (Lovejoy), who tells him, that Atkinson was murdered on her way home from Steele’s house, and her body thrown from the taxi. Meanwhile Steele has fallen in love with a neighbour Laurel Gray (Grahame), an aspiring actress. He wants to marry her, but after Gray experiences Steele’s violent temper she gets cold feet, only to make him keener with the famous lines: “I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she  loved me”.  Steele, who has made remarks that tie him to the Atkinson murder, is in the end cleared by Nicolai, but Gray leaves him for good.

Shot by legendary DoP Burnett Guffey (Human Desire, Bonny & Clyde and Bogart’s last feature The Harder they Fall), IN A LONELY PLACE evokes the spirit of Scott Fitzgerald in that it is a film about angst and alienation in Hollywood. In the original ending, Steele kills Gray, and is arrested by Nicolai. Ray shot the new ending more or less in secret, being afraid that Columbia boss Harry Cohen would explode at the unhappy ending. But to be on the safe side, Ray directed both final sequences in three days in mid November. One critic wrote at the time of the premiere, that – “not unlike Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Nicholas Ray’s remarkable IN A LONELY PLACE represents the purest existentialist primers”. AS

NOW SHOWING AS PART OF THE BFI GLORIA GRAHAME RETROSPECTIVE | FROM 24 NOVEMBER 2017

 

Bad Day for the Cut (2017) Prime video

Dir.: Chris Baugh; Cast: Nigel O’Neill, Susan Lynch, Jozef Pawlowski, Anna Prochniak, Stella McCusker, Stuart Graham; UK 2017, 95 min.

First time director/co-writer Chris Baugh has delivered a very bloody, moody and convoluted revenge thriller, saved by the widescreen photography of Ryan Kernaghan and a strong cast.

Farmer and part time motor mechanic Donal (O’Neill) lives with his mother Florence (McCusker) in Northern Ireland. After his mother is murdered brutally, her son goes out on a spiralling revenge hunt, digging deep into the IRA past of his family, and finding out about a sex-trafficking ring run by Frankie Pierce (Lynch) and her ‘consultant’ Trevor (Graham). Two of their henchman try to hang Donal, making it look like a suicide, but one of the assassins, Bartoz (Pawlowski), a Pole from Bydgoszcz, messes up with tragic  results.

The secrets of the past, personal and political, uncovered by Donal, are more than enough for one feature, Baugh doesn’t need to overload the narrative with a sex-slaves sidebar, giving the piece more than a hint of misogyny: although to be fair, the female gang leader Pierce (Lynch) is  far more deadly than her sidekick Trevor – whom she sacks in front of her little daughter in a rather hilarious scene – only Kaja (Prochniak), as the out and out victim, is shown any sympathy.  If you don’t mind gratuitous violence Bad Day certainly cuts the mustard, and looks good into the bargain with its convincing ensemble cast. As an exercise in innovative brutality, Bad Day wins hands down – with more domestic appliances than you can shake a blender at, but it’s pretty bloody as thrillers go. AS

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

 

Most Beautiful Island (2017) ***

Dir. Ana Asensio | Spain/US. 2017 | 80′ | Thriller

Many aspects of this true life tale of an ‘illegal alien’ Spanish grifting to survive in New York could come across as a little far-fetched, but its creeping paranoia also perfectly captures the climate of our increasingly unpredictable modern world. Based on the experiences of the film’s writer, director and star, it went on to win the grand jury prize at 2017’s South by Southwest.

MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND is best described as an urban thriller. Asensio’s Luciana is a desperate young woman who finds herself inveigled into situations she might have questioned and not counternanced in her native country, which she has fled in tragic circumstances. The pared down approach of dialogue and aesthetic adds to the film’s menacing allure where a brooding tension builds slowly towards the stark finale. From the early scenes there is a palpable feeling of dread when a confused Luciana is confronted by a hostile doctor who she consults about her feelings of nausea. We all know about the draconian rules surrounded the provision of health care in the US and this only adds to the sense of alienation. Surviving through a series of menial jobs – dressed as a chicken to promote a restaurant, and as a nanny to spoilt brats – Luciana cannot even rely on her self-seeking colleague, Olga, support or sympathy. And when Olga comes up with an offer Luciana cannot refuse, this does not arouse her suspicions. It involves lucrative work at an evening venue. All shoe has to do is dress up. Alarm beels ring when it emerges that the work could be both dangerous and humiliating. Our fears are borne out as she descends into the basement of a dodgy Chinese restaurant. No bags or mobile telephones are allowed at the venue, where she is urged by a threatening female master of ceremonies to ‘look like she is at a party’, while Luciana joins a group of similarly black-dressed young women who are each given a number and told to join ‘the game’.

There are shades of Eyes Wide Shut and even Frankie & Lola to this unsettling thriller which often sacrifices substance for atmosphere, the final denouement falling short of our expectations. Asensio uses a Super 16 camera to shoot her film, eking out a meagre budget to great effect. Jeffrey Alan Jones’ score is as mean and as sinister as the storyline of a claustrophobic but effectively scary feature debut. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 NOVEMBER 2017

Shalom Bollywood (2017) | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir/Writer: Danny Ben-Moshe | Doc | US | 85′

In his feisty all singing all dancing doc Danny Ben-Moshe shows how religious taboos led to the first superstars of Indian cinema being Jewish. India has always been extremely tolerant towards its Jewish population, it was deeply frowned on for Hindu and Muslim women to appear in film back in the early years of the 20th century, so their roles were generally played by men, until female Jewish stars filled the vacuum.

Light-hearted and full of cheeky chutzpah Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema explores the rise to fame of four such prima donnas — Sulochana, Pramila, Miss Rose and Nadira — and a token male David Abraham, whose charisma was such that marriage was unable to contain him to one female, but he always remained the toast of the town and the most-invited man in Mumbai’s soigné cinema soirées. Abraham was also known as “Uncle David,” and he charmed the birds from the trees until a stroke robbed him of his speech.

You get the impression that Ben-Moshe is really desperate to push his point showcasing these Jewish divas as his restless camera darts from pillar to post chockfull of original footage and talking heads that prattle away volubly about the triumphs of their proud community. And although the films they discuss are not necessarily the most well known to mainstream audiences, Shalom provides solid entertainment as a taster of Jewish-led Bollywood films of the last century.

This is a far cry from the director’s previous work Code of Silence, which raised the lid on child sex abuse in Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community. Here we learn how a few thousand Jews lived peaceably amongst the Muslim and Hindu majorities. They were the long-established sect of Bene Israelis, and also Jews from Iraq. Sulochana was actually called Ruby Myers. She captured the imagination of her male co-stars with her dusky beauty seen mostly in animated stills, as footage of her silent films is hard to come by but includes the remarkable 1927 Wild Cat of Bombay, where she does a ‘Kate Blanchett’, playing multiple female and male roles in this cult extravaganza. Esther Abraham, hailed from Calcutta and was known by her stage name of Pramila. Her marriage to a Muslim produced the actor-playwright Haider Ali, who provides a lively account of how the different religious communities got on like a house on fire, back in the day.

The film’s final glamorous star was Nadira (Florence Ezekiel), who played opposite Dilip Kumar as ‘the vamp’ – simply a female who fluttered her eyelids and wore high heels – during the 1950s and ’60s with films like Aan. These stars were quick to learn from their Hollywood peers and provided a new kind of emancipated female in contrast to the submissive characters of the era.

Shalom Bollywood skims over a great deal of detail surrounding Hindu language issues the stars encountered but as a fun and lightly informative flick through the era’s silent cinema and the ‘Golden Age’ of film it’s certainly provides insight. MT

SCREENING DURING UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | 9 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017 | NATIONWIDE

 

Russian Film Week | 19 November – 26 November 2017

Russian Film Week (RFW) returns this year for the second time and is twice as big, marking it as the biggest cross-cultural Russian event to have taken place outside of Russia.

The nationwide programme includes shorts, animation, documentary films and features intended to bridge the gap between Russia and the West through culture. And whilst the ‘greats’ – such as Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, or Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Loveless) – are well known to cineastes, the RFW mission is to bring us the full scope of Russian cinema to an international market and celebrate its artistic merit with global audiences.

18505238_303There will be a chance to see new films such as MATHILDE (Alexey Uchitel/left) and ARRYTHMIA (Boris Khlebnikov/below), and the latest in Russian cinema all with a Russian theme, whether from Russia or other countries — based on Russian literature, people or events, enlivened by Q&A sessions, exhibitions and masterclasses including a documentary strand as part its FemFest, Revolution Centenary, and Ecology Days. Waterstones Piccadilly will host throughout the week free VR demonstrations provided by Russian VR Seasons and PlanetPics (Natural Treasures of Russia programme).

arrhythmia_still_1_-_publicity_-_h_2017RFW opens with a screening of ATTRACTION, and climaxes with the BFI closing screening of MATHILDE on the 26th November, and Golden Unicorn Awards Charity Gala Dinner on the 25th. This is when the winners in 12 awards categories, including Best Foreign film About Russia, will be announced – as decided by a renowned international jury.

In attendance of the festival, will be over 75 of Russia’s most talented directors, producers and actors including: Fedor Bondarchuk, Alexander Yatsenko, Valery Todorovsky, Alyona Babenko, Anna Mikhalkova and Aleksey Uchitel. 

RFW takes place in venues including the BFI, Science Museum, PictureHouses, Curzon Cinemas, Ciné Lumière, Regent Street Cinema and more London, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

As 2017 is the Year of Ecology in Russia, RFW have teamed up with WWF UK to raise funds for the WWF Amur Tiger Conservation Project in Russia over the duration of the festival. RFW and Synergy University have also launched a special Student Ecology Short Film competition with a special Golden Unicorn–Synergy Award. So RFW looks set to be a highlight of this Winter’s festival circuit. MT

RUSSIAN FILM WEEK | 19 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017 | LONDON | NATIONWIDE

Heartstone (2016)

Dir/writer: Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson | Cast: Baldur Einarsson, Blaer Hinriksson, Dilja Valsdottir, Katla Njalsdottir, Soren Malling, Nina Dogg Filippusdottir | Drama | Iceland | 129′

In a remote Icelandic fishing village the hostile terrain provides a chilly counterpoint to the sexual awakening of two young teenagers in this movingly thoughtful if overlong feature debut. The young cast of newcomers is really what makes HEARTSTONE such an affecting drama, rather than its meandering narrative. We feel for them in their unsettling changes, but this would have held more more dramatic weight with a tighter edit. This is a small criticism for an impressive start. Writer-director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson has really marshalled his material and created an impressive film that certainly shows great insight into the kids’ confused state of adolescence.

The story follows best friends Thor (Baldur Einarsson) and Kristjan (Blaer Hinriksson) are who are at a loose end in this remote outpost, and given to bouts of aggression, sadly directed at wildlife, but there is also a tenderness between the boys – and they are only boys – with Thor still really only a child. Despite the country setting, family life isn’t easy and Thor is constantly teased by his older sisters — Rakel (Jonina Thordis Karlsdottir) and the more creative Hafdis (Ran Ragnarsdottir), who has a penchant for Bjork. Their father has cleared off with a younger woman, leaving their mother (Nina Dogg Filippusdottir) unsettled emotionally as she casts around for another man. Kristjan’s father (Sveinn Olafur Gunnarsson) is rather butch and macho – clearly a homophobic and hard drinker. The boys have already tried their luck with girls: Beta (Dilja Valsdotttir), and her friend Hanna (Katla Njalsdottir). But their true colours slowly emerge (and I mean slowly) on a spiky camping trip – not least due to the undergrowth. There’s a memorably dramatic scene where Kristjan’s father takes the boys up a mountain side to search for gulls’ eggs but the pace slackens during the final scenes despite a certain poignance in the ending that makes this an impressive first feature. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 17 NOVEMBER 2017 | VENICE 2016 REVIEW

Bye Bye Germany | UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

Dir: Sam Garbarski | Cast: Moritz Bleibtrau, Antje Traue, Tim Seyfi, Anatole Taubman | Ger/Lux/Belgium 2017 | Drama | 101′

Sam Garbarski’s rousing but tonally uneven drama takes place in the immediate aftermath to the Second World War where in Frankfurt, 1946, Moritz Bleibtrau’s glibly charismatic Jewish businessman has lived to tell the tale and is back to the drawing board of his previous existence, running a linen business owned by his family – who were not so lucky and mostly perished during the Holocaust. He and his other self-appointed salesmen try inventive ways to inveigle themselves into the homes and hearts of the local German housewives in order to peddle their wares, and get the business up and running again.

Based on Michel Bergmann’s ‘Teilacher’ trilogy the narrative is true to the page but somehow the book’s intended dark humour misfires on the screen, although the themes raised are certainly worthwhile in exploring the subtle nature of immigration and repatriation. Meanwhile, David shares a palpable onscreen chemistry with special agent Sarah Simon who is investigating questionable links to his past concerning a possible Nazi collaboration.

BYE BYE GERMANY is a lively and fast-moving drama if you buy into its humour, so let’s not bounce it out of court. If nothing else it is a tribute to the European Jews who chose to remain in their homeland of Germany with its painful reminders and past hostilities. MT

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 9 NOVEMBER – 26 NOVEMBER 2017

Filmstars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017)

Dir.: Paul McGuigan; Cast: Annette Benning, Jamie Bell, Juliet Walters, Kenneth Cranham, Vanessa Redgrave; UK 2017, 105 min.

Redeemed by the brilliance of leads Annette Bening and Jamie Bell, this rather sentimental psycho-drama recalls Peter Turner’s memoirs about his relationship with Hollywood star Gloria Grahame (1923-1981). Opting for a tricky flashback narrative, director Paul McGuigan introduces the doomed lovers in late 1970s London where Grahame (Bening) is trying to re-establish her career on the London stage; while Turner (Bell) is ‘resting’ in Primrose Hill. Returning to the US, Grahame discovers that her low-level cancer has come back with a vengeance but she is very much in denial, and rejects chemotherapy for fear of losing her hair, and her acting career. She comes back to live with Turner in the home her shares with his parents  (Julie Walters and Kenneth Graham), Ironically, he is playing the part of an doctor while Grahame is dying, but still hopes to play ‘Juliet’.

Gloria Grahame emerges as a complex character, obsessed with cosmetic surgery in a bid to achieve absolute beauty. Her relationships ended mostly tragically: the marriage to director Nicholas Ray (1948-1952) ended in divorce on account of her infidelity with his 13 year son Anthony, whom Grahame later married later in 1960 causing widespread scandal. But Turner was anything but straight: in the film he mentions his bi-sexuality en-passant, but script-writer Matt Greenhaigh decides not to follow this up. There is a telling scene in California, when Gloria’s mother Jeanne McDougall (Redgrave) reminds her daughter poignantly about her predilection for younger men. And there is no mention of how Grahame got to know the Turner family, in the first place.

Polish born DoP Urszula Pontikos uses soft colours, avoiding the usual kitchen sink grime in Liverpool. There are not many laughs, but when the couple pay 90 pennies for two pints, laughter erupted in the cinema. Overall, Bening and Bell play their hearts out, and really convince us of their amour-fou. Like a late Bruckner symphony, they carry their filmstars beyond the realm of everlasting torture and loss. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

https://youtu.be/uoRaUCeDLQ4AS

Manifesto (2017)

Dir.: Julian Rosefeldt; Cast: Cate Blanchett; Germany/Australia, 94′.

Writer/director Julian Rosefeldt (The Creation) transposes his installation of the same name to the big screen with this tour-de-force of ideas held together by Cate Blanchett, who appears in 13 different incarnations, breathing life into the tenets of Dadaism, Futurism and Suprematism and others whose credos enlightened the 20th century.

To say this is an odd film, is not an understatement. Apart from the lack of narrative, words and ideas dominate – despite Christoph Krauss’ images (mostly panorama shots from high above), which are stunning. When watching, it definitely helps to have some knowledge of art history and its movements, since the funny side of it all can only be appreciated with this background. MANIFESTO is, after all, a head-idea; an artificial construct which can be deciphered with pleasure – but some knowledge is simply a pre-condition.

It starts off with Blanchett playing a tramp, declaiming the Communist Manifest by Marx and Engels. Later, she changes into a bourgeois housewife, who lectures her family with a tract on the superiority of Pop Art. Husband and children are required by hee to fold their hands as in prayer, while they are waiting for mother to finish so they can start eating the turkey. Blanchett also plays a Primary school teacher, not only adamant that her kids learn about Jim Jarmush’ golden rules of filmmaking, but reminding them too, what JL Godard preached: “It is not where you take things from – it is where you take them to”. For good measure, the little ones also learn about the Von Trier/Vinterberg Dogma Manifesto: only handheld cameras, no artificial light. Blanchett also gives a staggering turn as a ballet master, directing a camp Busby Berkeley imitation of glitzy Martian girls dancing to a text about money distribution. And finally, there are two Cate’s at the same time at work in a TV studio: One is the anchor, who interviews the second Cate, who seems far away in the pouring rain, being interviewed on Conceptual Art, based on the text of Sol de Witt. When the interview is over, we discover that Cate II was in the studio next door, where the rain machine is switched off after the questioning finishes. MANIFESTO is certainly a great work offering endless subject for discussion – and musings are guaranteed for those who are in the know. For the rest, Blanchett’s performance is simply staggering. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 15 NOVEMBER 2017 NATIONWIDE

 

 

 

 

 

 

North by Northwest (1959)

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason | Writer: Ernest Lehman 136′

There’s a glorious irreverence to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘wrong man roadie’ that makes it funny and thrilling despite the lengthy running time. This is largely due to Ernest Lehman’s sparklingly witty screenplay, and Cary Grant who displays the same suave insouciance as Roger Moore in his utter refusal to take anything seriously, despite sinister scenarios constantly threatening danger.

As dapper advertising executive Roger O’Thornhill, Grant is mistaken for an imagined spy, forcing him to dice with death at every turn; evading James Mason’s arch villain while channelling a universal ‘mummy’s darling’ turn – alongside the marvellous Jessie Royce Landis – until he falls for the dulcet charms of the much younger but highly resourceful Eva Marie Saint (he was 45, she only 27).

The Mount Rushmore settings are astonishing, not least for Robert Burks’ daredevil camerawork, while Hitchcock’s laudable re-creation of the Frank Lloyd Wright house on the precipice is an ingenious money-saving exercise that adds a twist of sophistication to the final denouement. This priceless classic picked up the Silver Shell at San Sebastian in the year of its release, but Ernest Lehman’s brilliant script went away unrewarded at the 1960 Oscars. MT

NOW SHOWING ON BBC2

 

Félicité (2017)

Dir: Alain Gomis | France / Senegal / Belgium / Germany / Lebanon 2017 | Lingala | Drama | 123 min · Colour

Senegalese Auteur Alain Gomis is best remember for Today his striking portrait of a man’s final hours in Dakar. Félicité is another resonant snapshot of a proud and independent woman that gradually opens its focus from an individual to an entire society in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Félicité (Vero Tschanda) works as a singer in a bar in Kinshasa. Singing is her therapy but also the joy she brings her audiences who are seduced by the rhythm of her music and her powerful, melancholy melodies. When Félicité’s son has a terrible accident, she desperately tries to raise the money needed for his operation, heading off on a breakneck tour through the backstreets to the wealthier districts of the Congolese capital. Her friend Tabu offers to help Félicité but she is not keen on the idea due to his often erratic behavioir. Reluctantly, she accepts and Tabu turns out to be the saving of her son’s rehabilitation. has a hard time picking up his old life, but it is lady’s man Tabu of all people who manages to coax him out of his shell. Félicité’s seedy flat then becomes the setting for this well-crafted drama with its plucky central performance by Tschanda.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 NOVEMBER 2017

REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017

The Unseen (2017)

Dir.: Gary Sinyor; Cast: Jasmine Hyde, Richard Flood, Simon Cotton; UK, 108′

Director/writer Gary Sinyor, best known for his debut feature Leon the Pig Farmer (1992), fails to breathe life into a strong premise in his psychodrama exploring the aftermath of tragedy for a bereaved couple whose son drowns in their swimming pool. Married couple Gemma (Hyde) and Will (Flood) blame themselves, their grief manifesting in the usual psychosomatic ways, but when their friend Paul steps into help, inviting them to his B&B in the Lake District, he becomes more the problem rather than the solution in this skimpy, poorly-acted, attempt at slick arthouse horror. Gemma’s blurred vision and the forced happy ending will send you away with a sick headache rather than a feeling of satisfaction. MT.

SCREENING NATIONWIDE FROM 15 December 2017

Blood Simple. (1984) Bfi player

Directors: Joel Coen | Script: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen | Cast: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedeya, M Emmet Waltsh | US | Thriller | 92′   US

The Coen brothers pull a clever mix of cinematic tricks from their box in this tightly-plotted neo-Noir focusing on four characters. With brilliant cinematography (Barry Sonnenfeld) and a darkly humorous, whip-sharp script, this neo-noir thriller keeps you on your toes til the end with more nasty surprises than an angry rattlesnake.

Very much a throwback to the Hitchcockian thrillers of the forties and fifties, the action here unfolds in a shady Texan backwater in the eighties and established the Coens as creative leaders of the American art house genre.

Supremely well-cast: Frances McDormand came on board as a newcomer in place of Holly Hunter, and subsequently went on to win an Oscar for her performance in the Coens’ Fargo. John Getz stars as her lover Ray, and baddie Dan Hedaya plays her jealous controlling husband Marty who hires veteran villain M Emmet Walsh as a private detective Loren Visser to kill them. Naturally, the plan backfires. The car scene where the two are discussing the contract killing is a masterpiece of facial expression.

 

 

Blood Simple. won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance the following year. The Coen’s had spent a year raising the development finance by going ‘door to door’ to financiers with a two-minute teaser trailer of the film they planned to make.

The latest restored ‘Director’s Cut’ is actually shorter by 3 minutes than the original 1985 version due to tighter editing, shortening some shots and removing others altogether. In addition, they HAVE resolved long-standing right issues with the music. MT

NOW Bfi Player | 12 April 2021

 

Marjorie Prime (2017)

Dir.: Michael Almereyda; Cast: Lois Smith, John Hamm, Geena Davis, Tim Robbins; USA 2016, 99 min.

Director/co-writer Michael Almereyda (Experimenter) adapts Jordan Harrison’s play for the screen in an un-stagey  triumph that interweaves Beckett, Sartre and Phil Dicks, exploring themes such as memory, family and death – the latter not only on a personal level, but concerning humanity as a whole: “Computers have all the time in the world”.

Eighty-five year old Marjorie (Smith) is suffering from the onset of Alzheimers and her loving family, daughter Tess (Davis) and her husband Jon (Robbins), have installed a simulated, personalised digital projection of her dead husband Walter (Hamm) in the futuristic house near the beach. Walter is in his prime, around forty, and received daily tuition by Tess and Jon about Marjorie’s life – the exception being the death of her son. Walter is also instructed to look after Marjorie’s health; he tries to make her eat and drink regularly. But basically, his function is to make Marjorie’s decline more palatable for her. They reminisce over the feel-good features of her youth, such us the crush on a high-ranging French tennis player. And Tess reminds her husband that the man in question was hardly French, just Canadian, and only an amateur player. But Jon shrugs this off: allowing Marjorie a great deal of slack, and flattery is only a minor sin. The longer the ‘interactions’ go on, the more one suspects that all participants are holograms – something author and director have clearly intended. Computers may have all the time in the world, but the human race is only too ready to be replaced by them. To start with, they have a much more precise recollection than the human race. What stands for memory, is just the recollection of the original incident, re-memorised and re-told so often that the original event assumes only a random connection to the present.

DoP Sean Williams uses the house in Long Island as a perfect background for this placcid chamber piece. Colours are subdued and the functional building is just the perfect bland showcase for the holograms. Late Schubert strings are the ideal score for this endgame, where everything is in the past; the waves of the ocean more pacifying and reliable than humans. It is good to see Geena Davis in a major role again, but Lois Smith is the centre of this Artificial Intelligent drama which plays out as a long good-bye. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FRO 8 NOVEMBER 2017

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Dir.: Kenneth Branagh; Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Olivia Coleman, Leslie Odem jr; Malta/USA 2017, 114’

Director, producer and star Kenneth Branagh has filmed Michael Green’s script of Agatha Christie’s 1930s murder mystery MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS with the tragic earnestness of a Dostoyevsky novel. He never allows himself any sort of playfulness or improvisation, and the veteran Hollywood cast fails to animate this re-make of Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of the crime novel which is dead on arrival on the screen.

Even Lumet, a much more innovative director than Branagh, struggled with the transformation of the page to the screen: after all, we have 12 suspects and just one setting – even though Branagh manages to let the cast out into the snow for a few minutes, after the train derails during a storm: he even manages to botch that outing, but more of that later. Branagh’s collaborators on Cinderella and Thor PD Jim Clay and Haris Zambarloukas are here again – the DoP using his 65mm lens to great wide-screen effect, but Branagh’s direction is as stale as the cast whose performances are stuffy and lacklustre – for the most part.

Johnny Depp’s rake Ratchett is Dillinger warmed-up, Judi Dench’s Russian princess is stiff and detached; Penelope Cruz plays her Spanish missionary with the gloom of eternal repentance; Willem Dafoe’s detective has the poker face we’d expect from a sleuth and Michelle Pfeiffer feels almost on her last legs. But Olivia Coleman is the standout giving real verve to her Hildegard Schmidt. Sporting a ludicrous moustache, Branagh is joylessly pompous as Hercule Poirot. In a nod to the 21st century, Sean Connery’s army colonel has been replaced by Dr. Arbuthnot (Odem), who also happens to be black.

Agatha Christie based her novel loosely on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and the director has chosen black and white for the Armstrong family-related flash-backs, but then also used the same for selected scenes on the train, muddling the narrative even further. There are too many embarrassing moments, worst of all the grand finale in the snow: Poirot has decided to seat all twelve suspects on a bench at the entrance to the train tunnel, like naughty kids waiting for a school detention. Despite a massive budget, this stolid costume drama looks like an exhibit from some crusty museum featuring the mummified characters from Norman Bates’ motel. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Ferrari: Race to Immortality (2017)

DIR: Daryl Goodrich | Doc | Sport | 

Don’t be put off by the title of this stylish and highly entertaining film about the daredevil racing drivers of the 1950s. Anyone who appreciates a trip down memory lane – packed with original footage – will find this a great watch. Based on Chris Nixon’s ‘Mon Ami Mate’, a biography of British Ferrari drivers Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, whose derring-do and reckless ambition was aided and abetted by Enzo Ferrari and his iconic racing cars, who told his champions: “Win or die, you will be immortal”. 

These were courageous men who weren’t afraid to lose their lives doing what they enjoyed best. And most of them did. But they weren’t the only ones to lose their lives. Many spectators also perished when cars left the track and careened into the crowd – such as during the 1955 Le Mans race – killing 83 people in an horrific fireball. Between 1950 and 1960, 39 drivers in motor-racing were killed behind the wheels of tin cars that made a mockery of today’s ‘health and safety’. But Enzo’s love was for his brand and his precious vehicles, and if anyone was killed he laconically asked the question: “And how is the car”

Watching Ferrari, you can’t help falling for the charm and suave charisma of these brave and likeable gentlemen heroes. And the camaraderie between them all feels genuine and heartfelt. Some were playboys but others fell in love on the circuit, such as Mike and Peter went to marry their sweethearts. Director Daryl Goodrich packs e extraordinary tension into a story packed with nostalgia for the good old days of sporting heroes who really deserved their celebrity reputations and were prepared to die for the sport of princes. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2017

BFI Gloria Grahame Retrospective | Film Noir | Nov/Dec 2017

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This Winter the BFI are celebrating the life of screen siren GLORIA GRAHAME with a retrospective of a smouldering film career showcasing her talents – usually in supporting roles – garnering her critical acclaim and an Academy Award for her nine-minute role in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) starring alongside Kirk Douglas, who was nominated but went away empty-handed. 

Gloria Grahame appeared in more than 30 films during the 1940s and 50s and died shortly after returning to her native New York, from a visit to her friend Peter Turner, a stay which forms the basis for the 1987 biography Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and Paul McGuigan biopic drama which opens the retrospective on 14 November 2017, and stars Annette Bening as Grahame.

Born Gloria Hallward, in Pasadena, California on November. 28, 1923 to the British actress, Jean Hallward, who had played Shakespearean and other classical roles on the British stage, Gloria Grahame made her stage debut in Chicago soon after finishing high school. Broadway then beckoned, where she worked as understudy in Thornton Wilder’s play By the Skin of Our Teeth, an a number of other stage roles. Her Hollywood debut was in 1944 with Richard Whorf’s comedy flop BLOND FEVER. She went on to star as Ginny in Edward Dmytryk’s 1947 racially-charged noir thriller CROSSFIRE, alongside Robert Mitchum. She later claimed Ginny was her favourite role and she was nominated for an Academy Award which sealed her success for the following decade in titles such as THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952) and OKLAHOMA! (1955).

Offers dwindled during the 1950s as she brought up her family with Nicholas Ray, occasionally appearing in TV and stage outings, particularly in comedy roles in The Man Who Came to Dinner; Head Over Heels. She was married to Stanley Clements, Nicholas Ray, Cy Howard and Anthony Ray. MT

Here is the BFI Line-up:

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

UK 2017. Dir Paul McGuigan. With Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Vanessa Redgrave. 105min. Digital. Cert tbc. Courtesy of Lionsgate

Ageing Hollywood star Gloria Grahame (Bening), a goddess of the silver screen in the 1940s, now resides in Liverpool doing small theatre gigs to help support her children. While dealing a health scare, she develops an unlikely romance with charming 20-something Peter Turner (Bell) – a relationship that’s soon tested to its limits.

Tickets £15, concs £12 (Members pay £2 less)

Gloria Grahame: Femme Fatale Film Noir Icon | TRT 90min | TUE 14 NOV 18:10 NFT1

This lavishly illustrated talk by Adrian Wootton OBE, CEO of Film London, will celebrate the onscreen brilliance that defines Gloria Grahame as one of the iconic femme fatale heroines of the era. Wootton will explore her working relationships with major filmmakers such as Frank Capra, Fritz Lang and Vincente Minnelli, as well as her tumultuous and often controversial personal life. Tickets £6.50

IN A LONELY PLACE | MON 13 NOV 18:20 NFT3

USA 1950. Dir Nicholas Ray. With Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy. 98min. Digital. PG. A Park Circus release.

Nicholas Ray’s beguiling blend of murder mystery and unusually adult love story is one of the finest American movies of the early 50s. The lonely place is Hollywood: scriptwriter Dix (Bogart) is prime suspect in the murder of a young woman, until neighbour Laurel (Grahame) provides him with a false alibi. But as the pair embark on a romance, his volatile temper – exacerbated equally by the studio and the cops – makes her wonder whether he might have been guilty… Brilliantly adapted from Dorothy B Hughes’ novel, Ray’s tough but tender film is spot-on in its insightful characterisation of Tinseltown and of the troubled lovers. Marvellously cast, Bogart and Grahame bring an aching poignancy to their painful predicament.

nullTHE BIG HEAT | FROM FRI 24 NOV

USA 1953. Dir Fritz Lang. With Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Lee Marvin. 89min. Digital. 15. A Park Circus release

Fritz Lang’s stark thriller about a cop fighting city-wide corruption is also a classic tale of revenge and redemption. After a senior policeman kills himself, detective Dave Bannion (Ford) begins to suspect a cover-up between his superiors, local politicians and a seemingly inviolate crime-lord. Persisting with his investigations, he comes under attack, at which point his mission turns personal rather than professional. Famous for its (off-screen) violence – notably a scene involving Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin and boiling coffee – Lang’s film is pacy, unsentimental and to the point in exploring the thin line between the law and rough justice. The robust direction, terse script and unfussy performances ensure the movie feels strangely modern.

CROSSFIRE | FROM FRI 24 NOV

USA 1947. Dir Edward Dmytryk. With Gloria Grahame, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Robert Young. 86min. 35mm. PG

This was one of Grahame’s earliest substantial roles. Her portrayal of a dance-hall girl who witnesses a murder earned her an Oscar® nomination and also set the mould for her screen persona. As the police investigation into the crime leads to a manhunt for a missing GI, the film takes an uncompromising look at the problems men had readjusting to life after war.

WED 15 NOV 18:30 NFT2 / SAT 18 NOV 18:30 NFT2

Sudden Fear + intro by Adrian Wootton OBE, CEO of Film London*

USA 1952. Dir David Miller. With Gloria Grahame, Joan Crawford, Jack Palance. 111min. Digital. PG

Gloria Grahame read Macbeth in preparation for the role of Irene Neves – looking to Lady Macbeth to locate the emotional drive to manipulate a man to murder, as she does with Palance’s actor-cum-fraudster Lester Blaine. Joan Crawford is at the film’s core and plays the melodramatic angle to perfection but Grahame is compelling as the driving force behind the murderous plot

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL | MON 13 NOV 20:30 NFT2* / SUN 19 NOV 17:00 NFT2

USA 1952. Dir Vincente Minnelli. With Gloria Grahame, Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon. 118min. 35mm. PG

This classic Hollywood take on the movie business tells the tale of a ruthless producer and the effect his dealings have on his friends and colleagues. Grahame received a Best Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar® for her portrayal of Rosemary, the wife of screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Powell), despite being on screen for only nine minutes.

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THE GLASS WALL | FRI 17 NOV 18:20 NFT2 / THU 30 NOV 20:35 NFT2

 + intro by season curator Jo Botting, BFI National Archive*

USA 1953. Dir Maxwell Shane. With Gloria Grahame, Vittorio Gassman, Ann Robinson. 85min. 35mm. PG

One of Grahame’s lesser-known titles, this film also offered her a rare starring role. She appears opposite Italian star Vittorio Gassman, who plays a Hungarian illegal immigrant determined to remain in the US, with one night to track down the person who can save him from deportation. Grahame gives an exquisite performance as a woman on the breadline who forms a bond with the desperate man.

HUMAN DESIRE | MON 20 NOV 18:20 NFT2* / MON 27 NOV 20:40 NFT

USA 1953. Dir Fritz Lang. With Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford. 91min. 35mm. PG

The role of Vicki Buckley in this classic noir about a man’s affair with a married woman shows Grahame at her most complex and scheming. As the film progresses the layers of her character are slowly peeled away, and the audience teeter between sympathy for her tragic life and abhorrence at her capacity for manipulation

THE COBWEB | TUE 21 NOV 18:20 NFT3 / SUN 26 NOV 14:45 NFT1

USA 1955. Dir Vincente Minnelli. With Gloria Grahame, Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Lillian Gish. 123min

Vincente Minnelli’s lush melodrama revolves around the struggle for power among staff and inmates at a psychiatric hospital. Grahame plays the neglected wife of Dr McIver (Widmark), frustrated by his dedication to his work and stifled by the small-town mentality of those around her. The colour photography emphasises her brassiness, enhancing her waspish yet sensual performance.

OKLAHOMA! | DATES AND TIMES IN DECEMBER TBC

USA 1955. Dir Fred Zinnemann. With Gloria Grahame, Shirley Jones, Gordon MacRae, Rod Steiger. 145min. U

While she was not a natural chanteuse (she was tone-deaf) Grahame’s naïve, endearing vocal style in this musical western brings genuine charm to her portrayal of Ado Annie and she sung the role completely without dubbing. Annie’s romantic to-ing and fro-ing offers comic relief from Rod Steiger’s menacing pursuit of the wholesome Laurey (Jones), while the whole is interspersed with some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s liveliest tunes.

NAKED ALIBI | DATES AND TIMES IN DECEMBER TBC

USA 1954. Dir Jerry Hopper. With Gloria Grahame, Sterling Hayden, Gene Barry. 86min

A policeman pursues a suspected murderer to a Mexican border town, both men driven by desperation and their own personal demons. Grahame is at her most seductive as a nightclub singer caught between them; she finally finds the love she’s desperate for, but will the chance for happiness come too late?

DATES AND TIMES IN DECEMBER TBC

Merton of the Movies

USA 1947. Dir Robert Alton. With Gloria Grahame, Red Skelton, Virginia O’Brien. 82min

Showing how fast Hollywood forgot its roots, this broad parody of silent cinema was made barely 20 years after the coming of sound. Red Skelton was coached in physical comedy by Buster Keaton for his performance as a small-town boy seeking fame and fortune in the movies. Grahame luxuriates in the glamour of her role, as a film star who seduces the innocent abroad.

nullODDS AGAINST TOMORROW | DATES AND TIMES IN DECEMBER TBC

USA 1959. Dir Robert Wise. With Gloria Grahame, Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte, Shelley Winters. 96min

Director Robert Wise offers a heist movie with a twist, as Robert Ryan’s troubled WWII veteran confronts his prejudices when he embarks on a bank job with a black jazz performer (Belafonte). A very personal project for Belafonte, the film is one of the last Hollywood noirs ever produced. Grahame makes an impression in the small role of Ryan’s sexually frustrated neighbour, in her swansong as a screen siren.

DATES AND TIMES IN DECEMBER STILL TO BE CONFIRMED 

 

Thelma (2017)

Dir: Joachim Trier | Writers: Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier | Cast: Eili Harboe, Kaya Wilkins, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen | Norway | Horror | 118′ | Cinematography: Jakob Ihre | Music: Ola Fløttum

More than a character study of a sheltered, sexually repressed young woman with supernatural powers, THELMA is a graceful and provocative existential horror story that couldn’t be more different than Trier’s gentle love story debut – Oslo, August 31st. As clinical in tone as Evolution (2015) THELMA has with a much more down to earth feeling despite quirky moments of fantasy, it sets Trier out as an highly inventive filmmaker at the top of his game.

Eili Harboe plays the closeted Thelma, who moves to the sophistication of Oslo from her small-town existence and protective parents, played by Henrik Rafaelsen and Ellen Dorrit Petersen. At university, she strikes up a friendship with Anja (Kaya Wilkins), but it soon emerges that this is no ordinary relationship and one that goes against her morals as a devout Christian not to mention her own sexual preferences. One day a bird strikes the library window sending Thelma into seizures at her desk, as she gradually becomes aware of unusual ability accompanied by disturbing nightmares. There’s an unsettling undertone to proceedings heightened by Jacob Ihre’s hyper realist visuals and Ola Fløttum’s creepy orchestral score that often plays over the teasing interactions between Thelma and Anya hinting at the unfolding doom.

Harboe skilfully hovers between coquettishness and ingenuous behaviour in her friendship with Anya but with the absence of parental backstory we’re left guessing about their or even Thelma’s motivations for most of the time – which may or may not appeal to some viewers. It does seem that her father is an unduly controlling and undemonstrative. There’s an amazing scene at the Oslo Opera House where Thelma is forced to leave her seat due to sexual arousal at Anya caressing her hand – or simply that she overcome and confused emotionally due her devout beliefs or just generally lacking of emotional support. Trier keeps his characters at arms length throughout, leaving us guessing while he concentrates on atmosphere and tone in this stylish and disturbing drama. MT

THELMA IS ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM November 3 2017

 

78/52 (2017)

Dir: Alexandre O Philippe | Cast: Alan Barnette, Justin Benson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jamie Lee Curtis, Amy E Duddleston, Jeannie Epper | Doc | US | 91′

The title of Alexandre O Philippe’s documentary refers to the technical way of shooting the shower scene in Hitchcock’s horror classic Psycho: 78 camera setups and 52 cuts. It was the most exacting and difficult scene to shoot during November 1959. Psycho also represented the first physical attack against a naked woman on film, and in the privacy and sanctity of her bathroom – and the first image of a flushing toilet. Psycho is now considered a watershed in film history, ushering in an era of fear and uncertainty after the calm and orderliness of postwar positivity.

Hitchcock claims that he made the film in black and white because the flushing away of the blood in the shower would have been too shocking, although the torn shower curtain idea had already been seen before in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) . Peter Bogdanovich, who attended the very first press screening of Psycho in New York’s Times Square, makes the most salient point: “Women were top billing during the ’30s and ’20s and that gradually evaporated during the ’40s and ’50s when they slipped into second place, and that’s what the movie’s saying – it’s about killing off the woman”.

What follows is a dissection and debate – mostly by men – about the ground-breaking film, and its terrifying scene that seems to represent a culmination of all Hitchcock’s work up to this date, with the likes of American cinema luminaries such as Walter Murch, David Thomson, Eli Roth, Peter Bogdanovich and Bret Easton Ellis who all share their thoughts on the moments and motivations of Psycho. There is also comment on Gus Van Sant’s panned 1998 remake. A great deal of what is said is salient and apposite, but there’s also a large amount of pointless detail and waffle set to an ultimately annoying and redundant, violin score (nothing like Bernard Hermann’s masterpiece original) that thankfully fades out when we get to watch the scene clips,with commentary from Hitchcock himself, who puts the whole idea down to voyeurism; also claiming that Psycho was not serious and questioning why people found it so shocking. Those who enjoyed Hitchcock Truffaut (2015) will probably feel that most of the ground has already been covered in that superior documentary.

What the film does engage with – and that’s fascinating – is the role, positive and negative, of the mother figure in American Society since the 1950s, and how ultimately women have had the easy option of home-making and child-rearing, but also seducing and withholding (sexually) and therefore were due to be punished. And here Hitchcock admits, laughingly, that his mother scared him as a young boy and that’s putatively why he grew up to be sexually repressed with the need to punish womankind. This revelation could then have segued into a debate about the reportedly negative experiences had by Tippi Hedren, Grace Kelly or even Kim Novak while working for the director. So an exploration of Hitchcock’s suppressed sexuality that spawned the film could have been really intriguing but that’s clearly another documentary. 78/52 has weight and integrity and is certainly worth a watch. MT

OUT ON 3 NOVEMBER 2017

 

Silence of the Lambs (1991) | BFI Thriller Series | Oct-Dec 2017

 Mandatory Credit: Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 411879fv ) 'THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS' - Anthony Hopkins - 1991 VARIOUS


Mandatory Credit: Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 411879fv )
‘THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ – Anthony Hopkins – 1991
VARIOUS

Dir. Jonathan Demme; Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Jame Gumb, Anthony Head, Brooke Smith; USA  114′

Jonathan Demme, who died this April at the age of 73, made some excellent films such as Philadelphia (1993) and Swimming to Cambodia (1987). But he will be best remembered for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which won Oscars for Best Film and Best Director. Based on the novel by Thomas Harris and written by Ted Tally, SILENCE is one of the few feminist thrillers of its era.

Centred around FBI agent Clarice Starling (Foster) who is sent by her boss Jack Crawford (Glenn) to interview imprisoned mass murderer and psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins). The idea is to get his imput with a new case: a serial killer, called Buffalo Bill, who skins his female victims. In a cat and mouse game, Clarice gets Lecter to tell her the name of the killer who once his patient. After having kidnapped Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), the daughter of an US senator, Buffolo Bill (Gumb), is tracked down by Clarice.

Clarice is much more emancipated woman than she appears in the film. She is well aware that the older Crawford has an Electra crush on her but still calls him “Sir”, knowing she has the upper hand emotionally, slipping out of his command even though she is just a trainee in the last stages of her studies. Howard Shore’s score provides a foreboding undercurrent, reminiscent of Bernhard Herrman, throught her prisom encounters with Lecter which plays out as a cat-and-mouse game. Crawford has warned her never to disclose any personal information to the psychiatrist, Clarice makes a bargain with Lecter: she answers his questions, while he has to answer hers regarding the identity of Buffalo Bill. The outcome justifies her strategy, since Lecter is extraordinarily vain and fancies himself as her Svengali.

Buffalo Bill has a long history of childhood abuse, and is not happy in his body; he tried for a sex change operation, but was rejected because of his violent nature. He dresses as a woman, but feels only contempt for the female species. Catherine is held prisoner in a well, and her captor talks to his poodle about her, objectifying her with the impersonal  ‘it’. He takes great pleasure in making her use skin cream and starving her: all necessary for the skinning operation, which is his way of keeping a trophy. The use of a moth, which he pressed down his victims throat, brings Clarice closer to his whereabouts: a moth is a symbol of transition, something the killer wanted for himself. The American flag is a freqently occurring motif through the film: Clarice always finds one in Buffalo’s former dwellings. The last flag, which she discovers in the lair where he has killed and skinned his victims and skinned is small version, made for a child. AS

ON RE-RELEASE at BFI Southbank and cinemas UK-wide on 3 November 2017 to headline their THRILLER SERIES | BFI THRILLER: WHO CAN YOU TRUST October – December 2017 

Photo Credit: Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 411879fv )
‘THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ – Anthony Hopkins – 1991

Perfect Blue (1997)

Dir.: Satoshi Kon; With the voices of: Junko Iwao, Tica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji, Massaki Okura | Anime | Japan 1997, 81′.

Based on the novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi comes this psychological phantasy which can be seen as a fore-runner for today’s obsession with the cult of celebrity, onscreen violence and female repression. Japanese filmmaker Satoshi Kon (1963-2010) casts Junko Iwao as Mima Kirigoe, the leading member of a girl-band CHAM! who decides to become an actress in a TV crime series. After she plays a rape-victim, her manager Rumi (Matsumoto), who was once a pop singer herself, warns her of the potential psychological consequences. But Mima goes ahead, and is hunted down by Me-Mamia (Okura), a fan who has turned into a malicious stalker. Me-Memia tries to rape Mima, but she kills him in self-defence. His body cannot be found in the TV studio and Mima loses all sense of reality, unable to differentiate between reality and the plot of the TV murder series in which her character if forced to deal with imaginary figures invading her world. After the script-writer Todokoro (Tsuji) is murdered, Rumi suddenly turns against Mima, pretending to be her former self. The finale on the streets of Tokyo is a brilliant showdown.

The complete title of the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis is an acute description of the film’s narrative: Mima, insecure and always willing to please her male bosses, cannot take the pressure of acting as a victim, and soon loses her fragile self: she becomes more and more part of the TV play. This nightmarish scenario is shown in minute detail, and the realism is often hard to take. But Kon never loses his perspective in this striking and provocative debut: his character Mima is not just another helpless woman, but a young girl who has to mature enough to withstand the pressure of her place in a world of media dominated by men. Made for just 25 000$, Perfect Blue grossed over 112 million USD alone in the USA. AS

In cinemas 31st October from Anime Ltd and National Amusements

 

 

Grace Jones – Bloodlight and Bami (2017)

Die:. Sophie Fiennes | UK/Ireland. 2017 | Musical Biopic | 115′

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. At almost 70, 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.

1268255_Grace-Jones-2At at raucous and voluble family meal we get some backstory on the Jones and Williams troubled family backstory in a scene that culminates in a full-throated performance of Wicked and Williams’ Blood as Grace struts around amid strobes – sporting nothing but a black leotard and a massive clotted cream moonshaped crown – by Irish hatter Philip Treacy – Fiennes tribute captures the warmth and ebullience of Jamaica and Grace’s defiant irreverence.

Grace was once a Bond Girl – May Day – in A View To A Kill and also appeared in Conan The Destroyer, but here we witness the real Grace for the first time: The woman behind the act, and she’s as feisty and strangely vulnerable as you would imagine. Champagne flows throughout as Grace moves constantly, making angry phone calls and negotiating in French – she lived in Paris for many years with French photographer Jean Paul Goude who styled her legendary look and shtick. Opening an oyster with difficulty she snarls: “wish my pussy was still this tight”. 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.

La Vie en Rose is performed in a blossom pink setting – all softly sequinned and shimmery. Bloodlight And Bami – the film’s title is Jamaican for the recording studio lighting. She’s busy raising money for her next album, accompanied by her bass duo Sly and Robbie. Grace is no wallflower when it comes to things financial: she wants to be paid upfront for every concert, but will trawl through the old stalwarts just to raise money for her new work. You get the impression these old numbers bore her slightly, as she rants through Nipple to the Bottle, tottering gamely on amazingly amazonian legs. “Sometimes you have to be a high-flying bitch”.

Jones hasn’t forgotten the ghosts of the past: her abusive step-grandfather fuels the angry energy for her stage persona. Her parents lived away from Jamaica in New York during her childhood but she’s now closer to her mother and goes with her to church back home.

Pull up to the Bumper is vigorously vampish. Her lyrics – like her lips and bone structure – are strong and powerfully stand the test of time. Grace is vulnerable, scary and exotic – a feminine volcano that smoulders and could erupt at any time. Fiercely feline she purrs more like a jaguar than a pussycat. Her following is eclectic and all-encompassing: middle-aged men; sophisticated women and the gay crowd, all attracted to her burlesque bravado and musical power.

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

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Breathe (2017)

Dir.: Andy Serkis | Cast: Andrew Garfield, Clare Foy, Hugh Boneville, Tom Hollander, Diana Riggs; UK 2017, 117′

Andy Serkis has chosen a bio-pic of polio victim and disabled campaigner Robin Cavendish for his directorial debut. Written by William Nicholson (Shadowlands) and produced by Robin’s son Jonathan Cavendish, BREATHE is laced with a heavy dose of saccharine, from which Robin and his wife Diana emerge in a saintly glow.

After finishing his army career as a captain, Robin Cavendish (Garfield) goes to work in the tea-broking business in Africa. During a cricket match back in England, he meets his future wife Diana (Foy) and they return to Kenya, where in 1958, Robin suffers a polio attack leaving him paralysed from the neck down, unable to breathe or speak.

Against medical advice, Diana has her husband flown back to the UK, where he is put on respirator. Suicidal, not wanting to look at his newborn son, Robin wants his wife to end his life, but she is stubborn. Again defying doctors’ advice, she has Robin moved out of the hospital into the new family home in the country. Later, Oxford Don and inventor Teddy Hall (Bonneville) creates a special wheelchair for Robin. The couple visit Spain and France, and have countless parties at home, enlightened by Tom Hollander, who plays both of his Diana’s twin brothers. The couple also helps other patients, who are bedbound, founding charities with polio specialist Dr. G.T. Spencer and their own Refresh project, which allows patients and their families to have holidays. Robin Cavendish, who was given three month to live, died aged 64, a record for a polio victim.

This is a rousing film especially for those inflicted with the debilitating disease, but Jonathan Cavendish’s treatment lacks the objectivity really needed to do his parents justice in examining the wider issues involved. Nicholson’s script is a mixture of English stiff-upper-lip and ‘stay chipper whatever the circumstances’, skirting over the obvious difficulties the couple must have faced, for example, with sex. DoP Richard Richardson keeps the mood jolly with pastel colours and redundant panorama shots; whilst Nitin Sawhney’s score is of near-religious intensity. Garfield and Foy do their utmost but a less hagiographic approach would have certainly rendered a less cloying, more meaningful and realistic result. AS

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL OPENS ON 4TH OCTOBER 2017 – 15 OCTOBER 2017

 

Call me by your Name (2017)

Dir: Luca Guadagnino | Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlberg, Timothee Chalamet | 133′

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has similar stylishly languorous credentials to its forerunner, I Am Love, as it ravishingly unfurls.

In 1980s Cremona, where the summers are blindingly hot and torpid during the August holidays, one English family make their yearly vacation. Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet) is the musically gifted and sexually naive teenage son of Jewish parents, an eminent Classics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife, who are accustomed to a philanthropic gesture of inviting another Jewish student to stay at their villa to help with research. This year’s intern is Armie Hammer’s rather too sexy and urbane Oliver, who looks more like one of the Greek statues Elio is wont to study, than a budding historian. Elio is smitten in discrete ecstasy as he descends into emotional meltdown. Guadagnino conjures up the heady world of la Dolce Vita that mingles with the sexual undertow and uneasiness of Body Heat and the elegance of a James Ivory classic (he co-wrote the script). And it all looks stunning.

Elio and Oliver grow closer as the Ferragosto shutdown approaches, swimming, sunbathing and sampling the locale ‘by night’; Elio gawping at Hammer’s pecs – as we do too. In return, Hammer treats him with thinly-veiled disdain, coming and going at will and flirting outrageously while rocking a massive Star of David on his tanned and tousled chest. While he is every so slightly brash, the Perlmans are discretion itself, as Elio’s father gracefully points out. Elio doesn’t know where to put himself as his burgeoning sensuality is challenged by his ‘bon chic bon genre’ credentials, he teeters like a Tom cat on a hot tin roof, wanting to howl at the moon, bewitched and bewildered.

When he meets Esther Garell’s girl next door, he is flummoxed by her gamine charm and distracted by his burning desire for someone who is clearly not available, fluffing his own chance at enjoably losing his own virginity in the process. His father misjudges the sexual ambiance -or does he?- coming up with one of the best son/father soliloquies of recent years where he outlines emotional intelligence for his son’s benefit. This is something every teenager should hear.  CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is a thoroughly enjoyable, slow-burning romantic drama which should be savoured more than once. It has so much more to offer than its awkward title belies, and merits its generous running time. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 27 OCTOBER 2017  | BERLINALE REVIEW 2017

UK Jewish Film Festival 2017

The UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL has become one of the most-anticipated film events across the UK and the 21st edition will again showcase world, European and UK premieres of the best new Israeli and Jewish cinema on offer with 75 films from more than 20 countries at 115 screenings across London, Belfast, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham.

An-Act-of-Defiance-Bram-Fischer-movieThis year’s UKIJFF Opening Night Gala,  on 9th November at the BFI Southbank, is An Act of Defiance, directed by Jean van de Velde. Set in South Africa, 1963, it is based on the true story of ten black and Jewish men who are arrested for conspiring against the Apartheid system. Led by fellow defendant Nelson Mandela, the group plead not guilty, which in turn highlights the corrupt political system in power. This riveting drama captures a pivotal moment in the fight against racism, exploring the role of South African Jews in making Apartheid history.

1945Further galas and premieres will include Ferenc Török’s 1945, a powerful and innovative study of a post-war, village community, which competed at Berlinale 2017 and is a likely contender for the Festival’s Best Film Award. The ramifications of WWII are felt in Sam Garbarski’s Bye Bye Germany – a slightly overwrought but entertaining comedy set in Frankfurt, 1946 – and in a more contemporary setting for Menno Meyjes’s The Hero, a dark thriller by the co-writer of The Empire of the Sun.

paradiseParadise – (left) the spectacular Venice Silver Lion winner from Russian master filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky – will also screen nationwide at the festival, along with Avi Nesher’s latest drama Past Life. and Yaniv Berman’s unsettling thriller Land of the Little People. On a lighter note, there is Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon’s The Women’s Balcony – the most commercially successful film to date in Israel – and Francesco Amato’s gentle comedy Let Yourself Go!, worth seeing just for Toni Servillo in the lead role. New the party will be Erez Tadmor’s social drama Home Port and Haim Tabaman’s (Eyes Wide Open) eagerly-awaited Ewa.

A Documentary strand examines the life of the founder of the State of Israel with Ben Gurion, Epilogue, made from rediscovered footage of an exclusive interview. Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown is a timely portrait of the remarkable entertainer, while the surprising story of another Hollywood legend is revealed in Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story directed by Alexandra Dean and produced by Susan Sarandon. Archive features, old and less so, will include a tribute to Oliver Sachs with Penny Marshall’s moving classic Awakenings; while the secret identity of a young Jewish woman in the mid-19th century is scrutinized in The Governess by Sandra Goldbacher. Mr Emmanuel is the only feature digitised by the BFI for a new project of Jewish archive films; filmed in 1944 it provides an insightful, historical document of British cinema when a Jewish man travels to Berlin.

Bye Bye GermanyIn addition to the exciting showcase of Jewish focused films and TV in this year’s Festival, there will be a night of awards for Best Film, Best Debut, Audience Choice and now Best Screenplay. The Pears Short Film Fund returns for the 11th year and there will be screening of the 2017 winners The Master of York, by Kieron Quirke, and The Outer Circle by Adam Baroukh.

UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | NATIONWIDE | 9 -26 NOVEMBER 2017 

Liberami | Deliver Us (2016)

  C9mufahWsAEk2vd.jpg-smallDir: Federica Di Giacomo | 89 mins

Exorcism is still a fact of contemporary life particularly in Catholic countries such as Italy where every year more and more people claim that their illnesses are caused by demonic possession. Father Cataldo is a veteran priest, one of the most sought-after exorcists in Sicily. Every Tuesday, many believers follow his mass of liberation, searching for a cure for some adversity for which there does not seem to be a label or a remedy.

Italian documentarian Federica Di Giacomo won the Venice Horizons Award last year for this penetrating study of an ancient practice that has found its way into the contemporary world with as much conviction as it did in Medieval times. What emerges doesn’t provide answers but gives fascinating insight as Di Giacomo combines interviews and footage to show how, in some ways, exorcism is enjoying a boom especially in Sicily where this candid observational approach completely avoids sensationalism. MT

DELIVER US (Liberami) is in cinemas 27th October and on DVD 30th October#DELIVERUSFILM

 

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

Writer/Dir: S Craig Zahler | Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Tom Guiry, Don Johnson, Udo Kier, Fred Melamed | Thriller | US | 132′

Vince Vaughn plays a lean, mean, decent human being in S. Craig Zahler’s terrific BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99. infact its almost impossible to believe the integrity of the lead character Bradley Thomas who is forced to do what a man’s gotta do when his pregnant wife is kidnapped and threatened with death and the mutilation of her baby, in this tightly scripted vicious crime thriller that puts all Thomas’ problems down to the Mexican drug trade he’s involved in. With lines like: “Don’t call me a foreigner, the last time I looked the flag wasn’t coloured red, white and burrito”, this is a free-spirited affair that grabs you by the lapels with its straight-talking narrative and some of the best bare-fisted fighting scenes ever committed to celluloid. In fact the only criticism of BRAWL is the slighted bloated running time of over two hours, hardly a crime thanks to the fruity cast who keep us entertained throughout, with some awkward laughs at the unmitigated violence of it all. Vaughn is terrific as the guy who tries to salvage his ailing marriage by financing his future running drugs for a local gangster, but ends up in jail for defending his accomplices in a pick-up that goes wrong.

Best known for his Western Horror Bone Tomahawk, S. Craig Zahler packs genre tropes into a endlessly moving action thriller that continuously erupts with shocking violence. Vaughn’s Thomas is a solid mensch of a man whose stoicism and emotional intelligence is trounced only by his courage and physical prowess. After being made redundant he pulverises his wife’s car into the driveway, rather than take his anger out of her, despite her confessing to an affair, which the two resolve in calm dialogue each admitting their faults. After being convicted and set to the ‘FRJ’ prison, Thomas resolves to tough it out with his wife’s support, but a sinister threat from the beautifully-besuited Udo Kier,  sends Thomas into slowly unravelling meltdown. At this juncture, the film turns from a sober crime drama to something outlandishly deranged.  There are memorable vignettes from suave prison warder Don Johnson, snippy guard, Fred Melamed and a seething Mustafa Shakir. The dialogue is witty and sardonic as the body count rises and the nightmare reaches its astonishing denouement, with our hero setting a new benchmark for the all time action hero and 21st century man. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 20 OCTOBER 2017

The Death of Stalin (2017)

Dir. Armando Iannucci. Fr-UK-Bel | Comedy Drama | 106′

Armando Iannucci’s stylish Soviet satire plays out like a classic Mel Brooks comedy. This light-footed but abrasively cynical dramedy lays bare the grasping sculduggery of Stalinist Russia with a humour as bleak and bracingly vicious as the Gulags where nearly 10-20 million people lost their lives between 1929 and 1953. Our story kicks off in Moscow, where the cockney-tongued Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) collapses in his state rooms, having suffered a fatal stroke.

Best known for The Thick Of It, In The Loop and Veep, Iannucci again exposes the ugliness of power and politics in a film that echoes the global crisis of faith in our leaders. But what really bolsters this lavish production is seeing so many fabulous actors all doing their stuff in enjoyable comic turns. Amongst Stalin’s coterie of counsellors there is Michael Palin (Vyacheslav Molotov); Steve Buscemi (Nikita Khrushchev); Simon Russell Beale (Lavrentiy Beria) and even Paul Whitehouse (Anastas Mikoyan); not to mention Dermot Crowley (Kaganovich). The humour lies in their need to pretend to be unanimously respectful of Stalin’s death while, behind the scenes, a farce plays out with  hilarious gags as they all jockey for position and copy with the petulant posturing from Rupert Friend and Andrea Riseborough as Vasily and Sventlana, Stalin’s kids.

Based on a graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, THE DEATH OF STALIN also shows how ordinary people were casually abused and manipulated by the powerful elite – this is a fascinatingly caustic comedy plays up the pitfalls of a regime that replaced an equally unequal set-up of the Tsars, who at least had taste!. These characters are dead ugly and thoroughly unlikeable, swinging around the vast and vacuous corridors of power, exposing the same loathsome view of Russia that transpires in Andrei Zvyagintsev’s contemporary drama LOVELESS; clearly nothing has changed in the intervening years; the tone here is breezier, but just as back-biting.

Rupert Friend’s Vassily does sail a bit close to the wind in his silliness, but Jason Isaac steps in with comic astringency as Army Chief, Georgy Zhukov. On the whole these politicians are as frighteningly convincing as a species as Jeremy Corbyn or even Michael Gove. Steve Buscemi’s Khrushchev is a clever conniver who gradually gets his way through a process of stealth and self-pity. Witty and throughly entertaining. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 20 OCTOBER 2017

 

Dina (2017)

Dir: Antonio Santini, Dan Sickles | Cast: Dina Buno, Scott Levin | Doc | US | 102′

Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles explore the joys and idiosyncrasies of an autistic Jewish couple who meet and marry in this poignant and quirkily humorous vérité portrait of love and companionship. DINA serves as an understated tribute to emotional resilience and an indomitable desire for human closeness.

Although there are clearly moments of awkwardness and embarrassment here, Santini and Sickles are never patronising, treating their subject matter with respect and dignity. DINA emerges an engaging and revealing study of human tenderness at its most touching and honest.  48 year-old-widow Dina Bruno is certainly forthright but not apparently autistic when we first meet her making arrangements for her second marriage to Scott Levin, who works in the local Walmart. She is clearly on the outer fringes of the ‘spectrum’ whereas Scott is possibly more affected. The two met at an outer Philadelphia social group for ‘neurologically diverse’ adults. Dina has been ‘retired sick’ after a stabbing attack from an ex (‘the psycho’) left her depressed and traumatised. Her first husband died of cancer.

Although the couple both seem keen on each other, it’s clear that Dina is the more experienced, sexually and emotionally, of the two. Living alone in a flat above a shop, Dina is armed with a strong sense of self-esteem and, although overweight, is happy in her skin with few of the anxieties that bug most modern woman. However, Scott has always lived with his loving parents and is possibly a virgin, admitting to masturbation and given to romantic crooning of “Before the Next Teardrop Falls”,  but expressing a deep fear of tactile expression and sex. Something that Dina is determined to remedy, and Scott willing to learn.

Tenderness and tolerance are the watchwords of Dina and Scott’s relationship. They make a rather endearing couple on a bus trip to the New Jersey seaside for the first time, but when Dina presents him with a copy of The Joy of Sex, Scott is clearly out of his comfort zone. But sex – or lack of it – never becomes an issue between the two of them, simple another step on their journey towards mutual fulfilment. The wedding night is relaxed and informal with a focus on their enormous champagne glass-styled jacuzzi, rather than the lack of action between the sheets  (“I wonder what a honeymoon is like for a passionate couple” – muses Dina, aloud).

Scott’s parents are a warmly supportive couple who encourage him not to worry when he breaks down in tears over his performance anxiety, and this contrasts sharply with Dina’s fractious relationship with her slim, blond mother who finds her daughter ‘self-absorbed’. The couple are clearly sociable and have regular meet-ups with close friends Monica Ferrero and Frank Costanzo, whose happy marriage gives Dina and Scott something to hope for.

The filmmakers avoid a judgmental approach leaving the couple plenty of space to express themselves freely without time pressures in this well-crafted indie that never overstays its welcome. There’s a feeling here that Scott and Dina are forging something worthwhile and wonderful – in a small way, but a meaningful one nevertheless. When two people decide to really make a go of things, the result is invariably a success!. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 20 OCTOBER 2017

GRAND JURY PRIZE DOCUMENTARY WINNER | SUNDANCE US

 

 

A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Dir-Scr Sinéad O’Shea | Doc | Ireland | 2017 | 86′

When longterm religious conflict infects a population it almost becomes genetic inbred between one faction and the other. This seems to be the case in the Middle East and also in Northern Island where the Troubles first started in the early 1970s and are still going on according to this courageous documentary, five year’s in the making, that exposes modern day paramilitary activity committed by groups opposed to the peace process that hoped to put an end to hostilities with the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 2008.

The film’s title is no joke. Derry mother Majella O’Donnell actually took her drug-addicted teenager Philly to be punished by dissident Republican paramilitaries, who refused to come to her home for fear of ambush, making her  visit their hideout for his anti-social behaviour. In this non-judgemental even-handed film, award-winning journalist Sinéad O’Shea strikes up a friendly relationship with a former IRA member-turned-community mediator, now suffering from lung cancer, and also manages to home-interview Majella, her husband Philly Senior (who was later knee-capped) Philly junior (18 when filming began) and Kevin Barry, a mere stripling, who shows us his arsenal of weapons including an axe; bolt-cutters; a saw and a mallet – in the open scenes of this hair-raising documentary.

MOTHER_BRINGS_HER_SON_TO_BE_SHOT_A_laneO’Shea’s investigations are unsettling and compelling. It emerges that the locals would rather be killed than give information to the Police, so they continue to tolerate the insurgencies which have become a dyed in the wool symptom of this toxic rift between the two sides. One man claims the intolerance is as entrenched in the locals “as asking a Black man to accept the KluKluxKlan”. O’Shea discovers that far from happy with ‘peace’, young Kevin Barry even wish the Troubles were still raging,  None of the O’Donnell family are in employment as each day they feel they are living out the nightmarish scenario of drug-addiction and aggression from the outside, although in the final scenes before her husband’s shooting, Majella claims to be having ‘a good year’ with Philly junior expecting his first child and Kevin Barry on a more even keel emotionally at 15. Driving around the grim and rain-soaked streets, it is shocking to witness so much anti-British sentiment with menacing slogans painted on the walls of buildings. We are even privy to a twilight raid by masked gunmen that brings back those horrific TV images for those who remember the era. The final scene feels almost as if the Dark Ages have returned to modern day Britain.MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 13 October 2017

 

The Snowman (2017) Netflix

Dir: Tomas Alfredson | Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Val Kilmer, Chloë Sevigny, J.K. Simmons, Silvia Busuioc, Jamie Clayton | Horror Thriller | 119′

Tomas Alfredson’s first foray into thriller territory Let the Right One In was one of the most horrifying movies ever made and an instant cult classic. Sadly, The Snowman is horrifically bad. And not even star trio Michael Fassbender, Charlotte Gainsbourg or Toby Jones can do anything to save it.

Fans of ScandiNoir and the frosted pulpy fare of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø will be the most disappointed by this screen adaptation of the seventh Harry Hole thriller, where a serial-killer’s calling card is a haunting snowman that appears near his crime scenes. For some reason Alfredson has chosen not one but three award-winning writers to fashion the sprawling fractured narrative – and it’s a real dog’s dinner. But they do keep one trick up their sleeve: the identity of the killer.

Fassbender plays the maverick dipsomaniac detective who looks miserable as sin and permanently on the verge of ‘flu for the duration. But before he limps onto the scene, a mother has gone missing in snowy Oslo, abducted in the dead of night and leaving her young daughter and nervous husband (James D’Arcy) in the dark, literally and metaphorically. According to the crime motivation backstory, a ‘mother’ serial killer is on the loose. A little boy has been orphaned when his distraught and suicidal mum drove her Volvo into a frozen lake. A series of gruesome jump cuts feature severed limbs bloodying the snow, we then cut to the starkly-lit Ikea clad interior of a child’s bedroom.

The framing is off kilter, not to mention the gaudy aesthetic and lighting. The sinister tropes of Let the Right One In have gone out, and instead of feeling tense, we feel appalled at the ludicrousness of it all. The female characters are either wearing grotesque wigs (Chloë Sevigny has one of the worst examples) or tarty clothing for no apparent reason: Rebecca Ferguson’s sidekick detective is forced to don thigh books, red lippy and black lace to seduce one of the suspects, Arve Støp (JK Simmons).

Guffaws broke out in the cinema when a bloated, lumbering Val Kilmer appears (as Ferguson’s father), his dubbing wildly out of sync. And Charlotte Gainsbourg (as Hole’s ex) plays a moaning minnie, one minute wittering down the phone about their son, the next, seducing him in a mini dress and bare (almost blue) legs. Meanwhile Toby Jones sports poorly-advised blond highlights and a curious goatee beard. The Snowman is a real ‘shocker’ and not in a good way. On the plus side, the aerial shots of Oslo, Bergen and the wintery landscapes are wonderfully atmospheric: so you do get a trip to Norway’s highlights for your money, it’s a shame about the rest. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

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Araby (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dirs: Joao Dumans, Affonso Uchoa | Cast: Aristides de Sousa, Murilo Caliari, Renata Cabral, Glaucia Vandeveld | Brazil | Drama | 96′

An ordinary life takes on evergreen themes and universal implications in writer-directors Affonso Uchoa and Joao Dumans’ delicate rendering of turmoil in the industrial town in Brazil, when thoughtful teenager, Andre (Murilo Caliari) discovers a notebook that chronicles the eventful life journey of his injured neighbour Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), a factory worker in the aluminium mines.

Tempered with an atmospheric folkloric soundtrack, this is a cold-eyed but fitting tale for our turbulent times, and an endlessly fascinating politically-infused road movie that gradually broadens out and shifts in tone from the narrow social realist focus of an ordinary young boy, into the multi-faceted decade-long peripatetic experiences of a working man who has travelled from shore to shore, and recorded his fascinating lifestory.

Forty-something Cristiano’s hand-written wanderings come to light when Andre (Murilo Caliari) discovers and becomes engrossed in his notebook, after the factory-worker is injured in an accident at work. And once Andre starts reading the film sets off on its wondrous and finely detailed chronicle of Cristiano’s remarkable wanderings, footloose and fancy-free, through all life’s eventualities, from petty crime and retribution, to love and rigorous labour in order to earn his living, while experiencing the massive country that is his native Brazil.

This is a gently magnificent and free-spirited film exploring an ordinary life  that slowly opens up to extraordinary proportions. MT

SCREENING DURING LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 4 – 15 OCTOBER 2017

Chez Nous | This is Our Land (2017) | Bfi London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Lucas Belvaux; Cast: Emilie Dequenne, Andre Dussollier, Gillaume Gouix, Patrick Descamps, Catherine Jacob; France/Belgium 2017, 117 min

Belgium director/co-writer Lucas Belvaux has chronicled a local election campaign in the north of France, with similarities to the real world very much intended. Set in a unnamed town close to Henin-Beaumont in the Pas-de Calais region, where Marine Le Pen was elected as MP in June, after having been thoroughly defeated in the preceding presidential elections, Chez Nous is centred around a a-political community nurse, who is exploited by a far right Party called RNP.

Pauline Duhez (Dequenne) an over-worked community nurse, divorced with two little children, who has to watch, how her patients and most of the townsfolk are suffering from a permanent reduction of their living standard. Whilst her father Jacques (Descamps), is a fierce trade unionist, Pauline is susceptible towards populist right wingers, like Dr. Berthier (Dussollier), the local doctor, who looked after Pauline’s mother, who died of cancer. Berthier is a gentlemanlike neo-fascist, in the mould of Tixier-Vignancour, who was Minister in the Vichy regime, and collaborated with right-wing militias after the war. Berthier has now left military resistance behind, and helps the RNP (Renewed National Party) to gain power in a democratic way. This cannot be said for his erstwhile friend Stephane ‘Stanko’ (Gouix), who is still working for the military wing of the RNP. He was the first love of Pauline at college, and when he re-appears in her life, old feelings resurface. After Pauline agrees to be the RBN candidate for mayor of the town, Berthier warns ‘Stanko’ to leave Pauline alone: the party cannot afford a scandal, if it becomes public that Pauline has relationship with a para-military soldier. Whilst old friends warn Pauline off he engagement and candidature, ‘Stanko’ is ready to sacrifice his relationship with Pauline for the good of the party. But Pauline, who has doubts, confronts Berthier and stands down. She chooses a life with Stanko, who lies to her, that he is a changed man, who has left the armed struggle behind.

CHEZ NOUS is full of ironies: the daughter chooses the opposite end of politics from her father, her lover is really more dangerous than the Doctor, whom she rejects in the end, and the RNP has difficulties in getting rid of old fighters, who still use force. Pauline, politically naïve, is lost among the scheming politicians, particularly Agnes Dorelle (Jacob), the Party leader, who appeals to Pauline’s feminism. A late twist also helps to bring some loose ends together.
Most of the characters are based on figures of the crime novel Le Bloc (2011) written by co-author Jerome Leroy. This helps to keep the protagonists very earthy: in spite of the topic, politics are secondary; Belvaux concentrates on the motives and personalities of the participants. Some dry humour also helps, and Dequenne is particularly convincing. DoP Pierric Gantelmi d’Ille, who worked with Belvaux on Pas son Genre, captures the provincial atmosphere brilliantly, creating a feeling not unlike a Simenon novel. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

The Party (2017)

Dir: Sally Potter. Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Patricia Clarkson, Timothy Spall, Cillian Murphy, Emily Mortimer, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones | UK | DRAMA | 71′

After the lush languor of Orlando comes the sleek satire of THE PARTY: Sally Potter has never done laughs before, but here there are some mean ones but nothing unsurprising. This middle class chamber piece is very much a British affair with a British cast – strangely, the most appealing characters are German and American. Shot in bare black-and-white it certainly strips bare the themes involved: Politics, Love, Sex and Money: but what else is there? Intellect, of course, and that is supplied in spades by Timothy Spall’s lounge hang-dog lizard Bill who is hosting a soirée for six close friends for his wife Kristin Scott Thomas’ Janet, who has just been appointed Shadow Health Minister. This is one of those ghastly evenings where everyone has ‘an announcement’ and no one appears to be particularly in a good mood, apart from Bruno Ganz’ soothing alternative therapist Gottfried who talks in cliches along with the other guests, each saying exactly what you would expect them to, representing a different aspect of the social spectrum. Ganz’ news is announced as their ‘last supper’ by his warm and waspish wife April (a brilliant Patricia Clarkson) as she slumps gracefully into a squashy settee. Very much queen of the back-handed compliment she is also the lynchpin who holds the party together, and by the end announces: “our marriage is not looking so bad, compared to this lot”. Everyone is focused on their own issues in that fashionably distraught way well-known to city-dwellers. The only cheesy smile comes from Janet, not least because of her news, but also because of a secret lover who keeps phoning and texting while she pops the vol-au-vents into the oven like some modern day Fanny Craddock. Tom (Cillian Murphy), is a melodramatic financial type who snorts coke in the loo and carries a gun (yeh Sally all city-types snort coke, and carry guns – if only you knew!). The whole affair is book-ended by Janet pointing a gun from her open front door in a ruse that feels bit too formulaic and trite, in the scheme of things. The problem with THE PARTY is an insistence on toeing the party line: everything is so predictable, and unoriginal. There’s even a lesbian couple played by Emily Mortimer and Cherry Jones, who are expecting triplets, and whose dominant versus submissive shtick is cringeworthy in the extreme. The finale showdown involves interweaving infidelities. THE PARTY is an amuse-bouche, and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. And by the time you’re home you’ll be casting around for that bluray of Orlando. MT

RELEASES ON 13 OCTOBER 2017 NATIONWIDE | Berlinale review

Mademoiselle Paradis (2017)

Dir: Barbara Albert | Cast: Maria Dragus, Devid Striesow, Lukas Miko, Katja Kolm, Maresi Riegner, Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg, Stefanie Reinsperger, Susanne Wuest, Christoph Luser | Austria | Biopic Drama | 97′

Rococo Vienna is the setting for this formal but painterly portrait of the legendary Dr Anton Mesmer seen through the experiences of a young bind pianist Maria Theresa Paradis, who sought his help to restore her sight in 1777.  Adapted by Kathrin Resetarits from Alissa Walser’s novel ‘Mesmerized’, Barbara Albert offers a rather detached but finely-tuned arthouse drama offering a flimsy but fascinating exposé of Austrian Habsburg society during the time of Mozart when metaphysics, science alternative medicine were all on an equal footing, with unregulated doctors literally practising on unsuspecting patients.

The film opens as the 18 year-old Mademoiselle is seen playing the harpsichord, her cataract-ridden eyes rolling as she jerks her head from side to side. It is not a pretty sight but the music is delightful. Her wealthy family encourages her talent, but a good marriage is imperative in high-society. So parents Joseph (Lukas Miko) and Maria (Katja Kolm) consult Dr Mesmer (David Striesow/The Counterfeiters) whose methods are based on animal magnetism and positive fields of energy, otherwise known as ‘healing hands’.

Initial results are positive and Mesmer and his wife are keen to gain credibility in court circles to further their cause. But bizarrely, once Mademoiselle’s sight improves her keyboard skills start to deteriorate. A difficult film to warm to: not only are the characters unattractive physically, they’re also unappealing personality-wise, so we have no emotional investment whatsoever in whether the patient is cured, or not. But Mesmer’s methods make this compelling and he by no means comes across as a saviour or a quack, thanks to a skilful performance from David Striesow. Infact Mesmer seems to be the only character here with any chink of humanity, despite  remaining rather a cipher. Mademoiselle comes across as a spoilt brat but an intelligent one, and her character and foibles are subtly and convincingly portrayed the Romanian born Maria Dragus ( White Ribbon ) and form the mainstay of what would otherwise would be a rather airless affair compared with Jessica Hausner’s more satisfying Amour Fou, from the same era. Award-winning documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter is one of the producers. MT

ON PRIME VIDEO

Double Date (2017)

Dir.: Benjamin Barfoot | Cast: Danny Morgan, Michael Socha, Kelly Wenham, Georgia Groome | UK 2017 | 89′.

Benjamin Barfoot’s spoof Slasher movie is murdered by Danny Morgan’s dreadful script and a flimsy narrative that cannot survive even 90 minutes. The feature debut sees two spooky sisters Kitty (Wenham) and Lulu (Groome) corralled into helping Jim (Morgan) lose his virginity on the final night of his twenties. But unbeknown to Jim and his best best friend Alex (Socha), the sister’s have an ulterior motive for seeking out male virgins – it involves body parts, but not those that immediately spring to mind. To say that the material is raw, is an understatement. Only DoP Laura Bingham (also a newcomer), comes away with any credit. Overall, Double Date ends up with a lot of blood but very few laughs. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2017

School Life (2017)

1_tDirs: Neasa Ní Chianáin/David Rane | Writer: Etienne Essery | With John/Amanda | Doc | Irish | 99′

In a Georgian mansion in rural Ireland maverick educators John and Amanda have devoted their married life to bringing out the best in their pupils, along with their foppish Head Master Dermot Dix. And if you had young children, you’d send them to the idyllic prep school at Headfort House near Kells in County Meath. In this entertainingly footloose documentary we spend a year with the kids and staff and their wonderful approach to learning.

3_tThe directors’ narrative is as unstructured as the couple’s teaching methods. John and Amanda are as tender towards their charges as they are to each other. But discipline is also firmly in place and respect is the watchword; and it flows both ways. John is the Latin Master but he also teaches the liberal arts, music and painting. English Mistress Amanda, is responsible for drama – and there is a lot of fun. John and Amanda are often seen sharing a fag as they chat through their day in their cottage on the grounds, giving each other tips and encouragement – clearly the pupils are also their ‘children’ and they know just how to bring out the best in them. But they are dedicated to their life’s work and have also to consider what would happen when they eventually retire: “What would we do all day, if we didn’t come here?”. When little Florrie, a troubled but talented kid, appears on the scene from London, she is a brilliant drummer in the school’s rock band but lacks discipline. John deftly handles her tears and tantrums without batting an eyelid and the children all call him ‘Sir’, as a mark of respect – without a shred of resentment, or ever questioning his authority, in public or in the cosy dorms.

At the end of term, there is success for two children with places at Eton and Harrow, and John gently mimics the posh accents the boys may encounter once installed. At the same time, young Ted’s dyslexia has improved in this caring environment and there are prizes – and hugs – all round. A tender and touching portrait of what a school should be. MT

OUT ON 13 OCTOBER 2017

Pop Aye (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Kirsten Tan | Drama | Singapore/Thailand | Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Penpak Sirikul, Bong | 104′

Kirsten Tan’s enchanting film debut follows a disillusioned romantic and his elephant across Thailand on a mission to connect with the past. This deceptively simple tale has so much to say, most of it non-verbally, about the ennui of urban life and nostalgia for love, and does so with an understated gracefulness of touch, a distinct visual style and an astringent humour that shows considerable maturity and insight. Clearly she has thought a great deal about her script and subtle characterisations, and it shows.

World-weary Thana (Warakulnukroh) lives a banal existence in plastic Bangkok. Once a well-known architect, his marriage to a shopaholic (Sirikul) is soul-destroying, and his clients now prefer technology to his personal approach. One day he leaves home and just keeps on going, reuniting on the way with his childhood pet Popeye (Bong), a fairground elephant destined for the scrapheap. The two become soulmates in their eventful journey back to Thana’s hometown of Loei, where faded flashbacks reveal how Popeye joined their village life after his mother was shot dead.

Thana opens his diatribe on the perils of city living, in the first of several encounters with helpful strangers the unlikely couple meet along the way. Another more spiritual interlude involves a Buddhist pauper Dee (Khumdee) who senses his end is nigh and whose final wish is to see his estranged girlfriend, who redeems herself in the final scenes, along with Thana’s long-lost uncle (Pongpab) who has a few surprises up his sleeve. Meanwhile, the police take constant potshots at Popeye: roving elephants are regarded as a ‘threat to the public tidiness’, as they continue their illuminating journey. Chananun Chotrungroj’s clever camerawork draws similarities between the misty landscape and Popeye’s vast hindquarters, uniting beast and countryside in a metaphor for Thailand’s lost rural traditions, in poignant contrast to the brash and alienating march of progress unfurling in Bangkok’s glitzy skyline.

Tan’s characters are as subtle and complex as every one of us, and each brings out a new dimension in her story, revealing bittersweet ironies and universal truths, but always with spry humour. And all the while, Popeye is the sad reminder of the country’s past, seen through his knowing gaze and gentle demeanour. MT

NOW SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4 0CT0BER – 15 OCTOBER 2017

Filmworker (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: Tony Zierra | Documentary with Leon Vitali; USA | 94′.

Stanley Kubrick is without doubt one of the greats of 20th Century cinema. His perfectionism and dedication is also legendary as Tony Zierra (My big Break) illustrates in his haunting documentary of how an actor fell under Kubrick’s spell, becoming his right-hand man in an act of near-religious submission. Even now, 18 years after his master’s death, he works tirelessly transposing the film archive onto 4K material.

In 1975, actor Leon Vitali was a young man with a great film and stage future ahead of him and offers from the National Theatre. Securing one of the main parts as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Vitali went on to admire Kubrick so much, that he soon gave up his acting career to learn the craft, finally talking Kubrick into getting him a job on the The Shining (1980). Once Kubrick had gained his trust, Vitali was tasked with casting the child roles for the Cult horror feature. In Full Metal Jacket (1987), Vitali’s main contribution was helping the actors live up to the exacting demands of the director. Whilst returning to his acting career in Kubrick’s final feature Eyes wide Shut (1999), Vitali also helped with various technical tasks.

Being around Kubrick meant often working a 16 hour day and Vitali became a trusted adjutant of the control freak, even worked around the clock during large projects. His three children, who are interviewed, leave no doubt that they came second in the pecking order for Dad’s attention. Other interviewees, like Ryan O’Neal and Matthew Modine, talk about Vitali’s obsessive relationship with the often cantankerous Kubrick. If Vitali detected others’ shortcomings, he brought them to Kubrick’s attention. The obsessive job has taken its toll on Vitali. Physically as well as psychologically, he has aged beyond his years. Now haggard, he’s still driven by fulfilling a self-imposed workload as Kubrick’s personal assistant beyond the grave. FILMMAKER is an absorbing and haunting portrait of obsession. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

Cargo (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Gilles Coullier | Sam Louwyck, Wim Willlaert, Sebastian Dewaele | 91′ | Drama | France/Bel/Ned

There have been a number of really good marine-themed films of late including Mario Herce’s Dead Slow Ahead (2015); Delphine Coulin’s Stopover/Voir du Pays; Axel Koenzen’s Deadweight; and Felix Dufour-Laperriere’s Transatlantique.  Sadly this is not one of them, but is worth a watch.

What starts as an intriguing ‘man overboard’ thriller rapidly plunges into the maudlin territory of people trafficking in the grim Dutch debut that tries to be all things to all people with a male-centric narrative exploring the aftermath of tragedy for a struggling North Sea fishing company after the patriarch suffers a life-changing fall. Written, directed and produced by Gilles Coullier, the ace up CARGO’s sleeve is a brooding turn from Flemish actor Sam Louwyck as Jean, the eldest son responsible for the ailing fleet. Battling to bring up his 8 year old son, the single father is also tasked with managing his youngest brother Francis, who is a loser hiding his homosexuality, and the black sheep of the family William, who truculently wants to carrying on the family business, against all odds. Three signatures are required to put the business to bed. The other good thing about CARGO is David Williamson’s widescreen camerawork that makes the dismal North Sea coastline sing powerfully with muted blues and forboding greys, echoing the sentiments of this turbulent family saga with its universal themes of migration, financial crisis and the ties that bind. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 13,14,15 OCTOBER 2017

The Cakemaker (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir: Ofir Raul Grazier | Cast: Sarah Adler, Zohar Shtrauss, Tim Kalkhof, Roy Miller | 104′ | LGBT Drama |

Narrative torpor is not the only thing on the menu in this genteel gay-themed film debut from Israeli director Ophir Raul Grazier. Two stories of grief and bereavement interweave in a thoughtful but flaccid study of long-distance love that unfolds between Berlin and Jerusalem. Lust has nothing to do with it when young German baker Tomas (Kalkhof) meets married Israeli business man Oren (Miller) who calls by his cafe looking for directions, but also swings both ways. We are led to believe that the two then fall for each other, in the absence of any kind of convincing chemistry or even rapport. Oren then goes back to his wife Anat (Sarah Adler) and son in Jerusalem and after a brief silence, Tomas finds out he has been killed in an accident back home. The grief-stricken baker then goes to Jerusalem to scope out Anat and her family and ends up inadvertently working for her, although the two are totally unaware of their connecting backstory. As they cope with sadness of loss, cafe life in Jerusalem poses all kinds of Kosher problems for Thomas’ who cooking skills are hampered by not being Jewish, although we are persuaded that the cakes he makes are popular amongst the un-Orthoodox customers. THE CAKEMAKER is an LGBT title that wouldn’t say boo to a goose, let alone a nice fat challah during Passover; but there’s a quiet respectability here and it’s decent and well-performed. MT

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 4 OCTOBER – 15 OCTOBER

 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Dir.: Denis Villeneuve; Cast: Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright, Sylvia Hoeks, Jared Leto, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Davis; USA 2017, 164 min.

Ridley Scott set his original Blade Runner in 2019; and since we are nearly there, Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) has had to catapult us another 30 years into the future where LA is a chaotic ruin, where snows falls regularly with a permanent orange halo in the sky. Climate change has taken its toll. But this is nothing, because north of the metropolis, including San Diego, everything is, literally, just a dump populated by human scavengers. Canadian director Villeneuve has come from art-house cinema, and proves successfully that you can make a blockbuster costing 180 million dollars with the aesthetics and quality of an indie movie.

In this dystopian nightmare, a narrative emerges more or less where Ridley Scott (who is an executive producer) left off. LAPD officer K (Gosling) – himself an android (Mark Nexus 9) – is hunting down the rebellious model Nexus 8 survivors, and we witness him successfully executing a contract. But the aftermath is much more important: K finds evidence that the distinction between humans and androids has been breached. Reporting to his superior, Lieutenant Joshi (Wright), he is told to forget the whole affair: all evidence is being destroyed. But K is himself a rebel and goes on researching. Niander Wallace (Leto), who more or less owns the country and the plant where the much more pliant Nexus 9 model is produced, is not amused, and sets his executioner Luv (Hoeks) on Joshi. K. Luv is a killing machine who never moves a muscle in her angelic face. On his way back into the past, K first encounters a mind technician (Davis), whose identity will be of absolute importance, and finally Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, who has gone missing for thirty years, and now lives in the ruins of Las Vegas, gambling with himself and watching holograms of Elvis and Frank Sinatra.

Much more important than this wild chase – K still uses Ford’s battered mini-plane – is the relationship between K and Joi (de Armas), an inferior service android, who serves K on every level. But Joi develops feelings for her master, and finally even sacrifices her life, just to be with him. For me, the highpoint is the scene where K invites a hooker to the flat, and Joi wraps her holographic self around the woman, while they love together: all three of them longing for a human experience. When K finds the small wooden horse that has been a feature of his dreams, he’s not sure if this memory was implanted in the factory; ironically, Wallace the designer is calling the androids ‘angels’, wanting to develop them further, so they can reproduce.

The soullessness is astonishing: the wooden horse is a sensation because nobody has seen a tree. And naked women ply their trade with building-sized holograms. K, like his namesake in Kafka’s castle – is lost in the power play, but still yearns to be a human. Considering the state of the species, he should have second thoughts.There is lot to admire here, and Villenueve’s subtle, sensitive direction makes one forget the substantial running time. Writers Hampton Fanchor (who scripted the 1982 version) and Michael Green keep the focus and take their time developing each character. The music by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer supports the eerie atmosphere, and British DoP Roger Deakins (A Serious Man) creates a ghastly shadow world in bleached colours, creating an atmosphere of permanent darkness and fog. Gosling and de Armas are a couple from an inverted Sodom et Gomorra, by Proust. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE.

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

Dir.: Simon Curtis |  Cast:Domhnall Gleason, Margot Robbie, Will Tilson, Alex Lawther, Kelly MacDonald, Stephen Campbell Moore; UK 2017, 107′.

In trying to tackle the complex relationship between Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne (1882-1956) and his son Christopher Robin, Simon Curtis (Woman in Gold) finds the guilty party: the boy’s mother Daphne (Margot Robbie). Aided by scriptwriters Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughn, Dorothy ‘Daphne’ de Selincourt becomes a garish parody of a woman without a heart; although contradictory evidence found in the adult writing of C R Milne is written out.

Bookended by the two World Wars, the story opens with AA Milne (Gleason) in the West End Theatre scene of 1920, where flashbulbs remind him of his traumatic time in the trenches. Having written for the stage and the magazine Punch, Milne declares “I’ve had enough of making people laugh, I want to make them see”. Daphne had given birth to their son Christopher Robin, named ‘Billy Moon’ by his parents. The couple soon gravitate from London to Hartfield East Sussex, where AA Milne was to write his two most famous books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), illustrated by the Punch cartoonist EH Shephard (Campbell Moore), who visited the Milnes often and had a close relationship with the author, sharing post traumatic stress disorder.

Daphne is shown as an endlessly neglectful mother, seeking out out the brights lights of London’s social scene while leaving CR in the hands of his nurse Olive ((MacDonald). When Olive is on leave, Milne senior shows off his parenting skills in strange ways: when he finds his son on the table with knife and fork in his hands, he reprimands him “if somebody falls through the ceiling, they would injure themselves, drawing blood” – making sure the audience gets the wartime analogy. After the Winnie-the-Pooh books achieve worldwide success, Daphne decides to get in on the act, making hay out of Milne’s success despite being previously being on the verge of leaving him – she even sells one of his private poems to a newspaper, and gives her son short shrift when he tearfully complains “all these stories are just lies” – she retorts “There is no blubbing in this house”. A sentimental reconciliation between CR, returning from the war, and his parents shows Daphne again at her best: never in film history have you witnesses a mother less delighted by the survival of her son.

The dinner party conversation at the Milne house would make PG Woodhouse proud: Dinner guest: “I was at the Somme”, “How was it?” “Bad show”. Obviously, this only goes to emphasis how the British stiff upper lip kept the sensitive male in check. Clearly Curtis intends this as an indictment of the upbringing Milne’s children’s books revered, but is it really worthwhile, or even desirable, to criticise the values of the past through today’s spectrum? AA Milne is shown trashing his son’s room with a cricket bat, demonstrating that, unlike mother, he really regrets the rotten childhood he had forced on him. Whilst the PD department gets all the credit, GOODBYE is just too sweet and torpid – apart from its misogynist ideology – to keep even the most ardent Pooh fanbase engaged. Years from now this film will be forgotten, the books and poems will live on. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Legendary GET CARTER composer, Roy Budd is to have his lost score for Rupert Julian’s silent classic film, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA premiered at the London Coliseum, 24 years after his untimely death in 1993. On October 8th 2017, Budd’s masterpiece score will be performed by the 77 piece Docklands Sinfonia Orchestra, conducted by Spencer Down, alongside a screening of the silent film in a world premiere event.

British jazz musician and composer Roy Budd, is best known for the film scores of Get Carter with Michael Caine and The Wild Geese with Roger Moore and Richard Burton. In 1989 Budd acquired the only surviving original 35mm reel of Rupert Julian’s silent 1925 film, The Phantom of the Opera, and lovingly restored it to its former glory before composing his own score to the film, a sweeping romantic symphony. Phantom is the sound of Budd blossoming from jazz virtuoso to classical maestro.

img014 A self-taught pianist and child prodigy, in 1953 aged six, Budd performed his first concert at The London Coliseum on the same bill as Roy Castle and went on to perform with stars such as Aretha Franklin, Bob Hope, and Antonio Carlos Jobin as well as scoring 40 feature films.

Throughout his childhood Budd, who has perfect pitch, won a number of televised talent competitions, before releasing a single, “The Birth of the Budd”, when he was still a teenager, and becoming the resident pianist at one of London’s jazz meccas, the Bull’s Head pub in Barnes. In 1971, he sealed his place in film history when, aged 22, he was hired by Mike Hodges to score his grim revenge drama, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine. The music budget was a mere £450, but Budd, along with a bassist and a percussionist, recorded a spine-tingling harpsichord motif which is now iconic. In 1981 The Human League covered the theme from Get Carter on their multi-million selling album Dare.

Phantom Dancers_SmIn 1989 Budd acquired an original 35mm film print to the 1925 silent film Phantom of the Opera from a collector. He restored the film to its full glory using an experimental two colour process and original tints from the film’s original release. Budd completed a full orchestral score for the film using an 84-piece orchestra and recorded this with the Luxembourg Symphony Orchestra. In 1993, with five weeks to go before a London premiere at the Barbican in partnership with UNICEF and European tour, Budd suffered a fatal brain hemorrhage and passed away at just 46 years of age. The concert was cancelled and Budd’s widow Sylvia was asked to foot the bill. Sylvia has fought for 24 years to give the score the public airing it deserves.

Phantom of the Opera is arguably Budd’s greatest achievement: a grand soundtrack for full orchestra with several themes and leitmotifs that pay tribute to the great composers of the concert hall and screen, while at the same time unmistakably the work of its inspired creator.

LONDON COLISEUM | 8 OCTOBER 2017

Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2017)

Dir.: Masaaki Yuasa; Anime with the voices of Kana Hanazawa, Gen Hoshino, Hiroyuki Yoshino; Japan 2017, 93′

Masaaki Yuasa returns to the big screen with his first release in 13 years. Night is Short, Walk On Girl, based on the Manga by Tomohiko Morimi, is a variation on the One Night action Manga, itself the Oriental equivalent of Cornel Woolrich’s pulp novels featuring the doomed hero with just one night to prove his innocence and rescue his girl –while the clock ticks away. In this case, it’s the girl of the title, Ottome, meaning ‘girl with black hair’, who runs the show.

Set in Kyoto, Senpai (Hoshino), a shy senior college student from an upmarket background, is in love with teenager The Girl (Hanazawa) who keeps her feelings for him buttoned up. Senpai pursues her at every corner, but The Girl is much more streetwise than he is. After a mutual college friend’s wedding party, Senpai tries to find a seat near his paramour, but comes under attacked by a gang robbing him of his clothes, leaving Senpai deeply embarrassed and forced to beg strangers to lend him some underwear. The Girl, meanwhile, lucks out by winning a drinking contest with a God-like creature, Rihaku, thus liberating one of his debtors. As the night goes on, The Girl meets the ‘God of the old Books Market’ (Yoshino) along with Todo-son, an unhappy collector of erotic Japanese art, and a group of nihilists, who fall under her spell. A college theatre production turns into a out-out slapstick show, and, in the final section of this riotous night journey, The Girl fights tornados and icy hail, as the anime reaches its momentous finale

One word of warning: The title is completely misleading as The Girl never walks but rushes around madly, a tireless adventuress, seeking out excitement at every corner. Senpai is more contemplative and we learn a lot about the inner workings of his mind, where Ego and Id fight it out. There seems to be no ‘dramatic arc’ – this is a fairy tale told on speed. It would have been good to learn more about the innovative animation: for example, if people get drunk or act embarrassingly, their bodies are suffused by different shades of red, with Senpai being the main victim – but the subtitles don’t leave much time for admiration. The film’s characters are based on the drawings of the Manga by Yusuke Nakamura, and the director successfully marries this rather minimalist style with his overpoweringly fluid action scenes.

Some critics have accused Yuasa of celebrating Senpai as a stalker, but while he seems to be a bit of a control freak, he is very unsuccessful at it. Yuasa has stuck to the first sentence of the novel “This is not a story about me, it’s a story about her”. AS

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 3 OCTOBER IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Stronger (2017) | Bfi London Film Festival 2017

Dir.: David Gordon Green; Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson; USA 2017, 116 min.

Features based on true-life stories, particularly when terrorism is concerned, usually turn out to be questionable. But director David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche) has plumbed new depths with the story of Jeff Baumann, who lost his legs in the terrorist attack during the Boston marathon in 2013.

Baumann (played by the film’s producer Gyllenhaal,) is a charmer, but a bum. He has split up with his girlfriend Erin (Maslany) for the third time, and after leaving work early to watch a Red Sox game, he knows that he has to it make up to her. So he promises to support her marathon run with a placard. Erin suspects that this will be the usual botched effort, but for once Jeff is on time – but in the wrong place. His efforts turn into a fight between Erin and his mother (Richardson), the alcoholic matriarch of a family of lazy underachievers. Only after Erin gets pregnant (we have to endure sex with violins playing), does mother give in: she delivers Jeff to Erin, complete with his artificial legs. But her middle class family refuse to tolerate sloppy underachievement.

On the positive side Jeff is shown around at sporting events just like a hero, and Green shows that this is an affront to Jeff’s sensibilities. But that’s about the only thing John Pollono gets right in his script based on Baumanm’s co-written memoir. Richardson is a caricature of a slovenly, over-protective mother, and the rest of the family are as one-dimensional in their drunken passivity, using the attention Jeff gets for endless selfie opportunities. Erin’s family are also stereotypical in their straightlaced lifestyle. Only once does STRONGER get behind the facade, when Jeff asks Erin: “why do you want me”. Sadly her martyrdom takes over again, and Jeff is literally delivered like a schoolboy from a bad home to the sanctity of proper discipline and achievement.

Green directs with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, DoP Sean Bobbitt keeps it simple with one to one realism and Michael Brook’s score is suited to the whole exercise with its sentimental meowing. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2017

The Road to Mandalay (2016)

Dir.: Midi Z; Cast: Wu Ke-xi, Kai Ko; Myanmar/Taiwan/France/Germany 2016, 108′

Burmese auteur Midi Z shares own experience in this doomed love story about two illegal immigrants escaping prison and poverty in Myanmar (from his home town of Lashio) to seek a brighter future in Thailand.“The young Burmese, feeling imprisoned in their home country, and regard Thailand as a place where they could set themselves free and have a brighter future. Nonetheless, they have no idea that they are very likely to be imprisoned again, and this time in a bigger place. I’m fortunate, if I hadn’t come to Taiwan to study, I might have ended up like one of the character in the film”.

Z, who has directed documentary films before switching to features, shows his skills in catching the smallest details, not only on the coalface of the factory, but also in the relationship between the two main characters. Guo is stoic, but has a grasp of reality, whilst Lianqing is dreaming of a bright future – but relying on Guo to make it happen. Guo shows respect for Lianqing’s innocence and does not even kiss her. They live like brother and sister, with Guo hoping for more, without verbalising his feelings during their dangerous trip from the Myanmar border to Thailand. They have paid the people-traffickers, who take them over the Mekong river into the ‘promised land’ (the titular Mandalay is more symbolic than real), the journey often interrupted to bribe border control and policemen. Guo, whom fellow travellers call ‘simple Guo’, falls in love with Lianqing at first side, and lets her travel in the front of the vehicle, taking her place in the boot, even though he has paid a higher price. After they arrived in the suburbs of Bangkok, he tries to get her a job in a restaurant, but the young woman has set her sights higher: she wants to work in the city, selling clothes. But since Lianquing has no identity papers, she fails with her application, and starts working washing dishes. Arrested during a police raid, Guo has to bail her out. But love cannot save Lianqing from her burning ambition which also leads to her fate in this brilliantly-acted drama of illegal immigration and unfulfilled amour-fou. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 29 SEPTEMBER 2017

Brimstone (2016)

Dir.: Martin Koolhoven; Cast: Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Emily Jones, Carice van Houten; USA 2016, 148 min.

Dutch writer/director Martin Koolhoven brings a new chapter to the history of male-on-female violence depicted in film. That this all-out exploitation feature is sold as a feminist revenge story makes it even worse.

Set as a 19th century Western and told as an elliptical flashback story, BRIMSTONE is an ultra-violent, voyeuristic joy ride featuring a deranged Reverend (Pearce), who hunts down his daughter Liz (Fanning), to fulfil his God-given right to incest, quoting the biblical story of Lot and his daughters as an example. Having driven Liz’ mother Anna (Van Houten) to suicide, the Reverend then enjoys sex with his daughter who also happens to be his granddaughter. Liz has a long history of male-inflicted suffering in a brothel, where the film then features endless sequences that would look radical even on a common or garden porn site.

Koolhaven has a lot to answer for: why, for example, did he cast a six-year old girl and then give her the following dialogue: “Has your mother told you what a whore is?” Other scenes depict gratuitous violence directed towards women – did he really believe this is not exploitation at its worse? By all means hit at abuse to illustrate the point, but to over-expose it merely adds insult to injury. And to makes matters worse these scenes are almost wordless, the female characters having very little dialogue to express their feelings or concerns in defence of their treatment. Occasionally Koolhoven descends into self-parody in the scene where the Reverend tells his victims to be aware of men, describing them as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. Filmed in panoramic shots by Dutch DoP Roger Stoffers, Brimstone breaks the records for disingenuous virtue-signalling AS

NOW ON MUBI

Manolo: The Boy who made Shoes for Lizards (2017)

Dir: Michael Roberts | Doc | US | 97′

Manolo Blahnik. The name has become synonymous with luxury and given rise to the catchphrase “getting your Manolos on” to mean enjoying a night – or day – of fanciful pleasure, promising a romantic encounter, or even love. These elaborate “fuck-me” shoes are not for the faint-hearted – or structurally challenged – with invariably vertiginous heels and delicate designs. They are also beyond the reach of ordinary mortals making them even more desirable – the stuff of dreams for the average working girl or boy. In MANOLO: THE BOY WHO MADE SHOES FOR LIZARDS, director Michael Roberts delves into the life of their creator, a Canary Islander described as a “poet in couture” by fashion luminaries Anna Wintour and Isaac Mizrahi who wouldn’t be shod in anything shoddy. Maverick dreamer Manolo still fizzes with enthusiasm for his legendary footwear. Meanwhile, Roberts cobbles together a polished, foot-lose and narrative-free film scoping out the designer’s way of life, ideologies and relationships in a career that has spanned Sixties London, 1980s New York (immortalised in Sex in the City) and contemporary culture, capturing the essence of a dreamer who loves flowers, animals, Nature and freedom (don’t we all?).  So Manolo embodies the poetry in all of us, and has made millions selling us our own dreams. Anyone interested in fashion will enjoy this fluffy, fun and fascinating film. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 29 SEPTEMBER 2017

Our Time Will Come (2017) | BFI London Film Festival 2017

Dir. Ann Hui. HK | Historial Drama |  130′

Best known for her noble drama A Simple Life, Ann Hui rose to fame with her Japanese occupation-themed dramas, Love in a Fallen City (1984) and Song of the Exile (199. She returns to the era with her latest: OUR TIME WILL COME a languorously-paced and lushly-crafted snapshot of WWII occupation which explores the bitterly poignant experiences of a young woman who becomes a resistance fighter. Hong-Kong’s struggle for freedom is resurfacing again today, over seventy years later.

In 1942, serious-minded school teacher, Fang Lan (Zhou Xun) is living with her mother (Deannie Ip) when her boyfriend Wing (Wallace Huo) leaves to work for the Japanese. Fang is inspired by seeing how a local intellectual goes underground with the help of Dongjiang resistance guerrillas and decides to join their forces under the auspices of their suave leader (Eddie Peng Yuyan), eventually rising up through the ranks.

The undercover operations are stunningly captured in vibrantly elaborate images on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, often echoing French classic Army of Shadows (currently at the BFI Melville retrospective). The unobtrusive classic score adds a certain gravitas and Zhou Xun is the standout in an absolutely brilliant performance of elegant dignity as Fang, slowly gaining stature into her resistance role.

The film also stars the wonderful Tony Leung who plays a war veteran, now taxi driver, in a recurring black and white vignette set in comtemporary Hong Kong. In the black and white opening scene, and again half way through, he recalls the fond memories of the bravery of resistance leaders he once knew including Fang Lan.

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 4-15 OCTOBER 2017

Pecking Order (2017)

Dir.: Slavko Martinov; Documentary; New Zealand 2017, 88 min.

New Zealand born director/writer Slavko Martinov (Propaganda) has lovingly crafted a portrait of Christchurch Poultry, Bantam and Pigeon Club, whose whole existence is under threat just – two years before their 150th anniversary. What starts as a Mockumentary, turns into a very humane observation about ordinary people and their obsession with feathered friends – and themselves. Pecking Order is a little gem: just short enough to keep our attention, making us smile at the serious competitors battling for glory – and ourselves.

It has to be said that the feathered friends in question – mostly chicken – really do live the life of Riley: they have their special diets such as fresh Hazelnuts, before a bath in the kitchen sink, and afterwards they are dolled up with the blow dryer and combs. That is, if they are seen as worthy material for the prizes given out at the National Show. Otherwise, it’s the dinner table or, for the younger ones, the ‘Chicken Heaven’.

The Club’s crisis could not have come at a worse time as the preparations for the National Show, held at Oamaru, should by now be in full swing. But since the veteran Doug Bain has taken up presidency of the club – albeit as a caretaker, – things are not Going according to plan: open rivalry has broken out, one side supporting Doug, the other wanting him to be replaced with Mark Lilley, a much younger man, who is supposed to take the club into the 21st century – with the internet and all that. This amusing narrative ricks over as we enjoy a chaming slice of New Zealand life which still seems stuck in the 1950s.

We also learn to take the ‘bible’ of the club seriously: The New Zealand Poultry Standard, a chuncky tome written by Ian Selby, who tells everyone at the club to study it carefully before going to National Show. One of the competitors is sixteen-year old Sarah Bunton, who admits freely, that she is obsessed with chicken.

Finally, just before the National Show opens, peace is restored. At the event in Oamuru, the final judgement is left to ‘neutral’ judges from Australia, who after long deliberations, give their verdict. One of the runners-up is surprisingly sanguine about the outcome: he has never married, and lives just for his hens and cockerels. “One day, they will find me on the ground between the cages”. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 29 SEPTEMBER 2017

The Merciless (2017)

Dir: Byun Sung-hyun | Cast: Him Si-wan, Sul Kyung-gu | Crime Thriller | South Korea | 117′

Byun Sung-hyun’s The Merciless looks absolutely stunning as it opens on the waterfront where a man is celebrating his release from prison with his gangland mentor as a series of revelations about their ambitious past slowly unfurls in this dramatic and stylish thriller that often feels a bit too clever for its own good.

Jo Hyun-su (Yim Si-wan) is the young criminal and Han Jae-ho (Sul Kyung-gu) his aspirational father figure in this noirish South Korean exploration of like-minded friendship between felons. As long as you don’t thing too much it slips down as easily as a lychee cocktail.

Although this sounds like a contradiction in terms, the two have high hopes of rising to the top the criminal underworld. Hyun-su sons proves himself to the older Jae-ho (Sol Kyung-gu)  by saving his life in a knife attack and this loyalty leads to them working together once they are back in the real world. But when push come to shove their motives are very different. Jae-ho is desperate for a chance to kill his boss, Chairman Ko (Lee Kyoung-young) who was behind the attempted prison hit. Meanwhile, Hyun-su is tasked with taking down a enterprise linked to the Russian mafia, in an operation led by the masterful Chief Cheon (Jeon Hye-jin) who is bent on putting Ko and his associates in the klink.

This is a colourful and tonally cohesive genre thriller which have echoes of Infernal Affairs. Visually it’s lushly and vibrant but narratively there are drawbacks. Performance-wise too there is much to enjoy and the rapport between the leads crackles with charismatic, especially in regard to Yim Si-wan (a Korean pop singer who also goes by the name of Siwan). And although the film is more style over content, it’s a good-looking piece of filmmaking that slightly outstays its welcome at nearly two hours. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | CANNES REVIEW

Canaletto and the Art of Venice (2017)

Dir: David Bickerstaff |  82′ | UK | Documentary

Exhibition on Screen offers us an unparalleled big screen entree into Her Royal Highness The Queen’s collection of paintings by the Venetian 17th Century artist Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), which is spread between the Royal palaces, offering unique insight into treasures captured here by David Bickerstaff’s agile camera in glowing colours and pristine detail.

Canaletto & the Art of Venice also takes us to the heart of Venice to explore the origins of the artist’s work and features behind-the-scenes footage of The Queen’s Gallery exhibition and interviews with curators and art experts. Instead of a simple trawl through Canaletto’s output, the film offers insight into the artist’s central role in 18th century Venetian ‘vedute’ or landscape painting. Art Historian Charles Beddington gives a fascinating lesson in art history – avoiding worthiness with a twist of dead pan humour – and showing Canaletto’s particular penchant for painting dogs, so even the most disinclined viewer gets to understand how this genre developed in the early 18th century. Lucy Whittaker, a senior curator, offers her two-penny worth along with Rosemary Sweet, Curator of Urban History at Leicester University, and Rosie Rozzall, Curator of prints and drawings at the Palace.

We learn that Canaletto (1697-1768) was born into a middle class family in one of the city’s small squares where he grew up sketching the surrounding rooftops. The turning point of his life came when he travelled to Rome with his father, Bernardo Canal, a theatrical designer, and this saw the start of his work as a stage designer. Venetian painters were masters of colour and Canaletto was no different, soon striking out on his own as a view painter. But it was the English travellers, not the Italians, who admired his work and bought it home as a souvenir of the lagoon, a major stop on the Grand Tour.

Canaletto was also skilled in Capriccio painting – a sort of magic realism of the art world – where paintings were embellished with architectural fantasy, placing archaeological ruins and fictional elements into their compositions, from the Rialto Bridge to the Piazza San Marco, and the Palazzo Ducale to the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. His craftsmanship was meticulous and attentive and he often offered character studies focusing on Venice itself, always refusing to repeat himself. When Canaletto went to London between 1748 and 1755, Venice lost its main ‘vedute’ painter.

The Venetian artist’s financial acumen and keen business sense saw rise to a way of making more money from the existing works when, in the 18th Century, print-making came into vogue. Caneletto’s work could be attractively reproduced for those who could not afford his paintings. With his keen financial flair, he set up the Pasquale Press with English businessman Joseph Smith, so his works could be made into prints and delivered to London clients, for additional fees. Smith sold much of his collection to King George III and now Buckingham Palace houses the largest collection of Canaletto’s work, which was far more popular among English patrons that the Italians.

The remarkable group of over 200 paintings, drawings and prints on display offers unique insight into the artistry of Canaletto and his contemporaries, and the city he became a master at capturing. Bickerstaff also offers a sneak view of the interiors of  Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. CANALETTO is well-crafted and watchable for art lovers and travellers alike. MT

 ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26 SEPTEMBER 2017 | THE EXHIBITION ON SCREEN series now shows in 55 countries worldwide, recently expanding into Columbia, Korea and Lebanon | Main image courtesy of Exhibition on Screen. 

 

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Director: David Lean |Script: Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson | Score: Maurice Jarre | Cast: Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Wolfit, Zia Mohyeddin | UK/USA 1962  227′ | Adventure Drama

Based upon the writings of T. E. Lawrence entitled Seven Pillars Of Wisdom, a diary never meant for open publication, but allowed by his estate after his death, the making of Lawrence Of Arabia is a drama of epic proportions spanning three decades and worthy of a film in itself.

Alexander Korda kicked it all off in the 30’s, wanting Leslie Howard and then Walter Hudd as lead, but this all collapsed when the British Governor of Palestine at the time forbade ‘any large gatherings of Arabs’.  John Clements, Clifford Evans, Robert Donat, Laurence Olivier and even Cary Grant were also in the frame subsequently, as was Burgess Meredith in 1949 and then Alan Ladd. In 1952, Harry Cohn offered it to Powell and Pressburger, but they declined. Then, in 1955 Terrence Rattigan picked up the reins with Dirk Bogarde in mind and even got as far as location scouting in Iraq, only to have it all unravel as the King was assassinated and Iraq descended into revolution. When producer Sam Spiegel finally came aboard in 1959, he wanted Marlon Brando, but Brando backed out to go and do Mutiny On The Bounty

Alec Guinness was great, but too old, even though he played Lawrence in Rattigan’s well-received 1960 play Ross. Then it was to be Albert Finney, who infact undertook extensive screen tests, but eventually also backed out, citing that he didn’t want to be a star; frightened of what it would do to him as a person. He also, it had to be said, hated signing multi-picture deals.

Peter O’Toole had meanwhile appeared as a mere cameo in an otherwise forgotten film called The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England, which Lean saw, and knowing instantly that he had his man, even when Peter Hall refused to release him from his RSC contract in Stratford and Producer Sam Spiegel also initially rejected him.

As film commenced in Jordan, the script was in disarray, the original writer Michael Wilson, who had done such a fine job on Bridge On The River Kwai left the project, after a year working on the script in a state of high dudgeon. Robert Bolt was drafted in, at first purely to write only dialogue, on the back of his hit play A Man For All Seasons. But at one point, as the cameras rolled in the desert, with the script still incomplete, Bolt was gaoled for a month for marching in a CND demonstration and had to be extricated from gaol -against his own wishes- by Spiegel in order to complete the script (he wasn’t allowed to write it in prison).

There are legion stories emanating from the two-year(!) shoot, in Jordan, Spain and Morocco; of new talents cutting their teeth, like Freddie Young working with the new Super-Panavision camera with 70mm colour stock. The industrial kit needed to hold the massive cameras being lugged out into the desert, against the heat, the wind the sand and the flies… but, after all this, what we are left with is an extraordinary coming together of some amazing talent, from the writing to the design, the music, the costumes and the performances.

So, what of the new 4k digital formatted release? Well, It’s magnificent. One of the greatest films ever made, so crisp, clear and sharp, it could have been shot yesterday. Lawrence was nominated for ten Academy Awards and went on to win seven, including 1962 Best Picture and Best Director. Inexplicably, Omar Sharif, Peter O’Toole and writer Robert Bolt all failed to score. With Kwai, five years earlier also winning seven Oscars, David Lean really was at the top of his game and knew he wanted to capitalize on it. His next outing was called Dr Zhivago.

Bearing in mind he had come up through editing, having cut over 20 feature films prior to taking the helm as a Director, Lean later wanted to lose 40-minutes from Lawrence, but also knew he wouldn’t know where from- lest he lose the magic in the trimming.

So. What is Lawrence of Arabia all about? Seriously? Well, it’s about an eccentric Englishman who goes out into the desert, turns native, goes mad and then comes back home. All 227 glorious minutes of it. Go and see it for goodness sake and stop asking damn’ fool questions.

Is it any good? Well, I’ll leave you with several published quotes from the time of the original release: John Coleman, writing in the New Statesman- “none of it is good enough. Setting to one side the obligatory, contemptible music, the film never decisively makes its mind up what its after…”

Penelope Gilliatt “Two And A Half Pillars Of Wisdom…. A thoughtful picture with an intensely serious central performance, but it doesn’t hold together in great excitement.” New Yorker Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice- “Dull, overlong and coldly impersonal… hatefully calculating and condescending” The bottom line is, we all still remember  David Lean.

NOW ON NETFLIX

Wajib (2017) ****

Dir: Annemarie Jacir. Palestine-France-Germany-Colombia-Norway-Qatar-United Arab Emirates. 2017. 96’

Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir conjures up a well-paced and watchable family drama fraught with difficulties for the patriarch and his prodigal architect son, who has returned from Rome for the wedding of his sister. Based on her own family, Jacir is familiar with the territory here in Nazareth where customs requires wedding invitations to be hand delivered, so WAJIB essentially plays out like a road movie where the two spend a great deal of the running time driving around while thrashing out their issues. The pain of Abu Shadi’s divorce still haunts him and infects the respectful relationship between the grown men that gradually grows more and more tense, especially when it emerges that Abu has been less than truthful about Shadi’s situation, failing to mention his son’s relationship while trying to matchmake at each encounter. Their journey also serves as a forum for Jacir to broaden the discussion on local politics, viewed from inside and outside the region, in this well-judged and wry drama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 14 SEPTEMBER 2018

YOUTH JURY AWARD LOCARNO 2017 | BEST FILM | DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 6-13 DECEMBER 2017

 

 

Our Last Tango | Un Tango Mas (2017)

Dir.: German Kral; Drama-Documentary with Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes; Argentina/Germany/Italy 2015 |  85′ |

Argentine born writer/director German Kral (Musica Cubana) who studied at the Film School in Munich under Wim Wenders (credited as one of the executive producers), has created a passionate and imaginative portrait of Argentina’s leading Tango dancers, Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes, now both in their 80ies. But Our Last Tango is much more than history: it is gender warfare of the worst kind, with Maria’s and Juan Carlos’ life story easily as dramatic as their dancing career.
Born in the early1930ies, Maria and Juan Carlos came from a modest background, and met as teenagers in one of the Milongas, the dancing halls of Buenos Aires, “where the poor tried to forget their hard lives dancing at the weekend”.

Nieves and Copes devoted their lives to the Tango, but the Golden Age of the dance came to an abrupt end in the 50ies with the advent of rock. But Copes re-wrote the book: his choreography changed the Tango forever: his stage show gave the art not only a new lifespan in Argentina, but the couple introduced it to the world, even the USA, where Tango was as good as unknown. But whilst Maria just lived for Juan, the latter was more interested in her as a dance partner. They married in Las Vegas, but after their return to Argentina, Juan Carlos left her for a world tour. In his absence, Maria found a new partner, but when Copes returned, they lived and danced together again. But Copes became an alcoholic and philanderer. Without telling Maria, he married Myriam, and the couple had two daughters. Maria’s adoration of Copes turned into hatred. The couple went on dancing together, hardly speaking to each other, before Copes decided (under pressure from his wife) to break completely with Maria. She was over 60, when he told her, that their Japan tour would be their last engagement. Today he is dancing with his daughter Johana, who admits, that she was at first just a stand-in for Maria, whilst Nieves, after a long depression, also got her career going again.

Kral has introduced two couples, representing Nieves and Copes as youngsters and middle-aged dancers. They walk through Buenos Aires with her, visiting places of the past and sharing their reflections with Maria, who occupies the lion’s part of the docu-drama, whilst Copes contributes some rather arrogant and barbed comments: when confronted with his life style, which led to the break-up of their relationship, he is proud of himself: I had to do it, because I am a man”.

DoPs Joe Heim and Felix Monti have not only contributed to the magic of the dance scenes, their glorious panorama shots of the nightly Buenos Aires, with Maria wandering around the city, are a celebration of her resurrection. But the main memory of Our Last Tango is the dance itself: passionate and very, very sexy. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 22 SEPTEMBER 2017

In Between (2016) | Ba Bahar

Dir.: Maysaloun Hamoud; Cast: Mouna Hawa, Sana Jammalieh,Shaden Kanboura, Mahmood Shalbi, Ahlam Canaan, Henry Andrawas; Palestine/Israel/France 2016, 102 min.

Maysaloun Hamoud’s portrait of three young, independent Arab women living in Tel Aviv captures the lifestyle of a new generation of Palestinian women, fighting prejudice from the Jewish majority and their own – religious fundamentalist, male dominated – families, regardless of their Muslims or Christian backgrounds.

Laila (Hawa), a successful lawyer; Salma (Jammalieh), a lesbian bartender; and DJ who shares a flat with  computer science student Nour (Kanboura) who is the shy one of the trio, avoiding the party-orientated lifestyle of her flatmates. Nour is also the heroine of the story. sharing her life with fiancé Wissam (Andrawes) who works for a Palestine charity in a small town. Wissam takes the high moral ground when talking to Nour or her family, but cannot hide his own insecurity when he encounters Laila and Salma, calling them ‘whores’. He is adamant that Nour moves out of the shared place, finding her alternative accommodation. But Nour rejects this offer and also his wish to bring the wedding date forward. Confronted with female resistance, Wissam loses his cool and rapes his fiancée brutally.

Laila and Salma make sure that Wissam does not get away scott-free. Naturally the wedding is cancelled, but both women have their own, very different problems with their partners. Laila is courted by a Jewish lawyer, but she knows only to well that he is messing her around “still waiting to present a kosher bride for his religious parents”. When she meets Ziad (Shalabi), a liberal Palestinian, the scene seems set for romance. But soon Ziad starts controlling behaviour: So she gives him the boot.

Salma has fallen in love with Dr. Dunya (Canaan), but this all ends in tears with her father promising to incarcerate her, when he discovers her lesbian life. He is running for re-election as mayor: “I can do without people finding out that my daughter is a lesbian”. Salma escapes, but the break with her Christian family is final. Along with these trials and tribulations, the women have to fight off daily discrimination from Jewish citizens, some of them showing their distain for Arabs openly. “We do not bite”, says Laila to a shop assistant, who is not very happy, to serve her and Salma.

IN BETWEEN is a very honest film with its themes of drugs and alcohol, and charged sexual atmosphere – these women are no suffering wallflowers – they pay the price for going against their familes of all denominations. It is a radical new beginning for the region; a growing number of relationships are now developing between unobservant Jews and Palestinians: fighting the good fight against all shades of fundamentalism with love. So despite of some structural problems, IN BETWEEN is one of those films which really deserved to be made, and seen. AS

In the Name of All Canadians (2017) | Hot Docs 24 – 26 September 2017

 

Borg/McEnroe (2017)

Dir: Janus Metz Pedersen | Shia LaBeouf, Sverir Gudnason, Tuva Novotny, Robert Emms | Sports Biopic Drama | Sweden/Finland/Denmark | 100′

Janus Pederson’s drama of tennis rivals BORG/McENROE is actually far more exciting than the distant memory of their Wimbledon exchanges, if –  like me – you’re more interested in their personalities than the game itself. And that’s because tennis is a game of wits and psychology, perhaps more that any other sport, and these are two highly fascinating men, brought to life here appealing by Shia LeBoeuf, as McEnroe, and striking lookalike, Sverir Gudnason as Borg.

Compariing their respective rise to fame through fandom of the 1970s in Sweden and Queens, New York with gently humorous nostalgia as they both master their explosive neuroses, BORG/McENROE then goes straight for the jugular with an all out gripping finale showcasing that last epic match in July 1980 that rocked the world. Ronnie Sandahl’s makes us see how two very different characters actually shared similar strengths of perseverance, dedication and self-belief.

With its pounding score, this is a well-paced and luminously cinematic and absorbing watch not least for its compelling performances from LeBoeuf whose volatile but vulnerable appeal is far more magnetic than the memory of the real mercurial McEnroe (you cannot be serious!), making us feel for him and his private demons. In stark contrast, Gudnason’s nuanced charisma is every bit as mesmerising as he slowly generates an onscreen allure, transforming the captivatingly feline Swede into a magical sports hero. That said, this Nordic production is much more fleshed out in regard to Borg than McEnroe, and there are times when we’d like to have had more New York backstory about the New Yorker with his over-bearing father wittily played by Ian Blackman (Hail,Caesar!). Three different actors play the young Borg, including the young, his own son Leo, who is the most persuasive. Stellan Skargard exerts a masterful influence as his coach and former player, Lennart Bergelin. And Tuva Novotny is his gentle, chain-smoking fiancé Mariana Simionescu. Vitas Gerulaitis as a combative Robert Emms. MT

OUT ON 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

The Graduation | Le Concours (2016)

Dir.: Claire Simon | Documentary | France 2016, 115′

The leading film school in the birthplace of the Seventh Art has always come under immense scrutiny: this has not changed since the prestigious IDHEC (Institute des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques), whose famous students include Alain Resnais, Louis Malle and Theo Angelopoulos, was re-constituted and renamed La Femis (Fondation Européenne Pour les Métiers de l’Image et du Son) around 1987. Today’s younger generation of filmmakers, who finished the four year course in the old Pathé studios in Montmartre are numerous: François Ozon, Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, Céline Sciamma, Sophie Filliers and Rebecca Zlotowski are just a few of the La Femis’ successes.

The institution is unique in the sense that there are no lecturers: all courses are taught by active members of the film industry. And the over-subscribed entrance examinations (500 applicants competed for just six places of the directing classes), which are the subject of this documentary, are also conducted by these same professionals. Director/DoP Claire Simon (Gare du Nord) has taken time off her teaching duties at La Femis, to chronicle the hazardous process. The contest (the English title Graduation is misleading) starts with part one, when the hopeful students from virtually all walks of life, no qualifications are needed; start with a three hour written test. The panel of professionals fight hard, everyone has favourites, and often, the grades for an applicant (1-20) differ enormously, sometimes into double figures. Simon brings a touch of humour to the proceedings, showing two examiners talking about the wishful outcome of the tests which aim to be politically correct: eight women, seven men, one Asian, one black, one from North Africa and two from a modest background should be included in the selection. And they should come from all over France, not just  Paris.

Stage two of the examination process consists of interviews and practical tests. Screen-writing candidates are given one sentence from which they have to develop a narrative. Afterwards they have to ‘defend’ their script in front of a panel of two. Future directors are given a script, a crew and a studio, and have to justify their work to a panel. At last, the lucky survivors are grilled by a ‘jury’ of six, for the final cut. The main issue arising from the selection process is always the same: how do you select talent?. Because opinions differ so much, discussions are often irrational. After the interview of a particular director’s course applicant, some members of the panel – among them the directors Laetitia Masson (A Vendre) and Olivier Du Castel (Theo & Hugo) – criticised the young male candidate for being uncommunicative and “weird”. Others defended him arguing that Dreyer and Cronenberg must have been certainly weird at the age of eighteen. It should be also mentioned that La Femis does not only run courses for the original filmmaking subjects like directing, set design etc,, but also for Continuity, Distribution and Cinema management.

LE CONCOURS is a fascinating portrait of judging the creative process: the arguments may not always be rational, but the result of the selection process justifies the often chaotic and contradictive proceedings. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

My Journey Through French Cinema (2016)

Dir: Bertrand Tavernier | Doc | With Thierry Frémaux | France | 193′

Bertrand Tavernier’s love affair with film started with tragedy: as a child of the Liberation, in Lyon 1944, he was also a war child malnourished despite his middle class background. Tuberculosis was diagnosed and he was sent to convalesce in a St Gervais sanatorium where Sunday was dedicated to film. Thus began a life-long passion for film that permeates every frame of his three hour love letter to French cinema which every cineaste will devour with relish on the big screen, and rush to buy the bluray.

Tavernier, who also narrates in a chatty style, offers his unobtrusive but illuminating insights, adding value to the documentary, and is very much a part of the film history that unfolds, mostly from the 1930s,40s and 50s. Tavernier has made some memorable films and acted in others during his glittering career that began as an assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville and an press agent on Jean-Luc Godard; he also got to know many of the legends such as Jean Gabin, Jean Renoir, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker and Claude Chabrol, to name but a few. Chocful of anecdotes and observations, this is an ntertaining flip through original footage and archive interviews, enlivened by film clips and posters.

At the same time, Tavernier offers up a critical masterclass in acting and directing as he dissects individual films – and even scenes – giving his two pennyworth on those who he felt deserved better, such as Marcel Carne, of qualifying the technical decisions that Jean Renoir’s made in La Chienne (1931), for example, but also pointing out how Renoir’s charm and desire to be liked could led him to embroider the facts, with the best possible intentions. The only minor criticism is the failure to identify each interviewee, so concentration is vital in order to keep up to speed with Tavernier’s narration.

French historian Thierry Fremaux has contributed by providing ideas for the many clips, so the three hour running time whisks by engagingly. Tavernier also hints at a sequel.  MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

7 Days | Sette Giorni (2016)

Dir/Writer: Rolando Colla | Cast: Bruno Todeschini, Alessia Barela, Marc Barbe, Linda Olsansky, Gianfelice Imparato | Drama |

A family wedding in Sicily unites two middle-aged Bohemians who arrive in a sleepy backwater to prepare for the festivities. This ravishingly langorous and deeply affecting Mediterranean arthouse escapade serves both as a love story and a celebration of Sicily and its people.

The Swiss director is best known for his rites of passage scamper Summer Games (2011) which did the rounds on the festival circuit recently. 7 DAYS explores a slow comfortable prelude to baggage-laden doomed love for its tousled twosome, played by Swiss Italian Bruno Todeschini/Delicacy) and Alessia Barela (Summer Games) who make for a convincing onscreen couple with their relaxed and deliciously sensual chemistry tempered by years of romantic disillusionment rather than the high-octane excitement of young lust.

Todeschini plays Ivan, a slightly dog-eared botanist who is instantly drawn to Alessia Barela’s Leventine looks as fashion seamstress Chiara, who is already committed with daughter of 17. Ivan’s brother Richard (Marc Barbe) is getting married and he has arrived early to organise the wedding festivities to Chiara’s best friend Francesca (Linda Olsansky). At first the ramshackle accommodation looks awful but gradually the two work together with the well-meaning locals and in things fall into to place – or not – their passion is fuelled by the pressure of preparing for the big day in the sweltering days and balmy nights in this wild seascape. We get to enjoy some local flora, fauna, history and traditional Sicilian culture, while the couple’s on/off romance sizzles often erupting in angry spats as they both get cold feet, despite the rising mercury. It’s an authentic rendering of late love where maturity and self-dependence are the enemies of the trust and laid back light-heartedness required for love to thrive, let alone develop into something workable and worthwhile and Crolla’s script offers some surprises along the way.

DoPs Lorenz Merz and Gabriel Lobos pull all out the stops in the magnificent locations making the best of the natural wilderness both above the waves and underwater, echoing the emotional rollercoaster of a sunny, often stormy, tale of late love. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

Mother! (2017)

Dir/Writer: Darron Aronofsky | Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson | 120′ | DRAMA

Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer star in Darren Aronofsky’s highly anticipated psychological thriller about a couple threatened by the arrival of uninvited guests. MOTHER! is best described as a melodrama that portrays the existential angst of a young woman as she tries to build a home and tend to the obsessively humourless needs her ego-driven writer/husband in their precious early days of their marriage. Beset by anxiety about getting pregnant and pleasing her partner (Javier Bardem) in bed, she runs herself into the ground pandering to his quirky demands which become increasingly unbearable when he invites a dying and neurotic man – and gradually – his extended family into their home who they rapidly outstay their welcome with their own demands in this nightmarish scenario.
This, in a nutshell, is the plot – which sounds bad enough – but the execution is even more inbearable for both Jennifer’s Lawrence’s character, simply called ‘the mother’, and the rest of us. MOTHER! spews out from Lawrence’s POV like a free-flowing torrent of endless sewerage effluent: we are forced to endure her partner/husband Javier Bardem’s petulant posturing, then those of his guest in the shape of Ed Harris’ surgeon, who spends his time smoking, vomiting and talking about his terminal illness, and is soon joined by his snippy wife Michelle Pfeiffer who adds to the mother’s general feelings of unease with her patronising comments and bitchy jibes. Soon more characters join the fray. DP Matthew Libatique’s camera is like a voyeur scanning proceedings from above, and prowling the rooms where bloody stains (putatively representing an aborted foetus) seem to seep from every crack and cranny, with repetitive views into the lavatory basin. Mother! Lacks the rich texture and arthouse credentials of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby but it feels similar in tone, although more irritating than anxiety-provoking. Entertaining it is not, but it loosely does the job of conveying discomfort: thus achieving its goal of inducing general misery to Lawrence’s character and the audience. It’s a toxic and offensive film to watch, which will no doubt please the horror crowd. So do go and be irritated- you have been warned. MT
Darren Aronofsky was born in Brooklyn and studied live-action and animated film at Harvard. His feature films include Pi (98) and Noah (14), and the Festival selections Requiem for a Dream(00), The Fountain (06), The Wrestler (08), and Black Swan (10). mother! (17) is his latest film.
REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

Centre of My World (2017)

Dir.: Jakob M. Erwa; Cast: Louis Hofman, Sabine Timoteo, Philine Stappenbeck, Svenja Jung, Jannick Schümann, Alexander Gersak, Nina Proll; Germany/Austria 2016, 114 min.

Writer/director Jakob M. Erwa bases his latest film on Andreas Steinhöfel’s Coming-of-Age novel of the same name, with a good ensemble cast. Erwa is Austrian but one of many of his fellow countrymen to use the German language primarily to make a statement (‘Thesenfilm’). Erwa adopts an overly didactic approach that rathe undermines his viewers’ intelligence, treating the cinema like a lecture theatre. On top, there is more than enough narrative material in the novel, which carefully shortened and structured, could have avoided the unnecessary running time of nearly two hours, filled often with repetitive panning shots of the woods.

Seventeen-year-old Phil (Hofman) lives with his twin sister Diane (Stappenbeck) and mother Glass (Timoteo) in a “Märchenhaus” or ‘fantasy cottage’ near the woods. All they know about heir father is that he was American and number three on the list of her mother’s lovers, his name black-balled. Glass is still rather promiscuous and why she’s chosen to take her children to Germany remains open. Sister Diane is very good and training dogs, and was once arrested for telling a dog to attach its owner. Phil’s girlfriend Katja (Jung) is the polar opposite of her brother: she is fun-loving, whilst Phil is a worrier. When a new boy, Nicholas (Schümann) joins their class, Phil falls in love with him. They have rather awkward sex in the shower and Phil is too cowardly to tell Katja about his new lover at first, pretty soon she joins in the ménage-a-trois. But when Phil surprises the two having sex, he withdraws, telling Nicholas “that he wants him for himself”. At the same time, Diane keeps visiting her boyfriend in a coma in hospital, after he was injured during a storm. Her guilt feelings are compounded by an old family secret, and Phil feels that he has not only lost Katja and Nicolas, but also his sister. His erratic mother is no help, and he has to make a choice.

Erwa’s overly didactic approach feels rather condescending: too much philosophical spoon-feeding is self-indulgent, and mistakenly sees the cinema as a place for a lecture, rather than entertainment. There is more than enough narrative material in the novel, which, carefully shortened and structured, could have shortened the overlong running time stuffed with over-repetitive panning shots of the woods. Long dissolves and embarrassing slow-motion sequences echo the worst excesses of the 70s. Finally, the language: teenagers all over the world do not express themselves like Phil: “A small sliver of cold got between us”. And adults don’t talk to teenagers in parables about life as “a house with many rooms, some empty: “You lock your fear in one of the empty rooms”. What may work as “Bildungsroman” – and there are certainly parallels to the “Young Werther” – is simply too clumsy and lacks conviction on the screen. A little less would have been much more – plus a heavy dose of what is called understatement, avoiding a non-stop parade of over-the-top dramatics. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

My Pure Land (2017)

Dir: Sarmad Masud | Suhaee Abro | Tayyab Ifzal, Eman Fatima | Drama | 93′ |

Sarmad Masud’s tense feature debut follows her earlier success with the Oscar and Bafta-nominated Two Dosas. Told from a female perspective, MY PURE LAND explores the standoff between a group of women and their menfolk over title to a family home they occupy in the depths of rural Pakistan.

As the drama unfolds, during a night of sustained gunfire and violent outbursts around the house, the narrative flips back and forth to supply the background details of this real-life story. Masud deftly develops the characters in a film that feels at times like an Eastern-based ‘Western’ in character, beautifully captured on the wide screen and in close-up in the interiors of the traditional home and prison by Haider Zafar.

The male aggravation comes mainly in the shape of uncle Mehrban, who considers it his God-given right to fight for the property, and will do his utmost to exert his authority over the women. His gung-ho attitude is responsible for the death of Nazo’s father and her brother.

These women are no wallflowers – particularly young Nazo, played with graceful feistiness by Suhaee Abro – and slowly develop from timid souls to fearless feminist protectors of their domestic domain learning to use guns and subterfuge. MY PURE LAND is an strangely haunting arthouse piece and its glowering intent is tempered by an atmospheric occasional score and poetic touches – such a soaring flock of doves – that seem to reflect the transient nature of life and the spirit of the dead. This is a slim but luminously crafted indie that makes the best of its low budget with some convincing performances and a satisfying narrative arc. MT

MY PURE LAND is on GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

Motherland or Death (2017) | Open City Documentary Festival 5-10 September

Dir/Writer: Vitaly Manskiy | Doc | Russia | 99′

A fascinating snapshot of modern Cuba Motherland or Death (which, for more than 50 years, has been Cuba’s motto), chronicles the daily misery of the pre-revolution generation who realise they can now hope for better things as the country moves towards a sea change in its existence. Manskiy acts as his own DoP with Leonid Konovalov in this intriguing snapshot of modern, capturing the zeitgeist of a vivacious country, often down on its knees. Manskiy takes a non-judgemental approach, avoiding the usual human rights agenda or sensationalist victim angles that usually dog the country from the outsiders’ point of view. Nonetheless, Havana is captured as a broken-down backwater haunted by stray dogs and empty streets. MT

 

 

Private Cronicles. Monologue (1999) Chastnye kroniki. Monolog

Di: Vitaly Mansky | Music: Aleksey Aygi | Doc | Russia | 86′

This sepia cine-film diary follows Vitaly Mansky through his youth, offering both a biographical and collective memoir of the times. Born in 1963 in Lvov, (Ukraine) to an aristocratic mother and a politically-active intellectual father, he has since directed over thirty films, achieving critical acclaim on the international stage. From early sixties footage of his parent’s ‘rock n roll’ party on the night of his conception to his early twenties, it offers a fascinating insight into life in Soviet Russia: a tightly-controlled environment where family happiness was considered the main attribute to aspire to in a society where marriage was ‘the done thing’ and couples were compensated with gifts from the State to encourage as many births as possible.

Private chronicles empire 1 copy

From early footage of Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1967, to the 21st anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1970, and the first Soviet astronauts preparing to conquer Space; Mansky’s doc offers comprehensive insight into social and political life during the last knockings of Communism: and the two are inseparable. He describes the Soviet State as “frozen sputum on the upper lip, that cannot be removed without a soldering iron”.

Sport was a way to prove Communist strength over the intellectual rigour of Capitalism. But although times were hard and winters unbearable (fur coats were inherited), Mansky remembers people dancing in the streets on the many Soviet public holidays, and the long hot Summers in his mother’s dacha offered welcome contrast to freezing winters. There is even a macabre early memory of when he queued to buy a coffin on his beloved grandmother’s death. His mother and her (numerous) boyfriends remain the one constant in his early life: sex education, first love, endless partying; an eventful cruise on the Volga and his early experiences with filmmaking also feature heavily, crammed into this compulsive and meaty biopic that requires intensive concentration to assimilate an immersive digest of over 5000 hours of film material and 20,000 stills.Well worth it though! MT

 

 

 

The Lure (2016)

Dir: Tomas Leach | Doc | 77min | US

In 1988 an eccentric millionaire purportedly buried a chest containing gold worth around $3 million somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, tempting a trail of fortune-seekers into the region but also spawning a new genre of guidebooks offering advice on how to embark on a treasure hunt, based on the original written by the man himself, one Forrest Fenn.

Tomas Leach’s rambling documentary sets out to explore the excitement surrounding the hidden bounty and inadvertently gets caught up in the intrigue generated by a man who had always dreamt of discovering treasure, but ironically survived the ‘fatal’ cancer scare that had made him bury the gold in the first place.

This is a documentary that perfectly exemplifies the phrase “thrill of the chase” where the journey is always more exciting than the destination. And predictably, many of those that feature here have come for the satisfaction of solving the puzzle rather than the hope of actually finding the spoils, One man claims he would be happy just to uncover the pot of gold and then rebury it again. Others claim that the hike to the Rockies has given their lives meaning or even helped them overcome trauma and life-changing ailments.

But it’s not all good. The lure of the gold has led to one loss of life, and several hunters have gone missing during their trek which has so far tempted 65,000 to the mountain range. THE LURE brings to mind several other treasure-seeking titles: Thomas Arslan’s drama GOLD (2013) sees a bunch of German  come to no good in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, and KOMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER (2014) throws up surprisingly dark comedy elements associated with a woman’s search for hidden loot.

Fenn meanwhile, having survived cancer is still getting off on the furore surrounding his mountain bounty hunt; teasing prospectors with cryptic answers to their desperate search for clues. Will he ever take the money back into his own possession or is he a closet philanthropist hoping for a worthy recipient of his stash? Despite the saggy narrative structure, THE LURE offers plenty of food for thought and some staggering landscapes courtesy of Leach’s camerawork. You may even decide to have a crack at that pot of gold yourselves. MT

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 8 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

 

The Vault (2017)

Dir.: Dan Bush; Cast: Francesca Eastwood, Taryn Manning, Scott Haze, James Franco, Q’orianka Kilcher; USA 2017, 92 min.

It’s easy to see what Dan Bush had in mind with The Vault: melding the bank heist genre with some gruesome Zombie action looked a great idea. Unfortunately, he gives away the plot in the off-commentary at the very start. Instead of suspense and thrills we get what we expected; and in spite of a strong ensemble cast, the suspense – on which both genres rely – is minimal.

Sisters Leah (Eastwood) and Taryn (Manning) are helping their brother Michael (Haze) to pay back his enormous debts to some vicious gangsters, by staging a bank robbery. The concept of a bank robbery today seems quite antiquated, and we soon learn why: the siblings are totally irrational in their planning, their execution, and thei family dynamics. Vee is an out-and-out psychopath; Michael flips between guilt and violence – making Leah the sanest of the lot (which doesn’t say much). The trio’s reactions are the most promising aspects of this slack thriller. Bank employees Susan Cromwell (Kilcher) and Ed Maas (Franco) are drawn into the powerplay of the would-be robbers, who are soon contacted by police officers outside the building. A narrative along the lines of Dog Day Afternoon, would have worked better, instead Maas tells the trio about a huge underground vault with six million Dollars in the cellar of the bank. When it emerges that the notes from the pitiful score of 70 000 Dollars are banknotes from the early 80s when the bank was the victim of a bloody heist, we realise what will happen after Michael forces his way into the vault….

This is bland and conventional stuff to look at and by way of its storyline – in the resulting incongruence of the genre collision we lose any interest in the protagonists’ fate. AS

NOW OUT ON RELEASE

https://vimeo.com/226969325

The Limehouse Golem (2016)

Dir: Juan Carlos Medina | Cast: Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke, Eddie Marsan, Douglas Booth | Fantasy Horror \ UK | 104′

Compelling performances from Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke fail to save this rather formulaic Ripper story with its florid Burlesque styling and a script as hammy and hackneyed as the Victorian vehicle of its name.

THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM is based on Peter Ackroyd’s inventive 1994 novel ‘Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem’ interweaving the factual story of death by poisoning with the fictional macabre murders that menaced the East End of London during the 1880s. Best known for his Spanish language feature Insensibles Juan Carlos Medina directs from a lewdly over-stuffed script by Jane Goldman that pictures a set of poorly underwritten but intriguing Victorian characters in this two-pronged murder mystery with a final twist that panders to today’s penchant for gender-switching. A saturnine Bill Nighy stars as Inspector John Kildare – back-footed by allegations of homosexuality – is brought in to investigate an intractable series of gruesome murders so brutal as to suggest some mythical figure – a Jewish folkloric Golem – is at work in the backstreets of Victorian London. Kildare starts to find similarities between these murders and the domestic poisoning of failed playwright John Cree (Sam Reid).

The film opens as Cree is discovered dead by his wife Elizabeth (Cooke), the former “Little Lizzie” of music hall fame, who is also a marital bed-dodger, who employs the services of her Spanish maid to perform her marital duties. Naturally the finger of fate points in her direction due to her practice of preparing a nightly sleeping draught for her husband. But Kildare falls prey to Mrs Cree’s charms buying into her sob-story of childhood suffering from which she rose to respectability dragging herself up by her bodice strings only to be dragged down again in the public perception as the film’s femme fatale. She regales Kildare with stories of having been taken under the wing of cross-dresser and a music hall maestro Dan Leno (Douglas Booth) who’s catchphrase is “Here we are again!”. Desperately trying to forge her own acting career by associating with Eddie Marsan’s salacious stage manager “Uncle” in fierce competition with Maria Valverde’s  “Acrobatic Aveline” (Maria Valverde) from whose clutches she ‘won’ Mr Cree, she is played with skill and subtlety by Olivia Cooke in a difficult role.

Meanwhile everyone appears to be a suspect as Kildare’s ongoing investigations hurtle forward at breakneck speed – including Karl Marx (Henry Goodman) and the English novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) all portrayed as sketchily as possible within the claustrophobic two hours – although there’s plenty of time for gore. Technically there is a great deal to enjoy in this closeted costume drama with its distinctly theatrical feel and lighting but it just feels predictable and a little bit like something we’ve all seen before. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 1 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

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The Farthest (2017)

Dir: Emer Reynolds | Doc | US | 121′ | With Nick Sagan, Edward Stone, Lawrence Krauss, John Cassani, Carolyn Porco, Frank Drake.

“We are attempting to survive our time, so we can live into yours” said President Jimmy Carter. With this quote begins Emer Reynolds ‘out of this world’ documentary that explores the endlessly evolving story of the NASA’s pioneering Voyager space mission that catapulted two unmanned spacecraft into the unknown in 1977.

In an opening segment that feels bitty in bombarding us with information about the project, what emerges from the onslaught are three salient facts. First is that the spaceships embarked on their journey during a once in a lifetime beneficial alignment of planet (taking place only every 176 years) after five years’ research. Secondly, that the Sun is the size of a tiny grain of sand placed on a 6ft wide table, that roughly represents the Universe. Finally, it takes decades to get out into the Solar System, and that is where the pair are travelling.

The various astronauts at NASA have loaded the mission vehicles with a ‘message in a bottle’ in the shape of an almost weightless golden photograph record (looking like a old style LP recording) that contains two hours worth of information including music, sounds and images aiming at representing the human race, to be picked by any forces beyond our planet.

This is all explained by a series of talking heads who continue to bamboozle us with chestnuts of information which sound fascinating but collectively really mean little to the uninitiated. We gradually find ourselves tuning out as our brains go into overload with the facts, figures and intermittently buzzing sound effects. Fewer commentators would have been more effective, and also some silence to allow us to step back, admire the images and contemplate the enormity of it all. It’s overwhelming. Much of the film features scientists talking about the process behind selecting the soundtrack for the voyage and pictures for the ‘voyager record’ and there is much discussion about the ideal images to represent us as humans. The naked photos were eventually dropped – are they politically correct in Space too?. The only phrase that really sticks out is “it turned out that Uranus wasn’t particularly photogenic” (hadn’t they heard of anal bleaching?). More significantly, the best statement is Sagan’s graceful one about our planet being a place where axiomatically: “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Witticisms aside, THE FARTHEST feels rather alienating in both its form, delivery and subject matter which is a great shame because space travel and exploration are clearly highly relevant to the future of mankind. I realise I should be moved, yet I somehow found the whole thing vaguely underwhelming – interesting but terribly unmoving. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 31 AUGUST 2017

American Made (2017)

Dir.: Doug Liman; Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright; USA 2017, 115 min.

Doug Liman’s (Bourne Identity, The Wall) biopic of Barry Seal (1939-1986) could easily be mistaken for a Tom Cruise vehicle, in which the recently much maligned star plays a drug smuggler and money launderer for the CIA, putting on his megawatt smile and cheesy charm way through two hours of ludicrous mayhem. On the other hand, this feels like yet another Hollywood rewrite of American history.

We are introduced to a Barry Seal, who is naïve, but just a bit too greedy for his own good, when he starts to work for the CIA in the late ’70s, helping various suspicious South American groups to lay their hands on weapons and drugs – both seemingly necessary to fight communism in the sub-continent. Led by agent Mont Schafer (Gleeson), Seal, who once was the youngest pilot working for TWA, soon meets the Medellin Cartel and its main protagonist Pablo Escobar: After nearly coming to blows both sides see the advantages here and Tom – sorry – Barry is soon developing a lucrative side-line in drug-tracking – which naturally led to arms-dealing – for the Colombians, allowing him to trouser some pocket-bulging benefits. But soon everything goes bad: Barry is sucked into the Iran-Contra affair, with leading man Oliver North and a stonewalling White House led by Ronald and Nancy (‘Say No’) Reagan. Seal gets away from an Arkansas court, even though his guilt is proven, and gets a 1000 hour community work sentence. But the past catches up with him in a parking lot of the Salvation Army in his hometown of Baton Rogue, Louisiana in 1986.

Shot by DoP Cesar Charlone (Blindness) with competence but no imagination in the manner of all major Hollywood features, we are treated to two hours of escapism: just the right sort of juvenile nonsense without any impact, that might lead us to forget where we parked the car.

Not much to write home about – but looking into the CV of the real Barry Seal the picture changes dramatically. Born in Baton Rogue to a father who was an active Klansman, young Barry was in love with flying, and joined the Civil Air Patrol. In 1956/7 he met a certain Harvey Lee Oswald, and three years later became a member of “Operation 40”, a group of Cuban exiles, who where sponsored by the CIA and had been founded by then vice-president Richard Nixon. The group not only participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, but staged assassinations in the USA and plots in many South American countries well into the 80ies, when American Made starts. And a sworn statement of his wife Deborah states “that Barry flew a get-away plane after the assassination of John F. Kennedy out of Dallas”, in which Cuban exiles played a significant role. An American made hero, indeed – but not the funny guy we are led to believe. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Hotel Salvation (2016)

Dir: Shubhashish Bhutiani | Drama | 110′ | Cast: Lalit Behl, Adil Hussain, Navnindra Behl | India

In this appealing arthouse drama a 77 year-old grandfather Daya (Lalit Behl) dreams that his life is coming to an end and travels to the sacred site of Varanasi in order to prepare for his final days and achieve salvation according to his Hindu faith. His put-upon son Rajiv (Adil Hussain/Life of Pi) decides to accompany his needy father – more out of duty than desire – but the two gradually bond by the banks of the Ganges while the rest of us experience the inner workings of traditional Hindu life and the spirituality of this hallowed riverside location.

HOTEL SALVATION is the confident feature debut of Indian director Shubhashish Bhutiani who is best known in film circles for his Venice-awarded short Kush (2013). Working with a low budget and including gentle humour to avoid over-sentimentality the director highlights family tension throughout first between Daya and Rajiv and then between Rajiv and his own daughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh) who is engaged to be married and keen to make her own way in life. Meanwhile, the stressed-out Rajiv is trying to run a business with his efforts being constantly undermined by the niggling demands of his father, who meanwhile is steadily befriending a wise woman of his own generation Vimla (Navnindra Behl). There is no controversy here as the intergenerational conflicts are gently smoothed over despite one frantic scene where the tempo is raised over Sunita’s love life, forcing Rajiv to get back home.

The HOTEL SALVATION in question refers to a rather ramshackle retreat in the heart of Varanasi where the elderly repair to review their lives and come to terms with their own mortality. It is a place of transformative tranquility where a sadhu presides over the daily prayer rituals which are never taken too seriously, as in a scene where the Daya on his last legs commands that the mourning musicians “sing in tune please”. Certainly an experience to relish HOTEL SALVATION is a treasure not to be missed. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 28 AUGUST 2017

 

London Symphony (2017)

18582514_10156335747454062_8855051153228850370_nDir: Alex Barrett | Writer: Rahim Moledina | Doc | UK | 72′

LONDON SYMPHONY is a lyrical and poetic monochrome portrait of the capital, unfurling along the lines of Dziga Vertov’s 1929 triumph Man with a Movie Camera that pictured St Petersburg, the film also offers a contemporary twist on the popular 1920s ‘city symphony’ documentary genre or ‘Stummfilm’ that aimed to celebrate and offer insight into everyday urban life such as Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) whose 90th anniversary the release commemorates.

Divided in four ‘movements’ and set to James McWilliams’ specially composed score, the camera captures the frenetic tempo of a city ‘at work’ in the opening chapter: its train stations, water ways, boats and other transport moods are featured at length offering a rhythmic vigour to the narrative. Playful moments follow showcasing leisure pursuits – monopoly (indoors) and chess (outdoors). The second chapter is the most poetic as the camera ventures into the suburbs, rivers and waterways, where joggers and dogs enjoy the many parks, fields and woods. Pub life and cafe society is interrupted by a look at a busy Foodbank. Part three goes to the heart of spiritual London: synagogues, mosques and temples of all denominations are populated by active worshippers. Culture is expressed in the city’s plethora of museums and galleries, before it returns to work with a glimpse of office life and computer networks. The final chapter deals with transport systems in the metropolis, featuring the many bridges across the Thames. Buses and cyclists hurry homeward, before the rain starts: no London film can be complete without the occasional heavy downpour. London Symphony ends on a light-hearted note with a visit to the theatres and cinemas. Then we say goodnight with the hypnotic crisscrossing of overground tubes through the night.

In his second feature, Alex Barrett and his scripter Rahim Moledina have successfully captured the heart, soul and spirit of a very culturally and ethnically inclusive capital city – with its many seemingly contradictive moods – through the changing tempo that punctuates a vibrant place of work and play. Romance and office life may collide, but there is always room for uniqueness and solitude in a city that still has space for (nearly) everyone. A contemplative documentary about city life with floating, luminous images and a welcome addition to the genre.

LONDON SYMPHONY will be screened with a live orchestra at The Barbican Centre (3rd Sept), the Brutalist Alexandra & Ainsworth Housing Estate. (17th Sept) and the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple (October 28th). The music by James McWilliam – who is now in the process of composing for the forthcoming film Close staring Noomi Rapace – will be performed by the Covent Garden Sinfonia.

LONDON SYMPHONY -tour details and ticket booking links here: London, tour over 30 venues throughout the UK. http://www.londonsymphfilm.com/tour.htm.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) | Meghe Dhaka Tara | BFI India on Film

Dir/Writer: Ritwik Ghatak | Cast: Sudiya Choudhury, Nirinjan Ray, Anil Chatterjee, Gyanesh Mukherjee, Bijon Bhattacharya, Gita Dey | 126′ | India | Drama

Ritwik Ghatak is sometimes overlooked in contrast to his Bengali compatriot Satyajit Ray. THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR is the first part of his trilogy E Flat and Subarnarekha offering an emotional and deeply personal account of post partition poverty in 1950s Calcutta, East Bengal. Sublime in its poignant sadness flecked with occasional dark humour it is a visual masterpiece of chiaroscuro splendour set amid abject suffering of a gentle woman whose continuous acts of sacrifice show that the meek and selfless do not always inherit the earth. Quite the reverse.

The gripping linear narrative enlivening by enjoyable musical interludes centres on Nita (Choudhury) the talented eldest daughter in a cultured Hindu refugee family who puts all her efforts and hard-earned cash into the dreams of her three younger more self-seeking siblings. Falling for a promising but ultimately specious young scientist (Sanat/Nirinjan Ray), her dreams are shattered as her world slowly unravels when Sanat proves to be unfaithful and spineless and her father – the voice of reason and wisdom – suffers a serious accident leaving him bedridden. Richly thematic, this satirical melodrama offers insight into Indian society showing how women are the family underdogs despite their intelligence, perspicacity and perseverance.  Ghatak’s inventive use of poetic realism and his convincing characterisations and impressionist interweaving of sound, image and mood convey a palpable feeling for Bengal and its artistic traditions. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI’S INDIA ON FILM SEASON | SUMMER 2017

Bushwick (2017)

Dir: Cary Murnion/Jonathan Milcot | Writer: Nick Damici | Cast: David Bautista, Brittany Snow, Chrisian Navarro, Arturo Castro | Drama | 93′ | US

BUSHWICK operates from the faintly outlandish idea that this Brooklyn suberb has been invaded by a faceless military coup forcing its denizens to defend themselves in order to survive. It never gets out of the shadow of this weak plot and questionable premise.

The action follows Lucy (Brittany Snow) and her medic turned janitor boyfriend (Dave Bautista) who have arrived back in her hometown to meet her parents. They emerge from the underground to discover that war has broken out and that a private militia is attempting to force the president to accept the secession of a number of Southern States. Don’t expect to be entertained by witty dialogue here. After a casual conversation in the opening scene the pair’s exchanges are reduced to “Oh my God”, “fuck” and “I feel really weird, like” and a range of other surprised expletives. Clearly, they had their earphones on for the previous weeks/months and failed to notice any political changes during their amorous wanderings. Didn’t Lucy’s parents warn them what to expect when they arrived in Brooklyn?

Directing from a script by Nick Damici, the filmmakers expect us to go along with this constantly unravelling scenario in a political thriller that’s about as tension-fuelled as a stroll in Prospect Park. Our heroes: Lucy, her boyfriend and her sister, seem to be incredibly emotional and stressed out by the ‘insurgency’ but there is really very little real fighting to be had in the streets of Bushwick apart from the odd punch-up and the hum of hovering aircraft, it’s also very dark.

Politically there seems to be some confusion as to who our heroes are fighting against; is it White Supremacy, Hasidic Jews or even Zombies shooting from a graveyard (in one scene) – which is at best ludicrous. This half-baked political narrative is not helped by predictable characters and lacklustre cinematography in street scenes that feel stagey rather than convincing for an action thriller. What could have been an opportunity to make a shrewd political and social statement just misfires radically from the outset. The ensemble cast are unremarkable, not even Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) can inject any real macho charisma here. MT.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 AUGUST \ EST TVOD 28 AUGUST 2017

 

Mimosas (2016)

Dir: Oliver Laxe | Writer: Santiago Fillol | Drama | 96min | French and Arabia

In medieval Morocco, two nefarious tribesmen are tasked with accompanying a dying sheikh through the treacherous Atlas Mountains in Oliver Laxe’s eerily hypnotic arthouse drama.

Best described as a meditation on the strength of religious faith, this proves to be a gruelling journey – both physically and metaphorically – but it is resonant and ravishing to watch in its and spartan simplicity, and set to an atmospheric occasional score it has the striking otherworldly quality of Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) and Last Days in the Desert (2015). 

The travellers Saïd (Saïd Aagli) and Ahmed (Ahmed Hammoud) are eventually aiming for the ancient city of Sijilmasa, which is the ancestral home of the sheikh and where he intends to be buried. But death does not wait and reaches him during his final journey on a bleak mountainside. The caravaneers, fearful of the mountain, refuse to continue transporting the corpse.

In a parallel narrative, set in the modern world, a couple of taxi drivers who are modern incarnations of Ahmed and Shakib, fight for the job of taking the sheikh to his final resting place in their rickety vehicles. Shakib is chosen. Once again, his assignment is clear: he has to help the accidental caravaneers to reach their destination.

As the caravan travels, so the mostly reluctant tribesmen diminish in number, as one is drowned in fast-flowing river, as the troup come under fire from bandits, French Spanish director Brings his experience of living in Morocco to bear in a thoughtful drama that sometimes feels elliptical and difficult to connect with for the uninitiated. But there is plenty to enjoy in Laxe’s magnificent visuals and the film connects loosely with Ben Rivers’ 2015 film The Sky Trembles and The Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015), which featured Part of the shooting of MIMOSAS.

The cast of newcomers provide convincing performances and only occasionally angry outbursts disturb the tranquility of this placid and relaxing drama enhanced by Mauro Herce’s resplendent cinematography. MT

REVIEWED AT CANNES | WINNER, THE CRITICS WEEK GRAND PRIZE 2016 |

Distant Constellation (2017) ****

Dir: Shevaun Mizrahi | USA/Turk/Ned | Doc | 80′

An Istanbul retirement home is playfully haunted by the rich and colourful memories of its battle-scarred occupants in this impressive and gracefully composed debut from Shevaun Mizrahi.

Outside, high-rise construction takes Turkey into an acquisitive new chapter of its history. But in the faded splendour of their palazzo building, the old guard reminisce with humour, perseverance and poignancy, remembering a time when life was fraught with war and poverty but also held together by a sense of community and the simple pleasures of sex, family, music and the visual arts. Dressed up for another day alone with their memories, the cultured occupants of this care home – who range from late seventies to much older – are left to their own devices, keeping their minds sharp with crosswords in the privacy of their rooms. Others sits together in companionable silence, gazing wistfully into the camera or staring vacantly to the world outside. Mizrahi’s one-to-one encounters are mostly observational and her static camera patiently contemplates each individual without rushing on, even when clearly some are suffering from senility, or even early stage dementia, while others are bent over and crippled by age.

Selma, an Armenian woman in her late nineties. even nods off while chatting (Mizrahi stays off camera, and we don’t hear her voice). She tells how her mill-owning family were chased from their village during the Armenian genocide; the men killed with knives and the animals burnt. “1915 was a terrible time…we were forced to convert to Islam”. Having lost the opportunity to marry, she looked after a Turkish baby for two years, and cried when she left her, never having kids herself. She advises Mizrahi to get married and raise a family when she can but is clearly philosophical about the past: “life has been good to me”.

In another room a soulful photographer attempts to load his camera, repeating over and over again: “I can’t see”. We feel for him, as French music plays softly in the background. Shaved and dressed in a suit and tie, he won’t be going anywhere today but looks forward to his birthday, checking the date on his mobile phone, with a magnifying glass. “in 9 days time, they will bring a cake”.  A photo on the wall shows him proudly posing with his camera, his glossy black hair slicked back, he looks like a 1950s matinée idol .

A couple of old boys chat in a stationary lift – which they can’t operate, or pretend they can’t. One says to the other, a heavy smoker: “I’m sick of your breath, take an eucalyptus sweet, or even two” The lift door eventually opens to let two women in. Another – rather dapper pianist – treats us to a classical flurry on the keyboards before gushing forth with some particularly florid memories with his girlfriend in the back of a car: Sexual desire – and the longing for physical touch doesn’t change with age and he is clearly concerned about his emotional future. Hoping there will another relationship in his life (he’s only 77), he swiftly proposes marriage to Mizrahi: “you’re 29, I don’t expect you to stop going out dancing with your friends”. In return, he offers his generous pension, as a dowry.

As dawn breaks, a woodpecker and some spirited birdsong ushers in another day, as residents wash and dress in hopeful preparation. But the swirling murmuration of the starlings also signals the change of season as another winter approaches, suitably recalling the words of Dylan Thomas: ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day’. It certainly describes these spirited people, captured so charmingly here by Shevaun Mizrahi. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)

Dir: Patrick Hughes | Cast: Selma Hayek, Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L Jackson | US | Action Thriller

Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3) must have been on auto-pilot when he made this tonally awkward generic buddy thriller – a sweary throwback to the far superior Midnight Run (1988).

In place of Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro we get Samuel L. Jackson, with Ryan Reynolds playing his body guard, in an action thriller with plenty of action but very few thrills or indeed, laughs, for that matter: the romance is provided by Jackson’s feisty relationship with his pouty wife (Salma Hayek) who is serving time for stabbing someone to death with a bottle. And that’s just for openers.

The action opens as Reynolds and Jackson are off to Holland to give evidence against Gary Oldman’s curious former president of Belarus in The Hague. This incorporates a rather good chase scene through the streets of Amsterdam which brings out the best in Hughes’ directing skills, but the film somehow misjudges the mood musically with I Want to Know Where Love Is playing when the pair are later seen drinking together in a bar.

Ultimately, this is a film that takes itself far too seriously, unlike its predecessor that exuded a wry eye-winking warmth throughout, providing a perfect foil for the rather silly shenanigans of the action-thriller going on around it. As a result THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD is all action and no trousers in all the worse kind of ways, and despite Reynolds and Jackson doing the honours, it is largely unmemorable. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 18 AUGUST 2017

The Untamed | La Region Selvaje (2016)

Dir: Amat Escalante | 100min | Fantasy drama | Mexico Denmark |

Amat Escalalnte follows his Cannes-awarded Heli with a community based sci-fi fantasy drama inspired by the machismo, homophobia and misogyny of his native Mexico.

THE UNTAMED is an obscure and unsettling piece that deftly manages its tonal shifts – from grim social realism to sinister fantasy – in a mysterious narrative slowly unfolds, taking its characters to unexpected places while leaving them firmly rooted in contemporary Guanajuato, weighed down by their reality of poverty, overcrowding and crime.

In the outskirts of a town a large crater has opened up filled with animals that appear to have been affected by an extraterrestrial force. One of these has morphed into a benign tentacled creature capable of giving ultimate sexual satisfaction to the women who visit its cabin in the woods. But the creature can also turn nasty, like a disgruntled male. In this way, THE UNTAMED could work as a metaphor for Mexican oppression and the dire social issues facing the country, or for any other Western country caught in the current climate of political and social uncertainty.

We first meet Veronica (Simone Bucio) a willowy waif in the throws of ecstacy, courtesy of our alien-like tentacled tempter in his darkened cabin. This is one of the most bewildering scenes of the film and is captured by the same cinematographer who worked on Nymphomaniac. In a further twist, the creature is being looked after by a weird couple who are purported to possess psychic powers.

Meanwhile, back in town, young mother of two Ale (Ruth Ramos) is being abused by her husband Angel (Jesus Meza), a brutish civil engineer in a sexual relationship with her brother Fabian (Eden Villavicencio), who works in the local hospital where Veronica turns up later with a strange wound on her torso. The two are clearly attracted to one another and decide to meet up later, where it emerges that Fabian is unhappy with Angel.

The trio’s situation grows all the more desperate due to the Sci-fi occurences in the nearby woods: nothing is clear, everything seems to be degenerating both ecologically and societally for the country and its people who are caught in the grip of circumstances beyond their control.Despite the underwritten characters, Escalante’s attempts to chanel Mexico’s serious social issues into this Sci-fi drama are convincing and exciting marking him out as one cinema’s most visionary contemporary filmmakers.  MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

 

 

 

Quest (2017)

Dir.: Jonathan Olshefski; Documentary; USA 2017, 105 min.

What started as a chance encounter – when Olshefski was teaching photography in North Philadelphia – has turned into a documentary about the Rainey family: black, broke but incredibly creative and resourceful. QUEST is not just another opportunity for a white outsider to wax lyrical about deprivation, but a project born out of common interests.

Chris Rainey runs a small home recording studio where budding neighbourhood talents are try to find a way into the professional rapper scene. Whilst the studio is a labour of love, Chris makes a living as a newspaper deliverer – combing art and survival in the same way as former construction worker Olshefski – in order to finance his art projects. The director “could relate to the juggle of the passion project and the day job”. Aware “of the long history of privileged filmmakers going into communities that are not their own”, he avoids marginalising North Philly and the Rainey family, but tells instead a story which is as much about their friendship as the town itself, which he hopes will benefit from QUEST.

‘Ma’ Christine’ Rainey is the pragmatist in the family, working in a badly paid Shelter job, she has learned to economise on all levels. Her arms were badly burned in an domestic accident but she remains stoical, whereas her husband Chris is the dreamer, running his studio with near religious faith. When the matriarch’s oldest son, twenty-one year old William, is diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour, Ma springs into action. William, whose first child has just been born, is despondent. He even gets a tattoo with a warning sign for chemical pollution, declaring himself a ‘dangerous zone’

. Olshefski workimg as his own DoP and sound designer, wanted to close the project after the re-election of Barack Obama, but a new misfortune struck the Rainey family: their teenage daughter Pearl (P.J.) was hit by a stray bullet and lost an eye. In one of the most harrowing moments of QUEST, Chris recalls his daughter’s first words after he rushed to her aid: “Daddy, I am sorry, I got shot”.

But QUEST is also a celebration of life: when Pearl comes home after a lengthy hospital stay, the street party to welcome her back is something to behold. The discussion between the couple about Pearl’s burgeoning homosexuality is surprisingly rational, Ma blaming her husband “for always obstructing me, when I wanted her to wear some more feminine clothes”. Nevertheless, Pearl would graduate, choosing her own way. When Chris is interrogated by white police officers the tension shows– even though Chis has always supported the police and attended demonstrations against gun violence in their neighbourhood, the friction between police and citizens is always simmering.

Without the frills or mannerism that often accompany this kind of self-styled cinema-verite project, QUEST is exactly what Olshefski planned it to be: “the only agenda is to provide the viewer the opportunity to connect to these incredible individuals and share the love I have for them. This is what I want the viewer to take away. These are people whose voices should be heard.” Olshefski thus avoids a political sermon and just makes do with what he found – which is more than enough. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 18 AUGUST 2017

Final Portrait (2017)

Dir/Writer: Stanley Tucci Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy, Tony Shalhoub, James Faulkner, Sylvie Testud | UK | Drama | 90 min

The sculptor Alberto Giacometti was an eccentric, philandering neurotic and a crashingly self-centred bore. He was also a perfectionist, a sharp businessman and a fool for love. Or so Stanley Tucci would have us believe in his rather idolatrous but witty biopic drama that follows the Swiss Italian artist in his Paris atelier during the 1960s, where he worked with his tolerant brother Diego, also an artist.

In his second feature as both writer and director, Stanley Tucci deftly dovetails themes of creative insecurity and narcissism as he delves inside the intriguing subject of what is it to be an artist. Basing his script on James Lord’s biography ‘A Giacometti Portrait’, Tucci conjures up a chaotic genius who process involves constant over-painting directly on the canvas before finally getting the measure of his subject many hours if not weeks after the initial sitting.

In 1964. shortly before his death, Giacometti’s work was fetching record prices forcing him to squirrel away wads of banknotes in his shambolic studio amongst the many works in process. His wife Annette – who he calls a “petite bourgeoise” – is dismayed by his ongoing affair with his ditzy muse Caroline, not least because he lavishes money on his lover while being tight-fisted with his spouse.

One day, Giacometti asks New York art critic and writer James Lord to pose for him. Initially flattered, Lord has no idea of what he is letting himself in for as the portrait, scheduled to take a week, stretches on for much longer amid constant interruptions for restaurants breaks, setbacks and altercations with his wife and lover. Armie Hammer is perfect for the role of Lord: open-faced, cheerful and uncomplicated he plays the long-suffering Lord, with consummate ease.

Genius Giacometti’s method of working flies in the face of other famous portrait painters who are highly organised, fast-working and diligent, often juggling several projects at a time, beginning with pencil sketching and photographic impressions before finally putting paint to canvas. This depicts a man who was disorganised, scatty and unable to work to deadlines, despite his obvious talent.

With a tour de force performance from Geoffrey Rush in the lead role, and Clemence Poesie perfectly irritating as Caroline, this is a stylishly imagined and richly photographed drama that captures the romantic magic of Paris in its Sixties heyday, but is rather denigrates the memory of Giacometti. Worth watching if you can cut it some artistic slack. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 18 AUGUST 2017 | BERLINALE 2017 REVIEW

 

Patti Cake$ (2017)

Dir: Geremy Jasper | Cast: Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett | Siddarth Dharanjay | Drama | 108′

PATTI CAKE$ follows a common formula: a depressed and overweight girl has aspirations of making it in the music business with hopes kindled by the likes of X Factor. This is not New York City but the backwaters of New Jersey, where our heroine’s day job is in a bottom-feeders downtown bar.

With the buzz around celebritiy status, these kind of ‘talent discovery’  films are becoming predictably schematic: on one level they feed the dreams of the disenchanted, but in a world where everyone can become a star, the firmament gets rather overheated. And this is the case with PATTI CAKE$ which is sparky, well-made and cinematic, a bit saggy in the middle – you may doze off – but otherwise perfectly decent. The main character Patti, also known as Killer P, Dumbo and Patricia (newcomer Danielle MacDonald) is, as usual, bored with her humdrum existence at home with skanky mom Barb (Bridget Everett) and fag-smoking grandma (Cathy Moriarty) who is laid up in bed unable to pay her medical bills. So far, so convincing. Patti’s best mates with the local chemist Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay) who joins around with her when she comes in for grandma’s drugs, then joins her in a sudden outlandish ‘star-quest’ to the Big City.

But where is the evidence of Patricia’s musical talents, or grafting towards a career in that direction? Apart from noting down a few lines in a notebook, there is no backstory or history that makes us want to root for her as a budding star, or any great tunes – for that matter. Patti’s dream rapper is also a fictional star, rather than a real one, and a cypher into the bargain, adding further bum notes to this musical drama. Then we’re led to believe that her Black mate and ‘enabler’ Bob, aka the Antichrist, is some charismatic mystical charmer who ends up having little to say – let alone sing or play.

After a few setbacks, the action culminates in a showcase rap competition where her mother is grafted in to aid and abet proceedings with her trusty lung power, consoling the teary two in a crowd-pleasing finale. PATTI CAKE$ works as light entertainment but certainly no standout, as we were led to believe by the Sundance hype earlier on this year. MT

ON RELEASE 1 SEPTEMBER 2017

 

Le Doulos (1962) tribute to Jean Paul Belmondo

Dir.: Jean-Pierre Melville; Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, Monique Hennessy, Jean Desailly, Fabienne Dali, Michel Piccoli, Jacques De Leon, Rene Lefevre; France 1962, 108 min.

Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) is known mostly for his stylish portraits of the Paris underworld, but he is also considered the ‘grandfather’ of the Nouvelle Vague; though his early friendship with Jean-Luc Godard (he had a role in A bout a souffle), ended in the late 1960s, when Godard started doing away with narratives. For Melville, a great lover of literature, this was sacrilege. LE DOULOS, based on a novel by Pierre Lesou, is an intricate work of continuous betrayal, very much like a Balzac or Flaubert classic.

The title is a French slang word for hat, but also informer, and the film opens with a brilliant long panning shot of Maurice (Reggiani), walking through an endless number of railway arches at night. Everything is desolate, including Gilbert’s dilapidated house. But we soon learn the reason for this atmosphere of doom and gloom: Maurice, just out of prison, is going to kill Gilbert for the murder of his wife. He also steals a lot of money and the jewellery from a recent heist, burying both under a lamppost nearby. A radical change of scenes follows, with Maurice planning a robbery in a wealthy Parisian suburb. He meets his friends Silien (Belmondo) in his chic but tasteless appartment where he lives with his girlfriend Therese (Hennessy). These two have something in common which will decide the fate of all concerned. The robbery goes wrong, when the police arrive on the scene, Maurice is wounded, his partner and a police detective dead. The gangsters here – like Melville himself – are very much in love with their American counterparts: drinking Bourbon in American style bars. While Silien is being interrogated by detectives led by Superintendent Clain (Desailly) in a magnificent continuous shot lasting nearly ten minutes, Therese’s body is found in car which has fallen into a steep ravine in a quarry. In a payback for the murder of Gilbert Silien kills Armand (De Leon), the lover of his ex-grill friend Fabienne (Dali), and his partner Nuttheccio (Piccoli). He also frames them for the murder when he deposits the money and the jewells in Armand’s safe. In the finale, a variation on a Cornel Woolrich theme of ‘race against time’, Maurice puts a contract on Silien’s head, before trying to stop the contract killer.

While Melville always insisted that all his films were really Westerns, LE DOULOS is typically French, starting with a glimpse of poetic realism when Maurice walks towards Gilbert’s house. What follows is very much Flaubert territory, with the protagonists trying to extricate themselves from the roles they have played all their lives, only to trap themselves in the schemes they set up. It really doesn’t matter who is on whose side, the execution of violence overrides all motives and intentions. Talking about violence, women are treated as second class citizens always at the beck and call of men, they are neglected at best. But whilst women, like in most Melville features, are marginal figures in the plot, men are romanticised to no end: they can only be victims or perpetrators.

DoP Nicholas Hayer, who worked for Melville on Two Men in Manhattan (1959), creates a black and white landscape of utter forlornness. Every room seems to be a trap: Maurice murdering ‘the fence’ in the shabby room with the victim’s own revolver, Therese left alone in her flat to be kidnapped and murdered, Silien in the police’ interrogation room, bargaining for his freedom, and finally in his own house, with the contract killer hiding behind a screen. As for Melville, there are shades of Le Samourai (1967) here, but his misogyny is much more striking in the earlier feature, spoiling it to a certain degree. AS

JEAN PAUL BELMONDO 1933-2021

Step (2017)

Dir.: Amanda Lipitz; Documentary; USA 2017, 83 min.

Amanda Lipitz’ feature documentary STEP is proof that finding the right style for your subject matter is the basis of successful filmmaking: fast-moving but with an eye for detail, this is a rollercoaster ride of intensity. It also helps that Lipitz, a native of Baltimore, was a founder member of Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSfYW) whose class of 2009, entering its senior year, is the central focus of the film. Lipitz is not just a well-meaning outsider who presents the material before disappearing, but a fighter for the rights of one of the most disadvantaged minorities in the US: young black women.

STEP combines the two main goals of the first senior class of BLSfYW: to obtain college placements for all women students and to winning the Bowie State step competition. The documentary centres on the three leading girls of the step team, the “Lethal Ladies”, led by Blessin Giraldo. Blessin, hyperactive and a gifted dancer, puts all her frustrations into the dance routines – her home life is anything but ideal. Mother Geneva is suffering from depression and often unable to look after her family. When Blessin’s little brother discovers an empty ‘fridge again after school, his older sister admits she does not want this kind of life for herself. But Geneva, who has not even met one of her daughter’s teachers since 2009, always fails to live up to promises. Blessin is on the verge of dropping out, but principal Chevonne Hall and school counsellor Paul Dufat make sure that the target of 100% college placements for the class is realised. Cori Grainger is a straight A-student, whose mother has recently married an old friend; the merging of the two families brings new problems for Cori; who, in the end, successfully enters the prestigious Hopkins University. Finally there is Taylor Solomon, who has no problem achieving her grades, but is permanently embarrassed by mum Maisha, a correctional officer proud of her job and of telling all the parents about “her mission”. After the death of teenager Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015, which led to riots, Maisha’s profession makes her an outsider.

The dance routines under the watchful eye of coach Gari McIntyre and the appearance in the final of the competition – the “Lethal Ladies” all dressed as Cleopatra’ – dictate the tempo, even though more time is given to fleshing out the students’ background. DoP Casey Regan makes sure that the cinema vérité aesthetics are always adhered to; the music and the dancing reverberate all the time. Warm, funny and sad, the last word should go to Blessin: “We make music with our bodies. That’s some wicked stuff”. Indeed. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 AUGUST 2017

Prick Up Your Ears (1987) | Re-release

Dir.: Stephen Frears; Cast: Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Barber, Julie Walters, Wallace Shawn; UK 1987, 105 min.

Portraying the relationship between playwright Joe Orton and his lover and erstwhile collaborator Kenneth Halliwell, director Stephen Frears relies on a brilliant script by Alan Bennett, based on the Orton biography of John Lahr. But it is not the brutal ending, in the summer of 1967, which shocks up most but the seamy atmosphere dominating London at the time, a far cry from the “swinging’ myth of the late Sixties: instead, Frears’ London is a sordid mixture of repression, provinciality and squalidness.

Joe Orton (Oldman), coming from a lower-middle class family in Leicester, met Kenneth Halliwell, six years his senior, when they were both studying at RADA in 1951. Halliwell had a cultured and sophisticated middle-class education, and Orton, whose highest achievements were in shorthand typing, had never met anyone quite like him before.  During the course of their relationship, the tables were turned, and new power structure emerged; with Orton not only becoming a successful playwright, but also spreading his wings sexually, cottaging in the seedier parts of Islington, which at the time was still quite run-down.

For a decade, Orton and Halliwell had collaborated writing novels and plays (which are lost), but after both men were convicted to six months imprisonment, in 1962, for defacing highbrow literary works they stole from the local library (Halliwell decorated the walls of their bedsit with collages torn from the book’s pages), Joe developed a new creative energy, which set him apart from Halliwell. As Orton’s agent Peggy Ramsey (a playful Vanessa Redgrave) put it, “Halliwell became the first wife”, being discarded after the success of the ‘husband’.

Some scenes are set in Orton’s home in Leicester, where we meet his sister (and executor) Leonie (Barber) and mother Elsie (Walters in an early caricature). Again, it is surprising, that the ambience of Orton’s family home is not that much different that of the couple’s flat in Noel Street, Islington. And the meetings between Ramsey and John Lahr (Shawn), are more gossiping sessions than literary discourse. When Ramsey gains access to the flat after the murder/suicide, she steals Orton’s diary and Halliwell’s final note: “If you read this, all will be explained. P.S. Especially the latter part”. Even after the gruesome find, Ramsey acts with an egoistical meanness, which is symptomatic of many of the film’s characters.

Oldman is superb as the cocky Orton, who, after all the repression of provincial Leicester, is hell bent on enjoying himself in London. Not to demean Leicester, which has spawned many a talent: Richard and David Attenborough; Michael Kitchen; Graham Chapman; Bill Maynard; Kate O’Mara; Una Stubbs; Julian Barnes, Sue Townsend and Frears himself, to name a few). Whilst aware of Halliwell’s deteriorating mental health, Orton does not see the danger signs: whilst on holiday in Morocco, Halliwell violently destroys Orton’s typewriter. Orton, as narcissistic as Halliwell, seems to get younger during the narrative, whilst Halliwell succumbs to early mid-life depression. Molina’s terrific Halliwell cannot believe that life is slipping through his fingers: he is literally shrinking as a personality, whilst Orton grows into a public figure, even meeting Paul McCartney and writing a film script about the Beatles.

The ending is tragic, but somehow logical: Halliwell feels his life is being diminished by Orton – who is also demeaning his sexually, he cannot bear the reminder of his own failure – in contrast to Orton’s success – neither can be live with the fact that he killed his ‘other half’. Frears’ direction is absorbing, capturing the sadness of a tragic love story and well as the caustic humour the two enjoyed until things went wrong. AS

ON RELEASE COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS FROM AUGUST 5 2017

Atomic Blond (2017)

Dir: David Leitch | Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Toby Jones | Action Thriller | 115′ | US

Charlize Theron tries to save MI6 while the Berlin Wall tumbles in David Leitch’s visually arresting contribution to the espionage genre that often takes itself too seriously trumping internecine intrigue with vitriolic violence. There’s one impressive scene but you’ll have to wait until the final moments to enjoy it so the first hour or so will feel in retrospect like treading water – albeit squally Neon-lit and stormy water.

As the heroine of the piece Lorraine Broughton, the blond (and occasionally brunette) –  bruised and battered – bombshell possesses the requisite steely resolve to convince audiences of her integrity but is often forced to curb her characteristic verve – while displaying her unrivalled sex appeal in scenes where she’s not crossing keys or juggling fake passports in this action-packed affair from the director of stunt cult classic Fight Club (1999). ATOMIC BLOND is based on Antony Johnson’s comics and Theron stars alongside a sterling British cast of James McAvoy, as her sidekick; Toby Jones as her handler; and a rather underwritten Eddie Marsan as a Russian defector.

We first meet Theron’s MI6 agent freshly bruised in a bath of ice. She is in Berlin for a progress report with her local bosses (Jones and John Goodman) updating them on her work to flush out a confidential list of British spies operating on the Continent. From thence the plot withers in a thriller that can only be described as Besson (pre-Valerian) meets Bond. At the end of the day, ATOMIC BLOND is really just a vehicle for Charlize Theron in a rather sketchy narrative that relies on action and her saucy kit to drive its rather sketchy ‘plot’ forward, seducing you with stylistic technique so you won’t notice the rather slim storyline which is just a prelude so sit back and enjoy the ride to the fabulous finale. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 2-12 AUGUST 2017 | ON RELEAE NATIONWIDE 11 Aug

 

 

A Ghost Story (2017) | Sundance London 2017

Dir. David Lowery; Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck; USA 2017, 87 min.

David Lowery is re-united with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck of Ain’t Those Bodies Saints fame for this patchwork piece of paranormal fantasy that attempts a nostalgic revival of the time when ghost stories were free of today’s sensational stunts.

It opens with a Virginia Wolf quote “Whatever hours you wake, there was a door closing”, Mara and Affleck play an unnamed couple debating moving house: she is keen to get away from their semi-rural Texas backwater to somewhere less remote. But the sudden death of her songwriter husband, in a car accident, throws the proceedings into a long goodbye. After Mara has viewed the body in the hospital morgue, Affleck’s body suddenly rises from the gurney, and dressed in a white sheet with cut-outs for the eyes, leaves the hospital and observes her covertly from afar. The first signs of paranormal activity occur when she angers his ghoul by bringing another man back home. Later, when Mara has left the house to a Spanish family, the ghastly spirit makes plates fly and demolishes a table. From a neighbouring house, another ghost waves to Affleck, before the house falls into a state of disrepair and is torn down. We go through a future period when Affleck watches the urbanisation of the rural area, before the story turns back to the first settlers in the 19th century.

There are more questions than answers here, and whilst DoPGregory Crewdson creates an impressively spooky and atmospheric feel, shooting in an unusual format of 1.33:1, with round edges, like in old home movies, the overall impression is underwhelming. This ghost story is bewildering, rather than scary, and sometimes overstays its welcome with too many longuers in the froideur: a poor of version of Park Chan-wook masterpieces. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 11 AUGUST | 2017

Williams (2017)

Dir.: Morgan Matthews; Drama/Documentary with Emily Bevan, Jenny Funnel; UK 2017, 109 min.

Morgan Matthews offers up a documentary portrait of Formula One Boss Frank Williams that focuses on his family dynamics – his motor racing takes a (welcome) backseat, giving the film broader appeal. Matthews who also works as co-DoP and executive producer, neatly describes the drama behind the scenes of this dazzling but dangerous sport which has made fortunes for a few despite costing many their lives.

The glamour of the racetrack aside, there is nothing remotely glamorous about the life of Sir Frank Williams (*1942), reduced to paraplegia since his crash in France in 1986. He started his Williams team in the Formula One circus in 1966, but for many years it was the saying went round: “if you want to ruin your career as a driver, join Williams”.

That’s all changed since Patrick Head joined the team as a co-owner in 1977, and led it as Chief Engineer for 27 years to its greatest triumphs, starting with the first Grand Prix win in 1979 at Silverstone. Between 1980 and 1997, seven drivers won the World Championship for Williams, and the team won nine Constructor Championships in the same period. Jackie Stewart and Nigel Mansell, among other drivers, pay tribute to their boss admitting openly to the self-centred, fanatical approach of the company’s founder.

Frank Williams met Virginia ‘Ginny’ Berry first in 1967. It might have been love at first sight, but Virginia’s wedding was already planned, and her family background prohibited a cancellation. Besides, Frank was ‘from the wrong side of the tracks’ – even as a Williams boss in the early decade, he conducted business from a phone box, and didn’t pay his phone bill. Virginia eventually married Frank in 1974 and it was partly with her money, that he built his company, which is now worth over a hundred million.

After his accident in the south of France (Frank, an enthusiastic runner, wanted to catch a plane for a fun run in London the next day), it was Virginia, who stepped in and helped him survive after the doctors in France (and later in London) had given up on him. In 1991 Virginia wrote an autobiography “A Different Kind of Life” with Pamela Cockerill, which has been dramatised with Emily Bevan playing Virginia and Jenny Funnel the interviewing writer.

All this told more or less from the perspective of the couple’s daughter Claire (*1976), who is now the Deputy Team Principal of Williams, having replaced her father on the board of the company as the family’s representative. This has put her oldest brother’s nose out of joint, pottering around in the company’s Heritage Museum, he comments: “Claire wouldn’t know that these rooms exist”. Claire’s view is that he can’t understand that “a girl, and not the oldest son, is in charge”. But progress to get through to her father (“he is only interested in today and tomorrow, never the past”), is limited. She asks him to read her mother’s book, but Frank declines, “I will read it properly before my death”. Claire reads some passages to him, she is crying, but Frank is unmoved, his eyes are cold.

Far from being a hagiography of Frank Williams or the motor sport, Matthew creates a chapter of British gender history: sad and illuminating at the same time. The last word should be with Claire “My mother would have been a great Deputy Team Principal”. There is a photo of Virginia Williams, who died of cancer in 2013, holding up a trophy while standing in for the still-recovering Frank, steering the team to victory. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4 JULY 2017 NATIONWIDE

Land of Mine | Under Sandet (2015)

Dir.: Martin Zandvliet; Cast: Roland Moller, Laura Bro, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Emil Buschow, Oscar Buschow, Louis Hofman; Denmark/Germany 2015, 100 min.

Denmark is one of the few countries emerging from WWII with a measure of credit: mainly for its resistance against Nazi Germany and particularly its defence of its Jewish population. But writer/director Martin Zandvliet (A Funny Man) has uncovered a post-war incidence which somehow tarnishes the unblemished humanistic record of this Scandinavian country.

Set on the Western Danish coast just after the end of the Second World War, LAND OF MINE tells the story of Sergeant Rasmussen (Moller) in charge of a group of German teenage soldiers commanded to clear the coast of about two million mines placed by the German who expected the Allies (wrongly) to land there. Sergeant Rasmussen fosters open hatred towards the Germans: he obviously has been witness to the atrocities of the Nazis in his country.

Near the barracks, Karin (Bro), a Danish woman lives with her little daughter and supports the sergeant’s hostile attitude towards the POWs. For some reason, the teenagers are not being fed and Rasmussen starts to steal provisions for them – initially to help them work more efficiently. But after the first casualties, Rasmussen becomes aware that these young conscripts are hardly the experienced Nazi soldiers and SS troopers whose murderous regime he had to live under during the war. Rasmussen relaxes his regime, even gives the young men a day off. But this all changes when his dog is blown up by a mine in a coastal district declared “clean” by the Germans. More teenagers are killed before they risk themselves to save the life of Karin’s daughter, who has veered off into an un-cleared section of the beach. When his superior Lt. Ebbe (Foolsgaard), a hardliner, wants Rasmussen to transport the four survivors to clear another district, the Sergeant – who had promised the boy that they could go home – has to make a decision.

LAND OF MINE is an essay on forgiveness: highly controversial, since the relatives of the victims of the Nazi-terror are still alive, together with some survivors of the concentration camps. But Zandvliet makes clear that these teenage conscripts had no choice – and whilst the higher echelons of the Nazi party and army fled before the liberation, these young soldiers were left behind. Over 2000 were made to pay the debt for their elders, in clearing the mines, more than half of them were injured or killed during the process. Moller’s Rasmussen is a fine character study: his emotional changes show a decent man who is still suffering from the trauma of the occupation, but is still willing to give his humanistic Ego a chance, even against his own military authorities. DOP Camilla Hjelm Knudsen, the wife of the director captures a desert-like landscape where some of the alienated and isolated teenagers would sometimes rather commit suicide than go on living. Never didactic, LAND OF MINE keeps the audience engrossed with the gripping shifts of emotion for all parties concerned. AS

SHOWING AT CINEMAS FROM 4 AUGUST 2017

Victim (1961) | re-release

Dir: Basil Dearden | Writers: Janet Green & John McCormick | Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Nigel Stock, Peter McEnery, Donald Churchill, Anthony Nicholls, Hilton Edwards, Norman Bird, Derren Nesbitt, Alan MacNaughton, Noel Howlett, Charles Lloyd Pack, John Barrie, John Cairney, David Evans | UK / Drama / 100min

VICTIM was the second – and achieved by far the greatest impact – of a trio of topical “problem pictures” made by the team of producer Michael Relph and director Basil Dearden from screenplays by Janet Green. Sapphire (1959) had been about race relations, and Life for Ruth (1962) about religion. Of the three, VICTIM had had the most clearly defined purpose behind it, which was the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 criminalising homosexuality – described in the film as “The Blackmailer’s Charter” – as recommended by the Wolfenden report of 1957.

Janet Green (1908-1993) had read the report, and while the government of Harold Macmillan – for reasons made only too apparent by VICTIM itself – was dragging its heels, she, with her husband and co-writer John McCormick, anticipated Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969) in employing the conventions of a fast-moving, entertaining thriller to make a serious political film that packs a lot into a trim 100 minutes; embellished by handsome London locations and noirish interiors, by veteran cameraman Otto Heller (responsible for the visual impact of other classics like Peeping Tom and The Ipcress File).

It’s easy now to mock VICTIM for being dated, but politicians and other public figures today still dread the power without responsibility triumphantly wielded by our tabloid press. The role of the redtops in the fear and paranoia depicted in VICTIM is occasionally mentioned in passing; and just two years later the field day the Sunday papers had with the revelations that came out in court about the activities of our social betters during the trial of Stephen Ward vividly convey what Melville Farr could look forward to at the conclusion of VICTIM . On 9 November 1998 – over thirty years after decriminalisation – The Sun was still stoking the flames with its classic front page headline “Are we being run by a gay Mafia?”. In the United States VICTIM was refused a seal of approval by the Production Code Administration, and this remarkable passage in Time magazine that greeted its US release in February 1962 is worth quoting at length:

“What seems at first an attack on extortion seems at last a coyly sensational exploitation of homosexuality as a theme – and, what’s more offensive, an implicit approval of homosexuality as a practice. Almost all the deviates in the film are fine fellows – well dressed, well-spoken, sensitive, kind. The only one who acts like an invert turns out to be a detective. Everybody in the picture who disapproves of homosexuals proves to be an ass, a dolt or a sadist. Nowhere does the film suggest that homosexuality is a serious (but often curable) neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself.”

VICTIM was released bearing an ‘X’ certificate, and the era it depicts now seems as remote as the war years: a time when the police drove Bentleys and ‘phone boxes still had a button B. But anybody who considers the issues it raises moribund should remember that as I write there are about a dozen countries in the world today where homosexuality is punishable by death. One only needs look at the debate (and the language) the film continues to provoke in forums like YouTube to be reminded of how this issue still polarizes society, and that there are plenty of bigots still out there, irately convinced that they’re being muzzled by political correctness; “our crime”, as Lord Fullbrook puts it, “damned nearly parallel with robbery with violence”. While Eddy complains that “Henry paid rates and taxes…but they knew he couldn’t go out and call the cops”, it’s interesting to be reminded that one of the blackmailers accused the police of “Protecting perverts” even when homosexuality was illegal, and back in 1961 could firmly be of the opinion that “They’re everywhere, everywhere you turn! The police do nothing. Nothing!!”.

VICTIM goes out its way to avoid sensationalism, and it is precisely because it in every other respect so resembles a conventional black & white crime film of the period that one can still feel the shock audiences must have experienced in 1961 when Inspector Harris deceptively casually asks Farr “you knew of course that he was a homosexual?”, followed by the eye-watering statistic that at the time “as many as 90% of all blackmail cases have a homosexual origin”. If it seems too genteel for 21st Century tastes, the scene in which Derren Nesbitt wrecks Charles Lloyd Pack’s shop still provides a literally shattering reminder of the barely contained physical violence always ready to rear up from behind the prejudice now known as “hate crime”.

The casting of Dirk Bogarde makes the film what it is. Several other actors (including Jack Hawkins, James Mason and Stewart Granger) had understandably already turned down the role, but Bogarde accepted without hesitation; and on so many levels the film is inconceivable without him. (Anyone who thinks it was the first time he’d played a homosexual onscreen, however, plainly hasn’t seen the film he made immediately prior to it, The Singer Not the Song.) Almost as bold on Bogarde’s part was that in VICTIM he was for the first time playing his age – 40 – although this is more than compensated for by the fact that he never looked more debonair and distinguished than he does here. The entire cast obviously cared about their roles, right down to the smallest parts (as frequently happened in those days, veteran character actor John Boxer as the amiable policeman attempting to comfort Boy Barrett in his cell, and John Bennett – who in the opening episode of ‘Porridge’ was the prison doctor who asked Fletcher if he had ever been a practising homosexual – as “the bloke in the pinstripe”, make vivid impressions without being included in the cast list at the end). Although the blackmailers themselves are often described in accounts of the film as “a ring” or “a gang”, there in fact turn out to be only two of them; a pair of bloodcurdling ghouls worthy of the Addams family – the grinning, cheerfully amoral Derren Nesbitt and his vengeful associate piously convinced that “Someone’s got to make them pay for their filthy blasphemy.” As Inspector Harris (a superb performance by John Barrie) says to his stern Scottish sergeant (John Cairney), “I can see that you’re a true puritan, Bridie…there was a time when that was against the law, you know.”  Richard Chatten

VICTIM IS NOW SHOWING IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS

The Ghoul (2016)

Dir: Gareth Tunley, Tom Meeten, Geoff McGiven, Alice Lowe | Crime Drama | UK | 81min

Actor turned director Gareth Tunley’s stylish low budget indie sees a depressed Northern homicide detective (Tom Meeten) arrive in London to investigate a supernatural kind of crime – one where the victims were fatally shot but went on ‘living’. Clearly, he’s not well, but decides to go undercover as a ‘patient’ to investigate a suspect’s psychotherapist Dr Fisher (Niamh Cusack), who chats him through his inner life and probes his dreams.

Chris spends a great deal of his time bumbling around the streets of London to some atmospheric visuals and a suitably doom-laden score, clearly he’s not in a good place. “Is there anyone in your life you have feelings for” asks the lovely and sympathetic Cusack. As a typical middle-aged British male Chris admits to having a tentative thing going with an ex Manchester University friend called Kathleen: she’s actually with his mate, so this is just a smokescreen. But Dr Fisher probes further and Chris feels uncomfortable as the crime investigation fades into the background and he himself becomes the focus of the enigmatic narrative.

As fantasy and reality gradually become one, Chris strikes up an relationship with the suspect that leads to drinks. It turns out that Dr Fisher is transferring both of them to her boss Dr Morland, a rather voluble therapist  who adopts a jovial and imventive approach to his treatment with the opening gambit: “Normal tea or some sort of gay tea” but Chris goes along with it despite his misgivings and the suspect’s warnings that Dr Morland is dangerous. THE GHOUL grows increasingly mysterious as Tunley’s clever narrative has us searching for clues in a mind-boggling psycho thriller with more tricks up its sleeve than we first imagine. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 AUGUST 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hounds of Love (2016) Arrow

Dir.: Ben Young; Cast: Emma Booth, Stephen Curry, Asleigh Cummings, Susie Porter, Damian De Montemas; Australia 2016, 108. Min

Writer/director Ben Young’s debut feature, about a real life couple who murder young women, may be gruesome but it is never speculative or voyeuristic in focusing on the psychological interaction of the murderous pair, and how their clever final victim manages to evade them.

The thriller unfolds in Perth, South Australia in 1987 where David and Catherine Birnie raped and murdered four women. Birnie came from a violently dysfunctional background and first met Catherine during their school days.

The film opens to the drone of Dan Luscombe’s electronic score with Michael McDermott’s stealthy camera trailing the suburban avenues of Perth where scantily clad schoolgirls play netball. In this neighbourhood teenager Vicki Maloney (Cummings) suffers more than her fair share of existential angst, living with her recently separated parents Maggie (Porter) and Trevor (De Montemas). Trevor is a well-off surgeon still trying to coerce his disenchanted wife back into the marriage. Vicki rebels against her mother’s regime of discipline and curfew times, and one night escapes to a party. On a lonely street she is picked up by Evelyn White (Booth), and her husband John (Curry) in a car. We have seen the couple earlier as well as posters with photos of missing girls, displayed at the police station. The Whites take Vicki to their squalid bungalow where she is chained to a bed. This is all done in a nonchalant fashion leading us to believe that it’s all happened before. But we also get the feeling that Evelyn is – perhaps for the first time – jealous of the prey.

It soon becomes clear that John has a special hold over Evelyn: she has lost her two children from another marriage, and John drives this point home again and again. White is essentially weak, killing a dog in a rage of fury, and abusing his ‘wife’ physically – for even the smallest transgression. Evelyn is in sexual thrall to John, torturing and raping Vicki, all of it off-screen, in the hope that he will stay with her, because “she is special”. Evelyn cares little for the victim and is complicit in murders simply because she fears being alone – she does not enjoy the violence, but sees it as the only way of “keeping her man”.

This is a raw and sleazy story with convincing performances, particularly from Evelyn in her ambivalent role as John’s helpmate. Curry is a pathetic character, a glib psychotic prone to episodes of disproportionate brutality: he kills the couple’s dog for fouling the kitchen and uses psychological torture and rape to spike his sexual appetite. Young directs with mature assurance, never losing control of the narrative but keeping his distance. In spite of the gruesome topic, he is more interested in asking questions than staging a sensational case – and succeeds in the unspeakable. MT

HOUNDS OF LOVE ON ARROW-player.com

A LIfe in Waves (2017)

Dir.: Bradford Thomason, Brett Whitcomb; Documentary with Suzanne Ciani; USA 2017, 74 min.

Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb (County Fair in Texas), share the roles of writer, producer, DoP to create this lively portrait of Suzanne Ciani, pianist, composer and electronic music innovator, who brought us New Age and influenced bands such as Roxy Music.

Encouraged by her mother to play the piano and compose, Suzanne Ciano got an MA in classical music at Wellesley College, Maryland in 1968 and found University of California, Berkeley, quite a culture shock after the sheltered years in the all-women college of Wellesley where “the appearance of a man in college grounds caused a tremor”. Berkeley was one of the main centres of the protest movement, and she was politicised; spurning a marriage proposal from a Harvard law-student when she feel in thrall to synthesiser designer and composer of electronic music, Don Buchal. He would go on to influence her chosen career as an electronic music composer, changing the face of advertising and the sounds we hear today.

For Ciani synthesisers are like living beings, you can manipulate and develop emotions from them allowing the creation of sounds. But at a certain point, she had to choose between the music business (where women were still crassly under-represented) and her life as an artist. “At a certain point I composed music for X-rated films”. A way out of this dilemma was the advertising industry, where she would revolutionise the sound effects for Coca Cola (the sound of drinking the beverage), and most ironical in hindsight – the famous “Bull in the china shop” ad for Merrill Lynch, which ends with the slogan “A brand apart”.

Ciani found she could create sound effects for everything from pinball machines to the ghostly computerised language in a GE dishwasher ad, “where the machine introduces itself like a human”. Ciani wanted “technology to be sensual”. But music was to follow and after record producers rejected her first album Seven Waves (1982) in the USA and Europe, she found success in Japan with her second album The Velocity of Love and New Age was born.

Ciani has by now recorded 21 sole albums, and five more with other artists, among them Roxy Music and Brian Ferry. Having avoided her ‘first love’ the piano, she returned to to it with Neverland (1988). During the 80s she suffered breast cancer, forcing her to take time out and move to a beach house in Bolinas in California, where she even found time for marriage, which lasted from 1994 to 2001. Having composed the music score for The incredible Shrinking Woman and two Mother Theresa documentaries, her versatility seems without borders, Suzanne Ciani is still travelling the country for exhibition concerts, explaining to young fans how it was to work with analogue material – a legend in her own time. AS

The Big Sick (2017) | Sundance London Festival 2017

Dir. Michael Showalter | Cast: Holly Hunter, Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan | US, 2016, 119 mins

A thoughtful and daringly witty script with some surprising twists and turns make this cross-cultural romantic drama, based on the true life of Pakistani Muslim comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his onscreen American girlfriend, a real pleasure. Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon co-wrote the script that successful sends up terrorism, religion and racism. The film is given a gutsy kick up the pants by Holly Hunter, superb as Emily’s mother, sparring with onscreen husband Ray Romano.

There’s a lot going on here aside from Emily’s parents’ spicy show and Kumail’s Pakistani family backstory that plays out very much like At Home with the Kumars. The film opens as Kumail is working Chicago’s comedy standup circuit with a group of convincing and funny collaborators. Naive but well-meaning, and very much a metrosexual man, Kumail drives Uber taxis in the daytime and endures regular dinners with ‘suitable’ girls who “just stop by” the family home, courtesy of his overbearing mother. MA student Emily (Kazan) enters the picture, blond and very American, and neither wants a relationship, despite hot sex on their first date. They continue to see each other, enjoying the chemistry and growing closer each day until Emily calls time on their affair realising that Kumail must marry a Muslim woman. Clearly this is not the end – despite verbal assurances to the contrary – but Emily’s sudden illness and hospitalisation forces Kumail to reconsider his future and his life. Enter Emily’s frank and forceful parents (Hunter and Romano) who at first reject him and then recognise his dedication to their rather spoilt daughter. Kumail feels warm and comfortable in this close and protective family, not dissimilar to his own.

Despite its indie credentials this is a slick and polished affair, believable and utterly engaging from start to finish with its rich vein of humour, strong performances and timely storyline. In short, it’s a winner. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 28 JULY 2017

SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock (2017)

Dir: Barnaby Clay | Biopic | UK | 93min

Mick Rock is a maverick English photographer best known for his work and close friendships with David Bowie and Lou Reed in the late 1960s and 1970s.

IMG_3819Mr. Rock features very predominantly in Barnaby Clay’s entertaining but rather hagiographic portrait of a larger than life character with a gift for the gab and an eye for capturing what Rock himself describes as “the aura” of those he photographed – who were in Bowie’s own words just ‘ghosts’.

The title of Clay’s biopic plays not only on Rock’s name but also to his classical education and yoga training setting the tone for a stylish and cinematic doc that paints him as the tortured master of his own destiny, but fails to nail the root cause behind this insecurity. Many of those emblematic album covers from the Glam Rock era were created by Rock, whose mother remains a significant figure in his psyche (he mentions her many times, but never talks of his wife), and the impetus behind his place at Cambridge where he read French literature in the early ’70s. Rock peppers his conversation with arcane pronouncements (“the lysergic experience opened up my third eye”) and flippantly quotes from Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Not only does this give him a pretentious air, it also creates an impression of a man desperate to underpin his successful career as a celebrity photographer with proof of his solid intellect.

Rock certainly emerges as a formidable creative force, and one who didn’t want to remain on the sidelines – unlike Elliott Landy or Anton Corbijn (who later turned his skills to directing) – but very much wanted to be, and be seen as a mover and shaker in the inner sanctum of Rock Glam, hanging out and forging close relationships with the likes of Queen, Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry (due to her photogenic appeal he calls her “the Marilyn Monroe of music”). Although clearly Rock was not part of the musical creative process he was very much part of the artistic one with his iconic images, the original photos now languish in storage in his New York home providing a talking point and a rich source of fascination for us viewers.

For all his soul-searching, Rock’s story is the archtypical ‘Rock story”; obsessed with the music scene and the glamour surrounding it, he became addicted to the bright lights and buzz, professing to love cocaine so much that it led to him suffering a near-fatal heart attack at the age of 42, requiring quadruple bypass surgery for which Beatles manager Klein and several others picked up the hefty US medical bills. Clay captures this recurring scene on a soundstage while an actor spins round on a gurney in the operating theatre – it almost feels like Rock’s party piece by the end of the film. Mick Rock is clearly a bit of a primadonna, but a charming, and likeable one at that. The final scenes show him photographing contemporary acts like ‘TV on the Radio’ and ‘Father John Misty’. Clearly he’s found the path to greater personal serenity, and all that it brings. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 21 JULY 2017

Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, the Colours of Life (2016)

Dir.: Fariborz Kamkari; Documentary with Carlo Di Palma, Woody Allen, Vittoria De Sica, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach; Italy 2017, 90 min.

Director of Photography Carlo Di Palma (1925-2004) was one of the most influential DoPs of the second half of the 20th century, and instrumental in the careers of Michelangelo Antonioni and Woody Allen. His story is told in this compelling documentary from Fariborz Kamkari and Adriana Chiesi-Di Palma, who married the photographer in the mid-1980s, and conducts the interviews with Woody Allen and Ken Loach about their time with Carlo, making the tribute feel all the more intimate and personal.

Di Palma spent his early days in Rome where his mother, a flower-seller, popped him on the tram when it rained, and the drivers would give him water and sugar to cheer him up. Opposite his primary school was a film studio where his brother worked as a focus operator and Carlo joined him, as a teenager, working on Visconti’s first feature Ossessione. His job was to get the film stock from an allied soldier – a certain Sven Nykist, and later he joined the crew on Rossellini’s Rome, Open City as the most junior of all the camera assistants”.

Apart from the talking heads: Allen, Loach, Bertolucci et al, WATER AND SUGAR is enriched with excerpts from Di Palma’s many films, starting with De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, where he worked as a camera operator and assistant, until he was finally promoted to DoP in Lauta Mancia in 1957, directed by Fabio de Agostini. His first success was It happened in ’43, a WWII drama, directed by Florestano Vancini. In 1964, he shot the first of three films for Michelangelo Antonioni: Red Desert with Monica Vitti; Blow Up (1966); Identification of a Woman (1982) would follow. The two first two features were very much known for their stunning colour photography. “Black and white is a transformation of reality. But in colour the reality became too realistic, so we, like painters, have to cut the colours, to try and let them not dominate the technique”. But it was for Di Carlo’s personal touch that he was unique and special. Ken Loach tells how Di Palma and his contemporary DoPs all started with monochrome, so using colour was very exciting, “and this excitement could be felt in the images”. When shooting Blow Up in the summer of 1965, the grass turned yellow and had to be repainted green every day. Di Palma remembers:“Everybody in England looked at us as if we were mad”. But for Wim Wenders, Blow Up was a seminal experience: “Blow Up showed me how important colours were, because he showed them in an innovative way. He dealt with the essence of taking a picture”.

Between 1973 and 1976 Carlo Di Palma directed three feature films: one of them, Theresa the Thief, starring Monica Vitti, run into difficulties because Di Palma and Vitti’s relationship was coming to an end. In 1981 Di Palma would photograph Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man for Bernardo Bertolucci. Interviewed about their relationship, Bertolucci amusingly recalls: “Vittorio Storaro is my wife, Carlo Di Palma is my lover. The only time I did not work with Storaro, was when I worked with Di Palma. So this work is like the memory of falling in love”.

When Woody Allen was shooting his first film Take the Money and Run, he had just seen Blow Up and desperately wanted Di Palma to shoot it, but he wasn’t available. Nearly ten years later, in 1986, Allen and Di Palma finally got together in a collaboration marked by its easy friendship and camaraderie – they lived their whole lives together: “We worked and then had lunch; worked more and then had dinner”. Their first film together was Hannah and her Sisters in a collaboration that would last until 1997 (Reconstructing Harry). Allen was exuberant after their cooperation: “Carlo lived up to all our expectations.” Di Palma was also happy in New York: “it is a city where I can live like in Rome. But Los Angeles and New York are totally different. I could never work in Hollywood. You only use a storyboard as a tool there – the only creativity in Hollywood happens on the drawing board”.

Di Palma “loved warm colours, like the paintings in Italy”. He went to the Sistine Chapel as a boy, and later filmed the restoration of the place. But he was foremost a poet who filmed like a painter, yet always subjugating himself to the director and the script, “because some directors shoot their own film, not the one which is scripted. But it will be always the same film, perhaps even extraordinary, but the photography will always be the same”. Nobody could ever say this about Carlo Di Palma’s work: this documentary is a remarkable portrait not only of his monumental output but also his genuine warmness as a human being that made all who worked with him even better. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 21 JULY 2017

Scribe (2016)

Dir: Thomas Kruithof | Cast: Francois Cluzet, Denis Podalydes, Simon Abkarian, Alba Rohrwacher | Writers: Thomas Kruithof, Yann Gozlan | Thriller | 95min | French

You can’t help admiring Thomas Kruithof’s feature debut. It’s a rather stolid but quality conspiracy thriller starring Francois Cluzet (Intouchables) as a number-crunching former alcoholic who is forced into the shadowy underworld of political phone-tapping, desperate for work after his marriage breaks down. Kruithof is clearly nostalgia for the classic style of Sydney Pollack’s films of the 1970s. SCRIBE also has echoes of The Accountant.

Although thematically rather slim, this slick and stylish affair is watchable largely due to Cluzet’s quiet charisma and a reliably subtle turn from Alba Ruhrwacher who plays Sara, a vulnerable woman also struggling with post-addition. The two become romantically involved while Cluzet descends into a world of intrigue at the hands of his dodgy boss Clement (Podalydes), a man of mysterious motives who clearly has him by the short and curlies in this criminally charged environment.

Written by Kruithof and Yann Gozlan – who also collaborated on another enjoyable retro piece A Perfect Man – this is a noirish thriller that keeps its smouldering cards close to its chest while delivering intermittant bursts of tension, although the narrative is driven forward by unsettling atmosphere rather than plot twists. Stark Gordon Willis-style photography and Gregoire Auger’s terrifically suspensful score sizzles along in the background while Duval goes through his bewildering job often overhearing things he shouldn’t be privy to, such as details of a murder and suggestions of Middle Eastern political undercurrents. Clement’s purported sidekick (Simon Abkarian) drags him into the murky waters of a criminal twilight but Duval keeps on going despite warning signs that he should quit before the going gets dangerous. And eventually it does. SCRIBE is a sure-footed but safe debut. MT

SCRIBE is in cinemas and on demand from 21st July 2017

 

 

 

David Lynch The Art Life (2016) Mubi

Dir/Writers: Jon Nguyen, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Rick Barnes | 90min | Doc

“Sometimes you have to make a big mess to get to where you want to be”

David Lynch tells the strange story of his unorthodox and fascinating life in this intimate documentary. Memories of an idyllic childhood in Montana and Idaho lead to a dark episode in Philadelphia and finally through to the present day where his time is spent painting and enjoying contentment of creative expression- ‘the art life’ – in his studio in the Hollywood hills. It’s an existence that contrasts with the unsettling quality of his films.

It emerges that Lynch drew compulsively as a child, and this film is all about his development as an artist that led to his successful career in filmmaking. Even if you don’t know his films, Lynch is a witty and engaging racconteur, recalling with often minute detail, the feelings and sensations that inform and shape his creative impulses.

Working again with the team behind his 2007 documentary Lynch, which was filmed during the making of Inland Empire, THE ART LIFE offers compelling insight into his past, fleshed out with photographs and personal footage which is cleverly edited by Olivia Neergaard-Holm.

Early life seemed quite ordinary for David, growing up in a sheltered rural bliss of Missoula, Montana and then Boise, Idaho with his ‘perfect’ parents. The eldest of three children, he enjoyed a close friendship with best friend Dickie Smith and his mother encouraged his pencil drawing talents by not providing a colouring book. Unsettling incidents involving Dickie’s father (which he can’t bring himself to recount) and a naked woman wandering around in the street, crying and bleeding from the mouth, were pivotal moments in Lynch’s adolescence which seem to spark a dark introspective quality that later found its way into his films, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. 

IMG_3757

Moves to Spokane, Virginia and DC followed due to his father’s job as a research scientist. He described him as “his own man” who would “always meet him halfway”. But in his late teens David got in with the wrong crowd and fell short of his mother’s expectations. It was as if she had hoped for something special from David that he had not delivered. And from then on she was “disappointed” in him.

David clearly loved his parents but it was his friendship with Toby Keeler that led to his obsession with ‘the art life”. Toby’s father Bushnell was a professional painter and offered to let part of his studio to David for a small fee. From then on, David painted until well into the evening, and fell out with his father who wanted him home by 11pm. But when Keeler Snr telephoned his father to tell him that his son was actually working seriously on his painting, Lynch Snr acquiesced. From then on David’s free spirit soared.

Boston Museum school got the thumbs down because he refused to comply with the restrictive teaching methods there. David craved the freedom to express his creativity often if that meant sitting and listening to his radio until the battery ran flat. The film brings out a solitary stillness to him that indicates a deep inner life, yet he is by no means a loner. His first marriage to fellow art student Peggy Reavey led to Jennifer, the first of his four children. His toddler daughter from his fourth wife joins him in his California studio.

Like many people, David compartmentalised his life to reflect his varying interests and the friends who share these different parts of his existence and are never introduced to each other. But when he got a place at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, his creative talents flourished despite the grimness of the broken down part of Philadelphia that became his home. It was here that he made his first “paintings that moved, with sound”. often featuring Peggy his girlfriend and mother of daughter Jennifer. In 1972 during the making of Eraserhead, David describes receiving a grant to study filmmaking at AFI Conservatory as one of the happiest moments of his life. It gave him creative and financial freedom to explore his craft, and he continues to this day, working intensively at home. Long periods of contemplative silence are punctuated by Philip Nicolai Flindt’s dense percussive sound design and an atmospheric score by Jonatan Bengta. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Dir.: Matt Reeves; Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Karen Konoval, Amiah Miller, Terry Notari, Steve Zahn; USA 2017, 140 min.

In trying to make a ‘serious’ blockbuster, director/co-writer Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) has certainly achieved his intellectual intention. But the running time of 140 minutes is simply not justified by a narrative which too often treads water plundering Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and a biblical symbolism that takes us back all the way to the 1951 epic Quo Vadis.

WARS’s production values are nevertheless stunning, particularly the CGI images of the beasts whose war for planet earth is faring badly, led by its chief Ape Caesar (Serkis). The US troops, under the command of ‘The Colonel’ (Harrelson), a psychotic sadist, are driving Caesar’s army and civilians into the woods: extinction is a distinct possibility. After soldiers have killed Caesar’s wife and eldest son, the leader is bleeding tears of revenge and goes to hunt The Colonel down aided by Maurice (Konoval); Rocket (Notari) and Bad Ape (Zahn). On their way to The Colonel’s camp in the mountains, where large numbers of Apes are imprisoned, the group picks up a young mute girl, who they call Nova – a nice reference to the Linda Harrison character of the same name in the original 1968 Planet of Apes. When they reach the camp, Caesar is captured immediately and interrogated by The Colonel. Caesar is informed that he had to shoot his own son, afflicted by an illness that robs humans of their higher cognitive functions and the ability to speak. The Colonel is using the Apes to build a wall to resist the imminent arrival of US forces – but a reason why is never given. By the time these troops arrive, Caesar slips effortlessly into the Moses role, whilst Nova and the young Apes frolic around.

To be frank, Reeves has chosen the wrong genre to show this politically correct internal battle between Caesar and The Colonel: whilst the Colonel is (like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now) unhinged, Caesar dreams that his former opponent Koba (Stalin’s nom-de-guerre in the underground) appears to him; thus helping him to forsake personal revenge in the end. And we do not need signs like “Ape-ocalypse Now” in the military compound, since Reeves references his pet film often enough – right up to the helicopter formation during the battle scenes.

DoP Michael Seresin (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) and composer Michael Giaccino (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) add terrific entertainment value, but ultimately the film fails the litmus test: our interest starts to wane after only 90 minutes (in the most comfortable of seats) and we are still required to sit through another fifty. Yet again, it boils down to less is more. Reeves’ effort to marry showmanship with a philosophical debate on the virtues of pacifism is doomed because, like all anti- war movies, the opulent fighting scenes are the beating heart of this hollow and gruelling ‘epic’. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 11 JULY 2017

Genocidal Organ (2017)

Dir.: Shuko Murase; Animation; Voices of Yuichi Nakamura, Sanae Kobayashi, Takahiro Sakurai; USA/Japan 2017, 115 min.

This screen adaptation of Project Ito’s cult novel is a puzzling and often violent animation. Shuko Murase’s film is  part Jason Bourne spy thriller and part video game with countless casualties, Murase questions not only government policies, but also how human memory works.

Set in 2022, after the Bosnian capital Sarajevo was victim of a nuclear attack, the US government creates a special force to deal with genocidal tyrants, whose wars are proliferating outside the ‘safe’ world of the fully industrialised nations. This squad is led by Clavis Shepherd (Nakamura), hunting John Paul (Sakurai), an enigmatic American, who is suspected to be the ringleader of the warlords.

In Prague, Shepherd meets Lucia (Kobayashi), Paul’s ex-girl friend. We learn, that he was with her, when his wife and children were killed in the Sarajevo attack. Later Paul explains: “he does not want to be grieving again”, and therefore will keep all terrorist attacks outside the territory of the major powers. Lucia shows Clavis Kafka’s grave, and explains that Paul was working at MIT, finding a language pattern of dictators, prone to suicide. As it turns out, Paul is still in Prague, and has Clavis drugged in a seedy nightclub, where no fingerprint scans exist, which are usually needed, even if one buys a pizza. Travis escapes Paul’s clutches, and hunts him down in Africa, with a crew which is “emotionally optimised” – meaning that they do not feel any pain or regret for their mass killings. The leading trio finally assembles for the statutory show-down.

Project Ito (Satoshi Ito) published Genocidal Organ in 2007, followed by Harmony (a novelisation of Metal Gear soldiers 4), before he died of cancer aged only thirty-four in 2009. His status in SF animation circles is unrivalled, and Murase had a monumental task of keeping Ito’s followers happy. Whilst he clearly succeeds with the fan group, it’s unclear if a wider audience will share this enthusiasm for a near two-hour bombardment of half baked philosophies and gruelling mass murder. Whilst the colours are often muted, the violence is very graphic. Somehow numbness soon sets in and what seems original at the beginning, is less and less exciting as the narrative unspools. All said and done, the two hour running time does nothing to make this attack of explosions and sound effects user friendly for a larger audience. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 12 July 2017

The Last Word (2017)

Dir.: Mark Pellington; Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, Ann’Jewel Lee, Philip Baker-Hall, Anne Heche, Thomas Sadowski; USA 2017, 108 min.

Director Mark Pellington does his best to direct a formulaic script from debut writer Stuart Ross Falk – and more often than not succeeds with the help of Shirley MacLaine and a great ensemble cast.

MacLaine plays cantankerous octogenarian ex-advertising executive Harriet Lauler living out her days in a sumptuous villa where her gardener, cook and hairdresser are constantly fall short of her expectations – and replaced by Harriet herself. Her instinct to control everything goes even beyond the grave: she enlists Anne (Seyfried), the obituary writer of the local paper in the fictional city of Bristol, to write a piece singing her praises. Unfortunately, the checklist Harriet presents to Anne does not quiet work out: the matriarch is neither loved by her family (ex-hubby and daughter), nor admired by co-workers. And there is absolutely nobody whose life she has touched for the better.

Caustic as always, Harriet tries to remedy this by finding somebody from the target group of “minority or cripple”. But when she encounters Brenda (Lee) in a home for children at risk, the little black girl is very much a match for Harriet. Anne was abandoned by her mother when she was three, and has developed at developed a thick skin for dealing with the likes of Harriet, but she takes a leaf out of Brenda’s book, and develops a friendly but firm approach to counter Harriet’s obsessional control. This all seems convincing but Harriet’s long-suffering daughter Elizabeth (Heche) and her forgiving ex-husband Edward (Baker-Hill) are not fully sketched out and sometimes reality is suspended: Harriet not only finding a job as a morning DJ for the local radio-station, but also managing to set up Anne with the boss of the station (Sadowski, Seyfried’s real life husband). And when Anne’s clapped-out Volvo gives up the ghost after an – aborted – meeting with Elizabeth, Brenda ends up sleeping between the two women in a motel room, after a moonlight bath in the near-by lake.

Still, MacLaine’s performance compensates and carries the film through its pitfalls. The hopeful message about the interaction of three very different generations of North American females is told with great panache, even though at times a little over-didactic. MacLaine’s unsentimental approach and witty, self-depreciating humour makes sure that the soppy side of THE LAST WORD never wins out. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 7 JULY 2017

Tommy’s Honour (2017)

Dir: Jason Connery | Cast: Sam Neill, Peter Mullan, Jack Lowden | Drama | 111min | UK

Even if you feel that golf is ‘a good walk spoilt’ – as the saying goes, TOMMYS HONOUR is a surprisingly moving biopic about the game’s Scottish founding father and his champion son (both called Thomas Morris) who was the youngest player to win the Golf Open in 1868, aged just 17, and played here with cocky charm by Jack Lowden. 

TOMMY’S HONOUR is the fifth feature of Jason Connery, the son of another famous Scottish legend and Bond, Sean. The film works both as a historical tribute to the popular sport and as a coming of age portrayal of rebellious youth versus experience that plays out through the feisty relationship between the quietly deferential old school caddie Peter Mullan – whose ginger beard is almost a character in itself – and his confident blue-eyed maverick son. 

Fortunately, golf takes a back seat after the rather stolid male-dominated opening scenes, and just as we’re hoping for some intrigue it arrives in the shape of a flirtation between sparky Edinburgh waitress Meg, played by Ophelia Lovibond and young Tom, who eventually becomes his wife amid controversy about her dubious background. From then on, Tom’s rise to fame plays out against the glorious Highland settings of St Andrews, and seaside skyscapes of Musselborough, just outside Edinburgh. The most we get to see of the actual game is through the on-course confrontations between Morris and his rivals, as young Tom gets ‘a hole in one’ in all weathers.

TOMMY’S HONOUR succeeds largely for its cleverly paced tension as Lowden’s swaggering confidence is challenged by Mullan’s thoughtful dominance as a father whose mild-mannered influence quietly wanes. Together they bring flair to a film that otherwise might have been too clubby. MT

OUT ON 7 JULY 2017

 

Sage Femme | The Midwife (2017)

Dir: Martin Provost | France / Belgium 2017 | French | Drama  | 117 min · Colour

Auteur Martin Provost is known for beautifully-crafted classically-styled dramas specialising in the intricate interplay between his female characters in Cesar-awarded raphine and Violette (who was a pupil of Simon de Beauvoir).

Catherine Frot and Catherine Deneuve are the stars of SAGE FEMME – a more personal project for Martin Provost and a tribute to the women who brought him into the world after a difficult birth. As well as referring to a midwife, a ‘sage femme’ is also taken to mean one who is well-behaved and wise: Frot’s Claire is such a woman: dedicated, kind and no-nonsense, she comes up against Catherine Deneuve’s self-centred, frivolous, bonne viveuse Béatrice who has always got her own way in life, and is also Claire’s stepmother, whose erratic nature resulted in her husband’s suicide.

This is meat and bread and familiar territory for sophisticated viewers who will savour the delicious friction between the two women that has a surprisingly favourable outcome for them both. THE MIDWIFE also ventures into the less appealing genre of social realism in too many ‘too much information’ birth scenes: Provost would have been better focusing on the fluctuating dynamic between the witty and watchable Deneuve, Frot and her love interest, Olivier Gourmet’s gourmet truck driver. Béatrice initially emerges as a wealthy benefactor who has appeared on the scene to apologise to Claire for her behaviour back in the day, but it soon comes to light that the 70-something Béatrice has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and is on her last legs. And soon she is also homeless. And guess who picks up the pieces?

There is a serious message here: that bringing the next generation into the world deserves calm, personal care rather than hightec machinery but the fun lies in the story of the older generation and here Provost successfully mines the rich dramatic treasures of this ménage à trois with perceptive characterisations complimented by Gregoire Hertzel’s breezily romantic compositions and the lush local scenery of the Il-de-France in early summer. THE MIDWIFE is less formal than his previous work but equally affecting as intelligent arthouse goes, capturing the rich and sensual pleasures of traditional France MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT BERLINALE 9-19 FEBRUARY 2017 | IN COMPETITION (OUT OF COMPETITION

Song to Song (2017)

Dir: Terrence Malick | Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Bérénice Marlohe | Drama | US | 129 mins

More twirling and swirling from Terrence Malick in Song to Song, formerly known as Weightless, which feels somehow more appropriate, given the style of content of his ninth feature. The episodic, fractured narrative begins with an ominous statement from its central character Faye (Rooney Mara, living up to the name): “I went though a period. And sex had to be violent” this ushers in more gliding set pieces from a gilded Austin lifestyle – but it could also be LA – featuring property porn, rock concerts and eternity pools and suggest a menage a trois between her two lovers, the loose-limbed Ryan Gosling and a menacing Michael Fassbender, while her father admonishes her gravely: “do you trust this man”, “your mother and I would like to come and visit with you”. “I can’t watch the birds, ‘cos we watched them together”. “I had to find my way out, of you”. It’s all brilliant stuff for a Hallmark greetings card.

This enigmatic scenario continues for 120 tortuous minutes much in the same vein as the others in this hastily flung together twosome of love triangles: To The Wonder and Knight of Cups. There are are all pretty much of a muchness. There’s plenty of throwaway glances, fond kisses and slavish embraces “sometimes the truth isn’t the right thing to say” is one of the more oblique lines Mara has to utter as she carelessly flirts her way between her suitors; all troubled, disingenuous and coy. “Sometimes, I admire what a hypocrit I am”.

Fassbender and Gosling appear to be working together in the music business but somehow Fassbender appears to have the upper hand having offered the lythe singer-songwriter a contract, yet there’s a hint of double-crossing from Gosling’s perspective. The best scene is a neon lit dance-floor routine set to My Little Runaway, but it’s all too brief. There’s lots of hugging and the trio clearly share a palpable on-screen chemistry. Then there’s Gosling’s vague ex who sounds strikingly like Merrill Hemingway in Manhattan. And John Lydon and Iggy Pop who also appear with non-singing cameos.

Despite the urgent fondling, teasing and febrile groping no real sex actually takes place making the whole thing feel pent up and unsatisfied. Specially as Faye (not only wanted it violently) but appears to be hoping to clinch a record deal from Fassbender, who’s also her boss. Meanwhile he’s having a thing with blond saccharine waitress Nathalie Portman – again no sex occurs beyond the caresses – as she exhorts him to “do want you want with me”. Dangerous stuff, but not. Then she tearfully breaks down as the scene flips into an obsidian black obscurity that cleverly switches to snatches of a black and white classic movie. Bond Girl Bérénice Marlohe appears briefly just to say to Faye “you face is so beautiful in the shadows” before planting a lesbian kiss on her ubiquitous white midriff. Gosling then moves on to a dalliance with Kate Blanchett’s Amanda (“just take me somewhere”), completing the second of the two love triangles.

Emmanuel Lubezki has fun with his lenses, particularly on the widescreen and in intimate close-up – the whole film looks utterly amazing, as you would expect from him. Devotees who worship at the Malick altar will be smitten, while others look on in glazed tolerance, waiting for Iggy, or even Lydon, to perform. Somebody in the crowd says: “I can go on for hours with one chord. Just one chord, hammerin’,” and that just about sums it all up. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 7 JULY 2017

 

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2017)

Dir.: Steve James; Documentary; USA 2016, 88 min.

Steve James’ documentary portrait from the mortgage fraud episode of 2009 is both moving and informative. It follows a Chinese family, who run a community bank, Abacus Federal Savings Bank in Manhattan, and whose life is turned upside down after an over-eager District Attorney accuses the founder and his daughters of mortgage fraud.

Thomas Sung was born in Shanghai in 1935 and emigrated to the USA, where he became a lawyer. He had four daughters with his wife Hwei Lin, three are lawyers like their father, another is a doctor. In December 2012, New York District attorney Cyrus Vance swooped on Abacus, accusing them of mortgage fraud on a grand scale. Considering the Abacus Bank was number 2651 in volume in the USA, this is rather surprising, even more so, when you consider that Abacus’ default rate on its mortgages was 0.3%. This was just four years after the banking crisis in the USA had caused losses of around 22$ trillion, after bad mortgages to the tune of five trillion$ had (nearly) caused the collapse of the whole banking system, had the government not bailed out the leading banks.

Until today, Abacus Federal Savings Bank is the only US banking institution to be charged for fraud in connection with Fannie Mae and the associated crisis. Sung had founded Abacus in 1984 as a community bank for the Chinese minority and Vance’s only ‘trump’ was his star witness of the prosecution, Abacus employee Ken Lu, who had been found out by Sung and his daughters of defrauding the company and had been sacked, before Vance had Sung and fifteen employers of the bank handcuffed, and let to the police vehicles in the glare of the TV camera lights. This was a breach of law in itself, since five of the handcuffed had already been released on bail. So began a five-year long ordeal for the Sung family, who were joined in their legal fight by Chanterelle Sung, who had worked before for the DA’s office in New York. The trial began in February 2015 and ended in June. Interviews with some jury members are particularly interesting, since the jury was split at the beginning of the fortnight long deliberations.

James shows the family not only during their discussions involved in their legal defence, but also follows the clan through the Chinese community; taking in some mouth-watering restaurant visits. Thomas Sung, whose favourite film is It’s a Wonderful Life, identifies very much with the James Stewart character. Even after the ordeal, he still believes in the American dream, of which the film is, in equal parts, a verification and repudiation. AS

NOW OUT ON RELEASE

Chubby Funny (2017)

Writer| Dir: Harry Mitchell | Cast: Harry Mitchell, Augustus Prew, Isabella Laughland, Jeff Rawle, Jack Cooper Simpson | 89min | UK | Comedy

Nonchalamtly dovetailing humour with pathos, Harry Mitchell’s low budget comedy is indie filmmaking at its best. With naturalistic performances thrown in for good measure, CHUBBY FUNNY follows the freewheeling but not always light-hearted days of two aspiring actor/flatmates in London’s Primrose Hill. Oscar – played by Mitchell, who also directs – has an easygoing girlfriend (Laughland), works for a charity where he takes regular abuse on his door to door fundraising grind, while doing ridiculous chocolate adverts on the side (his agent has classified him as ‘Chubby Funny’). Meanwhile, Charlie (Augustus Prew) pays their rent and has just landed his first real acting part, paving the way for jealousy and resentment to infiltrate their relationship. As the onesie-wearing Oscar, Mitchell is a comedy natural with his slapstick insouciance and witty take on life, and there’s convincing support from Laughland, Asim Choudary’s razor-sharp shopkeeper and David Bamber as his cynical former teacher. Despite its slim storyline – nothing really happens – but somehow it all slips down rather enjoyably. With its occasional classical score, this is perceptively written, well-crafted and amusing stuff. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Hampstead (2017)

Dir. Joel Hopkins. UK, 2017, 103 mins | Cast: Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson | US | Romcom | 104min

HAMPSTEAD is one of London’s oldest villages where ‘quaint’ boutiques (think Foxtons and Oxfam?) thrive a stone’s throw from Dickensian cottages and palatial mansions cushioned in the verdant lushness of the Heath. Joel Hopkins’ romcom follow-up to Last Chance Harvey (2008) is based on the true story of a modern day hermit (Harry Hallowes) who gained legal entitlement to his self-built hovel between Hampstead’s Kenwood House and The Ponds. But that’s where reality ends.

Hopkins’ fluffy film is full of middle-aged cyphers floating around in a fantasy world of the Seventies where they meet for coffee mornings and discuss worthy causes. But in the real place, this lot passed on decades ago to be replaced by the likes of Hugh Skinner’s fundraising nerd or smiling Romanians selling the Big Issue. Despite its champagne socialist credentials the village is now mostly home to wealthy Oligarchs, chic Chinese diplomats and suave Italian bankers, a place where blacked-out Range Rovers jossle with builders’ lorries narrowly – avoiding the double Bugaboo prams.

But back to the film, which has Diane Keaton’s awkward American widow spying Brendan Gleeson’s grizzly bohemian gent in his shack moments from her Heath-side home. Although the chemistry here is seriously lacking, Hopkins persuades us that the shabby chic Donald fancies Keaton as she scuttles around in her charity shop like a ditzy Victorian street urchin on speed. Lesley Manville is hilarious as her bossy neighbour Fiona, tasked with organising neighbourhood affairs. She is a character straight out of Country Casuals in Tewksbury or Harrogate – not Hampstead, I’m afraid.

The narrative torpor plods on as our twee ‘lovers’ fight for Donald’s right to stay in his home, keeping those nasty developers at bay. Meanwhile, Keaton’s financial woes are being sweatily massaged by Jason Watkins’ obsequious ginger accountant who would be more at home in a market town like Utoxeter than this savvy North London corner. The third ginger character here is Keaton’s son Philip (James Norton), who has no personality whatsoever despite being rather pleased with himself.

Poetic licence apart – and watching this is like sharing your home with a bunch of weird aliens – HAMPSTEAD could be forgiven if it were funny. But Robert Festinger’s script teeters from crass to cringeworthy, with no laughs to be had at all and a score that jars. The filmmakers have captured the rural idyll of the location: Parrokeets chirrup and roses bloom in the perpetual sunshine that beams, between cloudbursts, through the Oak tree’d lanes.

Will the ‘Notting Hill’ affect come to Hampstead as a result of this jaunty romcom? This American treatment will probably have the reverse effect on the village, sending potential buyers desperately in the other direction, amid cries let’s get out of this hellhole. MT

NOW OUT ON RELEASE FROM 23 JUNE 2017

Edith Walks (2017) | East End Film Festival 2017

Dir: Andrew Kötting | Doc | UK | 60min | with Claurdia Barton, David Aylward, Anonymous Bosch, Jem Finer

Andrew Kötting is celebrated for his quintessentially English films that capture the idiosyncratic British humour and the beauty of the countryside. Gallivant explores the Sussex coastline in 1996, while Swandown took a trip from the coastal resort of Hastings upstream to Hackney on board a Swan-styled pedalo, and By Our Selves explores the Epping forest wanderings of a ‘mad’ poet John Clare (Toby Jones).

Edith Walks is intended as another light-hearted tribute to English King Harold Godwinson’s wife Edith Swanneck and is inspired by another walk – from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-On-Sea, where the ‘queen’ took the remains of King Harold’s body to Waltham for burial near the High Altar after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where he was defeated by William the Conquerer. She is seen cradling him in a statue at Grosvenor Gardens on the sea front in St Leonards.

Blending the banal and with the spectral, the dreamlike narrative opens with Edith lying on the grass bedecked in white robes and wearing regal jewellery and body markings appropriate for the era. The film The 108 mile journey, as the crow flies, allows the audience to reflect upon all things Edith. A conversation in Northampton between Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair and Edith Swan-Neck is also a key element to the unfolding ‘story’. With images shot using digital super 8 iphones and sound recorded using a specially constructed music box with a boom microphone the film unfolds chronologically but in a completely unpredictable way. The numerous encounters and impromptu performances en route are proof, as if needed, that the angels of happenstance were to looking down upon the troop, with Edith as their hallucination.

Eden Kötting’s short film Forgotten the Queen, a 10 minute and 66 second film made in collaboration with Andrew Kötting and Glenn Whiting with music by Jem Finer. Forgotten the Queen is a short animated film that digs into themes inspired by the life of Edith Swanneck. Eden’s drawings and collages are brought to life by Glenn Whiting and tossed into the time-line like flotsam from a demented passion. Meantime Edith’s eyes fix on the man-shadows overhead, resplendent in their didactic belief systems and stupid hats, which seem to have blighted women since the beginning of time. King Harold would not have approved because despite the fact that time itself can touch you like a feather, stupid men keep firing their bloody arrows.

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 23 JUNE 2017 | EAST END FILM FESTIVAL JUNE-JULY 2017 | CURZON

 

Souvenir (2016)

Dir: Bavo Defurne | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Kevin Azais | Drama | Belgium | 92min

Isabelle Huppert plays a chanteuse emerging from a long retirement in this slim but delightful musical romance from Belgium director Bavo Defurne.

Huppert holds our attention in a lightweight affair that conjures up the pleasure of this autumn/spring love story between Liliane a former Eurovision runner up and Jean (Kevin Azais) her 21-year old colleague at a pate factory where she gracefully manages to make her daily grind look satisfying, after a singing career that ended with the marriage and manager.

But Jean (Kevin Azais), who predictably still lives with his parents, has always held a candle for her and gently perseveres in in his romantic gestures, convincing her to sing at his boxing club knees-up. So convinced is he of her talents that he throws all his energy behind managing her come-back.

Defurne and his screenwriters craft an appealing show business drama with some poignant highs and lows as the Huppert and Azais manage a convincing chemistry – and we feel for them when Liliane’s old husband (Johan Leysen) makes a re-appearance on the scene. Perhaps Liliane was right to find another day job but Huppert’s perky rendition of Pink Martini’s Joli Garcon certainly deserves a toast.MT

ON RELEASE FROM 23 JUNE 2017

 

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2017 | 21 June – 2 July 2017

Cannes was not the only film festival celebrating its 70th birthday in 2017. Edinburgh International Film Festival is the same shares the same anniversary and takes place from 21 June to 2 July, showcasing a total of 151 features from 46 countries including: 17 World Premieres, 12 International Premieres, 9 European Premieres and 69 UK Premieres.

gods-own-countyHighlights include the Opening and Closing Gala premieres of Yorkshire-set God’s Own Country and England Is Mine a biopic of Morrissey’s early life in 1970s Manchester before becoming the lead singer in seminal band The Smiths.

Kyra Sedgwick will attend the Festival with her screen debut Story of a Girl, along with the film’s star Kevin Bacon. And Stanley Tucci’s Berlinale drama Final Portrait, is also a highlight of this year’s celebration.

Whilst Cannes celebrated by inviting those having won the Palme D’Or to a lavish evening reception, Edinburth with mark the occasion with a retrospective entitled THE FUTURE IS HISTORY attracting guests including Richard E Grant, Peter Ferdinando, Steven Mackintosh, Kate Dickie, Tam Dean Burn, Bernard Hill, Matt Johnson, Gerard Johnson and Polly Maberly to support and deliver a range of exclusive events and film screenings.

18582514_10156335747454062_8855051153228850370_nThis year’s BEST OF BRITISH strand includes exclusive world premieres of Bryn Higgins’ Access All Areas, featuring Jordan Stephens – one half of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks – on a group road trip to the Isle of Wight’s Bestival music Festival; Simon Hunter’s Edie, starring Sheila Hancock as an elderly woman who aims to climb a Scottish mountain; the Donmar Warehouse’s critically acclaimed all-female adaptation of Julius Caesar; and Danny Huston’s The Last Photograph. Audiences can also look forward to London based filmmaker Alex Barrett’s modern silent film London Symphony; an UK response to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera and filmmaker Justin Edgar’s noir British thriller The Marker; Daniel Jerome Gill’s look at the perils of modern-day relationships in Modern Life Is Rubbish; Sarmad Masud’s My Pure Land, about a mother and daughter’s fight to protect their home; searing abuse drama Romans, starring Orlando Bloom; and moving family drama That Good Night, starring Charles Dance and the late, great John Hurt. Toby Jones stars in a psychological thriller Kaleidoscope; taut mother-daughter drama Let Me Go; the emotionally raw The Pugilist; Taiwanese drama The Receptionist; and This Beautiful Fantastic, starring Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Brown Findlay. Renowned Scottish author Ian Rankin who will present captivating crime drama Reichenbach Falls.

the_oath_poster(laurels)This year’s EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES strand brings the latest from the continent in the shape of WWII drama 1945, Russian sci- fi Attraction; revenge drama Darkland; Nazi-euthanasia drama Fog in August that stars the Ivo Pietzcker who made his debut in Jack; and darkly humorous corruption drama Glory. There is also visceral Irish Medieval thriller Pilgrimage; Arctic Circle drama Sami Blood; stylish Spanish drama Sister of Mine; and the long-anticipated LGBT art biopic Tom of Finland; Fatih Akin’s roadie Goodbye Berlin;  Norway’s Oscar foreign language entry: The King’s Choice;  Catherine Deneuve’s latest drama The Midwife; and taut Icelandic thriller The Oath. 

SuenoThe WORLD PERSPECTIVES strand will feature Bong Joon Ho’s latest offering Okja, hot off the Cannes red carpet and starring EIFF honorary patron Tilda Swinton, and Indian road movie Sexy Durga; and the Sundance awarded: I Dream in Another Language – a moving study of language, heritage and hidden pasts;

DOCUMENTARY wise there is the enthralling Becoming Cary Grant, The Challenge – a look at the extravagant pastimes of the fabulously wealthy during one sporting desert weekend; Leaning Into The Wind the sequel to documentary hit River and Tides; Pecking Order that explores the world of chicken breeders; Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, that studies the role of native Americans in popular music history.

1249182_afterimage_04-h_2016A special FOCUS ON POLAND will present a snapshot of one of the most vibrant cinematic landscapes in the world. An International Premiere of Katarzyna Adamik’s thriller Amok. Additional notable films will include: Andrzej Wajda’s final feature Afterimage; psychological horror Animals; coming-of-age fantasy The Erlprince; Łukasz Ronduda’s A Heart of Love; the colourful Satan Said Dance; the extraordinary The Sun, The Sun Blinded Me; You Have No Idea How Much I Love You – the film that questions what love really means; and the gut- wrenching Volhynia. The strand will also showcase Polish Shorts: Perspectives; Polish Shorts: 15 Years of Wajda School; and a free lecture by Rohan Crickmar on post-war Polish cinema – Diamonds Out of the Ashes: A Brief Survey of Polish Cinema 1946 to Present.

If the weather is kind to Edinburgh, there is also the Outdoor Cinema strand to look forward to, cashmere at the ready. MT

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 21 JUNE UNTIL 2 JULY 2017

 

 

 

 

Churchill (2017)

Dir: Jonathan Teplitzky | Writer: Alex von Tunzelman | Cast: Brian Cox, Miranda Richardson, Richard Durden, Julain Wadham, John Slattery, James Purefoy, Danny Webb, Ella Purnell | Biopic Drama | UK | 98min

CHURCHILL is a commanding film of majestic images and thoughtful performances that seeks to imagine the man behind the legendary colossus and succeeds. This is a magnificent tribute to one of the greatest Britons of all time, Sir Winston Churchill.

Jonathan Teplitzky directs Alex von Tunzelmann’s sleek script that chronicles the tense twenty four hours before D-Day. Although the outcome is well known the tension is palpable in a moving  biopic that honours the protagonists involved in an epic interlude of wartime strategy and political manoeuvring that concluded the Second World War.

Brian Cox plays Churchill as a consummate politician; a humanistic man of the people; a respectful husband and ultimately a towering hero in a performance that occasionally feels like a caricature of the cigar-chomping, whisky drinking bulldog of a man who, despite bouts of arrogance, is not too vain to stand corrected. The only gripe here is his way of referring to ‘the Narsies’. We were at war with the Germans and that’s a fact, so let’s not get all politically correct about it in retrospect. As his wife Clementine Miranda Richardson is gracefully immaculate: an imperious English Rose as sharp as cut-crystal, and as inscrutable as sterling silver, she is his anchor and his rudder at times of crisis, while remaining cool as a quintessential cucumber. John Slattery (Man Men) plays an impressively masterful Eisenhower and Julian Wadham exudes class and integrity as Field Marshall Montgomery although James Purefoy is a little too fey as King George VI.

The story opens in June 1944 as the Allied Forces stand on the brink: a massive army is secretly assembled on the South Coast ready to cross the Channel and re-claim France under German occupation. Churchill tries to resist the D-Day plan, mindful of the errors of the Great War, the slaughter of Passchendaele, the Somme and Gallipoli, and – although he would go on to live another 20 years – is exhausted and overweight. Luckily Clemmie intervenes and the rest, as they say, is history. The only slight criticism of the film lies in the inclusion of a slight subplot which not only feels redundant -there is enough here to keep us absorbed – but also feels rather like melodramatic contrivance. Epic in scale and convincing in narrative CHURCHILL is a possibly the most memorable Briitsh film of the year. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 JUNE 2017

 

 

Stockholm My Love (2016)

Writer|Dir: Mark Cousins | co-writer: Anita Oxburgh | Cast: Neneh Cherry | Musical Drama | 80min | UK

Best known for his 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Cousins describes his debut musical feature STOCKHOLM MY LOVE as a city symphony. It is also the acting debut of Neneh Cherry who appears in every frame as Alva, an architect interested in the way our environment effects us – Also known as psychogeography. Cousins has superimposed Alva’s tragic narrative onto her psychogeographic exploration of Sweden’s capital, giving this paean an elegaic and rather mournful feel until the sun eventually comes out and the colours brighten from wintery greys to limpid shades of blue and green, reflecting Alva’s more positive mood.

Neneh Cherry was born in Stockholm in the mid sixties, the daughter of a Swedish textile designer and a Sierra Leonean student who had come to study engineering. Drifting aimlessly through the pallid streets as Alva, memories of her trauma resurface as she tells her (absent) father about the fateful day her car hit and killed an old Swedish man called Gunnar whose dog had slipped its leash and ran into the main road. This terrible event colours her life: “killing you is killing me” she laments. Luckily the dog escaped and is re-imagined eating a ham sandwich on the tarmac.

Alva spends the first hour of the film emoting cathartically to her father as she recollects the sequence of events that lead to Gunnar’s death. And here we are reminded of the unsolved murder of Sweden’s social democrat premier Olof Palme who was gunned down outside a cinema in 1986. Walking down a road of simple two-story houses built in the western suburb of Vällingby (in the late 1940s) Alva explains that Olaf lived amongst the people, and this gives Cousins an opportunity to show where many of Stockholm’s immigrant community also thrive.

Compared to London’s streets these are sparsely populated. Attractive low rise buildings with large windows and balconies, often facing a green space, make some of our own council houses look grim in comparison – especially in the light of the grim events of June 2017. The sunless climate rather than the architecture is really to blame for making this place look miserable in Winter, especially for people who have come from much sunnier climes.

Sweden is known for its design excellence enriched by the finance from the Hanseatic League, and Stockholm is one of the few European capitals that avoided bombing during the 20th century’s wars. Contemporary buildings and those dating back to the 13th century associate well in their locations between Lake Malaren and the Baltic sea. Cousins tells how architects returned from abroad armed with ideas from the Islamic world and this is reflected in Ferdinand Boberg’s airy central mosque which has an Art Nouveau flavour and glass chandeliers dating back to its original shell built in 1903.

But what about Alva lifting her mood by wandering round Vallingby’s stunning shopping centre Kfem; the renovated historical brewery now housing Octapharma; Sweden’s very own Flat iron building at Central Station; the light-filled Waterfront conference halls; or the gleaming public swimming and sports facilities at Ericsdalbadet. All of these are fine examples of how public urban spaces can uplift and energise those who use them.

After a hour of Cherry’s ramblings, occasionally enlivened by a soundtrack of classical Swedish music by Franz Berwald, songs by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and five of Cherry’s own tunes, this soul-searching love letter feels somehow spartan and incomplete as a mood-reflecting exercise. STOCKHOLM MY LOVE is watchable but never really satisfies as a psychogeographic study nor as a musical drama. What it provides is a snapshot of a point in time in a road less travelled but as a symphony to the great Nordic town it feels somehow inadequate. There is much more to Stockholm than this bird’s eye view. MT

REMEMBERING OLOF PALME | 28 February 1986, Stockholm, Sweden

 

Weirdos (2016)

Dir: Bruce McDonald | Cast: Dylan Authors, Julia Sarah Stone, Molly Parker, Allan Hawco, Cathy Jones, Rhys Bevan-John, Vi Tang, Gary Levert, Stephen McHattie, Max Humphreys, Alex Purdy | Canada | Drama | 93min

Bruce McDonald’s fresh and tender indie is suffused with the foot-loose charm of the ’70s and a freewheeling score from . It follows a couple of young teenagers who take off across Nova Scotia to the coastal town of Sydney during one breezy Canadian summer.

This may not be Bruce McDonald’s most oustanding piece but it’s certainly an endearing one where Daniel MacIvor’s 1976 script captures the zeitgeist of a gentle era where teens were still innocent and squeaky clean but ripe for self-discovery. Kit (Dylan Authors) is fifteen and still seems unsure of his sexuality despite declaring himself openly “a fag” and “a weirdo” he clearly still has some issues to deal with. His grounded bestie Alice (Julia Sarah Stone) is also a budding girlfriend who has the upper hand emotionally speaking, along with his Andy Warhol like ‘spirit guide who appears from time to time, like a jester in a

The two rub along quite easily until it starts to dawn on that Kit is clearly gay. He’s an appealingly decent youngster who is kind but never sappy, offering Alice his hairdryer and looking genuinely crestfallen when she snogs a guy they meet on the beach.

When they eventually fetch up at Kit’s mother’s house the mood turns more serious as it emerges that clearly there are family issues at stake that explain why Kit is living with his father (an appealing macho Allan Hawco) and his strict but open-minded grandmother (Cathy Jones) rather than with his bipolar mother played Molly Parker in a reliably charming and volatile turn.

As the leads Authors Stone are brilliantly mismatched in their peachy-faced cuteness underpinned by a burgeoning realisation of their slightly dysfunctional families – Alice’s parents are separated, while it’s unsure what’s really going on with his. Although he’s unhappy living with his dad, the extent of his mother’s emotional issues indicate that his tricky adolescent state is probably still too fragile to cope with his mother and give her the support that she needs. WEIRDOS is a gently nostalgic coming of age drama that really conjures up the thrilling excitement and gut-churning bewilderment of adoleschence. MT

CANADA NOW FILM SERIES IS SHOWING AT CURZON CINEMAS beginning with a weekend programme from 15th to 18th June at the Curzon Soho. From Saturday July 1st 2017, in celebration of Canada Day, the films will begin a nation–wide tour of cinemas and become available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema.

 

 

 

 

 

Papagajka (2017) The Parrot | East End Film Festival

Dir.: Emma Razinski; Cast: Adnan Omerovic, Susanna Capellaro, Tina Keserovic; UK/Bosnia and Herzegovina 2016, 82 min.

Australian born Filmmaker and writer Emma Razinski is the first MA student to come out of Bela Tarr’s film factory in Sarajevo. The impressive upshot of the master’s extensive mentoring is a study of apathy, in which the real Sarajevo building of the title actually has a character role.

Damir (Omerovic) is the security guard in Papagajka, spending his days in the glass cage, observing more or less nothing. In the evening he takes the lift up to his flat where he meets another (silent) inhabitant of he building for a rooftop smoke. Damir plays ‘Noughts and Crosses’ in his cage, using the dirty glass walls as a blackboard. The only contact to the outside world is his sister Kamala (Keserovic), who encourages him (in vain) to meet family and friends. Then one day, an enigmatic woman, calling herself Tasva (even though we learn later that he real name is Benedetta), appears at his door, claiming that she has been robbed and needs a place to sleep. Damir, pathologically shy, gives in, against his instinct. Soon the stranger takes over his place: changing the lock to the front door, redecorating the flat, throwing his stuff out, and finally taking over his bedroom, relegating him to the makeshift bed he had made for her in the kitchen. Their contact is minimal: they play cards, eat and drink. Only once do we see them in an – awkward – embrace. When Damir falls ill, he suspects that the mysterious lodger is to blame.

Long, stationary shots dominate Papagajka, the building provides a claustrophobic microcosm of contemporary Hungary, even the roof scenes induce paranoia. Damir communicates by way of numbers and figures: besides the ‘Noughts and Crosses’ he plays Sudoku. He is a man who has slipped through the cracks of time, writing him name on the dusty windowpane, to remind himself of his banal existence. A low level obsessive-compulsive, he channels his angst into dream sequences, while enduring everyday life and Tasvas’s presence in a silent scream.

Rozanski financed the film partly through crowd-funding but is as uncompromising as her mentor: she insists on telling the – not very elaborate – narrative in images, reducing her protagonists to the occasional sentences, letting their actions talk on their behalf. There a penumbral and eerie charm to the Papagajka  building – it could very well be a submarine on the bottom of the sea. DoP Malte Rosenfeld (graduate of the Lodz Film School) uses sparse lighting to enhance the woozy atmosphere. Papagajka might not be for everyone, Rozanski style is an unique and talented new voice.

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 17 JUNE 2017 | EVERY WEEKEND UNTIL JULY 2017 AS

Provenance (2017) | East End Film Festival

Writer|Dir: Ben Hecking | Cast: Christian McKay | Sophie Vega | 93min | Drama | UK

Ben Hecking’s feature debut is not the usual second rate UK crime thriller nor is it set on another sink estate. Delightfully, it’s a compact and suggestive love story that takes place in sun-drenched Provence, where a classical pianist in his early forties has left his career and marriage to start a new life in France.

This languorously enjoyable drama keeps its cards close to its chest and is also beautiful to look at: Hecking made his name as a cinematographer winning the Michael Powell Award in 2014 (for Hide & Seek). He directs his regular collaborators McKay who plays Jon Finch (and co-directs) and Macqueen who plays the man who threatens his peaceful existence in the village where his much younger lover Sophia (Vega) has just returned after a brief time away. We’re not told where or how they met or where’s she’s been for the past five months but that’s all part of the mystery that gradually unfolds as leisurely as a torrid summer afternoon with a nasty sting served with the sundowners. MT

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL | 17 JUNE | CONTINUES EVERY WEEKEND UNTIL JULY 2017

 

Dying Laughing (2016)

Dirs: Lloyd Stanton, Paul Toogood | Doc | 89min

Well-known stand-up comedians share their insights and experience in this occasionally amusing compendium. DYING LAUGHING is not a funny film but there are moments of humour in the British-produced documentary dedicated to Garry Shandling, a comedian who died last year.

You may not recognise all the 50 comics who take part in rolling snapshot interviews, but all convey the dreadful awkwardness and moments of embarrassment when no one laughs in a venue sucked dry of all positive vibes. The film conjures up the hit and miss nature of being a stand-up;  the harrowing stage fright and elation of success. The overall tone is rather downbeat and introspective; the humour drole or dark rather than laugh out loud. Jamie Foxx talks of money cushioning the blow of a bad gig, and seasoned pro Jerry Seinfeld describes “a dead-silent room full of unhappy people”.

There’s no narrative as such, although clearly these guys are responding to a question we’re not aware of as viewers, but pick up the drift as the diatribes roll on. Sarah Silverman describes the loneliness of life on the road, and it’s clear that this is a vocation for the emotionally robust and thick-skinned. Not a choice but an unavoidable calling.

Eventually the agony and the ecstasy becomes routine as each one replaces the other in a string of personal reflections. A more condensed and better edited version would have made for a more impactful, and ultimately more entertaining watch. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 16 JUNE 2017

Journey to the South (2017) | Creature of the Estuary | East End Film Festival

Dir: Jill Daniels | Doc | UK | 51min

Documentary award winner Jill Daniel’s poetic and often banal voyage of discovery takes her south to the French Riviera where in Menton and Castellar she discovers the villa used by writer Katherine Mansfield and kicks over the traces of a mysterious unsolved murder.

Very much in tune with Agnes Varda’s Cannes outing Faces, Places (2017), Daniel’s leisurely piece randomly engages with the French inhabitants she meets along the way. The photos and diary recollections of Katherine Mansfield give this piece a rewarding historical context as she alights upon ordinary life in rural France. Journey to the South is an artist’s meditation on life and death, on creativity and carving out a more satisfying future away from the gilded trappings of the past. MT

‘Exploring themes of displacement, migration and change, Creature of the Estuary takes us on an entirely different poetic journey, through the muddy netherworld of the Thames Estuary. This new work by Eelyn Lee evokes a creature made of fragments of memory and fear: a montage, part fantasy, part travelogue and part requiem’.

EAST END FILM FESTIVAL \ 18 JUNE | RICH MIX | WEEKENDS IN JUNE AND JUNE 2017

By the Time it Gets Dark (2017)

Dir: Anocha Suwichakornpong | Cast: Arak Amornsupasiri, Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Achtara Suwan, Visra Vichit-Vadakan | Drama | Thai | 105min

Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong’s latest film is a magical mood piece that calmly explores the nature of memory through lives traumatised by the government’s military-led massacre of student demonstrators in 1976 Bangkok.

Her characters are so deeply affected by the past that their bid to re-discover themselves in the present often skews their recollections as they grapple to find the truth and explore the nature of identity in a world floundering in sensory overload and media intervention. Often silent and meditative, Suwichakornpong’s film makes judicious use of a recurring musical motif that punctuates the often bewildering narrative that unfolds in three settings.

The story opens as a group arrives to pray and meditate in a large room with panoramic views of the surrounding verdant landscapes. In monochrome flashback, armed soldiers hold sway over their prone captives in a brightly staged setting that could be a prison or a memory of the massacre. The scene that follows pictures a couple strolling calmly in a woodland setting, the hostilities still fresh in their minds as they calmly discuss political activism.

Meanwhile her alter ego filmmaker Ann (Vichit-Vadakan) is preparing to make a feature film of the University massacre that took place nearly forty years previously. In the same rural house she prepares to interview her character Taew (Rassami Paoluengton) about her experiences during the fateful onslaught. But Taew sharply criticises Ann’s approach as lacking gravitas surrounded, as she is, by the trappings of her serene life in contemporary Thailand.

Ann realises she is totally ill-equipped to-create the trauma and  her mind starts to wander off into a reverie, and at this point the narrative becomes increasingly surreal with images of fast-growing vegetation marking the shift to another character Peter (Arak Amornsupasiri) a popstar and actor who is seen taking a flight to Bangkok where he settles down to read a film script in his modern condo. Then we are back to another glimpse of Ann (Inthira Charoenpura) and Taew (Penpak Sirikul) in more glamorous circumstances in the same country house, with the same film project.

The only character who connects these disparate scenes is Atchara Suwan’s unnamed worker, who variously plays a chambermaid, waitress, cleaner and monastery employee completing this surreal and enigmatic rumination. Suwichakornpong handles the ever-shifting form with consummate deftness while Ming Kai Leung’s camerawork moves seemlessly through the diverse sequences to capture the ethereal beauty of the verdant settings and swirling citiscapes. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16 JUNE 2017

 

 

 

Wilson (2017)

Berlin Syndrome (2017) Netflix

Dir.: Cate Shortland; Cast: Teresa Palmer. Max Riemelt, Matthias Habich, Emma Bading; Australia 2017,116 min.

Even if you don’t always agree with Cate Shortland’s point of view – Lore was a case in point – she has a special style –as in this variation on John Fowles’ The Collector, filmed in 1965 by William Wyler.

Australian tourist Clare (Palmer) is somehow lost in Berlin, and when she meets handsome Andi (Riemelt), an English teacher, she abandons her journey to Dresden, and stays with him. The sex is satisfying, but Clare soon finds out that Andi wants to keep her for good, as his prisoner: her Sim-Card disappears, the windows of the flat in an otherwise empty apartment block don’t open, and the door is double-bolted.

Andi is a lonely person, his only real contact is his father Erich (Habich), a university lecturer, who, contrary to his son, has some positive feelings about living in the old GDR. Andi’s mother ‘defected’ to the West when he was a child, something he will never forget or forgive.

Clare oscillates between fighting (both are seriously injured) and trying to coax Andi to release her. After  Erich dies, the two even spend a rather harmonious Christmas together in the dead man’s house. Andi adopts his father’s dog, and Clare is happy to have some company, when Andi is at work. But Andi’s true nature is soon revealed. A chance encounter with Franka (Bading) – one of Andi’s female students – who turns up on the doorstep, leads to a surprising, but well constructed, original conclusion.

The title refers to the claustrophobic atmosphere, which to this day, hangs over a united Berlin. Neither the neon-glitz of the western part of the city, nor the much less kempt part of the old east, lets us forget what happened here between 1933 and 1945. The fate of over 300 000 Berlin Jews, who were first excluded from public life and had to hide in their flats, before being deported from Grunewald Station to the extermination camps, still hangs over the city. And an involuntary wall the GDR rulers then erected, showed that Germans, whatever the ideology, are very good at creating a Huis-clos state of affairs.

When it becomes clear that Clare is not the first of Andi’s victims, she even allows him to use her more and more as a sexual object: he is more interested in taking photos of the helpless woman than having sex with her. He can only function if there is a woman substitute for the mother who abandoned him.

Palmer and Riemelt are convincing, both Erich and Franka seem to be only there to drive the plot forward. This is a shame, because we would have liked to learn more about Andi. The length of nearly two hours is also problematic: the tighter structure adopted by writer Shuan Grant in Melenie Joosten’s novel, would have kept the audience more engaged. DoP Germain McMicking’s images are most imaginative in the indoor scenes, the Berlin panorama is a little too idyllic. This is a provocative, but authentic production.

NOW ON NETFLIX

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Writer|Dir: Roger Michell | Cast: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger, Iain Glen, Pierfrancesco Favino, Simon Russell Beale, Vicki Pepperdine, Poppy Lee Friar, Katherine Pearce, Tim Barlow | 110min | Drama

Rachel Weisz plays the enigmatic heroine in this rather subdued adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic romance, with Sam Claflin as the naive country boy who falls under her power, completely misjudging the mood. The 1951 novel was first adapted for the big screen a year after its completion with Nunnally Johnson and Henry Koster brilliantly capturing the sinuous mystery, and giving a chilling sense of spiteful danger that this version fails to convey, despite its lavishly atmospheric mise-en-scene and an unsettling denouement for the impressive cast. Performance-wise, Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton were always going to be a hard act to follow but chemistry certainly smoulders between Claflin and Weisz’s Rachel, although she comes across as coldly reticent rather than alluringly mysterious, and by the end we are glad to be done with her.

In 1830s England, Sam Claflin is warm and exuberant as Philip Ashley, the fresh-faced orphan who “knows nothing of women”, growing up in his cousin Ambrose’s Cornish manor. Unsophisticated and puppyish, he is close to his godfather’s English rose of a daughter Louise (Holliday Grainger) but they lack the erotic charge to be more than friends. Philip idolises Ambrose (who he also plays) and compressed opening scenes show them enjoying outdoor pursuits, in shades of Schlesinger’s Far From The Madding Crowd. Come the winter, Ambrose heads for Italy for his health and finds love with his cousin Rachel, extolling their happiness and marriage in letters back home. But clouds soon gather over their idyll as a note of suspicion, then terror, enters his correspondence, and his “kindest companion” soon becomes “my torment”. And when Philip arrives in Florence to offer support, the mysterious Rainaldi is waiting to tell him that Ambrose is dead from a brain tumour, and Rachel is heading for Cornwall.

Devastated and angered, Philip hot foots it home on a mission of revenge. There, Rachel’s urbane grace disarms him, inviting him to tea, demurely dressed in black, eyelashes ‘a flutter. She is captivated by his strong resemblance to her dead husband, but after a tepid boudoir encounter, he clearly proves to be a pale imitation of the real man, both in and out of the bedroom. From then on Rachel turns to mind games rather than sexual ones, becoming the châtelaine and ordering refurbishments to the shabby decor. This is a household devoid of women so naturally Rachel goes down a treat, even the crusty old retainer Seecombe (Tim Barlow) fumbles more that usual over the tea things. There are open references to Rachel’s ‘unlimited appetite’ from her snivelling house guest Rainaldi, but the only appetite in evidence is her profligacy as a black hole appears in the family finances, and she comes across as simpering, inscrutable and histrionic when challenged, rather than bewitching or seductive. Philip enters a vortex of jealous obsession over Rainaldi (who is later revealed as gay) and rashly signs over his entire inheritance to the object of his desire in a wonderfully played cameo by Simon Russell Beale as his stickler of a lawyer (It’s my job, to stickle”) and rather a twee scene where his godfather (a dignified Iain Glen) plays the harpsichord, on the verge of tears.

Our trust lies in these erudite elders to save the day, but the recalcitrant Philip will have none of it, as the post-coital narrative gains melodramatic momentum driven forward by his stonking lust, Rachel’s ambiguity, and the legal twists and turns. Ambrose’ letters hinted at Rachel poisoning him and Philip discovers laburnum seeds amongst her possessions, while her specially brewed twig teas drive him, quite literally, to delirium, in scenes of woozy magic realism. During a bosky interlude in the bluebells, she again grimly tolerates Philip’s sexual advances, while later claiming to be a liberated female whose emancipation has somehow been challenged by his prescient announcement of their betrothal. It’s clear as the family crystal that Philip has been making advances, so why was she unable, despite her feminist pretensions, to signal her feelings of doubt – or distaste – before his clumsy announcement. Eventually we too become confused by their dalliance. She owns the house, so what is her game plan, if not marriage? She clearly doesn’t appreciate his lovemaking and yet continues to hang around the house titivating and forcing toxic tisanes on the reluctant household, and makes flirtatious sorties to see her Italian friend. Clearly the film’s feminist agenda has been lost in translation somewhere between the 19th and the 21st century. But still our heroine continues to exert a subtle suspense. A very timely film for today where certain women seem stuck in the dark ages while desperate to enjoy the privileges offered by the modern world. MT

 OUT ON 9 JUNE 2017

 

Norman (2017)

Dir.: Joseph Cedar; Cast: Richard Gere, Michael Sheen, Lior Ashkenazi, Charlotte Gainsborough, Steve Buscemi, Josh Charles; USA 2016, 118 min.

Director/writer Joseph Cedar (Footnote) works hard to avoid the usual clichés in this fresh and amusing portrait of the eternal loser Norman Oppenheimer – full title Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. But his latest feature suffers from too many narrative strands to keep the audience entertained for two hours.

Norman is played by Gere, in fine form, and sees himself as a financial fixer in the Jewish world of New York – unfortunately, he is just a man with a dodgy past and a string of failures in his current trials and tribulations. Nephew Philip Cohen (Sheen) tries his best to keep Norman’s feet on the ground, but he’s a man with his eye to the main chance – which is always just around the corner. Norman invents a dead wife and a daughter to gain the community’s sympathy, but on the up-side, he’s never mean-spirited. When he meets the Israeli politician Micha Eshel (Ashkenazi), he tries to impress him with his connections, and Eshel, who does not know how insignificant these business contacts are, gives Norman the lions-share of his time. In return, Norman blows his budget on a gift of designer shoes for Eshel, who is a man without scruples, becoming Prime Minister of Israel and going all-out for a peace mission with the Arab world. But he still remembers Norman’s kindness when visiting New York, and for once, Oppenheimer is the toast of the town. But soon Eshel gets into a bribery scandal, and to save his career, he has to sacrifice Norman.

There are fine character performances here: Steve Buscemi does Rabbi Blumenthal, who uses Norman’s new found popularity to involve him in a donation scheme to save the synagogue – but quickly drops him, when his connections with Eshel become a liability; Charlotte Gainsborough’s Alex Green, an Israeli agent, who tries to bring Eshel down with notes about connections drawn up by Norman – total fabrications, just to impress her. Arthur Taub is a coldblooded host, who literally throws Norman out after he gate-crashes his party.
Norman struggles against the tide of life, and he has our sympathy. DoP Yaron Scharf (who worked with Cedar on Footnote) crafts a harsh world with his brilliant camerawork. Gere is terrific, a big fish in his small world of sharks waiting to pounce. With some cuts and a little structuring this could have been a great film, but it is still worthwhile. AS

NORMAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 JUNE 2017

Christopher Nolan Presents | BFI

To showcase DUNKIRK British director Christopher Nolan has curated a series of films that inspired his new feature. title. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN PRESENTS has been personally curated by the award-winning director and will offer audiences unique insight into the films which influenced his hotly anticipated take on one of the key moments of WWII.

Preview: Dunkirk + intro by director Christopher Nolan

imagesNetherlands-UK-France-USA 2017. Dir Christopher Nolan. With Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh. RT and cert TBC. 70mm. Courtesy of Warner Brothers

Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.  We’re delighted to screen Nolan’s much anticipated vision of an event that shaped our world.

Tickets £24, concs £19.20 (Members pay £2 less)

THU 13 JUL 20:15 NFT1

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GREED 

USA 1924. Dir Erich von Stroheim. With Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt. 132min. 35mm. PG. With live piano accompaniment

Hollywood’s more serious stabs at realist fiction emulate the social and psychological nuances of the 19th-century novel, and no one has taken American film further down that road than Stroheim. Shot on location in San Francisco and Death Valley, the film was cut to less than a third of its original nine hours, but remains extraordinary for its unflinching vision of the corrosive power of money.

SUN 2 JUL 15:10 NFT1 / SUN 9 JUL 14:15 NFT3

SUNRISE: A Song of Two Humans

USA 1927. Dir FW Murnau. With George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston. 94min. 35mm. With score. U

Murnau’s foray into American cinema sees him construct a world free of geographic and social specifics – a dreamlike rural landscape and a brash cityscape that is everywhere and nowhere. Made at the end of the silent era, it pioneered the use of synchronous sound on film, for Reisenfeld’s score as well as such sound effects as traffic, whistles and church bells. Sunrise stands as a haunting fable – a dream of crime, love, loss and redemption.

MON 3 JUL 20:40 NFT2 / SAT 8 JUL 18:20 NFT2 / WED 12 JUL 20:50 NFT2

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

All Quiet On The Western FrontUSA 1930. Dir Lewis Milestone. With Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray. 133min with restored soundtrack. 35mm. PG

All Quiet on the Western Front is rightly recognised as one of cinema’s most enduring and emotive portrayals of the tragedy of the Great War. This epic film concerns a generation of German schoolboys who – exhorted by their patriotic teacher – enlist enthusiastically but are ultimately destroyed in the war. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel, the film proved highly controversial and was banned in many countries. Review

SUN 2 JUL 17:20 NFT3 / THU 6 JUL 18:00 NFT3

Considering All Quiet on the Western Front

TRT 90min

During WWI, Lewis Milestone, a recent Russian émigré to the US, made films for the Signal Corp, and this experience undoubtedly informed his 1930 Hollywood masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. Film historian Kevin Brownlow (who interviewed Milestone about his film career in the 1960s) will be joined by film professional Mamoun Hassan to discuss – alongside film clips and a rare trailer – the history and achievement of what is considered to be the greatest anti-war film of all time.

Tickets £6.50

THU 6 JUL 20:40 NFT3

FOREIGN CORRESPONDANT 

nullUSA 1940. Dir Alfred Hitchcock. With Laraine Day, George Sanders, Joel McCrea. 119min. 35mm. PG

Made partly to raise the American public’s awareness of the Nazi threat, this picaresque espionage adventure follows a US journalist to London and Holland to cover a mooted peace treaty; instead, with the help of a diplomat’s daughter, he uncovers a conspiracy. Set pieces abound, including one at Westminster Cathedral and a windmill that conceals a sinister secret.

SAT 1 JUL 15:20 NFT1 / SUN 22 JUL 15:10 NFT3

 

THE WAGES OF FEAR  Le salaire de la peur

nullFrance-Italy 1953. Dir Henri-Georges Clouzot. With Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Véra Clouzot. 147min. 35mm. EST. PG

Watched by a hungry vulture, a child plays with cockroaches in the dusty street of a South American shantytown. So begins one of the most nerve-wrackingly suspenseful films ever made, as four desperados take on a suicidal mission to drive two trucks full of nitro-glycerine along precipitous, pot-holed roads. As the tension mounts, this journey to hell is propelled to its misanthropic conclusion by a truly unsettling score.

SAT 15 JUL 18:00 NFT1 / SAT 22 JUL 17:40 NFT3

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS La battaglia di Algeri

Battle of Algiers (2)Algeria-Italy 1966. Dir Gillo Pontecorvo. With Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Brahim Hadjadj. 121min. 35mm. EST. 15

Algiers functions as both the site and symbol of struggle in this dazzling reconstruction of nationalist opposition to French occupation during the 1950s. The Old City nurtures and shelters the guerrilla fighters who, despite brutal reprisals, repeatedly venture from it to attack the colonial might of the new ‘European’ city.Battle of Algiers is an award-winning masterpiece of political cinema. Full review

TUE 4 JUL 18:15 NFT3 / SUN 9 JUL 20:10 NFT1

RYAN’S DAUGHTER 

UK 1970. Dir David Lean. With John Mills, Sarah Miles, Robert Mitchum. 194min (+ interval). 70mm. 15

With a harsh critical response at the time of its release, Ryan’s Daughter is a triumph of sensual storytelling for David Lean. Robert Bolt’s script reworks Hardy-esque formulae into a story about romantic excess and moral cowardice, set during the Troubles of 1916, woven into a vision of damnation. Freddie Young and John Mills won Oscars®, and deservedly so.

SUN 16 JUL 15:15 NFT1 / WED 19 JUL 19:00 NFT1

ALIEN

nullUK-USA 1979. Dir Ridley Scott. With Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm. 116min. 35mm. 15

The Alien phenomenon began here as the crew of the Nostromo are woken from stasis by the ship’s computer and grudgingly sent to investigate a transmission of unknown origin. They discover a deadly alien species and as the crew are picked off one by one, Ripley takes her place as the ultimate sci-fi heroine. This iconic classic features designs from HR Giger and a brilliant script by Dan O’Bannon.

SUN 23 JUL 20:15 NFT1 / SAT 29 JUL 20:45 NFT1

CHARIOTS OF FIRE 

ChariotsUK 1981. Dir Hugh Hudson. With Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Ian Holm, Nicholas Farrell. 123min. 35mm. PG

Hugh Hudson’s visually magnificent, emotionally exhilarating account of the struggle by Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell to compete on their own terms at the 1924 Olympics seemed to herald a new highpoint in British cinema and was a hit at the Oscars®. With fine use of slow motion, Chariots of Fire tugged at the heartstrings of a nation. Interview with film’s producer Mr Al Fayed 

SAT 15 JUL 15:20 NFT3 / SUN 23 JUL 17:40 NFT1

SPEED 

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USA 1994. Dir Jan de Bont. With Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper. 116min. 35mm. 15

This blockbuster hit has non-stop, edge of the seat thrills and spills. Reeves turns in a strong performance as the hero, a SWAT cop dealing with a crazed bomber who has wired up a bus to explode if the speed drops below 50mph. Bullock shines as the feisty passenger at the steering wheel. A thoroughly enjoyable roller-coaster ride of a movie.

TUE 25 JUL 20:50 NFT1 / SUN 30 JUL 17:20 NFT3

UNSTOPPABLE

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USA 2010. Dir Tony Scott. With Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson. 98min. 35mm. 12A

With the poster tag line reading ‘1 million tonnes of steel, 100,000 lives at stake, 100 minutes to impact’, Tony Scott’s final film as a director is about a runaway freight train, a retired railroad engineer and a rookie conductor who must figure out a way of trying to avert disaster. It’s a well-made, suspenseful thriller that works as a great companion piece to Speed.

SAT 29 JUL 17:50 NFT3 / MON 31 JUL 20:45 NFT1

From the Land of the Moon | Mal de Pierres (2016)

Director: Nicole Garcia   Writers: Nicole Garcia, Jacques Fieschi, based on a novel by Milena Agus

Cast: Marion Cotillard, Louis Garrel, Alex Brendemuhl, Brigitte Rouan, Victoire Du Bois, Aloise Sauvage, Daniel Para, Jihwan Kim, Victor Quilichini

Marion Cotillard is back with another intense character study that haunts this otrtured love story. In actor turned filmmaker Nicole Garcia’s eighth film FROM THE LAND OF THE MOON  she plays Gabrielle a woman from a bourgeois background who is desperate to find fulfilment in romantic love. Based on a best seller by Italian writer Milena Agus, the story opens in 1950s France where Gabrielle is driving her family to distraction with her violent and quixotic temperament. Fortunately beauty and money are on her side in an era where arranged marriages were still commonplace, so her mother organises a match with a penniless but decent Spanish builder, Jose (Alex Brendemuhl from Wakolda), who knuckles down to taking Gabrielle respectably off their hands and making an honest Catholic woman of her. From the outset, Gabrielle makes it clear that she will not be having sex with Jose and he takes this calmly knowing full well that his bedroom skills could potentially change her mind on the subject.

And Jose’s straightforward, kind and stable nature soon calms Gabrielle’s flighty temperament and emerges as one of the more  sympathetic characters in the film and a counterpoint to Gabrielle’s selfish and wayward character. Garcia and Jacques Fieschi’s script also emphasises Gabrielle’s desperate need of sexual fulfilment as we seen her standing in the cool river on a hot day trying to achieve the same sexual relief as men did during the war with the use of bromide. Obviously this is a sotry that will draw comparisons with Madame Bovary, although Gabrielle is not constrained by her social, moral or religious scruples and her husband is kind and supportive. After a miscarriage, Jose sends her off to an expensive Swiss clinic for treatment and once again her febrile sexual imagination gets the better of her. Here she meet Louis Garrel as the dashing lieutenant Andre Sauvage and is immediately smitten, especially as his keyboard skills playing Tchaikovsky are to become a leitmotif for the piece in the whimsical closing scenes.

Cotillard’s is the driving force behind this visually ravishing drama. She illuminates every scene with her serene beauty and elegance instilling calm and grace despite her brooding unhappiness which morphs into euphoria when she meets Sauvage. As  Gabrielle, she struggles to find contentment upsetting everyone else into the bargain with her toxic personality and meanness. This is a fabulously crafted classic drama that is both absorbing and intensely enjoyable. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 JUNE 2017

Icarus | Sundance London (2017)

Dir.: Bryan Fogel; Documentary with Gregory Rodchenkov; USA 2017, 120 min.

It started out more like a prank: amateur cyclist and filmmaker Bryan Fogel (Jewtown) wanted to take performance enhancing drugs to get into the top ten of the best amateur cyclists at the Haute Route mountain tour in Switzerland, having finished 14th the year before. When he contacted the Russian Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov (*1958), head of the Russian branch of WADA (World Anti-Doing Agency), to deliver said forbidden drugs, Rodchenkov was only to happy to deliver and monitor Fogel’s performance. Ironically the Fogel actually did worse on the drugs, so the filmmaker had a stunning success on his hands.

At the winter and summer Olympics in Vancouver (2010) and Beijing (2012) Russia fared very badly, and Vladimir Putin ordered “success”, particularly for the Winter Games in Sochi (2014). And results improved magically: whilst the Russian team finished sixth in Vancouver, on home soil Russia won 33 medals, including 13 Gold – coming first in the overall result. As it turned out, Dr. Rodchenkov had a big part to play. After being caught with his sister (also an ex-athlete like himself) dealing drugs in Moscow, he was sent into one of the horrendous “psychiatric” hospitals in 2011. His “redemption” on his release was to help the FSB (formerly KGB) to overcome the controls of the worldwide WADA organisation, in charge of monitoring and controlling the athletes. It helped, that the good doctor would be director of WADA in Sochi. There, he and his team collected and froze urine samples of Russian competitors before they started their steroid regime and human growth hormone injections, which Rodchenkov and his team later substituted for the contaminated samples taken officially by WADA at the time of the competition. They used a crude system of ‘re-distribution’, including the use of backdoors and hidden portals in the walls of the WADA facility.

Rodchenkov claims: “I don’t believe the Olympic Games could be won without any kind of pharmacological support”. And Don Catlin, former director of the UCLA Olympic facility, tested Lance Armstrong 50 (!) times during the latter’s career: his findings were always negative, before Armstrong confessed in 1913. Whilst Vitaly Mutko, who served eight years as Minister for Sport under Putin, was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister, another college of Rodchenkov died of a “sudden heart attack”. Luckily for Dr. Rodchenkov he had fled to the USA, and now lives under cover in the Witness Protection Programme, after The New York Times run his full confession.

ICARUS runs like a thriller: the charming Rodchenkov is first one to help Fogel to cheat, before investigations lead to the death of his friend and college – and threatens his own into the bargain. Fogel follows his every move, putting himself in a dangerous position. Whilst Rodchenkov had to leave his family behind, he at least got away alive. But it should not be forgotten that Russia is staging the Football World Cup next year, and that, after the majority of Russian competitors were banned at the Rio Olympics, these Russian track and field athletes will compete in London in August at the World Championships in front of a paying public. AS

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017

Crown Heights (2017) | Sundance London 2017

Dir.: Matt Ruskin; Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul; USA 2017, 94 min.

Writer/director Matt Ruskin’S conventional portrait of Colin Warner is emotionally convincing. The Black teenager was wrongly convicted of murder as an eighteen-year-old, and had to spent 21 years in prison, before being released due to the efforts of his his best friend.

In 1980, Colin Warner (Stanfield), a Trinidadian emigrant, worked as a car mechanic in New York, and stole cars in his spare time. He had a stable home life and no record of violence. When two detectives arrested him, he thought it was down to his car heists – but to his surprise, he was accused of murdering a young man in Flatbush. Without motive, murder weapon or any physical evidence, Warner was convicted of Murder in the Second Degree, and was incarcerated in a High Secirity prison, to serve 15 years to life. The only “proof” in the trial was an “eye-witness”, a 15 year old boy, who cut a deal with the police for a crime he committed, in exchange for him naming Warner as the shooter. In prison Warner soon lost his temper, beating a warden which resulted in him spending two years in solitary confinement. Whilst he later calmed down, this incident cost him his parole in 1995. Due to the efforts of his friend Carl King (Asomughan, a co-producer), who risked his job and marriage, the truth finally emerged, and Warner was finally freed in 2001, to live in freedom with his wife Anoinette (Paul), whom he had married in prison.

CROWN HEIGHTS reminds us that miscarriages of justice in cases of black men are a regular affair. Ruskin enriches his drama with clips of speeches by Reagan, Bush sen. and Bill Clinton, all of them proudly announcing new and tougher laws aimed at the presumed violence carried out by minorities. It is only logical that King, asked by Warner, why he is working so hard for the truth, answers: “This isn’t just about you, it’s bigger than that. It could have been me”. DoP Tim Gills sticks with reliable images of social realism, and Lakeith, who was in contact with Warner, succeeds in giving us an absorbing emotional rollercoaster of twentyone years. AS

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LONDON | 1-4 JUNE 2017

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

Dir.: Claude Barras | Animation | Switzerland/France | 66 min.

Claude Barras’ stop-motion animation is a tender tale probing life’s saddest moment: not a kid’s film but one that resonates with the kid inside us – Heart-breaking and uplifting at the same time. Celine Scammia (Water Lilies, Girlhood) an expert on juvenile psyches, has cleverly scripted Gilles Paris’ autobiographical novel Ma Vie de Courgette, and although the film is not as dark as the book, Barras’ characters have to deal with considerable trauma, making it only suitable for the over-tens.

The story of nine-year old orphan Courgette (his real name is Icare, i.e. Icarus) is completely different from other child-themed animations Mathilda or Annie. Courgette himself has killed his alcoholic mother accidentally; he keeps one of her empty beer cans as the only memento of her life. A friendly policeman Raymond takes him to an orphanage where he meets look-alikes, who share his displacement: the faces of all the children seem to be made out of plasticine, they have a mop of coloured hair – in Courgette’s case –   huge blue hands, and golf-ball sized eyes, with the iris looking as if it was stuck on. These eyes really are mirrors of their souls, pictures of their state of mind. And despite the slender running time, David Toutevoix’ delicately rendered images convey the passing years as the orphans develop seamlessly from children to gawky pre-teens. Initially the colours are muted, particularly in Courgette’s flat, where he hides in the attic to avoid his dipsy mother. But as life improves the visuals lighten and colours become more vibrant.

When Courgette enters the orphanage he is immediately accosted by the loutish leader of the pack, Simon, who calls him ‘potatoes’; whilst the dinosaur-obsessed Ahmed becomes more of a soul mate. Alice, always shy, hides behind her hair which she parts like two curtains over her face, when embarrassed. But Courgette falls for Camille. When Raymond re-appears, he takes the two children to his flat cacti-ridden flat. But then Camille’s money-grabbing aunt takes over: she feels nothing for her niece but wants to collect the grant for raising her. But Camille and Courgette find a way of being together.

Courgette is a sensitive study in grief, but also an authentic portrait of children growing up, coming to terms with their sadness and becoming sociable beings who have learned to look out for each other, like Simon who encourages Courgette and Camille to live with Raymond, even though they are sad to leave him behind. Barras and Sciammia create a wonderful cosmos of healing: symbolised by the children using a weatherboard for their moods: ‘Cloudy’ turning more often to ‘sunny’ than not. AS

OUT ON MUBI

Wonder Woman (2017)

​Dir: Patty Jenkins | Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, David Thewlis | US | Adventure Drama

IMG_3790That sound you can hear right now is hundreds, if not thousands, of film writers and critics breathing a huge sigh of relief that they won’t need to think too hard about the positives in DC’s newest reboot of Wonder Woman. With a cast straight out any fanboy and girl’s dreams and more roles for women over 40 than you can shake a stick at, WONDER WOMAN is not only a welcome break from the usual male-centric superhero movies, but it also presents its audience with a truly engaging and thoroughly enjoyable storyline. Staring Israeli actress Gal Gadot and directed by the excellent Patty Jenkins (Monster, 2003), the film manages to cleverly avoid the usual pitfalls of big summer blockbusters by offering up a plethora of very likeable characters and a wonderfully engaging plot. Fans and foes alike will have to admit that DC has finally got a big hit on its hands, and the fact that this was a female lead superhero movie is even sweeter for some.

​Diana (Gadot) lives on a mythical island inhabited by beautiful Amazonian warrior women, which has for centuries been hidden away from the prying eyes of the modern world. When American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash-lands on the island with tens of German soldier in his pursuit, Diana goes to his rescue and helps free him from the wreckage of his war plane. Together, they hatch a plan to leave the island, him to go back to his top secret mission and her in search of Ares God of war, whom she believes is responsible for the current World War. Staring Robin Wright as the Amazonian warrior Antiope and Connie Nielsen as Diana’s mother Hippolyta, the film spends a rather unnecessary amount of time setting up the mythical story behind our heroine, but once it gets going, there’s no stopping it. Chris Pine manages to be both charming and insufferably smug, his performance is beautifully nuanced and commendably comedic at his own character’s expense.
​                                                                                                                                                                             Whether WONDER WOMAN is, as some have said, a feminist treatment of a classic story, remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, Gal Gadot not only puts in a brilliant performance, but also presents a whole new generation of little girls and boys with a badass alternative to the usual male counterparts. On the whole, the film is very silly in parts, but this does nothing to put a dampener on the proceedings. I would dare anyone not to be entertained, at least by its witty dialogue and touching storyline. A sure hit for DC and Warner Brothers. LINDA MARRIC.

WONDER WOMAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE 1 JUNE


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Chasing Coral (2017) | Sundance London 2017

Dir. Jeff Orlowski. US, 2017, 91 minutes

After his resounding success with Chasing Ice (2012) that examines the dwindling state of arctic glaciers, CHASING CORAL is another resonant and vital eco-documentary that tracks the destruction of the ocean’s most vital ecosystem due to the warming effect of climate change.

Coral is a not just underwater flora undulating in beautiful gardens on the ocean bed, it is a complex organism that serves both as a food factory and a habitat for all marine life. Without coral the oceans will die: it is as important as bees and trees on dry land. Building a solid skeleton structure, coral creates its own architectural environment, attracting fish and orgnanisms to live there, much in the same way as our towns provide the infrastructure for human existence. Coral also provides the basis for many life-saving drugs – but all this could come to an end if the sea temperature keeps rising, even by one or two degrees. The ocean needs to maintain a regular temperature or, just like the human body, it will become sick and eventually die.

A team set up by former adman Richard Vevers begins an earnest attempt to chart the ailing coral reefs, eventually hiring professional cinematographers to chart the extent of the problem, monitoring the alarming rate at which the coral is affected by warmer temperatures. Brightly coloured coral reefs turn a ghostly white, known as bleaching, then rapidly decay to a dullish brown mush strewn with algae. So dramatic is this state of affairs that the Great Barrier Reef will be a thing of the past within less than two decades. Occasionally, the coral takes on a fluorescent hue of bright green, purple or blue. This is coral’s attempt to produce its own sunscreen, and signals the desperate last stages before inevitable death and decay.

Despite its tragic message – that coral could be wiped out within 30 years – this is filmic and beautifully made documentary that tracks the disappearance of coral all over the world, thanks to a team of keen volunteers. We also meet Australian biologist and photographer John “Charlie” Veron, who has been filming coral since the 1970s, when it was still flourishing all over the world. In order to save the planet Humans need to stop burning fossil fuels that provide heat that the earth and oceans reabsorb. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017 | TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO HELP VISIT 

 

 

In Spring (1929)

IMG_3785Dir: Mikhail Kaufman | Doc | 54min | Ukraine

Mikhail Kaufman’s 1929 silent documentary IN SPRING  (Ukrainian: Навесні, translit. Navesni, Russian: Весной, translit. Vesnoi) is Soviet Ukraine’s answer to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. The two brothers and regular collaborators had fallen out over artistic differences in their approach to filmmaking. Strongly rhythmic and stylishly symmetrical, IN SPRING was made in accordance with the ideas of the avant-garde manifesto Kinoks and was Kaufman’s directorial debut.

Much in the same way as Man With a Movie Camera, the experimental film explores the gradual awakening of a new spring day after the snowy rigours of winter. The film opens in the countryside, as opposed to the urban setting of Man With A Movie Camera, and as ice begins to thaw, illustrated by a humorous image of a snowman’s black eyes streaming down his melting face, people, horses and carts begins to emerge as people preparing for a sunny day as one of the shops lays out the newspaper “Socialist emulation Bulletin” for the year 1929. Agricultural activities give way to the pounding of machines in an industrial landscape. In the city parks and gardens, trees are sprouting leaves and in the branches birds build nests, bees swarm around flowers, buds bloom directly beforre our eyes. People walk freely unencumbered by heavy winter clothing. Soviet sportsmanship features again with a May Day demonstration with flags, competitions, a football match at a packed stadium. Daredevil-bicyclist rides on a street while playing the harmonica; girls are dancing and children excising in regimented rows.

IN SPRING + Q&A with Stanislav Menzelevskyi | 7 June 2017

BERTHA DOCHOUSE W1 | Introduced and followed by a Q&A with Stanislav Menzelevskyi, Head of Research and Programming Department, Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, who was involved in the recent restoration of In Spring, and hosted by Professor Ian Christie. 

This event is made possible in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute in London and the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, Ukraine.

Walking Out (2017) |Sundance 2017

Directors|writers: Alex Smith, Andrew Smith Cast: Josh Wiggins, Matt Bomer, Bill Pullman | 91min | US | Adventure Drama

walking-outDirectors Alex and Andrew Smith make a welcome return to Sundance 15 years after The Slaughter Rule, with an auteurish inter-generational hunting adventure that is spare on narrative but long on macho bonding and wild grunting from its rather one-dimentional male leads.

With the cherished memory of hunting with his traditional father (Bill Pullman) echoing in the snowbound landscapes and mountain streams of Montana, hard-bitten dad Cal (Matt Bomer) takes his own teenage son Ted (Josh Wiggins) on an adventure that serves both as an iniation into the world of big game hunting and a rites of passage endurance test that will see their roles reversed and their lives changed forever.

Ted is a rather introspective Texas teenager attached to his mobile phone and his life in the city. Although he baulks at the idea of spending time out with his spiky father Cal, who loves nothing more than to track a moose or a stag, once Ted gets a taste for hunting and shooting, he starts to enjoy the wilds of nature until an accident forces him to dig deep into his inner reserves of stamina, courage and mental resiliance. WALKING OUT is a predictable but well-crafted drama enriched by Todd McMullen’s magnificent widescreen retro-style photography that gives the piece an almost poetic and transcendent feel. MT

SUNDANCE LONDON 1-4 JUNE 2017 | PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL

 

 

Dough (2016)

Dir.: John Goldschmidt | Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Pauline Collins, Phil Davis, Ian Hart, Natasha Gordon; UK/Hungary | 94 min.

Veteran director John Goldschmidt (Maschenka) is best known for his TV work and here turns his hand to a feel-good portrait of London’s East End, where hero and villains live next door and no harm is done – really.

Kosher baker Nat Dayan (Pryce), whose wife has recently died, is about to lose his family shop to the greedy developer Sam Cotton (Phil Davis). His son Stephen, a Cambridge-educated lawyer, urges him to retire. Enter Ayyash Habimana (Holder), a black teenager from Nigeria, who shares Nat’s religious observance, although his Muslim faith does not prevent him from working for local drug dealer Sam Cotton (Hart). Nat is reluctant to employ Ayyash, whose mother is already on the baker’s payroll but when he does it emerges that Ayyash has hidden talents taking the bakery’s turnover and profits to sensational new heights. When the young Nigerian accidentally drops a pack of hashish into the challah dough, things go slightly out of hand, as Nat’s customers, friends and family are suddenly under the influence with dramatic consequences for all concerned. Masquerading as realism, DOUGH is just a run-of-the-mill early evening TV fare where everything falls into place, including a happy-end for Nat, in the shape of his landlady Joanna Silverman (Collins). Seeing him dancing with his granddaughter in the puddles in front of his shop (having watched Gene Kelly’s original over and over), is too cringingworthy. DoP Peter Hannan (Withnail & I) tries his best to make use of the studio-atmosphere, but cannot do much to save the saccharine narrative. A lightweight and unassuming watch. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 2 JUNE 2017

The Hippopotamus (2017)

Dir.: John Jencks; Cast: Roger Allam, Emily Berrington, Dean Ridge, Fiona shaw, Matthew Modine, Tommy Knight, Lynne Renee, Emma Curtis, Richard Glover, Gerald, John Standing; UK 2017, 89 min.

Based on a novel by Stephen Fry, director John Jencks (The Fold) and writers Blanche McIntyre and Tom Hodgson have come up with a pastiche on the “English Country House Mystery”, which is neither funny nor well-crafted. In fact, it’s pretty much a waste of time.

Just fired from his job as a theatre critic, irritable blunderer (and ex-poet) Ted Wallace (Allam), is asked by his god-daughter Jane (Berrington), who has been miraculously cured from leukaemia, to investigate the source of her cure. For this reason, Allam visits the country estate of the Logans, a family he was once close to Lord and Lady Logan (Matthew Modine, Fiona Shaw) have two sons, Simon (Ridge) and David (Knight), the latter Allam’s Godson. David is supposed to cure humans and animals alike, but Allam finds out the rationale behind the “miracles”: young David is sometimes apt to obtain sexual favours by masquerading as a faith healer – whilst the alcoholic Allam put a bottle full off whisky into the feeding bucket of a horse, which recovered on its own accord. When the light-hearted banter turns into something far more serious, the filmmakers lose the plot completely, when Jane’s mother Rebecca (with whom Allam had an affair) turns up out of the blue.

Complete with caricature appearances by Tim McInnery as the gay ‘Tunte’; Oliver Mills, Lynne Renee and Emma Curtis as the ‘French’ mother/daughter duo of Valerie and Clara Richmonde (sic), The comedy goes from bad to worse. DoP Angus Hudson undermines the project even further by letting his images look as pedestrian and third-hand as the narrative. Not even a persiflage, but just a caricature of itself, this is as tepid as it gets – even John Standing’s butler Podmore is mediocre. AS

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IS ON RELEASE FROM 2 JUNE 2017

Michelangelo: Love and Death (2016)

Dir: David Bickerstaff | Biopic | 89min

Director and cinematographer David Bickerstaff is back with the final part of his illuminating series Exhibition on Screen that offers an armchair view of current worldwide art shows, this time tracing the life and work of Michelangelo from his birth in Arezzo to his final days in Florence. Bickerstaff acts as his own cinematographer in this rather dry but learned documentary that may have enthused better had it made more of the human story behind the artist, such as Michelangelo’s relationship with Florentine despot Lorenzo de Medici, or his well-known ‘terribilita’ a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur often remarked upon by his contemporaries. Recent outings Goya: Visions of Flesh and Blood (2015);  Vincent Van Gogh: a New Way (2015) and Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse (2016) are particularly exciting for this reason alone – the art treasures provide the icing of the cake.

Michelangelo, along with Leonardo di Vinci is considered one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, a virtuoso craftsman, he was not only a sculptor but also a painter, architect, poet and spiritualist creating magnificent and diverse works such as the towering statue of David, the deeply moving Pietà in the Papal Basilica of St. Peter and his tour-de-force, the Sistine Chapel ceiling still leave us in awe of his skill, even today.

Spanning his 89 years (1475-1564), Michelangelo – Love and Death, takes a cinematic journey from the print and drawing rooms of Europe, through the great chapels and museums of Florence, Rome and the Vatican to explore the tempestuous life of Michelangelo.  great deal of his work was commissioned and influenced by the Florentine Medici family who held sway in fifteenth century Florence. Bickerstaff’s pristine camerawork examines his work in minute detail with informed commentary particularly rom art critic Martin Hayford and various Italian curators and experts (including Francesca Nicoli who explains how carrera marble was the best medium for fine sculpture of the Renaissance style). The film delves deep – perhaps too deep for mainstream audiences – and features close-ups of the Rothschild Bronzes which were positively attributed to Michelangelo in 2015. It emerges that Michelangelo preferred men to women, but not in a sexual sense; more in the way that he worshipped the physicality of the male form, although he often endowed his male figures with more rounded thighs and buttocks, normally associated with Amazonian women, rather than the plump fulsomeness of women of his era. Highlighting the fact that sculptors of the day were given permission and access to study human corpses by the Church, in return for creating religious works on their behalf, the film also stresses how this experience made them more knowledgeable about human anatomy than their medical contemporaries.

Accompanied by an atmospheric score of lute music and enriched by its glorious Italian locations including Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the Medici Chapel and the Vatican, Michelangelo – Love and Death perfectly captures Michelangelo’s environment, and in turn, delivers a greater understanding of the artist and his work.

SCREENING NATIONWIDE from 14 JUNE 2017 | EXHIBITION ON SCREEN

This documentary complements the current Michelangelo event at London’s National Gallery. 

 

The Beguiled (2017 | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Sophie Coppola | Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Oona Laurence | 91min | Thriller | US

Set in Louisiana and shot in 35mm THE BEGUILED is Sophie Coppola’s re-telling of Thomas Cullinan’s original 1966 novel that explores the powerplay and sexual tension that erupts between a group of differently-aged nubile females and an attractive male forced into their midst during the American Civil War.

Luminously mounted (the operative word – as the movie reveals!), THE BEGUILED sizzles swelteringly in its Southern Gothic aesthetic while remaining as delicate as a starched doily. Colin Farrell is dashingly seductive as the union soldier McBurney transported to this prim and proper confederate ladies’ school when he is rescued, wounded, in nearby woods by one of the youngest girls. Presided over by Nicole Kidman’s prickly Madame Martha who disapproves of the enemy element but secretly joins the innocent ladies’ lustful queue in the shape of Kirsten Dunst’ glacial French mistress Edwina, and Elle Fanning’s disruptive teenager Alicia with an eye for the main chance, the film works as a psychological thriller and a historical drama.

Sophie Coppola makes a dramatic reverse thrust in her clever narrative once Alicia’s cat has been let out of the bag transforming the dynamic of the entire household and transferring the power from a female perspective to a rugged male one, thus unleashing anger, fear and pent up longing all round, although we are never quite sure who is ultimately in control. As McBurney gets to know Martha’s pupils, it’s unsure whether he is trustworthy or a snake in the grass with lascivious intentions. And his masculine vulnerability sparks both desire and inquietude in the young women. He also has a cunning male knack of making them all feel intimate with him showering praise and compliments, individually, in an obsequiously sincere way. Competing with each other covertly for his affections, the girls try to maintain their ladylike behaviour but on an animal level their instincts lead them in a different direction.

Philippe Le Sourd’s hazy visuals give the film a dreamlike quality as if the college is caught in a time-warp from which there is no escape, and yet a drousy longing to remain. The film also has a timeless nature dealing with evergreen themes which could easily translate to a comtemporary setting. Don Siegel made a 1971 version of the story starring Clint Eastwood as the soldier who seduces the women, gradually turning them against each other and eventually himself.

Performances are superlative especially from Nicole Kidman as the cocquettish but buttoned-up Marsha, and Elle Fanning Alicia in the first flush of  burgeoning sexuality. Both manage vague flirtatiousness while keeping their upper lips stiff. But Farrell is the standout in a complex portrait that feels ambiguous but retains an intruiging tension throughout. This is Coppola’s most absorbing and accomplished work so far. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17-28 MAY 2017 | IN COMPETITION

The Shepherd | El Pastor (2016)

Dir.: Jonathan Cenzual Burley; Cast: Miguel Martin, Alfonso Mendiguchia, Juan Luis Sara, Maribel Iglesias; Spain 2016, 98 min.

The harsh rural landscape of Central Spain is the backdrop to this story about what money (the lack of it and the lack of need for it) can do to rather ordinary men. This is not so much about greed, but about what happens when the pressure to be materially successful in life collides with the traditional values of a life outside modern society.

Anselmo (Martin) is a shepherd, who lives in harmony with nature and his dog Pillo in a rundown cottage in the middle of nowhere. He, and his very modest lifestyle, are introduced in the first ten minutes; apart from a few words to Pillo, the sequence is just an introduction to the landscape, which will dominate proceedings: As in his debut The Soul of Flies, Burley is his own DoP, his pristine camerawork captures the beauty a natural workd that is never sentimentalised. Anselmo has no television, his leisure time is spent having a glass of wine in the local bodega and visits to the library in the nearby city of Salamanca (?) where he meets the librarian Concha (Iglesias), who treats him with gentle respect: most people believe he is a simpleton for eschewing a material existence. The tranquillity is undisturbed, until a developer offers Anselmo a handsome amount for his land. Anselmo refuses, he sees no need to change his modest, but meaningful life. Enter Julian (Mendiguchia), the owner of the local slaughterhouse, and Paco (Sara), another businessman, who need to sell their land to the developer – but won’t be able to make the much-needed profit, if Anselmo does not join them in the endeavour. Both men depend on the deal, because the middle class Julian, as well as the petit-bourgeois Paco, are living above their means. The pace kicks up in the last fifteen minutes, with an action-packed finale that is much in contrast to what went on before, very much action packed: a boy falls into a well, after Anselmo foresees the accident – shades of the magic realism of The Soul of Flies. But the bloody confrontation between the male trio, whilst telegraphed, somehow seems a rather simplistic solution.

Great on atmosphere, THE SHEPHERD is a brilliant explores the collision of very different lives, but the characters – apart from Anselmo – are somehow unwritten. To resolve this rather delicate story with an explosion of violence, is somehow negating everything what went before. Beautiful to look at, and directed with great panache, it is Burley the writer whose narrative fails him in the end. AS

ON RELEASE IN ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM  2 JUNE 2017

 

The Other Side of Hope (2017)

Dir: Aki Kaurismäki | Finland / Germany | Finnish, English, Arabic | Drama | 98 min · Colour · 35 mm, 2K DCP

The grass is always greener on the other side especially when your business is failing or you live in a war zone. Aki Kurismaki’s latest film is an unapologetically upbeat story of dystopia in modern day Helsinski where two lives converge – that of Khaled, a Syrian refugee and stowaway on a coal freighter and Wikström, a Finnish travelling salesman peddling ties and men’s shirts. Treating his characters with even-handed sympathy and understanding Kurismaki evokes a realistic picture of the local refugee crisis as well as the economic malaise affecting contemporary Finland.

When Khaled claims asylum at the government offices, he is bathetically told: “you are not the first”. This is the start of many telling observations that give THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE its spry and ironic humour. Meanwhile Witstrom leaves his wife and his business and, after a win at the poker tables, buys a local restaurant business. When the authorities turn down Khaled’s application, he decides to remain, going underground in the Finnish capital where he gets duffed up by the ‘Finnish Freedom League’ before some friendly street musicians offer support. And soon Wikstrom offers him a job in his new concern where the classic Kaurismaki community muddle along with the waitress, the chef and his friendly Jack Russell.

Starring regular collaborators Sakari Kuosmanen, Kati Outinnen and Ilkka Koivula, THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE is witty and watchable and never takes itself too seriously in showing how the kindness of strangers goes along way to making the world a better place. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE 26 MAY | SILVER BEAR WINNER BERLINALE  2017| BEST DIRECTOR

Wind River (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2017

Dir: Taylor Sheridan | Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Jeremy Renner | US | Thriller | 111min

Taylor Sheridan is the writer behind Cannes UCR 2016 breakout hit Hell or High Water and scripted the competition title Sicario in 2015. He returns to Cannes this year with his own mystery thriller set in Wyoming and starring  Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.

Shedding more troubling light on American contempo society this action thriller explores events surrounding the violent murder of a teenage girl found in a snowy corner of Wyoming and its investigation by Renner Cory Lambert, a  thoughtful and sensitive wildlife ranger who clearly has some issues relating to the recent loss of his own teenage daughter and breakdown in his marriage. Joining him in the investigation (Sicario-style in black SUV) is Olsen’s rather green FBI sidekick, Jane Banner. Clearly Cory is a hands-on type who is used to the territory, whereas she is not.

It also emerges that the dead girl has a brother whose sidekick Pete (James Jordan) seems to have some past connection with the oil company located on the Native American land, and although her father (Gil Birmingham) offers little insight into possible perpetrators, clues start to reveal that Pete is in some way connected.

Their inquiries lead them to an alarming confrontation with a group of Mexican oil-workers and this rather melodramatic second act sits uncomfortably with what has gone before. But Sheridan makes this good in the final denouement which brings us to an impressive close in this enjoyable thriller with its twists and dramatic turns. Clearly Sheridan is still learning but his directorial debut lacks the dialogue finesse of his former outings. WIND RIVER is solid entertainment showing Sheridan to be honing his skills as a consummate talent in the making. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 17-28 MAY 2017 | UN CERTAIN REGARD

 

 

 

 

Sundance London 1-4 June 2017

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SUNDANCE LONDON kicks off on 1st JUNE for a whole weekend of American independent narrative and documentary films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, U.S.A this January.

THE BIG SICK Director: Michael Showalter, Screenwriters: Emily V. Gordon, Kumail NanjianiBased on the real-life courtship: Pakistan-born comedian Kumail and grad student Emily fall in love, but they struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail must navigate the crisis with her parents and the emotional tug-of-war between his family and his heart.

Principal cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher International premiere. 

BITCH 

Director/Screenwriter: Marianna Palka– A woman snaps under crushing life pressures and assumes the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, absentee husband is forced to become reacquainted with his four children and sister-in-law as they attempt to keep the family together during this bizarre crisis.

Principal cast: Jason Ritter, Jaime King, Marianna Palka, Brighton Sharbino, Rio Mangini, Kingston Foster International premiere

BUSHWICK 

UnknownDirectors: Cary Murnion, Jonathan Millot, Screenwriters: Nick Damici, Graham Reznick – Lucy emerges from a Brooklyn subway to find that her neighborhood is under attack by black-clad military soldiers. An ex-Marine corpsman, Stupe, reluctantly helps her fight for survival through a civil war, as Texas attempts to secede from the United States of America.

Principal cast: Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Angelic Zambrana, Jeremie Harris, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Arturo Castro. UK premiere

9438-UN17_CROWNHEIGHTS_still1_KeithStanfield__byBKutchinsCROWN HEIGHTS 

Director/Screenwriter: Matt Ruskin– When Colin Warner is wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to proving Colin’s innocence. Adapted from This American Life, this is the incredible true story of their harrowing quest for justice.

Principal cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell, Amari Cheatom

Winner of Audience Award: US Dramatic

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Directors: Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini – An eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story. (Documentary) Special preview screening

Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary

A Ghost StoryA GHOST STORY

 Director/screenwriter: David Lowery– This is the story of a ghost and the house he haunts.

Principal cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky, Liz Franke

The-Incredible-Jessica-JamesTHE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES 

Director/Screenwriter: Jim Strouse

 Jessica James, an aspiring NYC playwright, is struggling to get over a recent breakup. She sees a light at the end of the tunnel when she meets the recently divorced Boone. Together, they discover how to make it through the tough times while realizing they like each other—a lot.

Principal cast: Jessica Williams, Chris O’Dowd, Lakeith Stanfield, Noël Wells

MARJORIE PRIME

Director/Screenwriter: Michael Almereyda

In the near future—a time of artificial intelligence—86-year-old Marjorie has a handsome new companion who looks like her deceased husband and is programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance?

Principal cast:  Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, Tim Robbins UK premiere | Winner of the Alfred P Sloan Feature Film Prize

Walking-OutWALKING OUT 

Directors/Screenwriters: Alex Smith, Adam Smith)

 A teenager journeys to Montana to hunt big game with his estranged father. The two struggle to connect, until a brutal encounter in the heart of the wilderness changes everything.

Principal cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins, Bill Pullman, Alex Neustaedter, Lily Gladstone

WILSON 

Director: Craig Johnson, Screenwriter: Daniel Clowes

Wilson, a lonely, neurotic, and hilariously honest middle-aged misanthrope, reunites with his estranged wife and gets a shot at happiness when he learns he has a teenage daughter he has never met. In his uniquely outrageous and slightly twisted way, he sets out to connect with her.

Principal cast: Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Cheryl Hines UK premiere

Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize

D O C U M E N T A R I E S

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Director: Bryan Fogel – When Bryan Fogel sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller involving dirty urine, unexplained death, and Olympic Gold—exposing the biggest scandal in sports history.

Winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award

svii_in_coral_triangle_-_photo_by_xl_caitlin_seaview_survey-copyCHASING CORAL 

Director: Jeff Orlowski

Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers, and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. This is Orlowski’s follow up to his standout eco-doc CHASING CORAL (2012) (Documentary) Special preview screening

Winner of the Audience Award: U.S. Documentary

SURPRISE FILM!For the first time this year the Sundance Film Festival: London will feature a surprise film. We can’t say too much, but it was a favourite among audiences in Utah, and with just one screening this will be among the hottest of the hot tickets. The title will be revealed only when the opening credits roll. By our reckoning it will either be I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE or JOSHUA.

SUNDANCE LONDON | 1-4 JUNE 2017 | PICTUREHOUSE CENTRAL

 

I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016)

Dir.: Feng Xiaogang; Cast: Fan Bingbing, Guo Tao, Da Peng Zhang Jiayi; China 2016, 138 min.

Director Feng Xiaogang (Back to 1942) and writer Zhenyun mock the Party bureaucrats but fail to give justice to the main character Li Xuelian, a woman fighting the law of an entire country, when she is wronged by her ex-husband.

Ten years ago Li Xuelian (Bingbing) and her husband Qin Yuhe got a fake divorce, the plan was to obtain another property. But after the divorce, Qin fell in love with another woman, and Li took him to court, to have the divorce annulled. But Judge Wang Gongdao (Peng) rules that the divorce stands; later Qin Yuhe calls Li a whore in front of his friends. A decade later, Wang is Chief Justice of the country, whilst Li is still protesting the court ruling at the Party Congress in Beijing. Wang asks the chef Zhao Datou (Tao), who had a crush on the young Li at school, to keep the woman away from the Congress. After raping Li, who tells him, “in spite of the rape this was the best sex I ever had”, she nevertheless leaves him when it emerges that he is spying on her on Wangs’s behalf. Much too late we learn at the end that the first divorce caused Li to have a miscarriage, and that she is fighting the courts on behalf of her unborn child.

Overlong and openly misogynist, the only saving grace is the innovative camerawork of DoP Pan Luo (Old Fish), whose circular images are a joyful reminder of silent films. But this does not compensate for the many issues director and writer have with women and their representation. AS

I AM NOT MADAME BOVARY (WO BU SHI PAN JIN LIAN) RELEASE ON 26 MAY 2017

Spaceship (2017)

Dir.: Alex Taylor | Cast: Alexa Davies, Antti Reini, Tallulah Rose Haddon, Lara Peake, Lucian Charles Collier | Drama | UK  86 min.

First time filmmaker Alex Taylor tries to evoke an alternative teenage world of alien abduction and unicorns in a dull corner of English suburbia. The result is a pretentious cocktail of pseudo-philosophy borrowing hopelessly from masters Gregg Araki and Guy Maddin.

Lucidia (Davies) is one of a bunch of teenagers who mistake their boredom for a creative impulse: popping pills and drinking whisky, they dress in psychedelic garb, trumping it up to be ‘avant-garde’. Lucidia’s mother died years ago under mysterious circumstances in her swimming pool, and her father Gabriel (Reini), an archaeologist of some sorts, has not come to terms with the loss. Feeling abandoned, Lucidia stages her own alien abduction. Her friends, stoned and/or role-playing, support this event: it gives them a credibility they have longed for. Gabriel now decides to get to know his daughters peers: there is Alice (Haddon), who drags her leather-clad boyfriend along on a leash like a dog, is supposed to be a vampire; Tegan (Peake) wants to be saved by Gabriel, but is happy spending her time being high, and Luke (Collier) who rides around on his motorbike, a tame imitation of Slater/Dean, eventually getting attached to a crashed helicopter. We never see the unicorns and black hole, but when Lucidia returns with a lame reason for her disappearance, the relief of cast and audience is mutual.

SPACESHIP looks like college cocktail of weird ideas, but rather than abandon the project, Taylor states in an interview that this improvised script was re-edited, and it shows: much of the senselessness of the narrative comes from the residue of another script version. To confuse matters even more, Taylor changes the POV structure of story-telling half-way through, to take an omniscient overview. DoP Liam Iandoli, also a debutant, tries to adjust to the spontaneous changes, without finding his own style in the process. The best part of SPACESHIP is its young ‘cast’, who just had fun. Most of the time, SPACESHIP is a bit of reverie for a middle-aged man surrounded by a group of sparsely clad teenage girls. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 19 May 2017

Machines (2016)

Dir.: Rahul Jain | Documentary | India/Germany/Finland | 75 min.

Originally ‘just’ a midterm project for debuting director/co-editor/co-DoP Rahul Jain at Cal Arts, his ‘student film’ MACHINES found its way into Sundance. Whilst describing the hell of working in a textile plant in Surat, with 4.5 million inhabitants India’s eighth largest city and economical capital of Gujarat, Jain chose to film the hellish environment in an extravagant, visually beautiful style.

Like a flies on the wall, Jain and his crew are invisible: the machines – running for 24 hours – churn out spools of fabric, dyed in sumptuously imaginative patterns, as young children, teenagers and older workers shuffle around their twelve hour shifts, looking like hunted animals in the dark sweltering jungle of this material world. “There are machines and then there are humans that are machines. My main focus was on humans who have ben dehumanised by labour to the point of losing their identities”.

Workers are aware of the trap they find themselves in: “Nobody makes me to work here, I travel 1600 km, 36 hours to get to this place”. Whilst they can stop working at any time, there is no guarantee that they will be re-employed. This is underlined by the sadly astonishing fact that all those interviewed, apart from the managers, had been replaced by the end of the shoot. Only 95% of the state’s workplaces are unionised and more than one labourer states, “When we unite, the leader of the union is usually killed”. Health and security issues are ignored, considering the huge cascades of chemicals and sludge-dumping, one wonders about the long-term health issues of the workforce. At one point, the director is directly questioned about his intentions – and he is compared, not favourably, to politicians who engage with the workers ‘ plight at election times, but disappear quickly after polling day. The textile plant looks like a re-incarnation of a Dickensian nightmare, yet it has been in operation for just twelve years.
still-h_2016Since the 1960, India has undergone a massive, unregulated industrialisation. In the textile industry alone, 45 million workers are employed, just under a third of which are children. Overtime work means a working week of 70 to 80 hours, the weekly wage is between $US 90 and $US150 a month in an industry with a turnover of $US 40 billion.

When asked, why he made such an aesthetically beautiful film of a nightmarish situation, Jain is adamant that “if it weren’t so beautiful, it would be easy to look away. There is something that you cannot ignore about beauty. I wanted the audience to be hypnotised and lulled defencelessly into submission when the images enter their brains”.

Helped by a sound design team led by Susmit ‘Bob’ Nath, MACHINES is a cacophony of noises, where the camera prowls in search of human life, a life with which fades in front of our eyes. The mainstream media is afraid of humans becoming more and more like computers, and Jain pictures an atavistic battle field where workers are left with just one, somehow medieval hope: “My only satisfaction is that everyone dies. Even when the rich go, they leave the world with nothing”. AS

MACHINES IN ON RELEASE FROM 19 MAY 2017 | SUNDANCE WORLD DOC WINNER 2017

Whisky Galore! (2016)

Dir: Gilles MacKinnon | Cast: Eddie Izzard, James Cosmo | Drama | UK

Alexander McKendrick’s 1949 screen adaptation of Compton McKenzie’s true story is an Ealing classic fondly remembered for its feisty depiction of the fearless folks of Todday Island in the Scottish Outer Hebrides and their attempts to recover the whisky cargo from a shipwrecked boat.

Quite why Gilles MacKinnon has decided on a remake of this popular arthouse gem is questionable given the high status it holds in the collective memory and the lacklustre cast he has selected to replace the originals: Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Gordon Jackson and James Robertson Justice.

The film is set during the Second World War when the Scottish Islands were a reasonably tranquil outpost in the war effort but impacted nevertheless by a serious dearth of whisky brought on by a breakdown of supplies. When a ship runs aground on a rocky outcrop, the residents club together to relieve the vessel of its precious liquid cargo. Hampered by a slowdown due to the Sabbath Sunday, the islanders are forced into ingenious ways of overcoming strict religious observances enforced by the local minister Macalister (James Cosmo). The only other spanner in the works is – naturally an Englishman – Captain Wagget (Eddie Izzard), who is tasked with maintaining order as Head of the Home Guard.

MacKinnon’s film beautifully evokes this period in history with painterly set design and some magnificent local scenery of the glorious location. Nigel Willoughby captures  summer on the island which glows with lush landscapes and wonderfully vibrant seascapes, clouds scudding by. Patrick Doyle’s original score compliments the narrative but the witty script falls flat on mediocre performances that lack the star quality needed to lift the film in Mackendrick’s brilliant 1949 league. The Home Guard appears to be modelled on the characters from Dad’s Army and are a pale imitation, borrowed again from another inimitable national treasure and cannot compete with Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier or Arnold Ridley. Some viewers may also be offended by the indelicate racial subtext that creeps into some of the dialogue and feels out of place for modern audiences.

That said, this is a decent if rather tame period piece, totally lacking drama but hopefully instrumental in reviving the treasured forties classic original. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 MAY 2017

 

The Secret Scripture (2016)

Dir.: Jim Sheridan | Cast: Rooney Mara, Vanessa Redgrave, Theo James, Aidan Turner, Eric Bana, Susan Lynch | ROI 2016, 108 min | Drama

After some Hollywood mediocrities such as Brothers, director|co-writer Jim Sheridan has tried to recapture his breakout success with My Left Foot by adapting Sebastian Barry’s artful novel The Secret Scriptures. The result is an uneven and often bewildering melodrama, but a moving one that is certainly worth seeing.

Set in the early 1940s and at the end of the 1990s, the drama tells the story of Roseanne McNulty who spent nearly all her adult life in a prisonlike psychiatric ward in Ireland where the film opens showing Vanessa Redgrave as an emotionally distraught elderly Roseanne whose future in the home is threatened due to plans for an upmarket Spa. In flashback the story retraces her young days in Sligo where Rooney Mara is captivating as the young Roseanne who clearly “has power over men”, as the town’s priest Father Gaunt (James), puts it. The Second World War has just started, with Southern Ireland staying neutral but actually supporting Nazi Germany in a clandestine way. Roseanne is marked by the priest as a ‘dangerous’ influence, and soon moved to a dilapidated cottage by her aunt, having worked in her shop and turned too many heads. After rescuing RAF pilot Jack McNulty (Reynor) on the beach one day, she hides him from the paramilitary forces acting on behalf of the Government. The two have a whirlwind affair and marry in haste, but McNulty is captured by his pursuers and executed. Roseanne, pregnant, is send to a horrific church institution for “fallen Women” and gives birth to a son. Learning that the nuns will take her child away and sell it to rich US-citizens, she flees with her baby into the sea.

The narrative is interlaced with Roseanne (Redgrave) telling her story to psychiatrist Dr. Grene (a thoughtfully appealing Eric Bana) and a sympathetic nurse (Lynch). Veering wildly between flash backs and Roseanne’s more contemporary narrative (including her diary, written into a bible), does not help the creation of a dramatic arc: it creates an episodic structure, which not only reduces the emotional impact but also skips over vital clues that muddle and fail to serve what could have been a spectacular denouement.

Whilst Mara, Redgrave and Bana are brilliantly believable, overcoming the shortcoming of Sheridan (both as director and co-writer), the rest of the ensemble is reduced to clichéd cardboard figures despite best efforts from Aidan Turner, Jack Reynor and a mesmerising Theo James as Father Gaunt. But ultimately it is the clumsily-handled finale that robs the film of the glory of its early scenes. Leviathan DoP Mikhail Krichman’s sumptuous camerawork and set pieces of the Irish countryside and interiors are really stunning in conjuring up the romantic past, and the miserably grim atmosphere in the hospital. But Jim Sheridan wastes all this for a sentimental TV melodrama retelling a story which has been told in a much better ways since the original true events. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 19 MAY 2017 NATIONWIDE

Lost in Lebanon (2016)

Dir.: Georgia Scott, Sophia Scott; Documentary; USA(?) 2016, 78 min.

Siblings, directors, producers Georgia (who also edits) and Sophia Scott (DoP) have created a very personal but convincing portrait of Syrian emigrants in Lebanon, very much in line with their debut doc The Shadow of War. Fleeing a country where 400 000 died and 13 million are displaced, the 1.5 million Syrians living in Lebanon face a uncertain future: over 600 000 of them have lost their legal status to remain there.

We meet Sheikh Abdo, a community leader in exile, who has helped the new arrivals to access medicines. This settlement of refugees, now proud owners of self constructed huts, is about five km away from the border to their homeland. They can hear the bombing and shelling, it has become a cure against homesickness – but not an ideal one. Abdo has even provided a school for nearly 70 families. Nemr, a student who left in 2012m helps in the Kindergarten, is clear about his task: “We want to educate scientists, not terrorists”. He is adamant that children should grow up without weapons – but the reality, at least in Syria, makes this wishful thinking. Pictures of his family in Syria still keep him company, but he admits: “I would return home, but I would be a killer or a victim”. Mwafak, in his twenties, an artist who lives in the capital Beirut, gives children lessons in painting; they sing anti-war songs, but want to return to Syria. When he takes the children on a bus, they get suspicious looks: They think we are all ISIS”, says Mwafak. At least, he succeeded in smuggling his 16year old brother into Syria.

Sheikh Abdo’s wife is expecting her second baby, “but the real joy is gone” says the father, who has been arrested several times. The Lebanese authorities are clamping down on Syrian immigrants: Abdo tells us how difficult it is to get official birth certificates for newly born Syrian babies: 70% of them have no birth certificates, which means that they will be classified as Stateless when they grow up. “All of them will know never anything about life in Syria”.  The most harrowing moment is filmed in Shatila, the camp where Palestinians emigrants were slaughtered in 1982 by Lebanese Falange soldiers. Reema, an aid worker, and herself a refuge from Syria, walks along the main street of the camp and a woman accompanying her describes the horror: “the bodies lay on the street, from one end to the other”.

In avoiding any direct political blame, the directors manage to achieve a clarity that is second to none: we simply are confronted with the human plight and suffering. As one survivor says: “We would be willing to drown, just to live as humans”. But the reality is that these Syrians, despite risking their lives to get here, will be soon very unwelcome in Lebanon. AS

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | LONDON W1

Tomcat (2016)

Dir: Handl Klaus | Cast: Kater Moses, Lukas Turtur, Philipp Hochmair, Sebastian Loschberger | Drama | Austria | 123min

Klaus Handl is an Austrian filmmaker known for his Locarno prize-winning debut March. His second feature – Berlinale Teddy winner TOMCAT – is a finely crafted piece that pictures the soigné existence of two loved up classical musicians and their handsome tomcat Moses. The trio enjoy a peaceful existence in a leafy upmarket suburb of Vienna and they are not wafting around naked petting each others’ penises and plucking their home grown plums, the couple a enjoy a varied social life and regularly have great sex that sometimes includes their timid clarinetist friend Andreas (Philipp Hochmair).

But Moses isn’t so sociable and their domestic harmony is ruptured one night when the cat gets involved in a territorial scrap and comes off the worse for wear. Stroking him the following morning, Moses snaps back at Stefan, who breaks the poor cat’s neck in retaliation. Life will never be the same again. But this tragedy comes as a distinct relief after over thirty minutes of rather twee domestic bliss now ruptured by a welcome undercurrent of conjugal conflict. While Stefan sobs emotionally in the bedroom, Andreas descends into a deep sulk as the pair engage tight-lipped – and now fully clothed – in a peevish passive aggressive bout of soul-searching. Also gone is the mincing classical music score and we’re left with brooding silence. Then the violence starts with a short sharp cat fight initiated by aggrieved and angry Andreas. Enter screechy violins and more tight-lipped bottom clenching silence and an angst ridden outbreak of tears from Stephan after a football match, where he is soothed and pacified by another male player.

Clearly nothing in this Garden of Eden will ever be as it was and the narrative unravels in a prolonged bout of Andreas sulking petulantly and Stefan trying to appease him until an accident in the plum tree, once again shifts the status quo. What starts out as an enticing Austrian arthouse drama ultimately offers little more than narrative torpor for the remaining hour, as TOMCAT pussyfoots around some resonant relationship issues, instead of  bringing something real and resonant to the party. Although pristinely crafted and earnestly performed by Hochmair and Turner, ultimately TOMCAT is just another mediocre domestic drama. MT

OUT ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 12 MAY 2017

Redoutable (2017)

Dir: Michel Hazanavicious | Cast: Louis Garrel, Stacy Martin, Berenice Bejo, Micha Lescot, Gregory Gadebois, Felix Kysel | French | Biopic Drama

Agnes Varda showed us the borish side of Jean-Luc Godard in her Cannes film Visages, Villages and in REDOUTABLE, his Palme d’Or 2017 hopeful, Michel Hazanavicius shed light on the narcissistic introvert he eventually became in the late 60s, away from the bright lights and adoration of the French film industry that made him a legend.

Played here with sardonic insouciance by a balding Louis Garrel, this is an enjoyable biopic that sees Godard withdraw from society to experiment with radical filmmaking and political activism. Refusing to except that his big time was over – he is seen reliquishing control of Wind from the East, a notion that might prove controversial to some viewers. Also he has started to resent his wife Anne Wiazemsky (played by Stacy Martin) on whose memoirs the film is based, she is spending less time with him and away on location – but the pair still generate a pleasurable chemistry. And although his career and marriage are clearly unravelling, Anne still seems an important part of his life.

Naturally the film was going to be a pastiche – this was Godard’s raison d’etre and fittingly Hazanavicious makes extensive use of Godard’s visual and stylistic gimmicks and the famous intertitles in his film’s primary-coloured 60s aesthetic. The famous dark glasses are there, even if he continually breaks them. Godard himself is naturally not keen on REDOUTABLE which makes him out to be a ‘has been’ when clearly he feels he is still a happening director, capturing his audience’s imagination to this day.

There’s plenty of action and debate in REDOUTABLE but strangely played down are the riots of 1968 which affected that year’s Cannes film festival, and seem to be particularly relevant at this time. An interesting watch for his fanbase and the arthouse crowd , but not possibly one for mainstream audiences. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 MAY 2018

 

 

 

Frantz (2016)

Director: François Ozon

Cast: Paula Beer, Pierre Niney, Ernst Stoetzner, Marie Gruber, Johann von Buelow, Anton von Lucke, Cyrielle Clair, Alice de Lenquesaing

Drama | France | 112min

With the theme of guilt firmly at the forefront, François Ozon takes his inspiration from Ernst Lubitsch’s ‘Broken Lullaby,’ in his first black and white film – a gloriously imagined postwar drama that flips fluidly from French to German.

The First World War changed everything – not only from a political point of view but also from a societal one. European countries were left reeling from the devastation but Ozon focuses here on the bitterness and remorse ordinary people felt at losing their dear ones to the war effort and the enemy, both from the German and French perspective.

After a lightweight dramady The New Girlfriend, Ozon is back on form with this lusciously filmed magnificently mounted masterpiece that takes place in the immediate aftermath to the Great War in a small village in rural Saxony (with echoes of Haneke’s The White Ribbon) and slowly builds to a powerful bodyblow in its emotive final scenes set in Paris and provincial France before returned to Germany. Basing his premise on a series of blatant lies, albeit white ones, the inventive French filmmaker tells a story of guilt and loss – where a young man (Pierre Niney plays Adrien) is driven to protect an old couple (the Hoffmeisters) and their daughter-in-law Anna (Paula Beer), in order to assuage his own actions in the trenches of Verdun, where Anna lost her lover in the slaughter that wiped out thousands and divided Europe in a way that many of our own relatives can still remember (beware Brexit!).

Paula Beer radiates a tragic sadness here as the complex heroine who gradually falls for Pierre Ninney’s fragile yet hopelessly handsome French soldier who manages to conceal his secret for most of the film, spinning her tortuously into a spiral of mixed emotions ranging from longing to anger, hatred and gradually, love and acceptance.

Ozon’s cinematographer Pascal Marti crafts velvety images 35mm in black-and-white. His regular composer Philippe Rombi crafts a atmospheric soundtrack of orchestral splendour that seems to continually presage doom in judiciously chosen moments, and there is an enchanting scene in Adrien’s family chateau where an impromptu piano and violin recital takes place between Anna, Adrien and Fanny (du Lenquesaing). Ozon’s theme of art as a potential healer and inspirer once again appears with Manet’s painting Le Suicide representing a potent motif. This is an accomplished and immersive period drama that will resonate with arthouse audiences and is certainly Ozon’s most mature and accomplished film so far. MT

NOW OUT ON RELEASE FROM 12 MAY 2017 at selected arthouse cinemas including CURZON | BEST EMERGING ACTOR SOPHIE BEER | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016

 

Jawbone (2017)

Dir.: Thomas Q. Napper | Cast: Johnny Harris, Ray Winstone, Michael Smiley, Ian McShane | UK | Drama | 91 min.

First time director Thomas Q. Napper conjures up a bleak and shadowy portrait of a homeless, alcoholic boxer who has seen better days and retreats to the glory days of his old boxing club in Union Street near Waterloo Station. But the journey into the past confronts him with his lost opportunities and few alternatives for the future.

Jimmy McCabe (Harris, also writer and co-producer), has been evicted from the council flat where he grew up; the whole estate is being raised to the ground. Losing this final connection with his mother, who died a year ago, he runs berserk in a council office, protesting violently, attacking police officers and spending the night in jail. He turns for help to William Carney (Winstone) and Eddie (Smiley), who now run the club where McCabe’s career started so successfully. Carney, who is on his last legs, does not want to hear any hard-luck-stories from Jimmy: “I have heard them all”, but reminds him that alcohol is a taboo in the club, where young boys and teenagers try to channel their isolation and violence into something constructive in the ring. Eddie, who is very close to Carney, has no patience with McCabe, who is sluggish in training and full of self-pity. When McCabe meets the shady promoter Joe Padgett (McShane), he agrees to a non-licensed fight ”up north”, where he will meet a stronger and much younger opponent. Padgett is open about McCabe roles in the fight: for two and a half thousand GBP (plus 500 extra if he unexpectedly wins), Jimmy is the scapegoat. “People love seeing this guy hurting his opponents, and they pay good money for it” is Padgett’s take on the forthcoming fight.

This is a grim and hapless British Noir that calls to mind John Huston’s classic Fat City (1972). Napper holds out little hope for the future but creates a blistering portrait of alienation in a desolate journey through this corner of South-East London, which has not changed much since the ’60s. The timeless settings and authentic characters enhance the quality of JAWBONE, overcoming the limits of the boxing genre, and establishing a noirish scenario, in which the anti-hero is trapped. Like John Huston’s Fat City, the ageing ex-champ is very much the victim of greedy promoters as well as his own inability to come to terms with life without alcohol abuse. But there is more: After Padgett had warned Jimmy about the odds against him in the ring, we see the crowd response: there is an alliance between the sadistic prize-fighter and his supporting audience – as long as he is winning against Jimmy. But this support turns into hatred against McCabe. When he leaves the ring as a winner, he has spoiled their evening, they had came for his blood. Napper taps into the rather shameful audience that watches endless hours of Reality-TV, to see others humiliated. This morose world is hauntingly evoked by DoP Tat Radcliffe (Pride), creating a world of half-shadows, in which the sun never shines. Artificial lights of all kinds, just give Jimmy a moment’s respite, but he can only hide for so long. Worse still, the two protagonists socially inclined to help others, are the dying Carney, and Eddie, who is the same age. One does not want to imagine a world without them – as Jimmy put it to Eddie: “I am not like the two of you, helping others, I can’t even help myself”. JAWBONE is a ballad of doom, atmospherically brilliant, a dark poetic realism for a time of utter disenchantment. AS

OUT ON 12 MAY 2017 NATIONWIDE

Burden (2017)

Dir: Directors: Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey | 89min | Biopic Doc | US

Often known as the Evil Knevil of performance art, the charismatic sculptor Chris Burden emerges as the ultimate control freak in this entertaining documentary by co-directers Dewey and Marrinan that will interest art-lovers and cineastes alike. Burden burst on to the art scene in early 1970s California and seemed to derive most of his satisfaction from the dynamic behaviour (and often angst) provoked by his outlandish ‘pieces’ which often involved violence and danger – mostly to himself, although he did once pull a dagger in a TV interview “for the sake of art”.

Rejecting the Evil Knevil tag, claiming he was certainly not a trickster, Burden was interested in creating art that couldn’t be bought or sold thereby gaining control of his own work as a reaction to the inflated art scene of the 1970s. Chris Burden died in 2015 just five days before the opening of his final peaceful  ‘Ode to Santos Dumont’ a motorised illuminated balloon, he is probably best remembered for having a friend graze his arm with a rifle, in the name of art, although when asked about the piece he states “the public still talk about ‘Shoot’. It’s like a very old girlfriend – you remember but you don’t think about  every day”.  ‘Making ‘Shoot’ turned out to be dangerously thrilling but also involved the Police – as a matter of procedure – but this did not put an end to Burden’s daredevil creative antics – for other installations he had himself nailed semi-naked to a Volkswagen and covered by a tarpaulin as he lay on the roadside tarmac by a Saab – again the Police attended the scene.

The youngest of three kids Burden enjoyed a cultured and peripatetic childhood mostly in Europe where his father was a big cheese at MIT; Burden himself later went on to be a professor at UCLA. Thoughtful and quietly spoken, he clearly possessed a rich inner life and was fascinated by the energy generated  around creating a piece, but this energy often caused great pain to himself and those involved and after his first marriage broke down – after an affair confessed publicly during one of his performances pieces –  Burden experienced a phase of down-spiralling depression that caused his work to become even more dangerous and obsessed by guns and firearms. In one piece, Burden was bolted to the floor near two electrically-wired buckets of water; his survival depended on the buckets not being kicked over by visitors.

Burden had his critics: Brian Sewell essentially called his work “rubbish” and Roger Ebert said: “If this is Art, it’s World War II”. But Burden was always quick to point out that he was driven to minimalism in order to expose essential meaning in his art. In his sculpture ‘Urban Light’, which is now the most photographed site in LA alongside the ‘Hollywood’ sign, street lamps have been honed to the highest degree of uniformity (by sandblasting) in order that they are absorbed and dominated by the essential idea of the piece. This is most effective when experienced at night.

His last years were spent seemingly at peace with himself creating immense artworks in his estate in Topanga Canyon, where his carefully curated team transform collected stray objects into works of art and his very satisfying sculpture cum model Metropolis II, an immense microcosm of the city of LA city, complete with toy cars. Burden ended his days a contemplative soul happy in the company of his dogs and his objets in the California countryside. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5 MAY 2017 COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

 

 

Mindhorn (2016)

Dir: Sean Foley | Cast: Julian Barratt, Steve Coogan, Russell Tovey, Andrea Riseborough, Simon Callow, Harriet Walter, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Farnaby, David Schofield | UK | Comedy | 89min

If you liked Alan Partridge or Alpha Papa then MINDHORN will appeal. Washing over you like a cloud of laughing gas there are scenes are so hilarious it’s impossible to remain dignified, others so cringingly embarrassing you will never wear lycra again – let alone tight jeans. Some of it’s self-indulgent and some of it’s just mind-boggling grotesque, but there’s a poignancy too that touches on emotional frailty and the pangs of regret that often surface as we stare back at photos of the past.

MINDHORN is the first feature of TV veteran Sean Foley who has a keen sense of comedy, assembling a accomplished cast of Andrea Riseborough, Kenneth Branagh, Steve Coogan and Simon Callow in his big screen debut. Some of the humour has echoes of TV hits such as John Morton’s Twenty Twelve. It will certainly put you off organising that trip to the Isle of Man – if you were toying with the idea. Seemingly stuck in the Seventies, the island is portrayed as a misty, rain-soaked backwater full of twee tearooms, mildewed caravans, ghastly Civic concrete buildings and mock Georgian manors the English seem unable to escape from. Into this retro retreat steps Julian Barratt as Richard Thorncroft, a pot-bellyed actor who’s lost his touch but not his self-belief (or his skin tight polo-neck and ‘slacks’. He’s joined by his nemesis Simon Farnaby who co-wrote the script and appears as Clive Parnevik, also consigned to scrap heap, a raddled has-been who never really was anything but a stuntman of dodgy origins. A loose narrative gives our comic heroes a vehicle to entertain us with their witty one-liners in the worse possible taste. Barratt’s comic timing in the Police Custody room scene is one of the funniest things you’ll see this year.

Thorncroft is helping the Police with their hunt for a killer called the Kestrel (Russell Tovey) who slips in and out of their grasp. The Kestrel has a mental age of nine and is a keen fan of Mindhorn, believing his to be a real detective. Thorncroft also bumps into his ex love Patricia Deville (Essie Davis) who’s now a ‘serious’ journalist since he walked out on her years before. A man of strong passions and even stronger rivalries he’s also made some enemies, insulting almost everyone on the Isle of Man, including Steve Coogan’s medallion man country club owner Peter Eastman who, from a bit part in ‘Mindhorn’, has spawned a more successful series called Windjammer, and has also been involved with Patricia (now married to Parnevik). Foley’s well-filmed comedy is all extremely silly and outlandishly gross for its sleek running time of 89 minutes. You’ll either be bewildered by the awfulness of it all, or laughing your head off in disbelief. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5 MAY 2017

SCREENING PART OF THE BFI’s LOCO FIOM FESTIVAL 4-7 MAY 2017

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2016)

Dir.: Matt Tyrnauer; Documentary; USA 2016, 92 min.

Director/producer Matt Tyrnauer (Valentino: The Last Emperor) has created the model documentary: his portrait of city planning and environmental activist, author and journalist Janet Jacobs (1917-2006) and her fight against the might of New York City’s political bureaucracy, spearheaded by ‘Planning Czar’ Robert Moses (1888-1981), unfurls like a thriller. It examines the consequences of failed urban planning and how it  impacts on lives all over the World.

Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford led the New Urban Movement in the 1960, pioneering the fight against modern planners and architects, not only in the built environment, but also as a theorist: her ground breaking book, The Death and the Life of Great American Cities (Random House,1961), was a battle cry to repudiate the destruction of urban centres, where under the slogan of “Slum clearance” whole neighbourhoods were destroyed. Jacobs, journalist and researcher, had first hand experience of this fight, before writing her book – which was belittled by the male-dominated architectural world, with critics describing it as “housewife’s remedies”.

In the mid-fifties Robert Moses proposed the demolition of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, to build the Lower Manhattan Express Way (LOMEX). Moses, who at one time held twelve titles simultaneously, among them NYC Parks Commissioner and Chairman of Long Island Park Commission, was never elected but appointed as a result of political patronage, mostly by successive NYC mayors. Jacobs had lived with her family in Greenwich Village and had seen the disastrous results of the super-highways of the Cross Bronx Expressway and Brooklyn Queens Express Way; the former destroyed large parts of ‘Little Italy’. The original ‘battle’ against the building of LOMEX was won in 1958 – due to the support of Eleanor Roosevelt and other politicians and celebrities – but Moses did not give up. During the 1960 he attempted thrice to resurrect his plan. At a public hearing in 1968, when it looked like the State Authorities would give in to the “Master Builder”, Jacobs collected the records of the hearing, which had fallen out of the stenographer’s machine. “No record, no LOMEX “ she exclaimed. Jacobs was arrested by a plain-clothes policeman, and charged with three felonies. She moved to Toronto the same year and continued her planning battles and campaigned until the charges were reduced to misdemeanours.

LOMEX was never built, and Moses’ influence waned, although the automobile was always considered more important than the inhabitants of the city. Public transport was neglected: the huge, costly Express Way schemes were built, but public subway and EL travel was neglected. Moses’ final disgrace was his (abandoned) plan, to demolish a playground in Central Park, to make space for a parking lot for an expensive restaurant.

We witness the demolition of so many high rise blocks in urban centres of the USA in the late 90s, which had become much more un-inhabitable than the ‘slums’ they replaced, we watch the same type of high rise blocks being built in India and China: “Moses on steroids, building the slums of tomorrow today”.
CITIZEN JANE is a near perfect piece of history, the struggle for control over the way we live, and the story of an intelligent and brave woman, who took on the male establishment at time when few dared. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 29 APRIL 2017

Resilience (2016)

Dir.: James Redford | Documentary | USA 2016 | 60 min.

First time director James Redford – son of Robert – charters the development of the movement based on the work by Dr. Vincente Filetti and Dr. Robert Anda, developing a public mental health campaign nationwide in the USA that focused on what they discovered in their research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE).

The original research revealed worrying results about adults who were later diagnosed with severe physical illnesses such as cancer and cardio-vascular disease. It emerges that over a quarter of these came from homes where substance abuse was common; maternal physical abuse and sexual abuse also came to light.

Based on this research on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Dr. Jack Shoncoff founded The Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University and named this syndrome ‘Toxic Stress’. This is a condition that arises from the constant presence of adrenaline in the bloodstream that leads to adrenal overload. Over a long time period the condition damages neurons and increases the risk of major illness, affecting the immune system and lowering life expectancy by up to twenty years. In a world where adults violent and abusing adults children are losing the capacity to help and heal themselves.

Redford’s approach is naïve, to say the least. He ignores various social categories in a study that appears to disregard class, income and education. Episodic in structure the documentary feels incohesive with too many Talking Heads, and a lack of critical distance from the subject matter. Sure, there is enough information here but the films fails to convey it in an engaging or entertaining manner. Redford needs to go back to the drawing board. AS

RESILIENCE a new film Directed by James Redford will have a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema on 27th April followed by a Q&A with James Redford, Dr Graham Music and the Children’s Commissioner

Lady MacBeth (2016)

Dir: William Oldroyd | Cast: Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbank, cosmos Jarvis, Bill Fellows, Naomi Ackie | drama | 89min | UK

British director William Oldroyd transports Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk to the wilds of 19th century Northumberland in his standout Gothic horror debut, served with a dash of noirish melodrama.

How male authors love to punish their female heroines, particularly the attractive ones. The main character in Leskov’s 1865 novella follows a long line of leading ladies such as Madame Bovary, Therese Raquin and Therese Desqueyroux. And Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned particularly when she is a young wife married to an impotent middle-aged psycho who comes (not) and goes of his own accord, leaving her locked in a stone mansion. Oldroyd adds modern flavour to the brew with a feminist, racial and gender subtext but the narrative retains a distinct whiff of Victorian starchiness from the tight bodices to the gracefully austere set design. We first meet Katherine (played by Florence Pugh) as a nervous teenage bride joining the household of Alexander (Paul Hilton) a wealthy but dysfunctional mining boss with brutish manners and a bedside manner to startle Jack the Ripper.

His lack of bedroom skills and frequent absences leave her craving companionship, sharing the house with her timid housemaid Anna (Naomi Ackie) and tight-lipped father-in-law Boris (Christopher Fairbank). But cocky stable groom Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) soon steps in to warm her wintery solitude and eventually the two find themselves locked in lust unable to keep their love a secret from the household staff and Alexander himself. Murder and mayhem ensue in the devilish denouement.

Performances here are astonishing particularly from Pugh in her first major role, mastering a decent Northumberland accent and a minxy sparkle in her eye to boot. While Oldroyd and screenwriter Alice Birch stay true to the pages of the original, the finale is more in line with Polanski than Leskov intended.

Shot on a tight budget but none the worse for it, Lady Macbeth was made for under £500,000 as part of a regional film-funding programme supported by BBC Films and the British Film Institute. Sometimes the film feels claustrophobic trapped in its country house setting and Lady Macbeth makes a pretty swift descent into Hell given the scant running time of 89 minutes. That said, this is an enjoyably gruesome romp that remains top drawer (particularly in the dress and lingerie department) and true to its literary pretensions never sinking into tawdriness as it unleashes a gripping tale of male oppression and female fury in a remarkable debut. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 25 APRIL 2017

 

 

The War Show (2016)

Dir.: Andreas Dalsgaard, Obaidah Zytoon l Doc l Denmark, Finland, Syria  l 100 min.

Writers/directors Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon have created a very private diary of the Syrian war, which has so far cost 400 000 lives and displacement of 11 million citizens. The emergence of Isis brought the Superpowers into the conflict, but after five years of fighting, no end is in sight.

When the Arab Spring reached Syria, radio DJ Obaidah Zytoon picked up her video camera and started filming what would become one of the bloodiest conflicts of the region. THE WAR SHOW is first and foremost the director’s personal diary, along with her friends: the poet Hisham (who was madly in love with law student Lulu); drummer Rabea Amal, an activist; dental student Argha and Houssain, who studied architecture at the outbreak of the war. Three of them would lose their lives, the rest would end up in European exile.

Told in seven chapters (Revolution, Suppression, Resistance, Siege, Memories, Frontlines and Extremism) and an epilogue, this war diary starts, like any student film, in the Sixties: the participants wanted fun, fewer restrictions and the abolishment of a dictatorship. But the dream of freedom turned very quickly into a horror show, because the Assad regime fought against their own population, using starvation as a weapon.

Zytoon’s group followed the war to her hometown of Zabadani, where the killings multiplied and the viciousness of the conflict increased: the tone of the video changes dramatically, the “playing” at having a revolution had become deadly serious. When the group reaches Homs, the capital of the uprising, Zytoon films wounded and dead children – it all became too much, “it pierced by spirit”. Later in 2012, Rabea was found shot dead in his car, Hisham was kidnapped by the security forces, Argha arrested and Houssain tortured to death in a police station.

In Zabadani, Zytoon’s Syrian odyssey finally comes to an end: confronted by Islam Caliphate forces, the forerunner of Isis, she is forced to flee: the Muslim soldiers refuse to be filmed by a woman, shouting “send us a man if you want pictures”. In the epilogue filmed in Istanbul, Zytoon consoles Lulu, who has found images of the murdered Hisham. Amal survives in Istanbul, and miraculously, Argha reaches the Turkish capital, after being released from prison.

Whilst unstructured and often suffering from the – obvious – production difficulties, THE WAR SHOW is a convincing example of cinema verite, shot directly from the heart. It is the story of a great tragedy, filmed from the perspective of a plucky, but in the end, helpless and defeated young woman, who lost her youth and many of her friends in an unwinnable conflict. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 12 MAY AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | SCREENING DURING IDFA AMSTERDAM 16-27 November 2016 | VENICE DAYS AWARD WINNER 2016

Seed: The Untold Story (2016)

Dir.: Jon Betz, Taggart Siegel; Documentary; USA 2016, 94 min.

The past 50 years has not only seen the emergence of genetically modified crops, but also the disappearance of 94 percent of plant seed varieties of common vegetables. In their rather dry but informative eco documentary Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel meet up with the organic farmers, who have tried to reverse the trend of the last half century and save the final 6 percent.

The wider the variety available, the greater chance there is of survival should disease or virus strike a particular plant or vegetable. Just as there are animal conservationists so there are plant conservationists and defendersof organic purity such as Bill Bonsall of the ‘Scatterseed’ project, a bearded hippy, who sees himself as a re-incarnation of Noah. Bill is eager to save all the seeds he can lay his hands on. He hopes, that in the event of a fire, he would first try to save his family, but is convinced, that he would look after his beloved seed collection first.

A visit to ‘Svalbard’ the famous ‘Frozen Garden of Eden’ in Norway, is followed by an excursion to Navdanya in India, where the co-founder of the seed project, Vandana Shiva, compares their work with Ghandi’s struggle. Also interviewed is Joe Simox, who travels the whole planet in search for new seeds, because “the whole planet is unhinged”. On the Hawaiian’ island of Kanai, the bio-tech company Dow is fought by the community, for trying to introduce genetically modified crops; and Monsanto, another company accused of using pesticides for their crops, is taken to court all over the USA.

There are original shots of seeds, spring to light suddenly in time lapse sequences, the eeriness of some of the huge seed banks evoke a rather other-worldliness of the whole process. But we should not be fooled by the of bizarre defenders of organic purity: modern laboratories might come up with new cures for different strains of cancer all the time, but herbal food and remedies helped the developing Homo Sapiens to survive ice, plagues and floods. AS

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | Curzon Bloomsbury London

The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017)

Dir: Niki Caro | Screenwriter: Angela Workman (based on the book by Diane Ackerman | Cast: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Bruhl, Timothy Radford, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas, Michael McElhatton, Vad Maloku | 127min | Drama

The most poignant aspect of THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE is the non-human story. But sadly the animals concerned are not the main focus in this Holocaust tale about a woman who sheltered Jews in her Zoo in Warsaw. Niki Caro’s drama is a variation on the The Diary of Anne Frank with exotic beasts thrown in – and this time getting the short straw – most of them being slaughtered by the Germans during bomb raids over the Polish city. The commendable but controlled drama film is also a showcase for Jessica Chastain’s talents as Antonina a gentle Polish woman whose guile and courage helped save a group of Jews who were banished to the Warsaw ghetto towards the end of the Second World War and escaped with their lives.

THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE faces stiff competition with Polanski’s Warsaw epic The Pianist and Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness, where a Polish World War Hero, Leopold Socha, hid a group of Jews. But the human element here is far less memorable than the story of the Zoo. Antonina Zabinska and her husband Jan , sheltered 300 Polish Jews at the Warsaw Zoo during World War II. The story opens cosily in the balmy summer of 1939 with Chastain waking her son and two lion cubs that share the family home. Her husband is a Prof and together they’ve nurtured the Zoo and its impressive menagerie of animals and are now basking in the afterglow of their hard work, blessed with a young son Ryszard (Timothy Radford) and an active sex life. The characterisation is all rather predictable. Prof is a masculine protector (The Broken Circle Breakdown‘s Johan Heldenbergh, Chastain as Antonina exudes feminine wholesomeness from her bouncy curls to her curvaceous figure and rocks a rather good Polish accent. Then it all goes pear-shaped when Germany invades Poland. The Nazis are nasty and shouty and their commandant Lutz Heck (Daniel Bruhl)- who we first meet as a German zoologist from Berlin Zoo – rapidly turns callous at the outbreak of hostilities informing the couple that their Zoo is to be ‘liquidated’. The animals are then mostly shot or slaughtered – one of the worst scenes involves the shooting of an elephant and a prize golden eagle who Bruhl orders to be ‘stuffed and mounted’. It later appears in his private office as he announces his plans for a selective breeding programme. At this point Antonina uses her feminine wiles to persuade Heck to run their Zoo as a pig farm providing fodder for German soldiers. The pigs will be fed vegetable waste that Jan will collect daily from the Ghetto. But the two plan to secrete Jews onto his truck, hiding them under the litter.

Although awful things happen to the Jewish hostages here we remain mostly unaffected by their plight largely due to a lack of complexity. The underwritten characters are like cyphers so we fail to feel their pain – or their joy and Antonina and Jan Zabinski – despite their bravery – emerge as martyred victims rather than shining heroes. Adapting Diane Ackerman’s best-selling book, Caro and screenwriter Angela Workman portray their protagonists as endlessly virtuous saviours and the enemy as vicious and venal. The only flicker of naughtiness comes when Antonina willingly submits herself to Heck’s blandishments- to save her husband, Jewish friends and cherished Zoo.

As Holocaust film go this is a safe bet, yet also a unexpected tear-jerker. It has cuddly bunny scenes (where the CGI is barely distinguishable) and cuddly conjugal scenes showing how men very much had the traditional upper hand in wartime. DoP Andrij Parekh camerawork is skilful and Daniel Bruhl breaks out of his usual buttoned-up roles in a scene of surprising passion which adds to his repertoire and his allure. The most disappointing aspect here is tragically the human story. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 21 APRIL 2017

 

7th London Spanish Film Festival |21-23 April 2017

The 7TH LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL SPRING WEEKEND 

London Spanish film festival is back again for a Spring weekend celebrating the latest in independent Spanish cinema.

kiki-el-amor-se-hace-slideKIKI, EL AMOR SE HACE | Kiki, Love to Love

dir. Paco León, with Natalia de Molina, Álex García, Paco León, Candela Peña, Alexandra Jiménez | Spain | 2016 | 102 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Paco León (Carmina and Carmina y Amén), returns with another comedy, a remake of Josh Lawson’s 2014 feature A Funny Kind of Love, interweaving five stories riffing on the fetishes and frustrations of his well-drawn and amusing characters. Working with an excellent cast León retains the tension throughout in this light-hearted satire that explores and the do’s and don’ts of Sex.

Friday 21 April | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

Saturday 22 April | 8.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster Students, £8 | Regent Street Cinema

image001JOTA DE SAURA | Beyond Flamenco

dir. Carlos Saura, with Ara Malikian, Sara Baras, Carlos Núñez, Carmen París | Spain | 2016 | 90 mins | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Visually stunning, Jota de Saura captures the vivacity and charm of the jota, a traditional Spanish dance often accompanied by the use of castanets, from Saura’s birthplace of Aragon. Music and dance has always played an important role throughout his extensive repertoire, and here he takes us from dance classes to studios where illuminated screens with his own paintings provide a magic backdrop to the dancers performances. This a wonderful trip to the world of the jota and its many variations that works towards safeguarding a very special tradition.

sat 22 apr | 4.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

image002 LA PUNTA DEL ICEBERG  | The Tip of the Iceberg

dir. David Cánovas, with Maribel Verdú, Carmelo Gómez, Álex García, Bárbara Goenaga, Fernando Cayo | Spain | 2016 | 91 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Cánovas’ debut feature is a stylish satirical thriller that examines how  surveillance cameras recording every moment of our working lives as employees runs contrary to the equally omnipresent data protection culture. Maribel Verdú plays the central character investigating a series of suicides in a large corporation.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

sat 22 apr | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LA CORONA PARTIDA | The Broken Crown

dir. Jordi Frades, with Irene Escolar, José Coronado, Michelle Jenner, Raúl Mérida, Eusebio Poncela, Rodolfo Sancheo | Spain | 2016 | 113 mins | cert. PG | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

Following the death of his wife Isabella, Ferdinand of Aragon (known collectively as the Catholic Kings) goes to war with his son-in-law Philip, over the kingdom of Castille, which has fallen into the hands of Ferdinand’s daughter Joan. The Broken Crown brings in a new perspective to this episode of 16 century Spanish history by focusing on the unscrupulous lust for power of two men and the fragility of a woman who never wanted to be Queen and who was devastated when betrayed by her husband and her own father.

sun 23 apr | 5.00pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LAS FURIAS | The Furies

dir. Miguel del Arco, with Carmen Machi, Alberto San Juan, Emma Suárez, Mercedes Sampietro, José Sacristán | Spain | 2016 | 125 mins | cert. 15 | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK première

70-something Marga faces an unexpected backlash from her children when she announces her intention to sell the family house and travel the world. Miguel de Arco, one of Spain’s most popular theatre directors, casts a solid Spanish ensemble in his first feature film, a family tale full of big egos and surprising twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

sun 23 apr | 8.00pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

London Spanish Film Festival | 21-23 April 2017 | Regent Street Cinema | Cine Lumiere.

 

 

Letters from Baghdad (2016)

Dir.: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum | Cast: Eric Lohscheider, Rachael Sterling, Andrew Havill and the voice of Tilda Swinton | USA/UK/France 2016, 95 min.

Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum convey the pioneering spirit of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), an archeologist, spy, political bureaucrat and explorer at a time were women simply did not feature in public life. Featuring Bell’s letters, mainly to her father, complemented by “comments” made by dignitaries like T.E. Lawrence – this structurally uneven documentary feels more authentic than Werner Herzog’s overwrought imagined drama Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman.

Gertrude Bell was bon in 1868 in the stately family home in County Durham. Her father, Sir Hugh Bell, was a wealthy landowner and industrialist and the two formed a close bond after Gertrude’s mother died giving birth to her brother. Even though Sir Hugh later re-married, and Gertrude got on well with Lady Florence Bell, she was closest to her for the rest of her life. At Oxford in 1886 she obtained a first in Modern History; one of the few subjects women were allowed to study. And later travelled to Tehran in Persia where her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was the British ambassador. In common with many British citizens of her class, she fell in love with the region and soon embarked on countless arduous expeditions around the Middle East. In 1909 she met T.E. Lawrence (Lohscheider) for the first time, their paths would cross again later, after the end of the Great War. Bell was doing “research” for the government, even before the Admiralty officially employed her. But her knowledge of the language and customs of the different tribes would serve them well during and after WWI.

The war itself became a personal tragedy for Bell, because her closest confidant, Major Charles Doughty-Wyllie, a married man, with whom she had an unconsummated affair, was killed at Gallipoli, with Bell hearing about his death in a restaurant in 1915. From now on, she would only live for her work. Vita-Sackville West (Sterling) comments on the lack of private fulfillment in Bell’s life – as far as we know, she only had one passionate love affair with Sir Frank Swattenham, which was short-lived. After the war, Bell was instrumental in drawing up the borders of the new state of Iraq, which would be ruled by Prince Feisul, the latter being very close to Bell. But Gertrude Bell was unhappy with the British Forces’ treatment of the locals: whole villages were punished because taxes had not been paid – even places of worship were destroyed. Bell wrote to her father “We are an immense failure. We wanted to set up a Arab government with British advisers, but we ended up with a British government with Arab advisers”. In another letter in 1921 she states her sorrow of “not having been home for Christmas for the last eight years”. In the same year she met T.E.Lawrence again, when she was working for Sir Perry Cox (Havill) at the Arab Bureau. But when Cox left in 1923, she was pushed aside by the Civil Service. Two years later, she visited her home in England for the last time, her family had fallen on hard times. Back in Baghdad, she helped to set up the Archeological Museum, which was opened a few weeks before her death from an overdose of sleeping pills in July of 1926.

Whilst the rich information about the life of this extraordinary woman is only too welcome – particularly after the superficial Herzog approach – perhaps a radio play would have not been a better way of telling this impressive story. Still, the newsreel clips and photos conjure up certain historical impressions. And it is particularly interesting to discover that Bell was not a friend of Standard Oil and other companies who exploited the region of Mesopotamia, the then British Mandate, where colonial rule would later cause even more havoc – until this very day. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 21 APRIL 2017

Bunch of Kunst (2016)

Dir: Christine Franz | with Andrew Fearn, Steve Underwood, Jason Williamson | Germany | Music Biopic | 106min

BUNCH OF KUNST accurately reflects the mindset of the Sleaford Mods, a couple of angry individuals who turn their feelings into sweary music. Whilst lacking the acerbic humour of Ian Dury, the Sex Pistols or The Clash the band gladdens the hearts of a fervent fan base with an axe to grind in modern Britain. They also stand out as a cry for help amid the saccharine hurling of so many of today’s British vocalists: at least the Mods are unaffectedly genuine in their vitriol, captured so candidly here by new German director Christine Franz.

There is clearly no animosity between the duo themselves who share a warm and mutually respectful friendship: writer Jason Williamson and computer ‘beat man’ Andrew Fearn call themselves “the voice of Britain” but continue a long tradition of fury that brings nothing particularly new to a party that’s been rocking on since the 1980s Punk era.

Franz follows the band from their genesis in a Nottingham bedroom to chart success – a journey that has taken two years and now sees them performing to fervent wide-eyed fans whose lives they seemingly reflect in livid lyrics. The long-forgotten towns and dreary backwaters epitomised by Morrissey are here again and chiming with a new generation of disenfranchised followers. Daniel Waldhecker visuals capture the heady waywardness of it all on stage and behind the scenes. This strong and evocative debut for Christine Franz will certainly delight fans. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 4 MAY 2017

Clash | Esthebak (2016)

Dir.: Mohamed Diab; Cast: Nelly Karim, Hany Adel, Mohamed El Sebaey, Ahmed Dash, Mai El Ghaity, Ahmed Abdel Hameed; Egypt/France 2016, 98 min.

CLASH is a visual tour-de-force that occasionally loses the big picture in exploring the aftermath of the Muslim Brotherhood’s surge to power after Mubarek’s reign in Egypt. The action is literally crammed into a police prison van, where supporters of the just deposed president Mohamed Morsi and the Army generals who toppled him, go on fighting their street battles in this confined area, often resembling a crowded boxing ring, with hysteria and chaos the ruling elements.

In 2011 the regime of president Hosni Mubarek was swept aside, and a year later, Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected as his successor. But by 2013, Morsi himself has been overthrown by an Army under the current president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. CLASH is set in the immediate aftermath of Morsi’s arrest, when his supporters still had a viable organisation to fight the new regime. Military police is unable to keep law and order, emotions are running high, and the MPs throw everyone suspect into the van, measuring eight square meters. First to go are the AP journalist Adam (Adel) and his photographer Zein (El Sebaey), who protest in vain their right to report and photograph the street fighting. But the mayhem escalates, and the MPs loose their cool, imprisoning right, left and centre, including their own supporters, who are celebrating Morsi’s overthrow. Nurse Nagwa (Karim) is the only one keeping a cool head, even though some men reject her help in the sweltering heat, not wanting to be touched by a woman. Nagwa’s teenage son Fares (Dash) is much more of a rabble-rouser, and joins the fray to the chagrin of his mother. A’isha (El Ghaity), an adolescent girl in a hijab, is very vociferous, but still cares for her elderly father who is suffering extremely from the heat. And there is even a good cop, Awad (Hameed), who tries to get as much water for the prisoners as possible. But it is impossible to cater for around 25 people, when the MPs also have to deal with the rioters outside who often outnumber them. The prison van is trying to get away from the riots, but in vain: soon it is questionable whether it’s safer inside or outside; particularly as laser beams are used by both rioting factions to unsettle the opponents, creating further havoc in the mobile prison.

DoP Ahmend Gabr (Asmaa) really conveys the escalating pandemonium, as fear takes over all sections in the van, and very soon engulfing the MPs too. The cast is equally admirable, the sheer force of their engagement is always visible. What is missing is a clear distinction between the factions: after all, people die, but we never learn the reasons for the overthrow of Morsi, nor do we get any insight in the ambivalent feelings of the demonstrators on both sides for each other: because only two years ago, the majority of them were fighting on the same side to do topple Mubarak. We only get a few dark hints, when Morsi supports talk about discipline in their own ranks, but apart from that, CLASH sometimes degenerates into a battle between two clans of football supporters, with petty and personal issues surging to the fore. But the bedlam we witness is symptomatic of the widespread internecine chaos that runs through Egyptian society – surely we deserve a more detailed explanation of. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 21 April 2017

 

God Knows Where I Am (2016) Prime Video

Dir.: Jedd Wider, Todd Wider; documentary with voice-over by Lori Singer; USA 2016, 97 min.

The directing debut of producers Jedd and Todd Wider, credited for many Alex Gibney documentaries, is a melancholic and visually stunning portrait of the life and death of Linda Bishop, whose decomposed body was found in an abandoned farmhouse in rural New Hampshire in May 2008.

Linda left two notebooks describing her final few months which are narrated by Lori Singer. Born in 1956, Linda was nature-loving and gentle, a joyful child and teenager – according to home videos. After the birth of her daughter Caitlin in 1985 and a subsequent divorce, Linda’s mental health deteriorated. She told friends she was being hunted down by the Chinese Mafia through her job in a local Chinese restaurant. Her sister Joan, and Caitlin talk at length about Linda inventing a male figure, a ‘knight in shining armour’ “who was going to save her”. This man was Keith, who was actually married and working in the same restaurant as Linda. Her diary states she had high hopes about him in the lonely cold winter in 2007/2008.

Linda had been in and out of residential psychiatric care for over a decade, her diagnosis was Paranoid Schizophrenia: A classification recently removed by the American Psychiatric Association, who eliminated all sub-types of Schizophrenia as a diagnostic tool, because “of their limited diagnostic stability, low reliance and poor validity”. But the failure of Linda’s doctors went much further than a muddled diagnosis: after Joan was named her guardian Linda repeatedly refused to take her medication over long periods of time, the hospital simply let her go. And a court, in a very short session, declared her sane enough to live on her own. Without notifying Joan, Linda was set free: in her notebooks she describes the elation of this freedom, and how she found the farmhouse in 393 Mountain Road.

The winter of 2007/8 was one of the harshest in history. Linda arrived in Autumn and collected apples from a nearby orchard. She lived on these apples and snow water until she died of starvation in January 2008. In her diary, she counts the remaining number of apples meticulously. But in her delirium, she also expects to be alternatively saved by the “Keith” figure, or killed by “domestic violence, because she cannot go to a home for battered women, as the ‘evil’ is everywhere.” In the end she turned to God, whom she asked to save her “I am trying, but I don’t know what to do”. And “It is so sad, that I am dying, when I have so much to look forward to”. Finally, she asks to be buried in the nearby cemetery, “where I have friends”.

DoP Gerardo Puglia shoots mainly on 35mm, and the depth of the film is apparent in these images: nature is shown as a refuge for Linda. The farmhouse where she took refuge was not a place of horror, but a sanctuary where she found a certain peace, particularly in the attic. Another sad story of how her family failed to be there for her, and a system that let her down. It did not help her to connect the two different parts of herself, as best described by her daughter Caitlin: “There was my mother, and there was Linda Bishop”. An elegiac swansong for a lost soul. AS

NOW ON Prime Video

 

The Transfiguration (2016)

Director/Writer: Michael O’Shea

Cast: Eric Ruffin, Chloe Levine, Aaron Clifton Moten

97min | Drama | US

Eric Ruffin (Nature Calls) plays a dark horse called Milo in Michael O’Shea’s pseudo vampire flick that premiered at Un Certain Regard Cannes side-bar last year. This low-budget indie follows the teenage African-American orphan in his freewheeling daily grind in a story that generates a palpable tension but never seems to know where it’s going.

Although O’Shea splatters his downbeat narrative with numerous vampire tropes in this impressive first feature that takes place in the backwaters and beaches of New York’s Rockaway Boulevard, the horror element is lowkey and is most distinguished by the atmosphere of alienation and loneliness generating in a desolate urban milieu.

Grieving Milo lives a solitary existence with his brother Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten) in a flat they once shared with their mother who appears, in flashbacks, to have commited suicide. Plagued by a crew of gangland heavies, who call him ‘the freak’ on account of his tiny stature, Milo strikes up a tentative friendship with a white girl called Sophie (Chloe Levine) who moves into his housing block but who we later see being abused by the gang in nearby grassy wasteland.

With his vacant stare, Milo strikes a melancholy figure tramping silently through the streets, clearly still traumatised by his mother’s death and withdrawing into himself while attempting to build an impenetrable poker-faced facade to the outside world. In his bedroom he watches youtube footage of animals being slaughtered and has also experimented with drinking the blood of solitary warefarers who approach him in the subway, although there is no rhyme or reason to these desultory and unprovoked attacks.

Although it feels as if Milo’s budding romantic relationship with Sophie is heading the same way as that of Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One, with roles reversed: the slightly older girl’s affection for him appears to act as a calmative influence on Milo and he soon backs off emotionally, freezing Sophie out of his life for her own salvation and ultimately his own tragic demise. THE TRANSFIGURATION eschews schlockiness to focus on building a potent sense of malevolent stillness ably assisted by a droning occasional electronic score composed by Margaret Chardiet. This is a promising debut from Michael O’Shea and his young cast but the dread of the enigmatic early scenes never really transmutes into anything meaningful. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) 12-22 MAY 2016 

We are the Flesh | Tenemos la Carne (2016)

Dir.: Emiliano Rocha Minter | Cast: Noe Hernandez, Maria Evoli, Diego Gamaliel, Gabino Rodriguez; Mexico/France 2016, 79min.

Director/writer Emiliano Rocha Minter has certainly learnt a great deal from producer Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light): his debut feature is a darkly subversive and enigmatic sexual tour-de-force with shades of Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room and even fellow Mexican Amat Escalante’s The Untamed. Teenage siblings Fauna (Evoli) and Lucio (Gamaliel) looking for a place to stay in post-apocalyptic Mexico City find refuge with the rather demonic Mariano (Hernandez), who lives in a derelict and dark cellar apartment. He offers them drinks laced with mind-enhances, and encourages them to build a womb-structure from wood and masking tape. Then, out of the blue, Mariano makes the siblings sleep which each other, much against Lucio’s. Watching and masturbating, Mariano suddenly dies. The intercourse awakens Fauna’s sexuality, but her brother wants nothing to do with it. Turned on by it all, Fauna has sex with Mariano’s body. Somehow, a Mexican soldier finds his way into the place and is killed by the siblings, to the tune of the National anthem of Mexico. But the main theme of the film is illicit sex and, Fauna soon finds a willing female  partner, passing her over to her brother and writhing in ecstasy whilst watching the two. As a grand finale, Minter serves up a phenomenal sex orgy, leaving us in no doubt that he is the Wilhelm Reich of filmmaking.

Shame then that this short version of the narrative fails to give Minter’s films the credit deserves, it is an illuminating exploration of sexuality serving as a coda to the nuclear family, which is finally destroyed by the chaos brought from the outside. There are echo’s of Bataille; and certainly Gaspar Noé, but Minter also captures a certain opaque quality which is very much his own style: the roving camera of DoP Yollitl Gomez Alvarado roams around 360 degrees finding new angles to explore the escalating sexual frenzy. Switching from almost colourless black and white to luminous primary colours, Minter develops a permanently changing environment where Fauna staggers wildly like a huntress in search of pray. Bach’s harpsichord concerto has never been heard in a less peaceful place; and exclamations like “Neither the Sun, nor Death can be looked at steadily” suddenly make sense in this context. Minter somehow pulls it off: WE ARE THE FLESH is certainly one of the most innovative and original debuts of recent years. AS

COMES TO SHUDDER ON 20 APRIL 2017  | THE FILM HAS BEEN BANNED BY OTHER STREAMING PLATFORMS IN THE UK

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Re-release

Dir: Miloš Forman | Writer: Lawrence Hauben | Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Scatman Crothers, Danny De Vito | Drama | US 1975, 128 mins

Randle Patrick McMurphy is a catalyst for change. Arriving at the Salem State Sanatorium (Oregon) he brings a spark of life to twelve random inmates. Surfacing as the ringleader of this group of lost souls he is a free spirit, a force for good – while also being a convicted rapist. In Milos Forman’s film version of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, Jack Nicholson, armed with his Oscar for Chinatown, gives a joyfully subversive performance in the leading role. A quick-witted, sly-eyed anti-hero whose life before never really amounted to much, is transformed into a saviour who brings light to the befuddled darkness of the loony bin.

But is Randle really mad, or just faking it to avoid serving his time in jail? This whole question is one that has been debated again and again and recently in Jon Ronson’s book The Psychopath Test, where the central character explores the spectrum of mental health by checking himself into a home where he purports to be unhinging and ends up being a victim of the system. And this is partly what happens to Randle. When we first meet him, he has been transferred from prison to the state institution, on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Here he undergoes psychiatric observation while making a spectacular rise to glory and then a tragic fall. In some ways Randle is a Christ-like figure, bringing redemption and salvation to his disciples at the expense of his own life on Earth. He battles a system that attempts to rob the patients of their souls by dumbing them down with medication and reducing them to simpering idiots. The bête noire of the story is Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher in an Oscar winning turn as a cruel and cold-eyed control freak who imposes her will on her patients, only being sympathetic when operating from the moral high ground.

Randle kicks against the system, represented by Ratched, determined to get his own way and corralling his co-inmates (some of whom are socially dysfunctional or lonely elective patients) by championing their human rights. These are people who have lost their way in life circumstance or upbringing, none of them is nefarious or ill-intentioned making this tragedy of the institutionalised even more poignant. With Randle they go to the match and even a spot of deep sea fishing, but it all eventually ends in tears.

Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman’s script leads to a schematic and anticlimactic ending when Randle suddenly loses his impetus after a night’s drinking and revelling with the boys (including Scatman Crothers’ sympathetic nightwatchman), making a mockery of all that has gone before. Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched is an intriguing and almost underwritten character whose backstory can only be imagined.

Although this scathing satire of the American mental health system fails to be as moving as it could have been, the performance are worth their weight in gold. Jack Nicholson’s jubilant  Randle with his subtle expressions and facial dynamics, will pave the way for his villainous turn as Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980). The tremendous support cast headed by William Redfield (who spouts blithering nonsense); Danny De Vito (as an engaging simpleton); Will Sampson (a strong and silent Native Indian) and finally Brad Dourif (as a young man with a mother complex). MT

Opening at BFI Southbank, IFI Dublin, Light House Dublin, Electric Cinema Birmingham and selected cinemas UK-wide on | 14 April 2017 in celebration of Jack Nicholson’s 80th birthday

Cézanne et Moi (2016)

Dir/Writer: Danièle Thompson | Cast: Guillaume Canet, Guillaume Gallienne, Alice Pol, Deborah Francois, Sabinz Azema | Drama

Emile Zola might have written some desolate novels but his private life appears to be rather pleasant according to CÉZANNE AND I exploring the close friendship between two of France’s most famous 19th century cultural geniuses: the titular novelist and the impressionist painter Cézanne. Unlike Gilles Bourdos’ tepid Rénoir (2012), there is plenty of drama here, as befits the subject-matter.

Writer and director Danièle Thompson’s painterly period piece imagines the two enjoying a beautiful bromance that lasted from childhood until their deaths, although it wasn’t without its tiffs and rivalries as the strong creative personalities often clashed giving rise to some moments of drama and even tears, and the racy often lyrical dialogue doesn’t hold back in expressing the deep intimacy of their conversations about the pleasure and pain of creativity (“do you still get a hard on from your writing?” asks Cézanne of his mate).

Starring Guillaume Gallienne (Yves Saint Laurent) as Cézanne and Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) as Zola this is a spirited and enjoyable – if occasionally soapy – affair with its sumptuous settings making great use of the gloriously lush and sun-drenched scenery of Provence and elegant boulevards of Paris and the Louvre, where the Salon de Réfusés episode descends into a brawl .

Eric Neveux’s intrusive score primps up moments of sauciness by a lakeside as Cézanne executes his’ plein air’ canvasses, and Jean-Marie Dreujou cleverly evokes some of the artist’s outdoor compositions with limpid camerawork and a fabulous choice of settings. While the painter comes across as the more louche of the pair, with his wealthy background and family funding; Zola is a more sober character and Canet plays him as a rather buttoned up and inaccessible, growing up a penniless orphan until he joins the successful bourgeoisie, as captured in the final scenes. The narrative unfolds from 1888, when Cézanne accuses Zola of writing a novel whose central character – a striving but unsuccessul painter – feels too near the bone for his liking. But Zola assures him that the novel in question ‘L’Oeuvre’ is not about his close friend. Most of the scenes  involves tête à tête set-toos between the pair highlighting their creative differences and expressing their feelings about sex and women. According to Thompson, they both fell in love with the same person, Alexandrine (Alice Pol), who would eventually become Zola’s wife. While Cézanne is restlessly married to his muse Hortense (Deborah François) there appear to be issues with his sexual performance, and she complains that “I fuck her too quickly and paint her too slowly.” The two debate Zola’s theatrical naturalist style that today feels stuffy and dated as opposed to Cézanne’s impressionism which proved the more universally evocative form of expression due to its avant-garde appeal that gave birth to modernism. Zola resents Cézanne’s monthly income that allows him freedom to explore, while the writer is hampered by his lack of funds. Meanwhile, Cezanne calls him a “a violeur et un voyeur”, somehow implying that his ideas were not original.

Artistic context of the era is further provided in the shape of fellow impressionists Edouard Manet (Nicolas Gob), Auguste Renoir (Alexandre Kouchner) and Camille Pissaro (Romain Cottard). This is a watchable and vivacious drama that paints an absorbing picture of two driven men but despite Thompson’s learned research CÉZANNE AND I  comes across as a lightweight drama rather than a resonant biopic of the creative duo. MT

Cézanne et Moi will be released on Friday 14th April at Ciné Lumière, find out more here: http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/cine-lumiere/whats-on/new-releases/cezanne-et-moi/

 

The Handmaiden (2016) | Agassi

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook

Writers: Chung Seo-kyung, Park Chan-wook, Novel by Sarah Waters

The Handmaiden (Agassi) is a sumptuously mounted and kinky erotic love story set in the 1930s Orient. Neatly sidestepping tawdriness the writer take the original text and flip it over into a tale of three parts, told from differing viewpoints that gradually morph into the realms of fantasy in a challenging re-telling.

Sarah Waters’ original novel Fingersmith tells the story of a girl who leaves poverty in Victorian England using her skills as an expert pickpocket to gain fame and fortune, eventually getting her comeuppance at the hands of a wealthy swindler after serving in the household of a Japanese heiress. We first get a glimpse of young Sookee (played by newcomer Kim Tae-ri) in the slums where she grew up surrounded by unwanted babies. Korea is under Japanese rule and she is sent to the mansion of Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), a black-tongued old man who specialises in book dealing. It soon becomes clear that she is to be the maid of his niece, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee – Right Now, Wrong Then). In truth, Sookee is a crafty petty thief sent by a pimp-style gangster called The Count (Ha Jung-woo) to help him marry the young heiress and gain control of her fortune. This is all revealed in a series of fast-moving scenes while we’re still reading the subtitles. Hideko seems to be a naive, virginal orphan who knows nothing of the real world outside her sheltered kingdom. But it soon emerges that her nonce of an uncle has groomed her from childhood to be his companion after driving her aunt (Moon So-ri) insane and later hanging herself from a cherry tree and haunting the mansion. But the Count suddenly appears presenting himself as a putative suitor from a noble family who is to add value to Kouzuki’s book collection with illustrations.

There is great deal of languorous heavy petting here between both men and women in scenes reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade’s “Crimes of Love” and this is all cleverly achieved by filming the sequences from different angles. The denouement is a complex affair in this lavish epic which is mostly filmed in the dark interiors of the mansion, although it occasionally breaks out in to some glorious surroundings of a nearby lake and shimmering landscapes. A real arthouse treat that needs to be seen again to fully appreciate the intricate plotting. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 14 APRIL 2017

 

 

The Hatton Garden Job (2017)

Dir: Ronnie Thompson | Writer: Ray Bogdanovich | Cast: Matthew Goode, Joely Richardson, Stephen Moyer, Clive Russell, Larry Lamb, David Calder, Phil Daniels | UK Thriller | 93min

A remarkable real event story turns into an enervating film that can’t be saved by Matthew Goode, Joely Richardson or even veteran David Calder as the plastic perps involved in a 2015 heist known as the “largest burglary in English legal history” involving loot of over £200million. Apart from the usual misogynist script that we’ve come to expect from recent British crime flicks (with lewd jokes that aren’t even funny) the editing is sluggish and cinematography poor. The only watchable sequence is that of the robbery itself and this lacks dynamism and drags the action out to the point of tedium and beyond. This is a film that thinks it’s super cool but just isn’t. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 APRIL 2017

Rainer Werner Fassbinder | BFI Retrospective | Classics now on Dual Format

6a00d8341ce04153ef01b8d08dfdb6970cFASSBINDER_PACKSFassbinder’s LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH | LIEBE IST KÄLTER ALS DER TOD made a low-key feature debut at Berlinale Film Festival in 1969, heralding the prolific career of one of Germany’s greatest auteurs of the second half of the 20th century. Critics talked about the stylish black and white aesthetics of DOP Dietrich Lohmann (who would go on and shoot ten more Fassbinder films); were puzzled by the rather simplistic but enigmatic storyline and liked the performances including the director’s turn playing his own fallen hero Franz, a pimp, who does not want to cooperate with the Mafia and falls in the love with Joanna (Hanna Schygulla), who works for him. Ulli Lommel is the killer Bruno, a sort of German version of Alain Delon in Melville’s Le Samurai, complete with sunglasses. Fassbinder commented at the Festival “I want the audience to formulate their own personal take on the film. That’s all I’m interested in. That’s much more political than forcing them to believe that the police are the worst aggressors. I am not interested in that sort of cinema, I am against the idea of people marrying and producing children without thinking or having any idea why they love each other”. His statements were as enigmatic as his film, and one Berlin critic wrote “Fassbinder does not care if he makes another film, he just wanted to make statement”. How wrong he turned out to be.

katzelmacher_1969_2KATZELMACHER was shot in only nine days during August 1969, just four months after Love is colder than Death. Based on Fassbinder’s play of the same name. Fassbinder against the central protagonist, Jorgos, a Greek ‘guest-worker,’ who falls foul of the youthful German machos, living a desperate existence in the backstreets of Munich. In much the same way as Fear Eats the Soul, (which he could go on to make in 1974), the drama uses Jorgos’ romantic encounters in the city to evidence the political undercurrent of racism, particularly amongst the sub-proletariat. Love and money dominate this male world where men have to buy their women, because of their inability to love. Katzelmacher – again shot by Lohmann in stunning black and white – is just a variation of Fassbinder’s debut, but shows the role of the immigrant worker, a theme that would dominate many of his films.

UnknownBEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (WARNUNG VOR EINER HEILIGEN NUTTE) Fassbinder turns the camera on himself in this semi-autobiographical feature about filmmaking. Shot in 22 days in Sorrento, Italy, during September 1970, the film had his premiere at the Venice Film Festival a year later, where no “Lions” were awarded. For no obvious reasons the narrative is set in Spain where a film team is waiting for the director and the subsidy money from the Federal Government. When the director Jeff (Lou Castel) arrives, he immediately becomes the centre of total chaos. The ageing star of the production (Eddie Constantine as himself) seems lost in the much younger crowd and starts a relationship with the actress Hanna (Schygulla). Jeff explains a very tricky shot to the cinematographer, and the simple idea of the film to Constantine: “Patria o muerte” is about the government’s brutality, which is legitimised by the state. But crew and cast are still fighting arguing, drinking and Jeff is beaten up. bewareofaholywhore1But in spite of everything, the shoot finally gets underway. Michael Ballhaus’ widescreen images echo Raul Coutard’s work for Godard’s Le Mépris, and Fassbinder’s own lousy, little line producer Sasha could have been equally at home in Godard drama. For Fassbinder, BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE was a good-bye to collective filmmaking: “The film is about the production of a film, but it is much more about how a group works, and how the leading status of the director develops and is used by crew and cast. I am not sure, if the film was a new beginning, but it was a surely an endpoint. With this film, we have buried our idea of collective work which we started [before filming] with the Anti-Theatre group in Munich. I did not know, how we would go on in future, but I knew we could not go back. This film is about what happened in Whitty (1970), when too many people relied on me, and I had to take on more and more responsibilities. During the shooting of Whity, everything collapsed: BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE is a about what happened on the set of Whity.”

The_Merchant_of_Four_SeasonsBy 1971 Fassbinder had a prodigious oeuvre to his name and THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (HÄNDLER DER VIER JAHRESZEITEN) was his twelfth feature film, a tragic melodrama shot in eleven days in August of that year. Set in the ’50s, like many of his later films, The Merchant is a story of a loser during West Germany Economic Miracle. Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmuller) has been a soldier in Foreign Legion, and a policeman. But now he is reduced to selling fruit and vegetables in a street market  – in a country where wealth and prosperity is an easy game. His wife Irmgard (Irm Herrmann), is financially aspirational, pushing her husband to the limits with emotional coldness. He suffers a heart attack and afterwards employs an old army friend Harry, to do the physical work. But Hans does not give up on Irmgard, he wants to be loved. The triangle becomes a trap for Hans. Fassbinder was impressed by the films of his fellow German director Douglas Sirk, and admitted that he integrated some elements of Sirk’s Hollywood melodramas into The Merchant. “In the beginning, I Ioved to create cool, detached films. Then I got interested in dramatic films, now I prefer melodrama.”

BITTER_2D_BDTHE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant), a psychological drama, followed in the wake of The Merchant and was shot in ten days during January 1972. Control-freak fashion designer Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) lives with her servant and assistant Marlene (Hermann) in a symbiotic relationship: Petra uses Marlene in every way, but Marlene takes this all on board, feeling a masochistic pride in her subservient status. When Petra falls in love with the much younger Karin (Schygulla), she soon finds out that the young woman is only after her money. When Karin’s husband returns from Australia, Karin leaves Petra and returns to her husband. Petra admits she only wanted to possess Karin, as she does Marlene. She is contrite, and offers Marlene a position of equal rights in her business, but Marlene simply packs her suitcase and leaves. Suffering and subservience is her raison d’être – She did not want equality. Fassbinder later commented “Marlene leaves Petra because there is a certain power in being subservient: being in charge herself involves a degree of risk and responsibility. Many interpreted the outcome as a liberation for Marlene, but that is not the case: those who have willingly accepted the yoke of subservience for 30 years, often find total freedom and the responsibility it entails, a poisoned challice

imagesCHINESE ROULETTE (CHINESISCHES ROULETTE) By the summer of 1976, Fassbinder was taking more time to direct. 1976 also saw the making of Satansbraten and Bolwieser and he took over a month to shoot this thriller in Beyreuth and Thurnau Castle in Bavaria. CHINESE ROULETTE is the nearest Fassbinder would get to Claude Chabrol, one of his early heroes. Ariane (Carstensen) and her husband Gerhard (Alexander Allerson) pretend to leave Munich for separate destinations for the weekend, but they soon reunite in their Bavarian castle. Ariane meets her lover Kolbe (Lommel), while Gerhard is looking forward to seeing his lover Irene (Anna Karina). Their handicapped daughter Angela also turns up with with her teacher Traunitz (Macha Meril), who is seemingly unable to speak. When Angela starts to play a kind of truth game called Chinese Roulette, the adults fear and mistrust of each other suddenly becomes palpable. For Fassbinder, it was a new beginning: “This is the first film where I don’t use the actors to tell the story. The main theme is ‘better the devil you know’: the protagonists all cling to their relationships, even though these are dysfunctional. There is a certain comfort in routine and core misery, which in itself is a kind of happiness.

Fassbinder_BRD_Trilogy_2003_CCTHE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (DIE EHE DER MARIA BRAUN) Shot in just over a month during the winter of 1978, this tragic love story was rejected by Cannes Film Festival but premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 1979, where it won a Silver Bear, and Hanna Schygulla Best Actress. Maria (Schygulla) has married Hermann (Klaus Lowitsch) during WWII but he fails to return after the war. Working in an American bar, Maria discovers her husband is dead and she falls in love with the much older American GI Oswald (Ivan Disney). Out of blue, her husband turns up when she is about to go to bed with Oswald, forcing her to make a difficult decision. In the interim, she has discovered personal freedom but Herrmann simply wants to control ‘the old’  Maria. Marriage is perhaps Fassbinder’s most mature film, influenced mainly by Godard, Brecht and Wedekind, it is poetic realism on an epic scale. Fassbinder’s critique of the crass materialism in West Germany after WWII is again a strong component. Schygulla had obviously matured very well since 1969, and became an international star. Fassbinder was emphatic about his latest outing: “It is a multi-layered film, much is hidden beneath the simple storyline. The audience has the chance to enjoy a love story, or something much more complex”. AS/MT

NOW SCREENING AS A MAJOR RESPECTIVE AT THE BFI DURING APRIL- MAY 2017 AVAILABLE AS A SELECTION OF TEN CULT CLASSICS on DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD FROM 28 MARCH and 4TH APRIL 2016 

 

Masaan | BFI INDIA Celebration

DIrector: Neeraj Ghaywan

Writer: Varun Grover| Neeraj Ghaywan

MASAAN enchants Un Certain Regard audiences with a painterly modern love story set in the holy city of Benares (Varanasi).

With his co-writer Varun Grover, Ghaywan creates a sure-footed character-driven debut that has all the intensity of a Bollywood drama but is told with a delicacy of touch similar to recent Indian dramas The Lunchbox and Udaan.

The three-stranded lyrical drama is essentially a coming of age affair where we first meet Devi (Richa Chadda) and her student friend Piyush checking into a hotel for an afternoon of sexual discovery. Both virgins, they are piqued to explore forbidden pleasures but Police break into the room before they have a chance to consummate matters. Piyush tries to kills himself during the onslaught and is rushed to hospital and the scandal brings shame on Devi and her father Pathak (Sanjay Mishra).

Meanwhile, in another part of the riverbank, Deepak (Vicky Kaushal) works at the funeral pyres of the ghats but his dream is to become to become an engineer. Shy yet stunningly attractive, he has set his heart on a Shaalu (Sheta Tripathi), who he meets on Facebook, but her higher caste means that their love affair is doomed before it begins.

This is a sweetly romantic and endearingly old-fashioned film that avoids sentimentality but finds a satisfying conclusion with some moving moments along the way. Although some of the musical choices feel slightly out of place – more locally-rooted music would have better captured the mood –  Avinash Arun Dhaware’s visuals of the exotic landscapes and rose-tinted sun-sets are amongst the most gorgeous of this year’s Un Certain Regard section, creating a real sense of place and transforming this beguiling drama into a memorial tribute to the people of Varanasi. MT

NIW SHOWING AT BFI AS PART OF THE INDIA SERIES

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 13 – 24 May 2015 | UN CERTAIN REGARD

All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I. F. Stone (2016)

Dir: Fred Peabody | 91min | Documentary | Canada

It behoves a Canadian documentarian to make ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE a film that raises the timely issue of mass media control by large corporations who are in turn influencing the election process and making a mockery of democracy. Peabody’s scattergun approach makes some salient points – over and over again – but brings little new to the table, it just seems more pertinent in the light of the recent US elections.

Fake news is not a recent phenomenon: indeed Fred Peabody argues that powerful organisations have been spinning narratives to further their own interests since the 1960s and the central news organs have been playing along with their stories and benefitting in the shape of large advertising revenues, in a hand in glove, ‘you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’ style operation. Corruption of this sort has been the subject of films such as All the Presidents Men, Bowling for Columbine and Citizenfour. But doesn’t just happen in political news; it goes on across the board and filters down into lighter news about culture, travel, the Arts and even cinema (give us some positive spin on our restaurant, film or resort and we’ll reward you with a fat advertising cheque for your trouble).

It was an independent, investigative journalist – ‘the first blogger’ – called I F (Izzy) Stone – later known as ‘the first blogger’ who actually coined the phrase: ‘All Governments Lie’ during the 1960s. Stone was the only real voice to question the US Government’s policy during Vietnam that lead to great military involvement in the region.   and the film uses his precedent and singular crusade against government deception as the thrust of its narrative. Peabody also introduces us to indie journos Glenn Greenwald, who helped bring Edward Snowden’s story into the public domain and Amy Goodman whose Democracy Now! channel uses respected, indie journalists to cut through the worldwide news agenda with the sword of truth; other talking heads are luminaries Carl Bernstein and Noam Chomsky; Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks; Jeremy Scahill (Greenwald’s partner at The Intercept); John Carlos Frey (independently financed), filmmaker and activist Michael Moore and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi. These all show how journalism can be a great force for truth and peace, rather than a conveyor belt for lies.

Combining striking news footage of Obama, Trump and fascinating insight from the talking heads – in particular Stone’s son Jeremy, this is a worthwhile watch that shows how ‘sometimes the truth is just true’. Perhaps we need to ‘stop catching up with the Kardashians and go back to I.F. Stone’. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 24 MARCH 2017 AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE

 

I am Not Your Negro (2016)

James BaldwinDirector: Raoul Peck | Writers: Raoul Peck, James Baldwin | With Samuel L Jackson | 93min | US | Doc

Black activist and writer James Baldwin once said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”: Writer and socal critic Baldwin was an highly intellectual thinker who explored the unspoken intricacies of racial tension, and here illuminates the lives of three American civil rights campaigners in Raoul Peck’s immersive and meaty biopic, narrated by by Samuel L. Jackson.

Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are the focus of I Am Not Your Negro (also the title of , an unflinching study of flagrant prejudice in 1960s America. It sometimes feels pretty close to the bone in its stark exposé of white supremacy and the apathy of ignorance.

When invited by literary agent Jay Acton to pen a book on the three, Baldwin’s turned him in the form of a slim yet pithy manuscript entitled Remember This House. And this became the basis for Raoul Peck’s film. Baldwin comes across as a calm and appealingly reflective man in television interviews and chat programmes. The film is fleshed with excerpts from classics such as In the Heat of the Night; Stagecoach; Dance, Fools, Dance and Elephant that feature Black actors portraying America’s cultural background in controversial settings or positions of inferiority.

Saliently shot in black and white and cleverly edited by Alexandra Strauss, the doc also includes topical posters. The occasional inter-titles, flagging up various ideas and headings, feel superfluous in a film that tells its own story evocatively and engagingly without a need for introduction.

Honourable and important in its subject matter, the only criticism of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is its lack of a cohesive narrative. Freewheeling between themes and ideas, the underlying thrust is one of social unease and violence, wherein the White man exploits the Black man feeling threatened by him, for reasons that never become entirely justifiable to modern audiences. Such is the nature of prejudice.

Baldwin, who was born in the Bronx and eventually died in Saint-Paul de Vence in 1987, commented that the history of America was a Black one, but he never comes across as vehemently racist or angry despite his background of poverty and deprivation, always peddling a reasonable and contemplative agenda that nevertheless maintained that racism was the source of America’s social divide. This is an enjoyable and edifying experience. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS APRIL 2017

Aftermath (2017)

Dir: Elliott Lester | Javier Guillon | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maggie Grace, Kevin Zegers, Scoot McNairy | 94min | US | Psychological Drama

Elliott Lester cut his teeth on commercials and his stylish cinematography is the best thing about this episodic and moodily opaque psychological drama that reflects on themes of bereavement and letting go of the past.

The film is based on the real-life Überlingen mid-air collision and the aftermath to the tragedy that impacts of the lives of those left behind. Arnold Schwarzenegger is powerfully grim as Russian architect Vitaly Kaloyev, whose wife and daughter are lost in the crash. He holds Danish air traffic controller Jake Bonanos (Peter Nielsen) responsible for the death of his family. Nielsen remains distraught and sinks into a depression that ultimately destroys his career and his marriage. But Kaloyev cannot let go and tracks Nielsen down determined to make him pay for the error.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is impressive here as a strong and smouldering type who whose latent rage eventually finds a bruising outlet. The denouement is quietly shocking but somehow anticlimactic in the scheme of things. AFTERMATH is more a study about a man’s lack of philosophy in managing grief and tragedy than a gripping thriller, but Lester provides Schwarzenegger with a vehicle to show off his acting potential away from his usual blockbuster roles. As a story portraying actual events AFTERMATH feels decidedly slim. MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 APRIL 2017

City of Tiny Lights (2016)

Dir.: Pete Travis; Cast: Riz Ahmed, Billie Piper, Roshan Seth, James Floyd, Mohamed Al Amiri, Cush Jumbo, Hanna Rae, Alexander Siddig; UK 2017, 110 min.

With Raymond Chandler in mind, director Pete Travis (Dredd) and writer Patrick Neate, on whose 2006 novel of the same name the film is based, paint a dark picture of London, in this British Neo Noir, where Private Eye Tommy Akhtar stumbles around finding new violent connections, whilst searching for closure on his own troubled past.

Tommy (Ahmed) runs a seedy detective agency called TA – in his own words, he “discovers and buries secrets”. One day, the prostitute Melody (Jumbo) asks him to search for her co-worker Natasha who has gone missing. Tommy can’t find her but he traces Natasha’s last client: a Pakistani business man, murdered in his hotel bed. Enter Lovely Ansari’, a property developer and pillar of the community who is also a good old friend of Tommy. Soon it becomes clear, that many people are interested in the victim: American agent Regan (Schaefter), the leader of Islamic Youth Centre Al Dabaran (Siddig), and the local cops ever ready to give Tommy a hard time. Not that his life is a bed of roses: his cricket obsessed father Farzad (Seth)  never lets him forget that he wants a much straighter lifestyle for his son, and Shelley (Piper) and her daughter Emma (Rae) share a bond from a past trauma with Tommy. The plot is not much more than a McGuffin, and the all-around happy-ending rings false.

Where it not be for the excellent work of DoP Christopher Ross (Detour), we could dismiss Tiny Lights simply as TV pilot. But the nightime images, mostly shot with natural light, are vey invocative: shadows lurk everywhere, and Tommy stumbles through a urban nightmare like the heroes of Cornel Woolrich, with all the implications of a cliff hangar depending on the exact timing.

Pete Travis tries to refresh the genre with the introduction of an Asian lead and his Bangladeshi father, as the shadow of Islam creeps in with shady clerical activity, the film feels much more at home with Akhtar being clubbed over the head by hired thugs, in the best Robert Mitchum tradition, than it ever does with reflecting the complexities of modern Britain.

Unfortunately, unlike Woolrich, Travis/Neate do not care much for an authentic narrative, and are content with a loose, episodic shape. Full points for atmosphere, but the strong cast could have done with some more structure. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 31 MARCH 2017

The Last Stage | Ostatni etap (1948) Mubi

Director: Wanda Jakubowska | Scr: Wanda Jakubowska, Gerda Schneider | Cast: Tatjana Gorecka, Antonina Górecka, Barbara Drapinska, Aleksandra Śląska | Drama / Poland / 110 minutes

Wanda Jakubowska (1907-1998) and her scriptwriter Gerda Schneider were themselves both inmates of Auschwitz; and Jakubowska’s determination to remember what she was witnessing in order to make a film about it helped keep her alive. In the summer of 1947 she duly returned to Auschwitz to film the exteriors of ‘The Last Stage’, with former inmates among the supporting cast. (The fact that it was shot in summer already sets it apart from most other films set in the camps, which usually find winter more atmospheric). Much of the imagery of later reenactments like ‘Schindler’s List’ – including the famous orchestra – can be found here; while the fact that the events it reenacts were only a couple of years previously gives it an immediacy and visual authenticity no later reenactments could hope to match. (One tends to think of Auschwitz as just a collection of huts, but seeing the real thing in this film you realise how enormous it was).

‘The Last Stage’ is not strictly speaking about The Holocaust, but is more an anti-fascist document of the rape of Poland by its occupiers; and we actually see Polish women protesting at their incarceration and rough treatment on the grounds that they’re not Jewish. Jakubowksa herself was there because of her activity in the resistance, while the onscreen introduction lists the many different nationalities held in Auschwitz. We see Frenchwoman singing the Marseilleise and Russian women dancing to celebrate Stalingrad (although it is sobering to reflect that at this stage liberation will still be two very long years away); and one prominent character is a gypsy.

Jakubowska’s film is organised as an ensemble piece which flits from group to group, the most prominent character being Barbara Drapinska as Martha Weiss, a young Jewish woman whose ability to speak German result in her life being spared (for the time being) to function as an interpreter. The actress who actually heads the cast list is Tatjana Gorecka as Eugenia, a Russian doctor ultimately tortured to death for attempting to tell the truth to members of an international commission who visit the camp to observe the conditions. (The fact that outside observers were allowed into some of the camps, where they were successfully lied to about what was actually going on, remains little known).

The chimneys perpetually belching smoke are frequently remarked upon throughout the film; and although the actual mass extermination programme is not depicted there are harrowing scenes involving the murder of a baby and the withholding of medicine. The cruelty of the guards and the kapos is depicted as a routine matter and the camp administration as unimaginative jobsworths. But Jakubowska is more concerned with making an uplifting socialist tribute to comradeship in adversity than a recitation of Nazi atrocities. Everyone in ‘The Last Stage’ is an individual, even the administrators (who get a surprising amount of screen time). Despite the characters all speaking in their native languages, the cast are all Polish (some of those playing Germans obviously dubbed), and with their handsome Polish faces look far too healthy and well nourished to dispel memories of the damning newsreel footage of starved and broken human beings that shocked the world in 1945. Even Aleksandra Śląska as the camp overseer is ironically much prettier than any of the actual women guards we see in contemporary newsreels.

‘The Last Stage’ could only have been made with Russian approval (Stalin, apparently actually approved the script personally), the excellent photography is by a veteran Russian cameraman, Bentsion Monastyrsky, and the Red Army are portrayed as saviours. Although stills from ‘The Last Stage’ regularly appear in film histories, the film itself (along with the rest of postwar Polish cinema) is little seen today. That Jakubowska remained an ardant communist until the very end of her long life, as well as enthusiastically wedded to socialist realist aesthetics, led to her own work ironically being sidelined as “politically incorrect” in post-communist Poland. RICHARD CHATTEN

ON MUBI

Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? (2016)

Director: Tomer & Barak Heyman; Documentary; Israel/UK/Germany 2016, 84 min.

Tomer and Barak Heyman (Bridge over the Wadi) have always combined the personal and socio-political in their longterm documentaries shot mainly in Israel where Barak produced the award winning Lady Kul el Arab by the Palestinian filmmaker Ibtisam Mara’ana. This was a manifestation of her brother’s political statement showing a divided Israel, trying in vain to come to terms with a permanent war against Palestine.

Saar Maoz, the central figure of WHO’S GONNA LOVE ME NOW? is forty and lives in London. For the past eleven years he has been HIV Positive. An ordinary gay man, he sings in the London Gay Men’s Chorus but his life is ruled by the medication he takes which often has side effects ranging from nausea and muscle cramps to very disturbed sleep patterns. What makes Saar’s life even more difficult is his relationship with the family in Israel, where he grew up on a Kibbutz with six siblings. His father is a paratrooper who tells everybody with pride that all his children served in the same military branch like him, and he parachuted “with all of them, even the girls”.

During one of Saar’s visits; his father, in uniform, shows guests around the military monument “Ammunition Hill”, proclaiming a rather belligerent, un-reflective ideology of Israel’s right to annex Palestinian territories. Prior to this we had witnessed Saar reading a letter from his father, which is insulting on a personal level as his political ravings in Israel. But Saar still craves the love of his family and  blames them for his being thrown out of the Kibbutz, when his homosexuality became apparent: “They should have said, we are all going to leave the Kibbutz, if you exclude our son”. Obviously, this was far from realistic.

The only person who loves Saar unconditionally is his grandfather, who is old and frail, and will die during the filming. When Saar’s mother comes to London later she is helpless and has obviously not come to terms with her son’s homosexuality: “You are like a branch without continuity”. Whilst she loves Saar, she still hopes he will give up s his sexual orientation. During the film, Saar becomes a little more realistic: when walking with a friend round Brompton Cemetery, he remarks sarcastically that the Kibbutz will bury him, but “hey we’ll put that Queer only in the far away corner”.

When his father visits Saar in London he also displays a huge degree of insensitivity: sitting in an outdoor café, he remarks loudly to his son “are these also gay?’ when two young women walk by. Later he asks Saar “who is gay here?” as if the promenading people were so easily classified. But Saar’s parents are not the worst – by far. When Saar finally decides to go back to Israel, working for The ‘Israel Aids Task Force’, his younger brother is openly hostile: he is afraid his small children may get infected “when you move here, the risks are so much greater”.

The great strength of the film is the long-term observation, making the awareness (or lack of it) of the Maoz family much more apparent. Filming in London and Israel, the scale of the different environments is huge: the man employing Saar at the Aids Task Force points this out to him. But Saar is set for a reunion with his family in a country which will not welcome him with open arms: he will be a stranger both at home and in a society geared to male values, needed Israel is a militaristic society. The images are clear and well-0bserved, there is humour here but also overriding sadness for Saar, who wants more than anything to come home, without being really wanted by those he loves and values. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 6 April  2017

 

 

A Quiet Passion (2016) Viennale 2021

Director|Writer: Terence Davies | Cast: Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine, | 124min  | Drama | UK

After his sober portrait of Scottish life during wartime, Terence Davies turns his camera back to American life, and particularly that of the reclusive 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, played sensitively here in this illuminating aptly claustrophobic biopic, by Cynthia Nixon. Jennifer Ehle plays Emily’s sister and Keith Carradine her strict but loving Victorian father in an attempt to explore and open up an introspective but hopeful young woman whose poor health saw her gradually regressing into her bedroom as a frustrated spinster. Dickinson had some success at being published at a time when women of her background were considered ill-suited to writing or any other kind of creative pursuit.

Her poetry is sometimes described as elliptical; it is certainly avantgarde but she never blossomed personally or professionally, opting for the closeted atmosphere of her close family rather than one of emotional fulfilment in household of her own. Highly self-critical, Nixon cleverly portrays her own worst enemy, whose inner monologues and negative overthinking continually self-sabotage her success: despite a prodigious output of nearly 2,000 poems, only 11 were published.

Dying from kidney failure at 55, Dickinson endured a maudlin household where, despite Vinnie’s uplifting support and love, the women seemed to teeter perpetually on the bring of anxiety-induced poor health. Her mother can barely get to the end of the day without dissolving into tears of melancholy (often looking like Stanley Baxter in drag).

Shot almost entirely indoors, within the confines of her luxuriously decorated home and flower-filled garden in Amherst, Massachusetts, Davies’ script is suitably coy and wittily crafted; guaranteed to elicit a tittering response of pleasure from its litterary-minded devotees. Played briefly as a young woman by Emma Bell, Dickinson is a sparky and sharp-tongued virago whose pluckiness turns to bitterness in the fullness of time as Dixon takes over the role.

Her God-fearing family is headed by her father who allows her to write at night time and to receive visits from her canny, Dorothy Parker-like friend, Vryling Buffom (Catherine Bailey) who eventually marries. But Emily’s ardour burns only for the unobtainable in the shape of Rev. Wadsworth (Eric Loren). When a good-looking admirer visits one day Emily rebuffs him with vituperative conversation while hiding behind her bedroom door. He never comes again, yet Emily remains desperate to be ravaged by a midnight guest – seen only in profile in a dimly lit fantasy scene. Best known for her antics in Sex and the City, Nixon plays Jane as plain and scathing in contrast to her sister Vinnie’s electrifying smile and brother Austin’s dark good looks.

Terence Davies’ mise en scene is fastidiously crafted as his camera glides stealthily through each shot. Delicate flower arrangement bring freshness to the otherwise crustily powdered and heavily wigged look of the cast whose superb but mannered performances evoke the stiff propriety of the day. A score of appropriate music selections from Schubert to Chopin adds to final touches to this rather twee but beautifully rendered arthouse piece than never quite reaches the emotional heights of House of Mirth or Deep Blue Sea but is nevertheless moving as a portrait of female endeavour and longing.  MT

TERENCE DAVIES RETROSPECTIVE | VIENNALE 21-31 OCTOBER 2021

Mad to be Normal (2017)

Dir. Robert Mullan | Cast: David Tennant, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, Gabriel Byrne, David Bamber UK | 106 mins

You may not learn a great deal about Sixties psychiatry in Robert Mullan’s impressive biopic of the maverick Scots mind doctor RD Laing, but after Dr Who David Tennant plays him with a stunning magnetic charisma that captures our imagination and goes along way towards helping us understand why he was successful in treating patients who had often been failed by the conventional medicine of the day.

Dubbed ‘the acid Marxist’, RD Laing is certainly an elusive and highly complex character to pin down. Like many dedicated to their cause, he is portrayed as often failing his nearest and dearest in his attempts to be all things to all people, and in particular his patients. But while being intense and empathetic and vulnerable, he comes across as an arrogant narcissist in respect to his avant-garde professional methods.

Robert Mullan has hired himself a splendid cast – Michael Gambon and Gabriel Byrne are impressively convincing as patients afflicted by mental illness, and the narrative in seen through Laing’s relationship with Angie Wood (Elizabeth Moss to appeal to US audiences) – a psychology graduate who comes to meet him for lunch one day, and ends up staying and having his baby, losing her own way and self-respect in the process. Clearly Laing was not a complete cad, acquiescing to all her demands in the East London alternative centre Kingsley Hall; where they live with his medication-free patients in a care in the micro-community-style environment, but he is not prepared to set up home with her when she insists on having a child, despite the threatening behaviour of those in his care who want his continued and undivided attention. Their relationship is often tested, when he own family of four children make themselves known, but Laing always makes it clear what he is about, in a charm offence. The film suffers from some tonal unevenness in the scenes changes: it’s not sure whether it wants to be a straight-up biopic or a dreamy dark comedy, shot in a smoky pot-fuelled haze of pastel peach hues.

MAD TO BE NORMAL makes much of its Sixties sensibilities, the score includes The Kinks “You Really Got Me” and Donovan’s Season of the Witch” and Laing struts his stuff in Beatle boots, besuited in bottle green velvet and Sargent Pepper style patterned tunics. This is a captivating film largely because of Tennant and his memorable portrayal of a man who, like many psychiatrists, might just have been slightly deranged himself in order to enter the minds of his patients. As the saying goes: You don’t have to be made to live here, but it helps”. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2017

 

Neruda (2016) ****

Dir.: Pablo Larrain; Cast: Luis Gnecco, Mercedes Moran, Gael Gabriel Bernal, Alfredo Castro; Chile/Argentina/France/Spain/USA, 107 min.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain has immersed himself in two iconic figures of the 20th Century to bring us films about Jacqueline Onassis and his fellow countryman Pablo Neruda, premiering at Venice and Cannes this year, respectively. NERUDA is not so much a biopic of the Nobel Prize winning poet, more a noirish character study of the man himself, in the format of a deconstructed detective novel.

In Chile 1948, President Videla (Castro) has joined the Cold War hysteria by arresting communists and putting them into concentration camps – one run by a certain Augusto Pinochet. Fleeing the police forces with his Argentine wife Delia del Carril, poet and Senator of the Republic, Pablo Neruda (Gnecco), is being hotly pursued by a part-factual and part-fictional detective Oscar Peluchonneau (Bernal), the putative son of a late police chief and a prostitute.

Aided and abetted by national sympathisers, Neruda enjoys a lifestyle which is anything but spartan: he and his wealthy wife are fond of the good life: but it does not detract him from writing his radical poems. Oscar belittles Neruda in his off-screen commentary, but at the same time he is in awe of him. The longer Neruda continues to evade him, the more Oscar becomes a pure invention of the writer who increasingly sees himself in a central role, everything revolving around him. In the third act, when Neruda escapes via the snowy Andes to Argentina, the duel between the poet and his creation becomes almost satirical.

Neruda was – like his Chilean compatriot Robert Bolano – an admirer of the detective novel, and Larrain plays the genre to perfection. The name Peluchonneau is a dead give-a-way: ‘peluche’ or a ‘stuffed toy animal’. The director weaves Guillermo Caldron’s script into a new form of magical realism: a form of noir, in which Neruda directs his own world, sometimes making fun of himself to deflect from the deadly game of reality. Oscar is somehow his alter-ego, very much an outsider, like himself: but the difference between them is that Neruda has never forgotten his impoverished childhood, he walked barefoot until the age of 12. Meanwhile Oscar is desperate to be the son of his father, who never really acknowledged him. Both men are pompous at times – pretenders; but Oscar lacks Neruda’s genius, and perhaps, more importantly, his courage to rebel.

Gnecco, a real look-alike, plays Neruda in the style of Cervantes, larger-than-life and always careful with his words in recording the most banal events for posterity. DoP Sergio Armstrong (The Maid) creates sumptuous, flowing images, the camera rolling over wild landscapes, starry skies and dark streets full of hidden danger, blacker than black. Chile is the 1940s is shown as a treacherous and exotic badland. The scenes in the brothel, where Neruda holds court, are reminiscent of early Renoir paintings. Larrain directs not so much with anger, as he did in The Club, but with a mischievous playfulness, never letting the audience forget the dangerous path the fearless poet is treading. Neruda’s works of art live on, giving voice to the fight against Fascism that engulfed his sub-continent for so long.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 APRIL 2017

Fear Eats the Soul (1974) | Angst essen Seele auf | Dual Format release

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann

94min | Drama | Germany

Long before Ulrich Seidl (Paradise Love) or Laurent Cantet (Vers le Sud) captured transracial intergenerational love on the screen, Fassbinder exposes the xenophobic underbelly of ’70s West German society through a surprising romance between a Polish German cleaner in her sixties and a Moroccan Berber immigrant twenty years her junior.

Arabs are family loving-people and, far away from home and lonely in a foreign country, Ali (ben Salem) finds the comforting presence of a mature and modest woman attractive. Emmi Kurowski (Mira) clearly adores him, flattering his ego with her subtle brand of charm. The two strike up an uncomplicated relationship in the confines of her small flat and the local restaurant where Ali works, and soon decide to get married. Ali is fascinated by Emmi’s calm self-assurance and her love of food and good coffee. Their simple wedding takes place against the rainy backdrop of a grim Munich and afterwards they enjoy dinner in a local gourmet restaurant. Emmi’s family regard Ali with savage mistrust, her son kicking in the television in anger before walking they all walk out. It gradually emerges that the local community are also scandalised by the marriage; shops often refusing to serve Ali.

Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem give sombre yet affecting turns as the doomed romantic couple: Fassbinder accentuates the disapproving visual expressions and hostile body language of his support cast to reflect their feelings of disdain, pushing this ordinary social realist drama into the realms of melodrama on occasion, as in the cafe scene where Mira breaks down sobbing as the staff look on, standing in pseudo military formation. Wildly prolific in his output, Fassbinder was a fan of his compatriot Douglas Sirk and this is in some ways a tribute to Sirk’s Hollywood-style melodrama. Fassbinder shot the political and social statement in only 15 days and also appears in cameo as Emmi’s weasel-like son-in-law. MT

SHOWING AT PART OF A BFI FASSBINDER RETROSPECTIVE | OUT ON BLU-RAY COURTESY OF ARROW FILM AND VIDEO  

Man Down (2015)

Dir.: Dito Montiel | Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Kate Mara, Gary Oldman, Jai Courtney, Charlie Shotwell | US | 91 min.

There have been many films about post traumatic stress disorder, but the plight of American veterans returning from far-away battlefields since the days of the Vietnam War in the early ’60s has been more or less neglected by successive governments. On the big screen, the efforts have also been mixed to say the least, and Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing your Saints) has tried to come up with an original approach, which proved in the end – again – not wholly satisfying.

The four-stranded narrative is centred around two GIs returning from a tour of Afghanistan: Gabriel Drummer (LaBeouf) and Devin Roberts (Courtnay), and flips between the pre-war memories of Gabriel, featuring his wife Natalie (Mara) and his son Jonathan (Shotwell); the traumatic war experience; a lengthy interview with councillor Peyton (Oldman), who tries to help the suicidal Gabriel; and finally, the return of the two buddies to a (seemingly) apocalyptic America, where Gabriel tries to find his wife and son.

There is certainly a soft streak in the original Gabriel before “the fall”: Learning that his cute was bullied by his school peers, after they overhead him saying to his mother “I love you”, Gabriel arranges a secret code with Jonathan: They will say “Man down” instead of “I love you”. Devin is much more uncompromising, he basically drags Gabriel into joining the Marines; the scenes in the Lejeune base camp of are conventional, featuring the nominal OTT drill sergeant. But nothing prepares the soldiers for the real war in Afghanistan, where combatants and families often live under one roof and leads to a gruesome incident, from which Gabriel does not recover, in spite of a lengthy session with Peyton. When the two return to their hometown, they find a country devastated by war.

Only in the final part do we learn about the true nature of the denouement, even though, in hindsight, the clues have been there all along. In attempting to tell the story in four different strands, Montiel often loses coherence. DoP Shelly Johnson’s visuals (Wild Card, Hidalgo), particularly of a ravaged America, go a long way, to keeping our interest going, but plot-wise MAN DOWN is often opaque, particularly with regard to the true nature of the relationship between Natalie and Devin during the weeks before Devin joined Gabriel in Afghanistan, due to a broken arm. LaBeouf is tries his best to impress, but is really the weak link – not given helped by the script enigmatic script. MAN DOWN simply lacks the direction to do the topic justice: trying to be avant-garde does not lead to an immersive experience in a story hampered by too many contradictions and unsolved equations. AS

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 31 MARCH 2017

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

DIR: André Øvredal | Cast: Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch, Ophelia Lovibond | Horror | 99min

Intrigue and mystery give way to shlocky horror and gore in André Øvredal’s high-concept follow-up to his quirky and inventive Trollhunter, a mockumentary foray into Norway’s folklore and one of the highlights of London’s First Nordic Film Festival back in 2012.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch are cast as father and son forensic pathologists tasked with discovering the cause of death a mysterious Jane Doe who bears extensive internal injuries despite being her corpse pristine as a pin on the outside. Rather like a Patricia Cornwell paperback or an episode of CSI, JANE DOE offers a procedural autopsy of a body discovered at a traumatic murder scene where all the other victims have been savagely brutalised. Coroners are not supposed to inquire about how their cases died, that is a matter for the police and the detectives. But Jane Doe’s cause of death gives the doctors much food for thought, as well as spurting blood and active brain tissue, that seems to fly in the face of reason, questioning whether Miss Doe is indeed dead after all.

The backstory here is that Tommy (Cox) has thrown himself relentlessly into his work since the death of his cheerful wife Rae, two years previously. Austen (Hirsh) is not so keen on becoming a coroner but feels duty bound to his father and their relationship is becoming more distant since the arrival of a love interest for Austen in the shape of Ophelia Lovibond’s Emma. Initially JANE DOE provides some moments of tension as Cox and Hirsh probe question what seems like an sinister case of New English witchcraft and a corpse that appear ‘undead’. But the autopsy soon descends into a blood bath – quite literally – as the mortuary cat is found butchered to death and blood seeps from zip-locked bags in the cold storage.  Meanwhile, the radio announces a gale force storm warnings advising listeners to batten down the hatches and stay home. The usual horror tropes are rolled out attempting to scare us (jumpcuts, screeches and slamming doors) but Goldberg and Naing’s script is more a case of initial fascination dissolving into disappointment, rather than slowly mounting terror. If you’re looking for a straightforward gore fest then THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE is likely go down a treat, for others it’s a missed opportunity to delve into the occult. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 31 MARCH 2017

Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories (2017) | Tribute to Paula Rego

Dir: Nick Willing | With Paula Rego | UK | Doc | 92min

“Just take of your knickers” said Victor Willing to Paula Rego and thus began a love story that was to dominate the life and work of a talented but timid Portuguese painter who arrived in London in 1950 leaving the comfort of a middle class home and a country in thrall to Salazar’s misogynist dictatorship. Salazar was to die after falling off a canvas deckchair, but Paula Rego fought manic depression and the male-centric art world to achieve international success painting canvasses that left Charles Saatchi gobsmacked.

This unique insight into the celebrated artist, who has died at the age of 87, is pictured above with her her son and film-maker Nick Willing, was brought up in Portugal and in Camden in a house bought by her father, where Paula and her husband the artist Vic Willing, arrived penniless after he was struck with multiple schlerosis, having lost the business left by Paula’s father. Notoriously private and guarded, Rego opens up for the first time, revealing how she channeled her shyness into her art with extraordinary results, using her powerful pictures as a therapy for her own demons, difficulties and personal tragedy. Through painting she continued to raise awareness of female issues and animal rights (her personal favourite charity is Dogs of Barcelona. Nick Willing enriches the film with a fascinating archive of home movies, family photographs and interviews spanning 60 years, describing the evolution of Rego’s work from early days at the Slade to the present day. What emerges is a deeply personal and intimate portrait of an artist whose legacy will survive the years, graphically illustrated in her preferred pastel, charcoal and oil paint. Poignantly, Willing asks his mother about her most proud achievement: “Winning the Slade Summer Prize when I was 19”. MT

PAUL REGO: STORIES & SECRETS IS AVAILABLE On BBCIPLAYER 

Tickling Giants (2016)

Dir Sara Taksler | Documentary with Bassem Youssef, Jon Stewart | USA 2016 |111 min.

During the Arab spring, cardiac surgeon Bassem Youssef from Cairo went to a demonstration against the regime of president Mubarak in Tahrir – an event which would change his life. Director/writer Sara Taksler, producer of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” has followed Bassem’s rise and fall as the face of his satirical TV programme “The Show”, which saw him taking on three presidents: Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi and Fattah el-Sisi, his audience reaching 30 million at its peak.

When Bassem was demonstrating in Tahrir against the near thirty-year rule of Mubarak, he wanted to help the victims of the police brutality but a teargas attack left him incapacitated and he remembers, “I saw two different realities, the one I saw in the streets, and the other reality I saw on television”. With his friend Tarek Elkazzaz and the cartoonist JF Andeel, Bassem started a satirical show “The B+ Show” on You Tube, which became so successful that Bassem gave up medicine and started “The Show” (Al-Bernameg) on TV. Soon he became a popular figure, and after the fall of Mubarak in 2011, to which he contributed, Bassem soon found out that Mubarak’s successor Mohamed Morsi, though democratically elected, turned out to be a ruthless dictator, who wanted to change the secular constitution of the country, turning it into an Islamic Republic.

After Morsi’s overthrow by the military, led by Fattah el-Sisi, the latter was elected as the new president in 2014, garnering a staggering 96% of all votes cast. Needless to say, that Bassem did not stop attacking the new regime, which was more or less a Mubarak 2.0 version. Helped by a visit from Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” in the USA, Bassem at first seem to keep his audience, but the new regime instigated mass protests against “The Show”: A woman shouting into the camera of the State TV Station “Don’t mess with the Egyptian Army and Sisi!”. To which a Bassem supporter answered” Why are you against the man who fought against the Brotherhood?” Bassem would soon find out “how scary it was, to be a TV host”. Shot behind the scenes, we see the collaborators being equally frightened – after all the military had re-introduced Martial Law and nobody was safe. At first, the CBC TV station let Bassem and his crew go, and after they found a new station, the government blocked the transmission of “the Show”, a step, even Morsi had refrained from. With his family and friends frightened, Bassem finally gave up and said good-bye to his audience. But CBC went to court, and Bassem was convicted of having to pay a fine in the nine figures region “for breach of contract”. With two suitcases he fled with his wife and baby-daughter to the USA – trying to drum up support for a new TV show, whilst giving lectures. After Trump’s election, this may be just another ironic twist in Bassem’s search for freedom of expression.

Whilst TICKLING GIANTS tries to keep up the humour, it is truly very dark, even though Bassem jokes at the very end that he hopes that this documentary will make it easier for him to meet a nubile Italian film star –the reality is, that he could not even attend his father’s funeral in Cairo. And president el Sisi has certainly reached his long-term goal “of influencing the media”. Taksler is very professional, always interested in the changes of the show’s crew, where the participation in this daring enterprise has brought also personal liberation for the female members. But overall, there is no sign of a happy-end anywhere – the giants are marching on. AS

FROM 31 MARCH AT BERTHADOCHOUSE

The Age of Shadows (2016) | Miljeong

Dir.: Kim Jee Woon

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gong Yoo, Um tae-goo, Han Ji-min

South Korea 2016, 139 min.

The original Korean title in translation means Secret Agent, and writer/director Kim Jee Woon (The last Stand) offers us a dazzling spy story, set in Seoul as well as Shanghai during the 1920s when large parts of South East Asia were occupied by the Japanese. Kim gets very near to the spirit of Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent: double crossing, based on ambivalent interests, dominates this sumptuous ballet of shadow fights played out against the alluring background of twenties architecture, lovingly recreated.

The first ten minutes set the tone: Kim Jan-ok, a leading personality of the Korean resistance movement in Seoul is chased by Japanese soldiers, led by Captain Lee Jung-Chool (Song), who once was himself a resistance fighter, before changing sides in Seoul. Cornered, Kim Jan kills himself. The whole sequence is filmed like a ballet: the soldiers jumping from rooftop to rooftop, whilst Kim tries to loose them in the narrow alleyways. Lee is truly sad about Kim’s death, and when he is ordered by his Japanese superior Chief Higashi to catch the leader of the resistance Kim Woo-jin (Gong), he remembers the time spent with Kim Woo and the beautiful Yeon Gye-soon (Han) in the underground movement.

In Shanghai, Lee meets up again with Kim-Woo, who is buying TNT from Hungarian anarchists, to use it against the Japanese in Seoul. On the train journey to the Korean capital, Lee has to kill his nemesis, Hashimoto (Um), to save Kim Woo’s life and that of the other resistance leaders. When they arrive in Seoul station, the police have surrounded the concourse, and one of the most memorable fighting sequence is set in motion – whilst Lee is still able to hide his true conviction to his Japanese superiors.

The true star of the film is DoP Kim Ji-jong, who effortlessly conjures up images of a bygone era: everything glitters in fragmented lights, cars roaming the streets, casting frightening shadows at night where the protagonists look very much like marionettes, pulled along in their own dangerous ways. The vibrant colour schemes are permanently changing, melting into each other, creating prisms and a dreamlike atmosphere. Even the violence takes place in an elegant way – apart from the torture scene with Yeon, which seems out of place. The sequences in the train feel seemless – an endless chase in a labyrinth. Song brilliantly evokes his character: a tormented man whose past eradicates his present. Kim Jee Woon directs with great sensibility, avoiding cliches as much as possible. The Age of Shadows is a real masterpiece: a paean to a people lost in the chaos of events well beyond their control, with images of true magic. AS

NOW SHOWING AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016

Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things (2016) | Bfi Flare Festival 2017

Dirs: Mark Kenneth Woods | Michael Yerxa | Canada | Doc | 71min

Taking its name from the Inuktitut language translation of lesbian and gay, literally: “two soft things rubbing together” and “two hard things rubbing together” this documentary explores the experiences of LGBT Inuits and examines their survival since the 1950s where colonisation, religion, forced migration, and cultural assimilation impacted on their communities in northwest Canada. This is largely viewed from the perspective of the small but growing community of LGBT Inuit people living in Nunavut, where they prepare for one of the world’s more remote and snowbound Pride festivals, taking place in the territorial capital of Iqaluit.

It emerges that LGBT identity and long-term same-sex relationships have always existed in Inuit culture, and same-sex sexual activity was common and accepted, particularly as a remedy for social and sexual isolation during times when men and women were segregated from each other as the men left for the traditional hunting season. These cultures norms continued until Catholicism emerged as a dominant religion during the 1950s, although Inuit spirituality still forms an important of their culture, despite many having been taught that homosexuality is incompatible with their traditions, causing a number to move south to large Canadian cities such as Ottowa and Quebec.

Without a straightforward narrative but benefitting from superb cinematography of the wild and snowy landscapes of the region, the film takes on an episodic style with the directors combining archive footage and photos with a series of talking head interviews with those who have commited to uncovering and reclaiming the hidden history of the Inuks, amongst these are filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, politicians Jack Anawak and Paul Okalik, and activists Allison Brewer, Nuka Fennell and Jesse Mike. MT

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 16-26 MARCH 2017

 

 

Holy Motors (2012) Arrow online

Director: Leos Carax | Cast: Denis Lavant, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue | 120mins.  Drama

Leos Carax is always full of surprises and Holy Motors is no exception. Weird and beguiling, it’s another fantasy trip into the unknown from the Cinema de Look movement focusing on style over narrative with a dynamite Denis Lavant as the central character Mr Oscar.

From the opening titles this darkly comic kaleidoscope fires up our imagination – how can a respectable business man start the day in suit, tie and City mode and then morph into a series of different guises arriving home in the back of a limo .

As Mr Oscar, Denis has fun with wigs, make-up and special effects costumes that transform him into many weird guises: a street beggar, a performance artist and a graveyard ghoul, to name but a few. During this nocturnal reverie a frisky Eva Mendes is carried off on his shoulders and there’s an impromptu turn by Kylie Minogue who bursts into song on the Pont Neuf and then throws herself off the roof of a disused Parisian clothing store in an odyssey of bizarre and outlandish antics. Suspend your disbelief, sit back and just let the whole thing wash over you. MT.

ARROW ONLINE in March 2021 | CANNES PREMIERE 2012

 

 

 

 

 

The Lost City of Z (2016)

Dir: James Gray | Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Angus Macfadyen, Tom Holland | US | 140 min.

Director James Gray, who based this biopic of Army officer/explorer Percival Fawcett on the non-fiction book by David Grann, delivers an un-ashamedly old-fashioned and linear boys-own-adventure, shot on grainy 35 mm, making The Lost City a stunning visual adventure spoilt by its overlong running time and regurgitation of the well documented stifling ideology of the Edwardian era which detracts substantially from the film’s enjoyment.

We first meet Major Percival Fawcett (Hunnam) in his late thirties, during a hunt staged for foreign dignitaries, where Fawcett distinguishes himself by killing a deer. But praise, in the form of an invitation for a formal dinner, will not come his way: his commanding officer explains, that “he choose the wrong ancestry” – meaning, that Percival’s father disgraced himself by alcoholism and gambling. But soon afterwards, there is a chance of redemption: The Royal Geological Society (RGS), of whom Percival’s father had been a member, offers Percival a tricky job in the Brazilian jungle where he has the thankless task of establishing a border between Brazil and Bolivia, rendered indistinct by newly installed profitable rubber plantations. Between 1906 and 1924 Fawcett would undertake seven more expeditions into the Brazilian jungle where he became obsessed by the idea of the lost city of Z, located somewhere in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Often clashing with James Murray (Macfadyen) an obese and unsuitable head of the rather reactionary RSG, who could not stomach the fact that the indigenous population had established a culture long before Great Britain, Fawcett is accompanied on all but his last trip by Henry Costin (Pattinson), who served him faithfully, backing him up in the dispute with Murray.

Fawcett joined the Army at the outbreak of WW1 in spite of his advanced age and he was injured and temporarily blinded at the battle of the Somme. His relationship with his wife Nina (Miller) was marked by his permanent absences: she had the burden of bringing up the children, whilst he followed his obsession. When Nina rebelled, wanting to accompany her husband on one of the expeditions (she was certainly fitter than Murray), Fawcett denied her vehemently, claiming “the different roles of males and females are the cornerstone of our culture”. In 1925 Fawcett made a final trip to the Brazilian jungle with his oldest son Jack (Holland): they were presumably killed by Indians along with around a hundred would-be-rescuers.

Percival Fawcett was a certainly a colourful character: he was befriended by Rider Haggard and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used Fawcett’s exploits as material for his books: ‘The Lost World’. Fawcett was very much a one-dimensional man of his time: unable to settle down to family life, he searched for a holy grail, always preferring physical exhortations to reflective patience. He had an anti-authoritarian streak, in reaction to his father’s reputation, but was a male-chauvinist when it came to his relationship with Nina. James Gray (The Immigrant), reiterates the clichés of the era and Fawcett’s part in it over and over again, in a linear narrative that is as conventional and bloated as the characters themselves. A more contemporary approach, such as Pablo Lorrain’s deconstructed approach for Neruda, could have offered a tighter and more engaging watch, The overriding entertainment comes from DoP Darious Khondji (Amour, Seven) sumptuous jungle scenes, the opera house in the middle of the wilderness, the serenity of the natives and the attacking animals which are captured in magnificent lighting. Contrapuntal to the lush jungle landscapes, England is pictured as cold, artificial light dominates in the scenes shot at the RGS. The Lost City of Z is a visual masterpiece, if you can forgive the rather stolid narrative. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 24 MARCH 2017

All this Panic (2016)

Dir. Jenny Gage. US | 79 mins.

What is it like to be a teenager girl today? The adolescent time in a girl’s life has always been the focus of Jenny Gage’s work as a filmmaker and photographer. With ALL THIS PANIC she offers up a female answer to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood in a fresh and effervescent vérité portrait of Brooklyn’s magical youth from teen to young adulthood. Despite its title, this is an uplifting and positive portrait of puberty – a time that seems much the same today as is did 40 years ago – in far less permissive days.

Gage has known some of their girls in her documentary since they were only little (6-8 in the case of Dusty and Ginger) and growing up in her neighbourhood. The film begins around a decade later and takes place over three years. We first meet the crop-haired and delicately gamine Lena while she’s still at school – by the end she’s in college, with her hair tipped in sky blue. Despite her broken family – who love her to bits – she’s sensible and engagingly courageous about her hopes for the future which include a boyfriend and travel. Her father is mentally unstable and her mother is open with about their limited resources – but this could be the making of Lena, just going to show how parental love and security is far more important for kids than money.

Ginger is unsettled and less sure of her direction. A tiff with Dusty sees them heading out for the city – both wearing headphones in protest, yet travelling together. Having decided not to go to college Ginger debates dreams of becoming an actor with her father – who appears unorthodox, English and covered in tattoos – and is not impressed with Ginger’s lack of effort in this endeavour. Little sister Dusty and her best friend the freckled Delia, listen carefully to the discussion and try to fathom out their less ambitious yearnings that include losing their virginity and having kids.

Sage is an articulate and strong-willed black girl who has recently lost her father. Attending a private school in Manhattan, she has won a coveted scholarship to Howard University. Squabbling with her mother over the household chores, she seems the most driven of the group. Olivia is introspective and softly spoken, with the most beautiful eyes – by the end of the film she is in love with another girl. And lastly, Ivy – the most streetwise – is in a committed relationship but unsure about the future without strong support from her parents.

Delicately captured in Tom Betterton’s limpid visuals this is impressionistic snapshot of blossoming womanhood explores intimate moments as the girls share their expectations of sex, studying and financial independence. Gage presents an encouraging picture of the next female generation, as giggly young things become the next generation of leaders, mothers, wives and partners. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 24 MARCH 2017

 

The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

Writer|Dir: Nicolas Pesce Cast: Kika Magalhaes, Will Brill, Olivia Bond, Paul Nazak, Diana Agostini, Clara Wong

Nicolas Pesce cut his teeth in the world of music videos and his feature debut – an intense and stylish psychological thriller – is embued with the melancholy moodiness of Portuguese Fado laced with macabre American Gothic.

Set in a remote forested backwater THE EYES OF MY MOTHER could easily have lost its way but a clever script never allows the film to wander too far off the beaten track, eventually reaching a rather satisfying ending, while keeping our attention fixed on its mesmerising central character Francisca, played with captivating nonchalence by Kika Magalhaes. We first meet Francisca as a little girl (played by Olivia Bond) who whose slightly bohemian mother (Diana Agostini) has fetched up in a cattle farm in the wilds of New York State with her strong but silent husband after a lifetime’s practising eye surgery in her native Portugal.

Nicolas Pesce could be the US answer to Jonathan Glazer in his stylish ‘less is more’ approach to directing with a slowly mounting atmosphere of dread deftly complimenting the pristine look of the film. Zach Kuperstein’s elegantly composed black-and-white visuals turn what could have been a gory film into a gracefully poetic arthouse chiller: blood and bodily fluids ooze like obsidian ink and a chiaroscuro aesthetic transform the story into a modern classic with the same unsettling dread of The Night of the Hunter with Magalhaes’ subtle psychopath replacing Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell, and a switcheroo male/female dynamic that appears in third act. Apart from the film’s strong visual appeal, the paucity of dialogue allows us to retreat into the deepest corners of the psyche to ponder over the implications and possibilities of a narrative that leaves so many questioned unanswered.

Bilingual Francisca is extremely close to her mother who has taught her all about anatomy and surgery not only leaving her skilfully au fait with dissection, but also making the process of carving up bodies completely natural. This will be crucial when her mother is murdered by a creepy stranger (Will Brill), not only leaving Francisca unfazed by her brutal death but also seemingly untraumatised in the aftermath (where he father keeps the man chained up in the barn), allowing Francisca to practise her surgical skills.

Her distant but respectful relationship with her father seems to have unleashed some kind of attachment anxiety in Francisca when she becomes an adult. Clearly she aches with loneliness, but rather than seek out an amorous encounter to avoid being alone, Francisca uses her talents to make sure nobody ever leaves her.

Most of the violence is tactfully alluded to rather than overt, and where brutality does occur it is often in silent scenes where Francisca demonstrates a tender and almost religious devotion. Ariel Loh’s atmospheric occasional score makes unsettling intrusions into the quiet moments without disturbing the sinister sense of terror. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE from 24 MARCH 2017

Afterimage | Powidoki (2016) | Kinoteka Polish Film Festival

IMG_3487Dir.: Andrzej Wajda | Cast: Boguslaw Linda, Zofia Wichlacz, Bronislawa Zamachowska, Aleksandra Justa | Poland | 98 min.

Andrzej Wajda’s final film, an unsentimental bio-pic covering the last years of the avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski (1893-1952), is the opposite of a melancholic swansong: AFTERIMAGE is a vicious attack on Stalinist repression and censorship, filmed by a man still young at heart, who never gave up the fight against an inhuman dictatorship regime which perverted the idea of equality.

Despite losing a leg and an arm in active service during WWI, Strzemisnki (a magnificent turn by Linda) led a vibrant life, shown in the opening sequence, when he rolls down a grassy hill with his students of the State Higher School of Arts in Lodz, which he had founded in 1945. A popular lecturer, all his students stood by him when he was dismissed from his post in 1950 for refusing to submit to the doctrine of Socialist Realism. One of his students, Hania (Wichlacz), eventually fell in love with him, but was rebuffed by the artist, because he knew he was dying of tuberculosis. But there was still time for a family drama: Strzeminski had left his wife, the famous sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (Justa), whom he had married in 1920, and who lived with their young daughter Nika (Zamachowska – in a case of life copying art, Justa’s Kobra is Zamachowska’s real life mother). Despite the family’s creative talents, resources were tight. Zamachowska has an other-worldly screen presence: she stands out as a fearless and self-possessed child. particularly in the scene where she walks alone behind the coffin in her broken down shoes and only coat (which she turns inside out after chastisement from a passer-by for its bright colour). After Kobra’s death, Nika moves in with her father and tenderly cares for his needs while lecturing him to eat more and smoke less. But when Hania appears on the scene, on the crafty pretext of recording “The Theory of Vision” on a typewriter stolen from the Art School, Nika makes no bones about moving into the local childrens’ home, where at least she gets a free uniform and new footwear.

The bureaucratic authorities gave Strzeminski a final warning after he damaged a street banner bearing a picture of Stalin, because it cut out the natural from his studio window. It counted for nothing that the painter was the co-founder of the world-famous BLOK group in 1924, a loose association of Cubists, Constructivists and Suprematists, including Malevich (whose students Kobra and Strzeminski had been), as well as El Lissitzky. After Strzemisnki’s dismissal from the Higher Art School, two events followed: firstly, his students’ exhibition was destroyed by hooligans hired by the State Authorities; then came the enforced closure of the Neoplastic Room in the Museum in Lodz, which Strzemisnki had opened in 1948 (and included five Spatial Compositions by Kobro, who nevertheless was not invite to the opening). Further humiliation followed: he was thrown out of the Artists Union, barring him from buying any more painting materials. Since food was only obtainable on ration cards for the employed, his status as unemployed meant that he was reduced to starving. Although his students tried to find odd jobs for him, Hania even getting arrested,  Strzeminski’s body eventually gave up just after Christmas 1952. Whilst Wajda concentrates on the last years of Strzeminski’s life, there is certainly another story to be told: daughter Nika has published a memoir of her parents “Love, Art and Hatred” in 1991.

César-winning (The Pianist) DoP Pawel Edelman’s resplendent visual style records the hardship of the post-war years, and the bitter hounding of a great artist by a posse of petit-bourgeois functionaries, who hide behind their orders from above. The Stalinist regime robs everything from Strzemisnki: even his love for the cinema, which he leaves with his daughter, after having to watch an infuriating propaganda newsreel. An Afterimage is the visual impression that remains on the retina after viewing an image: what will be remembered from Andrzej Wajda’s work is not the narratives that cleverly navigate through Stalinist restrictions and bans, but the memory of his fight to record the truth behind the events in over fifty films that he made from the 1950s onwards. In AFTERIMAGE Wajda drives his last spear into the heart of the Stalinist monster. AS

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH TO 5 APRIL 2017

Another Mother’s Son (2017)

Dir: Christopher Menaul | Writer: Jenny Lecoat | Cast: Jenny Seagrove, John Hannah, Julian Kostov, Amanda Abbington, Ronan Keating, Susan Hampshire and Brenock O’Connor | UK | Biopic | 90min

Best known for her TV work and the dire docudrama Diana: Last Days of a Princess, writer Jenny Lecoat unearthes another wartime story and this time one close to her own heart. Set on the island of Jersey in 1940 it explores the life of her great aunt and war widow Louisa Gould (Jenny Seagrove) who took in a young Russian prisoner of war in the final days of the Second World War.

Directed for the big screen by Christopher Menaul (Summer in February) with a decent British cast this painterly period piece conveys the community spirit of the islanders who were forced to live in reduced circumstances in the only part of the British Isles occupied by the Nazis. The wartime storyline lends itself to some rich moments of drama and gentle comedy but tension soon mounts in the third act when reality bites in a shocking denouement where the tone suddenly shifts to melodrama as Jenny Seagrove rather hams it up as she is overtaken by unexpected events.

ANOTHER MOTHER’S SON would work really well as a TV drama so it’s unclear why the producers have decided to give it a theatrical release but the significance of the true story, set to Mario Grigorov’s rousing original score; the lushly verdant landscapes of Jersey and some quietly moving performances from Seagrove (as the resourceful but cavalier Gould ), Julian Kostov (the impetuous Russian POV known as Bill), and Ronan Keating (rather appealing as Louisa’s brother Harold) give this tale of love, loyalty and betrayal a resonance that many may find deeply affecting. MT

ANOTHER MOTHER’S SON IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 24 MARCH 2017.

 

After Louie (2016) | BFi Flare

Dir.: Vincent Gagliostro | Cast: Alan Cumming, Zachary Booth, Sarita Chadhury, Everett Quinton | USA | 100 min.

First time director/co-writer Vincent Gagliostro explores the current LGTB scene in New York, with this rather episodic yet unsentimental portrait of three different generations of gay men.

Centred around painter turned video filmmaker Sam Cooper (Cumming), has recently made a film about his dying friend, an important campaigner in the 80s and 90s. At the age of 55, Cooper’s apparent midlife crisis leads him to embark on an affair with the much younger Braeden (Booth), who is living with a boyfriend who is HIV positive. After a night of passionate sex, Braeden is very surprised to find 500$ in his trainers: he was in it for the fun, whilst the older man, rather cynically, saw it as a transaction. Cooper the hearts of the audience, when he criticises a couple of recently married friends, for their “white middle-class values, being traitors to the gay men who died in the last century” – this is particularly offensive, since one of them is black – and Sam is the stereotypical white, wealthy middle-class artist. Meanwhile, Cooper continues to pay Braeden for his sexual favours – a moot point with his live-in boyfriend –  he meets up with his ex-college teacher Julian (Quinton), who is trying hard to age gracefully. The only voice of reason in this mayhem of contradictory emotions comes from Maggie (Chadbury) a black mother.

AFTER LOUIE doesn’t quite hang together despite some insightful moments. Visually weak and weighed down with verbose dialogue, it comes across more like a work in progress than the finished article. AS

BFI FLARE FILM FESTIVAL | 17 MARCH – 27 MARCH 2017

 

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism (2016)

Matilda BrowneDir: Phil Grabsky | Narrator: Gillian Anderson | US | Art Biopic |

After a look at French Impressionism, director and producer Phil Grabsky takes his camera across the Atlantic to explore the American Impressionist movement in a study that follows on from Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse (2o16). Once again, Grabsky explores galleries and gardens up and down the US, France and Britain to offer insight and enrich his film with sumptuous visuals. But although resplendent in its subject matter, this doesn’t quite live up to his previous documentary both from the quality of the narrative and in the commentary provided by curators and talking heads.

In America the Impressionist movement covered almost four decades and was rooted in a deep held desire to preserve nature by a largely rural nation that underwent rapid industrialisation towards the end of the 19th Century.

Edmund GreacenGrabsky shows how the origins of American Impressionist can be traced back to France, and, in particular, to French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel who arrived in New York at the end of the 1880s with a massive stock of impressionist works which he had not been able to sell back home where their counter cultural nature faced harsh opposition to conventional art community. The avant-garde canvasses provided inspiration and captured the imagination of American artists who beat a path back to Europe and the home of Monet in Giverny where they developed a new strain of Impressionism, changing the course of American art forever.

Impressionism had been met with ridicule in the salons and galleries of France but American dealers were now rich on the profits of industrialisation and snapped up the works in a buying frenzy. This all coincided with a time of urban renewal and regeneration when horticulture and landscape design lead a drive to improve the amenity value of the built environment in the form of parks and gardens that provided green spaces and fresh air to the new cities and towns. These in turn provided inspiration for the middle classes who were keen to re-create a ‘rus in urbis’ that reminded them of their rural past and provided inspiration for the future. Women were becoming highly educated and increasingly independent and sought to copy the fashionable ideas of Gertrude Jekyll, Lawrence Weaver and William Robinson in their homes, gardens designs and their painting, not only as a recreational activity but also as a pathway to spiritual renewal. MT

Willard MetcalfThe Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

ON RELEASE FROM 23 MARCH 2017 | FOR TICKETS TO A SCREENING NEAR YOU, CLICK HERE OR SELECT YOUR LOCATION ON THE MAP

Fashion In Film Festival 2017 | 11 – 26 March

Fashion In Film celebrates its Tenth Anniversary throughout London with a selection of rare and exciting screenings, talks and an exhibition exploring the potent visual means through which film can break away from known reality and herald new worlds of the future or conjure up and celebrate a sumptuous visual past.

The programme showcases an eclectic array of well-loved and neglected features, documentaries and shorts. Discover or revisit Alain Resnais’ LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, Richard Massingham’s wartime propaganda IN WHICH WE LIVE, Nick Knight’s early fashion film SLEEP.

TONY TAKITANI (2004)  The Hoxton, Holborn 18.30, Monday 13 March

BLACK TIE  The Hoxton, Holborn, 18.30 + AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF – Tuesday 14 March

IKARIE XB-1 (1963) Prince Charles 20.45 + EVERYTHING BUT EVERYTHING IN BRI-NYLON – 14 March 

THINGS TO COME (2016), Prince Charles Cinema, 20.45 – 15 March

DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) Picturehouse Central, 18.30 + CHILDHOOD STORAGE, 16 March

LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961), Picturehouse Central, 21.00, 16 March

In_the_Mood_for_Love_bfi-00n-3xqIN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001) Curzon Soho, 18.00 – 17 March

CLEO FROM 5 – 7 (1962)  The Hoxton, Holborn, 20.45 – 17 March

VERTIGO (1958) Curzon Soho, 15.00 + THE PERFECT EMBRACE – 18 March

BEYOND THE ROCKS (1922), Rio Cinema, 13.00 – 19 March

SOLARIS  (1972) Curzon Bloomsbury, 20.30 – 19 March

THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1969) Curzon WC1, 18.30 – 20 March

AELITA: QUEEN OF MARS (1924) Genesis Cinema, 20.30 – Tuesday, 21 MARCH

PRINCESS RACOON (2005), Curzon Soho, 20.30

TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942), 20.30  Genesis Cinema + In Which We Live – 24 March

Holy Motors

BARBARELLA (1968), Barbican Centre, 14.00 – 25 March

HOLY MOTORS (2012) Barbican Centre, 16.00 (right) – 25 March

THE INFERNO UNSEEN  Henri-Georges Clusot’s unfinished last film Barbican Centre, 16.00 – 26 March

FASHION ON FILM | 11 – 26 MARCH 2017 full programme AND TICKETS 

 

 

The Good Postman (2016) | Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Dir. Tonislav Hristov | Finland/Bulgaria 2016, | Doc | 82 mins.

In a remote village deep in the Bulgarian countryside only 36 people turned up to vote in the local elections. Great Dervent is crumbling to the ground and clearly on its last legs but resourceful local postman Ivan has a regeneration plan. Wealthy Syrian refugees have left traces in the decrepit school building in their search for a new home, and Ivan suggests to the villagers that they all gather round and welcome the newcomers into their community. Some agree but some are sceptical that the refugees will take over the few remaining jobs and prove a threat with their ‘criminal’ ways. And who can blame these hospitable and decent people who are used to their own kind and unaccustomed to outside influences?. There is no internet here but the media has not helped matters, whipping up a sentiment of zenophobia with negative TV reportage that fuels the growing climate of ultra-right nationalism.

Glowing with the bucolic splendour of this lush land in the extreme South on the border  with Turkey, Tonislav Hristov’s documentary is cinematic and soulful in tone, but very much along similar lines as the recent Ukrainian Cowboys (2016). Ivan the postman does not only deliver letters but also tea and sympathy to the ageing villagers, even doling out advice on water bills and medical help, he fervently believes the Syrians are a good thing: “Together, between us, we’ll create a good environment in the village”, “there will be children and they will laugh”.

Typically it is the latest immigrants to the village who are the most hostile about Syrians and other newcomers. Ukrainian wayfarer and recent arrival Halachev has taken a strident anti-immigration stance, considering his own credentials. Setting up a cranky electric organ on the common he preaches a negative diatribe: “Bulgaria for Bulgarians, the Syrians are worse than Gypsies”.

Hristov’s rather rambling but watchable documentary is accompanied by a mournful occasional score of folkmusic. It is a sad and rather pitiful story that contrasts sharply with the region’s peaceful and gently rolling countryside. As Ivan’s kindly wife sighs: “you remember a man for his goodness. People danced. Now nothing”. And clearly Ivan is a good and persevering man who will be remembered for his generosity of spirit in a fight that very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world. MT

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL | 6 – 17 March 2017

The Red Spider|Czerwony Pajak (2015) | Kinoteka 2017 | 17 March – 5 April

Dir/cine. Marcin Koszalka | Thriller | Poland |  Czech Republic | Slovak Republic | 2015 | 90 min.

With a quiver of macabre shorts and documentaries under his belt, Krakow-born filmmaker Marcin Koszalka is one of contemporary Poland’s most interesting talents and gathers around him an award-winning design crew.. Inspired by real events, his first fiction feature is a stylishly pristine and cryptic affair that delivers its sinuous storyline in a tightly-paced 90 minutes.

There are sinister things going on in communist Krakow in 1967. In a snowbound park, champion diver, medical student and dutiful son Karol Kremer discovers the multilated body of a teenage boy on his way home. In the shadows, lurks a man in a beret and Karol follows him home to discover he is the local vet, Lutek. The nightly news announces the 11th victim of a serial killer, a young boy. But Karol (Filip Plawiak) is hardly a straightforward chap himself and clearly a fantasist who becomes obsessed with the murders, visiting Lutek (Adam Woronowicz) with his ailing pet terrier (who he has pre-poisoned), and cross-examining him over the murders, which the vet doesn’t deny. Meanwhile, Karol is also conducting a slow-burning seduction of female photographer Danka who soon becomes the killer’s next victim in a frenzied hammer attack. Kremer is arrested as the prime suspect and bizarrely goes along with police inquiries, relishing the opportunity of becoming the centre of attention yet oblivious to the consequences.

More than just a film about serial killing, THE RED SPIDER is very much an evocative mood piece echoing unsettling political events of the time of widespread student protests with the government in disarray in the run-up to the Prague Spring in neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Koszalka’s immaculate camerawork echoes the chilly climate of sexual repression and uncertainty of the strictly Catholic country. Magdalena Dipont’s sets evoke the sleek minimalism of Sixties design in the interiors and street scenes. Although much of the narrative remains fairly enigmatic, Koszalka constructs a spider web of plausibilities that are not beyond reasonable doubt, and the froideur of perfectly-pitched performances adds allure to this his frigid thriller. MT

KINOTEKA 2017 | 17 MARCH 5 APRIL 2017

Gleason (2016)

Dir.: Clay Tweel | Documentary with Steve Gleason, Michel Varisco; USA | 110 min.

Director/co-editor Clay Tweel (Finders Keepers) tells the story of Stephen Gleason, who played eight years for the New Orleans Saints as pro-line-backer in the NFL, and was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) in 2011, three years after having retired from the sport. As irony has it, his son Rivers was born in October of that year.

Live expectancy with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) is five years, and the documentary opens with Gleason starting his video blog for his son while he retains the ability to talk, but already has difficulties annunciating. Later, Gleason is to lose his voice completely (to be replaced by a voice box, directed from a computer keyboard) and even his ability to breathe, he is now on a mechanical ventilator. But he is still alive, using a wheelchair and needing 24-hour care by a team, led by his wife Michel, an artist. Gleason appreciates the contradictions of his situation: once, he was a sporting hero making a daring play on the football field, where he became a symbol for the resurgence of New Orleans devastated by the hurricane. the city, including the Super Dome. Now he is largely incontinent.

Michel is looking after two children: but the strain has caused a growing distance between the parents. Rivers loves being taken for a ride by his Dad on the wheelchair, but one suspects, that this will not last much longer. Stephen’s video log is a testament of his care for his son – particularly considering his own relationship with his father. Stephen grew up in a dysfunctional family, his father not being able to give him the love he needed. Even during the first stages of ALS, Gleason sen. insisted on his son visiting a Christian faith healer – a move Michel called “bullshit”. Stephen has used his celebrity status for other ALS sufferers: his ‘Team Gleason’ helps to get equipment and care (not covered by insurance) for other ALS patients.

But Tweel’s hagiographic approach avoids some valid questions relating to American Football. On a small scale, the Gleasons worked with the filmmaker Sean Pamphilon until the release of the audio-tape regarding the ‘bounty scandal’ of the New Orleans Saints. This involved a coach asking his players to injure the opposition on purpose – in return for a bonus. Stephen Gleason tried to prevent the release of the tape, insisting that he did not authorise it. And then there is the issue of overriding connection between brain damage and the sport itself – long repressed by the NFL, until recently. These very relevant issues should have been mentioned.

Gleason shows a father struggling to be the best possible father for his son – watching Stephen’s condition deteriorate, both physically and psychologically, is hard. DoPs David Lee and Ty Minton-Small never take the easy way out and show every detail of Gleason’s fight which is still going on to this day. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 MARCH 2017

The Salesman (2016) | Cannes Winner: Best script and Actor

Director/Script: Asghar Farhadi | Drama | Iran | 127min

Asghar Farhadi is best known for his enigmatic drama A Separation (2011). This was a film that impressed the arthouse crowd with its slowburn intensity gradually building to a shocking final. About Elly (2009) followed with slightly less acclaim and The Salesman fits comfortably into the Farhadi groove. It’s a good film but not a great one. Starring the same lead as his Fireworks Wednesday (2006) the superb Taraneh Alidoosti, it explores a similar premise and now universal theme: that something familiar and safe is now fraught with uncertainty and the resulting chaos provides the testing ground for the protagonist’s integrity, or lack of it.

There’s an artificial and rather forced quality to The Salesman, a tale of Tehrani bourgeoisie: Rana (Alidoosti) is a housewife and Emad (Shahab Hosseini who won Best Actor) teaches at the University. They both enjoy the theatre and have joined an acting group staging Arthur Miller’s ‘American Dream’ play Death of a Salesman when the film opens. Emad gets the lead part of failed salesman Willy Loman and Rana – his wife -Linda. But events are waylaid by an horrific structural collapse at the couple’s apartment block and they are forced to move out into alternative accommodation, provided by another member of their group. The previous occupier has been involved with some unsavoury characters who swing by regularly at all hours of the day and night. And one day Rana accidently opens the door to one such individual. This paves the way for some startling unpleasantness as Farhardi mixes scenes from the American play with the couple’s sombre reality. The normally restrained Emad starts to take on a rather self-congratulatory grandiosity as his masculinity is challenged, much as Willy Loman’s salesmanship is when he fails in his sales efforts- the similarities emerge between the two man, albeit in a rather fatuous way in the final twist.

Although The Salesman has possibly more mainstream appeal it lacks the subtle quality of A Separation. That said, this is an intelligent and watchable drama that provides a great deal to reflect on, winning the Best Script award at Cannes Film Festival 2016. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | Winner Best Script and Best Actor

 

Planet Single (2016) | Kinoteka 2017 | 17 March – 26 April

Dir.: Mitja Okorn; Cast: Agnieszka Wiedlocla, Maciej Suhr, Piotr Glowacki, Weronika Ksiezkiewicz, Tomasz Karolak, Michel Czernek, Danuta Stenka; Poland 2016, 136 min.

Director Mitja Okorn’s portrait of contemporary Polish society is a bitter farce about a nation in the grip of media mania, where everybody lives on their smartphones scrambling for public success.

Ania (Wiedlocla), a timid music teacher, and TV host Tomek (Suhr) could not be much more different at the outset. Fighting for a place in the sun on all levels: at school she has to share the gymnasium with boisterous boys, who drown out her class with their ball games,  and at home, she is repressed by her mother (Stenka), who has not to come to terms with the death of her husband, and is needy for attention despite Ania sacrificing a career as a concert pianist to look after her.

Tomek is cocksure to begin with, but his bravado – usually in form of obnoxious, misogynist remarks in front of the camera – is hollow. The TV presenter relies totally on his producer Marcel (Glowacki), who he has copied since secondary school. Tomek picks Ania as one of his contestants for his TV Internet dating show, where he uses a puppet to represent the put-upon music teacher. Meanwhile, Ania’s best friend Ola (Ksiazkiewicz), married to the bone-headed Bogdan (Karolak), is set up by her step daughter, the teenager hoping to get rid of Ola. Ania ends up falling for Antoni (Czerneck), a grieving widower with a little daughter, who joins Ania’s class. But Tomek becomes jealous and wants to sabotage their relationship.

Just when the story is heading for happy-endings all around, destroying everything shown before, a surprising turn of events proves the shallowness of the characters who, sadly, prove to be as shallow and self-seeking as the premise suggests. Below the saccharine coating of the jokes and over-the-top gags THE SINGLE LIFE is suffused with bitterness, and there is a palpable sense of disillusionment with a society that encourages personal and professional success to be played out to the greatest possible audience. DoP Tomasz Madejski (The mighty Angel) conjures up brilliant images at TV the Station (with a viciously ruthless station boss), and behind closed doors, where people imitate their professional counterparts desperately searching for recognition and positive ratings, spinning their own stories with great aplomb. Enjoyable and illuminating, but at 136 minutes far too self-indulgent.

SCREENING AT KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Personal Shopper (2016) | Cannes 2016 | Best Director 2016

Director: Olivier Assayas

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Nora vonWaltstätten, Anders Danielsen Lie

101mins | Fantasy drama | France

Paris has always had a sinister side inspiring Poe’s Murders in The Rue Morgue and Balzac’s Pere Goriot, a story of social realism set near the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery: French literature is redolent with macabre stories conjured up by the dark side of the capital. So it seems somehow feels fitting that Olivier Assayas should add other chilling chapter to this spectrally charged city with his ghost-themed story PERSONAL SHOPPER.

The film is creepy, charismatic and as quirkily inventive as Olivier Assayas who has explored differnet genres in his consummate career but never a ghost story. And Kristen Stewart its star shimmers here in a sombrely subtle turns that is as dark as its subject matter. She plays the unlikely named Maureen Cartwright, a 27 year old American girl who is bored with life and living out a meaningingless few months as a personal shopper to bitchy German media figure Kyra (Nora vonWaltstätten), while she mourns the death of her twin brother Lewis.

Paris is the capital of the fashion world and Assayas works this elegantly into the plot as Maureen glides through a series of glitzy ateliers garnering hand-styled garments for her boss and jewelled accoutrements from Chanel and Cartier. This is work that fills Maureen with ennui as she considers herself worthy of better things and idly sketches and researches her yen for the supernatural and the psychic experiments of Victor Hugo and the avant garde Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. On the sly, she guiltily slips into Kyra’s couturier gowns and fetishistic footwear before pleasuring herself on Kyra’s bed during her trips abroad. Kristen Stewart brings a gamine insouciant sensuality to her role that feels both menacing and intriguing in its sexual ambivalence.

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 a ghostly presence is felt as Maureen whispers inaudibly in scenes that are genuinely scary and entirely plausible given the undercurrent of glowering spitefulness that vibes through the increasingly dark narrative. This leads us to believe that Maureen is herself conjuring up the devil’s work. Olivier Assayas’s wickedly inventive vision is the most exciting thing so far at Cannes 2016. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE 17 March | CANNES FIL FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 | Best Director for Olivier Assayas

The Love Witch (2016)

imagesDir/Writer: Anna Biller | Cast: Samantha Robinson, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Laura Waddell, Jared Sanford, Robert Seeley | US | Fantasy Drama | 118min

Anyone who enjoyed TVs Bewitched will appreciate this hyperrealist technicolour drama where the harmless Elizabeth Montgomery is replaced by a mysterious modern day minx who mixes potions and plots to make men fall in love with her, forever. Elaine (Samantha Robinson) is gorgeously winsome and perfectly poised until she retreats behind closed doors to a boudoir bursting with lurid love games and sexy underwear and where she shamelessly seduces her prey leaving a trail of dying and distraught menfolk wondering what on earth happened. Anna Biller’s clever script has nailed men’s egos to a cross and brazenly exposed their deepest anxieties of losing control, falling in love and ‘drowning in the oestrogen’ of their new found perfect playmate. Set in an imagined kitsch community in 1960s California, there’s also a whiff of Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale and Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers to Biller’s dark and mocking humour which also has a pop at women folk and their machiavellian ways when it comes to romance. Weird and possibly the most watchable satire you’ll see this week. A cameo from the wonderful Agnes Moorehead would have been the icing on the cake. MT

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NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 10 MARCH 2017.

 

 

 

The Eccentrics: The Sunny Side of the Street (2015) | Kinoteka 2017

Dir: Janusz Majewski | Musical Drama | Poland | 112min

Janusz Majewski’s stylish musical drama sees a former soldier and jazz fan return to Poland after the Second World War where he forms a swing band striking a chord of optimism in dreary fifties Warsaw. The venture is a roaring success and soon Fabian (Maciej Stuhr) is dating Modesta (Natalia Rybicka), a beautiful and mysterious fellow musician who joins the players as a vocalist. Intoxicated by their newfound freedom and excited about the future, the two lovers are the talk of the town but Poland is changing as positive and negative influences from the West make their lives more complicated. Although slightly bogged down by its superfluous subplots, ECCENTRICS is well worth seeing for its exuberant jazz numbers sung in perfect tune by the leads (unlike the lovers in La La Land) and for its stunning period set design and costumes. MT

SUNDAY 26 MARCH 19.30 REGENT STREET CINEMA | KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2017

Uncertain (2016)

Dir.: Anna Sandilands, Ewan McNicol; Documentary; USA 2015, 82 min.

Uncertain is a town of 94 inhabitants that lies on the Texas side of the border with Louisiana. The Sheriff jokes:“You’ve got to be lost to find it.” Rumour has it that the only reason for its existence is that a surveyor made a mistake on the map. But debut directors Anna Sandilands and Ewan McNicol get the most of the gloomy atmosphere of the Bayonne – a heaven for lost souls.

The lake, which supports the town’s fishing industry, has an eerie quality: Southern Gothic, mysteries and forgotten crimes haunt the murky waters. McNicol says “we spent time with the lake like as we would with another character”. But the lake is in peril; it is being invaded by a species of parasitic waterweed, salvinia, which covers the whole water surface, killing the fish and blocking oxygen and light and doubling its surface area every two days. Scientists have found a way to eradicate the prolific weed by introducing weevils but anticipate it will cost the authorities a pretty penny.

The filmmakers follow three Uncertain denizens, all with a skeleton in their cupboard. They seem fitting protagonists in this atmosphere lingering doom. Henry, a man in his seventies, has been coming to terms with getting older and losing his wife. In his hot-tempered youth he killed a man in an interracial contretemps. Like many, Henry relies on the lake for his liveliehood, and a friend states categorically “if the lake dies, the town dies.” Wayne is also a killer who caused the death of a young man while under the influence and is now trying to put the past behind him by going back to his native roots, hunting the local wild boar. His prime target is the leader of the herd, a bull Wayne has christened ‘Mr Ed’. He becomes obsessed with the hog, treating him like a warrior. Zach is perhaps the saddest of the trio: a young man, anorexic, diabetic and alcohol dependent, he dreams about a future in Austin, but his poverty is keeping him in Uncertain. Even when he finally gets away, we see him in hospital being told that he will not see thirty-five if he goes on drinking. Traumatised by a mother who had to be incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, he has even lost any illusions about his future: ”Don’t dream, that’s not how you’re gonna be happy in life. I kinda pushed my dreams aside”.

UNCERTAIN is a respectful non-judgemental study of people living on the margins of US society and the filmmakers really convey this doleful, festering quality – synonymous with the current mood prevailing in the country. AS

UNCERTAIN is at the ICA from 10th March and On Demand from 17th March
www.uncertainfilm.com

The Apology (2016) | Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Dir.: Tiffany Hsiung; Documentary; Canada 2016, 104 min.

Filmmaker Tiffany Hsiung’s debut is a moving but never sentimental tribute to three elderly women from China, South Korea and the Philippines. They all have something in common: During the Japanese occupation of the South-Asian subcontinent during WWII, they were amongst the 200,000 prisoners, and were confined in so-called “Comfort Houses”, where they were raped for years, many of them just thirteen or fourteen years old. For decades they have been protesting and campaigning, asking the Japanese government – in vain – for an apology.

Grandma Gil lives in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China and Grandma Adela in the Philippines. It is now seventy years, since they were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery – and have lived silently with their ‘shame’ for most of their lives, they are spending the last years of their lives campaigning. Even their closest relatives, were not told about their ordeal for decades, in some cases. The stories are grim: the girls were abducted on the streets, or taken from their families, the parents being beaten up. One woman reports, that she was beaten unconscious when she entered the “Comfort House” – and raped brutally before gaining consciousness. Others were sterilised, some had babies, which did not survive. After the war, hardly anyone was aware of the tragedy, since the survivors felt guilty and did not want to bring shame to their families.But this has changed: Gil, the spiritual leader in South Korea, has arranged demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy every Wednesday since 1992. Number one thousand was ‘celebrated’ with a golden statue of an elderly woman placed in front the embassy building.

But the Japanese reaction is vicious: in Osaka (mainly) young people organise a counter demonstration, calling “for the Korean ‘whores’ to go home”. And Mayor Hasimoto, MP of the Restauration Party, goes on TV, to declare, that the “Comfort Homes” were a necessity. Gil and her followers find a kinder audience at a Japanese Women’s University, where one girl breaks down in tears, having heard for the first time in her life about the suffering of these poor women. THE APOLOGY ends with Gil speaking in front of UN, having gathered more than 1.5 million signatures for a petition, asking Japan for an official apology. You have to see THE APOLOGY, even if it breaks your heart. AS

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL

Promised Land (1975) | Ziemia Obiecana | Kinoteka 2017

Director: Andrzej Wajda | Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Anna Nehrebecka, Tadeusz Bialoszcztnski, Bozena Dykiel, Franciszek Pieczka, Danuta Wodynska | Poland  160min

The Promised Land is Epic in every true sense of the word. It is a massive, sprawling, all-encompassing, vast film that rolls relentlessly onwards with all the energy of the industrial revolution that it portrays and yet never leaves behind the microscope on the wild, immense , tangled emotional landscape of the people that populate it. Wonderful.

Despite being made almost forty years ago, this astonishing work hasn’t aged a day. Concerning Lodz’s emerging textile industry at the turn of the century, three young friends, a Polish aristocrat, a German and a Jew plot to make their fortunes by building their own factory, whatever the cost.

And here, Wajda is in his element, displaying the insane wastage of wealth, built out of the rags and ruins of the destitute, forced to work as children in the hard, filthy, dangerous factories, to be inevitably plucked either by the wealthy or by the work.

As with all the best films created under a punitive regime, this is a work of allegory and symbolism all wrapped in a huge dollop of humour and laced with arsenic; there’s no hiding the fact that this depiction of rampant capitalism actually alluded to the Communist politics of the time.

This is filmmaking at its peerless best. The concept, the execution, the cast, the design and the acting all conspire to create a masterwork in film. It’s what we go to the cinema for. Wajda’s vision and the mastery of his medium was there for all to see in his WWII trilogy, A Generation, Kanal and Ashes And Diamonds; three films worshipped and copied by a generation thereafter. Heaven only knows why this one didn’t go on to win its nominated Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Andrzej Wajda survived the Second World War in Nazi-occupied Poland. In 1942, he joined the Resistance until the war ended in 1945. In 1946 he moved to Krakow where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, before moving on to study film. His appreciation for life as well as art must indeed have been hard won.

The cast is enormous and some of the larger scenes have a host of extras that today’s directors can only dream of. One of the many outstanding qualities ofThe Promised Land is the fully-rounded, flawed nature of all of the characters. Not many come out the other side as morally sound or principled and the steamroller charitably called ‘progress’ soon crushes those that do.

Tradition, honour, integrity, respect, faith, humanity and an honest living are all tokens thrown in to stoke the fire of greed, driving this story forward. Things being what they are now, it is  hard not to reflect how the story this film tells was never more apposite. A visionary film with its evergreen themes. MT

 KINOTEKA 2017 | 16 March 19.00 | CLOSE-UP CINEMA

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Trespass Against Us (2017)

Dir.: Adam Smith; Cast: Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lindsey Marshal, Georgie Smith, Rory Kinnear, Sean Harris; UK 2016, 99 min.

The British crime family thriller – almost a sub genre since Get Carter and The Krays – has always been popular. Here Adam Smith and his scriptwriter Alastair Siddons focus on another British crime family but are never quiet sure if they want to go for thrills or a salient message.

From the chaotic opening scenes, the Cutler family is introduced to us as a wild bunch: at the wheel is young Tyson (G. Smith), not out of primary school, but hell-bent on copying his elders. Colby (Gleeson), the family patriarch, is a poor-man’s Kray: never having learned to read, he goes with the Creation theory; somehow you could sell him the idea that the earth is flat. Tyson’s father Chad (Fassbender), is the brains of the family – even though his father kept him successfully out of school. Chad and his wife Kelly (Marshal) want to cut all ties with Colby and his mad crowd, who live in a caravan camp in Gloucestershire. Kelly and Chad want to move out, starting a new life with Tyson and his little sister. But Colby is possessive, and he uses Tyson as a pawn to keep the family together: Tyson is obviously drawn to his grandfather, who promises a life without sweat but high rewards. The family crisis is finally solved by the police, when PC Lovage (Kinnear), Chad’s nemesis, arrests him, after the robbery of a country mansion, which belongs to a very important member of the establishment.

Dog-lovers would probably be best to avoid Trespass, as there are some rather unsavoury moments, mostly involving Gordon (Harris), a mentally disturbed young man, running around half-naked in the camp, and enjoying cruel games. Although the car chases are exciting, and there is the occasional original idea (Chad hiding below a cow, as not to be spotted from the helicopters trying to trace him), Trespass suffers from the indecision of its filmmakers: Chad is shown as a rebel with a cause, but he seems to be putty in the hands of his father, whilst being a mastermind as a thief. Surely, since his father just sits around sprouting out his imbecile slogans, Chad has the upper-hand, since there would be no income for the clan, if he would leave.

But the botched ending shows that he is just in as much in love with a romantic-outsider existence as his father. DoP Eduard Grau (A Single Man) delivers professional images, but cannot save the cliché-ridden narrative. The cast is lead by Gleeson, who obviously enjoys himself, whilst Fassbender portrays his unease and ambivalence with a reserved performance, only really coming alive in the scenes with his son. Smith and Siddons have the setting for an original clan-crime story, but waste it with a story which falls between all stools: having built up excitement, they don’t know where to take it and could have learned so much from past master Thomas Hardy, whose novels of family crime in the rural West are full of drama and destructive passion. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 3 MARCH 2017

Certain Women (2016) | Best Film | LFF 2016

Director: Kelly Riechardt

Cast: Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Jared Harris, James Le Gros

107mins | Drama | US

Auteur Kelly Reichardt’s latest film is a humane and poignant story capturing the isolation and quiet devastation of loneliness. Following her noirish eco-thriller Night Moves, CERTAIN WOMEN feels even more prescient, yet low key and leisurely as it reveals with startling vulnerability the lives of three women in contemporary America.

Adapted from short stories by Maile Meloy and set around the trendy mountain outpost of Livingston, Montana (Michael Keaton, Dennis Quaid and David Lettleman have places nearby), this female-themed drama initially feels understated but eventually resonates as its gently calibrated rhythm echoes through the wide open landscapes of the northwest Pacific and the close reliance between people, animals and nature.

Casting stars alongside newcomers, regular collaborator Michelle Williams (Meek’s Cutoff) joins Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart and a welcome discovery in the shape of Lily Gladstone. These women play characters who could be you or me. And their daily lives strike a knowing chord as they trip lightly through our own experiences, in the capable hands of Reichardt and Meloy.

The opening scene is one that springs to mind as local lawyer Laura Wells (Dern) lies pensively in bed after a brief encounter with her lover Ryan (James Le Gros), who we later discover is married to another member of the trio. Pulling on his thermal underwear he goes back to his roost with wife Gina, Michelle Williams’ spiky mother of sulky teenager Guthrie (Sara Rodier). Turns out he also shares a close bond with Guthrie as the family camps on a piece of land where they plan to build themselves a house. Gina and Ryan hope to get elderly Albert (Rene Auberjonois) to sell them some local sandstone so that their house will have a touch of the vernacular. This is the only scene where Gina cracks a disingenuous smile as her assertive qualities comes across as machiavellian manipulativeness.

Laura Wells, meanwhile, is tasked with defending local chippie Fuller (Jared Harris), who is proving to be an irritating client fighting an un-winnable compensation claim over an accident at work. Taking liberties and turning up in unexpected places, Fuller seems to think he has the upper hand because Laura is a woman, and a sympathetic one at that.

The third strand is an enigmatic encounter with a twinge of l’esprit d’escalier where Kristen Stewart’s legal graduate Elizabeth travels thousands of miles each day to teach teachers education law. Attending the classes is Jamie (Lily Gladstone) a groom from a nearby ranch who seems drawn to Elizabeth, but whether this is a schoolgirl crush or nascent lesbian longing is wisely never examined, giving the story delicious depth and mystery. Jamie’s days are spent in the company of horses and her trusty mutt (Reichardt’s own corgi cross), but she seems ready to spread her wings although her direction never quite unravels. The two grow strangely close – emotionally and physically – as they share evenings together in the diner and a horseback ride back to Elizabeth’s car.

CERTAIN WOMEN is both pleasurable to watch and enjoyable to contemplate, It probes the lives of intelligent women whose longings never quite materialise, remaining inchoate and undefined but instilled with the growing melancholy of possibilities untrammelled and romantic disillusionment. DoP Christopher Blauvelt adds a grainy, indie feel to his glistening 16mm camerawork, and the tone that is subdued and introspective, enhanced by Jeff Grace’s atmospheric score. These are women who seem to know themselves but are somehow back-footed by their circumstances, being too empathetic with their fellow humans to boldly make a stand in raw emotional scenes that communicate more in visuals than they ever could in words. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3 MARCH 2017 | BEST FILM BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2016 

The Student (2016) (M)Uchenik

Dir.: Kirill Serebrennikov

Cast: Pyotr Skvortsov, Victoria Isakova, Julia Aug, Nikolai Roschin, Svetlana Bragarnik; Russia 2016, 118 min.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s adaptation of the stage play by German playwright Marius von Mayenburg is set in contemporary Russia, creating a vicious intellectual discourse of clashing ideologies and religious fanaticism.

Whilst Muchenik means ‘martyr’ in Russia, ‘uchenik’ translates into student – since this wordplay would not be understood outside Russia, the English title Student was chosen. But Serebrennikov’s anti-hero Venya Yuzhin (Skvortsov) is exactly the amalgamation of the two: a martyr in his own and in the eyes of the worldwide anti-enlightenment movement; a student for teachers, who educate in believing in a rational world and the importance of tolerance.

Attending secondary school in Kaliningrad Oblast, Venya is an angry pupil: his first hate object is his divorced mother Inga (Aug), who is holding down three jobs to survive. Venya attacks her with his rabid bible quotes (one of hundreds, annotated on screen), calling her a whore for leaving the father, who abused her. Inga wails: “I wish he collected stamps or jerked off all the time”. At school, Venya, afraid of his sexual orientation, rages against the girls, wearing bikinis in the swimming pool. The reactionary head teacher Stukalina (Bragarnik) even tries to accommodate Venya: she asks the PE teacher to have the girls wear one-piece bathing suits. But Venya is far from finished: he wears a gorilla outfit (shades of Karel Reisz’ 1966 British New Wave film Morgan!) in an Economy lesson, arguing against the need for industrialisation, because it does not confirm with the demands of St. John in the bible.

On a personal level, Venya is only to keen to kiss an attractive female student, and he also tries to heal a limping co-student, putting his hand on his deformed leg. Confronted by the orthodox priest (Roschin), Venya accuses him of lacking fighting spirit “unlike the martyrs of the Jihad, who want to die for their cause”. But Venya’s main enemy is the biology teacher Elena (Isakova), whose views on contraception and evolution he challenges. Again, Stukalina gives in, asking Elena to “find a tolerable mixture of scientific and religious ideology”. Venya has, in vain, asked his handicapped friend to manipulate the brakes of Elena’s motor Scooter, and clobbers him with a rock when the boy tries to kiss him. In a final confrontation, Stukalina takes sides, when Venya accuses Elena “to have fondled him”: she agrees with the priest, that Elena’s worldview is governed by her being Jewish.

The real monster of Student is not Venya, but Stukalina, whose far right-wing views on feminism, Judaism and homosexuality were the norm in Stalinist Russia. She is very much at home in Putin’s Russia, as intrinsic a nationalist state like the old USSR.

DOP Vladislav Opelyant’s visuals are breath-taking: his looping long shots set the antagonists on their confrontations. The images of Venya’s and Inga’s flat are symbolically divided: her living room is full of ungainly figurines, the walls covered with gruesome wallpaper; his ‘prison’ room is dark and spartan: the wallpaper ripped off, the windows closed with planks. Laibach’s pounding “God is God” is adequate good choice for an anthem: Serebrennikov shows a Russia of oppressive puritanism where hate is becoming institutionalised – again. AS/MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 3RD MARCH 2017 | REVIEWED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016 |

Beuys (2017) Free online at the Goethe Institute

Dir: Andres Veiel Germany 2017 | German, English, Doc | 107 min: English/German

The 12th of May would have been Joseph Beuys’ 100th birthday. To mark the centenary and shed light on the German artist’s legacy The Goethe Institute is offering a free screening of Andreas Veiel’s documentary about the artist.

Beuys attempts to capture the essence of one of Germany’s most famous conceptual artists, blending previously unpublished archive footage and informative interviews with the artist and his friends and collaborators, such as British art curator Caroline Tisdall.

The artist and visionary ‘man with the hat’ was, and still is, ahead of his time – thirty years after his death in 1986. He was the first German artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, while at home his work was often still derided as the ‘most expensive trash of all time’. Once asked if he was indifferent to such comments he retorted: ‘Yes. I want to expand people’s perceptions.’ Beuys also later reveals that his art was ‘a weapon against the enemy’; his felt piano is considered by many to be one of his most accessible pieces. But the most memorable is his dynamic living multi-location sculpture that embodies his Green credentials – 7000 oak trees with stone pillars beside them, creating a constantly evolving art piece that aimed to be an international ‘method of communication’ or ‘Gesamptkunstwerk’ – the Japanese intended to contribute financially to the project, but have sadly failed to do so, as yet.

Andres Veiel lets the artist speak for himself allowing his cheerful, warm charisma to surface, hiding a difficult traditional upbringing in a well to do industrialist background in Cleves, where he was expected to take over the family business. The secret of his hat is revealed to be the result of a war wound while parachuting from his plane. Although he is no longer with us, his expanded concept of art feeds directly into today’s social, political and moral debates. Beuys will be Beuys. MT

GOETHE INSTITUTE 12-15 MAY 2021 | BERLINALE  2017 COMPETITION

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

Dir.: Chad Stahelski; Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scarmarcio, Claudia Gerini, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common; USA 2017, 122 min.

Doubtless creating a new action franchise, director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad return Keanu Reeves as a super-hero killing machine – with a new dog and an even larger kill quota.

After a sort of overture, in which Wick fights a gang of Russian mobsters who have stolen his beloved Mustang, he settles in his new home with his canine friend. His retirement does not last long: Santino (Scarmarcio), an Italian member of the Camorra, asks Wick to kill his sister Gianna (Gerini), producing a blood token for help, signed by Wick for assistance rendered in the past.

In Rome, Gianna takes her own life in the bath, Wick watching, making small talk. But Santino is double-crossing Wick, sending his killers after our hero, amongst them is the mute Ares (Ruby Rose), a martial arts fighter who communicates in sign language. Returning to New York, every beggar and street tramp seems to be on Santino’s pay roll, not to mention Cassian (Common), Gianna’s body guard, who is out for revenge. After killing Santino in the New York Continental, a sort of violent free exclave for gangsters, Wick is given an hour’s grace by its proprietor Winston (McShane), before the Camorra and “The High Table” will up the seven million bounty on Wick’s head, ready to chase him in Chapter 3.

JOHN WICK is A perfectly choreographed dance of the dead; the body count is so astronomical viewers might expects the combo meter to appear any time in the right hand corner of the screen – this is a video game indeed. There are jarring moments, when Wick remembers his dead wife, but overall Wick is left do what he is best at: killing with ease, death seems to be painless. Coming nearest to a pure, classic Hong Kong product of the past, the irony of a 52-yer old hero causing mayhem will be lost on testosterone-driven audience. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2017

Tanna (2015)

Director: Bentley Dean | Martin Butler

99min l Drama  l Australia

Dean and Butler are experienced TV documentarians whose first foray into narrative features is this stunningly cinematic tribal tale from Vanuatu in the South Pacific.

TANNA is a tragic love story whose implications ripple out into the wider world and connect us to the narrative of disappearing communities and survival of remote tribes. There is a disarming innocence and fierceness that marks the traditional tribal villagers out as philosophical and emotionally highly evolved, despite their frugal and backwood existence in the magical island set in its Pacific splendour. The Australian helmers make no attempt to trivialise these honest and gentle people, or diminish the very real threats they face from rival tribes who pose a very real danger if their customs and beliefs are not upheld. By incorporating elements of ethnography and spirituality in their storyline TANNA comes across as a serious study while cleverly also appealing to mainstream and arthouse audiences, children and adults setting the story from the young protogonist’s perspective.

The island of Vanuatu has around 30,000 inhabitants who form part of distinct tribes who embrace the Kastom system of beliefs, rejecting Colonial invasion, Christianity and the lure of 21st century economic advancement. Dean and Bentley lived amongst the islanders in a village called Yakel where they gradually put together a narrative based on tribal customs, rituals and traditional stories basing their drama on an incident that occurred during 1987.

Women play an important role in this patriarchal community and the story is seen through the eyes of a little girl called Selin who quietly observes a budding romance between her sister, Wawa and a the village chief’s orphaned grandson Dain, But Wawa is coming of age and been committed by her grandfather to an arranged marriage with a man from another tribe which will serve to heal a rift between the rival villagers. Both the sisters share a rebellious streak and Wawa has no intention of fallong in with the arranged marriage haven fallen in love with Dain. Selin’s grandfather is the village shaman, and he takes her to visit the island’s active volcano, Yahul. The vermillion sparks and fiery energy provides the focus for a spritual force that offers both comfort but commands supreme respect.

TANNA is a poetic and magical drama that also highlights the songs and music of the tribal traditions focusing on the virtues of conflict resolution, forgiveness and wisdom gained through experience. The film shows how the rival tribes are proud but deeply philosophical and always willing to ‘see another way’ in resolving their differences, and although they appear backward are highly evolved, bringing compassion and intelligent to their way they conducting inter-tribal relations.

With its tantalising score and natural performances from the villagers, Bentley and Dean have created a tense and tender drama that is instructive and dazzlingly cinematic harnessing the rain forests, colourful tribal costumes, volcanic landscapes and palm-fringed beaches of Vanuatu. MT

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2017

 

Fences (2017)

Dir. Denzel Washington, USA/Canada 2016, Dur. 138 mins.
Cast: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson

August Wilson wrote his play FENCES some 33 years ago. It has been on stage in England, most recently the 2013 version with Lenny Henry, who was very good as the father. Now Denzel Washington, who played the part on Broadway in 2010, along with others in the film, takes the role of Troy and also directs the movie FENCES.

Taking place in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, we gradually learn Troy’s story. Once he had aspirations to be a baseball star but was thwarted as, at that time, only white sportsmen succeeded. Now he is bitter and talks about the past as he works on a garbage truck alongside his best friend, Bono (a most sympathetic performance by Stephen Henderson). The two, in fact, met when Troy had a spell in prison. Troy is supported by his wife, Rose (Viola Davis), who attempts to get her husband to promote the ambitions of their son, Cory who wants to become a professional footballer. Troy refuses to allow him to play in the college team and wants him to get a job. Troy also argues with Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his 34 year-old son from a previous marriage. Lyons is a musician, but regularly appears at his father’s door on paydays to ask for money.

IMG_3357Denzel Washington plays Troy convincingly. He puts over the playwright’s tremendous dialogue with a real feeling for the words he speaks. Sometimes he sounds like a musical instrument as he gives colour to the words. He is backed by a most sympathetic performance by Stephen McKinley Henderson as his white work mate who is mostly content to sit and listen as Troy tells stories about his past.

The two sons come across well, too. Older son, Lyons – a tough role to put across well but Russell Hornsby manages it – a struggling musician who feels forced to ask his father for cash and the youngster Cory, a breakout performance by young Jovan Adepo. Mykelti Williamson is moving in the small part of Gabriel, the mentally damaged brother of Troy.

The outstanding role is played by Viola Davis as Rose – she is terrific and you can see why she is up for a Supporting Actress Oscar. In her speech telling her husband that while he regrets not having achieved much in his life, she has stood next to him all the way, she is not afraid to let mucous from her nose run down her face she confronts her husband with a few home truths.

Washington directs the movie in a workmanlike fashion. Even if there is not a lot of flair here, it is always truthful and one can believe that the characters portrayed really exist. It mostly takes place in the front yard of Troy’s home and doesn’t show much of the area around. Yes, it is stagey but it is actually very well-staged. It’s good to see that August Wilson, who wrote the screenplay of his play, got his wish for the film to be directed by a black director. It is a long film but always absorbing and one not to be missed. CARLIE NEWMAN

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taxi Driver (1976)

Dir: Martin Scorsese; Script: Paul Schrader; DoP: Michael Chapman; Score: Bernard Herrmann | 112 minutes | Cast: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, Albert Brooks, and Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese’s searing portrait of alienation is every bit as raw and relevant now as it was in 1976. But it carries with it a message of hope; a happy ending that so often is different from today’s reality. Robert De Niro plays a young Vietman war veteran who fetches up post-combat in a Manhattan bedsit, aimless and unable to sleep and : “Loneliness has followed me all my life”.

TAXI DRIVER captures New York in the seventies, a neon trashcan stuffed with the American Dream where hopes slowly seep away into the steaming sewers while politicians slogans still promise: “A Return to Greatness” forty years ago.

Meanwhile, in the city “all the animals come out at night: hustlers, pimps, pushers, frauds, and freaks—they’re all at large”.  So hero/loner Travis Bickle (De Niro) takes a job where he can work long hours driving out to Brooklyn, The Bronx and Harlem and popping pills and watching blue movies to relax. He’s a complex and strangely charismatic character driven to the edge by his seclusion. But when he sees Sybill Shepherd’s political campaigner Betsy working in a Columbus Circle office, he becomes obsessed with her grace and beauty and boldly asks her for a date. A mutual attraction but blossoms then deteriorates when he takes her to an explicit film. Travis Bickle’s latent pyschosis then floats to the surface of a landscape that is increasingly hostile and depraved, but distinctly New York in the ’70s,  as we are instantly wafted back there by Bernard Herrmann’s highly charged and woozily romantic score.

TAXI DRIVER is in many ways naive in its belief that its central protagonist can find salvation in such a sordid set of circumstances. When Travis is rejected by the fresh-faced college grad Betsy it feels like his world will implode and destruct but scripter Paul Schrader endows him with a backbone and integrity that fights back to vanquish evil, redeeming him as a hero of almost Christ-like proportions. He suffers, reaches out enters Hell and comes back again with glory. And De Niro plays him with a subtlety and strength of feeling and expression rarely seen on the bigscreen today. The spectrum of psychosis is so broad that it’s entirely plausible that this man eventually pulls through. He is not hard bitten criminal but a decent type who temporarily loses his way, like Dante’s hero.

More slick and than Scorsese’s other Manhattan movie Mean Streets, TAXI DRIVER is a deceptively nuanced narrative: drama, sex, politics, romance, violence coalesce in a richly textured character study. Scorsese himself appears in a vignette as a cuckolded husband watching his wife’s silhouette in her lover’s window; the scene in the gun parlour over-looking Manhattan island is full of authentic details, in another scene, a professional-looking street musician runs through Chuck Webb titles but nobody stops to listen.Travis Bickle is in some ways similar to Polanski’s tragic Parisian loner Trelkovsky in The Tenant which interestingly came out the same year. But he lacks the emotional ballast to underpin his psychosis, and get him back on the straight and narrow, like Travis. Clearly, Travis is a bundle of self-destructing neuroses but his redeeming feature is his respect and love for women. . He makes friends with the angelic and intelligent campaign worker, played by Cybill Shepherd. His unfortunate choice of movie shocks her, and their palpable sexual chemistry is unable to overcome this grave error on his part, committed not intentionally but due to his mind swimming with a complex brew of emotions and ideas. Jodie Foster plays a sympathetic teenage hustler, whose inner vulnerability captures Travis’ imagination and is his saving grace. Harvey Keitel plays a sleazy pimp. None of Scorsese’s main characters are inherently evil; they are just ordinary people driven to the wrong side of the tracks through of force of circumstance. And that’s probably why, with its positive, message of hope, TAXI DRIVER won the Palme d’Or that year, while The Tenant went away empty-handed despite its similar narrative vigour and acclaimed performances. MT

TAXI DRIVER IS BACK IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 10 FEBRUARY AND AS PART OF THE BFI MARTIN SCORSESE RETROSPECTIVE UNTIL THE END OF FEBRUARY 2017 

 

 

Prevenge (2016)

Dir.: Alice Lowe; Cast: Alison Lowe, Kate Dickie, Tom Davis, Dan Renton, Jo Hartley, Dan Renton Skinner; UK 2016, 88 min.

Actor and writer Alice Lowe, tries her hand at directing here in Prevenge, and her script is very much inspired by her film Sightseers, in which she also starred: in both cases, the murderous actions are committed by rather ordinary people in an everyday environment. Acting in both films, Lowe makes the connection even tighter, robbing Prevenge of any originality.

Set in a charmless Cardiff, Ruth (Lowe) is pregnant with a baby girl, the child’s father having died in a climbing accident. The baby seems to have a mind of its own, talking to her mother, mostly encouraging her to commit some gruesome murders. First in line for execution is an uncouth pet show owner (Skinner), who rapidly meets his bloody end; followed by an obnoxious DJ (Davis), and a joyless career woman (Dickie). The last case robs us of any sympathy we might feel for our our heroine, and the other attacks underline the fact that Ruth is an out and out psychotic. This serious factor takes the fun out of the movie, and all that remains is an endless blood feast, and a rather botched ending. Prevenge also suffers from its one-dimensional protagonists who, with the exception of Jo Hartley’s midwife, feel utterly unconvincing.

It is ironic that film directed, written and starring a woman should be aimed at a mostly male audience. Gory repetitions aside, the endless clichés simply overwhelm any sort of attempted humour: in spite of Lowe’s stellar performance, Prevenge  is just a bloody rant. DoP Ryan Eddleston’s images are as pedestrian and redundant as the whole enterprise. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE \ REVIEWED DURING VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2016

Lies We Tell * * * (2017)

Dir.: Mitu Misra; Cast: Gabriel Bryne, Sibylla Deen, Jn Uddin, Harvey Keitel,Mark Addy, Reece Ritchie, Emily Atack, Danica Johnson, Harish Patel, Harvey Virdi; UK 2017, 109′.

First time director Mitu Misra tries, perhaps too hard, to construct a complex narrative that leaves too many loose ends to be convincing.. On the other hand, Misra offers a vey honest portrait of the underbelly of the Pakistani Muslim community in Bradford.

When crime lord Demi Lamprose (Keitel) dies, his chauffeur and general dogsbody Donald (Bryne) has to clear his luxury flat, forcing his fledgling solicitor lover Amber (Deen) to move out immediately. As Donald, Byrne rocks his signature hangdog look: estranged from his wife after the death of their daughter Amy, he gets involved with Amber, who has a troubled past -and present, for that matter. At sixteen she was forced to marry her cousin KD (Uddin) in Pakistan, and he is now a high profile gangster in Bradford. Having raped Amber, he tries to marry her 16 year old sister Miriam (Johnson), whose parents are only too willing to give her away, since the bounty from the marriage will cover their debts. It also emerges that Amber was pimped out to by her father to Lamprose for the same reason. When Lamprose’s son Nathan (Ritchie) wants to ‘inherit’ Amber from his father, Amber’s troubles get out of hand. She  successfully disrupts KD and Miriam’s marriage – and KD goes on to marry his pregnant girl friend Emily (Atack), whom he abuses, bloody revenge killings conclude this saga.

DoP Santos Sivan steers clear of bleak social realism and instead uses shadows and innovative angles for his noir images. The nightlife, ‘sponsored’ by KD is from another planet compared with the tradition of Amber’s family, both parents clinging to a religion they have great difficulty in following. Ambers’ workplace is cold, clean and white, a place she somehow finds comforting. Perhaps seedy KD is a little bit over the top in his nastiness, but Misra coruscating portrait of organised crime and this male-dominated culture, fed from both second-hand western macho images and Muslim religiously motivated misogynist ideology, feels very real. There are some great performances, particularly from the reliable Bryne and Deen, and in spite of structural difficulties, LIES WE TELL is always gripping. In the end, the brutal honesty of Misra’s arguments outweigh the flaws of this convoluted chronicle. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 2 FEBRUARY 2018

Toni Erdmann (2016) |

Director: Maren Ade

Cast: Peter Simonischek, Sandra Huller, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Putter

142min | Comedy | Germany

Following in the wake of some quirky and enjoyable comedies at Cannes Film Festival this year was German filmmaker Maren Ade’s TONI ERDMANN, a European arthouse drama that celebrates the intergenerational gap between parents and children with humour rather than strife.

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 an Ulrich Seidl film.

And in fact TONI ERDMANN‘s hero is Austrian: Peter Simonichek plays Winifried, a divorced German music teacher who loves playing inappropriate practical jokes on his friends and colleagues, with whoopee cushions and the like. 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 Ines (Sandra Hüller), a top management consultant in Romania. When she realises that 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 pranks, 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

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 12-22 MAY 2016 | WINNER OF THE FIPRESCI AWARD 2016

Strike a Pose (2016)

Director-writers: Ester Gould, Reijer Zwaan | Cast: Luis Camacho, Oliver Crumes III, Salim Gauwloos, Jose Gutierez, Kevin Stea, Carlton Wilborn | Doc | US |

Revisiting Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition gig, 25 dancers reflect on their experience in a very different world, a quarter of a century ago. This Dutch documentary looks at what happens once the performance high is over and the champagne glasses are washed and back on the shelf.

1990 felt feisty and fresh and so was Madonna and her dancers. Breaking onto a music scene that still seemed rather touching and naive, the quaint newness of ‘nautifying’ religion now seems very dated and tame in its way, and Gould and Zwaan successfully capture the zeitgeist of those ‘ground-breaking’ moments, with the usual talking heads, clips and footage format. But STRIKE A POSE is rather top heavy on sentimental family stories and light on entertainment, music and Madonna herself. So don’t go expecting a toe-tapping cheer-filled shindig; this really should be classified as an LGBT interest documentary rather than music biopic, per se. None of the dancers stands out as a personality with any particularly charisma. That said, this low-key indie makes some salient points about the cult of celebrity and its often catastrophic consequences for delicate egos and sensitive types, many of whom were still really kids when they took part, and there are some sincere revelations about what it feels like to be gay, then and now: “We carried our flamboyance as a warning,” says Camacho. “Yes, we have earrings on, we have eyeliner on, but don’t mistake any of this for weakness.”

So STRIKE A POSE is certainly worth a watch if you’re in the mood for a human interest story about the soulful introspection of gay men in the entertainment business and their melancholy reflections on the past, and of the first great arena spectacle that now is very much the way to go. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 3 FEBRUARY 2017 AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE

 

 

 

Danny Says – The Life and Times of Danny Fields (2016)

Dir: Brendan Toller | US | Music Biopic | 102min

Danny Fields was a key figure in America’s music scene of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. A trend forecaster with a prescient talent for spotting talent, he discovered artists floating in the ether and brought them to the public consciousness and the enjoyment of all. Everything Danny touched turned to gold, sooner or later, and although he nearly destroyed the Beatles’ US career with a misjudged headline, he put the Ramones and Nina Simone on the map and shared a close friendship with Lou Reed, Jim Morrison and Nico during his time as journalist, publicity director at Electra Records and Warhol’s Silver Factory.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Fields was always a rebel in his Jewish family. “I was on the wrong table from the get go”; “a flaming faggot”.  At Harvard he read Law but broke away from his studies to have sex with as many men as possible and moved back to Greenwich Village at a time in the late 1950s where gayness was not a point of reference or a definition: “No one came out, because nobody was ever in”. Homosexuality was a covert state between his buddies and they kept it to themselves: “Trying to find a gay bar New York in those days was like trying to find a protestant church in Spain.”

Fields eventually moved into publishing before gravitating to the music business as a general mover, shaker and fixer who had a gift for capturing the zeitgeist and selling a new idea that invariable took off. In 1965, The Doors, James Brown, Bob Dylan and Martha and the Vendellas were all breaking onto the scene with standout albums and Danny was in his element. But on the eve of the Beatles 1966 US Tour, he wrote a controversial headline in a music magazine that highlighted the band’s comments about Jesus and Black people. As a result, the band’s landing in Memphis was marred by a general trashing of their album and catastrophic ticket cancellations.

Taking its title from a Ramones song in his honour DANNY SAYS is enlivened by humorous cartoons, audio clips and fascinating footage, this fascinating freewheeling life story flows along as if on quaaludes, with the loquacious Mr Fields and the likes of Iggy Pop and Nico chipping in with their wit and wisdom on the music scene of the era. So Bravo to debut director Brendan Toller for this energetic and enjoyable biopic. Clearly he’s a fan of Mr Fields but could have curbed his enthusiasm with a tightening up of the final scenes which focus on the future of a man who is clearly still raring to go in his late seventies. MT

NOW SHOWING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE

The Promise (2016) Das Versprechen

Dir.: Marcus Vettel, Karin Steinberger; Documentary; Germany/Denmark/Sweden/ Netherlands, 130 min.

Directors Marcus Vettel and Karin Steinberger (The Forecaster) have documented the circumstances of the gruesome murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom in Virginia in March 1985, and the subsequent trials of their daughter Elizabeth and her lover Jens Söring, who were both convicted of their murder. But far from illuminating events, THE PROMISE tries to absolve Söring from all guilt, with the premise that there was a judicial conspiracy to convict him.

When the bodies of wealthy retired industrialist Derek Haysom and his wife Nancy, an artist, were found by friends in their house in their Bedford County/Virginia on March 30th 1985, this upmarket neighbourhood feared that a serial killer was on the loose. Nobody suspected either Elizabeth or Jens – only their disappearance to Asia and Europe (they were arrested months later in London for cheque fraud) led the police to them. They were a weird couple: Jens, the son of a German diplomat was only 18 years old; Elizabeth, who had been educated in boarding schools in Switzerland and the UK, was not only over two years his senior, but had run away from home and had dabbled with drugs. Jens was obviously very much in love with her, and after their arrest, he confessed to the murders, knowing full well that he would be tried in Germany, where there was no death penalty; whilst Elizabeth, if found guilty, could face the Electric Chair.

The couple had created an alibi for the weekend of the murders – a double bill at a Washington cinema – which became the point of contention between the two, after Elizabeth decided to plead guilty to being an accessory to murder. She claimed, that she knew, that Jens was setting out to kill her parents, whilst she stayed in Washington. Elizabeth was given a 90 years sentence, she is eligible for parole at the earliest in 2032, when she would be 68 years old. After Jens was extradited to the USA in 1990 – the Virginia court had promised not to go for death the penalty – he withdrew his confession. Elizabeth who was a witness for the prosecution, again accused him to have murdered his parents. Jens was given two life sentences, running consecutively. In an interview with the filmmakers, Jens (with Daniel Brühl voicing his statement, just as Imogen Poots voiced Elizabeth’s statements in the court recording of her trial), explained that he sacrificed himself and confessed in the first place out of love for Elizabeth.

Then THE PROMISE takes a strange turn: the filmmakers start interviewing experts, who come to the conclusion that a third person (Elizabeth’s drug dealer, since deceased) has helped Elizabeth to kill her parents. Elizabeth is called “a practiced liar”, whilst Jens is made out to be the naïve victim of the older woman. This biased ending – basically, one has to believe either Jens or Elizabeth – somehow contributes to make this bizarre case, which was the first televised trial in US TV history, even more compelling, particularly since Elizabeth had at first accused her mother of sexually abusing her, an accusation she later withdrew.

THE PROMISE is not so much a documentary, but an attempt to construct a case against Haysom for the murders, whilst white-washing Jens Söring. It is left to the audience to make up their mind. But in spite of the bias, the Haysom trials are one of the most peculiar and enigmatic court cases of modern times. The filmmakers, not withstanding their interference and a very unimaginative title, have contributed to a compelling viewing. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | BERTHA DOCHOUSE

Cameraperson (2016)

Director/DoP: Kirsten Johnson Editor: Nels Bangerter | Doc | 103min | US

Seasoned cinematographer Kirsten Johnson has worked in all corners of the globe on documentaries with the likes of Laura Poitras and Michael Moore. CAMERAPERSON is a raw and deeply-affecting patchwork of photo-memories that serves as visual autobiography of her life.

This essay film has no narrative as such but works its way towards a gradually more involving story from a recurring set of themes and locations. Reportage blends with personal footage of her own life in Beaux Arts Washington and Brooklyn; sorties to the former war zones of Bosnia, Dafur and Rwanda and closer to home, an electric storm in a Southern State, a field of wild flowers recording the memory of Wounded Knee; and the dreadful murder of James Byrd, Jr, dragged to death behind a pick-up truck. Each vignette is introduced with its location, making it all the more satisfying and resonant.

Never showy or sensationalist but always beguiling, her snapshots swoop silently into everyday life: a Bosnian re-settler bakes bread in her humble shack and there are incandescent moments where a boxer bitterly rages against his failure in Brooklyn, and a newborn baby is brought back to life by a midwife in a spartan Nigerian clinic; his tiny bewildered eyes meet ours as he desperately gasps for his first breath. In perfect English, a little Afghan boy talks tearfully but candidly about losing his eye and his older brother in a bomb blast. The tragic faces of the living are so much affecting than gory bodies of the dead.

Then there is the recognisable footage of Happy Valley and Citizenfour and glimpses of Michael Moore laughing on set. These makes the viewer realise that the ‘objective reality’ of freewheeling documentary relies on clever staging and editing to enhance our experience of factual filmmaking. Simple family moments can be surprisingly moving: Johnson’s mother (in the final stages of Alzheimer’s) points to a photo of her husband with the comment: “oh really, you knew him too?”

But Africa offers the most compelling footage: in barren wastelands women work with humour and forebearance in heart-warming testament to the human condition. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 JANUARY 2017

Goodfellas (1990) | Scorsese Retrospective

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Writers: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese | Cast: Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro | US | Crime Drama

Gangster movies hold a fascination in the public imagination with the genre catching fire in the 1960s when charismatic antiheroes like Bonnie and Clyde and the Kray Twins were celebrated for their criminal antics – but generally met a sticky end.

Growing up in New York, Martin Scorsese was familiar with the various cultural divides (Jewish,Irish,Italian) from his personal experiences in Little Italy and poured all this energy into his thrillers from the Depression with Boxcar Bertha (1972), to the visceral brutality of Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi-Driver.

The sheer upbeat energy of GOODFELLAS often makes the blood-soaked gushes of violence all the more breathtaking – especially where Pesci is concerned, and this is all punctured with caustic wit as Scorsese cleverly captures the Jewish situational humour in scenes featuring Hill’s wife, brilliantly played by Lorraine Bracco (as Karen), with ehoes of the best of Woody Allen. Yet there’s also the visceral punch of the love affair between Karen and Henry who express their passion in a way that’s seldom seen on screen – this is desire that doesn’t need to feature scenes of steamy love-making to make it palpable and real. Their chemistry makes for a interesting contrast with the more latent but just as tangible desire and longing that burned between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung’s characters in Wong Ka Wai’s In the Mood for Love.

Based Nicholas Pileggi’s book ‘Wiseguy’, and now celebrating its 50th annivesary, the film opens with Hill’s chillingly memorable words: “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster”, and takes us on a rollercoaster rake’s progress within a Mafia clan where Hill earns his stripes and twice serves time – if you could call it that – together with his brothers in jail. In actual fact these incarcerations were just a microcosm of his normal life: cooking, crooking and companionship continued on as normal – just in the confines of the jail. But it was the drugs that finally got to Hil although underneath it all, Pesci plays him as a emotionally rather a weak and unstable character who was just looking for an escape route. He finds this by entering a witness protection programme that saw him surviving iwth a new identity after giving evidence that ked to the conviction of his mafiosi colleagues.

All the velocity and verve of the filming panache carries the narrative forward like a steam-train of expert freeze-frames and long takes with Bernard Herrmann’s atmospheric score and a melee of modish tunes the shriek the 70s taking us back to those magnificent years of political incorrectness and gutsy romance.

GOODFELLAS is Scorsese at his very best with its iconic turns from De Niro (Jimmy Conway), Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito, ) and Ray Liotta whose vituperative viciousness unnerves the audiences from the very start. He’s a man with nothing to lose and his passion for Jewish princess Karen – Elaine Bracco at her most vibrant, is what love is all about. Their affair fizzes like a firework alongside the crime narrative making GOOFELLAS Scorsese at his very best. MT

COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS, A NATIONWIDE RE-RELEASE ON 20 JANUARY ACCOMPANIES THE MARTIN SCORSESE RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI THROUGHOUT JANUARY 2017

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) | Venice 2016

Dir: Mel Gibson | Biopic drama | US | 102min

Hacksaw Ridge is one of the most violent and gory films about pacifism ever made. But there again, its director is Mel Gibson. Based on the true story of a war hero and conscientious objector from Virginia, it is a film full of cliches and contradictions that still manages to move and inspire with its heartfelt and plausible narrative underpinned by the simple message of sacrifice and faith.

In common with Gibson’s unflinching dramas: Apocalypse, Braveheart and The Passion of Christ, Hacksaw ridge is long on a brutal battle that takes place on the blood-drenched battlefields of Okinawa. Shot in Australia, Gibson and his scripters Shenkkan and Knight create a narrative that embodies all that the United States strives for, particularly in the light of the Trump era.

Andrew Garfield succeeds in the leading role of a gentle but decent man who is first seen as a weak coward who adheres to his pacifist principles, but who later goes on to achieve greatness in battle eschewing violence: he will not carry a gun due to his religious beliefs as a Seventh Day Adventist. In reality, Desmond Doss came from a poor and dysfunctional background in rural Virginia but was keen to join the war effort believing he could do so as a medic. Naively believing he would go straight to the battlefield in a white jacket and stethoscope, it soon emerges that training and combat is part and parcel of the war effort.

At home in Virginia, Doss Senior (Hugo Weaving) is a hardbitten alcoholic and First World War veteran who balks at the idea of Desmond enlisting. But a childhood accident, where Desmond nearly kills his brother, has made a big impression and he is determined to avoid conflict. When he enlists for Pearl Harbour he comes across initially as a pain in the neck by upholding his stringent religious scruples. This premise is clearly going to set the men from the boys in the abuse he receives from his comrades (Sam Worthington and Vince Vaughn) that leads to a ludicrous court martial on the grounds of his refusal to bear arms and undergo the requisite training.

But when he gets to the battlefield his true grit emerges, as limbs are blown off and blood gushes in some startling combat sequences, filmed by DoP Simon Duggan and edited by John Gilbert, this is a heartfelt and inspiring action drama that will leave you upbeat and in a positive frame of mind about the power of peaceful conviction.. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 27 JANUARY 2017

Lion (2016)

Dir: Garth Davis; Cast: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Sunny Pawar, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose | Australia | drama | 118 min.

Garth Davis co-directed the TV-Miniseries Top of the Lake with Jane Champion and now turns his hand to Saroo Brierley’s autobiography A Long Way home with Luke Davies adapting it for the screen as a sprawling emotional drama that sometimes crosses into soap-opera territory. Davis’ advertising background – among his credits the Toyota “Ninja Kittens” – makes this a slick and visually ravishing watch with DoP Greig Fraser (Foxcatcher) conjuring up amazing images, particularly in Calcutta.

Newcomer Sunna Pawar (young Saroo) is spellbindingly gorgeous as the young boy who in 1986 is separated from his mother Kamla (Bose) and sister Shekila, after talking his older brother Guddu (Bharate) into taking him away from their rural home to help on a building site. But Saroo falls asleep at the station and wakes up in a decommissioned train, taking him 1000 miles away to Calcutta. There he avoids child-snatchers and ends up in an orphanage. Saroo cannot speak the local Bengali, and his Hindi dialect is insufficient to express the name of his village or his mother. Roughly half-way into the film, Saroo ends up in Tasmania, Australia, where Sue Brierley (Kidman) and her husband John (Wenham) adopted him. Saroo is an exemplary son, relieved to find a home of emotional and material wealth after his traumatic time in Calcutta. But Mantosh, the second boy adopted by the Brierleys, is unable to cope with his past and is proving a handful.

The plot skips forward about 20 years to when Saroo (Patel, star of Slumdog Millionaire) has left the home where Mantosh (Ladwa) is now self-harming and troublesome. Saroo takes a course in hotel-management in Melbourne where he meets Lucy (Carol co-star R. Mara) a lover of Indian food. Tasting a childhood sweet one day he realises that his hometown is not Calcutta. His search for his hometown is the weak link in the narrative, his traumatic experience is seen as an hero’s adventure, rather than an ordeal. Although this is underlined by the breathtaking images, showing Calcutta in high-resolution fly-over shots, the emphasis is on the thrills, rather than the terrible danger Saroo experiences there.

There is simply not enough darkness in Saroo’s Calcutta abandonment years – and when he finally enters the Brierley’s home in Tasmania, he appears blasé about the sensational new home comforts  – such as the ‘fridge and television, rather than awestruck. He also seems to lack an inner life whereas Mantosh is a far more believable character. Apart from skimming over this relationship with Mara, it is never explained Saroo waits so long to look for his birth mother – the sweet he remembers from his childhood can hardly be the first or sole reminder? It is stringent – and rather lazy – in this context, that Google Earth is just another star in the visual high-tech extravaganza. It would have been more interesting and convincing to show the search for her son from Kamla’s perspective, without the intrusion of computers. LION triumphs despite these plot-holes: a powerful and sumptuously photographed tear-jerker with a happy ending, despite its lack of teeth. AS

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 20 2017 | VUE, PICTUREHOUSE, EVERYMAN, CINEWORLD NATIONWIDE

 

 

Close Relations (Rodnye) (2016)

Dir: Vitaly Mansky | 112min | Documentary | Ukraine | Russia

Chatting to his mother in the opening scenes of RODNYE, Ukrainian director Vitaly Mansky (Pipeline) discovers for the first time that his background is mainly Russian and that one of his grandmothers was Polish Lithuanian (Babushka Sonya), indicating that Ukraine was at one point, part of Poland. Pictured sitting in the modest flat where he grew up, and where his mother still lives in Lvov, Mansky’s relishes his humble beginnings. After leaving to study filmmaking in Moscow, he is back again due to the recent upheavals in the eegion. RODNYE explores the current climate through a series of informal vists to his close family members in Lvov, Odessa and Sevastopol (Crimea). What unfolds from their differing perspectives is a fascinating potted political history of this part of the world during the period May 2014 to October 2015. Mansky brings his usual brand of black humour to the film, and some poignant family moments into the bargain.

Juxtaposing often feisty debate with low-key domestic scenes (a stray dog adopted by his sister wanders into the picture at one point and listens intently) and personal reflections (that echo Jem Cohen’s style), Mansky offers up something much more illucidating and profound than could ever be gleaned from newspapers or TV. This multi-faceted and nuanced analysis of national identity comes with some impressive footage of everyday life along with family photos from the album.

In Sevastopol New Year’s Eve is being celebrated in Russian and Ukrainian styles. In common with most of Eastern Europe, borders have been a moveable feast since time immemorial and Mansky’s birthplace Lvov used to be Polish and before that, Lemberg, part of the Hapsburg Empire. An irrestible documentary for those interested in poltical history RODNYE offers arresting scenes of the Black Sea port of Odessa; a bride and groom floating down the famous steps that featured in Battleship Potemkin; a funeral cortege complete with Ukrainian millitary in official regalia; Spring in Kiev and Donbas in Eastern Ukraine (“Ukraine has chosen the European path at last” sighs one of his sisters); and finally – a trip to the ballet. Describing the film as his “personal tragedy” Mansky offers a moving but often conflicted portrait of contemporary life amid crisis. MT

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE from 20 JANUARY | LFF REVIEW

La La Land (2016)

Dir: Damien Chazelle : Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone | US | Musical Drama | 129min

The 73rd Venice Film Festival opened with the razzmatazz of a rousing Hollywood musical, that is sadly not as good a film as it thinks it is, despite the much hyped critical acclaim that has it scoring more points on Imdb than some real classic masterpieces. Damien Chazelle’s much anticipated follow-up to Whiplash is a musical by theme and content and breaks into song during a title sequence that feels rather awkward and amateurish with most of the songs sung off- key, when you consider the wealth of US musical talent available.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star as LA wannabes at the bottom rung of the creative careers: he is Jazz pianist Sebastian, she as aspiring actor Mia. Gosling and Stone have worked together before with writer-director Damien Chazelle and both are decent enough dancers even if they do not have perfect pitch. They share a sparky onscreen chemistry from the outset when they first fall out during a mini fracas from their respective cars while driving into LA, and then later when their paths cross again just after Sebastian (Gosling) has been fired for playing his own tunes during his nightime gig at a fancy restaurant. LA LA LAND would work just as well, in fact better, as a straightforward drama – the banal script and musical elements sometime feel forced and unnatural although Seb does compose one catchy tune (from original composer Justin Hurwitz) which becomes ‘their’ song in an fluffy leitmotif that runs through the rest of the movie – at it is very much a movie: and boy can Gosling move.

This is a lively and entertaining film that make the mainstream crowd happy – it could be anybody’s story and resonates with most of us, whether we are working in creative fields or not, with its ‘reach for the stars premise’ of following your dream rather than settling for a safe and comfortable existence. Stone is the most vulnerable of the two as she finds the constant rejection of screen tests and auditions difficult to deal with but eventually gets into her groove. Gosling is more punchy and down to earth. Obsessed by trad jazz rather than the meandering self-indulgent kind, he eventually lands up with a well paid job playing the latter before setting up his own club which allows him to play the stuff he really enjoys. Falling in love comes naturally to them both but the road is rather rocky and involves the less travelled one on the way.

Gosling gives a suave and seductive turn throughout, never doubting himself for a moment. Stone – who won the Volpi Cup at Venice 2016 – feels more brittle and spiky, although she really puts her heart and soul into singing, dancing and acting. Damien Chazelle has a film grasp of the dark and dangerous nature of showbusiness and brings this to LA LA LAND as he did to his debut Whiplash. The final ‘what might have been’ montage works well enough to send to you off with a spring in your step. It’s a good film – but not a great one. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 JANUARY | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2016 | Best Actress Emma Stone

El Aura (2005)

Writer/Director Fabián Bielinsky

Cast: Ricardo Darin, Dolores Fonzi, Alejandro Awada, Pablo Cedrón, Jorge D’Elia, Manuel Rodal, Rafael Castejón, Walter Reyno, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart

Argentina-Spain-France / Drama / 134mins

El Aura (The Aura) was the second and final feature of the up and coming young Argentinian director Fabián Bielinsky (1959-2006) who died suddenly from a heart attack aged only 47 having just collected a host of awards for this film. His quirky debut feature Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens, 2000) had enjoyed a West End run in 2002 and received the mixed accolade of a Hollywood remake in 2004. But despite the acclaim El Aura received elsewhere, in Britain it was only screened once in an Argentinian season at the Riverside before dropping off the radar (although it can be found subtitled on YouTube) until recently revived at the Prince Charles.

It’s difficult to discuss this film without revealing the increasingly unpredictable turns the narrative takes, so I shall attempt to be vague. (Films, however, that it recalled for me for various reasons included D.O.A., Rififi, Bob le Flambeur, Le Deuxième Soufflé, The Passenger, House of Games and The Usual Suspects). One of Argentina’s top actors Ricardo Darin plays Esteban Espinosa – possibly the screen’s most bemused taxidermist since Norman Bates – whose fantasy of pulling off the perfect heist suddenly seems about to come to fruition due to an accident while hunting in Patagonia (he promptly acquires a familiar of sorts in the form of an attentive wolf with one blue eye and one brown who spends the rest of the film keeping a watchful eye on him). Did I mention that Esteban also happens to be an epileptic? The film begins with him regaining consciousness after a seizure and he later suffers two more at inopportune moments; the possibility arising that what we witness may be some sort of Incident at Owl Creek hallucination resulting from his epilepsy.

The narrative develops in a series of very gradual leisurely paced steps, with long stretches wholly devoid of dialogue, the camera concentrating upon Esteban’s face, and the photography simultaneously drab and atmospheric. Esteban is invariably a step or two behind developments which although realistically depicted often involve extraordinary coincidences, through which he is always able to muddle his way because he happens to possess a photographic memory (did I neglect to mention that too?) invoked in the style of the final scene in the interview room in The Usual Suspects. His phenomenal memory comes to the rescue in a number of very awkward situations with the mean-looking collection of hoods he incongruously now finds himself in the company of (like Edmond O’Brien in DOA), until it abruptly fails him with cataclysmic results. How much of this is actually happening is open to speculation. What violence there is fairly restrained in its depiction, but its impact on some of the characters – if it did really happen – leaves a bad taste in the mouth. RICHARD CHATTEN.

SCREENING AT PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA LONDON W1 | NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

 

Jackie (2016)| Best Script | Venice 2016

Dir.: Pablo Larrain; Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Max Castella, John Hurt; USA/Chile 2016, 91 min.

Director Pablo Larrain (Neruda) films Noah Oppenheim’s intricate script of JACKIE, covering four days in the life of first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy that opens on her arrival in Dallas on that fateful day in November 1963.  Roaming ecliptically, the film de-constructs the tragic and delivers a moving portrait of trauma and grief that turns into a media event.

Even though politics are always present, this is never a political film. Jackie (Portman) has to deal with the sudden wrecking ball of her husband’s death followed immediately by the loss of her family home in the Whitehouse. The presidential successor Lyndon B Johnson, follows hot on her heels, chasing her out to move in with his own family, just as Jackie has restored the place to reflect the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. With the move, shown in great detail, comes the realisation of her loss in status: Jackie is quickly becoming a ‘has-been’, her husband’s funeral arrangement are her last official occasion.

Suffering from survivor’s guilt, Jackie argues with her brother-in law, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Sarsgaard), about marching behind her husband’s coffin from the Capitol to Arlington cemetery – which is seen as a security risk by the new administration and foreign dignitories such as General de Gaulle. Changing her mind more than once, Jackie finally decides to risk of walking alongside the cortege – as did De Gaulle. Having no illusions about her late husband’s excessive philandering, she nevertheless wants to write a final chapter to his presidency, “something the world will remember”.

The losses mount up: Jackie decides to re-bury her two lost children the next to their father’s grave in Arlington, whilst dealing with her official assistant Pamela Turnure (Gerwig), who was one of her husband’s mistresses. The awkwardness is obvious, Nathalie Portman’s performance resonates with subtle complexity in her leading role. Only in an interview with Jack Valenti , (Castella), a PR man working for Johnson, do we get a glimpse of the real Jacqueline Kennedy, who after all worked as journalist before her marriage. Acutely aware of the difference between public perception and the truth: she is not willing to give an inch in her battle to canonise her husband as a great president.

The film flashes back to a black and white re-created TV clip, shot at beginning of her reign as First Lady, explaining to the public the redecorations she had made in the White House. Here, we see Jackie, fragile and vulnerable, before she enters public office, part of the illusion played out for the adoring public. And finally we learn about the legendary “Camelot” reference which is always associated with JFK’s presidency. It turns out to the name of his favourite musical – the vinyl was on the turntable before the couple left for Dallas. JACKIE is not so much history biopic as a case study of a courageous woman who was loyal to her husband, even after his death and despite his utter contempt of her: “we did not spend many nights together, not even the [last] one in Forth Worth”

Larrain directs with great sensitivity and a good eye for detail. Only the scene with a cleric (John Hurt) come over as stilted, the rest is perfect detachment and observation. DoP Stephane Fontaine finds a perfect style for all occasions: the Dallas shooting is tense and realistic, the White House sequences show not so much glitter but a film-studio like appearance. The close-ups are always telling, separating lies from truth. Natalie Portman gives the performance of a lifetime, as a intelligent woman, adored by the public for her innate style and elan as ‘sold’ by the media. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 20 January 2017 | BEST SCRIPT WINNER NOAH OPPENHEIM

Irreplaceable (2016)

Dir: Thomas Lilti | Writers: Thomas Lilti, Baya Kasmi | Cast: François Cluzet, Marianne Denicourt, Isabelle Sadoyan, Felix Moati, Christophe Odent, Patrick Descamps, Guy Faucher, Margaux Fabre | Drama | France | 91min

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

Manchester by the Sea (2016) BBC iPlayer

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

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

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

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

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

Now on BBC IPLAYER

Endless Poetry (2016)

Dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky | 128min | Fantasy Biopic drama | Cast: Adan Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Leandro Taub, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovits

Chilean Maverick Alejandro Jodorowsky was back at the Quinzaine this year with another riotous family affair, this time starring his sons Brontis and Adan, and shot by multi-award winning DoP Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love).

A follow up to The Dance of Reality, ENDLESS POETRY is an episodic but spectacular affair and one of his most accessible outings to date, filmed in Santiago de Chile – dressed up in its original 1930s look – and recording his early rebellious years in 1940s Chile where he alienated himself from his Eastern European Jewish family background to mix in a bohemian circle of artists such as Stella Diaz Varin and Enrique Lihn (Leandro Taub) – with whom he marches through the city in defence of artistic freedom and defiance of the establishment. Using a familiar cocktail of magical realism and surreal mysticism, the film serves as a philosophical celebration of life that echoes The Holy Mountain and El Topo.

After moving from Tocopilla to Santiago de Chile with his family: a loving mother who sings her lines and a strict salesman father, it emerges that although Alejandrito (played as a child by Herskovits)  is light on his loafers and highly artistic – he is not infact gay. This is shown in a touching scene where his cousin Ricardo tries to hit on him and is gently enlightened to the fact that Alejandro is not that way inclined.  The film then flips forward nearly a decade to Alejandro (as played by his actual son Adan) as he falls in love for the first time with a poet Stella Diaz and tries to ‘find himself’ as a poet, despite his father’s plans for him to train as a doctor.  In reality he was to find his way to Paris to study mime before getting involved in filmmaking – but that’s for later.

The film rambles slightly in the second act and feels a tad long at over two hours running time, but this is a visually striking fantasy drama with its street scenes featuring crowds dressed as black and white skeletons and red devils and his trademark nudity . There are some political undercurrents and nods towards the hardline dictator President Ibanez (1927-1931 & 1952-1958) and Jodorowsky himself narrates from time to time with his son Adam composing an evocative original score.

The final denouement with his father is impressive, where he makes the salient and ground breaking declaration that informs his life: “by not loving me you revealed to me that love is all-important”. Clearly his father inadvertently did him a favour. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 | ICA | CURZON HOME ENT

 

Silence (2016)

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Jay Cocks | Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Ciaran Hinds, Yosuke Kubozuka, Tadanobu Asano, Issei Ogata, Shin’ya Tsukamoto | US | Biopic Drama | 159min

5g2a7980SILENCE is an impassioned labour of love and a testament to the religious fervour and devotion of two 17th century Portuguese Jesuit priests who undertake a gruelling spiritual mission to the wilds of Japan to spread their faith. Light years away from Goodfellas and Casino, this is a diligent and earnest passion project and the result of 28 years of grafting for Martin Scorsese, a devout Catholic, and his scripter Jay Cocks. Scholars of Divinity and faithful Catholics will find it an immersive experience, for others the dynamite central performance from English actor Andrew Garfield (as Father Rodrigues) together with Dante Ferretti and Rodrigo Pieto’s magnificent mise-en-scènes will compensate for the demanding nature of the subject matter and its near three hour running time.

Background-wise, it’s worth remembering that 17th Portugal was a force to be reckoned with for the Japanese, and a towering trading power controlling the region’s Spice trade through the country’s domination of economic pinch points of Goa and Malucca. Shinto Buddhism was the prevailing religion and the Japanese rulers – the Shogunate – did not take kindly to Catholic proselytising at a time when the country already felt engulfed by Portuguese economic might. Based on Shusaku Endo’s ’60s novel, the local Catholic population had recently come under a period of heavy persecution due to their failed rebellion against the Tokogawa Shogunate – the Shimabara Uprising – and so any further Catholic missionaries were firmly stamped upon and uprooted before they could take hold of the population, particularly in remote regions such as the Goto Islands (Nagasaki) in the East China Sea where the missionaries land (filming actually took place in Taiwan).

Back home in Portugal at the time, the Catholic Inquisition was well underway, burning fiercely since the 1536 in its job of exterminating those who had rapidly converted to Catholicism, particularly from Judaism, while still covertly practising their own faiths. So this was a time of strong religious feeling and affiliations, not unlike today. The Jesuits, a Catholic order co-founded by Ignatius of Loyola, were stalwart missionaries known for their strong belief in education and whose motto is the famous chestnut: “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man”.

In the opening scenes, Padres Sebastiao Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver) discover that their mentor Padre Ferreira (Neeson), who has been in Japan for some time, has been forced to renounce his faith by committing apostasy and stepping on a fumie, a bronze image of Jesus used as a test of faith. The Japanese had their own religious inquisition, and suspected Christians were made to trample on the fumie or face horrific torture or imprisonment. Arriving by boat on the treacherous shoreline of one of the islands, the intrepid pair fortuitously fall in with an uncover Christian community who shelter them in shacks in the lush vegetation, but the cruel and wily local inquisitor (a foppishly whimsical Issei Ogata) has offered a silver-coined ransom for their capture, and they are soon turned in by their faithless, feral-eyed translator Kichijiro (Kubozuka), and go their separate ways in desperation.

A fork in the fractured narrative then follows the wide-eyed, tousled-haired Rodrigues – played by Garfield as a deeply troubled, gibbering wreck, praying and sobbing incessantly as he tries to come to terms with why his mentor Ferreira has become a heretic as he faces his own dilemma: denouncement or death.

silence-02045Amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth, this is a gritty and mournful affair where scenes of torture by crucifixion, burning and drowning offer little relief from the grinding misery of religious conviction. Spiritual succour has fallen by the wayside, and the only scene where we feel the comfort of ‘our Saviour Jesus Christ’ is when Rodrigues is encouraged by a kindly voiceover exhorting him to step on the fumie without fear of divine retribution, and momentarily denounce his religion in order to save a group of his followers from being hung upside down and bled to death, like cows in an Halal abattoir. Rodrigues’ character would have made a more appealing priest had his faith and prayers endowed him with a greater sense of composure, but here he plays a mere mortal. Liam Neeson gives a canny twist to his opportunistic Father Ferriera, who choses an easy life of compliance with his Japanese hosts rather than the designated path of religious rectitude – giving the impression, in the glint of an eye, that he has made his peace with God despite his outward transformation into a Judas.

There are echoes here of Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ but this is an altogether more doom-laden and tortured saga and more like Roland Joffe’s The Mission (1986), not least for its focus. Prieto’s painterly tableaux evoke the style and chiaroscuro lighting of Caravaggio, illuminating the cast as if by candlelight. Prieto also conveys the stark religious purity of El Greco, particularly in the scene where Rodrigues imagines the face of Christ appearing to him, while washing his face in a pool of water. And while the missionaries are portrayed as squeaky clean, the Japanese come across as conniving and merciless monsters who embody nothing of own their Buddhist or Animist references in their vicious regimes of torture. Certainly a film that will appeal to the American Christian heartland and devout Catholics, SILENCE is a timely story that has come full circle in the past 400 years. The fact that Religious conflict still divides and tortures our contemporary world is a sobering thought to take into 2017. MT

OUT ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 2017 | Picturehouses | Gate Cinema | NATIONWIDE

 

 

Zero Days (2016)

Writer| Director: Alex Gibney |  116min | Documentary | USA

Alex Gibney’s new documentary about cyber-warfare is like the inside of a freezer: chilling and done dry. A palpable menace permeated the early scenes as your brain juggles to process endless facts and figures, but the bottom line is cold war fear: are we heading for meltdown through our computer screens? It’s highly likely rather than just possible.

Offering no conclusions, Gibney once again gives us a fast-paced and well-edited, authoritative documentary that is scary and quite bewildering. In ZERO DAYS he claims that cyber-attacks are the next big thing in international warfare; instead of bombs or even chemical warfare, these silent systems can invade at the touch of a button and take over nations – even the whole world. There is something decidedly horrifying and apocalyptic about this form of attack that feels underhand and rather sly: like a silent germ ‘Stuxnet’ a piece of weapons-grade malware developed during the early years of the 21st century by Israeli and US security forces – who gave it the codename “Olympic Games” –  begins rapidly to replicate, like an embryo, imbedded in the cosy comfort of the aptly-named computer software.

By 2010, the cyber weapon had been successfully installed at the Iranian nuclear power plant in Natanz, where it a was able to disrupt the functioning of the underground spinning centrifuges which operate at the speed of light in order the complete the nuclear refinement process. The Iranian Government were aware of the infringement but had no idea it was being caused by the Americans, seemingly under their noses. The Iranians themselves had developed malware systems and they eventually retaliated with attacks of the Bank of America but, like germ warfare, Stuxnet got out of control and began a computer pandemic infecting other systems on a global basis.

American president, Barack Obama has secretly authorised various attacks intended to destroy their enemy’s computer systems running the country’s electricity, communications and even water supply –but it cuts both ways. In future, war will be silent and deadly: suddenly darkness will descend in a universal meltdown.

But there have been so many threats of this kind since time immemorial. Armageddon was mentioned in biblical times in the book of Revelations and, more recently, the Millennium Bug which threatened to strike with the dawn of 2000, wiping out all computer systems. So just how soon is ZERO DAYS  intending the world to end? Not the for the faint-hearted or those looking for light entertainment, this is a film that needs to be taken with a heavy dose of caution, but taken seriously, nevertheless. But don’t dismay – there’s still tomorrow. Take a walk in the park and smell the roses. There’s a lot to be thankful for. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 6 JANUARY 2017 | BERLINALE 2016 REVIEW 

 

The Young Pope (2016) | Bluray release

Writer|Dir: Paolo Sorrentino, DoP: Luca Bigazzi | Cast: Jude Law (Pope Pius XIII Lenny Belardo), Diane Keaton (Sister Mary);, Silvio Orlando (Cardinal Angelo Voiello); Chloe Sevigny (Ether); Cecile de France (Sofia), Javier Camarra (The Rt Rev Monsignor Bernardo Gutierrez); Scott Shepherd (Cardinal Andrew Dussolier).

The most gorgeous bauble on the Christmas tree this year is THE YOUNG POPE. Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s most triumphant  imagining so far sees Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII, born Lenny Belardo in a children’s home and brought up by Diane Keaton’s Sister Mary, an American nun an private secretary is also responsible for the religious education of the Pope, along with his childhood friend Cardinal Andrew Dussolier (Scott Shepherd).

Starting as a hard-line pontiff, but gradually morphing into a more sympathetic and liberal, Lenny Belardo is somewhat of an ingenue in all areas of life but he is quick to learn and Law endows him with an innate sense of ‘street cred’ which eventually sees him appearing on the Papal balcony like an ecumenical superstar spouting the kind of silvered soundbites that his believers really want to hear: “We have forgotten to masturbate; we have forgotten to be happy”. This is a Pope who is buffed and beautifully accoutred, drinks cherry coke for breakfast and has a fag (of the cigarette kind) in moments of severe stress. Paolo Sorrentino’s creation is fun and flirty, but also pithy and highly-satirical, served up on a plushly padded velvet cushion of hushed and lush tones, thanks to the drowsy staccato legato electronic score by award winning composer Lele Marchitelli and sumptuously photographed by ace DoP Luca Bigazzi (The Great Beauty). Cleverly scripted for US the market, its wit and intelligence will leave you breathless and dazzle even the most exacting audience: dumbed down it ain’t.

After banishing a cardinal who openly admits he is gay (due to Catholic inconsistencies) Pius emerges as a deeply human leader who grapples with his own parental issues, his own feelings about sex and God.  He grows close to Cardinal Gutierrez (the wonderfully cast Javier Camara) and closer to Dussolier who both offer their advice and support on homosexuality. As while Sister Mary is despatched on a mission to help children in Africa, Pius heads off on the road to Venice to retrace his own roots and his parents.

Since premiering at Venice Film Festival, the series has gone directly onto HBO courtesy of Sony Studios, but is here to enjoy on Bluray, as a seamless continuum, or in 12 hour-long episodes . THE YOUNG POPE is an inspired re-imagining of the papacy has the same tongue in cheek charm as Nanni Moretti’s  Habemus Papam and is laced with furtively dark undertones that is beguiling to the final denouement, There is an awe and majesty to its assured and intriguingly subversive narrative. Full of exquisite vignettes delivered by Diane Keaton as Sister Mary; Cecile de France as the scarlet- lipped tousled haired marketing maven and a tour de force by Silvio Orlando as Cardinal Voiello. MT

THE YOUNG POPE | UK DVD, BLURAY AND DIGITAL RELEASE 26 DECEMBER 2016

 

 

 

 

Why Him? (2016)

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM BOXING DAY 2016

The Eagle Huntress (2016)

Dir: Otto Bell | With: Aisholpan Nurgaiv, Daisy Ridley | Doc | UK | 87min

The Kazakhs are a fiesty lot and their kids are no exception, growing up in the hostile terrain of the Steppes with its perishingly cold winters and scorching summers. With echoes of Sergei Dvortsevoy’s drama Tulpan (2008) THE EAGLE HUNTRESS explores the life of a young Kazakh girl who grows up in the remote Altai mountains of Mongolia (west of Ulan Bator) where she has made her mind up to become the first female eagle hunter in twelve generations of her Kazakh family. Theirs is a nomadic lifestyle that very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

The feature debut of filmmaker Otto Bell, this is an informative piece of cinema vérité that unfolds in the snug interiors of Kazakh family yurts (with solar panels!) and offers some dizzying, often slow-mo, widescreen aerial shots of this vast and inhospitable region between Russia and China. We first meet the rosy-cheeked 13 year old as she starts her training with golden eagles under the auspices of her father – who looks about 50 but is feasibly in his early 30s.

As you can imagine, this is no cuddly animal story, once trained in the art of – what amounts to falconry – Aisholpan has to descend on ropes down a vertiginous rockface to steal a baby eagle from under its mother’s nose in a nest hundreds of feet above the valley. The eaglet is just old enough to fly but young enough to get accustomed to its new form of captivity where it will help in hunting foxes, before eventually being returned to the wild, according to Kazakh tradition.

The rest of the community is dubious about their women going out to hunt. The elders, in particular, think their females should stay at home and cook and are not adapted to the fierce outdoor conditions – especially during the winter months. But Aisholpan is undeterred and goes on to prove them all wrong in both her competitive skills – where she gets all dolled up with nail varnish and a fancy fur hat – and in endurance tests where she accompanies her father in a gruelling fox hunt that leads them on horseback into deep snow drifts, carrying their eagles aloft.

Daisy Ridley’s accompanying narrative doesn’t quite have the Attenborough touch, making you wish for more salient facts about the Kazakhs and their daredevil lifestyle, but all said and done this is an impressive film, and an ambitious one at that! Wishing Otto Bell the very best of luck his documentary and may he make many more along these lines. MT

ON RELEASE AT PICTUREHOUSES AND CURZON CINEMAS FROM 16 DECEMBER

Donnie Darko (2001) | re-release

Writer|Dir: Richard Kelly | Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Patrick Swayze | US | Fantasy Drama Horror | 102min

Richard Kelly’s debut DONNIE DARKO is a strange and wonderful beast. The story opens in the wealthy family county of Middlesex, New Jersey where Jake Gyllenhaal’s rebellious teenager Donnie lives with his parents and younger siblings in a plush and leafy part of town. This is no straightforward fantasy but a dark and tonally complex curio seeped in unsettling anxiety that scratches at the edges of horror, and seems even more relevant today in our unpredictable social climate, than it did back in 1988.

Assigned to a kindly behavioural therapist (a middled-aged Elaine Robinson/aka Katherine Ross), Donnie seems to suffer from mild paranoid schizophrenia manifesting in daytime visions of a fierce grey bunny rabbit, who exhorts him to commit crimes and misdemeanours in the upmarket residential backwater where Donnie’s pleasantly straight-laced parents only want the best for him and his sisters Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a Harvard hopeful, and Samantha, who is part of a slightly inappropriate dance troupe.

Donnie is a gifted and smart adolescent whose sleepwalking habit actually saves his life when he narrowly avoids death on the night when a 747 engine lands on the family house. This is weird for two reasons: the rabbit told him to make himself scarce before the event, and, there is no trace of the engine’s plane. And when Donnie’s doc discovers he has stopped taking his meds, she recommends hypnotherapy, which ends embarrassingly – on the verge of Donnie playing with himself.

Gyllenhaal is perfectly cast in the lead: far from geeky, his face has a compelling quality that is both wholesome and otherworldly depending on Steven Poster’s clever lighting techniques. He also conveys a dreamy sexuality that feels entirely natural as he falls for Jena Malone’s troubled teenage crush, Gretchen Ross, who father is a criminal.

But the underlying theme of the narrative is teenage anxiety in all its forms. And Patrick Swayze’s inspirational school mentor Jim Cunningham aims to counsel the kids on how to realise their true potential, adding a very prescient and modern day touch to the proceedings.

Where Donnie Darko slightly goes off the rails is in scenes featuring the ‘wormholes’ as described during the physics lessons. These are shown in  bubbles that extend from each character’s torso, yet move the film from its disturbing psychological agenda to an unfeasible fantasy territory that feels unconvincing and lacks the charm of, say, Michel Gondry’s magic realist moments in Mood Indigo. 

But Gyllenhaal’s mesmerising and mystical performance carries the film through these flaws, making Donnie’s sinister world of worry a compelling and

twisted portrait of teenage anguish and a convincing parallel universe to his upbringing in conventional suburban America of the 1980s. MT

DONNIE DARKO is on Arrow Films and Mubi. 

 

 

 

 

 

Fanny & Alexander (1982)

FANNY AND ALEXANDER (FANNY OCH ALEXANDER)

Dir.: Ingmar Bergman; Cast: Betil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Ewa Frölling, Jan Malmsjö, Allan Edwall); Sweden/France/West Germany 1982, 168 min (film version) 312 min (TV Series)

Fanny and Alexander was supposed to be the swansong of Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), but he went on to direct many more TV films, like Saraband (2003), often with his favourite screen actors Liv Ulmann and Erland Josephson. FANNY AND ALEXANDER was one of his most optimistic features, even though the dark epilogue takes some of the positivism away.

Set between 1907 and 1910 in Uppsala, a Swedish city famous for its university, it tells the story of two siblings Fanny (Allwin) and Alexander (Guve), whose father Oscar (Edwall) dies suddenly of a stroke. Their mother Emilie (Frölling), soon remarries the bishop of the city, Edward Vegerus (Malsmsjö), who turns out be an autocratic, joyless tyrant. The children and their mother were used to a carefree, artistic lifestyle, and do not want to adjust to the cold hearted stepfather, who in particular punishes Alexander, for his ability to see “invisible friends”. When Emilie decides to leave with her children, Edward threatens that she will loose them, since he will not agree to a divorce. But a friend of her former mother-in-law, smuggles the children out of Vegerus’ house, while he is sedated with a bromide drink. She tells Edward, that she intends to leave him, but he makes it known that he will go on ruining their lives. Vegerus’ dying aunt, who lives in his house, sets her hair and bedclothes on fire with a gas lamp, and runs to Edward’s bedroom, setting him on fire. In spite of his sedation, he manages to save his aunt, but dies soon afterwards. In an epilogue, the family is again living their former, sunny and lighthearted way, when Alexander sees Vegerus in his dream, And is told “you will never be free of me”.

Whilst the sprawling saga is one of Bergman’s more traditional outings, DoP Sven Nykvist conjures up a romantic atmosphere of a bygone era, which overwhelms the audience with its sumptuous visual aesthetic. The contrast between the dark, mausoleum-like atmosphere in Vegerus’ house, is set against the playful, lightly and softly lit scenes bookending the dreadful insulation where the three have suffer. The cast, particularly the children,  are brilliant and Bergman directs with his usual thoughtful sensitivity. AS

SHOWING AT CURZON SOHO | 11 DECEMBER 2016

 

Mother (2016) | Nordic Baltic Film Festival 2016

Writer|Dir: Kadri Kousaar, Tiina Malberg, Andres Tabun, Andres Noormets, Siim Maaten, Jaak Prints, Katrin Kalma, Getter Meresmaa | Drama | Estonia | 89min

Estonia’s official Oscar foreign language hopeful is a sardonic suspense drama that explores themes of responsibility, personal freedom and community in a small town near Talinn.

Described by its prize-winning director Kadri Kousaar as Baltic Noir, it has the dark humour of Aki Kaurismaki and its heroine – a put-upon middle-aged mother (Elsa) forced to care for her comatose adult son – is Estonia’s answer to Kati Outinnen with her own brand of miserable charm. MOTHER also has Kousaar’s regular Finnish cinematographer Jean-Noel Mustonen whose visual style here has a striking resemblance to that of the Swedish breakout hit A Pigeon Sat on a Branch (2014) but the remainder of the crew is female (and blond).

Only a woman can understand Elsa’s life of quiet desperation trapped in a loveless marriage with her avoidant husband Arvo (Andres Tabun) and financially wrung out by her son Lauri (Siim Maaten) who was born when she was only 17, chaining her to domestic drudgery and destroying her dreams of studying in Moscow. Elsa channels her frustrations into obsessive cleaning routines in their cramped cottage, using gardening as a displacement activity for addressing her marital woes with Arvo. To make matters worse, Lauri is now bedridden after a mysterious shooting incident and Elsa is forced to care for his every need. The only glimmer of hope is her secret lover Aarne (Andres Noormets) – Lauri’s geeky colleague from school – who visits at inopportune moments bearing bunches of flowers and sexual favours which Elsa snatches hungrily rather than amorously while fending off a stream of unwelcome visits from Lauri;’s friends, confessors and hangers-on.

All this is treated with a tongue in cheek, toy-town briskness. The crime element of MOTHER is of secondary interest to its fascinating study of small-town social politics: Kousaar uses Lauri’s deaf mute status as a backcloth to expose the possible motives of his would be assassin: with each visit an intriguing story unspools encouraging the viewer to become amateur sleuth in a guessing game: was it his girlfriend, his childhood friend, his mate, or his doting pupil, and why?. It then emerges that Lauri took out a large sum of money shortly before the shooting, so clearly a financial incentive was the motivating factor in the crime. And it appears that several of Lauri’s guests are aware of the money stashed somewhere in the house and furtively look for it while Elsa’s back is turned.

Kousaar certainly takes on some heavyweight issues: her Cannes selected debut Magnus (2007) dealt with suicide: The Arbiter was concerned with abortion and genetics and now MOTHER sees dark comedy in tragedy and female desperation. Performances are strong with Malberg superb is her first lead role and Noormets and Tabun providing suitably insipid male support. But in the end, Kousaar makes fun of her tragic heroine after exposing her bitter hopelessness, and even her pathetic paramour ends up betraying her. Elsa is a sad character but her flaws are understandable and her motives justifiable in the circumstances. Arvo is a cypher whose only regret is that he never got to know his son, not to mention his wife. MOTHER is based on a play by Irish writer Kevin McCann and although Kousaar’s film is an inoffensive domestic drama is offers a rich underbelly of food for thought. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BALTIC NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL | DECEMBER 2016

 

The Ardennes (2016)

Writer|Dir: Robin Pront | Cast: Kevin Janssens, Jeroen Perceval, Veerle Baetens, Jan Bijvoet, Viviane de Muynck | 96min| Crime drama | Belgium

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life, Animated (2016)

Dir.: Roger Ross Williams | Documentary with Owen Suskind | USA 2016 | 89 min.

Director/co-writer Roger Ross Williams (God loves Uganda) offers up a humane and hopeful portrait of Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) through sufferer Owen Suskind and based on “Life, Animated: A story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism” by Owen’s father, the Pulitzer winning journalist Ron Suskind, who is also the executive producer of this documentary.

When Owen Suskind was three years old, the communicative and lively boy withdrew into himself cognitively and emotionally. For over four years, his only stimulation where Disney films, which he watched over and over. When his father Ron and mother Cornelia were told that their youngest son was suffering from ASD, their dream of a perfect family life was shattered. But with the help of therapists they have enabled their son, who is now 25, to lead an assisted but nevertheless rewarding life with his own home and romantic attachment. Owen gave a speech to a conference of specialists in autism in France, and hosts a radio-show. His message to all his audiences is clear: autistic people do not want to be alone.

LIFE, ANIMATED does offer insights into ASD: one of the signs is Echolalia, a sort of parrot speech, which peaks with normal children at around 30 months, but ASD sufferers, who have great anxiety problems because their brains are differently wired, do not unlearn this early communication model. Their prediction and anticipation timing is much slower than the norm. Furthermore, as Owen’s history proves, they often suffer from weak co-ordination and motor planning inflicted by a low muscle tone which leads to walking impairment, amongst other inflictions. Because those afflicted by ASD have great difficulty identifying the meaning of words, due to a lack a rhythmical understanding of the words, their speech is often slow and sometimes difficult to understand and this is made worse because they cannot grasp the body language of the person they communicate with. Owen proves over and over again that this is not because of a mental disorder, his drawings and acute analysis of concepts like heroism, in his beloved Disney world, show a vivid imagination and acute knowledge of interactions. But this is limited to the black-and-white world of Disney cartoons. In the real world, Owen struggles, because the signals he gets from his environment are not clear and understandable for him. If we consider that we all suffer from double-bind signals given to us, we can imagine how hard it is for someone like Owen to cope with contradictive signals given by the adult world he lives in.

His first relationship with Emily, who also suffers from ASD, comes to an end, because she does want the closeness Owen needs. Owen is stunned, because Disney movies, with their regular happy-endings, have not prepared him for this outcome. As his older brother Walter – who is prepared to look after him, when their parents are gone – muses, Disney has not prepared Owen for a normal sex life, since there is no “Disney Porn”. It is a sign of normality – rightly or wrong – that children who want to be Superheroes, are seen as normative, whilst Owen, who identifies with all the sidekicks in the films, is really much more realistic than his so called normal brethren.

LIFE, ANIMATED is greatly helped by the original animation of Mac Guff, who draws the world in which Owen lives. DoP Tom Bergmann’s close-ups of Owen are highlighting the world he lives in – trying to understand a universe that does not always complies with the norms of his Disney world. A deeply humanistic and emotionally satisfying documentary showing that the other side of ‘normal’ is often more innovative than the bland world the rest of us live in. AS

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE FROM 9 DECEMBER 2016

 

Holy Cow (2015)

Director: Imam Hazanov

With the villagers of Luhic, Azerbaijan

77min | Documentary | Azerbaijan | Romania | Germany

Writer and filmmaker Iman Hazanov’s debut feature uncovers a picturesque corner of rural Azerbaijan where the only immigrants are of the bovine variety. Magnificently captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, this cinema vérité piece takes us through a year in the life of an impoverished villager who is determined to give his family a better life without leaving his homeland.

A decent family man, Tapdig figures that prosperity is cow-shaped. On the telly he’s seen that European cows are bigger and more healthy than Azerbaijani ones. They also produce more milk. Unfortunately the local village elders don’t agree: “Bring a woman, yes, but not a cow”.  Although the subject matter is light-hearted there are important messages in the idle chat of these village elders who, despite their old-fashioned thought patterns, consider themselves fully part of the European Union, but are at pains to point out “Prosperity must come from the top”. These Azerbaijani villagers claim to be contented feel looked after by their Government. Traditional they may be, but they also have minds of their own in this close community, and are not afraid to express them. But Tapdig believes prosperity is a ‘bottom-up’ affair and is determined to prove it, despite the negative opinion of his elders.

Sarvar Javadov’s camera-work is Turkish in style with its wide-screen panoramic views capturing the great sense of space  in the surrounding countryside and the moody skyscapes of the Eastern Caucasus, and this is borne out in the views of the villagers: “there’s plenty of room here for everyone”. The dialogue scenes are shot in long slow takes, often with subjects wandering out of the frame while still talking, which adds a freshness and spontaneity, and occasionally a comic element, as when one of the old men nearly slips on the ice and the path of the cameraman.

Ready to risk it all, Tapdig eventually buys his cow, names her Madona, and brings her home to his family where she flourishes in a seemingly idyllic setting, providing milk, and even a calf: Alyona, although there is no mention of the breeding process, and no evidence of any other cattle in the village, apart from geese. The community here is clearly of the Muslim faith with their mosque the biggest building in the village. Azerbaijan, like Turkey, remains a secular country but a traditional one, where women are clearly submissive to their husbands but well cared for and loved, almost on a par with their animals, or so it seems. We see this in Tapdig’s single-mindedness and the fact that he discusses business matters with his son, even though the boy is yet hardly a teenager. His wife Vafa is reluctant to take care of Madona but eventually the cow becomes part of the large community with a promise of better things to come with Tapdig managing to finish building his house thanks to the proceeds from Madona’s milk.

Imam Hazanov took part in the Berlinale Talents scheme in 2014 and his touching human interest documentary very much connects to a global narrative of survival of small communities all over the World, and even provides an interesting counterpoint to the timely economic migration story, as revealed in its final third act. Hazanov’s story-telling shows a rich vein of situational humour that recalls that of Pawel Pawlikowksi’s early documentaries Tripping with Zhirinovsky (1995) and Serbian Epics (1992), obviously these are grander in scale but it will be interesting to see what Imam Hazonov makes of weightier matters himself. Clearly a talent in the making. MT

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE FROM 9 DECEMBER | REVIEWED AT INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL | AMSTERDAM | 2015

 

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson (2016)

Dir: Clint Eastwood | Cast: Tom Hanks, Laura Linney, Aaron Eckhart, Mike O’Malley | Drama | US | 96min

For a film about a near disaster SULLY is terrifically buttoned up. Clint Eastwood’s slowly stirring study of the day an Airbus A320 was skilfully landed in the Hudson River by its pilot, one Chesley Sullenberger, is more of a procedural than the melodrama it could have been, or perhaps audiences expected it to be – but it nonetheless stands as a quiet tribute to courage and experience, and that added ingredient – the X Factor – is enjoyable although its narrative style quails away from an over-dramatic impact that would have sent it into the realms of melodrama rather than biopic exploration.

Tom Hanks is serenely magnificent as Captain Sullenberger – or Sully – as he is affectionately known. A man who embodies duty, responsibility and dignity – a triumvirate of qualities that may come across as comfortably dull but are actually beyond reproach and undervalued in this age of male meltdowns. He has a wife (Laura Linney) to do the tearful bits, leaving him to his nerves of steel. As a pilot he is exactly what you want him to be: calm, detached and sympathetic: and that doesn’t mean he goes home to a night of undisturbed dreams: part of his appeal comes from his ability to remain focussed on the job – allowing his fears and trauma to be unleashed and processed in the aftermath in sleep disturbed by recurrent nightmares that imagine a dreadful scenario where his engine-less plane, with crew and 155 passengers, carroons through Manhattan’s skyscrapers in an incendiary ride to Hell. What actually happened during the near-fatal flight is relayed in a fascinating and supremely-crafted landing sequence where we join the striken passengers as the plane touches down on the Hudson with some of the most extraordinary skylines known to mankind as a variety of river craft zone in on the rescue mission that transforms the stricken journey becomes a miracle in Manhattan.

SULLY tells how on January 15th 2009, flight 1549 left La Guardia airport and, shortly after take-off, is hit by a squall of birds, wrecking both the plane’s engines. Rather than turning back to La Guardia, which he deems unfeasible, Sully takes an informed but split-minute decision (208 seconds to be precise) to land the plane in the Hudson River, successfully saving all souls on board. Later, he finds himself under intense scrutiny by the NTSB, whose investigation reveals that potentially one of the engines was still working and theoretically could have made it back to the airport. But that’s all theory and conjecture and Eastwood’s film sets out to show what actually happened and how Sully saved his reputation, his career and the lives of all concerned.

In a world of multi-orgasmic melodramas, of tiredly emotional meltdowns and ever-climaxing dramas, SULLY comes as a pleasant relief with its calm analysis and restrained performances. Don’t go expecting to be reduced to a nervous wreck, go to discover what really happens when a plane is forced to lands in water, and you’re lucky enough to have Captain Sully at the controls. MT

NOW SHOWING AT ODEON CINEMAS, ELECTRIC CINEMA, PORTOBELLO, ARTHOUSE CINEMAS, GATE NOTTING HILL

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

DIR: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbinder, Rachel Weisz

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

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

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

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

The Curious World of Hieronymous Bosch (2016)

Dir: David Bickerstaff | Prod: Phil Grabsky | Documentary | 86min |

The dynamic duo of Grabsky and Bickerstaff are at large again this time in Holland where the latest addition of their Exhibition of Screen series offers insight into one of the most intriguing painters of the medieval times through the Hieronymus Bosch Exhibition that took place at the Noordbrabants Museum in the small Dutch city early this year. Not only does this allow us unprecedented access to the extensive paintings and their curators, it also enables us to get a clear and often microscopic look at Bosch’s highly detailed 16th century world in his intricate artworks.

And commentary is provided by the experts; this time chief curator, Jos Koldeweij, Rachel Campbell Johnson, Art Critic of The Times and British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. And there’s so much to see and learn about here in The Garden of Earthly Delights where animals are often bigger than people, as they cavort on unicorns while birds swims and fish fly. Or The Last Judgement where grotesque events take over in a manic mayhem. The small town has able to gather all his most important works into this one place by offering deep insight into his work by an impressive collection of scholars. Campbell Johnson explains how Bosch interpreted his medieval vision and translated into our modern world, as if we were meeting the man himself, face to face. But what does it all mean?

In a tiny corner of Saint John of Patmos, we see a self-portrait of Bosch who was, contrary to popular belief, an ordinary and quite serious man who married well and became a leading member of the city’s religious fraternity ‘Brotherhood of our Lady’, living in one of the most illustrious townhouses in the main square. But behind this bourgeois facade, lay a highly inventive mind. Many of his triptych’s portray Heaven and Hell, a sort of pictorial version of Dante’s Inferno, where figures were roasted on poles or cast out in the wilderness, reflecting the doctrines of his era and gave rise to his vivid imagination and often tortured soul. Twenty of his drawings survive and 19 are offered in the exhibition and they depict an existential angst of nightmarish scenes where terrible eyes peer out from the ground and ears from the branches of trees. And then there is the legend of the woman who was martyred on the cross for growing a beard. As the camera zooms in to the delicately rendered portrait, it’s clear to see the bum fluff sprouting on her pale chin.

The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch certainly lays to rest some myths and provides a fascinating insight into the artist himself, giving us a chance to get to grips with Bosch’s work in the context of this most intriguing time in art history. MT

SHOWING NOW | TICKETS AND INFORMATION HERE 

 

 

 

 

Blue Velvet (1986)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mum’s List (2016)

Dir: Niall Johnson | Script: Niall Johnson | Cast: Rafe Spall, Emilia Fox, Elaine Cassidy, Matthew Stagg, William Stagg | UK | Drama | 101min

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

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 25 NOVEMBER 2016

 

 

 

The Wailing (Goksung) 2016

Dir.: Na Hong-jin; Cast: Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Jun Kunimura,
Chun Woo-hee, Kim Hwan-hee, Moo Myeong); South Korea 2016, 150 min.

Director/writer Na Hong-jin (The Yellow Sea) imagines a monstrous journey into the occult – gigantic not only in length, but also in narrative and aesthetic over-kill. What makes THE WAILING bearable in spite all of the hocus-pocus, is the performance of lead actor Kwak, whose police officer Jong-Goo is more of a loafer than an enforcer, bringing some comic relief to the often gruesome proceedings.

Set in the same rural environment as many of the famous South Korean detective mysteries like Memories of Murder, Jong is introduced at the breakfast table with his wife and daughter, eating leisurely before setting out to investigate a multiple murder – as if this would be a routine case in his tranquil village. As it turns out, Jong doesn’t need to worry, because the culprit, the father of the slain family has been already caught. Soon more gruesome killings occur, and Jong sets out into the woods, to look for the chief suspect, a Japanese stranger (Kunimura), who has been spotted eating animals. But in spite of employing a shaman (Il Gwang), Jong does not get any nearer to the solution of this mysterious murder spree, which starts to dominate his dreams, But worse is to come when his daughter (Hyo-jin Kim), is affected by the illness. Then a strange woman (Moo) starts throwing stones at the detective, before warning him that the Japanese is not the culprit. In the end, THE WAILING ends as it began: as a riddle about religious obsession: which is really the devil behind the mass slaughter – and poor Jong has to come up with the right guess, to save his daughter.

THE WAILING is not a traditional horror movie, it does not rely on jump-scares (only once) or use sound as a harbinger of approaching evil – it more or less sucks the audience in, just like the virus spreading in the village. This is a story about desperation, the helpless Jong (and the audience) trying to find a rational solution for the crimes. There is contamination, affected victims vomit constantly: bodily and psychologically possession is the name of the game. But in the end, this endless cycle of new victims and new suspects is tiring: the self-indulgence of the director takes it toll – not only in running time, but in the narrative structure of film. DoP Kyung-pye is able to create to create two separate worlds: the mundane village life, to which Jong clings too long for his own good, and the jungle of the woods, from where evil spreads. It is ironic, that after such an exhaustive tour-de-force the main emotional impact should be deflation. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 NOVEMBER 2016

The Incident (2016) | Underwire Festival 1-6 December 2016

Writer|Director: Jane Linfoot |Cast: Ruta Gedmintas, Tom Hughes, Tasha Connor | 90min | Drama | UK

A rather unsatisfying and typically British class drama whose message is enigmatically couched in a series of polite middle class characters who exchange doleful glances but fail to make THE INCIDENT resonant or rewarding as a piece of filmmaking.

In an impressive central performance Ruta Gedmintas does her best as Annabel to stretch the wafer thin narrative into something meaningful. Various incidents do occur but we are never sure which one Linfoot is referring to in her enigmatic title. Is it the initial one where Annabel’s unsatisfied architect husband Joe (Tom Hughes) has it off with troubled teenager Lily (Tasha Connor) in the confines of his car? Cracks were already visible in the facade of their marriage and they irritate each other in every scene.

Or is Linfoot alluding to the second interminably long but undeniably frightening incident where Lily turns up at the couple’s home, blind drunk and rocking a jaunty balaclava, when Annabel is alone, startling her before then disappearing without further ado?.

After a while the film gradually loses its momentum as it wanders into a didactic exercise in the British class system where the teenager is villified while the married couple discretely cough and distance themselves from the rather unfortunate scenario, deciding to ‘keep calm and carry on’ in an increasingly alienating denouement.

For the most part, THE INCIDENT fails to get under the skin of its characters, but perhaps this is what Linfoot intended in portraying typical English reserve. Hats off to Ruta Gedmintas for making it strangely compelling and watchable for her performance alone. Cinematography is also to be applauded, reflecting the mournful mood and sober aesthetic of muted shades with intimate close shots and subtle lighting techniques. Linfoot could have dug deeper into the rich morass of moral issues behind her storyline but decides not to and this is why THE INCIDENT ultimately feels as hollow as Gedmintas’ beautifully sculpted cheekbones. MT

THE INCIDENT IS PLAYING AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS DURING UNDERWIRE FESTIVAL 2016

 

 

Starless Dreams (2016)

Dir: Mehrdad Oskouei | Doc | Iran | 76min

Award-winning documentarian Mehrdad Oskouei (The Other Side of Burqa) gives us a predictably stark snapshot of life in an juvenile correctional facility for teenage girls, on the outskirts of Tehran.

Infact, the word correctional seems to be rather a misnomer as none of these young women appears to receive any behavioural therapy during their stay in the spartan dormitory where they only have each other for comfort, and a few cuddly toys. STARLESS DREAMS (Royahaye Dame Sobh) is a sensitive and compassionate study that never attempts to offer judgement. The girls discuss their harrowing experiences to camera, often breaking down in tears or even smiles of embarrassment in revealing sexual abuse (euphemistically termed ‘bother’) from their crackhead fathers and uncles and verbal and physical abuse from their mothers (often by ‘burning’). What emerges is a generalised picture of familial discord and dysfunction where the parents favour their sons and mistreat their daughters in a cycle of anger, drug use and petty criminality that percolates through to the girls, who are often forced into dealing and drug addition themselves.

Often outwardly flippant, the girls face up well to camera but behind the scenes they are depressed and often hysterical: “Once I was young and in love but unfair times have made me feel old”. The tone is claustrophobic and unremittingly grim as some talk of “chains and beating” back home, others of going back to the streets. STARLESS DREAMS could have benefited from the occasional cutaway to some hard facts or more ample backstories to give context to the girls’ misery. When their families arrive, tears, smiles and hugs give a different impression from the girls’ negative feedback offered ‘in private’,  leading us to believe there is possibly more going on here than meets the eye. But it is clear that these girls are unhappy, unfulfilled and mistreated by their families and are never going to be given equal treatment in their male-dominated society. The ‘therapy’ offered inside the remand home consists of washing babies, hairdressing and making glove puppets, yet when the Imam arrives for prayer and discussion, the girls are ready for some feisty debate and probing questioning. Of course, all their intelligent ideas meet a dusty and non-committal response answer from the Imam. MT

NOW SHOWING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE LONDON W1 

 

 

 

 

Underwire Festival | London 2016

red-road-290x290UNDERWIRE FILM FESTIVAL exclusively celebrates female filmmaking talent across the crafts from Directing, Producing, Screenwriting, Editing, Cinematography, Sound Design, and Composing. Founded in 2010 by Gabriella Apicella and Gemma Mitchell the festival has awarded training and mentoring opportunities to over 40 filmmakers, and has screened over 300 films.

In a time of where the UK has a female Prime Minister, women still over make up only 21.8%* of a typical feature film crew. And the more opportunities available to start honing their craft, the better it will be for women in filmmaking careers and so that female stories get to be heard and to be enjoyed all over the World.

Now in its seventh year, UNDERWIRE has become a BAFTA recognised festival and is working with some of the best independent cinemas in London, including Genesis Cinema, BFI Southbank, ArtHouse Crouch End and Barbican.

UNDERWIRE FESTIVAL 2016 | ARTHOUSE VENUES ALL OVER LONDON | 30 November -5 DECEMBER

I, Olga HEPNAROVÁ (2016)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

imageDir.: Werner Herzog | Documentary |  USA | 98 min.

For someone who has battled with alligators in the Amazon and avoided being killed by Klaus Kinski, the internet doesn’t seem too much to tackle: Werner Herzog stands manfully up to the experts he interviews in his Teutonic tones, always having the last word, even when it comes to delicate questions like “can robots fall in love”.

The first of the ten-chapter exercise starts in the room where it all begun: on 29.10.1969, at UCLA, the first internet-message was sent out to Stanford University, some hundred miles away. It should have read “log in”, but the system crashed after just two letters – ‘lo’ becoming part of the title for this documentary. Herzog’s turns the inquiry often from its scientific base to practical all too human consequences. He is not awed by the scientists (or hackers for that matter), always arguing his point, often supported by Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. And there are some nasty examples he has uncovered: we see the family of Niki Catsouras, who had committed suicide in her father’s car, with the gruesome images plastered all over the net. Or the sanctuary for victims of internet games in Green Bank, West Virginia, where an enormous telescope, run and erected by Robert C. Byrd, blocks any connection. One of the ex-gamers is even afraid to discuss games in detail “in case it brings up my cravings”. We also learn that South Korea seems to be particularly afflicted by the plague of game addiction, some cases even being fatal. And worse is to come: physicist Lucianne Walkowicz talks about the danger of sun flares, which could bring down the whole network – endangering all aspects of our lives, including food and water supply. Hacker personality Kevin Mitnick, at a congress in Las Vegas, tells the story of his life and how he spent years in federal prisons.

Nowadays, hackers are more likely to be employed by federal governments – the case of Russian hackers trying to influence the USA presidential election a very much on-going case. There are less serious questions asked: who will be legally responsible for car accidents when artificial intelligence is driving our cars. Whilst trying to explain the function of the net, Ted Nelson uses the metaphor of flowing water as a metaphor for the interconnectivity. Another worthwhile thought is the lack of any mention of the internet in SF literature – we read all about flying cars, but nobody mentioned anything about the net. And finally the question of love among the robots: how would you react if your washing machine told you that it could not do the laundry, because it was in love with the dishwasher?

Herzog’s most important interception is to agree with the thesis “that computers are the worst enemy of deep, critical thinking.” I would even go a step further: they are the enemies of any form of emotional contact between humans. In a world still dominated by men often resembling patients suffering from semi-autistism, computers will eventually obliterate the difference between humans and robots. Then, robots won’t be the only ones that can’t dream. A sober and extremely unsettling documentary. AS

OUT ON DVD WITH ADDITIONAL EXTRAS FROM 5 DECEMBER 2016 COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

Special features include:
BFI London Film Festival Q&A with Werner Herzog and Richard Ayoade
Interview with Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Screen Talk
Theatrical Trailer

Indignation (2016)

Script|Director: James Schamus   Writers: Philip Roth

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

110min | Drama | US

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

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

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

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

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

IN SELECTED ARTHOUSE VENUES FROM 18 NOVEMBER 2016

 

 

 

 

 

The Innocents | Agnus Dei (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Anne Fontaine; Cast: Lou de Laage, Agata Kulesza, Agata Buzek, Vincent Macaigne; France/Poland 2016, 115 min.

Director and co-writer Anne Fontaine (Emma Bovary) creates an emotionally intense, aesthetically outstanding and politically brave film. Set in rural Poland in December 1945, THE INNOCENTS draws on material by the French doctor and resistance fighter Madeleine Pauliac (1912-1946) who was a Medical Lieutenant in the French Army and a member of the ‘Blue Squadron’, an all female unit involved in repatriating displaced citizens after the WWII.

Mathilde Beaulieu (de Laage) works in a field hospital in the Polish countryside. The war wounded are still dying, but the psychological impact on the even more serious, as Mathilde will soon find out when she meets Maria (Agata Buzek) a nun from the nearby cloister, who approaches her in a desperate state of mind, asking for help. Smuggled into the cloister by Maria, Mathilda finds out that more than a dozen of the nuns are pregnant, having been raped by Russian soldiers. Mother Superior (Kulesza) is against any outside help, she wants to sweep everything under the carpet: the esteem of the cloisters in the eyes of the outside world is more important to her than the physical and mental wellbeing of her nuns. With the help of her lover, the Jewish doctor Samuel (Macaigne), Mathilde intervenes to help the women but the Mother Superior remains deeply troubled and devises a scheme of her own.

Agata Kulesza – brilliant here as the Mother Superior – was cast as the die-hard Stalinist in Pawlikowski’s Ida. Both Catholicism (together with some other religions) and Stalinism (in common with other authoritarian ideologies) represent a deeply inhuman ideology (camouflaged by a canon of salvation for the worthy), with often deeply misogynist tendencies. The Mother Superior is hell bent on being the executor of a dogma, punishing “her” women again, after their traumatic experience with the Russian soldiers. And, like the Stalinist gospel, it is all about blind, intransigent submission: “We cannot doubt her, we can only obey her” says Maria to Mathilde at first – but her later defiance will save lives. Samuel, whose parents were murdered in Bergen-Belsen, and Mathilde, from a working-class background, are the sceptics: they have seen enough horrors not to rely on any religious or political faith to cloud their judgement. Focusing on their humanitarian convictions, they don’t select victims, but help them all. Needless to say, both of them are ‘suspects from the sinful world’ for the Mother superior. Their own low-key romance helps to leaven the austerity of the Convent theme, with Macaigne injecting some caustic moments of humour to an otherwise severe scenario.

DoP Caroline Champetier again works wonders with natural light. She frames landscapes, cloisters and the hospital with a limpid and painterly lens that seems illuminated by candllelight to show the darkness of the era. The delicately rendered interior scenes glow with a gentle purity and those in the snow evoke a white shroud placed over all the mass-graves of those that have fallen. THE INNOCENTS is never melodramatic with Fontaine keeping a detached eye in spite of the emotional turmoil, but this makes for an even even more harrowing drama. Whilst getting the balance between form and context right, the real success Is her ability is to create an overwhelming emotional impact, which remains for a long time.

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT PICTUREHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 11 NOVEMBER 2016|

My Feral Heart | EAST END Film Fest 2016

MY FERAL HEART 

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

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

SCREENING DURING THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL ON 28 JUNE 2016

You’ve Been Trumped Too (2016)

DIR: Anthony Baxter | UK | Doc | 78min

Anthony Baxter’s sequel to his 2011 film about a certain wealthy US Businessman’s clashes with his Scottish neighbours during the building his luxury golf course (in Balmedie) feels very much like a re-hash of the original. The only thing that’s changed is that Donald Trump is now in running for the American presidency while poor old widow Molly Forbes (92) is still trying to get running water on her property.

Playing out like a comedy – if it weren’t so tragic – YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED TOO – is a series of episodes garnered from Baxter’s previous socially-minded and earnestly intended documentary YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED. It certainly doesn’t make for an engaging watch or an informative one either, unless, of course, you missed the original. Baxter zips through the content like a CNN broadcast, rehashing the familiar news footage of Trump’s campaign interwoven with talking head interviews from both sides of the fence.

But just to recap, Molly Forbes and her farmer son Michael were left waterless when Trump’s builders broke through a pipe that supplied the Forbes with running water. While Mollie chunters around with buckets and kettles etc, Trump speaks very highly of the long-suffering Aberdeen granny, likening her to his mother. On the subject of her son Michael, Trump is less flattering referring to “the disgusting condition in which he lives”, simply because the boy spends his day riffling through rusty old machine parts before reclining on a battered tartan settee. Needless to say, this homespun pair have been offered full use of Trump’s 5 star Golf course, but no running water to their home.

Baxter’s documentary is wafer thin with new facts but stuffed full of election information and Forbes’s visit to the US in a bid to confront Trump’s supporters. Needless to say, he is unceremoniously told to back off by all and sundry. It’s all really rather inconclusive as to why, even now, the Forbes’ can’t get running water from a chap who has billions. And crucially, Baxter fails really to come up with a decent answer, or better still, a solution from anyone in team Trump.

More interesting would have been a documentary about Donald Trump himself – there have been several on Hilary. After Baxter’s first documentary was aired on the BBC, Trump agreed this time to appear in person. Surely a candid and informative film about Trump’s own life and background would have been preferable to this non-event? MT

OUT ON 4 NOVEMBER AT SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE.

 

Richard Linklater: Dream is Destiny (2016)

Directors: Louis Black, Karen Bernstein | US | Doc | 86min

Richard Linklater joins the sparkling array of Texan talent along with Patricia Highsmith, Wes Anderson, Ethan Hawk, Tobe Hooper, Howard Hughes, Forest Whitaker, Rip Torn and Joshua Oppenheimer, to name but a few.

And in a this enjoyable documentary, Louis Black and Karen Bernstein uncover the life story of the modest and appealing Houston born director, described by his father as “a self-starter who was always going to make a go of anything he did” and who went on to be among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s.

Linklater comes across as gentle but also driven by a laudable and impulsive desire to learn and improve his craft with every film he makes. Surviving outside the movie industry of Hollywood and New York allows him to hold on to his creative vision rather than focus on the money-making side of things and this is best evidenced in his audacious project Boyhood (2014) which is perhaps his best known film since the non-narrative comedy drama Slacker which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 25 years ago.

Moving to the comparative backwater of Austin when his parents divorced was auspicious for Linklater as the city provided an open-minded and unrestrictive backdrop for experimenting (“it’s a long time before your technical skills catch up with your ideas”) and he set up the Austin Film Society with the aim of screening arthouse films. This led to the making of Slacker and providing local creatives for the project.

The documentarys talking heads are particularly insightful and, avoiding hagiography, are drawn equally from talent (Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke), industry and press (Justin Chang/Variety). New York-born Black serves as both director and interviewer. The founder of SXSW Film Festival has known Linklater since the beginning and has access to early footage of the him and they chat about his first hand written scripts in the writing sanctuary of Linklater’s eco ranch in Bastrop, where is preparing for Everybody Wants Some.

DREAM IS DESTINY is keen to stress Linklater’s collaborative approach to his filmmaking and Jack Black talks about Linklater’s earnest desire to know what his actors are experiencing and what they can bring to their roles, even though in the end the film is always the director’s. Here Linklater is at pains to point out that he would never want to lose artistic control of his work, whatever the financial situation, as in the case of Dazed and Confused where Universal wanted to take his film in another direction from that intended. The only criticism of the doc is in not really covering his lesser known films as the focus is primarily on Boyhood and the Midnight series, but given a trim running time of 86 minutes this provides scope for a more ample study of this personable and talented man in the future. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 31 OCTOBER 2016

 

 

Ethel & Ernest (2016)

Dir: Roger Marwood | Voices by Jim Broadbent | Brenda Blethyn | Animation | UK

Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethyn are the voices behind Roger Marwood’s ETHEL & ERNEST, an animated portrait of marital togetherness in suburban England. Based on Raymond Briggs’ biographical tribute to his own parents, this is an emotionally resonant drama that glows in its water-coloured tenderness echoing the likes of John Betjeman and Alan Bennett in capturing the quintessential middle class tolerance and quiet humour of the era.

Against the dramatic background of the 20th century, Ethel and Ernest’s modest story unfolds as a delicate domestic tapestry. They first meet in 1928 and go to enjoy 40 years of marriage that sees them through the privations of the Second World War, the start of the Welfare State and other national events, and the birth of their son who went on the create the evocative children’s animation Snowman.

For the most part enjoyable, some of the dialogue verges on twee in phrases such as “Mr Hitler”, and “this nice Mr Atlee” which feel like an attempt to trivialise Ethel – as if women were so ignorant back then. While some of the scenes begin to feel rather predictable, this is a touching arthouse treasure that will appeal to patriotic mainstream audiences and cineastes alike. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 28 OCTOBER 2016

After Love | l’Economie du Couple (2016)

Dir: Joachim Lafosse

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

100min | Belgium | Drama

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

100mins | Drama | UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Au nom de ma fille (2016)

Dir: Vincent Garenq | Script: Julien Rappeneau | Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Sebastian Koch, Marie-Jose Croze, Emma Besson, Fred Personne | Drama | French German | 87min

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

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

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

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

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT THE CINE LUMIERE

 

In Pursuit of Silence (2016)

Director: Patrick Shen | US | Doc | 81min

Patrick Shen is an American award-winning filmmaker best known for his feature debut Flight From Death. Here he turns his camera to silence, an increasingly sought after commodity in our busy world. IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE is a well-intentioned but rather condescending documentary presenting the corrosive effects of noise and as this were some new revelation. But does he bring anything new to the debate with his premise that seems more affirming than revealing.

We know that modern life is a cacophonous existence. Twenty four hours a day we are continually bombarded by obtrusive sounds, whether we are aware of it or not: other peoples’ conversations on the tube; builders’ drills and sirens; musak in cafes and babies crying: wherever we go it is almost impossible to escape the intrusion of noise. Try to find noise-blocking headphones and you will be offered those that only function with personal media devices – more sound and sensory stimulation. Silence (or the sound of the natural ambient world) is becoming not only golden but also vital to our survival as human beings, but many (particularly the young) are aware of this: so it is vital that we tune into its healing power. As animals we need to retreat and connect with our natural environment. The more we resort to the technological world for satisfaction, the less we feel validated, and the more we have to clamour to be heard and valued.

Shen opens his investigation on the role of noise pollution with John Cage’s silent composition 4’33. We discover that silence was the main thrust of his work, and this piece consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence (or, rather, of whatever ambient sound exist where this work is being performed). More common knowledge comes next. Unwanted sound can have a detrimental effect on both our physical and mental health. It leads to increased heart beat and cortisol release –  causing stress,  sleep deprivation, hypertension and even cardiac arrest.

We meet Greg Hindy who in 2014 walked from New Hampshire to Los Angeles under a self-imposed vow of silence, his innermost thoughts  written on a notebook and held up to the camera – crystallise our feelings: “The sources of noise that I am trying to get away from are so embedded in electronics and entertainment that I really could not allow any such distractions. Time away has given me perspective on what I should allow back into my life, and to what extent. Sometimes to really see things the way that they truly are, you have to take a step back, and then another step, and then a few more”. Well put Greg. But is this new?.

Structurally, the film feels overly episodic with two many commentators making it feel fragmented rather than discursive, and where is the ground-breaking revelation in the third act?. As is often the case in documentaries: a point is made and then rammed home over and over again without leaving the audience to reach their own conclusions. We hear from Dr. Helen Lees (author of Silence in Schools), Pico Iyer (The Art of Stillness), Susan Cain (Quiet), Maggie Ross (Silence: A User’s Guide), and Brooklyn-based author George Prochnik whose book In Pursuit of Silence was largely an inspiration for Shen’s film and his definition of silence is simply “the interruption of the imposition of our own egos upon the world.”

There are glorious interludes in remote landscapes such as the Denali National Park in Alaska, where a geeky park “soundscape technician” instructs us on the balance between silence, listening, and space. Even here overhead planes can still be seen and heard. In Japan, a researcher explores the benefits of natural ambient sound revealing the calming effects that this has on improving the body’s overall capacity to heal itself. Particularly, the rhythmic sound of waves on a beach has the power to regulate human functions and heartbeat. Trappist monks spend a great deal of their time in meditation in Iowa and a Zen temple in Japan leading to some footage of a Japanese tea ceremony; silence offers us a way to return and to reconnect with ourselves and is the most reaffirming thing we can do, rather than to reach out to technology or even people. But this is all ‘white noise’ that qualifies what we already know.

And In Pursuit of Silence isn’t always the balm you may be hoping for when you see its title. To illustrate his points Shen frequently blasts us with loud noises, some of which are quite unbearable. We know what that feels like and don’t need to hear it – specially from TV news or talk shows. During a political TV debate we witness an hilarious scene of three people talking at once, none of them listening, leading to Lees observation: “If nobody’s talking, nobody’s dominating,” And this seems to be the only salient takeaway worth ruminating over. We live in an increasingly vocal world, where everyone is trying to impose their own will and their own opinions on the rest of us, even when they have no informed opinion on which to place their rhetoric. We have lost the power to remain silent. And sometimes silence is the most powerful statement of all. MT

 

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE.

Into the Inferno (2016)

Dir: Werner Herzog | Cliver Oppenheimer | Doc | 100min

Visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog seeks out the world’s most apocalyptic natural wonders in his latest film INTO THE INFERNO that comes hot on the heels of Low and Behold, It is a rambling but informative piece of filmmaking that will certainly appeal to devotees of Herzog’s inimitable style. Some of the images are so breathtakingly ethereal and often frightening, it’s difficult to believe they are actually real, flashing before our eyes to a score of operatic music. What seems to fascinate Herzog is their primordial ability to challenge our authority, exemplifying the essential fragilitiy of human existence. They also offer great filmmaking potential.

As his specialist guide and travelling companion Herzog choses the fizzingly enthusiastic Clive Oppenheimer, a leading luminary on the subject who offers scientific detail and he authoritatively engages with local experts as the duo journey through the South Pacific, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Iceland, North Korea and back to Vanuatu, whose inhabitants celebrate their volcano every Friday night. Some of the volcanoes are dormant, but some are still active spewing their firey red magma, billowing gas clouds and pumice showers over lush hillsides and stony ravines. Some photos are taken from space to capture the magnitude of volcanic crater lakes.

The Afar region in Ethiopia is the hottest place on Earth and Herzog and Oppenheimer can only enter with a miliary aide due to local hostilities. Here they discover the world’s best collection of fossils and hundreds of obsidian chips which, when fashioned into blades, are sharper than steel and were once used for eye surgery. In one of the film’s digressions, they meet up with a crackpot scientist and fossil hunter from California who describes how, thousands of years ago, the human species originated here as one type and gradually spread out to Asia, Europe and beyond where we different languages and characteristics developed. It also emerges that a massive volcano in prehistoric times nearly wiped out humanity.

In Iceland, Herzog gets to visit the Dead Sea scrolls equivalent, a revered manuscript that details and describes volcanic activity back to the Dark Ages. When invited to North Korea, Herzog accepts that his visit will be tainted with propganda. Here the main volcano is considered the mythical birthplace of the Korean people, and now a sacred site of pilgrimage. We meet a group of uniformed students who chant a (staged) anthem for the volcano, even though it has been inactive for over a thousand years. Oppenheimer is suitably deferential. Clearly he sees the authorities as more frightening than the possibility that the volcano might erupt. Although INTO THE INFERNO occasionally veers off into a field trip for Oppenheimer, especially in North Korea, it nonetheless provides absorbing entertainment for lovers of the natural world, MT.

AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX Launching on 28th October

Kate plays Christine (2016) | DVD release with Actress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driving with Selvi (2015)

Dir.: Elisa Paloschi; Documentary; Canada 2015, 74 min.

Elisa Paloschi’s uplifting documentary looks at the life of Selvi, the first female taxi driver in South India, chronicling her way from abused child bride to independence – and a licence to drive buses and HGVs. The film also offers a glimpse of rural life in India, far away from the modern images projected by the state agencies.

A month after having her first period, and in her last year at school, Selvi was forced by her parents to marry an unknown man. But Selvi’s family were poor, and in the absence of a dowry, the man pimped his wife out, to make the money he thought he deserved. Depressed, Selvi decided to throw herself under a bus, but at the last minute finds her fighting spirit. And does so with help of the Odanadi Organisation, which helps child brides and other repressed women to enable themselves to earn a decent living. Selvi learns to drive (the director’s vehicle ends up in a ditch during the learning process), and becomes the first female taxi driver in the city of Karnatuka. Selvi then goes on to find happiness with her second husband, Viji (who is also a professional driver), and makes a success of her life in more ways than one.

Apart from making the film, Elisa Paloschi is very much Selvi’s enabler and mentor who charts the young woman’s progress in some heart-breaking scenes that clearly show how female subjugation begins in the family unit and goes on into the workplace: when Selvi meets her aunt, the only relative who cared for her, it emerges that her mother did not even bother to feed her, giving all her love to her brother – who, having married her off, called her a whore. But Selvi’s story is full of hope as she is positive and very adamant about the future for her daughter “she will be my legacy, she will get everything I didn’t. One day, I might tell her my story”.

A simple but life-affirming documentary which tells the story of an exceptional woman, one of 700 million child brides, of which 250 million are under the age of fifteen – a third are living in India alone. AS

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE from 7 OCTOBER 2016

The film was described by the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) as “… a tragic and poignant yet also energetic and inspirational portrait of an extremely tough Indian woman.”

My Scientology Movie (2015) |

Director: John Dower,  Prod: Simon Chinn Writer: Louis Theroux

99min  Doc   UK | US

Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by American science fiction author L Ron Hubbard, who lived from 1911 – 1986.

Well-known BBC documentarian Louis Theroux blows the roof of the Church of Scientology in this often hilarious exposé of the enigmatic organisation, made with the help of senior ex-members whom have subsequently ‘blown-out’ (been ejected or forced to leave). This is Theroux’s first big screen outing and together with a running time of 99 minutes, the piece  successfully employs the elements that elevate it to feature status: a significant theme of worldwide appeal; a serious Hollywood-style orchestral score, a three-act structure where the third act offers a significant turning point or dramatic nugget. And Louis has certainly achieved this transition to feature doc – ‘cum laude’, as they say in the US.

Louis Theroux is at the top of his game: he is accustomed to dealing with unusual, unpalatable or unexpected themes and all manner of human behaviour which he invariably handles with supreme skill, without offending or seemingly being offended. Non-judgemental in his approach, he elicits remarkable responses from his subjects, often coaxing or beguiling with such self-effacing charm the individuals remain unaware that they are being gently manipulated into revelations or admissions. He uses the same techniques here with often remarkable results.

For MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIE, Louis politely requested ‘The Church’s collaboration, but apparently they have flatly turned him down. But he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, even when he’s simply trying to deliver a letter to the Church’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Accused of trespassing on a public road, he eventually turns the tables on his accuser, a senior member of the Church, ‘allowing’ her to stay, rather than drive away in her car with the words: “it’s ok, you’re not trespassing”. When she asks: ‘why are you filming us?’. Louis responds with superlative politeness: “Why are you filming me?” In short these guys are not going to ‘shut his butt down’ on the fascinating subject-matter that he has come to explore.

In order to offer enlightenment and understanding as to the Church’s methods, Louis and helmer John Dower, use actors to role-play the characters and experiences of the ex-members – including one who “finds it easy to tap into a well of anger” to play the part of the current Head David Miscavige. In this way, Louis sheds light on an organisation which exerts control over its members, non unlike those of the Mormon religion, often keeping them from leaving using similar techniques. John Dower uses inter-titles to put the salient facts forward and there is recent archive footage from the Hollywood-style films that L Ron Hubbard created to promote the Church’s activities. What emerges is intriguing and alarming but Louis always keeps the tone light even when he is openly vilified by his collaborator Matt, an ex-senior official, who emerges as somewhat of a narcissistic individual, a personality type the Church seems to attract amongst its followers. Tom Cruise is a close friend of David Malsavige and another senior member who, we learn, has spent around 1 million dollars on courses to rise to the senior echelons of the Church. What transpires in Louis’ documentary will certainly give audiences food for thought and a better understanding of this arcane organisation. Who knows: You may even consider joining. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS | REVIEWED AT BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2015

 

Under the Shadow (2016)

Writer|Dir.: Babak Anvari

Cast: Narges Rashid, Bubby Naderi, Avin Manshadi

84min | Iran/Jordan/Qatar/UK.

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 30 SEPTEMBER 2016

Rara (2016) | LFF 2016

Dir.: Pepa San Martin; Cast: Julia Lübbert, Emilia Ossandon, Mariana Loyola, Augustina Munoz, Daniel Munoz, Micela Christi; Chile/Argentina 2016, 92 min.

Filmmaker Pepa San Martin delivers a stingingly truthful portrait of family disintegration in her promising debut RARA, where a father uses the sexual orientation of his ex- wife to gain custody of their two daughters. Based on a true case in Chile, RARA is a sad account of judicial prejudice, told often in an ironic tone when describing situations bordering on the absurd.

In the Argentine city of Mar de Plata, Paula (Loyola) has left her husband Victor (D. Munoz) and taken their kids Sara (Lübbert) a maudlin teenager, and her much younger sister Catalina (Ossandon) to form a new family with. Lia (A Munoz). Things come unstuck when Sara tells her father about harassment at school because she lives with “two Mommies”, and Victor, a one time supporter of Pinochet in Chile, starts a court case to get custody of his two daughters, ably supported by a “tame” psychologist and his influential mother.

The catalyst of the narrative is Sara, whose teenage angst is driving her into the arms of her father, sometimes against her own will. Homelife for Paula and Lia is often problematic with the two arguing and causing friction between Catalina and her sister. At school, Sara’s best friend, Pancha (Christi), is everything Sara wants to be: slim, articulate, and indulged by her rich parents. Victor, manipulative by nature, uses Sara’s birthday party to alienate her from his ex-wife – after all, his house is much bigger than Paula’s. When Sara stays out late – just another attempt to copy Pancha – the situation boils over.

RARA, means strange in Spanish, and is certainly the situation finds herself in caused by adults who say something, but mean exactly the opposite. Sara flirts with co-student Julian, her sister is obsessed by a little kitten – their worlds do not meet. On top of it, Victor is a true macho man: when his new partner Nicole tells him to wash his hands before lunch, he immediately hits back, shouting at Sara to take her feet off the sofa.

RARA’s strongest moments are these small observations. The true victim is Sara, who is not only used by her biological parents as a pawn, but also is left to mother Catalina, since her father is hopeless at communicating with his girls and Paula is too engaged in her emotional struggle with Lia to notice, let alone care. Carried by Lübbert and Ossandon, RARE is always lively and tenderly humane as evoked in DoP Enrique Stindt visuals that contrast the two very different family homes, but also create lyrical scenes of the city, where Sara will find her freedom away from the interfering and selfish adults. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 5-16 OCTOBER 2016 | BERLINALE 2016 REVIEW

De Palma (2015)

DIR.: Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow; Documentary with Brian De Palma; USA 2015, 110 min.

Directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s unusual but effective format for their documentary on Brian De Palma allows the director to appraise his own films. His often defensive approach in standing by the flagrant victimisation of his female characters make it obvious that the filmmakers raised these questions in the off. Not only does this approach spare the audience endless ‘Talking Heads’ crucially it allows De Palma to “hang himself” with his excuses and denials.

Brian De Palma (*1940) belongs with the directors of the era: Martin Scorsese; John Milius; George Lucas; Paul Schrader; Francis F. Coppola; Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott to a Hollywood creed, which dominated artistically first as a “New Wave”, and then very quickly the high-profit commercial cinema of the Dream Factory. De Palma is – together with Milius – the great outsider of this group. Brian De Palma studied physics before falling in love with cinema, largely due to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But among his first films were the anti-Vietnam Agit-prop works of Greetings (Silver Bear Berlin 1968 Film Festival) and Hi Mom (1970). Later he would revisit this topic with Casualties of War (1989). His stringent logic about the catastrophic outcomes of all the American wars in foreign countries, from Vietnam to Iraq, is laudable. But when it comes to his own violent movies such as Dress to Kill (1980) or Body Double (1984), with its near fetishistic violence against women, he stumbles through his denials: admitting, quite seriously, that the drill used by the killer in Body Double had to be big enough to go through the woman and the ceiling into the room underneath, so that the camera could catch the dripping blood.

Blood dominates his work, whatever the genre: Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), Carlito’s Way (1993) completing his Gangster trilogy; Obsession and Carrie (both 1976), Blow Out (1981) and the aforementioned Body Double and Dress to Kill are proxies of a more personal bloodbath. Compared with all these frontal attacks on sensitivity, his mainstream productions like “The Bonfire of Vanities” (1990), Mission Impossible I (1996) and Mission to Mars (2000) seem to be just ordinary by comparison.

Many critics accuse De Palma of having no personal style – unlike Lucas or Spielberg – but this argument seems false, at least on an aesthetic level. De Palma often uses split screen and very acute angles, he has never forgotten his beginnings as an Hitchcock epigone with Sisters (1972), where he playfully imitated the master, using the camera as his way to show distortion as reality.

Baumbach and Paltrow’s approach is simple, but not simplistic: they let De Palma contradict himself sometimes, whilst commenting on his film extracts. But overall, DE PALMA is a lesson in film history, and quite an enjoyable one at that. It shows a Hollywood before the money men took over, when experiments were still part of growing up as a filmmaker. Some did, but Brian De Palma certainly did not, he just got older: Passion (2012) is just a tired version of Sisters, but it is as cold and detached as his earlier works. De Palma has been married three times, all his marriages (among them with actress Nancy Allen, star of three of his films) lasted a combined eight years. The last word should go to David Thompson who described the filmmaker as somebody “who controls everything, except his own cruelty and indifference.” AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2016

12th London Spanish Film Festival | 22-29 September 2016

The London Spanish Film Festival is back this Autumn for its 12th edition and a unique opportunity to watch some UK premieres at Ciné Lumière and the Regent Street Cinema. The season opens with La Novia, Paula Ortiz’s second film, based in Federico García Lorca’s classic Bodas de sangre and closes with, Endless Night (main picture) Isabel Coixet’s Berlinale 2015 title, which stars Juliette Binoche and Rinko Kikuchi, an intimate but rather portrayal of the relationship between two women from two opposite worlds.

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This year’s festival includes a Catalan Window with the fresh but solid debut, Les amigues de l’Àgata, and a drama about the battle of the Spanish Civil War, Ebre, which will be presented by the historian and Hispanist Paul Preston. Possibly the standout film is Victor Erice’s El Sur, a masterpiece about loss and memory, which also forms part of the BFI’s Pedro Almodóvar’s retrospective. Films in competition are marked with a **.

LA NOVIA**

Dir. Paula Ortiz, with Inma Cuesta, Alex García, Asier Etxeandia, Manuela Vellés, Leticia Dolera, Luisa Gavasa | Spain/Germany | 2015 | 96 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Based on Federico García Lorca’s play Blood Wedding, which is considered one of his best works, La novia tells us the story of a tragic love triangle set in the deep South of Spain. Ortiz’s treatment of Lorca’s play is respectful and very close to the original poetic dialogue, while the photography of Miguel Amoedo enhances a fable-like atmosphere with nuances of a catastrophe. All performances are powerful but special mention deserves that of Luisa Gavasa, worth of a Greek tragedy, in the role of the cold-hearted widow, mother of the groom.

The film will be followed by a Q&A (tbc) with Prof. Maria Delgado (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)

Thu 22 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

MARÍA CONVERSA

Dir. Lydia Zimmermann, with Blanca Portillo, Agustí Villaronga, Colm Tóibín | Spain | 2016 | 59 min. | col | doc | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Blanca Portillo has one of Spain’s richest, unstoppable acting careers in film, TV and theatre. She won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palm Award for her work in Pedro Almodóvar’s film Volver and her work has been awarded several times.Zimmermann’s documentary follows the actress’s creative process as she prepares to incarnate María of Nazareth in Colm Tóibín’s play Mary’s Testament under the direction of Agustí Villaronga. A privileged and enriching insight into the work of one of the most interesting Spanish actresses of all times.

The film will be followed by an on-stage conversation between Blanca Portillo and Prof. Maria Delgado (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

Fri 23 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

4d34c9cceae77577eb2f62fb66674ee7FALLING**

Dir. Ana Rodríguez Rosell, with Emma Suárez, Birol Ünel | Spain/Dominican Republic | 2015 | 89 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish, English, German and Turkish with English subtitles | European premiere

Alma and Aslan, now separated, meet in the place where they spent their best years married. While they remember their shared dreams and try to figure out what went wrong, Aslan tries to change Alma’s memories and make sense of them for a new life. Shot with a very small crew in the dream setting of the Dominican Republic, Falling is a very intimate film where the enormous talent of the actors thrives under the perceptive and sensitive direction of Rodríguez Rosell, who visited us with her debut film, Buscando a Eimish, also featuring Suárez and Ünel, a few years ago.

Followed by a Q&A with Ana Rodríguez Rosell, Emma Suárez and Birol Ünel

Sat 24 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LA PUERTA ABIERTA**

Dir. Marina Seresesky, with Carmen Machi, Terele Pávez, Asier Etxeandia | Spain | 82 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Through the years, we have programmed Marina Seresesky’s shorts (La boda and El cortejo) and are delighted now to show her first feature film, the moving, at times even poetic, story of Rosa, an embittered middle-aged prostitute living with her mother – who was a prostitute as well. When Rosa accepts to take Lyuba, an orphan little Russian girl, it seems that redemption might still be possible. Machi’s is a poignant, memorable performance. The humour is brought by a superb Etxeandia in the role of a foul-mouthed transvestite.

Followed by a Q&A with the director

Sat 24 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

A_PERFECT_DAY_deltoro-2 copyA PERFECT DAY

Dir. Fernando León de Aranoa, with Benicio del Toro, Tim Robbins, Mélanie Thierry, Olga Kurylenko | Spain | 2015 | 106 min. | col | cert. 16 | In English, French, Serbian and Spanish with English subtitles

Fernando León de Aranoa’s film revolves around the efforts of a group of aid workers to remove a corpse from a well in an armed conflict zone in the Balkans. What initially seemed like a relatively simple task turns out to be a nearly impossible mission complicated by bureaucracy and the stubbornness of the population in conflict. The director achieves with remarkable skill, consistency between the different yearnings of the international, polyglot array of characters in a frustratingly complicated context. Like a Russian doll, the film is a drama inside a comedy, inside a road movie, inside a war movie…

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Sun 25 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

BERSERKER**

Dir. Pablo Hernando, with Julián Génisson, Ingrid García Jonsson, Vicenc Miralles | Spain | 2015 | 100 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

When Hugo Vartán, a struggling writer, finds out that someone he vaguely knows was connected to a murder, the next thing he does is to set out to investigate the facts and use the story to write his next book – which needs to be delivered in a few weeks. As his investigation progresses, Hugo finds himself entering an enigmatic, dangerous world that doesn’t belong to him. Will he go ahead with the investigation for his new book or will he stay away beware of any consequences it may have in this life? Hernando’s second feature film is an accomplished and compelling thriller balanced with graceful suspense.

Preceded by the short EL CORREDOR | The Runner

Dir. José Luis Montesinos, with Miguel Ángel Jenner, Lluís Altés | Spain | 2014 | 12 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Five years ago the boss closed the company and fired 300 workers. The first day that he goes out to run he meets one of them.

Followed by a Q&A with Pablo Hernando

Sun 25 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LOBOS SUCIOS**

Dir. Simón Casal, with Marian Álvarez, Ricardo de Barreiro, Manuela Vellés | Spain | 2015 | 105 min. | col | In Spanish and German with English subtitles | UK premiere

Manuela and the poor population of her small village in Galicia work in the mines retrieving and processing wolfram for the Nazis, who need this rare metal for the Third Reich’s war machine. When some of the miners plan a revolt against Franco’s military men and the Nazis, while her sister is helping Jews cross the border into Portugal, she must decide if she can remain neutral in a time of war. Inspired by real events in the early 1940s, Casal manages nonetheless to infuse the Galician mountains, forests and wolves with a mysticism and magic very much in line with the mythology of that part of Spain. Marian Álvarez, as usual, delivers here a powerful and nuanced performance.

Preceded by the short ECO | Echo

Dir. Xacio Baño, with Xosé Barato, Rocío González | Spain | 2015 | 20 min. | col | In Spanish and Galician with English subtitles | UK premiere

Echo’s voice was stolen and she was sentenced to repeat what everyone else said. Trapped, she decides to take shelter in a cave and to distance herself from human touch.

Followed by a Q&A with Lobos sucios’s Executive Producer and Scriptwriter Paula Cons and Nir Cohen, Film Programmer at UK Jewish Film

Tue 27 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

NACIDA PARA GANAR** | Not What It Looks Like

Dir. Vicente Villanueva, with Alexandra Jiménez, Victoria Abril, Cristina Castaño | Spain | 2016 | 95 min. | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Encarna, a thirty something girl from Móstoles (Madrid) traumatised from childhood by a joke made by the most successful comedy duo in Spain in the national TV, is trapped in a monotonous life between her selling mattresses and her hiding from her mother that her life-long lover is her old Geography teacher. For Encarna it seems impossible to change anything in her life… until she meets an old school friend whose life seems to be one success after another. Ironic, and cruel at times, Villanueva’s is a comedy with tinges of surrealism and esperpento in its most realistic way, which includes Victoria Abril playing a fictitious Victoria Abril.

Preceded by the short DETOUR

Dir. César Espada, with Eulàlia Ramón | Australia/Spain | 2015 | 11 min. | col | cert. 16 | In Spanish and English with English subtitles | UK premiere

The adventures of a Spanish nymphomaniac smuggling drugs in Australia.

Followed by a Q&A with Eulàlia Ramón

Wed 28 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

Nobody wants copyENDLESS NIGHT |Nadie quiere la noche

Dir. Isabel Coixet, with Juliette Binoche, Gabriel Byrne, Rinko Kikuchi | Spain/France/Bulgaria | 2015 | 104 min. | col | cert. 12A | In English and Inuktitut with English subtitles | London premiere

Josephine Peary is trying to reach her husband, who is in a geographic quest to the North Pole. Upon the impending arrival of the Arctic winter, she finds herself stuck with an Inuit woman and trying to survive the impossible conditions of the harsh climate and the scarcity of food. Inspired by real events, the intimacy of the two women is superbly shown by the Catalan filmmaker and the two actresses are at their very best. The costumes by Clara Bilbao together with Jean-Claude Larrieu’s cinematography make for some really stunning images.

Followed by a Q&A (tbc)

Thu 29 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

B A S Q U E   W I N D O W

ACANTILADO** | The Cliff

Dir. Helena Taberna, with Daniel Grao, Juana Acosta, Goya Toledo, Ingrid García Jonsson, Jon Kortajarena | Spain | 99 min. | col | cert. 12A | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Gabriel has to put his promising political career on hold when a mass suicide of members of a sect takes place and his little sister, Cordelia, whom he hasn’t seen for years, seems to be involved. With the help of his sister’s former lover, Helena, and the police inspector, Santana, he’ll try to find Cordelia and the sect’s leader. The beautiful cinematography of Javier Agirre captures the extraordinary landscape of the Canary Islands, helping evidence the emotional state of the characters. The thriller is based on Lucía Etxebarría’s book El contenido del silencio.

Preceded by the short 36 HOURS, by Vincent Lacrocq and Kristell Chenut, with Jon Kortajarena, Clément Chabernaud | US/France | 9 min. | col | cert. PG | In Spanish and French with English subtitles

Against the stunning backdrop of Lanzarote, a poetic reflexion on life and unexpected encounters.

Followed by a Q&A with Jon Kortajarena

Fri 23 Sep | 8.45pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

AMAMA** | Grandma | Abuela

Dir. Asier Altuna, with Nagore Aramburu, Amparo Badiola, Klara Badiola | Spain | 2015 | 103 min. | col | cert. PG | In Basque with English subtitles | London premiere

Amaia grew up in a farm with her parents, brother and grandmother. A video-artist, she finds inspiration in the context in which she grew up and, particularly, in her amama (grandmother) and in the conflicting relationship with her father, who remains firm in his traditional farmer beliefs. A poetic homage to the Basque rural world and matriarchy, a world that is disappearing, Altuna’s Amama is a film with several layers, which, in the end, aims for reconciliation between tradition and modernity.

Preceded by the short LOST VILLAGE, by George Todria, with Kakkha Kobaladze, Lia Abuladze | Spain | 2015 | 15 min. | Without dialogues | UK premiere

A middle-aged man and a woman are the only people living in an abandoned village when lights start appearing in some of the empty houses. Their lives will never be the same again.

Followed by a Q&A with Asier Altuna

Mon 26 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

MV5BMTY1ODIyMjU0Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzUwOTI5NjE@._V1_UY1200_CR117,0,630,1200_AL_PIKADERO**

Dir. Ben Sharrock, with Bárbara Goenaga, Lander Otaola, Joseba Usabiaga | Spain | 2015 | 98 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Basque with English subtitles | London premiere

The eyes of the Welsh filmmaker based in the Basque Country, Ben Sharrock, perfectly capture the mood among Basque youths caused by the economic crisis gripping Spain and making them unable to fly the parent’s nest. Penniless Gorka starts an unlikely relationship with Ane. Both broke, they try to consummate their relationship somewhere, in the car of Gorka’s friend Iñaki. The frustration in front of a hopeless future economic independence gets hold of Gorka, while Ane dreams of leaving for another country.

Followed a Q&A with actress Bárbara Goenaga

Mon 26 Sep | 8.40pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

LEJOS DEL MAR** | Far From the Sea

Dir. Imanol Uribe, with Elena Anaya, Eduard Fernández | Spain | 2015 | 105 min. | col | In Spanish with English subtitles

When Marina, a doctor living in Almería, leaves her work place one day, the last thing she expects is to see Santi, with whom she had a terrible encounter when she was a child. Recently released, Santi, who has been in prison since then, has come to visit an old cell mate, who is terminally ill and whom Marina is taking care of. One of the most established filmmakers in Spain, with unforgettable films like La muerte de Mikel (1983), Días contados (1994) or El viaje de Carol (2002), Uribe offers us here a wonderful meditation on love, loss and absence with the support of the superb performances of two of Spain’s best actors, Fernández and Anaya.

Followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker

Tue 27 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

UN OTOÑO SIN BERLÍN** | An Autumn Without Berlin

Dir. Lara Izaguirre, with Irene Escolar, Tamar Novas | Spain | 2015 | 95 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

June comes back to her hometown after some time spent abroad, but her family and her first love are not the same. Like the southern autumn wind, June is going to change everything, getting back her place in the family and the dream shared with Diego of going together to Berlin. Izaguirre’s first feature film is, in a fresh and elegant way, a story about love and personal growth. Irene Escolar, sixth generation of one of the most established actors sagas in Spain, the Gutiérrez Caba, received a special mention for her work at San Sebastian Film Festival last year as well as the Best New Actress Goya Award. Tamar Novas, best known to British audiences for his work in The Sea Inside or Broken Embraces, delivers as well a strong and nuanced performance.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with the director

Wed 28 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

 

C A T A L A N   W I N D O W

EBRE DEL BRESSOL A LA BATALLA** | Ebre. From the Cradle to the Battle | Ebro. De la cuna a la batalla

Dir. Román Parrado, with Oriol Plà, Roser Tapias, Àlex Monner | Spain | 2015 | 80 min. | In Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

The Spanish Civil War as a war of attrition. In 1938 the War had already worn out both armies and the spirits of the whole population. The National army however had the support provided by Hitler and Mussolini whereas the Republican army was ignored by the rest of Europe as these countries were more worried about a possible world war. It is in these conditions that, in an effort to stop the National army from crossing the river Ebre, the Republic calls to arms thousands of youths aged 17 and 18. The story of some of these youngsters is narrated by Parrado with fresh enthusiasm and passion, all the while staying true to the facts.

Preceded by an introduction by Hispanist Prof. Paul Preston (London School of Economics)

Sat 24 Sep | 4.30pm | £12, conc. £11, University of Westminster students £8 | Regent Street Cinema

LES AMIGUES DE L’ÀGATA** | Àgata’s Friends | Las amigas de Àgata

Dir. Laia Alabart, Alba Cros, Laura Rius, Marta Verheyen, with Marta Cañas, Carla Linares, Elena Martín, Victoria Serra | Spain | 2015 | 70 min. | col | cert. 12 | In Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles | UK premiere

Les amigues de l’Àgata is a thoughtful and delicate portrait of four young friends through the eyes of Àgata, now in her first university year, who sees how the relationship with her school friends is transformed in their lives in Barcelona as well as during a trip to the Costa Brava. An exceptional final thesis in which all four directors have shared all tasks, the film establishes itself as their opera prima, with the assistance and tutorials of, among others, Isaki Lacuesta and Elías León Siminiani.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with one of the directors

Sun 25 Sep | 4.15pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière)

SPECIAL SCREENING 

El_Sur_(The_South)_Dir_Victor_Erice_pic_4 copyEL SUR | The South

Dir. Víctor Erice, with Omero Antonutti, Sonsoles Aranguren, Icíar Bollaín | Spain/France | 1983 | 95 min. | col | cert. PG | In Spanish with English subtitles

In collaboration with the BFI, as it is part of Pedro Almodovar’s carte blanche for their full retrospective about him and upon their re-release of this timeless masterpiece, we are proud to programme Victor Erice’s melancholic reflexion on the passing of time and loss. He does so through the eyes of Estrella, a little girl who grows up in a town in the North of Spain, fascinated by the secrets and the past of her beloved father, who was raised in the South.

The film will be introduced by Geoff Andrew, film critic and programmer

Thu 22 Sep | 6.30pm | £12, conc. £10 | Ciné Lumière

THE 12 LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 22 -29 SEPTEMBER 2016 

 

The Fencer (2016)

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

Director: Klaus Haro   Writer: Anna Heinamaa

Cinematographer: Tuomo Hutri

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

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

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

 

Dare to be Wild (2015)

Director.: Vivienne De Courcy

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

100 min | Drama | ROI

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

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

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

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

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

Shadow World (2016)

Dir: Johan Grimonprez | Doc | 94min | Belgium

In his well-crafted documentary based on Andrew Feinstein’s book. Johan Grimonprez tries to flesh out and shed further light on the well-known but nonetheless inflammatory subject of arms trading and, crucially, the finance governments receive from the racket. Whilst our leaders try to distance themselves from it, they condone the damage it causes by perpetually greasing the wheels of the gravy train that rolls on from one to the next, like a lucrative hot potato.

The evidence is all there and is masterfully curated by Grimonprez and corroborated by talking heads and witnesses who profess incredulity. The whole process started back in the 80s during Ronald Regan’s time in office when the term ‘special relationship’ with the UK’s Margaret Thatcher was first coined (and later passed to Blair, Bush and Obama) and  led to and facilitated a profitable trade with Saudi Arabia that escalated into an ubiquitous state of perpetual international conflict – still happening today – and ‘affectionately’ termed (and I use that term ironically) the ‘War on Terror’.

According to the alledged findings of Shadow World, which seem entirely plausible – this is a conflict that shows no signs of abating, and why should it when one considers the positive contribution that it has made to those concerned.  Not a documentary that will make you leave the cinema laughing. MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 17 SEPTEMBER 2016 | Bertha Dochouse W1

SHADOW WORLD

 

 

 

 

Cecilia (2016)

DIR.: PANKAJ JOHAR | Documentary | India/Norway | 83 min.

Director/producer/DoP Pankaj Johar (Still Standing) has invested a great deal of emotional energy in his documentary CECILIA: becoming a participant rather than a detached observer in this tragic film about child-trafficking.

Cecilia Hasda was 54 when she arrived in Delhi from her village in Bengal (1500 km away) to housekeep for Pankaj Johar and his lawyer wife, Sunaina, in the first year of their marriage. Almost immediately Cecilia finds out that her daughter Mati, 14, has been found dead in Dehli, having hanged herself. Cecilia is naturally distraught, and Pankaj and Sunaina try to help her investigate the circumstances of Mati’s death. The couple shamefully admit that they have employed children as young as twelve to work for them when they finally discover a child-trafficking ring, led by a certain Rafiq, who ‘bought’ Mati in her home village, obviously with the consent of her father – and, as it turns out, the consent of the whole village. In turns out that all the villagers are in league with Rafiq and his men, paying them to procure household staff.

Researching the widespread issue of child-trafficking, Johar and his wife meet the campaigner Kailash Satyarthi, who has fought against the practice for twenty years, just before being awarded the Nobel Peace Price. Mati’s employers approach Cecilia offering her compensation for her loss, on the proviso that she agrees to swear to an affidavit that they treated Mati well. But soon it becomes clear that Cecilia’s husband is attempting to have Rafiq freed from jail. Cecilia learns that he has agreed to the affidavit on the basis that he was divorced from her at the time when Mati started  work in Dehli, so making it impossible for Cecilia to pursue the case further.

Pankaj and Sunaina travel with Cecilia twice to her home village, but are frightened away by the villagers, who blame Cecilia for setting the police on them. At one point Sunaina is so upset she admits: “I don’t trust anybody in this country”. And it turns out that she is right: the villagers and her husband put Cecilia under pressure to take back the accusations against Rafiq. Returning to her home village for good she steadily becomes an alcoholic.

Working on three levels, CECILIA is a testament to the evils of child trafficking; an exposé of the financial benefits of the racket to the police and legal authorities (who are well compensated); and a portrait of a middle class Indian couple who finally wake up to the stark reality of their domestic lives. At least Pankaj Johar accepts his co-responsibility for the injustice he exposes in this brutally frank documentary. AS

SCREENING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | www.dochouse.org for tickets

Sour Grapes (2016)

Dir.: Jerry Rothwell, Reuben Atlas; Documentary; UK/US/France 2016, 85 min.

Directors/writers Jerry Rothwell (Deep Water) and Reuben Atlas (Brothers Hypnotic)  investigate a scandal concerning vintage vine and mega rich US citizens in SOUR GRAPES, a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie with its twists and turns. Dosed with a dollop of humour – after all, there cannot be much pity for victims who spend six figures on a bottle of wine – fake or not – but they are still victims and deserving of justice.

This well-crafted documentary opens during the dot-com-boom in the late 1990s, which produced an incredible number of super-rich patrons, vintage wine becoming one of the most sought-after commodities. Novelist Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City) joined the wealthy crowd as a wine journalist – he was one of the first to meet a certain Rudy Kurniawan, an Indonesian businessman of Chinese heritage, born in 1976 – a man with a yen for vintage wines and impressive manners. His background was slightly murky but his opulent wealth was family-related: his father ran the Heineken franchise in China, and gave his son a cool yearly allowance of one million US Dollars. Kurniawan’s wine cellar was legendary, and between 2003 and 2006 bottles worth more than 35M$ were sold, often in auctions at Christies, but also at Acker/Merrall/Conduit in New York, where Rudy’s auction of his wine fetched 24.7 M$ in 2006 – a new record.

But Rudy’s luck – his clients included the Hollywood producer Arthur Sarkassian (Rush Hour) and film/TV director Jef Levy (Inside Monkey Zetterland) – would run out soon: mainly, because in far away Burgundy, Laurent Ponsot, wine producer, discovered, that Rudy had forged labels, corks and content of his most famous Wines from the Côte d’Or. And closer to home, industrialist Bill Koch (brother of the infamous arch-reactionaries Charles and David), had put Ex-FBI agent Jim Wynne on to Rudy, after discovering that he had paid several million Dollar for counterfeit bottles. But there is much more here than initially meets the eye.

SOUR GRAPES is a slick documentary that plays out like a crime caper in a luxury environment. Rothwell and Atlas show Kurniawan very much at home in this world: basically playing a shell game, always borrowing just more than he would spend on his own luxury equipment, needed keep up the front. As fine wine consultant Maureen Downey states: “The overwhelmingly male-dominated field of the highest-end collectors is fuelled by “F.U.” money, a kind of money most humans never experience; it is a world of swagger, camaraderie and one-upmanship, in which the participants have more in common with James Bond than Richie Rich”. The  documentary is awash with archive footage showing Rudy very much at home in an environment where over 40, 000 fake bottles sold by the man ”who revolutionised the market”, are still in the wine cellars of his friends and clients. Watchable and intoxicating. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE from 16 SEPTEMBER 2016 COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

The Brother (2016)

Director|Writer: Ryan Bonder

Cast: Anthony Head, Jed Rees, Belinda Stewart Wilson, Tygh Runyan

86min | Crime thriller | UK Canada

This slick and rather enigmatic crime thriller is made on British soil with Canadian money and a transatlantic feel that gives it the edge over most contemporqry Britlicks of the genre. It also has a well-chosen Canadian\British cast which gives a shot of international glamour to a story that could have been rather more pedestrian in British hands. Ryan Bonder was born in Canada but latterly came to London where he honed his craft shooting commercials in preparation for his second feature THE BROTHER which he describes as ‘thematically resonant with the rest of my work – about Memory, Identity and Loss’.

The story is straightforward and unfolds in linear structure: Adam Diamond escaped the family business of international arms dealing to set up a new carefree existence. His past crashes in around him upon the arrival of his brother, who brings news that his father’s (Anthony Head) health is failing, leaving him to pick up the pieces of a deal about to sour.

Of course, English actor Anthony Head’s gritty performance as the spaced out pater familias scratching on the foothills of Alzheimers keeps it firmly tethered to its London territory along with Brian Johnson’s impressively shot cityscapes, but this is no sweary, overtalky caper. Quite the reverse, it feels spare and rather refined at times and despite some brutal bouts of violence, such as Head’s hand being staplegunned to the floor (obviously Bonder had the Kray Brothers in mind), his two sons are Canadian actors who adds a twist of suaveness to the proceedings, along with Bjorknas’ ominously stylish score that ramps up to the feeling of underlying tension, making THE BROTHER a compulsively watchable but ultimately rather unsatisfying experience. MT

NOW OUT ON RELEASE FROM 16 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

The Blue Room (2014) | La Chambre Bleue

923195_727151780639094_8184037258253821718_nDirector: Mathieu Amalric | Crime Romance | France | 76min 

Mathieu Amalric bases his directorial debut, in which he also stars, on a 1964 crime thriller from Belgian detective Simenon. Lushly erotic, highly stylised and superbly shot on the Academy format by the capable Christophe Beaucarne, it will please the art house circuit with its skilful performances and clever fractured narrative. After making love to his mistress Esther (a sinuous Stephanie Cléau) in the eponymous blue room, tractor magnate Julien (Amalric) goes home to his lovely wife (Léa Drucker) and daughter. The story jumps forward to show him being cross-examined by a local magistrate (a masterful Laurent Poitrenaux) as it transpires that his affair with Esther is not as simple and compartmentalised as has hoped for. As the story flips backwards and forward further clues gradually emerge, fleshing out the storyline but at leaving the details as shady as Esther’s background. The Blue Room is a workable and sophisticated piece of cinema that offers good entertainment, but many critics questioned why it premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes on its release. Those in the know will realise it was due to Amalric’s close relationship with the festival. Bijoux, smart and entertaining – it’s certainly a film to be proud of.  MT

OUT ON MUBI FROM 26 AUGUST 2016

Anthropoid (2016)

UnknownWriter\Director.: Sean Ellis

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 SEPTEMBER 2016

 

Chick Lit (2016)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim: The James Foley Story (2016)

Dir.: Brian Oakes | Documentary | USA 2016 | 120 min.

First time feature documentary director/co-writer Brian Oakes’ portrait of conflict journalist James Foley, whose  execution by ISIS in northern Syria on August 19th 2014 was videoed by the terrorists and went viral, is a passionate portrait of a man who tried to give voice to the many who have none. Oakes, like co-writer Heather McDonald, is a childhood friend of ‘Jim’ Foley, and has wisely not included the sensationalist clip in his documentary, stating that he “never watched it and probably never will”.

James Foley was born in 1973, the oldest of five children who grew up in quaint, middleclass surroundings in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. After his studies at Marquette University in Wisconsin, he worked for four years with ‘Teach for America’ in inner-city schools in Phoenix/Arizona. Whilst doing his MA in writing at the university of Massachusetts, he taught English to inmates of Cook County Jail. Becoming a conflict journalist in Afghanistan, Libya (where he was hold hostage for 44 days by Gadaffi’s forces) and finally Syria, he found yet another way to help those worse off than himself, in this case Syrians, who were at the mercy of Bashar-al-Assad’s regime and the growing terror of ISIS. He lived with Syrian citizens, gained their confidence and reported home. He was abducted in November 2012 in Syria, and held hostage with other conflict journalists (many of them were released) for nineteen months.

Oakes interviews colleagues of Foley and their stories are anything but heroic. Many full time journalists and photographers had been made redundant by their media outlets in the US, and the freelancers had to fight to make a living – whilst also being in a war zone; often mistrusted and constantly under threat by the forces whose war crimes they were reporting. Foley’s own videos are very much proof of this. Nicole Tung, who often worked with Jim, states that “conflict journalists are the intimate chroniclers of conflict.” She talks about their day-to-day life, playing with Syrian children, capturing the life of the communities, as they were destroyed by outside forces.

Oakes has recreated some scenes from captivity, with some of Foley’s co-prisoners giving harrowing testaments of their physical and psychological torture. But they also tell about their small victories: like inventing a simple board game, and playing it with such passion that they totally forgot where they were. These black-and-white images shot in shadows, support the emotional content of the narrative.

Interviews with family members (and videos about the siblings growing up together) show Jim as very much at odds with his socially adjusted family. There is still so much regret that they did not know him better. Jim was foremost a moralist, somebody who never owned a property, particularly valued material possessions. He was a nomad who identified himself with the victims of society, wherever he went.

The James Foley Story is a testament to a man who had not only the physical, but also the moral courage to live in war zones. It is only fitting that the James W. Foley Foundation is a living legacy of this brave humanitarian. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 SEPTEMBER 2016

Equity (2016)

Dir.: Meera Menon

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

110min | USA 2016 | Drama

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 SEPTEMBER 2016

Gary Numan: Android in La La Land (2016)

Directors: Steve Read and Rob Alexander

85min | Biopic | UK

Steve Read and Rob Alexander get together again for their second documentary that stylishly explores the human side of the reclusive British synthpop pioneer who started Tubeway Army rising to fame with two iconic ’70s hits – Cars and Are Friends Electric?

After thirty years away from the spotlight 55 year old Gary Numan emerges a blissfully married father of three small girls and making a move to a castle in Los Angeles to expand his repertoire into the film world and promote Splinter (2013) – his latest album which turns out to be a bestseller. Alexander and Reed’s film doesn’t attempt to fill in the blanks of the past three decades career-wise, but looks behind Numan’s cold and alienating public persona to expose a rather loveable man who is genuinely passionate about his music and disarmingly down to earth. The directors also avoid a talking heads approach centring their biopic on a close circle of Numan’s collaborators and his parents, who reveal how their son was a self-starting loner who suffered pathological stage fright as was much later diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Numan started life as Gary Webb and formed his five man band Tubeway Army as a London teengager in the late ’70s, getting them signed to a major label during punk rock’s surge to the public consciousness. When he discovered how the moog synthesiser could produce a series of highly original sounds Numan incorporated these electronic new wave vibes into a groundbreaking album ‘Replicas’ creating the first UK synthpop hit ‘Are Friends Electric?’ – along the same lines as the German band Kraftwerk several years previously. His robotic stage routines and swivelling eye movements where a clever attempt to emotionally detach himself from his public appearances in order to cope with severe shyness and social unease caused by Asperger’s, but they soon became one of the most innovative and successful features of his performances.

However, debt rapidly followed his breakout success largely due to the mounting costs of his futuristic stage sets and expensive lighting equipment and this caused a rift with his father and manager as the family had sacrificed everything for their only son’s career. The film makes no attempt to explore how financially Numan bounced back simply stating that he carried on working and touring, clutching success from the jaws of failure due to inner strength and his relationship with Gemma – a long-time groupie who eventually became his wife in 1997. One of the takeway moments of the film is when Gary shares his composing techniques ensconced in his musical studio. Fully admitting how unpleasant he can become during this anxiety ridden process, he confesses to coming alive nowadays on stage and wishes he could go on forever.

GARY NUMAN; ANDROID IN LA LA LAND works as a portrait of a fully evolved creative force and also as a tribute to  his relationship with the driven force of bubbly Gemma whose hair changes from a raven to flame and then butter blond bombshell during filming and, whom he describes as “everything that I am not” and his conduit to the outside world. Gemma has clearly built her entire existence round the easy-going and appealingly self-deprecating musician who appears to be charmingly devoid of hang-ups or pretensions as he goes about his days in black jeans, tee-shirts and sleeve tattoos. Numan still dyes his quiff of hair black in an attempt to stay youthful. But as his daughter Echo comments: “Daddy you still look old – but with black hair instead of grey”. Clearly children keep you grounded, even when you’re a pop star. MT

OUT ON 26 AUGUST 2016

 

War Dogs (2016)

Dir.: Todd Philips

Cast: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Ama; Bradley Cooper

USA 2016, 114 min.

Hollywood is full of directors who have never really grown up. Todd Philips, with his Hangover trilogy, definitely qualifies as a leading contender in this category – but with WAR DOGS he has his coming-out as an adult. And, even more surprisingly: his latest feature (co-written by him based on an article in Rolling Stone) is truly funny.

We meet David Parkouz (Teller), a college drop-out, selling quality bed-linen to nursing homes, whilst also working as a massage therapist in Miami Beach. This is not exactly the career he dreamed of and when he meets long lost school friend Efraim Diveroli (Hill), who runs a one-man conglomerate called AEY (which stands for nothing), trying to get into the arms business, David is only too keen to join.

We are in the middle of the Iraq war and the Pentagon, having given giant companies like Halliburton and Lockheed Martin countless no-bid mega defence contracts, wants to level the playing field somehow, and invites everyone to bid for the small fry contracts. Whilst Efraim obviously adores violence, his office wall features a big poster with Al Pacino in Scarface, shooting wildly. David, on the other hand, is a pacifist and he and his – soon to be pregnant – girlfriend Iz (de Ama), have been on many anti-war marches. After spending hours on the net, the duo finally lands their first contract: they have to smuggle Berretta guns from Jordan to an US unit Bagdad. The two have to cross the “Triangle of Death” – without being aware of it – but their 17000 $ reward makes it all worth it. At least for Efriam, because Iz finds out about David’s activities and leaves him with their daughter Ella. When David meets a shady arms-dealer (Cooper) in Las Vegas, AEY hits the big time: $ 300M worth of AK-47 munitions is rotting in an Albanian warehouse. The only hitch: it was manufactured in China, which means it is on an embargo list, and can’t be used by the US military. But David and Efraim have another brilliant idea: they re-package the munitions, making them products of a neutral country. The whole exercise takes months, after which, Efraim, always with an eye for extra-profit, “forgets” to pay the Albanian helpers, which will have consequences.

One could call WAR DOGS a comedy of terror. Instead of a buddy movie we get the opposite: Efraim, always trying to be everything to everyone, has cheated his way through life by mirroring people’s needs. He uses them constantly, pretending to be something he is not. David is naive, and obviously in need of a friend, so that he glorifies their High School past. Whilst Efraim is aware of the danger all the time, always pretending that everything is will be alright, David only wakes up to the many threats of their ”business” in stages. In short: David has something to lose (his family), while Efriam, the chameleon, has no close ties with anybody – apart from himself. Male friendship has never been caricatured so efficiently.

DoP Lawrence Sher (Garden State) has found a colour palette for every stage of this adventure: David and Iz’ old home has warm brown colours, their new home at the beach front is cold, arctic blue – symbolising the soullessness. The Bagdad scenes are shot in primary colours, the reality of war never far away. Albania is a dark, unforgiving environment, a true set for a horror movie. Teller and Hill feed of each other well, the only drawback being that Iz’s role is not fleshed out enough. We can only hope that Philips stays with his newfound maturity, because he owes it to his talents as a filmmaker. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 August 2016

Ambulance (2016)

Dir | Mohamed Jabaly; Documentary | Norway/Palestine 2016, 109 min.

In the summer of 2014, Israeli forces bombarded Gaza for 51 days, after Hamas attacked Israeli Special Forces. 18,000 houses were destroyed, half a million people had to leave their homes. After his neighbour’s house was destroyed on the first day of the war, 23 year-old Mohamed Jabaly took his camera and filmed an ambulance crew for the most of the war; his main reason was “to escape his own fear, clinging to the camera make me feel safe”. The result is an honest reportage, where we always hear Jabaly’s comments, without ever seeing him.

Surprisingly, there is a nearly total absence of politics – neither the director, nor the citizens of Gaza even mention Israel. Most comments of the victims praise their resilience, for which they thank God. And they need it – the camera showing the chaos of the fleeing masses. Strangely, the Israelis often give warning of around a minute, which block of flats they are going to attack. Sometimes the information is true, helping the targeted populace to flee in time – some times the phone calls are pure hoax. There are very strange moments, like the male nurse in the hospital proudly wearing proudly a Frank Lampard Chelsea shirt, and a man complaining to Jabaly, “the bomb destroyed my washing machine, which I did not even pay for.”

Finally, the director gets caught an apartment block, where he has followed the ambulance crew, and the rubble comes down on him. “I only wanted to run, for my life”. There are hardly any gory scenes, Jabaly does not hover over the casualties; a bone fragment on ground makes an impact, but at the same time, Ambulance shows the doctors in the hospital, trying to get the crowds away from the hospital entrance because they are blocking the way of the ambulance. Jabaly’s comments are confirming his approach to show as much as possible: but his fear grows, and he has to take a break form shooting; his family more or less locking him in. But five days later, he is back with the ambulance crew: the driver Abu Zouq, a calm and competent leader of his men. Jabaly shows the rubble, through which the people are fleeing back into their bombed houses, just to fetch a mattress so as not to have to sleep on the bare ground. Suddenly, the ambulance becomes a taxi service when the crew drives women and children from an area under bombardment to a safer zone in the city. After an excursion to a boarder crossing with Egypt, where families are separated because they do not share the same nationality, Ambulance ends on a hopeful note: children playing at Eid, just before a ceasefire ends this war – one of many since 1947 when the British government partitioned their Protectorate Palestine. Ambulance is passionate: it not only shows the suffering, but also the happiness of the survivors at being alive. Jabaly’s portrait of Gaza echoes Humphrey Jennings documentaries about London during the Blitz – a well deserved compliment indeed. AS

AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | CURZON BLOOMSBURY from 26 AUGUST 2016

Black (2015)

Writer|Directors: Adil El Arbi, Bilahh Fallah

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

95min | Thriller | Belgian

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

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

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

Godless | Bezbog (2016) | Golden Leopard Winner | Locarno 2016

Dir: Ralitza Petrova | Cast: Irena Ivanova, Alexander Triffinov, Ivan Nalbantov, Ventzislav Konstantinov, Dimitri Petkov; Bulgaria/France/Den | drama | 100 min.

The first feature film by Bulgarian director/writer Ralitza Petrova, who studied at the NFTS, won the Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, and its main protagonist Irena Ivanova, was awarded the prize for Best Actress. Reminiscent of Jim Thompson, this minimalist, small town noir is a stunning debut from an uncompromising talent.

Gana (Ivanova) is a geriatric and dementia nurse in the small Bulgarian mountain town of Vratsa. The young woman seems caring at first, but it soon emerges that she is stealing her patients’ ID-cards. She, and her partner Aleko (Konstantinoiv), a car mechanic, sell the ID-cards to the local police officer Pavel (Triffinov), who runs a money laundering racket. Pavel is also in league with the local judge (Petkov), who makes sure that any complaints are rebuffed by the court.

However, despite all this criminal activity Dana lives a modest existence with her mother in a run-down apartment block, where gun fire is a nightly occurence. Her sexless relationship with Aleko gets by on a morphine addiction, which Gana steals together with other prescription drugs. Her relationship with her mother is equally emotionless, summed up by Gana herself in the words: “I want to love, but can’t. Neither can you. Do you have any pills for it?”.

Unflitchingly grim, this is a drama that delves into the sad deparavity of modern life in this formally Stalinist state where corruption and larceny seems endemic and continues to thrive despite apparent economic improvememts. But there is a chink of light in the darkness that sees Gana redeeming herself in the final act.

GODLESS takes its – ironic – title from a mountain near Vratsa, were a local priest in the middle ages took his flock and was duly massacred by invaders. The cryptic coda of the film might refer to this. Sparse and unforgiving, Godless is a claustrophobic masterpiece. Rooms are narrow and unlit, grimy snow covers a bleak landscape. Even a brothel scene, where the judge and Pavel copulate, is passionless. In her apartment block, Gana finds a young boy alone in the staircase.  He later wanders off  and watches a couple having sex, having left the door to their flat open. Desolate and abandoned, people in post-communist Bulgaria seem to have given up on themselves. DoPs Krum Rodriquez and Chayse Irvin evoke this grim rigour on 35 mm film, transferred to digital. With its opaque conclusion, Petrova avoids any judgemental comment. GODLESS is a cheerless experience – but it is a gem despite its restricted budget. MT

GODLESS HAS BEEN AWARDED THE GOLDEN LEOPARD AT LOCARNO 2016 AND TOP PRIZE AT THE SOFIA AWARDS 2017

 

Almost Holy (2015)

Dir.: Steve Hoover; Documentary; USA 2015, 100 min.

Blood Brother director Steve Hoover creates another tour-de-force aesthetically as well as contents wise with this portrait of the “vigilante priest” Gennadiy Mokhnenko, who singlehanded created a refuge centre for abused children in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, liberating the victims by force from abusive parents and exploiting drug dealers,

Gennadiy Mokhnenko likes to be seen as the hard-but-fair, rather naïve do-gooder, who is both priest and strongman: saving the young victims in the Ukranian city of Mariupol and enforcing the law, police and civil authorities seemingly do not want to uphold. This requires certainly an uncompromising attitude in a society, where lawlessness seems not the exception: it is fair to say, that order has broken down in Mariupol. At the beginning, we see Mokhenko cultivating this image in front of a TV, where “Crocodile Gennadiy” a Russian cartoon character from the Soviet era, saves children. Then we are introduced to Mokhnenko’s own Republic “Pilgrim”, an orphanage for the forcefully liberated children: sex-slaves, drug addicts and victims of horrific parental abuse and neglect.

But Mokhnenko’s biography is anything but simple: In 1991 he attended a bible course in Latvia, a year later he founded his own church in Mariupol, and became its pastor. In 1994 he started to study at the Donetsk Institute of Social Education in the Department of History and Religion, graduating in 1999. He followed it with an MA in Theology at Kiev branch of the Westminster Theological Seminar. And when he reads through his Wikipedia page under the heading ‘Criticism’, he smiles warily: one of the few moments when the mask of guilelessness slips. Next we see him munching hotdog, drinking a coffee from plastic cup, declaring “that he likes everything Western”.

But there is an organised purpose behind the façade, his missionary streak is very cultivated, but he reaches out to many: his speech at a women’s prison is a great example of motivational vigour: he coaxes and threatens at the same time, a born orator. It is fair to say, that the long and unhappy relationship between the Ukraine and USSR/Russia, culminating in the war, and the annexation of the Crimea by Putin’s forces, plays a big role in this conflict ridden region: Donetsk, the capital, is occupied by pro-Russian forces of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, and Mariupol is now the provisional centre of the Donetsk Oblast. In June 2014 the Ukrainian army recaptures Mariupol from the Russian forces after a short invasion, but Russian rocket attacks continued into 2015. For once, Gennadiy, saying goodbye in the last take like a stranded walrus on the beach, is speechless and rather morbid.

Seguing back and forth between archive footage from 2000 to 2008 and the more recent past, Hoover does not spare us horrific images, like the deaf girl, who had been raped for many years, whose baby has been taken away by the authorities, and who lives now, after her liberation by Mokhnenko, in a psychiatric ward, asking to be re-united with her baby. DOP John Pope’s changing widescreen images include pure horror elements, cinema verity realism and dystopian S-F elements. Almost Holy is radical in its approach and innovative in its execution – but it is as bleak as a Hieronymus Bosch painting. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19 AUGUST 2016

The Wave (2015)

Director: Roar Uthaug

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

104min | Norway  | Drama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCREENING DURING THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 7 -18 OCTOBER 2015

The Shallows (2016) | Infierno Azul

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada, Angelo Josue, Lozano Corzo, Jose Manuel, Brett Cullen

87min | Action Thriller

Billed as the most terrifying shark thriller since Jaws, THE SHALLOWS doesn’t quite push the boat out in the same way as Steven Spielburg’s seminal seventies shocker, but for a slick 87 minutes it serves up a shot of adrenaline that will see you through the summer’s torpid cinema selection. Certainly filmic and well-constructed with some taut and tricky action scenes THE SHALLOWS makes great use of its tropical Australian seascapes and Blake Lively’s considerable charms as a stunning actor and capable action woman.

Catalan director Jaume Collet-Serra is known for a string of decent but untroubling thrillers, amongst them Unknown and Orphan, and this glossy bikini-buster is a welcome addition to his workmanlike repertoire, it slips down easily offering light entertainment unlikely to take the enjoyment out of your relaxing holiday swim in the sea; whether it be in the Med or a more exotic location.

Essentially a one-hander THE SHALLOWS is carried through on Lively’s perfectly formed shoulders as Nancy. a Mermaid-defyingly devastating surfing heroine who exudes a sensual, sweet-smiling vulnerability as a dropout medical student who is taking time out to kick back after a tough year. A backstory as tight as her buttocks contextualises her life: Mum also loved the beach but has recently died and she is close to her sister and father back home on the ranch in Galveston Texas. She arrives on a remote palm-fringed beach courtesy of her hungover companion Carlos and flirts with a bevvy of surfing buddies on her way to ‘blue hell’ (the film’s Spanish title is Infierno Azul) after tripping through the shallows in her neoprene wetsuit and gold jewellery (which later comes in handy when surturing her thigh). The rest is pretty much formulaic but tenderly told: nasty shark threatens, mermaid is injured but avails herself of her medical training to add spice to this compulsive survival against the odds narrative that incorporates a Friends of the Earth subtext.  Ultimately THE SHALLOWS is less of a  shark shocker and more a guide to surviving against the odds by using our instincts in harnessing nature’s protective forces. Amid a flurry of wetsuits, blonde tousled locks, twisted limbs, sharks teeth and gulls wings, Anthony Jaswinski somehow crafts a convincing storyline to keep us amused for the duration and although the finale comes as no surprise it’s somehow enjoyable getting there. MT

THE SHALLOWS IS ON GENEAL RELEASE IN AUGUST 2016

The Confession (2016)

Director: Ashish Ghadiali

With: Moazzam Begg, James Rogan, Keidrych Wasley

96min | UK | Documentary

Variously identifying as a British Muslim and a jihadist, one time Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who is of Pakistani ancestry, purports to be an inquisitive traveller – a global adventurer  even – who would rather make up his own mind about the world, than accept the views of the mainstream majority. Fair enough. But the authorities have considered him a questionable Islamic radical who has forged links to a range of Mujahideen Bosnians and even joined the Taliban in Afghanistan, taking his family to live in Lograr while he moved backwards and forwards from Kabul ‘on business’. And although he has never been convicted of a crime, the thrust of his premise is that the West is not only responsible for radical Islam’s jihad against it, but also for the violence that has gone on between Muslims and their fellow brethren in the Middle East – yet public hangings, mutilations and executions have always gone on across the region and have been since the beginning time, regarded as the kind of entertainment to which one business associate might invite another.

Throughout Ashish Ghadiali’s absorbing documentary debut, commissioned by the BFI and BBC Storyline,  the focus is on Begg as he is interviewed by an unseen Police inquisitor in much the same style as in the recent Fear of 13. He comes across as a quietly spoken but rather wilful subversive – not unlike Julian Assange in his conviction and self absorption – whose views shift constantly between the plausible and the somewhat outlandish, as he remains calm, composed and rational throughout his confession’, which is colourfully fleshed out by archive footage and numerous photographs and the occasional appearance from his father, a Pakistani banker who settled in Brimingham as a young man.

Born in Birmingham, we discover how Begg grew up in the close-knit Muslim community and was educated in a Jewish school. After debating his future in his early twenties, he decided to make Islam the central focus of his life, travelling to Bosnia to join the jihad and then to Chechnya and Afghanistan. No mention is made about how he funds his perpetually peripatetic lifestyle and supports a wife and children other than from his modest Islamic bookshop back in the UK, whose stock, he claims, is no more radical than that of Waterstones.

Begg is either cunningly clever in manipulating his right to free speech and movement, or fantastically naive in thinking that his activities were unlikely to provoke attention, and Ghadiali is clearly on his side, although he tries to present an impartial take. At one point Begg was arrested by the British authorities but claimed: “I wasn’t anti-State. The State was anti-me.” But then he candidly reveals his time as a prisoner, trussed up and naked in Guantanamo, as this was an entirely quotidian affair and routine affair, and there is no shred of bitterness or upset in his manner, leading us to ponder whether he is a narcissist or even a fantasist.

That said, Begg appears highly articulate although at time contradictory, talking of his hope for a united multicultural Britain but, in the same breath, believing in and supporting the jihad, and his white-skinned is wife is pictured wearing a hijab. Ghadiali’s intelligent film certainly provides food for thought but whether this food is just a little ‘rich’ is for you to decide. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 12 AUGUST 2016

 

Touched with Fire (2016)

Writer|Director: Paul Dalio Cast: Katie Holmes, Luke Kirby | Drama | US |

Paul Dalio’s exploration of a semi-autobiographical love story between two bipolar poets, whose toxic relationship ignites and stokes up their manic tendencies when they meet as patients in a mental home, is certainly touched with melodrama and histrionics. In Touched with Fire, inspired by a book by psychologist author, Kay Jamison, who also appears as herself to endorse its contents, Carla (Katie Holmes) and Marco (Luke Kirby) fail to engage our sympathies or capture our imagination as lovers who continue their relationship in the outside world, under the watchful eyes of their respective parents. Having exposed their worthwhile story Dalio’s greatest flaw is in failing to probe deeper into this challenging theme or contextualise his narrative for wider audiences than those affected by its subject matter. Given its limitations, Touched with Fire is a reasonable human drama but don’t expect much from Holmes and Kirby. In more experienced hands this could make a fascinating feature. MT

OUT ON DVD

 

A Letter To Three Wives (1949) | Kirk Douglas Season | BFI

Dir.: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Cast: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Southern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Jeffrey Lynn

USA 1949, 103 min.

It is difficult to understand how Mankiewicz managed to direct four so different films in the span of two years: A Letter To Three Wives and All About Eve (he received Oscars for Best Director and best screenplay in both cases), are the bookends, whilst his two film-noir productions of House of Strangers (1949) and No Way Out (1950) were, in comparison, rather unrecognised, although far more more weighty in their subject-matter.

A Letter to Three Wives is based on the novel ‘Letter to Five Wives’ by John Klempner (which appeared first in ‘Cosmopolitan’); the number of wives had been whittled down by 20th Century Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck to three. In spite of this, the film feels much longer than 103 minutes – there are simply not enough dramatic turns (unlike in All about Eve) to sustain interest.

When three middle-class wives, Deborah Bishop (Crain), Rita Phipps (Sothern) and Lora Mae Hollingsway (Darnell) enter a pleasure boat to take care of under-privileged children, they receive a message from Addie Ross (voiced by Celeste Holme), that she is going to run away with one of their husbands – leaving them all in suspense as to which husband she had picked. During the boat trip we learn in flash-back about the (rather mundane) marriage problems and get to know the husbands: Brad Bishop (Lynn), George Phipps (K. Douglas) and Porter Hollingsway (P. Douglas). Deborah, who grew up in the countryside, is ill at ease in Brad’s upper-class family, furthermore, everyone in his circle expected him to marry Addie, who is adored by all the men in the film. Rita is a writer of radio plays, and her husband George, a teacher, feels somehow ‘castrated’, since he can’t compete with his wife financially. Finally, Lora Mae grew up poor, and her husband Porter (who owns a chain of nationwide department stores) somehow suspects that she has married him only for the money.

Needless to say, there is a happy ending, and it is unanymously re-affirmed that women cannot live without a husband. Furthermore, the enigmatic and supposedly very attractive Addie is just a cypher, shown only once and from behind. In positioning her as the sexually-alluring femme fatale, who looses out in the end to three insecure, but ‘needy’ women, Mankiewicz re-affirm society’s doctrine of male dominance. There is no attempt to question the hierarchical structure of marriage, and the rather tepid acting and stage-like camera movements combine with the stale narrative in a conservative image of society – as if the war and resulting women’s liberation had not happened. AS

SCREENING AT BFI DURING THE KIRK DOUGLAS SEASON

 

Presenting Princess Shaw (2015)

Writer|Director: Ido Haar

With: Ophir Kutiel, Samantha Montgomery, Liran Atzmor

Care-home nurse Samantha Montgomery was always an active presence on YouTube where she energetically performed her own material under the name of Princess Shaw. Then a meeting with an Israeli mash-up artist finally brought the New Orleans woman into the limelight forming the subject of this entertaining documentary that brings her story to life, showing that artistic collaboration is often the only way forward.

At first, Montgomery was unaware her YouTube material was being used or that the ‘composer’ in question, Kutiman, had released a song called ‘Give It Up’ which, amongst others, featured one of her own pieces. Director Haar and Kutiman clearly recognised Princess Shaw’s natural talents as a singer songwriter. With a difficult childhood (physical and sexual abuse) and a gruelling existence, Montgomery puts her best foot forward and seems to have a winning personality. After performing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ to her charges she then goes home to find her car trashed and is barely making ends meets in her nursing job, let alone finding time to record a demo-tape or finance to get an agent to back her musical talent. Thanks to the latest technology she is able to get her strong voice and material out there and Kutiman clearly knew a good thing when he found her on the internet. Remixing and adding a full band to flesh out her basic tunes, Kutiman, a well-known and respected artist in his Israeli homeland, adds his own wacky blend of marijuana-laced musical magic to her fiesty upbeat vibe on life and the end result is amazing.

Ido Haar keeps his cards close to his chest throughout the film – which some may find frustrating – and certain salient questions remain unanswered: Did Princess profit from the collaboration? Isn’t Haar, or Kutiman, for that matter, just using her? Although Princess Shaw gets recognition aplenty, does she make any money of this venture? Well the answer seem to be a glaring ‘no’ and Haar fails to spill the beans; but where would he be without Princess?.

That said, Haar has certainly made an inspirational documentary about the modern music industry and about a remarkable woman who never gives up on her dream – and who has now found emotional fulfilment and a recognition of sorts but may be not a crock of gold – let’s hope she makes enough to pay her bills. MT

NOW SHOWING AT BERTHA DOCHOUSE | LONDON W1

Sid and Nancy (1986)

S&N_PR_PicDirector: Alex Cox

Cast: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, David Hayman, Andrew Schofield, Courtney Love

112min | Biopic | UK

Far the most interesting thing about the Sex Pistols was their music. The story of the band is, for the most part, unedifying and one that Alex Cox and Abbe Wool’s narrative does no favours in the re-telling via the love story between bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) in this tame ’80s biopic. Intimate in scale and shot largely within the claustrophobic confines of sordid bedrooms, New York hotels and bars, Sid and Nancy is gut-retchingly unappetising (puking and bodily fluids abound – but at least the blood looks authentic) but there are a handful of scenes where DoP Roger Deakins’ masterful cinematography is really given reins to take flight – when the band goes on tour in the US and the final scene encompassing the magnificent Manhattan skyline shrouded in morning fog, which must rank amongst the most memorable of any committed to celluloid during the 80s. The score features a smattering of iconic tracks but we are well into the first half hour before any are played in a truncated ‘on-stage’ gig in a small bar. This is not a film to see if you’re hoping to hear The Sex Pistols malevolent musical brilliance.

The film opens at the end of 1978 in the immediate aftermath to Spungen’s death in the Hotel Chelsea, where the couple lived, with the police questioning a catatonic Sid Vicious over his involvement. Flashing back to a year earlier, Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) and Sid have just met drugged-up groupie Nancy, whom Sid eventually starts dating, feeling sorry for her sad plight and following her into heroin addiction, which will eventually claim his own life the following year. Their love gradually drives a wedge between Sid and the rest of the band, and a disastrous American tour sees Sid go off the rails, destabilised by Nancy’s neediness, a result of her unhappy childhood. Back in New York, the couple reunite with Nancy attempting to manage Sid’s solo career, organising gigs which never actually pan out. In the midst of Nancy’s depression, Sid decides to return to England and the two argue in a drug-induced haze that eventually comes to a tragic end.

Gary Oldman is the only star turn here, loose-limbed and lithe as he weaves from mouthy punk performances to a profanity-ridden ‘My Way’ version, set on a neon sweeping staircase, in an early music video. Webb is true to her character, an annoying, whiny irritant swathed in tattoos and bruises, with no saving graces and not particularly good acting at that. The band’s guru Malcolm McLaren is convincingly played by David Hayman rocking an ill-advised rusty wig.  Schofield’s turn as Johnny Rotten – the only one who seems to have made good – is gutsy and plausible. There is also a welcome glimpse of Courtney Love in a cameo role. But none of the edgy blast of anger that was punk really comes through here as we remember it. Everything feels rather stagey and timid compared to the real thing.

Attempts to recreate a socio-political backdrop of British life to this romanticised counterculture feel largely false and rather tacked on: a Luncheon Voucher banner in a newsagents, the famous Saatchi poster, ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ and detectives in tweeds and heavy-rimmed glasses. The US scenes fare far better feeling fresh and original and particularly a final track of street kids boogieing with a transister to KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Get Down Tonight’ (1975). That and the Manhattan skyline make Sid and Nancy worth seeing, if you can sit through the rest of it. MT

BACK IN CINEMAS 5 AUGUST AND BLURAY\DVD OUT ON AUGUST 29 2016

 

 

Barry Lyndon (1975)

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

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

183min | Drama History Adventure | UK US

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 29 JULY 2016 

The Killing$ of Tony Blair (2016)

Dir.: Sanne Van Der Bergh, Daniel Turi, Greg Ward

Documentary, UK 2016, 92 min.

This is the closest a documentary has come to pure agit-prop in recent years: whilst directed by first timers Sanne Van Der Berg, Greg Ward and Daniel Turi (head of research), The Killing$ of Tony Blair is a film by George Galloway, as stated in the production notes.

Blair and Galloway have been intimate enemies for the whole millennium, since Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003, over his opposition against of the Iraq war. Both men’s reputation has suffered mightily in the last years, and although Galloway is certainly not in the league of the ex-PM, this documentary is very much a case of projection.

Still, as we learned from the Chilcot Report, Blair dragging this country into the war was at least negligent – some might call it criminal. George Galloway to his credit opposed the regime of Saddam Hussein, when Western powers armed the dictator in the hope he would defeat Iran in the war of neighbours. Galloway, then a Labour MP in Glasgow, later switched sides when the US-led embargo on medicines Iraq was subjected to, led to the death of over 100 000 of children in the country.

Galloway, who always pops up to have the last word here, has assembled an impressive array of witnesses for his case against the war, among them the ex-shadow secretary David Davis MP (Con); Naom Chomsky (MIT); the former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday; the former British ambassador to Iran and Libya, Sir Richard Dalton and former British intelligence Officer Annie Machon – none of them have anything in common with the former Respect MP George Galloway. Davis in particular is very adamant about the fact that he felt that Blair misled parliament. Stephen Fry and Lauren Booth, Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, talk about the charm of the Ex-PM, which is proven in news-clips: Blair striding in war zones, smiling like a saviour, every inch the messianic figure he wanted to be.

The second half of The Killing$ is a little bit of a murky affair, but mainly due to the fact that Blair, using a loophole in the law, is not required to make his tax returns public. This leads to wild speculations about his real wealth, anything between fifty and a hundred M£. The only fact for certain, is that his property portfolio alone is worth 25m£. But the exact figure of Blair’s wealth is irrelevant: the fact that he brokered deals, earning millions for a few phone calls for the likes of Muammar Gaddafi and the Sultan of Kuwait (to name but a few), very well known for their violation of human rights among other crimes, is sufficient. A final mention should go to Blair’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch, whose British papers supported him during his time in office: in 2013 Murdoch filed for divorce from his third wife, Wendy Deng, rumours indicating an affair with between Deng and Blair. Blair’s negative treatment in the Murdoch press since are indications that these rumours might be true.

George Galloway has done a fine job with The Killing$. Apart from his own vanity making him literally centre stage, there are are too many Talking Heads, and the structure is sometimes undermined by the over-emotional approach, but The Killing$ is still informative and, yes, amusing. But, we have not forgotten the George Galloway of the 2005 General election in Bethnal Green and Bow, where he defeated the black, Jewish Labour MP Oana King by some 800 votes, after using the Islamic Forum of Europe – who supports the Sharia Laws – extensively in his vile and vicious campaign.
A little projection can go a long way…AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Santa Sangre (1989) |

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Starring: Bianca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison,  Adan Jodorowsky

115mins    Cult drama

Jodorowsky’s 1989 film SANTA SANGRE or ‘Holy Blood’ finally managed a long-overdue re-release in 2012, having been tied up in litigation for many years. Jodorowsky’s two sons play the aptly named lead ‘Fenix Adulte’ at different ages.

Filmed in Mexico City’s ‘Estudios Churubusco Azteca’ studios, the story plays out in flashback, opening in a mental institution, where we first meet a deeply unhinged Fenix, portrayed very convincingly by the older Axel Jodorowsky.  As may be expected, this is far from what one might consider a mainstream film. Jodorowsky was a student of mime in Paris under Marceau and also spent time working in a circus and both of these experiences are drawn on heavily in Santa Sangre.

Santa

Accordingly, the piece is highly theatrical in nature, with classically heightened performances; there is no attempt here to rein anything in for the camera. This is Theatre of the Absurd, exploring core Absurdist themes, with religion and symbolism plastered unapologetically all over it.  But underpinning all of this and what gives it both its heart and longevity, lies a story for and of the outsider; from caged animals to clowns, painted ladies and dwarves to deaf mutes, prostitutes to the physically and mentally disabled, cult followers to the deranged, all of life’s outcasts and perceived misfits.

Here, they are all embraced unflinchingly and without judgment, brought together under that other collective of outsiders; ‘the performers’, to form a skein of society that is so seldom seen in film unless for novelty value, that yet can be, even from the depths transformed by hope and the redemptive hand of love.

Some moments may feel they have gone beyond the edge of theatrical to the point of ridiculous and yet there remains a deep, troubling, visceral experience watching this film, containing as it does so many powerful, disturbing ideas and indeed, performances. It is truly the actors art on display here.

For many, Jodorowsky’s masterpiece over and above his more famous 1973 film The Holy Mountain. If you like your tales of revenge best served up bloody and graphic, catch this seminal cult opus at a cinema of iniquity somewhere near you.

Screening during EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2016 on July 2nd as part of the MACABRE MASONIC MASCARADE | OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY 

 

Queen of Earth (2015) Mubi Retro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Violators (2015)

Director: Helen Walsh

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

97min | drama | UK .

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

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

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

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JUNE 2016

 

Crazy About Tiffany’s (2016)

Unknown-2Director: Matthew Miele | Documentary | 87min | US

Matthew Miele’s ‘fully authorized’ documentary on Tiffany & Co plays out like a glossy (what else) commercial for the jewellery brand founded in 1837 that now aligns itself with a celebrity following of media mavens, New York socialites and ladies who lunch, along with more illustrious clientele such as JFK and the Roosevelts. Those seeking to learn more about Louis Comfort Tiffany’s glass and ceramic designs will be disappointed as this very much concentrates on the modern and contemporary cultural impact of the fine jewellery creations, and also its film associations.

CRAZY ABOUT TIFFANY’S relies heavily for its commentary on an endless stream of talking, coiffed and botoxed heads – amongst whom are Razzie award-winner Jessica Biel, Jennifer Tilly (Bride of Chucky) and filmmaker Sam Taylor Wood (50 Shades of Grey) – who extol the spinoff effects of the jeweller’s highly fashionable diamond-encrusted credentials for a vacuous 86-minutes commercial. All this is interwoven into a cursory, often animated, history of the iconic emporium which was founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B Young originally as a stationery company that soon grew into a classy mail-order store and originator of the famous “Blue Book” and eventually the most desired address to buy your girlfriend (and nowadays your boyfriend) an engagement ring, even for those who “self-purchase” (ie: buy their own).

“I’m really a fan of big, big pieces,” gushes Jennifer Tilly, shaking a multi-coloured hair-do onto her low-cut décolleté. Others leer through porcelain-capped teeth (probably more expensive than the jewels they “self purchase”) to rave about the beauty and rarity of the ‘pieces’ (and we’re not talking about guns here) and their incredible craftsmanship and legacy interpreted by British design director and Audrey Hepburn lookalike – Francesca Amfitheatrof.

All of this majors on clips from the ’60s classic Breakfast At Tiffany’s. We hear from Andy Tennant who directed Sweet Home Alabama and see footage from the 2002 romcom and excerpts from The Great Gatsby further tenuously endorsing the luxury product and providing retail porn for those who get their rocks off on rocks. CRAZY ABOUT TIFFANY’S is ultimately a vehicle that will appeal to acquisitive fashionistas and the likes of news anchor Katy Curic, who claims that her 50th birthday was ‘the most fun event ever’ simply because it was held at the flagship store in New York City’s Madison Avenue.  MT

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 24 JUNE 2016

 

 

 

 

Ma ma (2015)

Director: Julio Medem

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

111min | Drama | Spain/France.

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

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

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

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

OUT ON RELEASE FROM 24 JUNE 2016

 

No Home Movie (2015)

Director: Chantal Akerman; Belgium/France 2015, 113 min.

The last film of avant-garde director Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) is a still life of her mother Natalie, survivor of Auschwitz, who occupied her flat in Brussels. It is the final filmic account of Natalie Akerman, by a daughter whose life (and work) she completely dominated, unintentionally yet inevitably, until her death in 2014. Chantal Akerman committed suicide the following year.

Chantal Akerman’s obsession with her mother is the topic of News from Home (1977), a work show entitled My Family and other dark Materials, and Letters Home (1986), about the visceral link between the poet Sylvia Plath and her mother Aurelia; who described Sylvia’s struggle with her Jewish identity before her own suicide in 1963. And, as Akerman once said in an interview, “my mother is Jeanne Dielman”, the heroine of the director’s most famous work of the same title: “My mother making her home into a jail”. In common with all children of Holocaust survivors, Chantal Akerman’s life was formed by the Shoah. Her mother Natalie had fled Poland in 1938 to Belgium, but was deported by the Germans in 1943 to Auschwitz, not 30 miles away from the place she grew up near Kracow. Returning to her husband in Brussels, the rest of her family having been murdered, Natalie gave birth to two daughters, Chantal and Sylviane, who also features in NO HOME MOVIE. Without a formal education, Natalie became a prisoner in her own flat, while Chantal lived a peripatetic existence, filmmaking and making her home everywhere, yet nowhere.

After watching a screening of one of her daughter’s films, Natalie commented: “You have all this, I only have Auschwitz”. There is no way a child can have a remotely satisfying relationship with a mother like this. Akerman opined to her fellow Belgian filmmaker Marianne Lambert “I don’t belong anywhere, yet my mother is the centre of my oeuvre”. And yet her Jewish roots would always catch up with her wherever she travelled, rather like the Jewish joke about the man called Katzmann (Catman) from Paris, who wanted a less Jewish name – his friend translated Cat into ‘Chat’, man into ‘l’homme’, finally calling him Shalom.

NO HOME MOVIE, a medium between essay and documentary, is a final attempt by Akerman to come to terms with her mother’s history, and to make peace with a woman whose total apathy in terms of feminist emancipation must have made her feel desperate at times, even though she inspired, or better, counter-inspired, her to make all these films. Using consumer grade digital camera (and Skype), NO HOME MOVIE is very different from many of Chantal Akerman’s ‘formal’ films, being her own DOP underlines the concept: but she has chosen this personal medium to show a relentless private world. And the private world and the director’s world come full circle, when her mother goes into an endless monologue about how to cook potatoes, evoking the potato peeling ritual of Jeanne Dielman. But other topics are also sensitive: the war, anti-Semitism and the double bind her parents put her into as a young girl: Her father wanted her to be slim so she would find a husband; her mother fed her constantly, to make up for her own near-starvation. To watch NO HOME MOVIE requires patient tolerance; it only leaves the confines of the flat/jail for two long shots of desert grass in Israel – apart from this, it is a ‘Trauerarbeit’ about a mother and two daughters. Cut from over twenty hours of original footage (“if I had tried to make a film about my mother, I might not have dared”), NO HOME MOVIE is a still life, where events unfold out-of-frame: when we leave her mother’s graveside, what happened the following year seems somehow a logical conclusion. AS

NO HOME MOVIE IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

Remainder (2015)

Director.: Omer Fast | Cast: Tom Sturridge, Cush Jumbo, Asher Ali | UK/Germany 2015, 103 min.

Well known for his video installations, REMAINDER is Israel-born filmmaker Omer Fast’s first full-length feature after his debut with the medium length hybrid documentary/fiction Everything that Rise must Converge. Based on the novel by Tom McCarthy, the obtuse drama deals with the function of human memory, and is difficult to classify.

Tom (Sturridge), loses his memory after being hit by a big black box falling from a highrise office block in central London. He spends the rest of this film trying to reconstruct his life before the accident. After receiving an £8 million settlement, he buys an old-fashioned mansion block, where he believed he had lived before. He then employs all the tenants to act out his memories. Two men, supposedly agents from the Security Services, kill a man with whom Tom was in contact, near a phone box out side his flat. The mysterious Catherine (Jumbo) visits him and he has her repeat some dialogue from their past. With the help of the equally enigmatic Naz (Ali), who is supposed to be an architect, Tom assembles a crew in order to restage a bank robbery in a private City bank, where Catherine works. When the restaging turns real, Tom feels as if he is caught in an endless time loop.

REMAINDER is well crafted on all levels, but lacks any emotional interest for the audience. We are tossed a few red herrings about Tom’s past but he remains a cypher along with the other protagonists in this guessing game exercise: Fast plays with the audience, but he does not engage for a moment. DoP Lukas Strebel’s images are fittingly cold and ascetic creating an atmosphere of enigma, where the protagonists float rhythmically in this soulless operation that fails to connect on any level. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 24 JUNE 2016

 

The Childhood of a Leader (2015)

Dir.: Brady Corbet; Cast: Tom Sweet, Berenice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, Stacy Martin, Yolande Moreau, Robert Pattinson;

UK/Hungary 2015, 113 min.

First time director Brady Corbet tries to engage with Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’enfance d’ un Chef (1938), crucially leaving out one of the main themes of the book – anti-Semitism – to end up with a caricature; in the process transforming the future petit-bourgeois ‘leader’ of Sartre’s work into a laughable, monstrous dictator by the ending.

Set in a French village after the end of WWI, little Prescot (Sweet) the son of an American diplomat (Cunningham) helping President Wilson with the Peace treaty and a German born, religiously devout Catholic(Bejo), is prone to histrionics and dark tantrums. Since both his parents are control freaks who take an emotionally distant interest in the boy (quite normal for the era) this is not particularly surprising. After his mother dismisses Mona (Moreau) the only person of any warmth in Prescot’s life, on the grounds of her disobeying orders, the wilful boy decides to stay in his room, rejecting figures of authority. The mother also sacks Ada (Martin), the boy’s French teacher. Finally, the father chases beat him brutally when he refuses him entry to his boudoir – where he literally is, as the word suggests, sulking. Childhood of a Leader ends as a farce, with the grown-up Prescot morphing into a ludicrously overbearing ruler.

Corbet’s debut is a muddled affair that attempts to keep us in the dark throughout: the tone is sinister and often terrifying, heightened by a ominous and melodramatic orchestral score. Does Presot’s father have an affair with Ada? Has the mother (an effectively coquettishly petulant Bejo)  has the mother slept with family friend (Pattinson)  mother f who comes for sporadic visits? Prescot seems to look more like him than his putative father. It’s uncertain. And finally, what is the reason for the mother getting rid of everyone who comes into daily contact with her son without replacing them?. The acting – apart from young Tom Sweet – is contrived and rather wooden, DoP’s Lou Crawley’s images are muddy and pseudo-naturalistic – pseudo being the operative word which characterises the whole production: bereft of any insight into psychological or political structures, this is a superficial travesty of Sartre’s novella. Quite why it was awarded the LEONE D’ORO for Best Debut is also unclear. Corbet has a future, let’s hope it’s a more promising one than that of his protagonist little Prescot. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT  VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2015

Tale of Tales (2015)

Director: Matteo Garrone

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

125min  Fantasy Drama   Italy

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

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

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

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

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

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE  \ CANNES REVIEW 2015

Long Way North (2016) Tout Au Haut du Monde

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON 17 JUNE 2017

Phaedra(s) | The Barbican

Director: Krzysztof Warlikowski | Dramaturgy Piotr Gruszczynski

Performed by: Isabelle Huppert, Agata Buzek, Andrzej Chyra, Alex Descas, Gael Kamilindi, Norah Krief, Rosalba Torres Guerrero, Gregoire Leaute

220min | Drama | Poland | France

It seems fitting that one of Greek tragedy’s most controversial figures should be played by one of film and stage’s most enigmatic French actors, Isabelle Huppert, who makes a rare London appearance to play three roles (Aphrodite, Phaedra and Elizabeth Costello) in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s radical and visionary French Polish production which bewilders and bewitches despite occasional longueurs.

His PHAEDRA(S) takes the form of three versions of the Greek myth, blending fresh material from Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad with the provocative text of Sarah Kane’s brutal ‘Phaedra’s Love’ and extracts from J M Coetzee’s novel ‘Elizabeth Costello’.

In 2010, Warlikowski cast Huppert in his version of A Streetcar Named Desire and this captured his imagination to create her three incarnations here as she morphs seamlessly from the sexually manipulative Aphrodite taking revenge on Hippolytus, then switching to Phaedra and finally to the perverse Elizabeth Costello.

Hot on the heels of her intoxicating performance in Paul Verhoeven’s outré ‘rape comedy’ ELLE, that premiered at Cannes in May, Huppert struts provocatively around the stage in a range of raunchy rigouts from Dior, Hedi Slimane for Saint Laurent and Givenchy during an evening that perpetually teeters on the brink of elegant outrage. During the opening scenes she strips down to her blood-stained undies before girating in angst-ridden love-sickness on a bed, throwing up into a sink and fatally climaxing in the arms of her step-son Hyppolyte 1, a coltishly exotic Gaël Kamilindi who slinks in as a black dog.

In the second and most protracted segment, Andrzej Chyra (In the Name Of) plays Hippolyte as a bored and bloated playboy sulking in a sliding glass enclosure (representing his regal quarters) where he is entertained by the intoxicatingly rhythmic dance routines of Rosalba Torres Guerrero while Hitchcock’s Psycho plays in the background, in the first of the production’s three references to the film world. Jessica Lange’s lobotomy scene in Clifford’s Frances (1982) plays during the final Coetzee segment along with Pasolini’s ’60s allegory Teorema, which cleverly draws a parallel with Silvana Mangano’s chic but sexually frustrated Milanese mother. In final strand Huppert plays conference speaker Elizabeth Costello who disdains Chyra’s intellectually arrogant interviewer during a conference debate that uses Frances, German Romantic poet Höderlin who incorporated Greek tragedy into his 19th century works, and Racine’s 17th century version of Phèdre as its pivotal conversation points. Of the three parts, this is possibly the most amusing but also the most challenging.

In sharp contrast to the starkly elegant stage sets (marbled walls, chrome shower heads and contemporary low level Italian furniture) and haute couture, the cast bravely submits to the full complement of human physical and emotional degradations: crying, pleading, throwing up, bleeding and crawling on all fours with open legs.

Isabelle Huppert’s coruscating emotional intensity ranges from the sarcastically perverse Costello to the proud posturing of Aphrodite and the clipped sardonic diction and soulful sobbing of Phaedra, making us scorn and then pity her characters within minutes. Amusement jostles shock and contempt. Agata Buzet (11 Minutes) is potently feline and as Phaedra’s real daughter Strophe. And there is a dizzying dance from Guerrero. Complimented by Pawel Mykietyn’s arresting atmospheric score this is an often bewildering but ultimately rewarding production. MT

PHAEDRA(S) | BARBICAN THEATRE EC2 | TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

 

Where to Invade Next (2015)

Director: Michael Moore | 110min  Documentary  US

Oscar-winning documentarian Michael Moore is a romantic idealist. Well that is what emerges from his latest film, a joyful and impishly entertaining romp around Europe which explores a simple premise: why are Americans so hard done by in the country that invented the American Dream? Subversively simplistic but wonderful to watch, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT cherry picks the best European ideas to import back to Moore’s motherland.

In Italy he discovers the love and appreciation of food and sex: Italian workers get 2 hour lunch breaks and two week’s paid honeymoon entitlement, in addition to the other regular seven; from France Moore selects kiddies’ four-course school meals – at least one is a regional cheese selection. In Finland he discovers that children get no homework and are encouraged to have fun during their schooling; so that’s the next idea to pack in his return bag; in Slovenia University is free to any student, so Moore stashes that in his suitcase to take home; and Iceland gives women the upper hand in the workplace and politics, so what’s not to like about that in America.

Judiciously, he forgets to visit Britain; that would be too complicated. But the mere fact that Iceland, Slovenia and Finland have tiny populations is another vital fact Moore fails to factor in when looking at the these countries’ standard of living. Italy has always been a nation of small family businesses whose customers value quality and style way above price – the British prefer the cheapness of Primark (go figure) – and no mention is made of the raging unemployment in Italy.  France is first and foremost in promoting the interests of his native (white) citizens (thanks to Citoyen Chauvin) so never mind the rest. And unless you’re wealthy in America, living there pretty much sucks in terms of holiday-entitlement, prisons and social welfare. And nearly 60% of their pay-packet deductions go to an ominous thing called ‘defence’.

There is an hilarious scene early on in the film where the ‘US Powers that be’ – Heads of Government and the Forces – go to Moore cap in hand asking for his assistance. And Moore is spectacularly good at his punchy interview technique of firing fast and furious questions, that makes Louis Theroux look like a shrinking violet in comparison. We watch in amazement as a svelte and hyper-tanned Italian couple blanch and wither to hear that Americans only get two weeks holiday – paid if they’re lucky!.

But clearly a visit to Norway’s worst prison is always going to be a picnic in contrast to a Texas penitentiary: the population size and ethnic mix is the US is beyond comparison. And when rich and poor kids all attend the same small local school and grow up in the same community, naturally this fosters good relationships across the social divide: “We have to show love and affection for one another”. Certainly when fewer people live side by side in near empty cities, there is much more room for tolerance and respect. This ‘grass is always greener’ approach is a bitter pill for most Americans to  lot of American audiences rueful when they see what is on offer in Europe. And the film many British people think twice when voting ‘Brexit’ at the forthcoming elections.  MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 10 JUNE 2016

 

When Marnie Was There (2016)

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi;

Anime voices of Sara Takatsuki, Kusumi Arimura

Japan 2014, 103 min.

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

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

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

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

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10 JUNE 2016

Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) (2016) | Golden Bear Winner 2016

Director:  Gianfranco Rosi
Documentary | World premiere | Italy France | 95min

Samuele is twelve and grew up on the island of Lampedusa with his family of fishermen, all struggling to survive. But fish are not the only thing in the sea, miles from mainland Italy. For years, his home has been the destination of thousands of people trying to make the crossing from Africa to a better life in Europe. They have paid expensive fares to traffickers but their journey often ends in death. The Italians rescue them and respect their dignity. Gianfranco Rosi’s sober exploration of this human crisis is a tribute to the kindness of strangers who say “we are all in the same boat”.

Rosi’s starkly rendered and absorbing documentary paints a vital and non-judgemental portrait of the situation where both immigrants and islanders are given ample weight. But pictures can tell a thousand words and that’s the way Rosi leaves it: we must draw our own impressions and conclusions of the humanitarian tragedy.

Samuele’s family are decent but poor. Eking out a meagre existence through diminishing returns, they prey to God and drink out of plastic cups at dinnertime, but somehow they are content with their simpe life and its ingrained traditions. His grandmother remembers the hardship during the Second World War when their livelihood was once again threatened by ships that came by with guns rather than immigrants, but they survived.

Amusing himself with a handmade sling Samuele spends his days messing around on the shoreline with pals and gaining his sea legs for when he becomes a fisherman himself. Those who reach the island are often mothers with kids and babies on the way. They have suffered war zones and hardshipin Sudan, Eritrea and Syria. Many have died in the overstuffed, leaky boats and appear like tragic creatures, bedragled from the heart of darkness or a holocaust; their gold plastic insulation blankets giving them an otherworldly appearance of stranded meteors with coal black skin. Patiently the Italian coastguards take them on rescue boats and doctors examine them, expertly offering free medical care.

FUOCOAMMARE is a calm and sobering film that often makes tough and gruelling viewing but its images linger long afterwards: the rugged landscapes, azure coves and bleeding corpses speak for themselves. It’s a bittter pill to swallow, sweetened by Samuele’s chipper vulnerability as we watch him learning English and coping with his own difficulties: asthma and heart palpitations suggest the boy is internalising some sort of inner turmoil or grief. The title is name of the song his granny dedicates on the local radio station to her sailor son who is hoping for better weather so he can launch his rickety boat and earn his living. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | BERLINALE GOLDEN BEAR 2016

Love & Friendship (2016)

Writer|Director: Whit Stillman   Novella: Jane Austen

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

92min | Drama | US

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON FRIDAY 27 MAY 2016

 

 

Gray Matters (2014)

Dir.: Marco Orsini; Documentary; Ireland/Monaco/USA/France/Germany/UK, 76 min.

Director/Co-writer Marco Orsini (The Reluctant Traveler) portrays the life of the iconic Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976) in this compact, non-frills documentary which would have pleased the artist who was well known for her down-to-earth approach, but always ahead of her times – and often her male competitors.

Born in the Irish town of Enniscortly, the youngest of five siblings of a wealthy and aristocratic family, Eileen went to the Slade School of Fine Arts in 1898, a very brave step, particularly for a woman of her background. But her social class did not affect how she developed into a radical and passionate bi-sexual lover.

Orsini sketches out how in 1900 Gray emigrated to Paris, where she stayed for the rest of her life, returning during the first World War and s short break to look after her mother. After studying at the Academie Julian, and the more formal Academie Colarossi, Gray met the Japanese lacquer artist Seizo Sugawara and became engaged in this art form. Her first exhibition in Paris in 1913 was a great success. After work on the now famous Bibendium chair (1917-21) Eileen had a long affair with the singer Marie-Louise Damia amongst other female artists, but she fell in love with the Rumanian architect Jean Badovici, a friend of Le Corbusier.

In 1924 the couple started work on Eileen’s first architectural project, the Villa E 1027 in Cap-Martin, near Monaco. The villa and the furniture were later (one of many) reasons for the couple to split up, when in 1938 Badovici, in whose name the villa was registered, allowed his friend Le Corbusier to paint the walls with some occasionally explicit, murals. This way, E 1027 became wrongly associated with Le Corbusier, who somehow must have felt jealous of Eileen’s achievement. He later bought a property next door, and, in an act of poetic justice, finally drowned in August 1965 swimming in front of the house he desired so much. But the irony goes further, Le Corbusier saved the villa’s furniture, and because, it was – wrongly – assumed, to be his building, the State looked after it. It should be said that Gray and Le Corbusier corresponded well into the late 50s and in 1970, Gray opined how, “he never got enough praise for his work.” In the late 1930s Eileen Gray started work on her second home, Tempe à Pailla, in Menton. She supervised the buildings work and was very innovative with the furniture: it was foldable to save space. At the age 78 she led the construction of her summerhouse near Saint Tropez. Eileen Gray worked until her death in her apartment in the Rue Bonaparte in Paris.

Today, her classic furniture designs are mass produced and originals, like the Dragon Chair (1917-19), auctioned off for 19m £. Luckily she lived long enough to be recognised as one of the greatest avant-garde artists of her time, after being written out art history for over twenty years. Orsini employs the talking heads of the art world paying tribute to Gray, but centres his documentary on her houses in the South of France. This way he stays true to the artist: her work was not so much art, but creating ‘designs for living’ from any given material. She would have liked Orsini’s workmanlike approach, not a hagiography, but the portrait of the artist at work. As a minimalist, she never cared for dogmas or categories, but she was a modernist in her personal and artist life. Gray Matters, in its erudite understatement, does her fully justice. AS

IN SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 27 MAY 2016

The Price of Desire (2015)

Director: Mary McGuckian

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

Drama | France | 104 min.

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

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

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

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

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 27 MAY 2016

 

Bo66y (2016)

Director: Ron Scalpello | Documentary | 97min | UK | Russell Brand | Ray Winstone

Marking the 50th anniversary of England’s victory in the World Cup, this energetic tribute to East End footballer Bobby Moore (1941-1993) explores with appealing fervour the life of a young man from Barking who joined West Ham United in 1956 going on to become one of the greatest defenders of all time and a national icon after leading England to success in the 1966 international tournament, when Pele left the field. The film is co-produced by West Ham fan and family friend Matt Lorenzo and directed with great passion and verve by Ron Scalpello

Scalpello adopts a talking heads approach as fellow players recall their fond memories of Moore’s integrity as a leader and skill as a player. Known as “a Prince” among men, Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore commanded respect through his calm presence in a team of strong players who were a “tough bunch of boys”. His first wife reminisces about their first date – when she asked the ‘rather square’ young man round for tea with her mother – and the subsequent courtship which lead to marriage after a year. Far from being a macho man, she describes the sporting hero as romantic and vulnerable, but he was also practical: “when I had blond hair he used to do my roots – he was like a mate”.

His diagnosis of testicular cancer in 1964 (described as a groin injury in the press) left him humiliated and deflated. But despite training harder than anybody on the squad, Moore also wanted to have a life outside football. Rebecca Moore Hobbis describes her special bond with her father – due to his insomnia – he looked after her during the small hours in the first months after her birth and the two became close.

Old fellow footballers such as Sir Geoff Hurst, Harry Redknapp, George Cohen, Norman Hunter and Martin Peters speak with pride and fondness about their old pal and captain and touch upon how football became a popular career for them and the opiate of the masses due to the release it offered during the war and post war autherity. A dazzling array of archive material brings this colourful documentary to life and a rousing score from Benjamin Wallfisch (12 Years a Slave) reflects the highs and the lows of his career and personal life MT

BO66Y – the story of football legend Bobby Moore – is coming to UK cinemas on 27 May 2016 and will be soon available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download  

Close Encounters of the Third Kind | Director’s Cut (1998) | Re-release

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Richard Dreyfus, Francois Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon

35mm | Fantasy Drama | US | 137min

Combining scenes from both the 1977 original version and the 1980 Special Edition, Close Encounters, released in the same year as the first Star Wars film, proves that director Steven Spielberg, at 28 years old, was a child of the 1950s: Close Encounters being a compendium of SF films from his teenage years, feeding on the fears of the Cold War.

Electrician Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) encounters an UFO on the road while investigating a widespread power cut. Somehow believing that he is in secret contact with aliens, he tries to rebuild the scene of his encounter, so that he can meet them. His wife Ronnie (Garr), his three children and the whole neighbourhood is convinced that he is going mad. In a parallel narrative, four year old Cary Guffey runs away from home in the middle of the night and is picked up by a spaceship, leaving his mother Jillian (Dillon) desperate to regain her son. Roy and Jillian meet and with the help of the US military and the French scientist Claude Lacombe (Truffaut), make contact with the spaceship. Although Jillian is only too happy to be re-united with her son. Roy, whose family has left him, is overjoyed to join the aliens on their journey home.

Spielberg takes his story seriously delivering some slapstick scenes, particularly when Roy is going overboard with his quest for meeting the aliens. These creatures are rather benign yet somewhat enigmatic. After landing in a secret field in Wyoming for the final sequence, they deliver the sailors of the navy ship Cotopaxi, which is found empty in the Gobi desert, and some crew from WWII planes, before taking the grateful Roy in exchange. Spielberg’s explanations are rather diffuse, being a mixture of religious and philosophical ramblings.

The final segment in the desert is stunning, but also includes a lengthy quote from Hitchcock’s North by North West, when Roy and Jillian try to climb a mountain, very much in the manner of Eva-Marie Saint and Gary Grant. Overall, one never has the feeling that writer/director Spielberg offers his own take on SF, unlike Kubrick’s vision in 2001. Close Encounters reallt belongs to DoP Vilmos Zsigmond (who won the only Oscar of all the many nominations the film garnered), special effects supervisor Dalton Trumbull and composer John Williams.AS

OUT NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 27 MAY 2016 Courtey of Park Circus Films

 

The Daughter | (2015)

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

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

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

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

REVIEWED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | now ON GENERAL RELEASE

Streetdance Family (2016)

Director: Debbie Shuter, Adam Tysoe

87min | Documentary | Germany/Italy.

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

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

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

OUT NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 27 May 2016

Money Monster (2016) | Cannes Film Festival 2016

Director: Jodie Foster

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

98min | Thriller | US

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chicken (2015)

Director: Joe Stephenson

Cast: Scott Chambers, Yasmin Paige, Morgan Watkins

UK | Drama | 86 min.

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

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

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

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE  CINEAS FROM MAY 20 2016

 

Heart of a Dog (2015) Prime

Dir: Laurie Anderson | With: Laurie Anderson, Dan Janvey, Toshiaki Ozawa, Joshua Zucker Pluda | 75min | Documentary | US | France

Apart from a brief foray at Cannes 2019 with her short film To the Moon (2019), Heart of A Dog is still Anderson’s most recent feature, playing out on many levels: documentary, animation, essay and installation – the latter part of the artists’ Habeus Corpi installation which showed in 2015 in New York City.

The star of the show is unsurprisingly a dog (to be precise, six canines were in front of the camera), with Anderson’s own, late companion Lolabelle, a terrier, taking centre stage. Early on the filmmaker dreams of giving birth to a dog, even though she cheated a little in the process, and this is shown in Laurie’s charming pencil sketches. Further musings after the death of Lolabelle lead Anderson to the main subject of her film essay saying goodbye not only to Lolabelle, but also her mother (and always unspoken) her husband Lou Reed, who died in 2013, and whose Turning Time Around plays powerfully over the end-credits.

The overall style is liquid with all segments flowing – in an associative way – into each other. Some strains are picked up again, a case in point is the potent reaction to 9/11 with images of the huge NSA HQ in the Utah desert in Utah (where the recordings of security agencies are made and stored indefinitely). In California Lolabelle nearly became the victim of a circling hawk who mistook her for a large rabbit. Later, Anderson dreams about her dog being in ‘borda’ for 49 days, a sort of liminal state before re-incarnation, as taught by the Tibetan ‘Book of Death’.

But the director is always self-critical: after telling the story of her long hospital stay after a childhood accident when she found herself in a ward with children suffering from serious burns, Anderson remembers censoring her memory and leaving out the “cries, dying children make”.

With quotes from Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, Heart of a Dog is a love letter about letting go – melancholic, but never depressing. It celebrates life and many art forms, the human and the canine spirit, leaving the audience in a contemplative mood. AS

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

Our Kind of Traitor (2016)

Director: Susanna White   Script: Hossein Amini

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

UK 2016, 107 min. Thriller

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 MAY 2016

Green Room (2015) |Quinzaine des Realisateurs | Cannes 2015

Writer|Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Patrick Stewart

94min  US   Horror

Saulnier emerged on the indie scene at Cannes 2013 with his richly-textured arthouse revenge thriller Blue Ruin. But this latest outing GREEN ROOM feels like he’s slid back into the teenage slasher territory of his debut Murder Party. Whilst being reasonably entertaining, this tale of a punk band who wander into the dangerous clutches of a gang of fascist drug dealers, feels slacker and less convincing with its throwaway gory violence and puerile stab at black humour that will go down well at Frightfest.

Another reason why GREEN ROOM feels less edgy and unsettling is the casting of mainstream actors, Imogen Poots and Patrick Stewart. Although this talent may be more of a box office draw, the result is a film that feels more anodyne despite some macabre moments. For a start Imogen Poots will always impart a Sloaney feel for British audiences and Patrick Stewart pales into insignificance compared with Ben Kingsley, in ‘gangleader mode’. The extreme schlocky violence is another reason GREEN ROOM fails to impress, causing many more eyes to roll, than heads and limbs. The continual meaningless re-makes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre have shown why ubiquitous hacked-off limbs and geysers of blood simply aren’t scary or horrific. Less is always more, where blood and gore are concerned.

The story follows a punk band that have just been on tour throughout the US and haven’t really been coining it. Petty arguments have broken out between band members – bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole); so guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat) and lead singer Tiger (Callum Turner) are the only ones still speaking when they fetch up at a roadhouse in Oregon. This is extreme right fascist skinhead territory, apparently. After a pretty miserable go on stage, one of the ‘Ain’t Rights’ returns to the Green Room to discover a murder scene. One of the skinhead girls has been stabbed in the head and her friend Amber (Imogen Poots) is frightened to move. In the end, they barricade themselves into the Green Room while venue manager, Macon Blair (Blue Ruin), and the venue’s owner Darcy (Stewart) hang around outside with murderous intent.

There’s nothing inventive thereafter as, gradually, the band members meet their grisly deaths in ways that will unfold for those interested in seeing the film, which, to its credit, is laced with a lacerating black comedy. Dogs are involved but, for once, don’t seem to be involved in the death count. Disappointing and predictable then as an edgy horror outing, but entertaining if outright slasher movies are your bag. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | REVIEWED AT QUINZAINE DE REALISATEURS | CANNES 14 – 24UI MAY 2015 | CANNES 2015 

 

I Saw the Light (2015)

Director: Marc Abraham

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Bradley Whitford, Cherry Jones, Maddie Hasson, Wrenn Schmidt

123min  | Biopic |

Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen are the stars in Marc Abraham’s tribute to US country music legend Hank Williams which takes its title from one of the best loved songs by the singer. The biopic charts Williams’ rise to fame from his 1944 marriage to Audrey, at a petrol station in Alabama when he was just a small time ‘country’ singer, through to his tragic death from heart failure at only 29 as the best-selling, chart-topping superstar headlining the “Grand Ole Opry “show in Nashville, Tennessee (1953).

Abraham’s narrative focus here is very much on Williams’ failed love affairs that started with Audrey and continued with a series of other women, culminating in his second marriage to Billie Jean Jones (Maddie Hasson), as he desperately sought  emotional support, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, to sustain him through his short but meteoric musical career.

The film takes its title from ‘I Saw the Light’, one of the most popular songs by the country legend, but another song ‘Lovesick Blues’, would have been more appropriate for a story that fails to distill the spirit and joy of Williams’ phenomenal contribution to the music scene in 1940’s America, concentrating instead on his rather maudlin marital turmoil and succession of sad love affairs, overshadowed by the domineering presence of his widowed mother Lillie (Cherry Jones).

Tom Hiddleston dazzles in the role and the renditions – his tall and willowy frame ideal for the part of a man who suffered from a rare form of spina bifida, leaving him occasionally crippled, bedridden and addicted to painkillers. Complete with cowboy suites encrusted with diamante and an ubiquitous cowboy stetson he really looks convincing, and although he feels miscast, despite sterling efforts, in evoking the folksy charm of a “lil’ ole Southern boy” and part-time philanderer: Williams’ off-piste activities feel cheeky and playfully forgivable in Hiddleston’s take. As Audrey, Elizabeth Olsen has the same hard-voiced, unsympathetic edge to her character as she does in Avengers, competing with Williams in the singing arena, peddling her own canoe and nearly submerging his own showboat in the process as a rather bullish femme fatale who comes to the marriage with a child and has a cherished boy with Williams as they serially split and regroup in a partnership where she appears to wear the trousers.

Ultimately, I SAW THE LIGHT doesn’t carry a candle to recent biopics such as Love & Mercy and even Miles Ahead which have better showcased their artists’ iconic 20th century American success stories. None of the musical numbers here really shine out as the enduring classics that they undoubtedly have become in the American ‘country’ consciousness.

Yet despite its failure to set the musical world on fire, there’s much to be admired in Merideth Boswell’s set design and some stunning set pieces as the luminescent Lousiana landscapes really come alive in the capable hands of Michael Mann’s regular DoP Dante Spinotti (Heat/L.A.Confidential). MT

NOW OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 MAY 2016

 

Evolution (2015)

Dir.: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

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

France/Belgium/Spain 2015, 81 min.

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

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

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

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

NOW ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | EVOLUTION | 

Truman (2015)

Director: Cesc Gay   Writer: Cesc Gay, Tomas Aragay

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

108min | Comedy Drama | Spain

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 6 May 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 6 MAY 2016

 

 

 

Talking about EVOLUTION with Lucile Hadzihalilovic

French filmmaker Lucile Hadzihalilovic, won the Jury Prize for Best Cinematography at San Sebastian and Stockholm last year 2015 for her marine-based fantasy Horror outing EVOLUTION. Here she talks to Matthew Turner about how teenage appendicitis sparked the original idea for the feature.

Lucile Hadzihalilovic (LH): Well, at the very beginning it was just the boy and his mother and the hospital and this idea that the mother was taking her son, who is beginning to grow up, to kind of get another child. But I think when I think back to where it comes from, I think it’s a very autobiographical film. It really came from my own childhood, I would say, my fears, my expectations and especially, when I was ten or eleven, there was a moment – so I was going to become a teenager and I had appendicitis, so I had to go to the hospital. And it was just a normal experience, like many other children have. But it’s so strange this thing, that you are in this hospital with adults who are touching and opening your body and cutting something out of it and this strange pain in the belly etc. And at the same time, this idea that I was going to have my period very soon and become a teenager, so I think these were different elements that where linked at that time. So I think it’s based on that time and then my life and this fears about metamorphosis, about pregnancy. So this is where the idea comes from.

MJT: In the hospital waiting room, there wasn’t a big aquarium with lots of starfish in it?

LH: Maybe! Maybe there was and I didn’t remember at the time, but I remember through the film. But it’s funny, because the ocean came afterwards – at the beginning it was just the hospital and I thought, okay, it’s in the city. But suddenly I realised that it should be on the seaside. And of course the ocean brings the perfect setting for the story. And then it also gives room to explore deeper feelings, maybe more primitive feelings and of course linked to the mother, to the womb, so they are a kind of lost paradise but at the same time it’s an amazing place but it’s also kind of scary and really mysterious. And the mysterious aspect of it was really very much what I was looking for, for the film. It’s like a subject by itself, in a way, the mystery of the world and all the changing.

MJT: Where were the locations for the film?

LH: We shot the film in the Canary Islands, in one of the Canary Islands, which is called Lanzarote. And when I wrote the script I didn’t know these places, but one of the producers knew them and he thought that it would be a very good place to shoot the film, for budgetary reasons, but also for artistic reasons. And he was totally right because the great thing in this island is this volcanic seaside, very black and very dramatic and at the same time there is the strength of the sea with the wind and the waves. And this village, which is both familiar and a bit strange. I was looking for this ambiguity, this ambivalence and for me it was very important that the place was very attractive but at the same time gives a kind of anxiety, this feeling of isolation – I think it’s very much about also being isolate, about being separated from the world and still kind of being in the realms of motherhood. So i felt that really, in this landscape. we had really very little to do to have this feeling of being in another reality, very close to ours.

EVOLUTION_STILLS_boyMJT: How do you see the film’s relationship to your previous film, Innocence?

LH: I know that it really looks like there are many, many similarities, to the point where people ask me if it’s like a diptych. I really didn’t think about it like that, because it wasn’t like, ‘I’ve done the girls, now I’m going to do the boys’. It wasn’t like that. It was more again, the very beginning of this script was even before Innocence and it was, as I said, a more intimate story with the boy and his mother. And I thought that it was more interesting with a boy, more striking, more nightmarish, more abnormal. And I also felt that I could portray myself as a boy rather than as a girl, in this situation. If it had been a teenager, it wouldn’t have been the same, but as a child, I thought it worked. So it didn’t come from this idea of a group of boys, it was more like Nicolas and his mother and the boy’s fear, and then I developed the idea of this whole community around them and maybe it has been influenced by Innocence, even if I really tried to go somewhere else with more narrative and this one is more of a genre film. So I tried to do something else, but I really see the similarities and also this microcosm, which is both kind of paradise and prison. And also the weird biology elements. Of course, in Evolution, it’s dark, it’s much darker than Innocence, but there’s also a kind of moment of feeling of liberation and joy, like at the end with the nurse under the water that maybe is a bit similar to that moment with the fountain at the end of Innocence, and then also this water element. And again, it’s a coming of age story. That one is more like a disturbed one, but it was not really on purpose, it just came by itself.

MJT: I certainly think Innocence prepares you for EVOLUTION, in a way. So if you’ve seen Innocence, you’re already prepared for the rhythms and moods of EVOLUTION. So you haven’t considered a trilogy then?

LH: But what could it be now, if it’s a trilogy? I guess that with children, what is interesting for me with children is that I can create kind of a new, different universe, because they are still open, quite new in the world, so they don’t know very much, so they make their own links and they are kind of creative, So I guess what would interest me in other films would be maybe to work on some kind of madness that permits also to create a world by itself. I mean to mix dreams and reality. It’s a kind of artificial narration, I guess, to have a character that guide you to this kind of thing. So with children it’s easy for me to do it. Maybe someone else has to deal with madness or so, I don’t know. So in that way, there could be the third chapter.

EVOLUTION_STILLS_sea copyMJT: How much research did you do into the mating rituals of starfish?

LH: In fact, we did a lot. I know we don’t see much in the film, really, but with my co-writer, at some point we really developed much more of the script about this universe, who exactly these women are and what their relationship is with the starfish. And we imagined things like the starfish, at the very beginning because it’s a very familiar motif, like these images of children playing with starfish gives the impression of happiness. Then if you really look at the starfish it’s such a strange animal and very far away from the kind of being we are and it has a lot of interesting characteristics that we had a whole back story for, where they could resist radioactivity, they can regenerate themselves, and also it’s a very, very primitive animal that has been on the Earth since…for a very long time – I don’t remember exactly how long. So yeah, we did a lot of research and it was also very exciting to see how they reproduce and what about the larvae and many of these marine creatures are very fascinating because they are so kind of alien. So this is the kind of research we did to feed ourselves, to feed our imaginations, rather than really being very scientific about it. And then I had to cut a lot of things in the script for budget reasons, so many details disappeared. And a few of those things were about the starfish.

MJT: What kind of things did you have to cut out? Was there anything in particular that you were sorry to see go?

LH: At the end, maybe it’s because I really don’t want to be sorry about what I cut, because it’s how it was, but there is a whole other layer in the film that was including other people, other sets, other scenes, more special effects, also, but it was not like one scene which was too expensive, no, it was really a kind of other narrative layer – probably this layer would have brought more explanation, somehow, not really explanation in the way that – it’s not who are the people that are doing these things, it’s more like there are more links, who these women are. But maybe it’s also an element that we have developed through the years because it has been very difficult to finance the film, so many times we had some reaction from people saying, ‘Oh, we don’t understand, why this, why that?’ So at some point the producer wanted me to make it more explicit, etc. So we developed it a little bit more, but also we thought it was a very dangerous path to go down, because it could have just killed the film to explain it all, because at the end it’s so not logical, it’s more like a dream, like a nightmare, it’s more like elements from the unconscious rather than a sci-fi, very logical explanation, and so it was very difficult to do that. But nevertheless, we had many elements and one at the end we had to cut again because it was too expensive. Probably it was all these additional elements that were easier to cut, because then the heart of the project was not really in these things. So it went back more to something more like a nightmare, like a dream, more oneric, rather than a moral, sci-fi thing. So there was just a little hint of it.

MJT: How important is the colour scheme to the film, the use of colours? Are they symbolic in some way?

LH: No, it was more like feelings. For instance, I very much wanted the film to be very colourful, even if we had just black and white landscape outside of the water and not so much colour in the clothes etc. So I felt the sea should be very colourful because when you see these creatures on the water or in the weeds, they have a lot of colours, very strong colours sometimes, and this is what is so exciting about shooting under the water. So I knew that I could have some colours and some kind of exuberant moment in the film. And then there is this colour of the green of the sea, and then that. should help us in the hospital to get the sea back, in a way. So we had these green walls that bring the feeling of the sea from the colour. And then there was of course the red starfish, and red is always a dramatic colour and a very strong one, especially if you don’t have so many other colours, so we had the green and the red of the starfish and then we needed to continue this red a bit, and so we had this red bathing suit on the child and yeah, it’s a way to underline or to dramatise a few moments but it’s not like a symbol.

MJT: Were there any particular visual influences on the film, in terms of maybe other films, or paintings or anything like that?

LH. Yes. I think probably the main influences visually were more like from paintings, from the surrealism, like Chirico (an Italian painter from the ’20s and ’30s), for this village where the presence of the architecture is very strong, very dramatic, this idea of a sunny place with long, enigmatic shadows or things like that. So Chirico and also painters like Max Ernst, Tanguy or even Dali, because they have painted the seaside a lot as a very alien place, but also very organic and I was really trying to be as organic as possible in this film. So yes, I had these kind of visual references. As for films, I didn’t have many references, consciously, I mean – there was one – Who Can Kill A Child? Again, not for the story but for the mood, like this white village, with empty streets and only children, so it was a bit strange. That was maybe the main conscious influence of a film that I had. And then I think there is another one that was very, very different visually, but it was more about the mood, it was Eraserhead. For instance, I always felt that we really shouldn’t have a creature, but a puppet that looked like a baby. It’s really far from being as great as the one in Eraserhead, but this was the reference, not to have the same thing, but to have a very physical presence that looked real.

MJT: What was the most difficult thing to get right?

LH: Well, it was difficult to structure the story, because I really began with feelings, situations, emotions, visuals, sounds and elements, so at some point we really had to make a story out it, to have these images that happen, so there was a difficulty there and I was very lucky to be able to work with Alante Kavaite, my co-writer – she helped me a lot, in structuring all this material. But probably the main problem was the one I was telling you about, when people were saying, ‘We don’t understand this film, what kind of film is it, is it a genre film, is it something else?’ So we really tried to make them understand. For instance, the ending was also – not for me, because for me it was really like what it is in the film, always – we should arrive at a particular place, but it’s not back to reality or it’s not a happy ending. It’s, okay, he has escaped from the island, but maybe now it’s another cycle. But it was difficult because people thought they wanted a kind of explanation or a definitive ending, ‘So, is it that or is it that? Was it true or was it not true? Where are the facts?’ So it was difficult to deal with these things without destroying the film. So the difficulty was really to try in the script to make people understand what the film was about and give a feel for the nature of the film without giving too much explanation. Like, okay, it’s metaphorical but we can’t really explain it or show you what the metaphor is about. It’s not like someone’s dream and suddenly it’s a boy who is in hospital and he’s dreaming of this island, no. But at one point we were kind of being pushed to do things like that, to be more explicit, so that balance was difficult to achieve.

MJT: Do you have a particular favourite scene or moment in the film?

LH: I guess because it was a shot that I was not there for when it was done – it’s probably the underwater shots made by the diver who was like a second unit. So we said we would like these kinds of things with weeds and so on, but I’m not a diver and neither was the DP, so at some point we had to let him do it by himself and.he came back with these amazing images and this was like, ‘Oh, wow’. They were a great surprise and I was so happy about that – I thought it would really bring a lot to the film and it was really exactly what I was looking for. So yes, it’s the underwater scenes that you see right at the beginning.

MJT: The casting is interesting because you have a couple of well-known actors…

LH: In fact, Julie-Marie Parmentier is well known, because she has done many films now, and Roxane Duran is more at the beginning of her career, but she made The White Ribbon with Michael Haneke. I thought of Julie-Marie straught away, because I think she’s really special – I think she is a very good actress and she has different qualities – she can be very attractive, but also kind of ugly, also mysterious and I think you feel like she has a real inner life. I knew that she could be kind of scary, but in a very minimalistic way and I also think that she’s very charismatic and she doesn’t need to have to read dialogue to create something. And it’s a bit the same with Roxane, the great thing with her is that she’s really sweet and she brings a very kind of human element into this atmosphere that works very well. Before meeting her I had thought that the nurse should have been scarier, in a way but when I met her I thought that it was really interesting to have someone so sweet, even if she’s doing sometimes scary things. And she’s a bit like a child, she has something that’s still very child-like, and I was really happy with them. And I also wanted to have this mood, because it’s not about performance, it’s more about the mood they give and they fit very well to this landscape.

MJT: And was it difficult to find Max Brebant?

LH: It was not really easy, of course because there is this aspect of swimming, that was one thing. And then the story might have been difficult for some parents, rather than for the children. What was very good with Max is that, in fact, he was thirteen years old when we did the film, so I think he had this sometimes more mature expression, but also his very tiny body, so he’s kind of fragile. And I really liked him very much,I found him very charismatic and very sweet, in a way, with his big face and small body – he had a fragility and a sweetness that was very interesting. Before shooting I thought that I was going to maybe try to make him express more fear, but it was really difficult and we had so little time to shoot, so we couldn’t spend a lot of time on each scene, so I decided to play it more like a blank expression, as if he was sleeping with his eyes open or something and that, and I think it works at the end because he’s very charismatic, for me, at least. So we found him quite late in the process of casting but we couldn’t begin the casting too soon, because they change quickly at that age, so we just tried to find them six or seven months before shooting.

MJT: What’s your next project?

LH: My next project, I’m a bit scared now of not choosing the right one, or choosing the one that would be too difficult and would take me too many years to find the financing, so I don’t want to talk about it, really, because I don’t want to jinx it, but I’m working on different things.

EVOLUTION IS ON GENERAL RELEASE AT ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 6 MAY 2016

A Flickering Truth (2015)

Writer|Director: Pietra Brettkelly | Documentary | 91 min

In cinéma vérité style, New Zealand director Pietra Brettkelly (Maori Boy Genius) follows Kabul film archivist Ibrahim Arify in his struggle to safeguard the security of the treasured Afghan film archive that has so far avoided destruction by the Taliban both during and after their time in Afghanistan. A FLICKERING TRUTH is a story that will interest film historians and those with a penchant for social culture and heritage.

What makes the documentary watchable is the painstaking passion of those involved in film preservation and cinema history which provides a fascinating window into the country’s past pictured in Jacob Bryant’s superbly crafted visuals and accompanied by a wistfully atmospheric soundtrack by award-winning British composer Benjamin Wallfisch (12 Years A Slave).

Arify is a masterful presence who knows how to deal with the locals when he arrives at the dusty location where film stock is in danger of spilling out and being damaged by the elements. It gradually becomes clear he has a mammoth task on his hands if the archive is to be saved. Under the Taliban (as under Hitler during The Third Reich) film and art were considered a decadent element of Western society and those in charge of the archives were forces to burn stock in massive bonfires. Fortunately, prudent archivists managed to hide their precious films which were remained cunningly boarded up for posterity.

It also emerges that Arify, is also a filmmaker who was imprisoned during the Mujahideen era and fled to Germany to seek refuge. Now back home in Afghanistan, he gently takes his Uncle Isaaq Yousif to task. The old man has been a custodian at the archives for over 30 years, and Arify accuses him and others of not being proactive in film conservation.

A FLICKERING TRUTH unearths some real treasures: apart from vibrant cult classics from a bygone era, the films also show young people dancing to a band during the roaring ’70s with a young Arify playing the guitar. On a more tragic note, archive footage bears witness to the bombing of Kabul in 1992, leading to a challenging and uncertain future for the country. It’s sad to think that some of these films show a past that feels more advanced than the present here in contempo Kabul – we see young boys playing football in fundamentalist attire in contrast to the fashionable Western clothes worn by the male and female ‘disco dancers’ nearly 50 years previously.

Having secured the archive, Arify is off to Germany again, fearing the worst for the future and bidding farewell to the personnel at Afghan Films. Despite the danger of coming face to face with the Taliban, some of the more plucky film archivists have decided to tour the country with a selection of films. The aim is to show the younger generation how their world used to look in a seemingly modern past. But these kids are not the only ones who will look on aghast. And this is where Brettkelly’s documentary moves on to the world stage, transcending its subject, and becoming something much important that resonates at a global level. While sharing the filmic glory days of the past with the Afghan nation, a more fascinating picture unfolds before our Western eyes: that of a medieval landscape and a society that has returned to the Dark Ages in a future where fundamentalism has taken over and women have entirely disappeared behind the veil. MT

OUT ON RELEASE AT CURZON CINEMAS and SELECTED FROM 29 April 2016

 

Heavens Knows What (2015)

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

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

94min | Drama | US

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

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

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

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

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM 29 APRIL

 

Florence Foster Jenkins (2015)

Director: Stephen Frears  Writer: Nicholas Martin

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

110min  | Drama | UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUT NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Demolition (2015)

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée   Writer: Bryan Sipe

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

101min | Drama | Canada

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

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

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

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

DEMOLITION follows a linear narrative but regular DoP Yves Belanger cleverly uses jumpcuts and rapid flashbacks to fill in a backstory that initially leads us to believe that Davis is some kind of sociopath or, at least, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome; clearly he avoids ruminating on his inner demons with a series of personal techniques that keep him in a safe place emotionally – which his family interprets as a lack of feeling for Julia. But the finale seems to bring him to his senses – or even better, and plausibly – a place where his brain is healed so that he is able to feel and react ‘appropriately’ in a finale that is both moving and uplifting. Another tragedy that Davis discovers in the final scenes also brings him emotional peace through a relationship he develops with Karen’s 12-year-old son, Chris (Lewis) – it’s a meeting of minds that cuts both ways in bringing both their characters finally to safety. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

 

Golden Years (2016)

Director: John Miller   Script: John Miller, Nick Knowles, Jeremy Sheldon

Cast: Philip Davis, Bernard Hill, Simon Callow, Una Stubbs, Virginia McKenna, Sue Johnston, Alun Armstrong

96min | Comedy Drama | UK

GOLDEN YEARS may have slim appeal to a certain sector of the community who it cynically pictures long-retired and living on the outskirts of otherwise decent such as Wigan or Uttoxeter. Like a Woolworth’s pick ‘n mix GOLDEN YEARS is certainly cheap and cheerful and full of artificial flavours, but even Woolworth’s eventually acquired cult status, a tribute unlikely to be given to this flaccid comedy. It features a talented cast of well-known British actors who do their best to flog what feels like a proverbial dead horse by its cretinous denouement. Philip Davis; Bernard Hill, Simon Callow, Virginia McKenna, Una Stubbs and Sue Johnston all do sterling work to bring a certain charisma to a vacuous 96 minutes of entertainment.

Not so the script. co-written by director John Miller, Jeremy Sheldon and DIY SOS frontman Nick Knowles, it trips lightly through a thousand cliches, suffering middle age spread and then sinking into oblivion by its flatulent finale. Billed as a crime caper, the implausible storyline re-works the theme of financial crisis where Bernard Hill’s Arthur finds himself without a pension and his wife Martha (a game and still resplendent Virginia McKenna) invalided and requiring expensive medical care. Their limited social life revolves round the local club which is threatened by closure due to a bid from the developers. Then Arthur discovers a get rich quick scheme; a cunning plan to rob High Street banks from the unlikely cover of an innocuous-looking caravan, financed by his first hawl of swagger, and parked nearby. Consoling himself that his Robin Hood approach to re-financing is somehow acceptable, due to general feeling of animosity towards the banking fraternity, he manages to spin things out until Martha wises up after an unfortunate incident, and the two decide to garner support from their friends for a final heist. These willing accomplices include metal worker Brian (Philip Davis), policeman Sid (Alun Armstrong) and rambunctious bore Royston (Simon Callow) -amongst others. Whether the film is intended to be tongue in cheek – or just seriously misjudges the mood of today’s more mature filmgoer – is unsure. But GOLDEN YEARS feels like a poor re-working of a Carry On film minus the laughs and the charm, and with moments so toe-curling, they will make you want to curl up and die. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM TUESDAY 29 April  – in over 108 Odeon Cinemas Nationwide, Scotland & Ireland from 29 April

Arabian Nights II : The Desolate One (2015)

Director.: Miguel Gomes |  Cast: Christa Alfaiate, Chico Chapas, Luisa Cruz

132min |Drama | Portugal/France/Germany/Switzerland

Writer/director Gomes continues on his path of re-writing Scheherazade’s classical stories of Thousand and One Nights with the second part of his trilogy: The Desolate One. After the overwhelming opening salvo of the first part, The Desolate One is perhaps the most audience friendly of the trio: full of humour, self-irony, satire and much less hectoring, the streamlined second part consists of three fables outlining the disgruntlement of  Portuguese workers during the financial austerity in the early 21st century, and connecting the present with the past.

Told with subtle irony by Scheherazade (Alfaiate), sometimes residing on a Ferris Wheel, the first tale Chronicle of the Escape of Simao – ‘Without Bowels’ is a gem. Simao (Chapas), an ageing farm worker, who earned his nickname for his life long anorexia, has murdered four women, among them his wife and daughters, and is on the run. In his hideout in the wilderness, he dreams about prostitutes and great banquets. But in spite of his crimes, he becomes a local hero for his Robin Hood style redistribution from rich to poor. Scheherazade blames his crimes on capitalism: “Evil is only a severe tendency of selfishness”.

The second story, titled “The Tears of the Judge” is a burlesque courtroom romp, where the severe judge(Luisa Cruz) presides over a case which starts out with the theft of 13 cows and continues, taking in a series of Chinese mail-order brides, a genie and a machete-wielding human lie detector. The stern judge, who almost loses it due to the complexity and buck-passing of the various witnesses and scenes involving her daughter, who has recently lost her virginity to a man selected by her mother, assuming a guise of domestic servitude which she then relegates her duties. This seems to be a metaphor for continuing misogyny and racial stereotyping in contempo Europe (yet it’s even worse in continents such as Africa, South America and India).

And, if matters aren’t complicated enough, this is the segment that won the ‘Palme Dog’ at Cannes 2015 for Dixie, the Maltese poodle, who here is passed on from one tenant to the next in a housing estate, where even the human residents have difficulties feeding themselves. Somehow there are shades of Chekov in this episode: the eviction notices spread a collective outpouring of melancholia.

Again, DoP’s Mukdeeprom’s sun-dried images are the highlight, producing serenity and beauty in spite of the poverty. Shot on 16mm and 35 mm, his work proves that our eyes, like the film stock, work on an analogue basis. The depth of these images is impossible to recreate with digital, however brilliant the HD. Gomes always tries to change, double and exchange the perspectives: This happens on the levels of images and sound, the mixing of documentation and fiction, the (sometimes overdone) multi-lingual components (which make this part particularly challenging for non-Portuguese-speaking audiences) and finally, in the episodic structure of the whole trilogy, where the actors participate in different episodes underlining the concept of total exchange. The Desolate One is made of legends: yesterday’s and today’s are finding a common platform where Gomes’ poetic realism steers his often unwieldy project to safe shore. AS

THE SECOND PART OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS IS ON RELEASE FROM 29 APRIL 2016 at SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

 

Walkover (1965) Walkower | Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Dir|Wri: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Aleksandra Zawieruszanka, Andrzej Leszczyc, Krzysztof Chamiec | 77min   Drama    Polish with subtitles

During the 1960s writer and director Jerzy Skolimowski focused on films exploring the ironic aspects and moral dilemmas affecting everyday life in post-Stalinist Poland. His films were the ‘Impressionists’ of an era dominated by the sweeping epics of the Polish Film School.

A debut feature, Rysopsis (Identification Marks: None) 1965 was closely followed by WALKOVER another drama set in his home town of Lodz (and also starring his off-screen partner Elzbieta Czyzewska in the opening scenes).

As Andrzej Leszczy, he represents a ‘New Wave’ hero, a raffish outsider with a certain appeal to the opposite sex. Drifting around the locale, having left the army and about to embark on engineering studies, he is taking part in a local boxing match when he meets Teresa (Aleksandra Zawieruszanka), a government engineer who has arrived in the city to work on a new factory scheme. Under Teresa’s spell (Zawieruszanka looks like a Polish equivalent of Angie Dickinson) goes to the wrong ring for the tournament. And as he sits on the train with Teresa, we see his boxing opponent following on a motorbike, viewed in a superb continuous shot from the rear of the carriage. Turning up later, Andrzej wins the contest in a “walkover” as his rival fails to turn up.

As a metaphor for individuality WALKOVER was a very personal second feature for Skolimowski, who aside from his filmmaking activities enjoyed boxing and poetry, some of which is recited in voiceover in several scenes. The film opens with the face of a woman who will later jump under Andrzej and Teresa’s train, but rather than develop this plotline, Skolimowski’s film segues unconventionally into Andrzej’s story using the furore from the accident as an enticing background introduction to the central story about the couple’s brief romance.

The tragedy of the girl under the train adds additional texture, but remains an undeveloped strand. Perhaps his intention was to use her suicide as a cry for help from the thousands of Poles who felt washed up, directionless and cynical after years of fighting a cause; rather like the troubled characters in Tadeusz Konwicki’s Last Day of Summer. It was certainly his intention to explore unconventional ways of telling a story.

Skolimowski’s drama also seems to suggest the importance of standing up against the tide of change and power.  Both Andrzej and Teresa go on to fight their individual battles in WALKOVER. Andrzej perseveres with his boxing and Teresa argues with the factory chief but they both rebel against the tide of industrial Lodz. Although the couple enjoy a night together they remain detached in the scheme of things, alienated further by the stark industrial landscape of Sixties Lodz.

The occasional modernist building sparks interest, such as in the pure lines of the outdoor restaurant scene (title photo), emphasising the pristine black and white cinematography of Antoni Nurzynski. The film also features a meandering, improvised jazzy score by Andrzej Trzaskowski (Night Train). MT

WALKOVER IS SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM MEETING’S RETRO OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

 

 

Friend Request (2016)

Director: Simon Verhoeven

Cast: Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley, Connor Paolo, Brit Morgan, Brook Markham, Sean Marquette, Liesl Ahlers

Germany 2016, 92 min.

German director Simon Verhoeven (Men in the City) offers a self-ironic but critical contribution to the new Social Media Horror genre. Taking an seemingly normal daily occurrence, Verhoeven, who co-wrote the script, highlights the ever increasing sociological relevance of facebook and other media outlets of the same kind.

The story follows Laura (Debnam-Carey) a post-graduate psychology student who shares a flat with her two girlfriends Olivia (Morgan) and Isabel (Markham). Laura is ‘popular’ in the ether with over 800 friends on facebook and trying to add even more. But her integrity comes into question when she agrees half-heartedly to a Friend Request from Marina (Ahlers), a shy co-student who hides under her hoody. Laura is a psychologist in the making and should really have been more watchful, since Marina is signing in as Ma Rina, a sure sign of a split personality – but Laura just wants to collect friends. Marina then angles an invitation to Laura’s birthday party, purportedly “an event for two”, inviting her friends and family.

When Marina sees the party photos on Laura’s Facebook site, she flips and tells Laura “I will make you as lonely as I am” before committing suicide by hanging herself over a fire while looking into a mirror – a sure sign of black magic. Frightening videos then appear on the FB pages of the three girls and Laura’s boyfriend Tyler (Moseley) fails to calm her in the ensuing meltdown

FRIEND REQUEST is much more than a horror movie, the takeaway here is Verhoeven’s treatment of his main protagonists, focussing on their narcissistic need for continuous self-affirmation – a practice known in its most extreme form as “trolling for narcissistic supply” -facilitated and enhanced by a social media presence where there are always new people joining the circle of deceit and self-deceit in a carnival of self-glorification. Although many people use these networks to engage with like-minded individuals and family, FRIEND REQUEST on those who eschew critical intelligence, in favour of superficial self-indulgence.

Verhoeven’s film is the perfect pendant to Caroline Kepler’s novel “You”, about cyber stalking, where a man uses the social media accounts of the woman he stalks to control her, while killing his rivals. In this well-crafted creeper DoPJo Heim (Men in the City) captures the world of the ‘short generation span’ with breath-taking jump cuts that impressively showcase the tricks of social media. His horror images are seriously frightening; his use of night scenes and the finale in an old factory are perhaps not original, but show intricate composition. shot in the mellow light of Cape Town, South Africa, FRIEND REQUEST is a welcome take on the genre.

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 APRIL 2016

Identification Marks: None (1965) Mubi

Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Jerzy Skolimowski, Elzbieta Czyzweska, Tadeusz Minc, Andrzej Zarnecki, Jacek Szczek | 73min | Drama | Poland

Jerzy Skolimowski’s debut sparked off two sequels (Walkover and Hands Up!); he also plays the leading role of an aimless college dropout kicking through the final traces of freedom before being drafted into the army for military service. Ever the outsider, rather like his compatriot Polanski, Skolimowski explores the motives of his recalcitrant character Andrzej Leszczye who is living with his wife but keeping his options open with a series of other women, hanging around Lódz with his dog (who has contracted rabies, and has to be put down) before jumping on train with his other friends who have been conscripted to the army.

Only 23 at the time, the young filmmaker flexes his artistic muscles with tricks and creative flourishes honed during his final days at Lódz, and the result is here in pristine black and white. Well-made and beautifully edited by one-time feature editor Halina Szalinska, Identification Marks has a lively unstructured score by Krzysztof Sadowski and captures the footloose ennui of Poland’s postwar generation, pictured to perfection in this carefree chronicle of this final day of youth epitomising the Polish New Wave. Skolimowski incorporates some of the footage shot during film school, using stock provided and the skills of his college contemporaries at Lódz. Now, nearly sixty years later his latest EO is running for an Oscar. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Macbeth (1971) | Criterion Collection UK

Director: Roman Polanski | Writers: Kenneth Tynan/Roman Polanski

Cast: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayler, Nicholas Selby, Stephan Chase

140min  Drama

Who better to direct The Tragedy of Macbeth than Roman Polanski, bringing his customary nihilism to the famous Scottish play: his is an ambitious production but not amongst his best, despite collaboration from Kenneth Tynan on the script. The action opens on a desolate shoreline where young nobleman Macbeth (Jon Finch) is returning from battle, three witches are seen casting their spells in the watery half light of a wintery dusk.  The locations were infact Porthmadog and Northumberland but they absolutely conjure up the essence of the story. Most of film is set in dank and dripping moorland or inside shivering castles where the additional effect of howling winds add to the sense of unease – not even blazing open fires can warm this cruel and hopeless saga. Polanski, deeply effected by the recent violent murder of his lover Sharon Tate, clearly made his film more violent than the play (lines such as “Untimely ripped from his mother’s womb” seem particularly cruel and apt) but it could equally have echoed his experiences in Krakow. In any event, Polanski was always going to make a grisly rendering of Shakespeare’s brutal masterpiece. This is very much Polanski’s version: he added a final scene, a variation from the Shakespeare play – where Donalbain is seen skulking off to the Witches’ hideout. This is the sting in the tail, the classic Polanski unhappy ending; offering no hope for redemption. The use of a discordant score from the folk band Third Ear and Gil Taylor’s stunningly photographed scenic set pieces add grim redolence to proceedings and the siege scenes are particularly evocative of doom. Casting off screen lovers Francesca Annis and Jon Finch as the Macbeths, their dark good looks and chemistry permeate the drama. A superb performance from Francesca Annis makes it easy to see how a man can be led to his demise by his own inflated ego and the sexual obsession for a woman who feeds his lust for power (and indeed, her own), as she does as Lady Macbeth here.

In the event, neither of these characters possesses the moral fibre consistent with their regal stature: and this is why the story so perfectly fits into Polanski’s body of work: the professionals seen wanting, brought down by their own petty insecurities. Macbeth is seen as a figure worthy of disdain, a man hoisted by his own petard; a ‘falling King’, rather than a ‘fallen’ one. The film was not a commercial success, and although capable and atmospheric, lacks the precision and perfection of his earlier works, Knife in The Water and Repulsion. MT

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH IS REMASTERED | THE CRITERION COLLECTION UK | 18 APRIL 2016

The Divide (2015)

Dir.: Katharina Round; Documentary; UK/US 2015, 74 min.

Katharina Round’s debut feature documentary is based on The Spirit Level by the epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, a study about the relationships between rising income differences and their social results – all captured in graphs and charts.

Round was obsessed with mathematics as a teenager and saw the science “as a language, you just have to know how to read it.” After reading The Spirit Level, she decided to put human faces to the statistics, in a way translating the figures into a language we all speak, “because the book was at its heart a story of how big picture economics can pull very personal, individual levers in all of us and have an impact on how we live our lives”.

Round has chosen seven individuals in the UK and the USA, who are reacting in their different ways to the changed economic landscape. Alden is a psychologist, but he is not involved in personal cases, preferring to lecture Wall Street executives on how to maximise their income and personal happiness. In Glasgow, rapper Darren just tries to survive and stray off drugs. Rochelle, who lives in Newcastle, works as a carer. On workdays, she only sees her two kids when she wakes them and puts them to bed at night. Somehow she has managed to accumulate a debt of £4000, but her main concern is that her work is underappreciated by society as a whole.

A high income does not guarantee happiness; quite the reverse: Jen in California is living in a ‘dream house’ in a gated community near a golf course. Her neighbours don’t talk to her, she is simply not “one of them”; not surprisingly because she mocks their expensive golf-carts which cost $20000 dollars a pop. Janet, a Walmart employee in Louisiana, is comparing her shop assistant income with that of the shareholders, the ratio being about 1:1000. And Leah, working in a KFC outlet in Richmond, Virginia, feels so stressed out that her customers worry about her health.

Globalisation and deregulation, together with a great shift in power towards employers, are the main factors which have changed the political scene in the UK and US, since Thatcher and Reagan came to power in1979/80. But they were only the trailblazers; whoever followed them since the late ’80s, has slowly built up social divisions which followed the economic ones, so changing the way we live: from mental and physical health to increasing violence and addictions. – these drastic changes for the worse, underpin the lack of cohesion in a society where, in the USA, the 0.1% of the population owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

Another factor is the ‘squeezing’ of the middle classes, where the need to keep up appearances and support children, who return to live at home after university, have led to families taking on enormous debts. But in the UK it is more punative than ever for the small business to take on new staff, such are the regulations in place.

Round has tried a lyrical and sometimes even poetic approach aiming for humanity in her doc, which was crowd-funded on a low budget. DoP Woody James’ strength are the intense close-ups and panoramic shots of the environment but the indie feel, keeps it real. Overall, The Divide is a serious contribution to the inequality debate, but fails to set out a blueprint for real change. It seems there will always be the rich and the poor and that will never change. AS

THE DIVIDE is in cinemas from 22 April and nationwide on 31st May http://thedividedocumentary.com/

Miles Ahead (2015) | Berlinale 2016

Director: Don Cheadle | Writers: Don Cheadle, Steven Baigelman

Cast: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michael Stuhlbarg, Keith Stanfield

100min | Music Biopic |US

Actor Don Cheadle makes his debut as director of this biopic in which he also stars as 20th century jazz supremo Miles Davis (1926-1991) exploring his lost years during the late Seventies

Cheadle plays it close up and intimate, capturing the mercurial nature of the trumpeter but sadly
his music hardly features at all, instead his co star Ewan McGregor shares most the screen time as a music hack, Dave Braden – purportedly from Rolling Stone magazine – who has been sent to report on the musician’s putative comeback: “If you’re gonna tell a story, man, come with some attitude,” Davis advises him in an early show of feisty bravado. “Don’t be all corny with this shit.”

In the event, Cheadle’s narrative is so freewheeling that it mostly feels unsatisfying in a doc that gives the audience scattergun snatches of music but no full numbers. MILES AHEAD is largely composed of outbursts, memories, flashbacks, and smoke-fuelled musings on Davis’ life. Devotees of jazz or and the celebrated auteur will be disappointed if they are expecting a musical biopic, and if you are hoping for an introduction to his music – look elsewhere.

Co-scripted by Steven Baigelman, who also worked on the James Brown 2014 biopic, Get On Up. Cheadle does succeed in evoking the free-spirited and reclusive nature of a man who preferred to call his music ‘social’ rather than ‘jazz’.  The soulfully-eyed Cheadle also has the wiry frame and sinuous elegance that fits the part.

During the second half of the Seventies, Miles Davis took a break from the limelight due to chronic pain from a hip injury and this is where Cheadle opens his narrative. Apparently there is a hidden session tape that has fallen into the hands of a music producer Harper Hamilton (Michael Stuhlbarg) and the storyline follows Davis’ attempts to recover it. Braden befriends him through the medium of some top drawer cocaine  (supplied by a wealthy student fan (Austin Lyon), and this section explores the greed and opportunistic nature of the record business with the finger particularly pointed at Columbia Records. In flashback the film also revisits Davis’ worldwind love affair and marriage (in the late sixties) to celebrated dancer Frances Taylor – a knockout performance from Emayatzy Corinealdi – and these emotional interludes give the film its best moments cinematically and some much need dramatic heft, as the couple fall madly in love. Cheadle also portrays the unravelling of their relationship (due to his infidelity, drugs and violence) with a piercing poignance.

Music-wise there are excerpts from Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue played during smoky recording sessions where Davis sports some dapper designs in a vibrant retro palette betokening the respective era. There is a vignette involving a young jazz trumpeter Junior (Lakeith Lee Stanfield), a brilliant young jazz trumpeter whom Harper is cultivating – this may actually be a clever technique for introducing Davis himself as a young man.

All it all, this impressionistic jumble of snatches from Miles Davis’ reclusive period and earlier life captures a maverick man whose musical talent was evident and enduring despite his debilitating illness and drug abuse. Clearly too, Miles Davis’ musical career deserves more extensive treatment but that’s another film. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 22 April 2016

The Sweeney: Paris | Antigang (2015)

Dir.: Benjamin Rocher; Cast: Jean Reno, Caterina Murino, Thierry Neuvic

92 min | Action Drama | France 2015, 92 min.

Not even Jean Reno can save Antigang – a straight remake of the The Sweeney, a British film made in 2012, starring Ray Winstone – which was itself based on the popular ITV Series of the same name from 70s. Benjamin Rocher (Goal of the Dead) fails to come up with a semi-macho plot on his own so his ‘scriptwriters’ dived deep enough into the bargain basement of violent back titles to give him an excuse to show off this brainless joyride. Led by Reno as Serge Buren, this gang of Parisian cops enjoy violence at least as much as their law-breaking counterparts. Widescreen images by DoP Jean-François Hensgens are the staple feed of commercials and when you think it can’t get worse – one of Buren’s side kicks, whose partner is expecting a child, is asked what he will call the baby: “Serge, it’s a nice name for a girl too”. Yup – let’s hear it for the boys! AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

Eye in the Sky (2015)

Director: Gavid Hood   Writer: Guy Hibbert

Cast: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Jeremy Northam

102 min | Thriller | UK

Aaron Paul is a drone pilot who balks at pulling the trigger for Helen Mirren in Gavin Hood’s new film.

Before you dismiss EYE IN THE SKY as just another film about terrorism, think again. Gavin Hood’s gripping imagined drama is a tightly-plotted moral maze that places us right in the heart of the decision-making process with a front row seat.

In this Drone Drama, you will share and sympathise with army chiefs and governments ministers, the decision-making red tape that has to be gone through, laboriously and stringently, before anyone can pull a single trigger. The War on Terror is a now worldwide issue but here the anxiety here is distilled into a the sweaty confines of a tiny boardroom where the ‘powers that be’ debate and clash over matters of life and death under pressure and with nerves of steel, making sure that their own backs are covered in the chain of responsibility. Hood shows us the man at the coalface who feels his responsibility to his target just as keenly as a soldier confronting a civilian face to face – on the streets or battlefield.

But where Hood’s thriller falls down is in imagining that so many major minds would be involved in the life of one single person – and that Government ministers and trained soldiers could be driven to tears over such a decision. That said, Guy Hibbert’s script feels plausible and persuasive: in a Whitehall Cabinet office senior officials are summoned by Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in a masterful final role) to curtail the activities of “most wanted” set of terrorist villains including a British woman allied to the Al-Shabaab militants in Nairobi. Meanwhile an American drone is gliding over the African village and sending information to British Colonel Katherine Powell (a steely Helen Mirren), who in turn is reporting back to the Cabinet and also liaising with her ground staff and local troops in the village locale. The order is sent out to capture but not to kill.

These highly-skilled ground operatives also have at their disposal tiny remote-controlled insect-shaped drones equipped with cameras that can fly into buildings and monitor the movements of their desired targets. As such they are sent in motion by these trained allies in ‘civvies’ nearby, to assist in the bombing of headquarters of the praying terrorists, who are plotting their ambush. Crucial also is the damage limitation required in such an exercise: the chances must be weighed up of a bomb causing collateral death and destruction. In particular, to a  little girl selling bread in the street outside the perpetrators hide-out. To humanise the little girl, we see her  sans hijab, with her parents in their home. When her mother has baked the bread, she is sent off with her camping table to sell her wares.

There are some terrific moments of tension where we root for the ground ally (Barkhad Abdi) and empathise with the ministers and Powell who is tasked with completing her vital mission. There is a deadly humour too to the board room buck-passing that shows how ultimately politicians always cover their backs before reacting; it is not doing the right thing that is important, but how it will be perceived in the newswire aftermath. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15 APRI 2016

 

Europa, Europa (1990) Mubi

Dir.: Agnieszka Holland | Cast: Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, Andre Wilms, Delphine Forest; Germany, France, Poland | 112 min | Drama | Germany France Poland

Polish director Agnieszka Holland follows her mentor Andrzej Wajda from Poland to France for this true story of Solomon Perel. Based on his memoirs, it focuses on his extraordinary escape from Nazis Germany and his successful time in the Hitler Youth.

Young Solomon (‘Solly’) (Hofschneider) loses his sister on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah at the Kristall Nacht Pogrom. After the family emigrates to Poland, Solomon flees with his brother to the USSR at the outbreak of the War, but the siblings are separated. In the USSR he fetches up in an orphanage falling in love with the attractive teacher Inna (Delphine Forest). After the Nazi army overruns his village, he burns his identity papers and calls himself Joseph Peters, claiming to be of German blood. The German soldiers take to him, and use him as a translator. In this capacity he helps to interrogate Yakov Dzhugashvilli, Stalin’s son. He witnesses the atrocities of the Germans against the Russian population, but has to stay quiet, since he is now the mascot of his division, under the nickname of ‘Jupp’ given by his protector Hauptmann Kellermann (Wilms). The soldiers deem that ‘Jupp’ should have a good education in Germany, where he joins the Hitler Youth Academy – but not before being seduced by a middle-aged Nazi functionary, Rosemary, who climaxes with an ecstatic “Heil Hitler”.

At the Elite School, ‘Jupp’ then falls for Leni, a member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädchen“ (the female equivalent of the Hitler Jugend). After a particularly vicious anti-Jewish outburst, Jupp abandons Leni, who soon falls pregnant by Jupp’s best friend Gerd. Leni’s mother, well aware that Jupp is Jewish, does not give him away. When the Russians occupy Germany, Jupp is saved by his brother Isaac, as the Russians (rightly) do not believe that a Jew could be a member of the Hitler Youth. Finally Solomon Perel emigrates to Palestine, where he does not have to hide his Jewish identity any more – he can be Solly again..

Jacek Petrycki’s visuals underline the epic narrative with long panning shots and panoramic views of the fighting scenes; the images often reminiscent of Soviet realism. Hofschneider is utterly believable as the naïve boy who has to fight throughout the whole film to keep his circumcised penis from view. Holland directs with great sensibility, struggling to control the rather sensationalist plot. This is not her fault: most feature films about the Holocaust are by nature melodramatic but this should never submerge the tragic events. Often unavoidably cliché-ridden, Europa Europa, is a good example of why – after Lanzman’s Shoah – feature films, how ever well meant, rarely offer new information on the crimes against humanity, and very often detract from the real events by unintended trivialisation. AS

NOW ON MUBI UK

A Woman Alone | Kobieta Samotna (1981) | Kinoteka 2021

Director: Agnieszka Holland  Writers: Agnieszka Holland, Maciej Karpinski | Cast: Maria Chwalibog, Boguslaw Linda, Pawel Witczak, Danuta Balicka-Satanowska | 92min | Drama | Poland

The gruelling life of a single mother is the subject of Agnieszka Holland’s humanist but harrowing slice of ’80s social realism. Irena (Maria Chwalibóg|Mother Joan of the Angels) shares her bed and bathwater with her little son Bob (Pawel Witczak) in a small rented room in Wroclaw. The landlord regularly switches off their electricity supply, babies cry endlessly next door and her job as a postal worker is physically overwhelming. To make matters worse, she is forced to care for and support her sick and mean-fisted aunt who lives nearby. So much for communism.

Intimate in scale but far-reaching in its implications, this heartbreaking domestic drama touchingly depicts the close ties of family and the devoutness of religious feelings in a small community; but above all the hopeless desperation of a woman who has no joy, warmth or affection in a miserable existence where she feels neither respected nor valued. The stress of her meaningless life eventually leads her to the town hall where she makes an emotional appeal for better conditions and housing, but is sent packing by the authorities.

Agnieszka Holland shot this sharply critical feature on a hand-held camera shortly before making Angry Harvest. As a woman she is able to empathise with the female need to express feelings of alienation and loneliness in a world where outside emotional demands submerge her central character’s wellbeing.  Holland ellicits a poignantly discrete performance from Maria Chwalibóg, who shows how the interest and support of a masculine presence allows her eventually to tolerate her situation and care for her dependents. This support comes in the shape of a disabled younger man, Jacek. Although she is not attracted physically to Jacek (an unglamorous but award-winning role played sensitively here by Boguslaw Linda), she befriends him, disarmed by his desperatation to show her love and just to be with her. The two develop a relationship of sorts that leads them to a brief moment of happiness until they realise tragically this is also a point of no return. MT

KINOTEKA 2021 

 

People With No Tomorrow (1921) | Ludzie bez jutra | Kinoteka 2016

Director: Aleksander Hertz   Writer: Stanislaw Jerzy Kozlowski

Cast: Józef Węgrzyn, Halina Bruczówna, Pavel Owerlio, Iza Kozlowska

Drama | Silent | Poland

On the morning of 1 July 1890 the acclaimed Polish actress Maria Wisnowska was found shot dead in her Warsaw apartment. Her killer was a Russian hussar seven years her junior named Alexander Barteniew, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years of hard labour and exile to Siberia. At the old Powazki cemetery in Warsaw a large monument in white marble was erected to Miss Wisnowska, and when Barteniew later returned destitute to the city he would reputedly be seen laying flowers and weeping over her monument before he eventually died in a Warsaw poorhouse in 1932.

The murder – and the revelations about Wisnowska’s love life that emerged during the trial that followed – were later fictionalised by, among others, Ivan Bunin in his 1925 novella The Case of Lieutenant Yelagin, Stanislaw Antoni Wotowski in Maria in the Bonds of a Tragic Love Affair (1928) and by Wladyslaw Terlecki as A Black Romance (1974). Inevitably there was also a film version: Ludzie bez jutra – the title of which translates literally as People With No Tomorrow – subtitled A Tragedy in Five Acts.

The film was directed by Aleksander Hertz (1879-1928), an important figure in Polish silent cinema who has been described as ‘the father of the Polish Film” and whose name appears in reference books and all the histories but whose films – along with Polish silent films in general – are as rare as total eclipses. People With No Future largely dropped out of film history along with most of Hertz’s other films until an incomplete tinted print was discovered in Germany’s Bundesarchiv in 2003; to be unveiled in Warsaw last December and in London, with a live musical accompaniment, at the Regent Street Cinema as part of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2016.

IMG_2167Although completed in 1919, the sensitive subject of a notorious and destructive relationship between a Russian soldier and a famous Polish woman (their two countries were actually at war between February 1919 and March 1921), resulted in two years of censorship delays, including changes to the title (it was also known as At the Time of the Czars and as The Barteniew Affair) and to the names of the central characters. The premiere was postponed twice before it eventually opened in November 1921 when, not surprisingly, it proved popular. The still reproduced here of actors Józef Węgrzyn and Iza Kozlowska as Barteniew and his fiancée contemplating Wisnowska’s monument, is possibly a publicity picture – and certainly didn’t appear in the print shown at Regent Street – but shows that the film was originally overtly about Wisnowska. In the film as it now exists, the two ill-fated leads are now named Lola Wirska and Alfred Runicz, but the film is vague about the period (it seems to be set before the Russian revolution, but a document is seen bearing the date 1919) – and the surviving version screened at Regent Street ends very abruptly!

Viewed after an absence of nearly a hundred years, People With No Tomorrow plays as a plush, very attractively tinted, if rather stilted soap opera in which Halina Bruczówna as diva Lola Wirska sashays through various elegant interiors – and some handsome contemporary Warsaw locations – in a variety of outfits that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Dallas. Wicked Lola doesn’t let the fact that she already has a fiancé interfere with her “weakness for jewelry” lavished upon her by the various male admirers in her wake, whose ranks are swelled by the dashingly-uniformed but unstable Alfred, who also has a fiancée. Alfred in this version of events spends a lot of his time kissing the hand of the object of his obsession but seldom seems to get much further, and after he is challenged to a duel by Lola’s indignant fiancé, his descent is swift. The film throws in a female Iago in the form of Helena Sulima as rival diva Helena Horska (probably based on Wisnowska’s real-life rival Jadwiga Czaki) whose intriguing against Wirska includes engineering the compromising letter that seals her doom. RICHARD CHATTEN.

KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL 7 – 28 APRIL 2016

Mojave (2015)

Director: William Monahan

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Garrett Headlund, Walton Goggins, Mark Wahlberg, Dania Ramirez

93min  Thriller  US

Disenchanted with his charmed life, a Hollywood hipster heads out to the desert where he meets a dangerous drifter with nothing to lose but everything to gain by following him back to his existence home home.

Director and Oscar-winning scripter William Monahan’s noirish thriller occasionally feels rather forced and artificial but his clever casting of Garrett Hedlund and Oscar Isaacs ensures an entertaining ride through contemporary California urging us to contemplate the meaning of fame, love and the ties that bind and asking the question: “When you get what you want, want do you want?”

MOJAVE‘s premise is actually very solid and even a noble one: the world of stardom is full of narcissistic types who can turn extremely dangerous if they don’t get the fame they think they deserve and this kind of twisted psychology runs rife in the concentrated toxicity of Hollywood’s starry Hills. Garrett Hedlund plays Tom, tells us in the opening scene how he’s “been famous since he was 19”. But in his early thirties, this facile success has left him empty and deluded: his English wife and daughter have abandoned him with his part-time lover (Louise Bourgoin) in a bijoux villa with infinity pool, and he is bored with the present and truculent about the future. Casting off to the Mojave desert in his jeep, in the hope of shaking off this ennui, he comes across a well-kemp wayfarer whom success has clearly deluded but whose articulate if embittered patter (“I’m into motiveless malignity”) indicates he’s no fool.

But things turn nasty as Tom immediately spots his alter ego, and after a brutal scuffle Tom takes Jack’s gun and finds refuge in a cave from whence he shoots and kills a federal officer mistaking him for Jack in the half-light of dawn. Tom then destroys the stolen gun and heads back to Los Angeles.  But Jack follows him back and after killing a gay guy who tries to pick him up, he uses his house for a base from which to stalk Tom, as he re-invents himself with a new look. Essentially a two-hander, support comes from Walton Goggins in an campy cameo as his agent and Mark Wahlberg as  his stroppy and petulant producer/partner.

Chocful of witticisms and literary allusions, Monahan’s script makes this desert duo slick and entertaining – but in a way that feels rather overplayed and pleased with itself. Clearly these two are easy on the eye and amusing to be around but Wahlberg’s turn just doesn’t work and is something he will regret in retrospect. These are people we don’t care tuppence for and so the denouement evokes little reaction other than reminding us that Hollywood and Los Angleles are places that echo loudly with an emotional and spiritual void.

Ultimately MOJAVE is a well-paced thriller: over-talky but always entertaining, Oscar Isaacs does his best at being a nasty psychopath but previous roles in A Most Dangerous Year and even The Two Faces of January have suited his talents better. Hedlund’s role is rather one-dimensional, but he plays that dimension very successfully and is mesmerising in each scene. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM MARCH 25 2016

Noble (2014)

Dir.: Stephen Bradley

Cast: Deirdre O’Kane, Sarah Greene, Nhu Quynh Nguyen, Gloria Cramer Curtis

100 min.| Drama

Irish humanist and aid-worker Christina Noble founded children orphanages for more than 700 000 victims of war in Vietnam. Writer/director Stephen Bradley’s tribute to her efforts is worthy in tone, but hampered by a clumsy script and an unconvincing realisation. It doesn’t do any justice to an extraordinary woman.

Told in linear narrative form, Bradley reveals how Christina Noble (an ebullient Cramer Curtis) loses her mother when she is ten. Her father, an alcoholic, neglects the family and the children are separated and put into orphanages where they have to work. During the late fifties, teenage Christina (Greene) is living rough in Dublin and is gang-raped. A Catholic, she is tricked into giving her baby away in the local home. Moving to Birmingham with a friend, she marries Mario, a Greek Cypriot bar owner. They have three children, but Mario is unfaithful and beats Christina up. Forced to leave and bring up her children alone. Having had ‘visions’ about Vietnam in Birmingham, she travels there as a middle-aged woman (O’Kane), and with the help of Madame Linh (Nguyen), starts to lay the foundations for her orphanages, after meeting two young, abandoned girls in the street.

It is understandable why Bradley chose to do this biopic of Noble; her life story literally cries out to be filmed. But Bradley’s schematic structure accumulates all the clichés possible during its three sections, which lack any continuity, making it difficult for the audience to appreciate fully the extent of Noble’s heroism. There are some attempts at humour: we see Noble talking to God in an very argumentative way, and attempting to imitate her own heroine Doris Day. DOP Trevor Forrest’s visual are uninspired, particularly in Vietnam, where he oscillates between postcard idyll and shocking realism. Overall, this is a simplistic hagiography, leaving the audience often un-engaged, in spite of the emotional input by the three actresses portraying Christina in the three stages of her life. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE from 12 FEBRUARY 2016

Legend (2015) | Netflix

Dir: Brian Helgeland | Cast: Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, Taron Egerton, Paul Bettany, Aneurin Barnard, Colin Morgan, David Thewlis | Biography | Crime | Thriller | US

As Reggie Kray, Tom Hardy essays the classic bad boy rise and fall narrative of genre familiarity. As Ronnie Kray, Hardy bears an uncanny resemblance to Patrick Marber. Unfortunately the filmmakers didn’t have the foresight to get Marber to do a rewrite of the screenplay.

Real life is messy, though arguably more dramatic. Working Title, who excel in chocolate box exports of the Union Jack, truncate and clean up the timeline of the brothers, and Reggie’s relationship with Frances, to a neat conventional structure, taking liberties with documented facts for the sake of a reductive and restorative three act structure.

Narrated from beyond the grave by Frances, as a sort of cockney sparrow cousin of Bridget Jones, all with a garish sense of retro-knowingness and provincial cool and a script full of some real exclamatory corkers “It was time for the Krays to enter gangster legend”. Its soundtrack, a wholly predictable mix of Green Onions, In the Mood and Hermans Hermits, literally illustrating, for those opening weekend punters who can’t be bothered, the wedding scene with Chapel of Love, the relationship turning sour with Helen Sharpiros Lonely Last Night, and her suicide with Make The World Go Away (a new version by Duffy, who may be the only authentic thing in the film).

No subtlety is allowed here. Ronnie’s schizophrenia is too complex for the flat white mainstream to handle, so instead they ramp up his madness way past 11, an absurdist idiot savant pitched somewhere between Tommy Cooper and Derek & Clive, complete with liberal and comedic use of the c-word. Spanking a Y-fronted young teen with a carpet beater, his sexuality is also far too abstruse a subject for its audience – better to grab some laughs with carry on up the camping instead. “Barbara Windsor was in here the other night”, Reggie tells Frances, as he seduces her with the nightlife. And at a Hackney orgy, John Sessions, as Lord Boothboy the perverted peer, enquires of a young lad “Do you like it down the hatch?”

Chazz Palminteri, a proper American actor who has played proper American gangsters with Robert DeNiro and Woody Allen, is brought in to please the studio and as an attempt to give weight to two brief cameo scenes of wretched expositional dialogue, apparently as Sicilian Mafioso Angelo Bruno, who comes out with clunkers such “London is going to be the Las Vegas of Europe”, then warning Reggie that Ronnie’s a loose cannon and “we need you to do something about Ron”, leading to Hardy’s very EastEnd reply “I can’t do that – he’s my bruvva”. Dum, dum, dum…

The Krays (1990) an earlier film with the Spandau brothers Kemp, a Buñuelian masterpiece by comparison, dealt largely with their mother Violet, played by Bille Whitelaw, and her unconditional love of her little monsters. Violet gets little screen time here, save for a scene where she berates Frances for making a bad cup of tea. Instead, Tara Fitzgerald is lumped with the thankless mother in law role. Elsewhere, other facts are inexplicably sexed up into bad movie scenes – Jack the Hat McVitie is shown having a doorstep scuffle with the accountant (David Thewlis) in a botched attempt to kill him – in reality his wife answered and said that he wasn’t in, so McVitie just pocketed the money and went home. Further licences are taken with scenes that are so dramatically convenient its laughable to believe they happened like that.

LEGEND, beyond the gimmick of Hardy’s doubletake, and though he does have some tender moments as Reggie, is nonetheless a simplistic 4th form Jekyll and Hyde sketch, with the soap opera plotline of a man, an alpha male, trying and failing to be saved to the straight and narrow by the love of a good little dolly bird, who he ultimately destroys, and who in turn inevitably destroys him. Apparently no CGI was utilised, instead using stand-ins and old fashioned angles for Hardy’s dual role, though one would have thought the 30 million budget would have afforded the blurring out of double glazing in Stoke Newington’s Cedar Court. @Robert Chilcott

LEGEND IS NOW ON NETFLIX

Everest (2015) Prime

Dir: Baltazar Kormákur | Cast: Jake Gyllenhall, Emily Watson, Josh Brolin, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, Keira Knightley | 121min  Action thriller

Icelandic director Baltazar Kormakur attempts to scale the highest peak but doesn’t quite reach Nirvana here in a thriller based on real events (always a tricky premise when those affected are still alive). Everest wraps a series of lukewarm love stories in the grip of an icy disaster movie, based on an attempt to scale Mount Everest in 1996. For once the 3D format actually brings to life the vertiginous peaks, hellish chasms and lofty mountain scenery of Nepal but somehow the human elements are less impressive.

The action shifts between a group of gung-ho mountaineers bent on proving themselves, leaving their disappointed partners back home trying to grapple with real life. And although Kormakur spends a long time at basecamp building rapport with his characters, none stands out with a personality to make us care if they succeed or fail. Jake Gyllenhaal is billed as the star of this ‘epic’ drama but is cast as a neanderthal nice-guy so cool he ends up frigid, quite literally. Josh Brolin starts out fighting fit but will limp back to his Texan roost where his wife (Robin Wright) is the one really wearing the trousers. Keira Knightley is there with her signature grimace and a bump to keep her grounded, while her on screen partner Jason Clarke gets to lead the expedition (as Rob Hall) in a ridiculously patterned romper suit. In a bizarre twist, there are no heroes but plenty of fall-guys – in the true sense of the word.

Ostensibly, climbing is now a commercial exercise, and there are plenty of organisations in the Himalayas making money out of their punters’ desires and dreams: And we’re talking big money to the tune of $65,000 a pop. Clearly there are risks as well as rewards and the former outweighs the latter. Rob is responsible for ensuring he delivers – not only for the clients but also for his bosses: As Emma Watson’s stolid base-camp administrator Helen (who job is to be the lynchpin) points out: “it’ll be bad if we don’t get any climbers to the summit again this year”.

As an experienced mountaineer, Rob is the consummate professional. Despite his unwise sartorial choices, you feel safe with him but spooked out by his climbing advice: “Human beings aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747.” The other clients in the group are Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) a part-time postman, and Yasuko (Naoko Mori), the token woman. And to give the expedition glowing press coverage there is well-known journalist Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly, who also features in Amy Berg’s Prophet’s Prey) who went on to write about the ill-fated expedition.

Jake Gyllenhaal is oddly cast as Scott Fischer, a laid back guru leading a competing team, who ends up drifting off into the snowy outback as an also-ran. A perfect storm is to alter the course of their odyssey with unsurprisingly tragic results that make for some gripping viewing, and Kormakur doesn’t disappoint in icy ground already covered in  Kevin Macdonald’s 2003 documentary Touching The Void. The ascent is always easier than the descent where summits are concerned: the euphoria at reaching the summit leads to slackness in safety procedures and mistakes are inevitable on the way down A fatal flaw in the timing of Rob and Doug’s descent leads to tragedy – but whether this is due to human error or just an Act of God with the ‘mountain making it’s own weather’ is never determined.

Everest is an entertaining watch but its human backstory is as disappointing as that of Kormakur’s previous outing The Deep that loses its way in slushy characterisation so as not to upset the real people affected. Go for the terrific view. MT

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME | TOUCHING THE VOID is on MUBI

 

Trapeze (1956)

12240110_1491485151181618_4247650772421919146_nDir.: Carol Reed

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Gina Lollobrigida, Katy Jurado;

USA 1956, 105 min.

Based on the novel The Killing Frost by Max Catto, TRAPEZE is one of Carol Reed’s meeker films although the scene direction is highly sophisticated and saw his re-uniting with his DOP of The Third Man, Robert Krasker. The circus romance was very much pulp material to start with, and has aged quite badly, into the bargain.

Trapeze artist Mike Ribble (Lancaster), who was one of only six men who completed the triple Salto, has been crippled since a fall, and works at the Circus Bouglione in Paris as a tent rigger. Enter the young American Tino Orsini (Curtis), who tries to talk Ribble into teaching him to do the famous triple. After Ribble agrees, getting himself fit to be part of the act, the trampoline artist Lola (Lollobrigida) is pushed to join the trapeze act by the owner of the circus, even though she is not very talented. Lola seems to fall for Tino, but it turns out, that she really loves Mike. This leads to a split between Mike and Tino, which threatens the lives of the trio whilst they train for Tino to perform the triple.

Beautifully shot in the famous Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, TRAPEZE‘s storyline is pure Mills & Boon. When Lola tells Mike that she loves him, but does not want to hurt Tino’s Ego, it raises some involuntarily laughter. Improbability rules, and the acting – apart from Lancaster, who, as a former circus artist, did most of the stunts himself -, is rather over-the-top. That said, Gina Lollobrigida is seductive and skillful, stealing many of the scenes from her co-stars who were at the top of their game.  Whilst a success at the box office, TRAPEZE‘s artistic merits are sadly lacking: you would never guess that TRAPEZE and The Third Man shared the the same director. AS

SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN IN CELEBRATION OF THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL | JANUARY 2016 

Grandma (2015)

Dir. Paul Weitz

Cast: Lili Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Sam Elliott

USA 2015, 79 min.

Serious themes of abortion and lesbianism are tossed around playfully in this derivative Hollywood Screwball comedy. Paul Weitz (ABOUT A BOY)  trivialises a family’s conflicts, falling far short of Hawks or Cukor.

Elle (Tomlin), college lecturer and poet, has just split up with her much younger girlfriend Olivia (Greer), on the rebound from her longterm partner, Violet, who has recently died. Blaming Olivia (unjustly) for the split, Elle is in a foul mood, when her grand daughter Sage (Garner) appears in her flat, wanting money for an abortion. Elle, having just cut up all her credit cards, using the snippets for a creative mobile, tries in vain to borrow money from Karl (Elliott), an ex-boyfriend; the two women trying to avoid to involving Sage’s mum, the straightforward business executive Judy (Harden), who lives exclusively in the real world, and is equally exasperated by her ‘fly by night’ daughter and mother.

GRANDMA is a vehicle for Lili Tomlin to show off her considerable acting skills. Dominating the film, the cast are merely punchbags for her anger. There are some impressive scenes, like the one in front of the abortion clinic, where a vicious Pro-life lobbyist uses a little girl to argue her point; but mainly it is all about the frustrated Elle, having failed as a poet and is now lonely in old age. Worst of all is Weitz’ banal approach in trying to milk really serious situations for cheap laughter. Whilst Tomlin has a field day, the same cannot be said for the audience. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

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Goya – Visions of Flesh and Blood (2015)

Director: David Bickerstaff | Producer: Phil Grabsky

Biopic | Documentary |

Francisco Goya is Spain’s most celebrated artist and often considered one of the leading protogonists of the modern art movement; his piercing psychological insight seen in his portraits of Spain’s leading figures during a time of great turbulence for Europe at the crossroads of the 19th Century.

In this feature-length documentary based on the major exhibition GOYA: THE PORTRAITS at London’s National Gallery, the film builds a compelling portrait of the artist’s 80 year life offering critical appraisal from experts and contemporary artist, illuminating behind the scenes footage, masterpieces from international collections and visits to the places where Goya lived and worked in Spain and France.

Once again regular collaborators, producer Phil Grabsky and director David Bickerstaff, offer an insightful and visually compelling arthouse piece with filmed excerpts provided by a professional actor in the part of Goya himself, to flesh out their straightforward documentary narrative, much as they did in their Van Gogh documentary.  Occasionally feeling like an Open University title with its largely didactic approach, GOYA: VISIONS OF FLESH AND BLOOD is nevertheless absorbing and highly watchable. The film uncovers Goya’s close friendships and dalliances showing him to be a brilliant observer of everyday life and of Spain’s troubled past, and a gifted portraitist and social commentator par excellence. Bickerstaff’s peerless camerawork compliments Goya’s brushwork and technique showing how his penchant for white lead oils could well have lead to his deafness in later life but also shows how the painter developed his talent, continually improving and honing his craft, taking the genre of portraiture to new heights of genius, despite times of great financial hardship. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 1 DECEMBER 2015 COURTESY OF EXHIBITIONONSCREEN and ARTSALLIANCE.COM

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Unbranded (2015)

Director: Phillip Baribeau

105mins | Documentary| US

Best described as a Western Documentary Phillip Paribeau’s UNBRANDED sees four young wannabe cowboys, fresh from college, follow their dream on a wild adventure along a 3,ooo mile backbone of the Mexico borders to Canada.

Their chosen method of transport is by mustang, just a folksy word for the wild horses (that were originally imported into the country 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadores) and whose cause the boys are promoting: Over 50,000 of the beasts are looking for adoptuion in holding facilities. Since 1971, the horses have been protected on the land and there is controversary as to whether they are over-breeding – as rangers claim, or are under threat. But under the AML guidelines (Appropriate Management Levels), the territory can only support 23,000 mustangs and there are currently over twice that amount, 60% are in Nevada alone, and therefore their existance is potentially untenable, aacording to so,e. Fortunately, the horses’ cause has been considerably enhanced by the doc winning the Audience Award at Hots Docs in Toronto.

Audiences may find the idea of a rites of passage journey exhilarating but occasionally the boys complain of boredom and resort to reading on horseback during their journey, ironically ‘Shades of Grey’ is the book of choice for one man – casting considerable doubt on his abilities to meditate and ruminate on greater things in this magnificent countryside of Utah, Montana, Oregon

Ben Masters leads the five month expedition through some of the most glorious scenery known to mankind and Dp  camerawork is simply stunning to behold offering unbridled footage of national parks such as the Yellowstone and the Glacier. But the major challenge comes from the mustangs themselves who are fiercely wild and independent and, most of the time, an unknown quantity offering plenty of dramatic tension in this entetaining and informative film, scored by a Sergio Leone style original soundtrack. But for those looking for fast-moving action sequences there may be some longeurs: this is more about quiet meditation and being at one with nature.

The story kicks up briefly for some 4th of July celebrations including a tradional rodeo and cut throats shaves all round for the boys, in Jackson. But Ben claims to be “glad to get out of there”  as they continue their journey. Donkeys join the group but there are also losses on the mustang front and eventually the trip proves tiring as food supplies start to offer poor variety on the nourishment front. “No matter how beautiful a country is, at some point it becomes a test of endurance,” and this particularly the problem when the troop have to take the long way round, in the case of private ground. And arguments break out as the tensions start to surface. But Ben Masters’ endeavour is ultimately about promoting the horses fight for survival so that every man and beast can successfully share the natural beauty and ressources of this spectacular part of the world.

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27 NOVEMBER 2015

 

 

China Craft| What to see this Winter | Film | Dance | Art | from China

London plays host to some of the most exciting Chinese art, dance and cinema, both from mainland China, and its edgy sister Taiwan. Here’s a selection of the best offerings for the Winter season. The common thread throughout is master-craftmanshp: a mind-numbing attention to detail that is intoxicatingly beautiful and unique in its creativity and inventiveness

IMG_3323AI WEI WEI until 13 December 2015 | RA London W1

Major artist and cultural phenomenon Ai Weiwei is known for his powerful, provocative and visionary works and is now one of China’s most influential artists and drawing international attention to the Chinese government’s limitations on individual freedom.

Ai became widely known in Britain after his sunflower seeds installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010 but the RA is now showcasing the first major exhibition in the UK, bridging over two decades of an extraordinary career highlighting Weiwei’s formal attention to detail and to realism, and the calculated whimsy of his creative vision.

Among his newest works are a number of large-scale installations, as well as works in mixed media from marble and steel to tea and glass. With typical boldness, the chosen works explore a multitude of challenging themes, drawing on his own experience to comment on creative freedom, censorship and human rights, as well as examining contemporary Chinese art and society. What emerges here is not only meticulous and mind-numbing attention to detail – Wei Wei’a art also require a dedicated troupe of highly skilled artisans in its painstaking execution. The centrepiece of utter brilliance is a series of limited addition chrysanthemums: delicately rendering in ice-blue, snow-white and shell pink. The refined exquisiteness of these ethereal baubles justifies their price tag of £14,000 per piece.

CHINA NATIONAL OPERA | SADLERS WELLS Theatre | until 22 November 2015

《杨门女将》朱虹饰穆桂英 copyThe hot ticket of the decade is CHINA PEKING OPERAs visit to the UK this November – The Peking Opera is a unique art form that requires the highest level of performing skill; demanding  lifelong dedication to practising its artistry. In this dance and musical extravaganza, each performer trains from a very tender age at opera school before being an apprentice and learning from the masters. With  spectacular costumes, face painting make-up and stunning stage craft, Peking Opera represents the essence of tradition Chinese values – achievements come through sweat and tears and resistance to material temptation. If there is an identity and unifying force for Chinese nationals, whether from the mainland, Taiwan or Hong Kong; it is the Peking Opera.

In FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (ticket details) Zhu Hong gives a unique performance as the lover of the Overlord of Chu, Xiang Yu, who is fighting to save the Qin Dynasty. Floating like an exotic flower, her role culminates in a magnificent sword dance that leaves her as composed as a water lily on a tranquil pond. This combination of controlled emotion and highly complex choreography, echoing Wuxia epics such as The Grandmaster and House of Flying Daggers, is what makes this spectacular an unforgettable experience.

The troupe also perform WARRIOR WOMEN OF YANG, a story set during the Song Dynasty (960AD-1279AD) when the Emperor of Mercy, General Yang Zongbao, leads the Song army against the Western Xia and is victorious thanks to his fierce and loyal female soldiers.

In the climate of a largely westernised China, there are still artists who are passionate about the traditional form of Chinese artistic heritage and devote their lives to preserving the century old form of art. It is a dream kept alive by the National Peking Opera Company who continue to pursuit their dream of keeping this ancient Chinese art form alive and sharing its beauty and stagecraft with the world.

Differing only slightly in costume and makeup, all traditional opera forms, including Peking opera, are, strictly speaking, “regional,” in that each is based on the music and dialect of a specific area. Peking opera assumed its present form about two hundred years ago in Beijing, then the capital of the Qing Dynasty, it is usually regarded as a national art form combining singing, dancing and martial arts. Peking opera is the most representative of all Chinese traditional dramatic art forms.

《杨门女将》探谷-4 copyThe music of Peking opera is mainly orchestral music and percussion instruments provide a strongly rhythmical accompaniment. The main percussion instruments are gongs and drums of various sizes and shapes. There are also clappers made of hardwood or bamboo. The main stringed instrument is jinghu (Beijing fiddle), supported by erhu (second fiddle). Plucked stringed instruments include yueqin (moonshaped mandolin), pipa (four-stringed lute) and xianzi (three-stringed lute). Occasionally, suona horn and Chinese flute are also used. The orchestra is led by a drummer, who uses bamboo sticks to create very powerful sounds — sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes strong and exciting, sometimes faint and sentimental — and bring out the emotions of the characters in coordination with the acting of the performers.

The vocal part of Peking opera is both spoken and sung. Spoken dialogue is divided into yunbai (recitative) and jingbai (Beijing colloquial speech), the former employed by serious characters and the latter by young females and clowns. The vocal music consists mainly of erhuang (adapted from folk tunes of Anhui and Hubei) and xipi (from Shaanxi tunes). In addition, Peking opera assimilates the tunes of the much older kunqu opera of the south and some folk arias popular in the north.

The character roles in Peking opera are finely and strictly differentiated into fixed types. Female roles are generally known as dan and male roles as sheng, but male clowns are known as chou. A chou, depicted by a patch of white on the face, is a humorous character. Male characters who are frank and open-minded but rough or those who are crafty and dangerous are known as jing or hualian (painted faces). Peking opera roles are further classified according to the age and personality of the characters. Each different role type has a style and rules of its own. What makes this “opera” unique, is this exotic combination of movement, dance, singing and music that makes it feel literally ‘out of this world’.

CHINESE CINEMA | THE ASSASSIN

ASSASSIN_THE_trees_green copy

Peking opera and its stylistic devices have appeared in many Chinese films. It often was used to signify a unique “Chineseness” in contrast to sense of culture being presented in Japanese films. Fei Mu, a director of the pre-Communist era, used Peking opera in a number of plays, sometimes within “Westernized”, realistic plots. King Hu, a later Chinese film director, used many of the formal norms of Peking opera in his films, such as the parallelism between music, voice, and gesture. In the 1993 film Farewell My Concubine, by Chen Kaige, Peking opera serves as the object of pursuit for the protagonists and a backdrop for their romance. Chen returned to the subject again in 2008 with the Mei Lanfang biopic FOREVER ENTHRALLED. Peking opera is also featured in Peking Opera Blues by Tsui Hark.

Three_Times_9 copyHou Hsiao-Hsien’s sumptuous films epitomise Chinese cinematic artistry and attention to detail. Fabulously meticulous both in execution and narrative, his award-winning dramas are amongst the most beautiful ever committed to celluloid. Born in Mei County, Guangdong province (China) in 1947, Hou and his family fled the Chinese Civil War to Taiwan the following year where he studied at the National Taiwan Academy of the Arts.

Internationally Hou is known for his austere and aesthetically rigorous dramas dealing with the upheavals of Taiwanese (and occasionally larger Chinese) history of the past century seen through the experience of individuals or small groups of characters. A City of Sadness (1989), features a family caught in conflict between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after the Second World War. Groundbreaking for tackling the controversial February 28 Incident and ensuing White Terror, the film became a major critical and commercial success, winning the Golden Lion at Venice in 1989, making it the first Taiwanese film to win the top prize at the oldest international film festival in the World.

hou1 copy copyHis narratives are elliptical and his style marked by extreme long takes with minimal camera movement but intricate choreography of actors and space within the frame. Hou uses extensive improvisation to arrive at the final shape of his scenes and the low-key, naturalistic acting of his performers. Famous for his rigorous austerity, a close collaboration with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bin since the 1990s has brought a sensual beauty to his to his imagery and this is at its most sublime in his most recent Wuxia outing THE ASSASSIN, which won him Best Director at Cannes this year (2015). Since the 1980s, Chu Tien-Wen has been his writing partner notably on Three Times (2005), The Assassin (2015) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998).  He has also cast revered puppeteer Li Tian-lu as an actor in several outings, including The Puppetmaster (1993), based on Li’s life.

THE ASSASSIN IS ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 22 JANUARY 2016

THE CHINA PEKING OPERA | COURTESY OF SINOLINKPRODUCTIONS.COM | SADLERS WELLS 19 -22 NOVEMBER 2015 

AI WEI WEI AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY LONDON W1 UNTIL JANUARY 2016 

 

South Social Film Festival | 12 -15 November 2015

SOUTH SOCIAL FILM FESTIVAL is a long weekend of indie film, food and music in South London venues. There’s an opportunity to enjoy some deliciously-themed food to match the independent film premieres before they go on general release in the UK.

The festival kicks off on Thursday November 12th at 7pm with the documentary HEARTS OF TANGO   that gets inside “tanguero’ fever hitting the streets of Toronto, and explores what makes this dance so addictively popular all over the world.

HEARTS OF TANGO 1P R O G R A M M E

Thursday November 12th at 19.00| HEARTS OF TANGO (2014) | live music from Tango specialist Javier Fioramonti | Dulwich Constitutional Club | Empanadas by CHANGO |

Friday November 13th at 19.00| W.A.K.A (2014) | live music from Jazz guitarist Muntu Valdo | Roxy Bar & Screen | Cameroonian style Buffet

Saturday November 14th at 14.30| FILOSOFI KOPI (2014) | Sumatran Coffee tastings from Volcano Coffee Works | PITCHIPOI (2014) at 17.00 | music from London Klezmer Quartet | FEAR OF WATER at 20.00|(2014) | all at Roxy Bar & Screen

Sunday November 15th at 15.30  |VIKTORIA (2015) | Roxy Bar & Screen | 18.30  PER AMOR VOSTRO (2015) | Italian Food by the Italian Institute and SAID Chocolate | Kennington’s Cinema Museum.

SOUTH SOCIAL FILM FESTIVAL | A NICHE FESTIVAL FOR CINEASTES AND FOODIES SOUTH OF THE RIVER

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By Our Selves (2015) | FID Marseilles | June 30 – July 6 2015

Director:  Andrew Kotting

Cast: Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair, Eden Kotting, Freddie Jones

UK  Experimental Drama

Experimental filmmaker Andrew Kötting is very interested in English journeys. Whether on foot or in a duck-shaped pedalo to Hackney – as in his previous outing, Swandown (2013) or on the coastal foray of his feature debut Gallivant (1996) – these gentle filmic wanderings unearth a stream of thoughts and memories that are nestling in the English countryside scattered by those that lived or worked there before he came, and waiting to add flourish and meaning to his own mysterious musings.

Before the 2012 Olympics, Kötting joined regular collaborator Iain Sinclair (in a Savile Row suit), for a wry and quintessentially English journey by pedalo on an expose of the thoughts of a private few. Taking inspiration from Sinclair’s psychogeographical work ‘Edge of the Orison’, BY OUR SELVES, sees the two together again in selvine seclusion, apart from a few close friends – a bewildered Toby Jones and his father Freddie, Kötting’s daughter Eden (as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz) and Kötting dressed as a straw bear –  as they trace the tortured yearnings of John Clare, a humble English poet who “went mad”, was committed to a mental asylum in Epping Forest and thence attempted to reunite with his last true love Mary Joyce, rather than with his actual wife who had sent him there. Based on Clare’s book ‘Journey Out of Essex’, and diosyncratic as ever, the troupe wander from the wayside to discover their own unique and deeply affecting impression of the woodland experiment.

BY OUR SELVES follows Toby Jones (Clare), as he meanders, slightly disorientated, through this mystical woodland, bear in tow and occasionally taking control until it finally takes the lead. Sinclair joins him in a ‘Wicker Man’ style mask, lending a slightly troubling tone to the piece as he reads from Clare’s poetry and engagers with those they stumble across on the way. Later the pair are joined by Simon Kovesi who opines on the poet’s work in greater detail, before engaging with Sinclair in a pugilistic punch-up, as passers-by occasionally follow on conversing in a desultory way.

It is a pleasingly English portrait of a fairytale woodland, exquisitely framed and captured in delicately rendered monochrome visuals by Nick Gordon Smith; often voyeuristically tripping over the shoulders of Jones or viewing him, gnome-like, from afar surrounded by the gentle carpet of casual countryside, with the blend of ambient sounds and songs that softly envelope them in an atmospheric bubble of downy black and white.

BY OUR SELVES was made on a shoestring budget, largely financed by kickstarter, and proves that with the right blend of experimental wizardry, perfectly pitched performances from the pros and some pizzazz, perfect pictures can give pleasure to the arthouse crowd. MT

BY OUR SELVES SCREENS DURING FID MARSEILLES 

The Tribe (Plemya) 2014 | Bfi player

Director/Writer: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy

Cast: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich

Ukraine Drama 132mins

How many single-take sex scenes in cinema today show the pair going at it in multiple positions over an appreciable amount of time? Answer: at least one—that being in Cannes prize-winner THE TRIBE (PLEMYA), the debut feature by palpably talented Ukrainian writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, who returns to Locarno Film Festival this year as a jury member overseeing its Pardo di domani competition, having won a prize at the festival in 2012 for his impressive mid-length film NUCLEAR WASTE.

Coming back to this sex scene though: teenagers Sergey (Grigory Fesenko) and Anya (Yana Novikova) make love on the cold, hard floor of a boiler room in the boarding school at which they both reside. It’s an unsentimental, rather passionless scene that ends with unexpected post-coital tenderness—Anya kissing Sergey with previously elusive sincerity—all the more so considering it begun with a monetary transaction. Why money? Because Sergey has for the first time just escorted Anya and her roommate Svetka (Rosa Babiy) to a nearby overnight parking lot for long-distance truck drivers, who routinely pay to have sex with the two teenagers. Witnessing the ease with which Anya accepts this scenario, Sergey fancies a go himself, and duly pays up.

There’s a twist. The whole scene, like the whole film, is dialogue-free: Sergey and Anya are both deaf mutes, attending a specialised school where new arrival Sergey has quickly fallen in with the wrong crowd—the same lot who, under the influence of their woodwork teacher (Alexander Panivan), mug innocent people for their booze and money at night, who illegally sell trashy souvenirs on local train services, and who are making money from Anya and Svetka’s exploits.

Exploits? Make that exploitation. THE TRIBE is all about the various strategies by which people are both impacting and impacted upon, how they adapt to and affect their social environment—whether through an organic chameleonism or something less subtle, such as intimidation and violence. Hierarchies are unavoidable. Upon arrival, Sergey’s lonely procession through the school canteen culminates in a pupil with Down Syndrome stealing his lunch, only for the head bully to spit on the burger and summon Sergey outside to take him under his wing. Soon after, Sergey must undergo an initiation, which entails him having to fight off his new friends—which he does so with surprising ease.

Communication goes entirely unsubtitled; to anyone unfamiliar with sign language, the literal content of the film’s many conversations will be a struggle. This is the point, of course: compare the aforementioned school canteen scene with similar examples in, say, Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003) to realise the voluminous texture and timbre given by a wildtrack naturally composed of an indiscriminate sea of vocal chords. Consequently, this is an intensely and interpretably visual film, effortlessly blending immobile establishing shots with elegant Steadicam movements to simultaneously echo the characters’ own sensorial limitations and subsequent negotiation of the world through other, heightened gestures. Working with cinematographer (and editor) Valentyn Vasyanovych, Slaboshpytskiy opts for long-takes and, frequently, wide compositions in order to allow his performers full expressive range.

Soundlessness begets ambiguity. Without the benefit of sonic cues, otherwise disturbing incidents have a deadpan absurdity. Sergey’s initiation sequence begins with its participants warming up with comical shadow sparring and daft shoulder-nudges, and the fight itself, unfolding without edits, has a kind of emotionally constipated choreography. It’s as if we’re watching, out of earshot, the dance floor at a silent disco. There’s even something morbidly funny in the harmless way in which an otherwise vicious attack on someone walking home with their groceries one evening is rendered like a cartoon—or in that scene when one character is run over by a slowly reversing lorry as he smokes a cigarette completely unable to hear it approaching.

Obviously, to feel morbid funniness in a scene is not to claim there is an easy, go-to emotional response to it. Dragged into such tonal registers, we ourselves are tricked. And, as THE TRIBE continues, its silences seem to become more protracted, its tracking shots more suggestive, its scenes grimmer and darker. It takes a certain sort of director to alternate between strangely sweet moments, such as that in which a creepy official shares his innocent holiday photos with two teens he’s presumably paying for sex, and scenes of unthinkable physical and mental stress—such as that horrible scene in which Anya pays for and endures a backstreet abortion.

Just as the consequences of the latter scene will take time to register for Anya, one realises with belated horror—and, yes, excitement—that the violent underpinnings of THE TRIBE’s earlier scenes were glaring clues all along, setting in motion a sequence of events that can only end in the most hilariously heinous way possible. ©MICHAEL PATTISON

THE TRIBE IS ON BfiPlayer | SUTHERLAND AWARD WINNER – LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Ealing Film Studios: A Retrospective

Man In The White Suit Britain’s best-loved, independent cinema organisation, EALING STUDIOS, produced a dazzling array of comedies and noirish dramas during the 1940s and 50s, adding a rich vein of provocative and subversive films to the British film canon, some of them surprisingly radical in their implications.

The Studios has a unique place in the history of British cinema and has become a byword for a certain type of British whimsy and eccentricity but it also pioneered the underdog spirit, producing some tough, cynical and challenging portraits of British life. During the War years, Ealing produced romantic features that roused the British public during the War effort and the studio’s films boasted a surprising variety of characters from all walks of life. Many of these now rank among the undisputed cult classics of British cinema, among them Dead of NightThe Blue LampThe Cruel SeaThe Man in the White Suit and Passport to Pimlico. There are many other worthwhile features that have been unseen or inaccessible for decades.

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY  (1947)  Set over a single 24-hour period in postwar Bethnal Green, Robert Hamer’s noir-ish thriller was Ealing Studios’ first popular success and it widely considered one of the greatest achievements of British Cinema of the last 1940s.

Ealing was presided over by Michael Balcon, a towering figure in British cinema who was an early supporter of Alfred Hitchcock. He gathered around him a band of talented collaborators including the very influential Braziilian Cavalcanti brothers and directors Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden and Alexander McKendrick.  Battling against competition and a certain hostility from the major studios of Rank and the American giant Hammer he successfully ran Ealing for more than 20 years.

Today Ealing Studios is the oldest working film studio in the world and the only British studio that produces and distributes feature films as well as providing facilities. It recently joined forces with leading film financier Prescience, co-formed in 2005 by Paul Brett and Tim Smith, to create the new one-stop international sales company ‘Ealing Metro’.  Prescience uniquely positions Ealing Metro as an international sales and distribution company that can deliver an integrated solution for filmmakers.  Through Prescience and its Aegis Film Fund, Ealing Metro works with independent producers to help develop and finance product so that, along with Ealing Studios’ own productions, it can market and sell a unique and growing slate in the international marketplace.

The theme of Ealing: Light & Dark is a rich and revealing one. Even the renowned comedies have a dark side within them: Kind Hearts and Coronets is a wittily immoral tale of a serial killer in pursuit of a dukedom; Whisky Galore! has a mischievous approach to law and order as a Scottish island population attempt to beat the Customs men to the free whisky washed ashore from a shipwreck.  

Part of the enduring appeal of Ealing is its witty challenging of authority in films such as Passport to Pimlico and The Lavender Hill Mob, which touched a nerve with audiences eager for social and political change faced with the austerity of the immediate post-war era.

Beyond the apparent frothy entertainment, Ealing’s darker side dares to show wartime failures, imagine the threat of invasion or to contemplate the unsavoury after-effects of the war in the subtly supernatural The Ship That Died of Shame or the European noir Cage of Gold, in which Jean Simmons is lured by the charms of an homme fatal. Another pan-European story, Secret People (featuring an early appearance for Audrey Hepburn), contemplates the ethics of assassination, while in Frieda, Mai Zetterling faces anti-German prejudice in a small English town.

The posters for Ealing Studios films feature artwork by many of the era’s greatest artists including John Piper, Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Edward Ardizzone and Mervyn Peake, while the acting talent is a roll-call of many of Britain’s greatest performers, among them Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford, Joan Greenwood, Dennis Price, Jean Simmons, Googie Withers, Michael Redgave, John Mills, Thora Hird, Diana Dors, James Fox, Virginia McKenna, Herbert Lom, Maggie Smith, Jack Warner, Alastair Sim, Will Hay and many more.

E A L I N G   F I L M   N O I R

NEXT OF KIN

UK 1942. Dir Thorold Dickinson. With Mervyn Johns, Guy Mas, Basil Radford,

Nova Pilbeam, Thora Hird. 102min

Ealing’s first major artistic triumph for the war effort, Next of Kin is a cautionary tale about careless talk and the scourge of fifth columnists at large in the UK. The film’s sober tone marked a change in war propaganda for Ealing, whose earlier blind celebration of military prowess gives way to an authentic depiction of the dangers and sacrifices faced by the wartime nation. Plus All Hands (UK 1941. Dir John Paddy Carstairs. 9min) a MoI short that warns of the dangers of careless talk in the navy.

WENT THE DAY WELL? UK 1942.

Dir Alberto Cavalcanti. With Leslie Banks, Basil Sydney, Frank Lawton, Elizabeth Allan. 93min. PG

In the middle of World War II  Cavalcanti provocatively imagined a postwar England in which the failure of the threatened German invasion could be safely seen in flashback, thanks to the resourceful villagers of Bramley End. Once the ostensibly British troops in their village are revealed as Nazis, and the local squire as a fifth columnist, the community unites and fights back with startling ferocity. A call to arms as persuasive as Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

DEAD OF NIGHT

UK 1945. Dir Alberto Cavalcanti. With Googie Withers, Mervyn Johns, Michael Ralph, Michael Redgrave. 102min

Straying from more familiar realist fare, Dead of Night was Ealing’s only venture into the horror genre. The film recounts five supernatural tales, held together by a linking story which itself has a creepy conclusion – a forerunner to the anthology films that flourished in the early 1970s. The film’s nightmarish world of haunted mirrors and ghostly hearses lingers long after the closing credits, with Michael Redgrave’s performance as a crazed ventriloquist proving particularly unsettling.

PINK STRING AND SEALING WAX

UK 1945. Dir Robert Hamer. With Googie Withers, Mervyn Johns, Gordon Jackson, Sally Ann Howes. 89min. PG

Two worlds collide in this melodrama set in Victorian Brighton: a repressive household, run by a tyrannical chemist, and a sleazy tavern, presided over by a passionate landlady. The chemist’s son (Jackson) finds himself, understandably enough, in thrall to the landlady (Withers). His naïve passion and rebellious feelings against his father lead him into a murder plot from which he barely escapes, prompting a very equivocal happy ending.

FRIEDA

UK 1947. Dir. Basil Dearden. With David Farrar, Glynis Johns, Mai Zetterling, Flor Robson. 98min. PG

Telling the story of a family trying to make sense of a postwar world, Frieda asks the question, ‘Does a good German exist?’ There isn’t one simple answer but many, represented by the varying reactions of the inhabitants of the English village of Denfield when a German refugee arrives as the wife of one of their war heroes. In her first British film, Zetterling portrays Frieda sympathetically but the film allows the audience to reach its own conclusion over her individual responsibility for the horrors of war.

SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS

UK 1948. Dir Basil Dearden. With Joan Greenwood, Stewart Granger, Peter Bull,Flora Robson. 96min. U

In this rare excursion for Ealing into historical drama, Bull and Greenwood are perfectly cast as the dissolute Prince George-Louis and his reluctant bride Sophie-Dorothea. Shooting in colour for the first time allowed the studio to give full rein to the period costumes and sets (the latter were nominated for an Oscar). The design provides an evocative backdrop to the princess’s tragic story. As her lover, Granger shows why he was soon poached by Hollywood, his stature and looks making him the perfect screen hero.

WHISKY GALORE!

UK 1949. With Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Wylie Watson, Bruce Seaton,

Gordon Jackson. 82min. PG

Mackendrick’s glorious debut was the second of the trio of 1949 films that defined Ealing Comedy. When the whisky-parched Todday islanders spy salvation in the form of a shipwreck and 50,000 contraband cases, first they must outwit the morally upstanding English home guard Captain Waggett. One in the eye for puritan English priggishness and a joyous salute to the transformative power of a ‘wee dram’ – or ‘the longest unsponsoredadvertisement ever to reach cinema screens the world over,’ as producer Monja Danischewsky put it.

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

UK 1949. Dir Robert Hamer. With Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood,

Valerie Hobson. 106min. U

Even Hitchcock couldn’t make murder this much fun. Hamer’s ageless classic challenges The Ladykillers for the title of Ealing’s blackest comedy (call it a score draw, though Kind Hearts has the higher body count). Near perfect script and direction are crowned by wondrous performances. History tends to remember Guinness’s virtuoso turn as all seven members of the lofty, aristocratic D’Ascoynes. But it’s really Price’s film: as the D’Ascoynes’ ruthless nemesis Louis he gives us surely the screen’s wittiest and most charming psychopath.

CAGE OF GOLD

UK 1950. Dir Basil Dearden. With Jean Simmons, David Farrer, James Donald,

Herbert Lom. 83min. PG

Simmons’s only film for Ealing is an unfairly neglected slice of Euro-noir, built upon the (apparently) un-Ealing foundations of passion, infidelity and blackmail. Simmons is a nice, middle-class girl with a nice, steady fiancé who is enticed to the dark side by the return of an old flame. The film flits between cosy suburbia and a vivid Parisian demi-monde, and if the conclusion inevitably opts for safety, the alternative is painted with relish, and Farrer, as ever, makes an appealing rogue.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT

UK 1951. Dir. Alexander McKendrick. With Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough,Ernest Thesiger. 85min. U

Mackendrick’s plague-on-all-your houses industrial satire may be the most cynical Ealing film of all. Guinness delivers his most complex comic performance as the unworldly genius Sidney, whose invention of an indestructible, dirt-proof fabric terrifies textile barons and trade unions alike. A parable of the inexorability of technological progress and the tyranny of vested interests – with some sly sexual politics thrown in – it’s as acerbic a piece of social commentary as ever escaped from Ealing.

SECRET PEOPLE

UK 1952. Dir Thorold Dickinson. With Valentina Cortese, Serge Reggiani, Charles

Goldner. 96min. PG

An untypical Ealing film, drawing on Dickinson’s own Spanish Civil War experiences. Maria (Cortese), orphaned in London, is a hesitant revolutionary enlisted by her lover to  assassinate her country’s fascist leader, the man responsible for her father’s death. Compelling and strikingly inventive, Secret People upset contemporary critics for its  apparent indecision, but today it seems an intriguing study of a moral dilemma, with engaging performances from its Italian leads and a notable early role for young Audrey Hepburn.

MANDY

UK 1952. With Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins, Terence Morgan, Mandy Miller,

Edward Chapman. 93min. PG

In this rare Ealing tearjerker, Calvert and Morgan play a couple who disagree about how best to help their deaf child; their relationship is strained further when they become pawns in a political situation at a special school. The story is presented largely from the female point of view and Calvert gives an exceptionally moving performance as the mother torn between her husband and her child. Mandy never succumbs to mawkishness, approaching the subject with sensitivity and reason.

THE CRUEL SEA

UK 1952. Dir Charles Frend. With Virginia McKenna, Stanley Baker. 126min

The ‘Battle of the Atlantic’, as experienced by the captain and first

lieutenant of an anti-submarine convoy escort. Based on Nicholas

Monsarrat’s novel, Ealing’s most popular war film celebrates the commitment and bravery of the British naval forces but isn’t afraid to engage with the harsh realities of combat. Jack Hawkins and Donald Sinden lend British grit to the military spectacle and claustrophobic tension, depicting those men shaped and permanently shadowed by the war.

THE MAGGIE

UK 1954. With Paul Douglas, Alex Mackenzie, Abe Barker, Tommy Kearins,

Hubert Gregg. 92min. U

An unsentimental counterpart to Ealing’s The Titfield Thunderbolt, with the latter’s vintage steam train crewed by high-spirited amateurs replaced by a ramshackle ‘puffer’ boat and its gnarly old skipper. The devious MacTaggart cheats his way to the commission to transport a US businessman’s cargo – the first in a series of indignities heaped on his hapless client. The Maggie pits wealth and modernity against heritage and intransigence in a gleeful subversion of Ealing’s ‘small versus big’ convention.

THE SHIP THAT DIED OF SHAME

UK 1955. Dir Basil Dearden. With George Baker, Richard Attenborough, Bill Owen,

Virginia McKenna. 95min

Director Basil Dearden combines sharp thrills with loose social commentary in this tale of Motor Gun Boat 1087 and her once-celebrated officers now turned smugglers. Ealing’s occasional engagement with the supernatural and nostalgia for the war is spun into one of the studio’s darkest and best final films. Richard Attenborough is on form as a crooked chancer making the best out of the bleak social realities of postwar Britain.

 NOWWHERE TO GO

UK 1958. Dir Seth Holt. With George Nader, Maggie Smith, Bernard Lee, Bessie

Love. 97min. U

A rare, late excursion into noir for Ealing Studios, scripted by first-time director Holt and critic Ken Tynan. A good-looking ex-con (Nader) coolly robs an old lady of her coin collection, anticipating prison, but also the later recovery of the proceeds. Nothing proves that simple and he discovers the truth of the film’s title. Stylish low-key cinematography, a jazz score and Maggie Smith’s debut performance add to the pleasure.

EALING DRAMAS 

THERE AIN’T NO JUSTICE

UK 1939. Dir Penrose Tennyson. With James Hanley, Edward Rigby, Edward Chapman, Mary Clare. 81 min

An aspiring boxer hopes to transcend humble origins and build a name for himself, but comes up against the corruption of the sporting establishment. ‘The film that begs to differ’, announced the publicity for this first film by Ealing’s youngest director, the gifted 25-year-old Pen Tennyson, great-grandson of Lord Alfred. It’s a striking departure from the shallow representation of working-class life in 1930s British films, and the first film to set out recognisably Ealing values: decency, courage and an optimistic faith in humanity and community.

CHEER BOYS CHEER

UK 1939. Dir Walter Forde. With Edmund Gwenn, Peter Coke, Nova  Pilbeam,  84 min.

An ‘Ealing comedy’ before its time? Venerable family brewery Greenleaf finds itself under threat from monopolistic industry titan Ironside. But with an unlikely ally in Ironside’s lovelorn scion, plucky little Greenleaf mounts a courageous fightback. Predating Passport to Pimlico and its comic cohort by a decade, this half-forgotten film was an almost uncanny premonition of Ealing delights to come, in its evocation of community, gently progressive values and ‘small v. big’ dynamic. A missing link in the Ealing story, then, but thanks to comedy veteran Forde, a joyous one.

THE BELLS GO DOWN

UK 1943. Dir Basil Dearden. With Philip Friend, Tommy Trinder, James Mason, Mervyn Johns. 90 min.

“In the East End they say London isn’t a town, it’s a group of villages,” begins Dearden’s tribute to the intrepid firefighters confronting the Luftwaffe’s nightly raids. Village London is a very Ealing conception: the vast, anonymous city reduced to a more human scale. But The Bells Go Down is no mere sentimental homily. Its community has its share of divisions, petty squabbles and criminality, but these fade in the face of a common enemy and the stoic endurance of routine tragedy. An inspiring companion piece to Humphrey Jennings’ Fires Were Started.

SAN DEMETRIO LONDON

UK 1943. Dir Charles Frend. With Ralph Michael, Walter Fitzgerald, Robert Beatty, Gordon Jackson. 104 min.

In 1940 the oil tanker San Demetrio, half torn apart by U-boat torpedoes but still somehow afloat, was valiantly rescued by a handful of its crew and steered home through treacherous Atlantic waters. Frend’s admirable second feature takes a true story of wartime heroism and, without sensationalism or triumphalism, shapes it into something approaching national myth (the damaged but defiant ship stands for Britain, the crew a people united by determination, courage and democratic values). It’s Ealing’s most potent and inspiring fusion of propaganda, documentary and people’s war ideals.

THEY CAME TO A CITY

UK 1944. Dir Basil Dearden. With Googie Withers, John Clements, Raymond Huntley, Renée Gadd. 78 min.

This most unusual of Ealing’s features has long been hard to see and is now in a new digital transfer. A fantastical allegory from the pen of J.B. Priestley, it transports nine disparate Britons to a mysterious city. What they find there is, according to their class and disposition, either an earthly paradise of peace and equality or a hell starved of ambition and riches. A film once dismissed as naïve and uncinematic, it has more recently been viewed as a striking expression of its era’s most utopian impulse.

THE BLUE LAMP

UK 1950. Dir Basil Dearden. With Jack Warner, Dirk Bogarde, James Hanley, Peggy Evans. 82 min.

Ealing’s defining contribution to the police procedural genre – with ex-policeman T.E.B. Clarke’s script lending authenticity – sits on the border between the studio’s dark and light sides. There’s tragedy at its core, and a portrait of snarling, lawless youth (a mesmerising young Dirk Bogarde) that’s tough for its time, not least for Ealing. But if it takes us to dark places, its conclusion expresses an irrepressibly optimistic and comforting vision of the ability of society to overcome its most hostile elements.

THE PROUD VALLEY

UK 1940. Dir Pen Tennyson. With Paul Robeson, Simon Lack, Edward Chapman, Janet Johnson. 77 min.

An American seaman is welcomed into a Welsh mining village and bolsters a community facing industrial decline and the tremors of war.  Paul Robeson brings warmth, integrity and powerful bass tones to his role as David Goliath, the figure around whom the struggling miners unite and discover their own proud voices.  Pen Tennyson directs this simple story with compassion, beauty and dignity to make The Proud Valley one of the most satisfying of early Balcon-era Ealing. 

THE HALFWAY HOUSE

UK 1944. Dir Basil Dearden. With Mervyn Johns, Francoise Rosay, Glynis Johns, Esmond Knight. 96 min.

Towards the end of the war, Ealing films took a positive turn and The Halfway House uses a ghostly setting to look towards a future in which wartime problems such as black marketeering, broken relationships and mourning for lost ones are left behind. A disparate group of people find themselves at a remote inn in the Welsh valleys which turns out not to be quite what it seems. A fine ensemble cast balances the film’s humour with its more serious undertones and the supernatural atmosphere is reinforced by a haunting score.

THE OVERLANDERS

UK 1946. Dir Harry Watt. 

With Chips Rafferty, Daphne Campbell, John Fernside, John Nugent Hayward, Peter Pagan. 91 min.

A band of Australian drovers, led by Dan McAlpine (Chips Rafferty), drive 1000 cattle across the harsh Northern Territory to fresh pastures in Brisbane. Ealing’s first Australian production is a stellar tribute to the country’s WWII scorched earth defence against the Japanese.  Rafferty embraces the sprit of defiance that characterised a nation under threat of invasion, while director Harry Watt brings a documentary sensibility that celebrates the sheer ambition and vast achievement of the drive.

HUE AND CRY

UK 1946. Dir Charles Crichton. With Harry Fowler, Jack Warner, Alastair Sim 82 min  Script: T E B Clarke

In the first of the EALING COMEDIES, Harry Fowler leads the ‘Blood and Thunder Boys’, a group of adolescents who discover their favourite boys-own magazine is being used by criminals to plan robberies. Largely acknowledged as the first in Ealing’s cycle of post-war comedies, Hue and Cry gives us a joyfully chaotic of the kind of English eccentrics which would come to characterise the later films.  Alistair Sim and Jack Warner are the old hands whose exaggerated performances lead a cast of mostly newcomers.

SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC
UK 1948. Dir Charles Frend. With John Mills, Kenneth More, John Gregson, James Roberston Justice. 109 min.

Michael Balcon’s self-confessed preference was for tales of adventure and derring-do and Scott fits the bill perfectly. The British spirit of endeavour and determination, even to the point of foolhardiness, pervades the film, as Scott’s expedition gets ever closer to failure. Filming in Technicolor was an interesting choice given the bleak locations but the scenery is captured exquisitely and offers a dramatic backdrop to the exploits of the party. Vaughan Williams’ score heightens the drama so poignantly enacted by Mills and the rest of the sterling cast.

PASSPORT TO PIMLICO

UK 1949. Dir Henry Cornelius. With Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford, Jane Hylton, Paul Dupuis. 84 min.

A group of Pimlico residents discover that they are in fact citizens of the Duchy of Burgundy, a change of nationality that offers them the opportunity to dodge post-war strictures. Tearing up their ration books, they embark on self-governance but soon find that, despite all its problems, Blighty is the best place to be. Cornelius’s only directing credit for Ealing (though he went on to success with Genevieve), Passport to Pimlico is perhaps the studio’s most joyous celebration of Britishness.

THE MAGNET

UK 1950. Dir Charles Frend. With William Fox, Stephen Murray, Kay Walsh, Meredith Edwards. 79 min.

James Fox, (credited here as William) plays Johnny, a 10-year-old who tricks a younger boy into giving him a toy magnet.  Feeling guilty over his deception Johnny anonymously offers the magnet to auction, but when it raises raise enough funds to buy a life saving piece of hospital equipment he is nowhere to be found.  A comedy of childhood errors, The Magnet pokes fun at a cosy adult world made insensible by the fantasies of some of its younger  inhabitants.  Ealing regulars Gladys Henson, Thora Hird and a disguised James Robertson Justice provide support. 

 THE LADYKILLERS

UK 1955. With Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker, Peter Sellers, Danny

Green, Katie Johnson. 97min. U

Everyone’s favourite knockabout black comedy caper – or a political fable with the ‘ladykillers’ as the incoming post-war Labour government and the little old ladies as the obstacles of Conservative tradition? Beyond any doubt The Ladykillers is the last great Ealing comedy, and the studio’s final production before its sale to the BBC.American screenwriter William Rose apparently dreamed up the plot overnight, but casting, script, production design, and the Technicolor camerawork combine effortlessly for the blackest of farces.

Rivalling Kind Hearts and Coronets for the gleeful blackness of its humour. Posing as an amateur string quintet while planning a robbery at Kings Cross, an ill-assorted group of crooks led by the sinister Professor Marcus (Guinness) rent rooms from a sweet little old lady (Johnson). Despite a few setbacks, the Professor’s plan works superbly. But there’s one factor he hasn’t allowed for… At 77, veteran bit-part player Johnson all but walks off with the film.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB
 UK 1951. Dir Charles Crichton. With Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass. 78 min.

Ealing’s theme of the ‘little man fighting back’ finds its culmination here, as upstanding citizens Guinness and Holloway turn to crime, hooking up with two small time crooks to form a gang of unlikely gold smugglers. The heroes’ dreams of freeing themselves from wage slavery in a grey, bombed out London have us rooting for them against the inept police pursuit. Writer T. E. B. Clarke’s comic observations are spot on; he creates a postwar Britain in which demure-looking little old ladies devour American detective fiction with relish.

THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT

UK 1952. Dir Charles Crichton. With Stanley Holloway, George Relph, John Gregson, Hugh Griffith, Sid James. 87 min.

The commuters of Titfield form an amateur rail company when they discover that their local branch line is to close.  Despite physical opposition from a rival bus company, the train enthusiasts unite behind their eccentric village vicar (Relph) and his affable drunk benefactor (Holloway), to bumble their way to an operators licence.  Perhaps the archetype of ‘Ealing Light’ Crichton’s gentle and nostalgic film was also the studio’s first made in colour.

Many of these films are available on DVD/Blu atand HUE and CRY, THE LADYKILLERS, THE MAGNET are re-released by STUDIO CANAL in June\July 2015

 


The Punk Syndrome (2012) | VOD Release |

Directors/Script:Jukka Karkkainen, J-P Passi

Cast: Pertti Kurikka, Kari Aalto, Sami Helle, Toni Valitalo

Finland   2012             85mins         Music Doc

A truly one-off music documentary about unlikely Finnish Punk sensation, ‘Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day’; a band made up of two obsessive Down’s Syndrome sufferers and a mentally disabled lead singer with rage issues. You just couldn’t write it. No, you wouldn’t be allowed to write it. But then, isn’t punk all about throwing ‘PC’ out the window?

THE PUNK SYNDROME is an at once a joyful and poignant study following the band’s rise and their trials and tribulations, without the smooth PR one might normally bounce off when trying to document a band both at home and on tour. What thus follows is an extraordinarily candid insight, not only into the band, but also into what it is to live an institutionalised life on the margins of society and how blurred that line can indeed be with the rest of us.

The documentary has already played at Tampere, Visions Du Reel, Helsinki IFF- Love and Anarchy where it won Special Prize Visions Du Reel and Best Film/Films On Art Competition New Horizons IFF.  What makes it work so well is unflinching access straight through to the humanity of the players; four men who recognise that their lives really aren’t that great, but who manage to negotiate their own selves and vent the vast majority of their frustrations through their music.

It is noticeable at some of the various gigs that the audiences start out thinking they’re perhaps going to witness the performing equivalent of a train wreck, but in the end are simply won over by the heart, brutal honesty, energy and pretty funny lyrics that come out of these four committed musicians, through some enthusiastically thrashed out titles such as ‘Speech Defect’, ‘ADHD’ and ‘Decision Makers Are Cheaters’.

As the guitarist and songwriter Pertti says, ‘This isn’t about honour, this is about punk’. THE PUNK SYNDROME has some brilliant laugh out loud moments, but one cannot also but be genuinely moved by the plight and frustrations of these guys who, despite the way their lives are stacked, remain resolute in raging against the machine. And I can promise you, you’ll never look at pedicurists in the same way again. Pure Gold. Ian Dury would be proud. AR

http://kovasikajuttu.fi/

[youtube id=”xM58kP_JHkQ” width=”600″ height=”350″]

 

Spring In a Small Town (1948)

Spring_In_A_Small_Town copyFei Mu’s post war melodrama Spring in a Small Town is considered one of the best Chinese films ever made and spearheads the BFI’s major exploration of Chinese Cinema that starts on 20 June 2014.

It concerns the delicate intricacies of a classic love triangle between The Husband (Shi Yu), The Wife (Wei Wei in a stunning debut) and The Guest (Li Wei Li) that took place in a remote country town in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War. This ‘dilemma of desire’ is very much an affair of discreet ecstasy rather than unbridled lust, as indicated by the formal titles of the characters, but loyalty and decency are the qualities at stake here rather than the personal wishes and sexual fulfilment of the individuals.  The Dai family are somewhat down on their luck and the head of the household (Shi Yu) is now an invalid looking back on a prosperous past and a marriage that’s all but over, but the couple continue to go through the motions. A breath of fresh arrives from Shanghai in the shape Zhang (Li Wei) a childhood friend and now a successful and prosperous doctor. The potent chemistry between the newcomer and The Wife is palpable as she finds herself torn between erotic love and duty. Mei’s central theme here serves as a metaphor for re-building the past or embracing the future.

An enchanting voiceover gives substance to the emotions that the characters feel unable to confess through their shame, adding adding another dimension to this poignant story which is performed with great elegance and lightness of touch. The velvety visuals echo Rene Clément’s wonderful camerawork as the ensemble cast move graciously amongst the ruins of this Post War landscape. It’s clear to see how Fu Mei’s classic was a formative influence for Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai and others. MT

THE NEW RESTORED FILM IS now available on DVD/Blu

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The Turning (2013)

REUNION, Dir.: Simon Stone; AQUIFER, Dir.: Robert Connelly; ON HER KNEES Dir.: Ashlee Page; THE TURNING, Dir.: Claire McCarthy; LONG, CLEAR VIEW, Dir.: Mia Wasikowska; COMMISSION, Dir.: David Wenham ; COCKLESHELL, Dir.: Tony Ayres; BIG WORLD, Dir.: Warwick Thornton; SAND, Dir.: Stephen Page; Australia 2013,107min

Even though the original format of THE TURNING had 180 minutes of running time and seventeen episodes, this shorter version, featuring only nine segments of the book of the same title by the Australian writer Tim Winton and the brainchild of producer Robert Connelly, is still very impressive. Somehow one would have liked to watch the full version, where the central character of Vic Lang is played by eight different actors, of varying age groups – with his wife Gail and his father Bob represented also by different actors.

But we are still left with a convincing picture of the not-so-sunny-side of Australia, where the over-riding optimism and material indulgence is replaced by sorrow, guilt and alienation. In REUNION Gail (Cate Blanchett) and her husband Bob (Hugo Weaving) celebrate an awkward New Year: egged on by Bob’s mother, their search for a relative ends up in a stranger’s house, where the two women end up in the swimming pool, to the annoyance of Bob, a police officer. Somehow we get the feeling that this displacement is not the first – Gail and Bob’s relationship is more than fragile. When she congratulates herself “on the best new year’s party for years’, we know how bad things are in her marriage, in spite of the couple’s tentative tries at some reconciliation. A macabre version of a marriage on the rocks.

Actress Mia Wasikowski’s debut as a director, LONG, CLEAR VIEW is a sensitive observation piece of a teenager’s sexual awakening – even though the girl he is courting is much more experienced then him, he is stubborn in his attempts, and, in the end, overcomes his shyness in a dramatic finale. The coastal setting contributes very much to the success of the film: this is not a glorious beach bathed in sunshine, but a dreary, lonely place, where people make a living from fishing. Never sentimental, LONG CLEAR WAY is a fine character study.

Staying with youth, Warwick Thornton’s BIG WORLD is a portrait of two young men, Biggie and Davo, already disappointed with life after working in a meat factory after leaving school. Their unsatisfactory grades prevented them going to university, and what was once a Saturday job, has become their life. They pick up a young hitchhiker, Meg, who falls for Biggie, who has so far had no success with women. Davo, until now the more successful of the two, is extremely jealous. The last word goes to the narrator, foretelling Biggies demise in an accident, and Davo’s uneventful life. BIG WORLD shows a moody, pessimistic outlook, reality overtaking any dreams the protagonists ever had.

THE TURNING by Claire McCarthy is outstanding. Set in a dreary trailer park near the ocean, Raelene (Rose Byrne) tries to leave her violent husband Max (the same character already showing signs of violence as a child in the episode SAND). When Raelene meets Sherry (Miranda Otto), a born-again Christian, who is married to an ex-alcoholic, still fighting against a relapse, a whole new world opens to her: Sherry shows her an alternative world. Raelene is impressed, but a new, even more vicious attack by her husband, drives her not into leaving him, but leads to a tragic end. Atmospheric and impressively acted, THE TURNING is a little gem.

With most of the other episodes it shares a multitude of great camerawork, which leaves the audience with a rather harrowing vision of Australia, where most of the fragile protagonists seem to teeter on a brink, a step away from falling over the edge of the world. The narration helps to sustain a literacy quality throughout. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH FEBRUARY 2015

20 Hot Titles for 2015 | Indie | Arthouse film| Part 1

TTOE_D04_01565-01568_R_CROP-2THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: The main reason to see this moving and ambitious biopic of our most famous living scientist Stephen Hawking, is that Eddie Redmayne’s is pure dynamite as the man himself. Combing through endless footage of the Professor Hawking’s voice recordings and photos, he literally inhabits his very being from early life at Cambridge right through to his epic achievements in the realm of Science. Co-Written by his wife, Jane Hawking. touchingly played by Felicity Jones (The Invisible Woman). Out on 1 January.

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A MOST VIOLENT YEAR: If you’re ready for a grown-up thriller with a gripping storyline and fabulously crafted-performances, look no further this tightly-plotted, New York-based slow burner from J C Chandor (All Is Lost). Set in 1981, during the city’s most dangerous year for crime, if tells the story of an ambitious immigrant’s bitter fight for survival in a precarious and competitive world. Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davies) and Jessica Chastain star.  23 January 2015

Altman_1ALTMAN: There’s nothing to beat an absorbing biopic on a prolific film director, and this one eclipses them all. Ron Mann charts the story of Robert Altman’s career from his lucky first break, to his far-reaching TV work and finally his outstanding contribution to independent cinema. A pithy, poignant and highly-entertaining portrait. Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin, Elliott Gould and Paul Thomas Anderson reminisce to add ballast. T. B. A.

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THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY: Peter Strickland’s edgy and inventive seventies-themed drama tackles the delicate subject of sexual dominance and submissiveness amid butterfly buffs in a  seventies-setting deep in the Hungarian counrtyside. Sidse Babett Knudsengarnered Best Actress for her portrayal of a lesbian with performance fatigue in this unsettling but yet darkly comic treasure. 20 February 2015

whitegodWHITE GOD (Feher Isten): ‘Superiority has become the privilege of white Western civilisation and it is nearly impossible for not to take advantage of it’. With this premise Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo’s invigorating drama WHITE GOD scratches at the edges of horror to create a richly inventive fable where dogs take over the city of Budapest. Starting out as gentle and harmless, the narrative gradually darkens into something morbid and frightening. No shaggy dog story here but certainly one to salivate over. 27 FEBRUARY

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THE LOOK OF SILENCE: Following on the heels of his devastating documentary about man’s evil to man, Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE LOOK OF SILENCE is in some ways even more affecting. For a start, it’s running time of under two hours makes it a more manageable to engage with. Don’t be fooled though. Oppenheimer probes the killers much more harshly this time and elicits some unsettling revelations from the perpetrators and those affected by the terrifying regime in Indonesia. T. B. A.

downloadMACBETH: Roman Polanski was the last director successfully to adapt this most dark and sinister of Shakespeare’s plays. Here, Australian director, Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) casts Marion Cotillard as the chilling chateleine of Cawdor Castle playing alongside Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth as the fatefully ambitious couple whose ‘follie de grandeur’ leads them depose of Scotland’s King Duncan. T.B.A

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IT FOLLOWS; David Robert Mitchell’s latest film has emerged by general consensus amongst critics to be the most heart-thumpingly horrific indie thrillers of recent years. Simple in concept, this low-fi outing is inventive in creating a fairytale atmosphere in a modern-day setting. A must-see for all audiences. 27 FEBRUARY 2015

1001 NOITES: Tabu director Miguel Gomes is back with a re-working of the fabulous legend of Scheherazade locating his film in crisis-ridden present-day Portugal. Shifting between imagination and reality, the narrative takes on familiar elements to the original but  retains the same teasing quality that Scheherazade employed on the King. T.B.A.

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PHOENIX: Christian Petzold’s heart-wrenching drama works cleverly as both a wartime love-story and an evergreen metaphor for regeneration and identity. Starring regular collaborators Ronald Zehrfeld (In Between Worlds) and Nina Hoss (Barbara) who gives the best rendition of ‘Speak Low’ known to mankind, it has also one of the most devastating climaxes of recent years. TBA

RELEASE DATES FOR ALL THESE FILMS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.

 

 

 

Land of Storms (2014) Viharsarok

Director: Adam Csaszi

Writers: Adam Csaszi, Ivan Szabo

Cast: Andras Suto, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Adam Varga, Lajos Otto Horvath, Eniko Borcsok

105min  Hungarian/German/English  Drama

Adam Csaszi’s feature debut is a stunningly-shot and steamy affair that explores the erotic life of the three young men in the traditionally Catholic Hungarian countryside. Similar in tone and atmosphere to the recent Polish dramas: Floating Skyscrapers and In The Name Of,  Storms is another foray into Eastern European attitudes to homoexuality and benefits from the excitingly inventive visuals of Csaszi’s cinematographer Marcell Rev, whose widescreen compositions and intimate close-ups compliment the sexually-charged performances of lust and longing by leads Suto (Szabolcs), Urzendowsky (Bernard) and Varga (Aron).

Szabolcs and Bernhard are best friends, training with a German soccer team to become professional footballers. Before their big game, attended by a scout from a leading team, the young men watch straight porn and smoke joints, setting the tone for what is to follow. In the match, Andras is not only sent off, but has a bad game overall. He makes a hasty retreat to his native Hungary, where he takes refuge in a ramshackle house on the prairie, inherited from his grandfather. During the night a young man from the nearby village, (Aron), tries to steal Szabolcs’s motorcycle, but in spite of it, they become friends and are physically drawn to one another during horseplay, ending up in bed. Aron is shunned by the villagers after he shares this with his mother. Splitting up with his girlfriend Brigi (Zita Teby), he then moves in with Szabolcs. Suddenly Bernhard arrives, declares his love for Andras, and asks him to make a decision which has dramatic consequences and vehement resistance from the villagers.

Hungary, particular in the provinces, is still very much influenced by the Catholic Church, and even the young attend mass regularly and participate in processions. Homosexuality is therefore considered a sin, especially in these villages. The love between Andras and Aron is doomed from the beginning; Andras is seen as the seducer, not only poisoning Aron but taking away the male head of a household and potential husband to his girlfriend. The young men of the village want revenge, and since beatings for both men do not change anything, psychological pressure is put on Aron with startling consequences.

Csaszi’s debut captures the wide flatness of the Hungarian countryside, and shows a life more or less unchanged since the First World War. The camera pans over the vastness, dwarfing the men in the enormity of their environment. Szabolc’s diffidence is touching and sensitive, very much in contrast to Aron’s physical masculinity. Land of Storms is a slow-burning mood piece, that may be too slow for some audiences, but nonetheless mesmerises throughout with its potent narrative and the powerful atmosphere. Congratulations to Adam Csaszi’s brave attempt to convey the hostility of a country governed by ‘The Small Landholders Party’, which represents exactly the sort of old-timers who hunt down the likes of Szabolcs and Bernard.

LAND OF STORMS SCREENED DURING THE BERLINALE 2014 IN THE PANORAMA SECTION.

IT IS ALSO SCREENING AT SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL which runs from 15 – 23 August 2014.

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Mood Indigo (2013) Netflix

 


Director: Michel Gondry | Writers: Michel Gondry, Boris Vian | Cast: Romain Duris, Audrey Tatou, | 131min   French with subtitles   Romantic Drama

Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris team up again for this surreal tale of emotional love. Sex and lust are replaced by the heartfelt tenderness of romantic devotion; better summed up by the title l’Ecume des Jours (Froth on a Daydream), Boris Vian’s cult novel, on which it was based. You will either totally buy into its poetic retro charm (which does rather overstay its welcome at over two hours), or find it tedious in the extreme.

A wealthy young man, Colin, (Romain Duris) falls head over heels for the delicately coy Chloé (Audrey Tatou). But after a mysterious floral growth in her lung requires her to be perpetually surrounded by fresh flowers in order to survive, Colin’s financial means comes under severe strain. An upbeat jazzy start sees Gondry’s stylistic fantasy slowly shift in tone from fluffy romcom to shades of mournful melodrama as sullen clouds darken the lovers’ world, turning their florid love-song into a faded and poignant elegy, strangled in bindweed.

This is not the first screen adaptation of the novel, Charles Belmont made the film in 1968, featuring Vian’s wife Ursula as a nun. Go Riju also crafted a Japanese version in 2001. But Gondry’s film feels typically French with its light-hearted whimsical approach evoking the Parisian outings of the fifties and sixties. Technical effects are superbly inventive and Duris and Tatou are perfectly cast for the fun-filled slapstickery, and equally good when it all  darkens to cutesy pouting and tear-welling tristesse. You may even shed crocodile tears… MT

NOW ON NETFLIX FRANCE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibition (2013) Bfi Player DVD

Dir: Joanna Hogg | Cast: Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston | 104′ UK Drama

In her portrayal of the English middle-classes Joanna Hogg has a unique voice. And she particularly understands the women.  We’re not talking about the huntin’ and shootin’ brigade: her characters are writers, artists, and creative types often played by untrained actors.

Hogg found her way into the film world after a chance meeting with Derek Jarman and her first film Caprice featured (the then unknown) Tilda Swinton.  Her first big screen release UNRELATED (2007) tells the story of a childless woman who joins her married friend’s house party in Tuscany and feels “fated to spend the rest of my life on the periphery of other womens’ families’. It won the FIPRESCI prize that year. Her follow-up ARCHIPELAGO (2010) witnesses the disintigration of a family on holiday in the Scilly Isles where the visual language speaks louder than the embittered dialogue between them.

EXHIBITION takes place in a fabulous modernist house in London (Kensington?), which is on the market. Newcomers to acting D and H (played by Turner prize nominated artist Liam Gillick and onetime punk musician, Viv Albertine) love living here but feel the need to move on with their lives and the house is full of bittersweet memories. Essentially a two-hander, it has Hogg’s regular collaborator Tom Hiddleston, as the estate agent tasked with the sale.

The house is very much a character and a part of who they are; embodying not only their artistic personalities but enforcing the pain of the past and embued with the story of their married life. Full of hope, they moved in after marrying with plans for a family and all the happiness that couples wish for, sadly not for them. But in their own way they still love each other.

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Communicating via intercom from their respective offices in the house, they evoke the typical nature of ego-driven but insecure artists: permanently at work – sometimes avoiding contact; sometimes welcoming reassurance of each other’s existence and commitment.  Competitive, independent yet needy of affirmation and understanding. Sex has died but H’s libido is still dormantly waiting for male excitement.

This is an urban London film and Hogg absolutely nails the minor and major irritations of life here: the estate agent’s glib patter; dinner parties talking about other peoples’ children; the street noise, parking problems and alarms. Here again Hogg elicits a strong visual language from her actors that requires minimal dialogue evoking their individual dynamic in the relationship: H is an appeasing mother figure, D is controlling, anal, looking for comfort.

Leaving the house, can they leave the ghosts that haunt them behind? Joanna Hogg offers up another subtle masterpiece.  Poignant and absolutely authentic. MT

EXHIBITION IS now on BFIplayer | READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH JOANNA HOGG HERE

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Miss Violence (2013) 70th Venice Film Festival

Director: Alexandros Avanas      Writers: Alexandros Avanas, Kostas Peroulis

Cast: Themis Panou, Constantinos Athanasiades, Chloe Bolota, Chloe Athanasiades,

98mins  *    Greece     Drama

A nasty, evil and smug drama that surrepticiously feeds on man’s sexually exploitative nature couching it in a wrapping of finger-wagging worthiness in an attempt to capitalise on the success of recent tales of family dysfunction such as Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth and Michalis Konstantos’ Luton, from the Greek New Wave.

Suffocating in a sickly pastel aesthetic even the cast look drained and inanimate although Themis Panou is far from that, playing the debauched and controlling ‘pater families’ that won him Best Actor at the 70th Venice Film Festival.  In a performance of venal subtletyyou hardly notice him  any more than you might the insipid stranger who is later found flashing in the dimly-lit park.

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On daughter Angeliki’s (Chloe Botota) 11th birthday, she jumps unceremoniously from the family’s ghastly appartment balcony after tea. Social services are keen to keep an eye on proceedings and, no doubt, lessons will be learnt, or will they?.  The eldest daughter, Eleni (Eleni Roussinou), announces her pregnancy but she could well be the nanny judging from her mother’s distant and slightly irritated reaction to the news.  MISS VIOLENCE is a buttoned-up, bewildering drama that has you constantly trying to work out who’s related to whom and how. As the father, Themis Panou behaves more like his daughter’s husband, dispassionately discussing details of her menstrual cycle, organising the kids and doing the school run.  His wife, the matriarch, (Reni Pittaki) feels more like the grandmother here, as turgid as a lounge lizard with her slothful eyes. Sissy Toumasi stands out as daughter Myrto, a spirited teenager who’s desperately going against the grain in her hope of a more fulfilling existence.

What gradually unfolds is as nauseating and unpalatable as the three-piece suite in the family living room. Well-performed and competently crafted, Avranas’ feature nevertheless feels a cheap and gratuitous example of modern European cinema from a country whose morals seem to go hand in hand with its lax financial probity. MT

MISS VIOLENCE WON BEST ACTOR (THEMIS PANOU) AND BEST DIRECTOR (ALEXANDROS AVANOS) AT THE 70 VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2013.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 JUNE 2014

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Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) DVD release

Directors/Script: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake Garrett Hedlund

105mins       US   Music Drama

Joen and Ethan Coen won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2013 for this atmospheric story of a struggling folk singer in early sixties Greenwich Village. Exuding style, charm and nostalgic appeal; Bruno Delbonnel’s desaturated velvet visuals coalesce with a gently humorous script and  subtle performances capturing the era that was JFK and Peter, Paul and Mary and gave way to the edgy voice of Bob Dylan (whose bent figure is seen haunched over his guitar in a bar the final seconds) and his anthems of US civil rights and anti-war sentiment.

_MG_0793_RT copyThe central character, played by Oscar Isaac, is both flawed and self-defeating but fascinating to watch as he suffers perpetual bad luck, living at the mercy of friends and people he meets along the way.  In the winter of 1961, after leaving Jean Berkey (Carey Mulligan) pregnant from a one-night stand and now living with successful duo partner Jim (Justin Timberlake), Llewyn heads off with his cat to forge a solo career; his duo arrangement having fallen apart. As he is walks along the highroad, collar drawn up to the biting New York winds (much like Dylan on the cover of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’), we know the die is cast and his latest single “Inside Llewyn Davis” will gather dust in a box on his agent’s floor.

Isaac carries the role well bringing to his character a brooding resentment tempered with restrained charm. A disillusioned romantic resigned to failure, he is darkly handsome with Byronesque curls and and a full beard.  The episodes with his neighbours, the Gorheims, are particularly amusing and apposite with their New York, Jewish humour. Justin Timberlake and Garrett Hedland have small but appealing cameos. At one point Jim and Lleywn perform an original (imagined) chart single dedicated to JFK which is exhilarating and upbeat.  But most of the folk music played in smoky locales by Isaac is soulful and the overall soundtrack is pleasant thanks to T-Bone Burnett. His other singing friend is Al Cody played exultantly by Adam Driver.

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On the way to Chicago for an audition he hitches a lift with John Goodman’s bitterly sardonic jazz pro, providing delicious comedic texture, as the film turns road movie through the freezing late winter of 1961 with widescreen visuals of snowswept landscapes; early motorways; classic Chevies; dim-lit offices full of dusty, resilient characters redolent of an era where people still spoke in straightforward sentences and meant what they said.  “I don’t see a lot of money here” – is the bathetic response from his Chicago agent when Llewyn finally auditions there.  No words could express a more simple truth about an artist who isn’t going anywhere, despite his creative talent.  This is a tale about trying hard and not succeeding; about gradually acknowledging and accepting defeat that dawns somewhere down the line marking mediocrity from bankable talent. And this is the deeply-sad crux of this impeccably-crafted, bittersweet masterpiece and possible its universal appeal.  MT

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NOW ON DVD

 

 

Beyond the Edge (2014)

Director: Leanne Pooley

Writers; Leanne Pooley and Matthew Metcalfe

Cast: Chad Moffitt, Sonam Sherpa, John Wraight, Daniel Musgrove

100min   Documentary

If you’ve ever wanted to climb Mount Everest, Leanne Pooley’s documentary is a chance to experience at first hand the thrill and danger that many have gone through to conquer the summit since that first fatal attempt back in 1924.  Re-enacting the incredible journey to the top, using a skilful blend of archival footage and interviews, Pooley frames her documentary in its historical post-war context, recreating the world as it was sixties years ago, with a well-thought out introduction to the backgrounds and personalities of the individual climbers and the equipment used in the expedition organised by leader, Colonel John Hunt.

We all know that New-Zealander and Bee-keeper, Sir Edmund Hillary and sherpa, Tenzing Norgay were the first men to stand on the summit (the iconic image is of Tenzing), but this documentary shows how it happened and sheds light on the particular conditions prevailing at the time. One of the strengths here is the lack of narration other than the words of the expedition team. Using actors (with climbing training) to portray the real-life mountaineers and rarely seen footage amassed from archival interviews and photos, the doc takes us, step by step, as Hillary and Tenzing battle upwards conveying their numerous setbacks. Illustrating their strength of personality and extraordinary motivation to form a successful team, it shows how not only as climbers but also as men, these two remarkable people stood out from the crowd and persevered on an almost impossible mission.

In user-friendly 3D technology, (incorporating 16mm colour footage and 35mm stills) the dazzling camera-shots lean over dangerous precipices, killer ravines and terrifying crevices to share the mind-blowing experience of these fearless men. Climbing gear has an authentic feel and Pooley explains the science and practicalities of mountaineering and human endurance. She also explores the human psyche with universal appeal in this brave doc that flags up Hilary’s legendary words: “It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” MT

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BEYOND THE EDGE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 23 MAY 2014

The Canyons (2013) Venice Film Festival 2013

Director: Paul Schrader

Script: Bret Easton Ellis

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk, Gus Van Sant, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston

A great director and writer doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good film: such is definitely the case for THE CANYONS, Paul Schrader’s much-anticipated ‘erotic’ thriller described as “Youth, glamour, sex and Los Angeles 2012”. Really?.

Matters got off to an unpromising start when it was reported that Leslie Coutterand had been on call throughout the entire filming process due to Lindsay Lohan’s repeated absences and feuds with the director, who had been forced to direct a scene naked just to placate her (?).  Finance was raised through a Kickstarter campaign, and the resulting film was rejected from Sundance and SXSW.  I was determined to give it a chance being a fan of Schrader’s earlier work, though not, I hasten to add, of Lohan.

As it is, she appears vaguely unhinged and physically bloated during her performance as young actress, Tara.  This is supposed to be a soft porn movie, so why is Lohan wearing a pair of Bridget Jones-style knickers under her leatherette treggings for an evening out with a girlfriend?. One can only assume it was to rein in her midriff from too much booze and cigarettes (consumed during the shoot). Sexy or what?

As suggested by the title, Tara is living with her producer boyfriend Christian (porn star James Deen) in a rather glamorous modernist house on the edge of the hillside, overlooking the ocean.  Theirs is not an easy relationship with Christian being a control-freak and demanding to know her schedule as he swings in from the studios to find her poolside.  He cleverly swaps her phone to discover text messages showing that she’s cheating on him with a pretty young actor called Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk).  When the camera starts zooming in on mobile phone screens, and relying on text messages to drive the narrative forward, one realises the whole story is doomed.

The strange thing about ‘soft porn movie’ The Canyons is that it’s possibly the least sexual film of the entire festival (apart from the Andrea Segre’s La Prima Neve). There are no real sex scenes to speak of but a great of deal of glowering, posturing and pouting goes on, largely between Lohan and Deen.  It transpires that Ryan, who is straight, has his own cross to bear: he is up for a juicy acting role, but to seal his success he may have to sleep with the gay head of the studios and is forced to receive oral sex with him just for starters.

What follows is a predictably troubled but unremarkable voyage through the seamier side of dysfunctional relationships. It almost feels like one of those ‘made for TV’ soaps you catch in a hotel room in Spain or Italy when surfing through the options looking for News.  In a cameo, Gus Van Sant plays Christian’s shrink, and it’s the best thing about the whole affair.  Brett Easton Ellis’s script is appalling with cardboard dialogue along the following lines:  “Are you cheating on me?  What d’you mean by cheating?  Well cheating, with another guy….

Please Mr Schrader, you’re such a talented man.  When you next make a film, make it with proper actors and a decent storyline. MT

THE CANYONS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9 MAY 2014

Il Divo (2008) Bfi player

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino | Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci | 110min   Italian with subtitles   Drama

After successes with the small but perfectly formed Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, Il Divo bursts on to the screen in a baptism of fire that marks Paolo Sorrentino as a filmmaker of considerable talent in winning collaboration with much loved actor Toni Servillo. He plays Giulio Andreotti, the enigmatic leader of the Italian Christian Democrats who haunted the face of Italian politics like an enigmatic smile for nearly forty years and was seven times prime minister.

Mesmerising filmmaking takes over the first twenty minutes as the camera cuts and thrusts from every angle and Sorrentino’s signature soundtracks punctuate the action often to comical and contradictory effect. The story focuses on Andreotti’s last term in office and manages in nearly two hours to fast forward through complex political intrigue interweaving the mafia, corruption and the Catholic Church in a vast tapestry of Italian affairs at the end of the last century while creating an intimate portrait of a rather inaccessible and self-contained man.

Understanding such an ambitious and complex subject is quite a challenge for any audience and there’s a danger of being submerged by the complexity, and bowled over by the visual treatment of this fascinating story and, to some extent, this is where the film falls down. That said, Sorrentino’s  lively and accomplished film reflects the tenaciousness of a significant statesman and Toni Servillo is magnificent as Andreotti in one of the best performances of his career so far.  A masterful tribute to one of Italy’s most signicant historical moments. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

You and Me Forever (2013)

Dir.: Kaspar Munk    Writers: Kaspar Munk, Jannik Tai Mosholt

Cast: Julie Andersen, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Emilie Kruse, Benjamin Wandschenider

Denmark 2012, 82 min.  Drama

Kaspar Munk’s coming-of-age drama looks at teenage friendship. Laura and Christine have been friends forever, but when you are only sixteen everything suddenly changes. When Laura meets Maria she’s awestruck by this new sophisticated girl who puts her down: ‘You are boring, but have nice eyes” and has lived in New York. Hesitantly she follows her into the world of parties, drugs and drinking. But when it comes to sex, she is diffident about Maria’s experience with boys, especially Jonas, who lives in a condemned building and seems suicidal. But when Maria pays a boy to sleep with Laura for 500 kroner, she is forced to evaluate not only her new friendship but also her own sexuality.

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Munk revolutionises the genre with his subtle approach in this well-paced drama with its stand-out performance from Julie Andersen as the melancholic Laura, who seems unable to make up her mind about anything, particularly when it comes to her own life. A dreamer, she’s held back by doting parents who panic at the slightest threat of their daughter becoming independent. Laura dreams her way through life and she is drawn to Maria (Frederikke Dahl Hansen) as the polar opposite to her. Maria plays the adult, it’s an strong and alluring performance – but when it comes to the crunch, she’s very much a teenager: promising a couple of boys a blow job if they pay for a taxi, but running away with the overwhelmed Laura in tow and the money – then missing the last train. Laura puts herself out for Maria – whose response to boys is always “don’t touch me”. Maria makes the mistake of using money to soften-up Laura.

A “Sturm und Drang” feel dominates permeates this dark and downbeat piece with lightning, storms and heavy rain predominating. The murky interiors are never fully lit, going in tandem with Laura’s dreamy demeanour. The strongest scenes are close-ups between the three girls: Christine pleading in vain, Laura evasive at the beginning, than alienating her childhood friend; whilst Maria stays in the background, pretending to be the adult. Laura captures the imagination of the viewer because she is living in slow-motion, dragged forward by Maria, but never loosing her subdued hesitancy. Andersen’s Laura is moody, evoking insecurity and self-doubt, yet carrying the film with consummate ease. AS

YOU AND ME FOREVER is on general release in selected cinemas from 25 April 2014

 

Willow and Wind (2000) Beed-o Baad The Cinema of Childhood Season

Dir.: Mohammad-Ali Talebi    Writer: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Hadi Alipour, Amir Janfada, Majid Alipour

Iran/Japan 1999, 81 min.

WILLOW AND WIND headlines a touring film season exploring and celebrating rare film classics about children “Cinema of Childhood”. The season launches this week with Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film that poetically mirrors the political unrest in Iran at the beginning of this century and, in particular, the concerns surrounding artistic censorship.

A young schoolboy in a primary school in the Iranian mountains is threatened by his teacher with immediate expulsion, if he does not repair a broken window, which he smashed whilst playing football days ago. The boy’s father has no time or inclination to help him, and so he has to turn to his new friend, who has recently joined the class. Together they somehow manage to get the funds, but the glass merchant lives miles away from the school. Our hero stumbles with the big plate of glass through the wild landscape, but arrives with the window plane intact at his destination. Just when he seems to be successful against all odds, the gathering storm finally brings his odyssey to an unfortunate end.

Based on a script by Abbas Kiarostami, director Mohammad-Ali Talebi (Bag of Rice, 1998) has painted more than filmed this poem about loneliness in childhood. Ozu and Bresson immediately spring to mind, their fragile child characters in a world of insensitive adults are very much related to all the children in this film. But, surprisingly too, there are also echoes of early Hitchcock films, where children are the victims of the adult world. Talebi starts his discourse in poetic realism right at the beginning of the film, when the newcomer to the class, coming from an Iranian region where it hardly rains, is naturally more fascinated by the rain than the lesson. The weather plays a central role in the film, nearly always having a negative influence on the hero’s struggle. Adults are shown as  remote: even when they want to help, they are unable and sometimes unwilling to engage with the childrens’ problems. Modes of transport are archaic and unreliable, not helping the quest of the boy, which is thwarted at every turn. Talebi’s narrative, fraught with  incidents, is always second to his lyricism; dialogue is minimal and feels redundant, since the tortured look of the main character tells the story on his own. The howling wind and wild landscape is integrated beautifully, always playing a main role in the proceedings.

The camera is very mobile: panning and tracking vigorously, panoramic shots of the mountains are breathtaking. The young boys Razam and Kuchakpourso give convincing performances as they form a bond of friendship, their vigour contrasted (rightfully) with the adults, who seem either subdued or pedantic. Merhad Jenabi’s intense original score underlines the enfolding drama without intruding. Willow and Wind successful creates a world of childhood, full of passionate dreams and, at the same time, rejection by an adult world – the boy’s imagination – which drives him on, so much superior to the dreary world of the adults.  In this atmospheric mood piece, Talebi shows us, that in the process of growing up, we loose often much more than we gain. AS

HEADLINING the SEASON ‘THE CINEMA OF CHILDHOOD‘ AT THE FILMHOUSE EDINBURGH

 

 

 

 

 

Svengali (2014)

Director: John Hardwick

Writer: Jonny Owen

Cast: Martin Freeman, Vicky McClure, Michael Socha, Maxine Peake, Matt Berry, Morwena Banks

93min  Comedy   UK

The premise whereby impassioned, eternally optimistic rockers attempt to spread the sweet sound of music to the unsuspecting public, has been covered in British cinema this past year in the likes of Good Vibrations and Vinyl. Though there are shades of the intrinsic charm of the former, John Hardwick’s Svengali is regrettably more in tune with the latter, in what is ultimately an unfulfilling comedy picture.

Our eternal optimist, in this instance, is Dixie, played by Jonny Owen – who also penned the screenplay. Bored in his monotonous livelihood in a small town in Wales, he sets off for London with his girlfriend Shell (Vicky McClure) by his side, and plastic bag in tow, hoping to become the manager of an unsigned band he heard online. Though triumphant in his quest, and attracting interest from the likes of renowned record label owner Alan McGee (playing himself), it seems he may eventually have to choose between the band, or his girlfriend; as the two aren’t quite as compatible as he had initially envisaged.

The overstated narrative can be somewhat frustrating, and though inevitable (this is cinema, after all), it can prove difficult to believe in the band’s increasing popularity. It doesn’t help that we don’t ever hear them play, but that issue is key to how absurd and fantastical is all turns out to be: as even for an industry that is notoriously impulsive, this band are ‘the next big thing’ before anyone has even heard them play.  That said, Hardwick does a fine job in capturing the essence and anarchic spirit of a fresh new indie band in the early stages of their career, with a nod to the likes of The Libertines, and the movement that followed them at the turn of the Millennium.

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Talking of spirit, Dixie is a wonderful creation, with an infectious optimism and outlook in life. His happy-go-lucky persona and ability to find the good in everyone is an endearing quality, and the audience wish him all the best as a result. It also means that when he’s upset about something, or annoyed with somebody, we completely adhere to it given it’s such a rarity. He has a great image too, reminiscent of Irish comedian Michael Redmond, always with his trusty plastic bag in hand. He collects things as a child would, and it’s this blissfully naïve quality we like about him. Meanwhile, he shares a great chemistry with McClure – hardly surprising as they’re an item in real life – though the actress is better than this film. There are some great cameos to be noted too, such as Martin Freeman and Maxine Peake, though conversely, you can see why Alan McGee didn’t ever pursue a career in acting.

Svengali suffers most in the flat comedy, as a film that succeeds more when it’s heartfelt and poignant with a well-handled romantic narrative. It begs the question why the film can’t drop the pointless gags that pollute the production and detract from the one key thing that makes this film a worthwhile endeavour – its sincerity.  Stefan Pape.

SVENGALI IS OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 21 MARCH 2014

 

 

 

 

Gravity (2013) Oscar for Best Director ON DVD/BLU

DIRECTOR: ALFONSO CUARON    WRITERS; ALFONSO AND JONAS CUARON

Cast: George Clooney, Sandra Bullock

USA  90min  Thriller

2014 OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTING; FILM EDITING; ORIGINAL SCORE; SOUND MIXING; SOUND-EDITING; VISUAL EFFECTS

Seven years after Children of Men, Mexican Director Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY 3D swirled silently into Venice with a distant murmur of astronauts talking via satellite in space.  George Clooney (Matt Kowalksy) gradually floats into view, as sauve in a space-suit as he is in Gucci tailoring.  With his co-pilot Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), he injects much-needed humour into this claustrophobic but technically brilliant sci-fi drama that follows a stricken space-ship as it floats towards the Earth’s orbit with its surviving astronauts. The pair float helplessly amid a welter of emotionally-charged memories of the World they left behind.  A pithy script and Emmanuel Lubezki’s ethereal visuals make this a worthwhile experience for the art house crowd and well as blockbuster fans and Sandra Bullock is surprisingly moving as a co-pilot who has nothing left to live for but every reason to survive.. MT

GRAVITY IS ON DVD/BLU FROM 4 MARCH 2014

Non-Stop (2014)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver

Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’O Gwen, Anson Mount, Linus Roche, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stoll

106min    Action/Thriller    US

Based on a story by John W Richardson and Chris Roach.

Probably not a film to see before a flight or evening during one, NON-STOP is one of those ‘what happens when’  films that, if nothing else,  takes you through the paces of an emergency crash landing from 40,000 feet.  You have been warned.  Fans of Liam Neeson’s particular brand of gentle giant physicality will see him turning cold-blooded killer in this claustrophobic whodunit from Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver (of Matrix and House of Wax fame). He plays Bill Marks, a whisky-swilling, bleary-eyed air marshall, tortured by an unhappy personal life and an uncertain future. Travelling ‘undercover’ on a plane to London from New York, he’s faced with the unenviable task of dealing with a series of menacing and mysterious text messages effectively blackmailing him to organise, with the airline, a transfer of USD150 million into a bank account or risk having a passenger killed, every twenty minutes.

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Not a bad premise thus far, although the cliche’d  dialogue hardly sets the night-flight on fire: “I hate flying; the lines; the crowds; the delays”: Does anyone actually find these exciting? But some appealing characters and witty repartee could still make this a journey with some thrills. No chance there either. After a cheesy bit of bonding with a little girl on her maiden solo flight, Bill finally settles down with a neurotic passenger Jen  (Julianne Moore). She plays one of those irritating people who desperately wants the window seat and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, making you wish you could upgrade to club class. A few rows down sits a deeply unlikeable NYPD Officer (Corey Stoll);  a devout Muslim doctor complete with skullcap (Omar Metwally), and a mousy stewardess (Michelle Dockery) who’s pale and shaky from a vegetable fast. Great. In lieu of some edgy interrogations with potential suspects, the dialogue is driven forward by text messages between Neeson and the mystery ‘perp’ on a special intranet.  None of this throws up any tangible clues and soon everyone on the plane is a potential culprit, and Neeson gets heavy with his uncooperative colleague, Hammond (Anson Mount) in the loo, breaking his neck in a surprisingly violent altercation. Push follows shove, none of it very edifying although there are plenty of bland, red herrings in the inflight catering, and a pilot who pops his clogs mysteriously (Linus Roche).

Jaume Collet-Serra, who also made the impressive Orphan, House Of Wax and the awful Unknown, tries to keep his vehicle buoyant with frequent fisticuffs and eventually stages a dramatic CGI-enhanced landing sequence, which is more fascinating than frightening (oxygen masks DO fall down as promised, and people DO faithfully adopt the brace position).  But this is a flight that even Julianne Moore can’t save, and Liam Neeson’s closing moments (where he tries to inject a scintilla of romance into the equation) will have you rushing for the sick bag. MT

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NON-STOP IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 February 2014

Mister John (2013) Now on DVD

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Cast: Aidan Gillen, Claire Keelan, Zoe Tay, Michael Thomas

95 mins    English  UK Drama    MISTER JOHN 2012 - DAY 03 _ 164 - 2nd grade copy copy

In their acclaimed debut Helen (2008), writer-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy probed into the mind of a passive protagonist whose desire to reinvent her life slowly manifested itself as she took part in a police re-enactment of the last known movements of Joy, a college classmate gone missing. In their follow up, Mister John, another passive protagonist (Gerry, played by Aidan Gillen) travels to Singapore after the death of his brother (the eponymous John). Upon landing, Gerry finds that his luggage has been lost, and John’s widow later lends him one of John’s shirts to wear – and, much like Joy’s distinctive yellow jacket does for Helen, John’s shirt seems to offer Gerry the first step towards a possible reinvention of the self. However, despite the many similarities between the two projects, Mister John never feels like a repetition: a continuation, perhaps, or a development (both of style and of themes), but never a repeat. If anything, the similarities could be offered as proof of the distinct, singular vision of the directing duo.

Img2052HGgraded (3) copy copyWith its lush images, languid pacing and heavy, brooding soundtrack, Mister John is a film thick on atmosphere, and relatively thin on plot. At times, its dialogue feels clipped and overly minimal, and there are occasional slips into cliché – Gerry sitting on his bed, rubbing his face in his hands; a frustrated woman cutting up her lover’s clothes – but none of this detracts from the alluring, beguiling success of the film. In fact, it all feels like a part of the overall design, a deliberate play with convention on the part of the filmmakers. The film is, after all, a kind of anti-thriller (in this there is, perhaps, an obvious comparison to be made to The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic identity-swap anti-thriller – but the similarities feel superficial. The tone, the mood and the ideas all seem different here, even if the filmmakers have publicly acknowledged Antonioni’s influence).

Another element of Mister John which shouldn’t go overlooked is the rich vein of humour which runs throughout. That the film’s scariest moment leads to one of its funniest, shows again the mastery of Lawlor and Molloy’s control of the medium. If Helen was, as many claimed, an outstanding debut, Mister John is most certainly a worthy follow-up. ALEX BARRETT

MISTER JOHN IS OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 24 2014 COURTESY OF CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE

Le Week-End (2013) Netflix UK

Dir: Roger Michell  Wri: Hanif Kureishi | Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Olly Alexander, Brice Beaugier | UK Comedy Drama 93min

Hanif Kureishi and Roger Michell were regular collaborators on the subject of mature adult love (Venus, The Mother). LE WEEK-END sees a teaching couple from Birmingham in their sixties (well-known British thesps: Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent), embark on a second honeymoon to Paris in a bid to spice up their tired marriage. Predictable premise: yes, but don’t let this put you off.  The city of love is always a welcome setting for any romantic drama and Paris doesn’t disappoint as we hurtle down open boulevards and swing by Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur.  But time doesn’t stand still and Meg and Nick discover the hotel of their honeymoon has rather gone downhill.  In a moment of pure madness, they head for the Georges V and find themselves in the Presidential Suite.

 

Hanif Kureishi reflects their well-worn resentments, hopes and idiosyncracies in his sharp and well-judged script that sails close to the wind with bittersweet and laugh-out-loud authenticity appealing to art house and mature sensibilities.

As Nick, Broadbent’s keen attempts on the physical front are met will derision from Meg who feels sexual but not sexy despite her Laboutin stilettos and black lacy dress. They resurrect the vamp in her and excite Nick’s dormant libido; still alive but flailing desperately in search of encouragement.

Both nurse secret agendas as they chomp their way through gastronomic blow-outs: Nick has bad news on the work front and Meg feels restless and unchallenged by her job, fearing the future.  There’s a feistiness to this relationship that, despite its bickering, feels so much more upbeat than the tawdry sniping of Before Midnight.  We actually feel for them both and want things to work out.

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A chance meeting with an ex-student of Nick’s (Jeff Goldblum) throws up an invitation to a soirée the next day.  Full of false bonhomie and pretentiousness, it’s an evening of self-gratification for a group of minor intellectuals but brings Nick’s sincerity and openness into sharp-relief amid a barage of boastful toadying. Here Broadbent is unexpectedly moving in a performance that breathes honesty from every pore. Lindsay Duncan too is surprisingly touching and believable in one of her best turns so far. There’s a gung-ho attitude to these two that feels both appealing and genuine and very much buys into the theory that you only live once and life is not a rehearsal. Refreshing, fun and everything that Blue Jasmine was cracked up to be and wasn’t. MT

LE WEEK-END IS ON NETFLIX UK

 

 

The Stoker (2010) Kochegar Aleksei Balabanov series

Director:                     Aleksei Balabanov

Script:                         Aleksei Balabanov
Producer:                    Sergey Selyanov
Cast:                            Mikhail Skryabin, Yuriy Matveev, Aleksandr Mosin, Aida Tumutova, Anna Korotayeva, Varvara Belokurova, Roman Burenkov

Russia 87mins   2010    Black Comedy

Balabanov follows up his successful period piece Morphia with something more in line with Cargo 200. The Stoker is a scathing attack on the nascent mob culture in Russia and with Pop composer Valeriy Didyulya providing the music that is the only thing that lends this film the comedy element to its tone. Otherwise, it is a pretty dark, stark depiction of life in the 1990s in the ‘burbs of a harsh, wintery St Petersburg.

Known more as a theatre actor, the recently deceased Skryabin is superb in the titular role. Skryabin is a Major, retired due to injury during the Afghan War and now the eponymous stoker, tending the furnaces of an industrial complex, owned by Russian mobsters.

Life here is cheap. You may not even be aware that you have transgressed, only to find yourself food for the fire. Skryabin turns a blind eye to the bodies fed into his coal box by erstwhile army colleague Misha (Alexandr Mosin), content to spend what little time he gets with his daughter and write a long-gestating book about the persecuted North East Siberian ‘Yakut’ people on an ancient typewriter set up by his bed in the boiler room adjacent to the voracious incinerators.

 First time actress Aida Tumotova is perfect as Sasha, the stoker’s daughter, now set up in business in the fashionable fur trade and in love with Misha’s taciturn hired gun, ‘Bison’ (Matveev). Indeed, the cast are terrific throughout.

Balabanov has extracted all of the sexiness out of killing, counter to the current American fashion. Here, it has become a sanitised occupation, a clinical undertaking, exercised with the practiced functionality of a fruit-picker or glassmaker and is all the more powerful for it. Likewise, nudity is treated with the same total lack of self-consciousness.

The only downside to this sparse, economically shot, finely executed and highly stylised drama is the pop music, which although making its comedic point quite obviously, finally grates in the use of the same pop song over and over; although this is of course is presumably also an artistic choice.

An eloquent, if somewhat light tragicomedy; in the end, it’s an exploration of the venality of life, where moral bankruptcy slips down through generations with ease, with even less compunction even than the generation coming before. At what point do you take a stand? AR

THE STOKER WILL SCREEN AS PART OF THE ALEXEI BALABANOV RETROSPECTIVE AT KINO KLUB, THE MAYFAIR HOTEL FROM 1 FEBRUARY UNTIL 25 MAY 2014 COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA

 

 

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013) DVD

Director: David Lowery

Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Keith Caradine, Nate Parker

105min  US Drama

What separates David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints from other contemporary tales of romance, is that when we are first introduced to our protagonists, we see them bickering, setting the precedent for the rest of this memorable Texan drama. Though hopelessly romanticised in its approach this is by no means a ‘Disney’ fairytale. Beneath the surface lies a pragmatic and bittersweet drama of a husband and wife desperately hoping to be reunited.

When Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) lands himself a lengthy prison sentence, having taken the fall for his wife Ruth’s (Rooney Mara) impetuous shooting of a police officer, he manages to break out of jail, eagerly hoping to be reunited with his wife and the daughter she gave birth to during his incarceration. However in the meantime, Ruth has struck up a strong relationship with the officer himself, Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster), who is blissfully unaware that it was she who pulled the trigger, as both nervously await the impending return of the feared outlaw.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is not your conventional love story, as the only time we truly see Bob and Ruth together they seem somewhat uneasy in each other’s company. Considering the entire film is built around these romantic notions and the foundations of their marriage, it’s a brave move to depict it so truthfully. To an extent, such an honest portrayal actually allows for the viewer to invest even more into their relationship, as we genuinely believe in it. However, Lowery can be accused of not presenting enough back story for our leads, as the jailbreak occurs too swiftly into proceedings, and because of this we don’t really get a sense for either of their personalities beforehand, which makes it difficult to then root for their cause as a result.

Meanwhile the crime itself is understated somewhat, which, considering the entire film hinges on this very moment, appears a strange move to have made for the filmmaker. But despite the lack of context provided, Lowery is evidently attempting to portray how life changing moments such as this can occur in the most unexpected of ways, and take us by surprise. Whilst appreciating the realism, the scene itself doesn’t feel like it is given quite enough substance or detail to help settle us into the story.

There is a gentle atmosphere prevalent in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, enhanced by the A Cappella score, where mere clapping makes up much of the film’s soundtrack. However the clapping can also create a tense, foreboding ambience on occasion, as it speeds up dramatically to suit the nature of the scene at hand. Meditative and slow-burning in its approach, there is a pensive tone to this production, and though telling a simplistic tale, you never once question the significance or conviction of the narrative, despite so little actually happening for the most part. Unfortunately – and this is the case with many films of this type – Lowery can’t avoid unwanted bouts of tedium, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. STEFAN PAPE

OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 10TH 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton       Screenplay: James Agee

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chaplin, Sally Jane Bruce, Evelyn Varden, Don Beddoe, James Gleeson

Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez

93min   US Film Noir/Southern Gothic from the novel by Davis Grubb

Back in the fifties, Charles Laughton’s reputation as a flamboyant actor on stage and screen totally eclipsed THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, his only outing as a director. This magical piece of ‘Southern Gothic’ was America’s answer to German Expressionism.  Dark themes of religious fervour, sexual tension and fear strike terror into the subconscious. Coalescing with dreamlike set pieces rendered exquisitely in black and white, this masterpiece of chiaroscuro lighting has the ability to shock and enthral. The image of Willa’s corpse in her white winceyette nightie, languishing underwater in the Bayou, is one of the creepiest  sequences in Gothic cinema.

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However, the film was not a commercial or critical success at the time.  James Agee, scripter of The African Queen, was the brains behind the screenplay, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. He offered up the idea to Laughton providing the Britsh thesp with a ideal framework on which to unleash his creative genius on the silver screen.

The setting is the Christian bedrock of West Virginia during the Depression years, a  time of hardship and male chauvinism in the Deep South where Shelley Winter’s ‘Willa’ is left widowed after her husband, Ben Harper, receives the ultimate punishment of execution, having  left the secret of the stolen loot with their two young children. Posing as a man of God, Robert Mitchum plays psychopath Harry Powell who prays upon such widows, marrying them and stealing their money, he tracks Willa down through the criminal network. She is persuaded by the local matron, Evelyn Varden, that in their God-fearing community a widow is more respectable if she re-marries, particularly to a respectable man of the cloth. So Willa marries Harry, who only really worships himself.  On their wedding night, he makes it clear that sex in not on the agenda and he has no desire for progeny and so Willa’s dreams are shattered and her sexual energies are subverted into religious fervour. Joining Harry on a mission to prosceletize through fire and brimstone sermons, the piece is chockfull of religious motifs and sensationalism with its well-crafted Gothic art and set direction, redolent of the Silent Era.

Shelley Winter plays a similar role to that of Alice Tripp in  A Place in the Sun (1951): a gullible, disillusioned romantic, down on her luck and disappointed with life. Cowering under the dominating figure of Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden) she brings a subversive quality to the role of a young and vulnerable mother who eventually becomes a victim.

Night_of_the_Hunter copyAfter the children evade Powell in a rowing-boat, the film takes on a fairytale feel as the fast-moving Mississippi carries them on a nightmarish journey through  starlit countryside: Stanley Cortez’s magical cinematography zooms in on all manner of local flora and fauna: a white owl swooping down on a baby rabbit is a metaphor for Powell threatening his step-children: “It’s a hard World for little ones”.

As Powell, Robert Mitchum gives one of his most innovative performances: menacing, cruel and demonic, as his black figure rides on horseback silhouetted against the sunset, whistling religious hymns.  Well-known for his langorous looks and lazy drawl in Noir classics such as Out of the Past (1947) and His Kind of Woman (1951), here he plays a more sinister role as a magnetic charmer who is a figure of fear to children but one of sexual allure to women, with his tattooed fingers and rakish respectability.  Purportedly, it was his favourite role in a film.

Lillian Gish gives an exultant turn as a winsome carer with attitude. Taking in the Harper children, she styles herself as a soft earth mother who is later to produce a rifle and to actually use it.  THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is one of the most mesmerisingly horrific arthouse films of all time.  Worthy of its re-mastering and ripe for a re-viewing. MT

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER completes GOTHIC: THE DARK HEART OF FILM series at the BFI, Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide from 17th January 2014

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Kiss the Water (2013)

Director: Eric Steel

Documentary/Animation   80min      US

American filmmaker Eric Steel describes his documentary Kiss the Water as an ‘invitation to a fairytale’. And it certainly is. Set in Scotland, it tells the story of Megan Boyd, an artist based deep in the Highlands, who was enchanted by the brightly coloured and intricate pictures she found in a book about fly-fishing when she was a little girl.  A lonely outsider, she taught herself to make these delicate objects using the finest feathers known to humanity.  Their vibrant colours and delicate shapes are certainly the stuff of dreams and carry names redolent of the rich and regal heritage of the British Isles.

KISS_THE_WATER_2 copyEven if you have no interest in fishing or Scotland, this beautifully-crafted film will enchant you with its cleverly-animated sequences featuring impressionist-style paintings of swirling underwater wildlife that conjure up a world of mystery and intrigue, perfected pained with dreamy photography of  the glorious Highland countryside.  Even though Megan Boyd never married and appeared to be an outsider, working away devotedly in her workshop, it is clear that she possessed a richly emotional and romantic soul that is cleverly evoked by Eric Steel’s imaginative rendering in animated mixed media.  Working exclusively during daylight hours and eventually losing her sight, Megan perfected her skills and worked on into her eighties.

Despite the ultimate (rather crass) revelation that one of her flys actually fetched  thousands of pounds, it is fair to mention that Boyd was a humble creature who never intended to capitalise over her skill and never actually charged more than a few pounds for her wares.  Naturally, among her customers was Prince Charles, who grew so fond of her that he actually invited her down to London to collect her OBE award.  Such was her modesty that she declined the invitation and the Prince duly delivered the award personally to her Scottish abode. MT

KISS THE WATER IS ON RELEASE FROM 10 JANUARY 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Computer Chess (2013) MUBI DVD/BLU-

Dir: Andrew Bujalski, Cast: Patrick Riester, Wiley Wiggins, Myles Paige, Robin Schwartz | USA 2013, 92 min.  Comedy

Andrew Bujalski’s latest film COMPUTER CHESS defies any genre classification: sounding a death knell for human discourse as we know it, this is simply on its own. Set in a sleazy, low class hotel in Texas at the beginning of the 80s, it features two group of humans (the computer chess group of the title and a New-Age cult meeting) and an overwhelming horde of Persian cats who seem to take over the hotel; at least at night. Whilst all the humans are awkward and geeky, the cats are full of themselves marauding the place in a quest for domination.

 

The fuzzy black and white of the 4:3 format (shot with a Sony video camera from the 1960s, but not in a gimmicky way, gives the film its sci-fi element: pioneers from another world, creating a an almost surreal otherworldly atmosphere  in which all three tribes vy for supremacy is both absurd and unsettling. The unintended ludicrousness of the situation engenders an atmosphere of alienation, the participants existing in their own bubbles, where words are lost as a means of communication, and emotions have yet to be invented.

The annual chess meeting has a long tradition and the winner wears a glittering crown at the end and takes on the chess Grand Master Paul Henderson, who has met a bet that he will successfully beat all computers until 1984. The players – in their thirties – are humourless and emotionally inhibited (the only female competitor, Shelly, is no different), the term ‘nerd’ could have been invented for them. The youngest of them Peter (Riester), is oblivious of Shelly, even though she gives him tame encouragement. Peter wanders into the next emotional trap when he visits an older couple in their room: they want to seduce him into a ménage-a-trois, but he literally runs away, like the frightened boy he is.

One of the programmers, Papageorge (Paige) roams the hotel at night, trying to find a room to sleep in. He is brazen in his attempts, but everyone is too polite to point this out to him. The New Age group members are very accommodating to start with (putting their fingers in freshly baked loaves of bread and “replaying” their birth to re-engage with their inner beings), but when the chess congress overruns into Monday, they insist on sharing the meeting room with them, in spite of Henderson’s loud protests: he senses their intrusion may disrupt his concentration. A unique, enigmatic, unique and innovative masterpiece. AS

COMPUTER CHESS IS on DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY ON 20 courtesy of www.eurekavideo.co.uk | and also on MUBI

William Nicholson on the making of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

2CAJ7906 copyWilliam Nicholson knows Nelson Mandela’s life inside out. Starting work in 1997 on the script the the film that eventually became MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, two years before director Justin Chadwick even came on board, he’s looked at the story from every possible angle – even at one point locating it in the Palace of Versailles, even toying with TV and a two-parter film version eventually coming up with an appealing, filmic journey.  Working every single day on a script, from linear narrative to fractured narrative – he’s tried every angle to bring us a way to understand the life of this great South African Statesman, Politician and human being , who, significantly chose to leave this World during the UK Premiere, never actually seeing the finished product – MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, 33 drafts later- ‘a story version of the truth’ has emerged – a film the creators thought would never happen. 09738-1B5O1798 copy

Naturally over the last sixteen years events have unfolded and developed – nearly every well-known black actor has been considered for the part and moved on, due to other work commitments. South African actors also came and went. But when Idris Elba arrived on the scene, he made an indelible impression with his appealing humanity that stems in part to his father being a trade union organiser. The emotional link is stronger than the ‘Africanness’ in him, although Elba’s origins are in Ghana.

Now it seems he’s set for international stardom, after magnetic roles in TV (Luther, The Wire) and this standout performance. The young Mandela was a fitness freak and a boxer, so Idris Elba’s strong physicality was ideal for the part, which he embraced wholeheartedly; running tapes of Mandela’s voice over and over again. Says Nicholson of Elba “He’s not an intellectual and doesn’t spend all day ‘in character’ like some actors.  He internalises the part and reverts in and out of Hackney, completely naturally”.  Naomi Harris also fits the persona and stance of Winnie Mandela, even – this film has been ‘made’ by this serendipitous casting.

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The film has been extremely successful in South Africa and will most likely be used as an educational tool in schools:  successfully encapsulating the key idea that Mandela made the White population fear the Black, encouraging them to work for a solution to harmony.  This is particularly felt in the scene where Mandela refuses to let P W de Clerk offer him a state funeral, on principal. He reasserts his power through moral emotion.

16408-2CAJ6374 copyWilliam Nicholson believes that the ANC will split and form an opposition.  And he does bring some heritage to the story.  Born to a Catholic mother and Jewish businessman father, whose parents were South African, the scripting job was a natural fit.  But although he has studied the history in depth, William Nicholson describes how important it is not to let research engulf the project: “Know it, don’t let it overwhelm you”. Producer Anand Singh was also adamant he didn’t want a South African screenwriter for the feature but someone who could tell a story for the whole World to appreciate and understand. For his part, William Nicholson considered it his duty to get across the moral quality in Mandela – a quality that’s the key to making his enemies embrace him.  So MANDELA becomes a universal story.  As in SHADOWLANDS  and GLADIATOR, Moralism is the most important element of all in MANDELA – ‘Everything I write is driven by moral emotion”.

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM comes out on 6th January 2014

 

The Great Beauty (2013) La Grande Bellezza

GREAT_BEAUTY_2D_DVDDir: Paolo Sorrentino   Writers: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Carlo Buccirosso

137mins  *****     Italian with English subtitles   Drama

Paolo Sorrentino’s sensual overload of all things Italian transports you to Rome for a paean to pleasure and pain, gaiety and melancholy seen through the eyes of writer and roué, Jep Gambardella.  Played exultantly here by Sorrentino’s regular collaborator, Toni Servillo (The Consequences of Love, Il Divo), this is possibly Sorrentino’s best film so far, capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle class with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first experienced in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, here seen in the context of 21st century ennui.

But Jep Gambardella has only written one book having spent most of his nights as a party animal and bon viveur.  At 65, well-preserved and suave, he exudes a Mediterranean masculinity with his finely-tailored jackets and well-made shoes.  In this rich Autumn of life,  jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery, he is thrown off-balance and onto a Proustian trip down memory lane.  But as he looks back with friends and paramours, he sees complexity and spirituality beyond all the glamour and profanity.

The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet of tone and texture, captured here by Luca Bigazzi’s dizzying cinematography, evoking all that’s stylish and beautiful as well as hypocritical and shallow about the Italian way of life.  See it, enjoy it, savour it; because one day its passion and glory may be gone forever and only memories will remain. MT

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THE GREAT BEAUTY IS OUT ON DVD and BLU-RAY ON  13 January 2014  COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE.

THE FILM HAS ALSO BE SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE SECTION OF THE OSCARS IN MARCH 2014

 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Dir.: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Kathryn Hahn, Shirley MacLaine, Sean Penn, Adam Scott

USA 2013, 114 min. Comedy Drama

i1-DF-03424crop copyFirst thought: Do we really need a remake of Norman Z. MacLeod’s classic from 1947, with Danny Kaye as the superhero of his own dreams? Thirty minutes into Ben Stiller’s remake (in which he also stars) we probably think: not really. In Stiller’s version, Walter is a photographic archivist at ‘Life’, which will close down in a few weeks after a takeover and go exclusively online.

Down in his basement office, Walter is meticulously preserving all the negatives, particularly those sent in in by Sean O’Connell, an elusive war and wild life photographer (Sean Penn) who embodies Walter’s romantic dream of an action hero (and also happens to be Stiller’s ideal actor for the part).  But the cover photo for the last edition of the magazine is missing – and Walter is to blame. Cue cringeworthy company liquidator played by Adam Scott in a performance epitomising glibness and corporate sleaze.

The only problem is that Walter – true to his legend – can only imagine his ideal life in “zoning out” experiences, where he becomes the romantic superhero, make his bland life bearable. During these episodes he saves humans and animals from great peril, and even getting the girl of his dreams, co-worker Sheryl Melhoff (Wiig), a single mum whom he is unsuccessfully trying to dating ‘in reality’ and on the e-harmony website. At this point the film, having shown off his big budget in special effects, changes gear.His desire to capture Sheryl’s heart  is the kicker that spurs him on to realise his full potential.

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DF-00187_WW copyEmbarking on a quirky and action-packed mission to find O’Connell (and the photo), all the way through Iceland, Greenland up to the Himalayas. his dream is tethered now to reality and this is where the narrative becomes both engaging and plausible despite the hysterical shenanigans that ensure.  Walter embodies you and I – his ‘Superman’  is a disorientated character, buffeted by external forces, running for his life in a hostile land/seascape, forced on by his obsession for Cheryl – Walter becomes a metaphor for ‘everyman’. He is really a blob on the landscape. And how magnificent is this landscape: huge panoramic shots of great beauty, but not in the way of a postcard idyll, but retaining all the rough edges, which  threaten Walter’s pursuit of his goal. Not to mention the humans he encounters: a drunken helicopter pilot in Iceland, who drops him into the sea instead onto a vessel, where he narrowly misses being a shark’s breakfast. And the perils of the English language, when Walter has to be saved from a volcano eruption in Iceland – he interprets the warning, Freudian slip-wise, as ‘erection’.

HM-620 copyIn his least cynical film (his own words) Stiller directs himself not as the slap-stick hero he normally portrays, but as (at least in the second half) the lonely, shy man Walter really is. Having been traumatised as a teenager by the death of his father (and supporting his family), he is still in the clutches of his mother Edna (MacLaine) and sister (Kathryn Hahn/Afternoon Delight). Cheryl is as many light years away from him as his fantasies, and he only makes contact with her via her son and a common love of skateboarding. In sympathy with many guys, Walter is not good at communication with women of his age; he feels a longing, but can’t articulate those urges in a coherent way. He’s much more able to react angrily to men, like the corporate baddy (Adam Scott). But he is not yet fine-tuned for a real partnership, because he has to embrace the Jungian concept of finding an adult version of himself, away from the stifling closeness of his mother and the hero-worshipping for O’Connell.

Stiller has presents a well-crafted film – the dissolves are stunning and he matches the narrative with a suitably emblematic score, always finding the right song for a particular moment, like the ‘fantasy’ Cheryl who morphs into his muse, singing “Major Tom” in a pub in Iceland, encouraging his to follow his ‘star’. The message overall is humanistic and anti-corporate – not without good reason, because the online version of ‘Life’ closed down for real in 2012, having lasted a fraction of the time of the newspaper. Stiller’s MITTY takes its time to find his human feet, but it deserves our attention like Walter his happy-end. AS

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
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Last Vegas (2013)

Director: Jon Turteltaub       Writer: Dan Fogelman

Cast: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Bre Blair

105min    US Comedy

A stellar cast of real pros makes this trip to Las Vegas a worthwhile bet. When Robert de Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline head off on a ‘boys’ weekend’, it’s bound to be gold-plated especially when the destination is Vegas and they are clearly out to have fun. Schematic and corny it may sound but this certainly hits the jackpot comedy-wise, offering moving moments and valuable insight into mature dating and life-long friendship.

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A glitzy get-together is the clearly the order of the day before Billy, 69, finally decides to tie the knot with a girl who could be his grand-daughter (Bre Blair). And where better than the Nevada gambling haven?. Michael Douglas is a natural charmer as Billy, the oldest swinger in town, with his biscuit tan and ‘stay-pressed ‘slacks. His bitter  love-rival Paddy (De Niro) is still mourning his beloved wife who Billy once dated (seen in flashback to their youth).  Sam (Kevin Kline) is hoping for a late leg-over too (with his wife’s blessing) and 76 year-old  Archie (Morgan Freeman) is desperate to escape house arrest at his son’s, after suffering a stroke.

Dan Fogelman’s sparky script ensures cut and thrust with events taking an unexpected turn for Billy when he bonds with a sophisticated cabaret singer Diana, (Mary Steenburgen) on arrival. In Vegas to revitalise her career and not afraid to push the love boat out, Diana proves a mellow counterpoint to his young and brittle fiance, Lisa (Bre Blair) who never really convinces but certainly looks the part.  In a strange twist, Sam gets embroiled with a drag queen (Roger Bart) who takes the wind out of his sails, while Archie hits the jackpot and is upgraded to the hotel’s presidential suite, providing the venue for an impromptu knees-up and attracting the resort’s most alluring eye candy, allowing him to kick back from his more worthy roles of late.

Naturally, these actors are at the top of their game when dealing with the ups and downs that predictably ensue as the veterans are let lose to explore their interpersonal dynamics (both social and erotic). The sparkling results feel plausible, farcical and charismatic.  De Niro is on form as the grizzled old love victim. Kevin Kline, the youngest and most insecure as Sam, also gets the roughest deal and the leanest character arc – but with his comic genius makes of it what he can. He really needs another film like The Ice Storm to give this brilliance another chance.

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Mary Steenburgen’s musical role is the icing on the cake and one delivered with charm and mature assurance that makes her delightful to listen and popular with the flirty foursome. The bets are off on who finally wins her hand. MT

LAST VEGAS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 3RD JANUARY 2013.

SEE OUR MOVIE GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS

 

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO 35 copyDirector/Writer: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cast: Marco Leonardi, Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Isa Danieli

171mins   Italian with English subtitles   Drama

This cute cult classic from memory lane was garlanded with awards including an Oscar back in 1990. Now celebrating its 25th Anniversary with a sparkling re-master and back on our screens for more cinematic indulgence.  Nostalgia and sentimentality aside, we see Salvatore (Marco Leonardi), now a famous auteur, transported to his childhood Sicily when he hears of the death of his cinema mentor, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the village projectionist. As a young ‘Toto’, (Salvatore Cascio), he had been inspired to follow his star thanks to Alfredo’s fatherly inspiration. Now the world has changed and there’s no going back. That said, the drama made Marco Leonardi an international star.   A romantic tribute to the love of film and the love of life. MT

CINEMA PARADISO (RE-MASTERED) IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 DECEMBER 2013

Big Bad Wolves (2013)

Director/Writers: Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado

110min   Comedy Crime Thriller   Israel. Hebrew with subtitles

Cast: Guy Adler, Dvir Benedek, Lior Ashkenazi, Tzahi Grad, Doval’e Glickman, Rotem Keinan; Israel 2013, 110 min.

Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s violent thriller courts controversy with nearly all the characters involved, and one wonders if this was not the main raison-d’etre behind this film in the first place. The torture scenes are technically well-crafted and graphic, and would fit in with any horror/slasher movie. But even worse is the manipulation of the filmmakers: trying to make the viewer side with Dror against his vigilante captors, having created the narrative this way.

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When a group of police officers are brutally interrogating a suspected serial child killer, they are filmed undercover. Miki, the leading officer is suspended. He starts trailing the suspect Dror, a teacher of religious education, who seems to be awkward, but harmless.  Miki wants to capture Dror and ‘continue the interrogation’, but Gidi, the father of the last victim, captures Dror first and takes him into a remote hut.  Miki is also captured by the grieving father, but the policeman agrees to help Gidi, to make Dror confess, and tell them, where he has hidden the heads of the girls he has killed.

Is there still a place for self-justice or torture, are the filmmakers overstepping the boundaries of moral responsibilities, in making this feature?Decide for yourselves. As a pure shocker the film may be excusable, but the moral implications are not.  Child killers will always excite vigilante action, but in a civilised state such actions should be condemned outright. Perhaps the permanent war situation in Israel has blurred the reaction to violence as a whole: A reason more to listen to the Peace movement inside the country. AS

BIG BAD WOLVES IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 DECMEBER 2013

 

 

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s (2013)

Dir: Matthew Miele;

Cast: Linda Fargo, Betty Halbreich, David Hoey, Rachel Joe, Candice Bergen;

Narrator: William Fichtner. USA 2013, 93 min.

Documentaries about institutions of all kind – and the upmarket department store Bergdorf Goodman in New York is certainly that – tend usually to be sycophantic. But Matthew Miele’s SCATTER MY ASHES  has stepped over the demarcation line between document and commercial – clearly landing on the side of fawning admiration where any reality outside the store is ignored.

Senior staff are treated like gods; the filmmaker demurely listens to all the small talk and gossip about how fantastic life at B&G is, endlessly extolling its virtues without a scintilla of criticism to add texture is this picture-perfect paean to the department store where a pair of shoes costing a cool six thousand Dollars (the only price mentioned during the whole film.), is held up as a paragon of bare-faced profiteering. Oscar Wilde would turn in his grave uttering his well-worn dictum: “the price of everything a the value of nothing”.

History resolves around the store – not the other way around. With great sadness we are told that Jackie Kennedy bought a certain hat here, which she later wore to greet the masses on that fateful Dallas day in November 1963 (mercifully we are spared the shooting during this segment of archive footage recounting the event.).  And that’s the way history is made: Bergdorf Goodman placing itself right in the centre of the assassination drama, an example of product placement at its most ghoulish and opportunistic.

Needless to say, there is no downside to this story apart from the tragically amusing fact that, during the 2008 crash, even the clientele of this great shop were unable to afford its prices. So profits fell during the crisis, but then so did Walmart’s, because people could hardly afford a pint of milk: the doc would be hard-pressed to come up with a more insensitive social commentary on the World financial meltdown. But luckily for B&G, we learn that today’s profits have exceeded the pre-2008 level – “quiet an achievement”. Really?!

We also discover in this glitzy advert for the store, that shop window dressing is called ‘installation’ at B&G. David Hoey, who is in charge of the Christmas decorations in 2011, behaves like Cecil B de Mille the second. Yes, it looks nice, but please, the only reason is that you want to sell the over-priced stuff. But no, B&G is actually doing us all a favour, being so monumentally wonderful: it’s the public, the 95% who can only do “installation” shopping and the five percent who own the World and can afford to pay the inflated prices inside the store, who have to be grateful.

Joan Rivers nails it in one statement: “People who take fashion serious are idiots” – but it goes under in an endless display of vanity and pomp – the grimacing faces of most of the participants of this hideous carnival are testament to the ugliness of capitalism showcased here at its most rampant. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 DECEMBER 2013

 

 

A Long Way From Home (2013)

Sharing a dp (Ed Rutherford) with Joanna Hogg doesn’t guarantee the end result will produce her subtle brand of middle-class English drama. That said, this sun-filled story of elderly Brits in the South of France is not without merit, although dark clouds do occasionally appear.  Watchable and appealing, it successfully evokes the heady summer atmosphere of Languedoc-Roussillon with stunning visuals.

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It also has the suave acting talents of James Fox as Joseph, a debonair gent in his early seventies who’s enjoying a leisurely but aimless retirement in Nîmes with his motherly Irish wife (Brenda Fricker) scrabbling about on the foothills of senility.  At dinner one night they meet a young couple on holiday – Suzanne (Nathalie Dormer/The Tudors) and Mark (Paul Nicholls/Life Just Is). The pretty blond makes a palpable impression on Joseph, with her perfectly blow-dried hair and delightful smile.

At first this feels like an upmarket version of Bergerac, with equally inane dialogue, but then a tragic accident proves Brenda to be worth her weight in gold and the narrative gains momentum. The following day Joseph meets the couple again and they head off to the vineyards in Joseph’s car – cue idle banter about their respective relationships. Nathalie Dormer manages to be sexy and sensitive as Suzanne but Paul Nicholls is slightly miscast: he does his best to play a slightly vulnerable geezer but this role would have been perfect for someone like Jack Davenport who was wasted recently in the (dreadful) Mother’s Milk. Joseph and Suzanne grow closer while Mark proves to be a bit of a lad, chumming up with a local wine-maker Robert, on a business venture.

ALWFH EC-1207-7025 copyVirginia Gilbert’s well-paced  and convincing drama offers an insight into male sexuality and feels authentic and heartfelt (with echoes of the more robust Le Weekend). James Fox gives a poignant performance as Joseph; clearly smitten by a “late-life crisis” – his dormant libido flickering at  Suzanne’s frisky sexuality but his bittersweet voyeuristic moments (when he sees the couple later in the village) feeling sad and rueful rather than raunchy.  Ultimately, this is a story about revisiting the past with regret, about the quiet desperation of old age for those whose pleasure is not tethered to their family but to their cherished and much enjoyed sexuality.  A la recherche du temps perdu. MT

A LONG WAY FROM HOME RELEASES ON THE 6TH DECEMBER 2013

Hannah Arendt (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Margarethe von Trotta     Writers: Pam Katz and Margarethe von Trotta

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Axel Milberg, Janet McTeer

103 mins   Germany   Drama   German/English

Hannah Arendt, the eponymous real-life subject of this well-meaning biopic, was a political theorist who studied under a series a great twentieth century philosophers, including Jaspers, Husserl and Heidegger. Born in Germany in 1906, the Jewish Arendt fled her home country amidst the rise of pre-war anti-Semitism, finally settling in America. Among the many important works Arendt would go on to produce were The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi  HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel” \o “Schutzstaffel” SS who oversaw the deportation of Jews from Germany. It is Arendt writing the latter work which forms the basis of Hannah Arendt. 

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After persuading The New Yorker to send her to Jerusalem to cover Eichmann’s trial, Arendt is overcome by Eichmann’s sheer ‘mediocrity’, and unable to reconcile this with the ‘greatness’ of his crimes – thus leading her to develop her concept of ‘the banality of evil’. Expressing the concept in her New Yorker piece, alongside some ambiguous comments about the conduct of Jewish leaders during the war, Arendt unwittingly unleashed a tidal wave of controversy. As her friend Hans Jonas says in the film, Arendt turned the trial into a philosophy lesson, using it to raise important questions about the nature of evil. In reliving the story and controversy behind Arendt’s piece, Hannah Arendt shares these preoccupations, transferring Arendt’s ideas from the page to the screen.

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The film’s key themes are neatly summarised by the darkness of the film’s opening, which shows Eichmann’s capture followed by a scene of Arendt smoking and thinking, lying alone in darkness – an apt visual metaphor for what’s to follow. And in perusing Arendt’s thoughts, the film seems to posit that her attempts to understand Eichmann were at least in part also an attempt to understand how Heidegger, her former mentor and lover, could have likewise become a member of the Nazi party.

It’s a very human motivation for a woman who was criticised for being ‘all arrogance and no feeling’, as one character says here. In attempting to try and show us Arendt’s mind at work, it could be argued that Hannah Arendt likewise fails to truly engage feelings. There are attempts: quickly sketched friendships and romantic exchanges, and yet when health troubles strike for both her husband and an old friend, neither moment carries the necessary dramatic impact. We’re constantly told how great Arendt is (students fawn over her, the editor of the New Yorker claims ‘she wrote one of the most important books of the twentieth century’) – and yet, as portrayed in the film, her humble, human side never feels truly exposed. Though we see her criticised and hounded, it feels like the film presupposes our sympathy, assuming Arendt’s likeability without the need to actually show it to us.

Thankfully, the power of the story,  and the ideas ultimately win out, the film becoming powerful, gripping and thought-provoking. But it’s a shame that the film never engages emotions quite as successfully as it does the intellect. Alex Barrett.

HANNAH ARENDT IS SHOW AT THE EVERYMAN HAMPSTEAD, TRICYCLE KILBURN. WATERMANS ART CENTRE BRENTFORD, CURZON RENOIR and IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Cinema Paradiso – coming soon….

 

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Mirrors (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Marina Migunova; Cast: Viktoria Isakova, Roman Polyanskiy, Victor Dobronravov

Russia 2013, 130 min.   Biopic      Russian with English subtitles

Some brave Russian dramas will never reach mainstream audiences in their homeland such as WINTER JOURNEY.  MIRRORS is one that probably should have stayed at home.

A biopic of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), MIRRORS is carried alone by Viktoria Isakova in the title role. With her strong performance she saves this overlong, often confusing and in the end not very truthful feature. Tsvetaeva was born into an upper-class Russian family. Her very strict mother died when she was 14, which was a liberation for Marina. At the age of 16 she studied at the Sorbonne, before returning to Russia, where she met Sergej Efron, a cadet, at a Black Sea town. She was 19 when they married. Her two first children Irina and Alya were born before the Russian Revolution. Whilst Efron was fighting at the front, and later for the White Army, Tsvetaeva suffered from near starvation in Moscow. She wrote poems glorifying the White Army and later emigrated via Berlin  and Prague (where she had an affair with Konstantin Rodzevitch, a soldier and friend of her husband) to Paris. She suffered from Tuberculosis from 1925 onwards, bcause her life in the Russian émigré society in Paris was materially very unrewarding. Efron became homesick for Russia in Paris, and joined the NKDW (forerunner of the KGB), killing a man near Lausanne. In 1939 Marina followed Efron and her daughter Alya to Russia, where she killed herself in August 1941, after being notified by the authorities of the death of her husband.

It is always difficult to show the written work of a genius in a feature film, and Migunova, like many before her, fails the task. We hear voice-overs of Tsvetaeva’s poems, but mainly we see a rather affected woman, craving for affection and making scenes about banalities. Her husband is portrayed as a weakling, who suffers for his love for his wife and his sudden conversion to communism remains totally unexplained. These rather one-dimensional characters act in a rather well set up design of diverse stages of poverty, but they cannot compensate for the episodic nature of the narrative. Camera work is very conventional, mainly relaying on close-ups.

But the worst aspect of the film is its lack of truthfulness. To begin with, we never learn that Tsvetaeva gave her daughters Irina and Alya to an orphanage in Russia, in the misguided hope that they would be fed better there.  Irina died, leaving the poet with a life-long trauma. And whilst we are shown the ménage-a-trois between Marina, Sergej and Konstantin in Prague at length (even though it lasted not much more than a year), Migunova leaves out totally more important personal encounters of the poet, all of which fond their way into her most celebrated work. Soon after her marriage she had an affair with Osip Mandelstam, and between1912 and 1917 she was the lover of Sofia Parnock, both of them poets. And in 1917 Tsvetaeva met the actress Sofia Holliday, writing countless poems and a novella about their relationship, which lasted until 1917. Do we have to understand that the ideology of the leadership of the Russian Federation regarding homosexuality is being followed by its artists to the letter? AS

MIRRORS screens during the 7th Russian Film Festival 2013 on Friday, 15th November at The Mayfair Hotel London.

AS

Winter Journey (2013) London Lion Winner – 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Directors/Writers: Sergei Taramev, Liubov Lvova

Cast: Aleksei Frandetti, Evgeny Tkachuk, Vladimir Mishukov, Dmitry Mukhamadev, Andrei Tsymbalov

90min   Drama    Russian with English subtitles

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Winter Journey takes its title from Schubert ‘s “Winterreise” song cycle.  The central character is Eric (Aleksei Frandetti), a young, gay classical singer, who is preparing for audition at the Moscow State Conservatory when he meets his nemesis, Lyokha (Evgeny Tkachuk).

One of the standouts at this year’s Russian Film Festival, the feature is unlikely to be widely screened in Russia due to issues surrounding Putin’s new law criminalising ‘gay propaganda’.  But apart from a snatched kiss between Eric and the psychotic criminal he becomes involved with – there is very little to offend mainstream audiences but a great deal to entertain them in this quirky and visually engaging snapshot of Moscow’s contemporary bohemian scene.

In a snowbound Moscow, thawing round the edges – the voyeuristic camera offers insight into Moscow’s hard-bitten underworld: Cabaret venues, urban backwaters and waterways as well as the more traditional majestic architectural facades and panoramas of the capital. Reflecting the polarity that still exists in modern Russia, Lvokha’s disenfranchised world collides with Eric’s artistic one when their paths entwine during an altercation on a bus. Each leaves the scene with an item of the other’s property.

The story then follows them both: Lyokha gives an unflinching and raw performance full of anger and despair as he embarks on a brutally-violent crime-fuelled mission to survive on his wits from mugging young Russian yuppies to shedding tears of self-pity on hearing Eric’s rich singing voice.

Erik is more enigmatic as a member of Moscow’s romantic professional elite. Frandetti manages successfully to convey his ego-driven artistic sensibilities and his damaged psyche with considerable allure.  Prone to bouts of drinking and smoking, he too appears to be on a journey of self-destruction; although a more ‘Romantic’ one.  Caught up in a submissive relationship with a gay doctor; he hangs out with a crowd of cultured professionals- the most interesting of whom is Slava, who lives in an antique-strewn house and owns jewels purportedly inherited from the ‘Royal Family’.

Tkachuk won best actor for his role as the mercurial and ultra-violent psychopath who somehow pushes the buttons to ignite Eric’s passion. They scamper deliriously through the snow in the the film’s coruscatingly bleak dénouement, sumptuously evoked by Michael Krichman’s inventive visuals and enhanced by occasional bouts of the classical score highlighting the intense melancholia of the piece.

Directors Lvova and Taramasev are professional actors from a background of TV and film and this shows through in this directorial debut which aptly reflects the sentiments of Franz Schubert’s elegant yet mournful songs to piano composed when he was dying of syphilis. Perhaps the one entitled “Frozen Tears” best expresses the drama: “Frozen tears fall from his cheeks as he walks away, but the breast from which they arise is so burning hot with feelings that they should melt the winter ice completely”. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parkland (2013) 70th Venice Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Peter Landesman; Cast: Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti, Colin Hanks, Mark Duplass, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, USA 2013, 93 min.

The only thing PARKLAND gets right is its timing: the 50th anniversary year of JFK’s assassination. But it is nearly impossible to imagine such a dull realisation of one of history’s most dramatic moments. To start with, the acting is wooden, with everyone is hamming it up, like they think it should have looked on November 22nd 1963. So we see Jackie clutching skull and brain parts of her husband, eyes wild. The trauma surgeon hammering away on JFK’s chest like a drummer; the nurse fetching a cross from the cupboard with all the solemnity of a papal ceremony; the CIA man dragging the coffin with the corpse through the plane door with the violence associated with American football players, just to underline their unwillingness for an autopsy.

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But worst of all is the total lack of standpoint – Landesman declared in the press conference, that he just wanted to show the emotional impact of the tragedy on the main participants but not touch on the question of who shot the president. How anybody can be so wilfully naïve is hard to understand. To make a point, the filmmaker mentions none of 18 material witnesses of the shooting who died: six were shot, 3 died in car accidents, 2 committed suicide, 3 died of heart-attacks, just two from natural causes. Did the shooting not impact emotionally on their lives and those of their loved ones? And how can we judge the impact on Harvey Oswald, when Landesman leaves it open as to if he was the assassin or not – even though the Abraham Zapruder film (which is used in  PARKLAND) shows clearly that JFK was shot from the grass hill and not from the fourth floor of the library, where Oswald was supposed to be.

PARKLAND’s film aesthetics top the list of conventional boredom and its supposedly naïve a-political message is disingenuous. Paul Giamatti convinces as Zapruder in a fine performance. Otherwise, this is one of the few films that can compete with any propaganda film – just by leaving out the truth. Make up your own mind.  If you’re looking for more on the Lee Harvey Oswald story, KILLING OSWALD makes the intellectual argument and works an interesting companion piece to this dumbed-down Hollywood pap. ANDRE SIMONOWEICZ.

PARKLAND IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 22 NOVEMBER 22 NOVEMBER 2013

 

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Frances Ha (2012) Greta Gerwig Season

Dir/Wri : Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig | Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Esper, Adam Driver | 85’ US   Drama

A kooky and charming twenty-something New York tale that could have been penned by Hal Hartley or even Woody Allen, Frances Ha is Noah Baumbach’s second collaboration with Gretwig who also stars in a comedy about an awkward girl and her complex passions. It was a critical smash hit for its star and her director.

Typically indie in feel and freshly shot in crisp black and white – with a large dose of chutzpah – it tells the story of a slightly jejune sofa-surfing dancer who is vulnerable yet determined to have fun in her quest for happiness.  As Frances, Greta Gerwig gives a suberb performance that shows she’s much more clever than her friends give her credit for.  It’s a stylish film and well worth a watch for its sharp script, authentic characterisation and sparky performances. MT

Greta Gerwig Season at the BFI 

Watch Here

 

 

 

Utopia (2013)

Dir.: John Pilger, John Lowery; UK 2013, 110 min.

Eighteen years after Lieutenant James Cook had claimed Australia for the Crown in 1870, the British government started to colonise the fifth continent. Since then, Australia has been named the ‘lucky’ country, even though it was first used as a penal colony for misfits from the United Kingdom. But their plight is nothing compared with the fate of the indigenous population, the Aboriginals, of which around one million lived in their own country at the time of the British invasion.

Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who has worked since 1962 in the UK, has returned to his homeland to see the current plight of the earth loving Aboriginals, who are the victims of an ongoing genocide. UTOPIA takes its name from an aboriginal village of the same name in the Northern Territories, where Pilger’s peripatetic journey begins combining widescreen visuals with close-up interviews of locals and archive footage. We see shacks and other provisional housing, and the house of the government rep, which has no less than 18 ventilators, keeping the heat at bay. These living (?) conditions for Aboriginals are repeated throughout the film: the lack of functioning toilets and other sanitary installations, overcrowding, water pumps outside the buildings, asbestos poisoning, lack of basic health care – the list is endless. No wonder that most of the children suffer from deafness and blindness – they are permanently dehydrated, loosing 30% of their body fluid. A third of the aboriginals die before they reach the age of 45.

The abuse of the Aboriginals by countless governments seems endless and provides a startling contrast to the plush lives of ordinary citizens pictured: Prime Minister Barton stated in 1901 that the equality act would only include the white and British citizen. Sterilisation was another way to reduce the indigenous population, since the white population believed “that they themselves were civilised –but they are not”. In the 60s TV programs proclaimed “that they have to show that they want to be one of us”, and talking about the poverty of the Aboriginals the announcer’s voice proclaimed “That’s what they want”. (‘They’ having replaced the original names of the victims). Thousands of children were literally stolen from parents, and given to white families for ‘integration’. And today’s prisons are overcrowded with victims of the race injustice, the perpetrators speak freely of “stacking and racking” and “warehousing”.

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Death in police custody is not a rarity, the case of Eddie Murray, who died in prison in 1987 of a broken sternum is only an exception in so far that he was the son of Arthur Murray, who led a strike of Aboriginal workers in the early 60s, when the conditions were not unlike slave labour. He is rightly convinced that the death of his son was a revenge act. In 2006  the TV show “Lateline”  interviewed a “frightened” youth worker (his face blacked out), who claimed that Aboriginals were using their children as sex slaves. Police action was swift, but it turned out that the “whistleblower” was Greg Andrews, working for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs. This case is particularly ironic, since white men have sexually abused Aboriginal women and children for a century without prosecution.

Perhaps symbolic for the continuous plight of the Aboriginals is Rottnest: a former concentration camp (minus gas chambers) it is today a luxury Spa, costing 240 Australian Dollar per night. The roads are build over the mass graves of the Aboriginal prisoners. Pilger visits Rottness with one of the survivors, who shows us that 51 prisoners lived in the space of one hotel room. The prisoners had to build the gallows for their own people.

Aboriginals are “Refugees in their own country”, and as long as the Australian Government is unwilling to pay any compensation and better their living conditions, it should be treated like the Apartheid regime of South Africa: with economic sanctions.

The “lucky” country? More likely the “lying one”.  This well-paced and immersive documentary is well worth watching both from an historical viewpoint and a cinematic one.  AS

UTOPIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE ACROSS THE UK FROM FRIDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER 2013

Alpha Papa (2013) Now on DVD/BlU

Director: Declan Lowney

Cast: Steve Coogan, Colm Meamey, Sean Pertwee, Anna Maxwell Martin, Felicity Montagu, Jason Tresswell

Writers: Armando Iannucci, Peter Baynham, Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons

90mins  Comedy UK

Gun_Cropped-672x1024Steve Coogan’s famous local radio DJ and talk show host Alan Partridge is one of the UK’s favourite comedy characters and has now arrived on the big screen in this Summer’s unmissable British comedy ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA.

There are plenty of laughs to be had in this close-up and personal film debut of the saddo presenter at North Norfolk Radio. Awash with ‘too much information’ (he loses his trousers, quite literally!), it records every crack and crevice of Alan’s cringeworthy physique and shamelessly pursues a politically incorrect agenda of witty one-liners skilfully crafted by co-writers Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci (“Forget about Jesus, as far as I’m concerned, Neil Diamond is the real King of the Jews!.) and helmed by the safe hands of ‘Father Ted’ creator Declan Lowney.

Featuring the usual team of co-presenter Simon (Tim Key), Radio Norwich pal Dave Clifton (Phil Cornwell), long-suffering PA, Lynn (Felicity Montagu), ageing DJ, Pat Farrell (Colm Meamey) and his Geordie friend Michael (Simon Greenhall) now a security guard, this outing is sadly missing a love interest for Alan, more’s the pity!.

After the unfortunate turn of events on his BBC show ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ where a guest accidentally gets shot, Alan’s fighting for his career for the second time around when a multimedia conglomerate “Shape” takes over the station threatening a round of redundancies and putting his slot ‘Mid-Morning Matters’ into jeopardy.  The first head to roll is that of fellow presenter and ‘has-been’ Pat Farrell. But Pat’s having none of it and returns with a gun, fully-loaded and firing on all cylinders to plunge the station into full siege mode, forcing Michael into a cupboard (‘Like a Geordie version of Ann Frank’) and Alan into the limelight acting as a mediator between Pat and the Police.

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Naturally Alan relishes this chance to take centre stage in a media circus of heightened melodrama, but the emphasis here shifts onto fast-paced action and slapstick sequences descending into banality at times, and away from the element we’ve all been waiting for: the next chapter of Alan’s life as a delusional porn-obsessed loser whose children no longer speak to him, whose PA’s preoccupation with him is unwanted and unwholesome and whose ‘mildly cretinous’ Ukrainian girlfriend ‘Sonja’ has him firmly by the short and curlies.

That said, this big screen debut offers great entertainment value, preserving the integrity of the ‘Alan Partridge brand’ where so many others such as League of Gentlemen, Borat and Brüno are a shadow of their TV and radio versions. Alan may have lost his trousers but Alpha Papa definitely has us wanting more. MT

 

  DVD / Blu-ray / Steelbook Extras:

  Hectic Danger Days: The Making of Alpha Papa

  Deleted Scenes

  Bloopers

  Audio Commentary with Steve Coogan and Writers Rob & Neil Gibbons

  ASDA 2-Disc Bonus Extras:

  Exclusive Interviews with Steve Coogan / Rob & Neil Gibbons / Declan Lowney

  Exclusive Q&A with Armando Iannucci

  Premiere Day Sizzle Reel

  Irish Screening Introduction

  Trailers – Teaser and Full

  TV Spots

 

How to Survive a Plague (2013)

Director: David France        Writers: David France, T Woody Richman, Tyler Walk

110min  US Documentary

You may be wondering why a documentary on AIDS should suddenly be newsworthy. The reason is that  AIDS campaigner and debut director, David France’s moving HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE has the benefit of hindsight reflecting, as it does, on thirties years of suffering since the crisis originally hit the international headlines with the news that AIDS posed a potential death sentence on every sufferer.

At that time there was scant medical research on the disease and  hardly any treatments available. Furthermore, no US Government prevention scheme was in place to protect the public.  Then gradually a groundswell of those affected harnessed their resentment and rose up to form Act-Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). They retaliated against the system with specialised ad campaigns lambasting public figures from the New York Mayor (Koch) to religious leaders such as the Catholic head of Church, Cardinal O’Connor.

David France’s film makes grim viewing not only because of its subject matter but also due to an almost exclusive use of grainy archive footage showing how the New York gay community formed Act-Up and charting how it campaigned against the indifference and negativity of the powers that be, and, in particularly, the hostile administration of Ronald Reagan.  But as a documentary it is informative and well-put-together, wielding considerable clout in conveying the message largely through its use of the belligerent army of sufferers themselves who speak with anger and conviction (that is more convincing and heartfelt than any potential actor), and who were eventually able to change government policy regarding medical research so that by the mid nineties remedial care finally started to make an impact on this terrible epidemic. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE is a worthwhile and immersive guide to the history of AIDS activism. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 NOVEMBER 2013

 

The Nun (2013) La Religieuse

Director: Guillaume Nicloux | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Pauline Etienne, Agathe Bonitzer, Louise Bourgoin, Martina Gedeck | Cinematography: Yves Cape | 114min |France |Drama

Based on the novel by French writer, philosopher, art critc Denis Diderot (1713-1784).

The Nun has had a tough time.  Conceived by Denis Didérot in the eighteenth century, the nature of the work was open to controversy as a purportedly salacious account of innappropriate goings-on in a French nunnery. Jacques Rivette’s film version in 1966, was banned by French censors at the time of its release due to its negative representation of the Catholic Church. Now, nearly 50 years later, here is Guillaume Nicloux’s adaptation with a fine cast of Isabelle Huppert, Martina Gedeck, Agathe Bonitzer and Marc Barbé.

The Nun follows the story of a young woman, Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Étienne) who is confined to a religious order of sisters, under the auspices of Madame de Moni, due to her parents’ inability to fund her dowry.  Once enconsed in the convent, Suzanne is put under pressure to take her vows, against her wishes, and subsequently also discovers she is illegitimate and has been locked away to assuage her mother’s guilt and make her peace with God.

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This could be a brilliant opportunity for a discretely naughty insight or even a ‘no holds barred’ exposé surrounding the confessional memoirs of the provocative Sister Suzanne Simonin.  But Guillaume Nicloux’s goes to the other end of the spectrum offering a visually exquisite and stylishly sleek, part candlelit part naturalistic, masterpiece concentrating only on the ascetic aspects of Suzanne’s confinement. He highlights her disappointment with her mother’s deceit, the physical and emotional discomfort of being in spartan confines without affection, physical comfort or close friends but there is no attempt to delve further into her psyche.

Nicloux paints Suzanne as a picture of perfect introversion and blind innocence but also of passive resignation living under sensory deprivation. Although Pauline Etienne plays her part admirably, this bone dry and formal treatment lacks the necessary element of drama, tension or even empathy required to make the piece engaging in a way that Bruno Dumont achieves with Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915, which has a set of circumstances.

Isabelle Huppert lights up the screen when she finally arrives as the more motherly Mother Superior.  She is captivated by Suzanne’s pale beauty and serenity, for reasons that will become evident, and gives a delicious turn with wry, comedic appeal tinged with bittersweet sadness, as only she knows how.

The Nun is a technically accomplished film with a beautiful visual aesthetic and some strong performances but lacks dramatic edge to offer really appealing insight and plods along so slowly that it requires the patient of a saint, at times, to endure. MT

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THE NUN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013

 

 

 

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Director: Michael Roemer

Writers: Michael Roemer and Robert Young

Cast: Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Yaphet Kotto, Julius Harris.

95mins   US  Drama ***

First released in 1964, Nothing But A Man appears to have suffered the fate shared by so many low-budget independent films: festival success and critical acclaim, followed by a small release and a sink into relative obscurity. However, in 1993 the Library of Congress declared the film ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ and selected the film for preservation, leading to a successful re-release in the US. Now, 20 years later, comes the film’s first-ever UK cinema release, courtesy of the BFI.

The film depicts life among the black community in a small town in 1960s Alabama, focusing upon the burgeoning romance between section hand Duff (Ivan Dixon) and local schoolteacher and preacher’s daughter Josie (Abbey Lincoln). If the romance itself follows a somewhat predictable narrative arc, the film makes up for it with its searing examination of the town’s racism, and the myriad of relationships surrounding the protagonists. In its detailed exploration of the life of Duff and Josie, and the various prejudices and troubles they face, the film questions not only the relationships between blacks and whites, but also between men and women, parents and children, friends and co-workers, and middle-class and working-class citizens. The fact that the film is able to fluidly and cohesively incorporate such a large canvas, and do so with so much wit, style and compassion, is testament to the deft hand of (white Jewish) director Michael Roemer (there’s only one sequence, towards the end of the film, which seems to ring false).

Roemer, alongside his unusually hyphenated cowriter–cinematographer Robert Young, frames the action in stark black and white images, punctuating the drama by filming the characters’ frank exchanges in powerful close ups. The film is permeated with a sense of neorealistic naturalism, its nuances and textures coalescing into a vivid portrait of 1960s Alabamian life. For all its scope, the film is tied together by Dixon’s transfixing charisma, which imbues the film with a level of charm which could easily have been absent with a lesser presence playing the protagonist. Dixon’s wry smile lends an air of charm to the proceedings, and grounds the film in a gentle, engrossing humanism. Add to this the film’s interestingly open ending and its scrupulous examination of social mores, and it’s easy to understand why the film was dubbed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.  ALEX BARRETT

 

Gloria (2012)

Dir: Sebastian Lelio | Cast: Paulina Garcia, Sergio Hernandez | 110min Drama Chile/Spain

Paulina Garcia won Best Actress at Berlin for her sunny portrayal of a mid-lifer who hasn’t reached old age but is contemplating the future and starting to see the long shadows of her mortality slowly edging into sight.

Sebastian Lelio’s third feature opens with a palm-fringed panorama of Santiago de Chile, the sophisticated capital of his thrusting South American homeland. Gloria, in her fifties, is a positive and happy divorcee looking love.

Lelio’s crisp, clear direction and a wealth of glossy locations and interiors, make this a mature and insightful drama for a director in his late thirties. Gloria offers gives plenty of positive food for thought without a touch negativity or self-doubt: a refreshing look at second-time love for the older generation. Gloria examines her hopes and reassesses her life through the encounters she experiences. Sebastian Lelio shows us the positives of his Latin culture without being judgemental or maudlin: strong family links, dancing, music and laughter, Chilean wine and socialising are the keynotes. There’s a touchingly romantic vignette of a man and woman singing a Brazilian love song round the piano.  The dating scene throws up rich pickings  most of which are rotten and a graduall realisation that life is good and there is future for Gloria and for Chile set against a background of political uncertainty and forty years of strife and unrest. MT

GLORIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013 IN SELECTED CINEMAS

Child’s Pose (2012) Pozitia copilului Golden Bear Winner Berlinale 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Calin Peter Netzer

Writers: Calin Peter Netzer/Razvan Radulescu

Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Natasa Raab, Florin Zamifirescu, Ilinca Goia

112mins    Drama   Romanian with subtitles

Child’s Pose is a portrait of female power and Luminita Gheorghiu’s multi-layered performance as Cornelia, a wealthy, overprotective mother whose unconditional love for her hot-housed, despondent son Barbu (Bogdan Dumistrache) knows no limits.

An age-old theme, then, but one that Netzer tackles here with brilliance and insight: this is not a film about love but about control and manipulation and ultimately about dominance. And Barbu is simply a tool in his mother’s trick box enabling her to endorse her privileged place in local society, ‘Romanian-style’.

Calin Peter Netzer is a filmmaker of undoubtable talent. His previous films of note: Medal of Honour and Maria are certainly worth watching for their fascinating stories of Romania and its customs and character, often seen with black humour. Ably assisted here by the writing talents of Razvan Radulescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) Child’s Pose is a weightier and more demanding beast that may not appeal to everyone with its jerky hand-held camera technique and emotional overkill.

Naturally there’s a girlfriend involved (Carmen, played by Ilinca Goia) and naturally she is to blame for Barbu’s distant attitude towards his mother. But when Barbu has a car accident killing a child, Cornelia swings back into favour, springing into action on her mobile phone, dominating the criminal procedure, pulling strings in the local community with the great and the good and shining like a beacon of salvation for her desperate son, as if this was the moment she’d been waiting for all her life and his too.

Once again the theme of Romania’s intricate and unwieldy red tape is called in to question.  We’ve seen this all before in Medal of Honour, Aurora and The Death of Mr Lazarescu.  But here the camera tracks the action with intrusive immediacy; transmitting  expressions of anguish and a palpable and claustrophobic sense of fear and tragedy: the effect is almost nauseating. Cornelia is a woman to dread. You certainly wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her.  Having riden roughshod over her husband, Luminita Gheorghiu’s Cornelia is a frustrated, scheming demon; all dressed up with nowhere to go but the corridors of corruption (which are filled with Bucharest’s society elite) and nothing left to live for but her sad, emasculated son. MT

CHILD’S POSE WON THE GOLDEN BEAR AT BERLINALE 2013

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

BROADWAY MUSICALS: A JEWISH LEGACY

Dir. Michael Kantor: USA 2013, 84 min., Narrated by Joel Grey (Documentary) + 185 min (Bonus Material, DVD)

Michael Kantor’s lively and informative film includes interviews, excerpts from the musicals and footage manages also to be very moving, helped by a running time of under 90 minutes. Particularly impressive are the scenes from the 20s, showing a “noisy, over crowded and dirty” Lower East Side in New York. True fans will enjoy the three hours bonus material of excerpts included in the DVD.

The Broadway Musical is the most American of art forms (apart from TV commercials), and its past and present is dominated by Jewish composers and lyricists. The reason for this is that Jewish artists successfully developed the tradition of the Jewish musical theatre of the Lower East Side into a national art form by the 1930s. They simply replaced the downtrodden Jewish heroes and heroines with other minorities. Nobody did this better than the composer George Gershwin and his brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics. But one should not forget that Gershwin was at first rejected many times by  Broadway producers for being “too” Jewish”. His break trough “Rhapsody in Blue” was a sort of Blues played on a Klezmer clarinet, this being made possible by the fact that both Black and Jewish music was both mostly written in the minor key, to describe the suffering of both minorities. The Gershwins, unlike others, had a healthy distrust of orthodox religion, starting “Porgy and Bess” with the debunking of the Torah, by opening a ceremony with the line “It may be not be so”.

It helped, that some of these composers and lyricists ‘anglicized’ their names, like Irving Berlin (Isidore Beilin), or had it done by their parents like the Gershwins (Gerschowitz). The musical became soon a feel good factory, Rogers and Hammerstein being the leading pair with hits like “Oklahoma (1947), “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I” and their last cooperation “The Sound of Music” (1959), which dealt with emigration from Hitler Austria in a rather quaint form. By then Irving Berlins songs “Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “God Bless America” (which for a long time was the second National Anthem) were the epitome of post-war optimism, though it should be said that many Christian leaders protested openly against the latter song, questioning if a Jew had the right to express anything about the Lord.

We also learn how from the sixties onwards, Jewish composers and writers started to come to term with their own history, starting with “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964), composed by Jerry Bock. In spite of the catching songs, the story, starting with a pogrom and ending with an emigration was hardly uplifting. The same can be said for “Cabaret” (1966), where John  Kander’s music could and would not camouflage the rise of Nazism in Germany. The musical was, in contrast to the film version of 1972, not a success. Finally, Mel Brooks tried more or less successfully with “The Producers” (‘Springtime for Hitler’) to kill the ghosts of the past in 2001 with laughter. AS

SHOWING AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER AT CORNERHOUSE, MANCHESTER AND 13 NOVEMBER AT BARBICAN LONDON tickets here

 

 

 

LEAF London Electronic Arts Festival 7-10 November 2013

Not so much a film festival, more a weekend festival featuring film and exploring the legacy of London as a pioneering centre for the global electronic music movement. LONDON ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL runs from 7-10  November showcasing a series of talks, parties, installations and technology masterclasses.

Legendary impressario and Academy Award-winning composer GIORGIO MORODER will be in town to present his re-scored version of Fritz Lang’s cult classic METROPOLIS  (1923) set to a 1984 score which features contemporary songs and added rock and pop soundtracks from the early days of MTV.  His long career has involved such luminaries as Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Roger Daltrey, David Bowie and Blondie.  His award-winning film scores include those of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, FLASHDANCE AND TOP GUN and his contributions to AMERICAN GIGOLO, SCARFACE AND CAT PEOPLE.

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METROPOLIS ‘envisaged a utopian city of the future with a dark side.  Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers, the downtrodden masses worked ceaselessly underground for the benefit of the elite above. The city’s ruler creates a robot to incite a revolt and lead the rebels to their deaths – thus making room for a less troublesome robot workforce.  Painstakingly restored and re-edited under the initiative of Giorgio Moroder to create a thoroughly modern interpretation of this silent classic’.

ROB DA BANK (Bestival) will also be there to present his live re-scoring of KING KONG (1933).  ‘Digging through his record library to give an eclectic collection of dubstep, electronica and weird beats to accompany for the greatest adventure-fantasy film of all time which will be played alongside the screening of this much-loved cult classic’. MT

TICKETS FOR THIS FILM EVENING AVAILABLE AT LEAF 

 

The Road A Story of Life and Death (2011) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Director: Marc Isaacs
Written by: Marc Isaacs, Iqbal Ahmed
Producer: Rachel Wexler, Aisling Ahmed

UK  75mins 2011 Doc

What may seem at first to be quite an unpromising premise: the A5, Edgware Road; becomes rather an elegant elegy to the hidden, forgotten immigrant population of Britain, providing as it has a key workforce that has been underpinning the British economy for centuries.

Isaacs has evidently spent a great deal of time getting to know his subjects: A blind 95-year-old Viennese Jewish lady who lost her mother to the Pogrom, a Kashmiri Sunni Muslim hotel worker hoping to bring his wife over; two Irish, young and old; an aspiring Burmese Buddhist monk and a German ex-flight attendant living with her estranged husband. And all of them live on the Edgware Road. A route most would associate merely with getting to somewhere else.

The production values are affected by the small, digital camera utilised throughout and some of the storylines are inevitably more interesting than others. But this nevertheless is filmmaking rich in content and our guide and documenter, if not subtle in his manner of questioning, has definitely won over the trust of the people he befriends in the pursuit of their story.

His evident empathy and understanding enables Isaacs to cast a light into these very ordinary peoples’ lives and encourage them to share their dreams both aspirational and dead, with the audience; sometimes in a quite breath-taking way.

Keelta is a young Irish girl leaving the Emerald Isle for the Big Smoke, arriving at one end of the A5 straight off the ferry in Holyhead, full of hope for her future. Billy is a man who came over in the Sixties, worked tirelessly building Britain’s future on the railway, the Eurotunnel and the roads. But his is a far more pessimistic though not embittered appraisal of life away from home. Being an outsider in Britain is no picnic. ‘Always a pound short and a day late’ is how he expressed a lifetime of dreams thwarted with heartfelt Irish understatement.

This doc is a real treat and tremendously moving. The filming spanned an 18-month period, so we get to see how things develop for all concerned, good and bad. It’s a fascinating snapshot of an invisible London; an everyday one and the A5 is the perfect foil. One might drive down it a hundred times and never really glance right or left for any period of time longer than it takes for the lights to change.

But Isaacs forces us to slow down and take in what is a tiny sample of the very real people that live and work there and in so doing opens up a whole tapestry, a whole conversation about life and what life means; the choices we make and the ramifications thereof. Andrew Rajan.

SCREENING AS PART OF A MARC ISAACS RETROSPECTIVE FOLLOWED BY Q&A WITH THE DIRECTOR ON SUNDAY 10TH NOVEMBER AT 12.00 AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE  tickets here

Gothic: The Dark Heart Of Film October/November 2013

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Madeline Smith (Theatre of Blood), Charlie Higson (King of the Ants), Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentleman) and Jane Goldman (scriptwriter) sharing some Gothic moments from their childhood at the press conference for GOTHIC: THE DARK HEART OF FILM that runs at the BFI Southbank until early in 2014.

Luton (2013) BFI 57th London Film Festival

Director/Writer: Michalis Konstantatos     Writer: Michalis Konstantatos

Cast: Nicholas Vlachakis, Eleftheria Komi, Christos Saupountzis, Connie Zikou

104min  Psychological Drama   Greek with English subtitles

Michalis Konstantatos’s debut feature LUTON, initially appears to have about as much going for it as its eponymous Bedfordshire town.  Suffocating in the same washed-out visuals and bland aesthetic as recent Greek “Weird Wave” outing (and Venice-winner) Miss Violence, it opens rather like an episode of EastEnders on valium, Greek-style, with monosyllabic dialogue.  Following the workaday lives of three unconnected people: Eleftheria Komi plays Mary, a lonely solicitor looking for more than sex in her life, Saupountzis is Makis, a newsagent in a rut and Vlachakis is teenager Jimmy, trapped by his strict parents: all give performances of considerable appeal.

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The film opens with dark-haired Mary exercising in the gym. We then meet Makis riffling through the pages of a newspaper, fag on the go, as he serves a blond customer.  Mary, then goes lingerie shopping for her night out. This dark lawyer is a dark horse and once inside the cubicle, she starts to fondle herself slowly. Meanwhile in a chinzy dining room, Jimmy has a stultifyingly silent dinner with his grandma and mum. Later in the park, a couple is snogging voraciously, endlessly: it’s Jimmy and his girlfriend. Mary’s evening at a nightclub ends in oral sex in the car park; no prizes for who’s the giver.  And so Konstantatos continues to flesh out the ordinary lives of his sad protagonists and we wait patiently for the drama in this drama to be unleashed.

When their disparate lives eventually collide it’s almost too fast to process, given the deliberately banal build-up.  LUTON is a slow-burner sharing its story cryptically, resentfully, eerily but eventually the pieces fall together in a cataclysmic meltdown leaving us mesmerised at its long-awaited denouement.  Bide your time, if you can,  and you will be rewarded. MT

LUTON IS SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 20 OCTOBER 2013 AT HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE.

A Hijacking (2012) DVD/BLU

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Director/Script:  Tobias Lindholm

Cast: Johan Philip Asbaek, Soren Malling, Dar Salim, Roland Moller, Abdihakin Asgar, Amalie Ihle Alstrup

99min      English and Danish with subtitles

From the opening scenes there is a prescient doom about A Hijacking that sends cold shivers of anxiety down your spine. Told in linear narrative form by lauded scripter Tobias Lindholm, the writer behind Borgen, Submarino, and standout hit The Hunt, the strength of this story is that it feels so real. A Danish cargo ship is held up by Somali pirates in the Indian ocean, but the way that it’s told has a chilling quality that keeps you on your toes throughout, hoping against hope for a positive outcome.

Shot on location off the East African coast in a real ship with its own experience of hijacking and in the sleek and architecturally magnificent offices of a Danish Shipping Corporation this is a visually ambitious film quietly realised without resorting to heightened melodrama or outlandish displays of emotion from its strung-out protagonists. It’s very much a case of less is more.  And the key to success here is that ‘reality rules’.

We first meet the crew through the ship’s cook Mikkel, who is ‘ship to shoring’ his wife with the date of his homecoming. All is present and correct on board as they proceed on a normal day’s sailing back to Denmark. In the next scene they are unceremoniously overcome by a brual gang of Somali pirates and forced into the hold.  Back in steely-lensed Copenhagen, bespoke besuited CEO Peter (Soren Malling) is being advised by a professional hostage and non-actor negotiator Gary Skjoldmose Porter that negotiations are better handled by an disinterested party.  Peter, begs to differ, takes full control and responsibility of the reins here not only of his company but also of his staff. The performances are understated but committed, tight-lipped and austere with the only ripples of emotion seen from the cook (Johan Philip Asbaek) and his wife Amalie (Ihle Alstrup).

What ensues is a suspense-filled battle of wits between the corporate mindset of a captain of industry Danish-style and of the criminal gangsters who have no interest or intention in playing by any rules as the tale spins out with increasing hostility and barely controlled anger over a period or several months. And it’s a surprisingly discrete white-knuckled and nuanced ride, which will have you reaching for the valium in lip-biting tension until the final gut-twisting denouement delivers its final shock. MT

A HIJACKING RELEASES ON 9TH MAY 2013 IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK and OUT ON DVD ON FROM 16 OCTOBER 2013

Enough Said (2013)

Director/Script: Nicole Holofcener
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Toni Collette
USA 91min  Comedy drama

If you’re a fan of Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her particularly brand of self-deprecating humour, then this is your film. Upbeat and zinging with wit and authenticity, ENOUGH SAID is a classic farce revolving around a group of semi-sorted couples and striving singles with kids in the sunny suburbs of LA.  Living with her daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairway) Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays divorced massage therapist, Eva.

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At a crowded cocktail party she talks to Albert (Gandolfino) about the unattractiveness of the other guests, agreeing to have dinner one night as friends. She also meets offbeat poet Marianne (Catherine Keener) who is so drawn to Eva’s accessible humour and empathy she starts to open up about her ex-husband and his strange habits at the dinner table.

Albert and Julia get on surprisingly well at dinner.  Albert is overweight and eats like a pig, but has a certain charm and conversation flows naturally as they discuss their daughters who are both heading for University.

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Like her character in Seinfeld, Julia always puts her foot in it but does so with such charm and warmth she makes Eva an appealing and funny woman who can be also be naive. As she gets to know Marianne, it gradually dawns that Albert was her ex-husband. Toni Collette provides additional humour as her best friend Sarah and emotional side-kick when the chips are down, but somehow Eva manages to save the day despite her massive social gaffe which naturally leaves her in the dog-house, but not for long.

James Gandolfino too emerges smelling of roses in this his penultimate film (Animal Rescue will be released in 2014). He manages to pull dignity and integrity out of the bag and certainly proves he is no pushover in the game of love.  Catherine Keener achieves the right blend of superiority and emotional aloofness in contrast to Julia Louis Dreyfus’s sparky candour. An upbeat gem.  MT

ENOUGH SAID IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH OCTOBER 2013

 

 

 

 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2013)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen          Adaptation: Carl Joos/Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Neil Cattrysse, Geert Van Rampelberg

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a musical love story.  Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen in fractured narrative form, captured on the widescreen in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), a tattooist  discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

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Flashing back to the moment they first met, the chemistry is ardent and their affair takes off as they instantly bond through music. Life takes its natural course, as the narrative dances back and forwards dipping into their lives in a way that feels natural and easy to follow.  They move into Didier’s restored barn and create a life together. There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle that echoes that of Cafe de Flore (2011). Heldenbergh and Baetens attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band.

As the narrative develops, the storytelling becomes more erratic and a sudden shot of Elise in a ambulance fighting for her life, feels abrupt and disorientating, as if we’ve missed a vital clue.  What follows is heartbreaking and the tone becomes increasingly sinister switching from melodrama to something darker and more muffled.  Didier becomes unbalanced, ranting at the television in an unmoving outburst that attempts unsuccessfully to add a political dimension to proceedings. His touching sensitivity, previously anchored by Elise’s practical nature, transforms into the realms of psychosis and she also starts to lose the plot in a personality change that lacks believability as Broken Circle finally goes into meltdown in a dispiriting denoument to a promising start.  MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH OCTOBER 2013

Love, Marilyn (2013)

Dir: Liz Garbus,

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Jennifer Ehle, Lindsay Lohan, Lili Taylor, Uma Thurman, MarisaTomei, Evan Rachel Wood,

107min  USA  2012

One can say without hype that Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) is one of the most exploited women in our media age. After her mother, a cutter at RKO, could not look after her anymore due to mental health problems, Norma Jean Mortenson was bounced around between orphanages and foster parents. At the age of 16, working in an aircraft factory, she married a man whom she called “Daddy; they divorced in 1946. Her acting career started the following year as an un-credited voice of a telephone operator. Fox, who let her first contract expire, re-signed her, and she had small parts in the 1950 films Asphalt Jungle and All about Eve. But nothing prepared her or the media world for her status as sex symbol, which she cemented with Niagara in 1953.

love_6 copyHere in Love, Marilyn, a documentary-style biopic, Liz Garbus tries to give the late idol a voice based on diaries and personal letters previously published as ‘fragments’ in 2010 (as discovered in Marilyn’s house in Brentwood by Anna Strasberg, daughter of Lee, her acting coach). It goes without saying that the subject-matter is gold-dust, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee top marks for Love, Marilyn as a successful piece of filmmaking. Liz Garbus falls on the first hurdle in her decision to cast a selection of contemporary Hollywood actresses to recite the “different voices” of Marilyn  (rather than just one lead), giving the piece a slightly disorientating feel at first as we grapple with trying to identify who’s being whom. Clearly it’s impossible to find an actress that evokes Marilyn’s multi-faceted persona, so casting a variety of actresses seemed a stroke of genius but actually it’s rather a flawed one. These moments are, however, successfully inter-cut with archive newsreel and private footage which are always going to be endlessly fascinating, no matter which filmmaker wields them.  And the camera obviously loved Marilyn: possibly one of the most expressive and charismatic of all the actresses of her era. The most appealing aspect of this doc are the endless stills of her looking devastatingly beautiful, touchingly naive; endlessly sexy; happily ‘in love’ and tellingly lost; disappointed and broken.

We learn nothing really new, only snippets like Jean Russell mentioning that Monroe was frightened to leave her dressing room during the shooting of Gentlemen prefer Blondes (1953). Or the scene Monroe’s husband Joe DiMaggio made in 1954, when director Billy Wilder shot the famous subway footage over and over again, while 1500 hooting men stood by, asking for more. The same Wilder, who would call Monroe later “the mad person on the plane” during a troubled shooting schedule. Or her brave engagement for her soon-to-be husband Arthur Miller in 1956, when he was hunted down by the HUAC committee and could not get a passport (Fox told Monroe, she would be finished, if she supported Miller); the same Miller who wrote the script to Misfits, her and Gable’s last film, in which Monroe played a role she felt degraded by, whilst her husband met his next wife, Inge Morath, on location. love_4 copy

No wonder she was so disturbed that she agree to enter Payne Whiting Psychiatric Hospital voluntarily in February 1961, a month after her divorce from Miller. Mistreated and cut off from her friends, she smuggled a note to DiMaggio, who got her out, threatening to tear “the building down brick by brick”. Her relationship to her psychotherapist Ralph Greenson (she moved closed to his home in LA) was ambivalent too, since the doctor prescribed her in the end more or less anything having grown distant from his star patient. In May 1962, whilst on the set of the troubled Something Has To Give, she flew to Washington to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for JFK; Fox sacked her for breaking contractual obligations, only to re-instate her days before her death on 5 August 1962.

Garbus saves us from all the theories regarding the Kennedy brothers, but the earnest declamations of the Hollywood stars do not make up for the fact that this, too, is just another vehicle on the exploitation bandwagon circling a troubled woman who was unable to put the many fragments of her life together and who wrote in her diary shortly before her death: “Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone”.  AS

LOVE, MARILYN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 18TH OCTOBER AND ON DVD 28TH OCTOBER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haewon, Nobody’s Daughter (2013)

Dir. Hong Sang-soo, Cast: Jung Eunchae, Lee Sunkyun

South Korea   87 min.   Drama

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha)) shows in his latest film NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON the unravelling of a personality: aspiring actress Haewon, played by a very impressive Jung Eunchae, has an on/off relationship with an older, married professor (Lee Sunkyn), who is the father of a recently born baby.

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After her mother leaves Seoul for Canada, Haewon looses her last ‘anchor’ in life. Her personality fragments, she sleeps at day time, loses more and more contact with her acting school, drinks too much and flees into a parallel universe, in which she ‘directs’ life via a permanent inner monologue. She can’t differentiate any more between important and unimportant events and wanders off into a vacuum that only her inner voice can fill. Her often hysterical laughter is the only obvious sign of her psychological deterioration, so that her friends find her rather ‘odd’, because they are too self-centred to help and unable to commit to anything but the acute present.

The narrative develops in episodic format, so as to underline the lack of continuity in Haewon’s life. She always visits certain places: mainly a park, a motel and an old fort, as if trying to re-connect with the past, even though it is exactly this past with has thrown her life into disarray. But she is unable to find a solution,because she can’t connect the important points in her life any more and  it becomes totally structureless as she drifts more and more away from herself. She wanders often and long, particularly in the rain, as if trying to purify herself. But since she can’t ask the right questions, or even worse, can’t remember what to ask, all her physical exercises take her even more away from herself.

nobody_3 copy copy copy copy copyHer relationship with the professor has issues, so does her relationship with an fellow student: everything is in flux. Haewon is the object rather than the subject of Sang-soo’s film – even though paradoxically both men in her life believe her to be strong. She drifts along in a way that makes her loose more and more of her personality.  Sang-soo has selected a muted palette here and most of the drama takes place outside, with a few claustrophobic indoor shots): everything is murky and somehow diffuse,  just like Haewon.  There is a timeless feel to the narrative which could be set anytime between the 70s and today.

The sensation here is one of being dragged along on a slow-moving river, not unpleasantly, but somehow disturbingly. There are no dramatic incidents, everything is more or less of the same colourless grey: a permanent misunderstanding on the part of Haewon, who is floating away into near oblivion. Unable to read her own (or anybody else’) real intentions, she relies only on her internal world to direct herself. She does not say it, but one expects her at any moment to voice the obvious: “I don’t know why I am doing this”.

Hong Sang-soo’s latest treat IN ANOTHER COUNTRY is a quirky comedy drama starring Isabelle Huppert is yet to hit our screens but in the meantime this well-observed portrait of a young women fragmenting under the pressure of her loneliness, low-key but with extreme sensitivity is something worth discovering. A little gem. Andre  Simonoviescz

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11TH OCTOBER 2013 IN SELECTED LONDON CINEMAS

Camp 14: Total Control Zone (2012)

Director: Marc Wiese

106min  Documentary   Korean/English

Are we inured to the atrocities of death camps? Do they become less horrific the more we are exposed to their heinous crimes upon humanity? Here a South Korean escapee of Kaechon’s repressive North Korean ‘Camp 14’ tells his true story. Shin Dong-Huyk was born to prisoners in the camp; his first memory is of a public execution, aged 4. From that point he is subjected to starvation, forced labour, torture and deprivation.  From this early age, lies and murder were just as common to him as love and affection are to most other children. Deceit and hatred became the norm. With no conception of family life, how can Shin become a decent human being having been dehumanised?

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With its sombre  visuals and ambient soundtrack of wind and rain, Wiese’s documentary makes depressing and unsettling viewing. Based on Shin’s commentary intercut with animated sequences created by Ali Soozandeh (The Green Wave), Shin comes across as a reasonable man as he chats to young people in the Human Rights group ‘Link’, occasionally losing his nerve.  But, like most children subjected to emotional hardship at an early age, Shin is damaged and the only place he can really fit in is the camp.

Camp 14’s unspeakable environment can only breed sociopaths, witnessed in interviews with former guards who talk candidly of their crimes: rape, torture, cruelty, calling to mind Joshua Oppenheimer’s recent doc: The Act of Killing. But what is missing here is the reasons for these guard’s defections and tangible facts. History can never forgive what went on in Camp 14, and this remarkable story gives further evidence of the capacity for evil present in a human nation. A valuable piece of filmmaking that warrants a viewing; if you feel strong enough. MT

CAMP 14: TOTAL CONTROL ZONE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 4TH OCTOBER AT RICH MIX CINEMA BETHNAL GREEN

 

9th London Spanish Film Festival 27 September – 9 October 2013

The 9th LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL brings a spicy selection of Spain’s latest dramas and documentaries right to your doorstep at the CINE LUMIERE, London this Autumn.

STOCKHOLM stars Aura Garrido and Javier Pereira who share a poignant night of seduction in the Swedish city.  In THE EXTRAORDINARY TALE, boy meets girl in a modern humorous re-working of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ set in contemporary Seville and starring Ken Appledorn (The Imposter) and Aida Ballmann.

imageFrom Barcelona, A GUN IN EACH HAND (UNA PISTOLA EN CADA MANO is Cesc Gay’s latest comedy drama about eight fortysomething men and their mid-life crises. Led by Javier Camara (Talk to Her) and Ricard Darin (While Elephant) it’s a well-scripted affair of bittersweet moments seen from a male perspective.  THE END (FIN) is a thriller with a sci-fi twist, starring Andres Velencoso (the Spanish model) and Maribel Verdu (Blancanieves) who head to the mountains for a reunion with sinister overtones. Isabel Coixet is well-known for her ground-breaking films and this UK premiere of YESTERDAY NEVER ENDS (AYER NO TERMINA NUNCA) is her metaphor for Spain’s economic and social woes, seen through a couple’s turbulent relationship, set in 2017.

On the documentary front, THE LABEQUE WAY follows the legendary French piano duo Katia and Maria Labeque as they perform across Europe with appearances from Sir Simon Rattle and Semyon Bichkov. THE EYES OF WAR (LOS OJOS DE LA GUERRA) explores the motivations behind four journalists reporting from Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and The Congo.  There will be a Q&A with the director Miguel Angel Idigoras to follow.

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Sumptuously set in Paris, LA BANDA PICASSO is Fernando Colomo’s entertaining comedy drama that delves into the intrigues between Braque, Gertrude Stein, Apollinaire and Picasso when the Mona Lisa is ‘stolen’ from the Louvre.  THE BODY (El CUERPO) offers dark and seat-gripping thrills from Catalan director Oriol Paulo and the producers of THE ORPHANAGE and centres on the disappearance of a corpse from the local morgue.

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A fifties masterpiece and one of the biggest commercial hits in Spanish film history is THE LAST TORCH SONG (El ULTIMO CUPLE, 1957) starring Sara Montiel as Maria Lujan, a forgotten diva who sings some of the best-known songs from Spanish cinema here.  She went on to Hollywood to headline with the likes of Gary Cooper and Joan Fontaine.

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Finally from the archives there’s Bigas Lune’s 1992 modern classic JAMON, JAMON which launched Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and explores the complex relationship between erotic desire and food, set in the arid Zaragoza desert. I wonder if it was love at first sight for the Spanish duo who are now happily married with kids! MT

For the full programme

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Thanks for Sharing (2013) ***

DIRECTOR: STUART BLUMBERG         WRITERS: STUART BLUMBERG, MATT WINSTON

CAST: Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Joely Richardson, Patrick Fugit

112min   US Romcom

Following on from Steve McQueen’s Shame, this is not the first time sex addiction has been explored in contemporary cinema. However, although Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing is not quite as intense or dark as the former  – tackling the subject matter in a far more jovial manner; the The Kids Are All Right writer offers a picture equally as poignant with his directorial debut.

We follow three friends who meet at 12-step meetings to help combat their unhealthy addictions to sex. At the heart of our story is Adam (Mark Ruffalo) who is five years ‘sober’ and now feeling ready to meet women again and attempt to strike up a relationship. However when he meets Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow) he falls in love, but struggles to overcome his previous habits. He seeks help from his mentor Mike (Tim Robbins), who has problems of his own, as his drug-addicted son (Patrick Fugit) has just shown up out of the blue. To complete the cycle, Adam himself is also a mentor, but to a young man named Neil (Josh Gad), who is desperately seeking help, as his sexual deviance has landed him in trouble on several occasions. We intertwine between these three corresponding lives, and see how each individual relies heavily on the next to get through this challenging treatment.

Thanks for Sharing treads the line between comedy and drama masterfully, portraying sex addiction sincerely, giving it the gravitas it deserves and considering it as a genuine disease. However the often frivolous nature to the film allows for us to see the humorous elements too, easing us into understanding and appreciating the true severity of the condition. That said, Blumberg can be accused of being overly lighthearted at points, particularly at the start when introduced to Neil. He is the comedic figure of the piece, providing the film with the vast majority of its witty one liners – but he is actually a sexual predator with a dangerously perverse outlook on life, and the sexual abuse he carries out is inappropriately depicted as humorous. Though jokes are a necessity within Thanks for Sharing, sometimes they are implemented in the wrong places.

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Nonetheless, the story is structured ingeniously, as we weave in and out of our lead characters’ lives effortlessly, each individual story being substantially told. We care enough about each and every character and their own personal journeys, enough so that at the end we are intrigued to see how each one will conclude. Blumberg must be commended for this, as many ensemble pieces fall at this very hurdle. Much of why we are so empathetic to the characters is as a result of the screenplay, with each role crafted beautifully and the dynamics between each varying relationship perfectly judged. There are several themes at play too, such as romance, friendship, addiction and family matters – and these are all dealt with well, with every plot-point being given enough screen-time for us to invest emotionally in each one.

Thanks for Sharing is a picture that could so easily be underwhelming, dealing with various themes we have seen done to death in Hollywood – yet this avoids cliches. It may be overly melodramatic at times, yet Blumberg manages to steer away from ever feeling mawkish or over-indulgent in the slightest. He may have crafted a reputation for himself as a valuable screenwriter, but now it seems that he is equally as adept at directing, with a bright future certainly beckoning. STEFAN PAPE

THANKS FOR SHARING IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4TH OCTOBER 2013 at Vue Cinemas, Odeon Cinemas Cineworld and Shortwave Bermondsey

 

 

The Crash Reel (2013)

Director: Lucy Walker

90mins  ****  Documentary  Biopic  US

The story of snowboarders Kevin Pearce and Shaun White has an unexpected outcome. TheCrashReel

Lucy Walker’s adreniline-fuelled, action-packed sports doc is a visual feast of panoramic time-lapse sequences in the snowbound landscapes of Canada and Colorado, set to an exhilarating soundtrack. But this snowboarding doc soon develops into something far more fascinating and meaningful. Meaningful, that is, even if you’re not a fan of the sport or of any sport, for that matter. The Crash Reel is really about the nature of risk, of human frailty and how the support of a loving family can enable us to reach our full potential, whatever life throws our way.

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Kevin Pearce and Shaun White are highly competitive World champions and arch rivals in the extreme sport of snow-boarding.  We see them competing here for the Vancouver Olympics but when Pearce suffers a tragic accident, White goes on to take the Gold medal.  The story then turns the spotlight on Pearce, following him in the aftermath and recovery process. Examining at close quarters his will to survive and sheer conviction that one day he will return to the slopes and beat Shaun White are extraordinary. But his medics and family fear that this may cost him his life.

Growing up with a close family in an upmarket part of Vermont, Kevin Pearce and his three brothers (one of them with Down’s Syndrome) had every possible advantage in life.  But he’s a reckless individual who develops into a risk-taker whose will to win becomes paramount.  In this climate of industry pressure and lack of regulations, extreme sports people will push themselves to the preternatural extremes, risking life, limb and family loyalty to meet the expecations of their public.  Lucy Walker shows how ultimately greater awareness of our own boundaries can actually help us develop greater spiritual awareness and that evolvement of the mind rather than the body is the real key to human success. MT

THE CRASH REEL IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT THE CURZON SOHO AND THE ICA LONDON

 

Malgorzata Szumowska – Film Director

Director Malgoska Szumowska copy copy copyHaving dipped her toes in international cinema, with her French based production ELLES, Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska has since returned to her native country for the poignant drama In the Name Of. In a film that depicts repressed homosexuality in the Catholic Church, Szumowska discusses her own religious background and influences in making this production. She also tells us about the varying reactions to the film, how she went about casting unprofessional actors – and whether or not she can see a future for herself as a director, outside Poland.

The film gets off to an uncomfortable start, with the young boys teasing somebody and making him eat ants  – why did you decide to throw the audience in at the deep end so early on, and create this tense atmosphere from the word go?

MS: I felt from the beginning we wanted to make this feel like a documentary, to show this rural village and we used real people from the village in the film. We have only a few actors, and the rest are people from the village, like all of the boys, they are not actors. Also the movement of the camera, we were trying to follow them and we had a plan from the beginning to create a special atmosphere in this countryside, to show that the setting is also a hero of the film somehow. Myself and Michal (Englert) have made four documentaries together, including two in the same place in the countryside in Poland, so we wanted to give off a similar feeling to make this story believable and more powerful.

It’s incredible that you were using unprofessional actors, it must have been inspiring that you were able to find such raw talent in such a small town?

MS: It’s funny because a young director recently asked me how I went about communicating with these boys, because they were kind of dangerous, I mean, some of them are from pathological families and hardcore boys. So you just have to be in their skin and behave like them, and I did it. I had a very big group then I chose eight of them, and I chose them by screaming with them, dancing with them, playing football, and they started to treat me not like a lady from the big city, but a friend, older, but a friend. Then I took this group and we spent a week together without shooting, including actors, and we’d play football, drink beer, talking… Just to give them the feeling that we aren’t any different than they are, and also to observe them. Afterwards it was pretty easy to be honest, the first two weeks before shooting it was hard and I wasn’t sure if it would work out, but because we created this special atmosphere, it works.

Were you any good at football?

MS: [Laughs] I’m not, but they were! I was trying but it was more for fun.

Andrzej Chyra and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz In The Lake copyThere are several severe themes in this film, how much did you have to explain to these kids about the context, and were their parents involved at all?

MS: They were all more or less 18, we tried not to have any kids. The parents didn’t care about them, because it’s very complicated, sometimes there is only a mother, or their parents are alcoholics, it’s a really brutal Polish countryside. For them it was very good they could have some money, a bit like a job on holiday. It’s not such a civilised part of Poland, and it was a kind of experiment, but they all came to the premiere in Warsaw and it was the first time they had been there, and it was very touching.

The rural setting is so important to this film, it’s an angry place for Adam to live – was it metaphorical of the homophobia that he suffers?

MS: Yes definitely, because if I put the story into the big city the priests are in different positions and people are different in Warsaw and the provinces. The provinces are very homophobic and close-minded and the people are really focused around the church, but for pragmatic reasons more than for metaphysic ones. The people are simply poor, and I wanted to portray this part of the country because it’s like 80% of Poland. Poland is not Warsaw or Krakow, it’s just the provinces, and for me it was important to show what a Polish province is. Very important to put the priest into that setting.

As one of the biggest Polish filmmakers working today – do you almost feel a responsibility to show the world what is going on in your native country?

MS: Yes, definitely. I got the feeling that I wanted to show people what’s happening in Polish provinces, Polish churches, Polish streets, and Poland’s attitudes to homosexual people and I was concentrating on this part. However I was also concentrating on the love story. In my next film I want to say something else about Poland and maybe more deeper.

Your previous film ELLES was shot over in France, do you think that helped you go back to Poland with a new perspective?

MS: Definitely. For me it was a very hard experience. Even though I had an amazing relationship with Juliette Binoche, who I am planning on making another movie with – it was very tough for me. I didn’t speak French, I had to move to Paris, I had to work with people I didn’t know and it was a lot of pressure from production, the film has to be like this or like that, you know what I mean? Finally, it was a traumatic experience, even though I like the film. But it was such a pleasure to get back to Poland and I just wanted to make a small Polish film only with Polish people and no co-production and it gives me a perspective that I want to say something about Poland, because I was outside for a while. Now I really find myself as a Polish director,  with Polish roots and I understand that for me it’s better to tell the stories that are really connected to my country of origin, because Poland is very interesting. It’s a strange country, and it’s not multicultural, which is a pity, it’s very local – we have only Poles living in Poland, which is terrible because it puts the society in a locked position. At the same time, it’s very interesting our history, like the Second World War, the German occupation, the Russian occupation, and suddenly in the 90s we had capitalism, it’s terrible and everybody freaked out and wanted money to buy all of these colourful things, and now the current generation in Poland are extremely international and speak many languages. It’s an interesting mixture and you can talk about it in the movies, more than here in the UK I think, because here or in France everything is so obvious somehow.

Another very important theme is the Catholic Church – as a Catholic growing up yourself, was religion and faith an area you always wanted to explore in film?

MS: Definitely. My parents used to be communists and they were atheists, so I didn’t grow up as a Catholic, then my father switched and then I became a Catholic when I was 14, I was very old. Then the next 10 years until I was 24, I was a Catholic. I was trying to explore religion very seriously, like all the metaphysic and mystic, but then I quite the church, and I was full of ideas. In the beginning when I quite the church I was twenty-something, and I had an obsession in my mind about making a movie of a believer, a priest or somebody who really believes in Jesus, as for me that was extremely interesting, as somehow I passed through and saw it from a close perspective.

Andrzwj Chyra as Father Adam copyDid you therefore have to do much research, or when writing the screenplay was a lot of the material from your own personal experiences?

MS: We did research and I spoke with a few priests. Also I met a man who used to be a priest but he got married, and is a very famous professor of anthropology and he helped a lot and he came to Berlin for the premiere and he appreciated the film.  We didn’t do a huge amount of research though, and that’s why I can see that Poland really is a country of paradox, because the reaction is very complex. People from the right wing think it’s terrible, but I expected that, it’s not unique to hear this. But from the other hand, people on the left, they don’t like the film because it’s not radical enough, it doesn’t attack the church enough. Now there’s a gay priest who gave his story to a newspaper, and it’s much more violent than what we showed in the film. It’s another discussion, but he said, ‘I’m a priest and I’m a homosexual and I’m fucking around all the time. I cannot stop myself, I have five or six boys a week’. Comparing that to our film, which is like poetry! A lot of people went to see the film in Poland and we had a good box office, but we had good reviews and bad reviews, but it’s very emotional, people love to discuss it, which is good.

Did you feel any apprehensions when dealing with religion in film, knowing of the potential backlash? Or do you welcome the inevitable debate?

MS: I welcome it. I’ve never been afraid to touch the matter. Nobody did it in Poland and I’m the first one, and I’m fine with this, we should do this somehow in Polish cinema, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to be in such a religious country. But no, I wasn’t worried.

It must be fascinating for you when travelling across the world at various film festivals, to see how different countries react to the film?

MS: Oh it’s very, very interesting. I’m not travelling that much because I have a small baby and I’m trying to work on my next films, but when I am travelling I always get completely different reactions. For example in London at a screening I went to, it was only young people, and half of them were Polish people and the other half was their English friends, but they all liked the film. Apart from this one Polish, old lady and she was yelling “This is terrible”. It’s so interesting to see their reaction.

Do you find it more interesting to speak to somebody who does like the movie, or somebody who doesn’t?

MS: To be honest, I prefer speaking to the people who love it [laughs]. To explain to somebody who really doesn’t like it, it’s very hard because we are so far away that we can’t really talk, it’s complicated. I try to avoid these people!

In The Name Of - Around The Table copy

Talking of film festivals, you won the Teddy Award in Berlin – that must have been a great moment for you?

MS: Yeah it was amazing, especially that we kept joking with friends that we should get the Teddy Award because we go back to Poland and be like, “Yeah, look at this!” and yeah it happened. It’s a very good award and opens a lot of doors, and it’s a stamp of tolerance and I treat it very seriously. Afterwards we have collected many awards, the film now has more then 10 awards and it’s still travelling. Also, there is a nomination to the European Film Awards which is very cool.

Andrzej and Mateusz In The RainWhen you win an award like this, does that help you get more creative license when you want to make your next film?

MS: For me it really helped, but from a professional perspective, the best thing was that the film was in competition at Berlin. It’s really helpful because usually it’s so hard to have a film in competition in Berlin, Venice or Cannes, because they take only 15 or 16 movies, and if you are in this selection you have an almost stamp of quality. I think this will make it easier to do the next films now. Also, Elles was very helpful because is sold out in so many countries.

Talking of Elles, both that and In The Name Of deal with corrupt worlds where sexuality are very prevalent themes – what is it about this particular world you wanted to explore?

MS: It was a moment in my life when I was interested in exploring people like this. In Elles it was women’s sexuality, and for me it was a taboo because I haven’t seem many movies about women’s sexuality, so I had a feeling maybe it wasn’t understood well because I showed it only from a woman’s perspective and not too many people understand that. If I did the film now perhaps I would be more intellectual and show more spectrum, but anyway in this, we just loved the story to In the Name Of, the idea of a priest who cannot have sex because he’s not allowed and is celibate, and yet he feels such a huge desire, and for a young man who has never had sex because he comes from a pathological family, so I wanted to show this sexuality and how it awakens. It’s easy to explain because in my experience women grow up sexually when they are around 40, and maybe that’s why all of these issues regarding sexuality were interesting to me because I am in that age group, so I wanted to explore this side of human nature. Now I’ll probably turn to another direction though [laughs].

Was it helpful to have co-written the screenplay with Michal Englert then, and to have that male perspective infused into the script?

MS: Yeah definitely, but we tried not to divide. Sometimes we were laughing because I was more male and he was more female. But yes of course it’s helpful to see how he sees and feels the erotic scenes between two men are like, so yes it was interesting to work with a man.

This film is so much about the lead character Adam, so how did you decide Andrzej Chyra was perfect for this role?

MS: He is one of the most famous Polish actors of his generation, and I used to work with him in small scenes, such as in Elles, and I was always planning on making a special part for him because I knew he deserved it because he is an amazing actor. So I wrote a scenario for Andrzej and I was thinking about him from the beginning.

Is that something you often do?

MS: I will only be doing this from now on. I wrote this part for Andrzej, another part for Mateusz (Kosciukiewicz) and all the other parts for the actors I knew from the beginning were going to be involved. Now I’m writing another script the same and I’m thinking about some actors I want to use because I don’t like casting. I think it’s too hard to judge on casting, it’s an unnatural situation.In The Name Of UK Portrait Poster  copy

You’ve spoken about an upcoming project with Juliette Binoche – can you tell us about that?

MS: There are two projects, one is with Juliette and it’s called SISTERS. It’s an experimental film because it’s based on documentary archives I have at my home. I have loads of archives of conversations with my sister, which was a few years ago. Out of this material I am writing a scenario, and it’s very funny – I think it will be a kind of black comedy, and I found it so interesting to transfer a documentary into a feature. Also there is another small Polish project, again with Michal, as we’re writing together. It’s going to be more about Poland, but also about how people have relations with their bodies.

Do you have any long-term plans to make a film in either the UK or the US?

MS: To be honest I’ve never thought about it because it’s not for me. The producer is always the most important, and I’m afraid the UK is the same. Also the stars… You have to have the stars, and the stars tell you what to do and I cannot imagine. I like the European art house style where you have such freedom and nobody is forcing you to do anything. At the moment I’d like to keep my art house way.

Poland have a really impressive film history – the likes of Polanski, Zanussi, Wajda… Are there any in particular that really inspired you though?

MS: Yeah all of them. Of course I admire Polanski and his work, but there are so many who are inspiring. At the same time, the younger generation are rejecting this, we want to do something different, which is typical. But we are really under the influence of all of these masters of Polish cinema, even sub-consciously. STEFAN PAPE

IN THE NAME OF is on current release at selected cinemas including the CURZON SOHO AND ODEON PANTON STREET, LONDON from 27th September 2013

 

In The Name Of – W IMIE (2013) Berlinale 2013

Director: Malgoska Szumowska   Writers: Malgoska Szumowska and Michal Englert
Cast: Andrzej Chyra, Mateusz Kosciukieiwcz, Lukasz Simlat, Maja Ostaszewska

Malgoska Szumowska’s second outing after the acclaimed Elles centres on Adam, a celibate Catholic priest who works with delinquent teenagers in a village in rural Poland.

As Adam, Andrzej Chyra is well cast and generates a profound benevolence and warmth that’s the nearest feeling to true goodness that one can possibly imagine. He embodies unselfishness, empathy and kindness but also commands respect and authority  in a really moving performance.  Michal Englert’s soft summery visuals heavily mingled with striking imagery from Christ’s Passion render the hazy bucolic setting in a powerful yet soothing way as Adam’s calming presence gradually deepens into something more heavy and unsettling.

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Despite sharing a resonating chemistry with one of the inmates Lukasz, a young simple country lad, Adam rejects his advances and also those of Ewa a blonde alcoholic, stating that he’s already spoken for (by Jesus).  But he also experiences moments of despair, repression and lonliness in this moving portrait of confused emotions and abstinence and the journey towards self-discovery and self-acceptance.

With its atmospheric soundtrack this is an absorbing and emotional drama that echoes Brokeback Mountain in its intense and delicate subject-matter. MT

IN THE NAME OF is on general release from 27TH September 2013 AT THE CURZON SOHO AND THE ODEON PANTON STREET.

IN THE NAME OF WON THE TEDDY AWARD AT BERLINALE IN 2013

 

 

 

Van Gogh (1991)

Dir. Maurce Pialat | Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London,Gerard Sety, Bernhard Le Coq, Corinne Bourdon, Elizabeth Zylberstein. | France 1991, 158 min.  Drama

French director Maurice Pialat (1925-2003) was a maverick: a late starter in film-making – he directed his first feature L’Enfance Nue (Naked childhood – in 1968 at the age of 44. An antagonistic person, he thrived on controversy, on and off the set. His relationship with the French film critics was poisonous: when he received the Palme D’Or in 1987 for Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the sun of Satan) he was roundly booed and retaliated by sticking out his tongue.

Sharing his lack of aesthetic compromise with Bresson (it’s no accident that Under the sun of Satan is based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, whose Mouchette and Diary of a Country Priest were filmed by Bresson). And Pialat was a painter – albeit with little success.

Dialogue-driven and aesthetically rather underwhelming, Van Gogh is well-crafted with a strong central performance from Jacques Dutronc who portrays the last three months of the artist’s life.

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh arrives at the station of Auvers-sur-Oise, a little village 40 miles away from Paris, where is met by his friend Dr Gachet (Gerard Sety), an amateur collector of works by Cezanne, Renoir and other contemporary French painters. Van Gogh has just left the hospital in Saint Remy, after treatment for physical and mental illness. Even though Gachet wants to look after Van Gogh and admires his works he is wary of him; with good reason as it turns out. Van Gogh stays in a cheap inn, but sees Gachet regularly, meeting and painting his teenage daughter Marguerite (Alexandra London), with whom he forms a romantic bond. Brother Theo, an art dealer, also visits with wife Jo (Corinne Bourdon) at the Gachet place, where they have fun in the garden. Van Gogh works tirelessly, only interrupting his work when friends from Paris arrive, one of them is the Cathy (Elizabeth Zylberstein), who is supposed to be the love of his life. After a night out in Paris with Theo and Marguerite, Van Gogh sinks again into a deep depression and meets a tragic end.

Pialat mistrusted all forms of psychological interpretation. His long shots show what is happening, nothing else. He demystifies Van Gogh and argues, that if the painter had really been that ill, he could not have created so many masterpieces in the last two month of his life. In common with Eustache and Cassavetes, Pialat welcomed confrontation on many levels: On set, he drove the actors mad and even came to blows with many of them.

Pialat resolves many scenes with conflict, particularly those between couples (here Van Gogh/Marguerite and Theo/Jo are arguing constantly and violently. Like all Pialat’s films, Van Gogh is rigorously structured, nothing is left to interpretation. Unsentimental it may be, but the director is not interested in romantisicing the artist: his Van Gogh is a lonely, cantankerous man, unable to express himself in words, only knowing how to confront. Whilst he is not a misogynist, his relationships with women are mainly exploitative, at home in chaos and catastrophe – not unlike the director, whose films all have an underlying autobiographical tone. AS

VAN GOGH IS OUT ON DVD/BLU and a selection of his films are now on MUBI |  COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA.

Metro Manila (2013) ***** Sundance London 2013

Director/Script: Sean Ellis

Cast: Jake Macapagal, Althea Vega, John Arcilla, Ana Abad-Santos, Miles Canapi, Moises Magisa

90min          Crime Drama     UK

British director, Sean Ellis, started life as a  fashion stills photographer in the nineties.  His film debut was born out of a short of the same name Cashback (2006).  His second feature, a critically-acclaimed psychological thriller The Broken (2008) starred Richard Jenkins and Lena Hedy.

Metro Manila contains no famous actors and although the initial treatment generated keen interest, his quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Fortunately for us all, Ellis succeeded in filming and financing his endeavour and the native language adds authenticity and an exotic edge to this first rate crime drama which completely transcends its need for subtitles, such is the power of the cinematic narrative, and is one of the best thrillers I’ve seen for some time. Metro Manila - Audience Award World Cinema Dramatic - Sundance 2013

To illustrate the extreme measures to which the central character, Oscar Ramirez, is forced to go to, Sean Ellis took, as inspiration, the true story of one Reginald Chua whose father was murdered by rivals envious of the success of his silk factory.  Eventually, their threatening behaviour to his workers became so serious that we was forced to shut the factory and go bankrupt. Facing mounting debts, he boarded a plane and forced the passengers at gunpoint to hand over their money. He then jumped out with a parachute made from the silk of his father’s factory.

Poetic in feel and sumptuously shot, Metro Manila is a beautiful thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philipino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), who give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

Metro Manila starts as a quietly realistic story set amid the paddie fields as the family  leave their farmland and set out on a colourful bus journey to the city. But a sinister edge soon sets in when they fall amongst thieves a few hours into their arrival they are firstly swindled by a rogue landlord and then turned out into the street. Greedy employers exploit their honest naivety, seeing them as a soft touch and setting out to take advantage of their lack of guile.  It’s a sad state of affairs: Mai is working as a hostess in a lap-dancing club and Oscar partners a corrupt guard dealing with laundered cash for a security firm. They find themselves in a filthy flat on the slippery slope to hell with only their love for each other and their faith in God to redeem them.

Proceedings turn increasingly tense as Oscar’s job feels like a game of Russian Roulette due to the mercurial and unpredictable character of his shady partner Ong (John Arcilla). His lack of shrewdness threatens to land him in deep water but Oscar is no fool and manages to stay ahead of the game as the final denouement is ingeniously unwrapped in the final seat-clenching moments. You’ll never guess the ending. MT

Metro Manila won the Audience Award for best drama at Sundance Film Festival 2013 and BEST FOREIGN FILM at the BIFA 2013. It is the British submission for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM AT 2014 ACADEMY AWARDS 2013

InRealLife (2013)

Director: Beeban Kidron

90min  ***   UK  Documentary. image

Beeban Kidron is well known for her TV series, documentaries and dramas: everyone knows Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Here she tackles the thorny subject of the internet, taking a look inside the sinister online world to try and find out how it’s shaping the future generation.

Not surprisingly, many of the large conglomerates refuse to take part so this at times feels slightly incomplete given that Facebook, Google and Youtube represent the lion’s share of what goes on online.  That said, InRealLife certainly offers compelling subject-matter, quite whether it’s worthy of big screen treatment is another question, given the inherent geekiness of it all.

Creative shots of underwater cables twisting as fish glide by, accompanied by a sinister, twanging sound and some corporate-looking footage of the large  global ‘cloud’ storage facilities in Miami, is about as cinematic as it gets: so visually exciting it certainly ain’t. There’s also a scattergun approach to the material that feels very much like clicking through a search engine giving snippets from no less than thirteen different professional commentators ranging from Norman Doidge, a neuroscientist; Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange and Sherry Turkle, who offers insight into the ‘authenticity of intimacy and connection through the internet’.

Given the startling fact that 40% of of teenagers spend more time with their friends ‘online’ than in reality; the message here is that perpetual internet usage does shape teenage brains encouraging behaviour that is at best, less socially-aware and, at worst, verging on sociopathic.

Professional views are intercut with those of the teenagers themselves: Tobin (19), a highly articulate Oxford graduate  who enjoys online games as a displacement activity for more meaningful self-improvement; Ryan (15), who believes he’s addicted to online porn on his iPad, describing his daily activities as ‘me-time’ and surfing through categories such as ‘MILF and ‘Amateur’ while indulging himself before having his shower (!).  Although they claim to prefer meeting friends face to face, several feel that their internet habit comes largely from living in isolated parts of the country where they have little recourse to like-minded friends or interesting activities.  In this respect, the internet has almost become an easy or soothing activity; like smoking or sucking a dummy.

Perhaps the most depressing fact to come out of this film is that sharing on the internet also has a commercially driven element with the large conglomerates using our to  data to make money. And although google is ‘free’, the information that users offer in return has netted the googles of this world billions of dollars over the years. And there’s a nefarious element: google has recorded every single page that you have ever looked at and used the information to build an exclusive profile, almost as telling as your individual DNA. Eeek!

Beeban Kidron’s documentary makes quite sobering viewing. It will certainly make you think twice next time you log onto Facebook, youtube or Twitter. You have been warned! MT

INREALLIFE GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classe Tous Risques (1964) ****

Director: Claude Sautet

Cast: Lino Ventura, Stan Krol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sandra Milo, Marcel Dalio, Simone France

110min    French with subtitles

Claude Sautet is better known for his dramas Un Coeur En Hiver and Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, but in it’s own way, Classe Tous Risques is a significant thriller of the late fifties that launched Jean Paul Belmondo, to be immediately overshadowed by his breakout hit Breathless, as the tsunami of French New Wave rolled in making him into a star after this screen debut.

Sombre in tone and impressively shot in black and white, this quietly brutal road movie with its central theme of dishonour and broken loyalty in the criminal fraternity, has Lino Venturi in the lead as Abel Davis, a square-set, hardened criminal living in Italy, who needs one last job to retire so he can take his family back home to France. And how many times have we heard that before?: he should have known better.

After losing his partner in crime (Stan Krol)  in a twist of fate as they reach the French coast, he teams up with a small time thief Eric Stark (Belmondo), who drives him to Paris.

France of the fifties is grittily depicted here and Paris takes very much a central role still recovering from the hardship of the war days. Tightly written with some witty moments helping to lift the overall mood of grim inevitability, it is accompanied by George Delerue’s atmospheric score. He went on to compose the theme tunes to A Man for All Seasons and The Day of The Jackal and has just written the soundtrack to current hit: Frances Ha.

The female characters here know their place in film noir is to be cool and simmering or proud and coquettish in support roles well-performed by Simone France as Lino’s wife Therese, Sandra Milo as Belmondo’s Liliane  and a wonderful vignette from Evelyne Ker as the daughter of Gibelin.

Classe Tous Risques was a screen adaption of the novel by real life crim, Jose Giovanni, who had worked with the French Resistance and was at one point sentenced to death. His particular experience lends a touch of grim authenticity to the piece, preventing it from drifting into cliche. If you’re looking for a solid French thriller of the old school then this will fit the bill. MT

 

 

 

The Artist and The Model (2012) ***

Director: Fernando Trueba       Writers: Fernando Trueba, Jean-Claude Carriere

Jean Rochefort as Marc Cros,

 Aida Folch as Mercè, Claudia Cardinale as Léa Cros, Chus Lampreave as María 

with Götz Otto as Werner, Mateo Deluz as Henri, Martin Gamet as Pierre and Christian Sinniger as Emile

Marc Cros was a French sculptor who associated with Cézanne and Matisse. In Fernando Trueba’s arthouse drama, we meet him during the 1940s working quietly from his studio in an idyllic corner of the French Pyrenees and married to the vivacious and supportive Lea (an exuberant Claudia Cardinale).  Artist2

Lanqourous and lushly photographed in black and white, Jean Rochefort  gives a masterful performance as the ageing Cros, who slowly develops a bond with a local Catalan girl Merce (Aida Foch), who has recently escaped the Civil War in Spain and with Lea’s blessing, becomes his model.  Not just a pretty face, or a naked body for that matter, she revives the old man’s dormant creativity and keeps him in his place, gradually emerging as a sharp-witted accomplice with a keen knowledge of the local countryside which she uses to help Pierre (Martin Gamet), a local resistance fighter.  An an historian friend, Werner (Gotz Otto), also visits the studio to discuss work and Chus Lampreave injects a spark of comedy as the housekeeper Maria.

If you’ve recently seen Gilles Bourdos’s film RENOIR, there are similarities here in that Trueba and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carriere, one again refuse to let any real dramatic punch intrude into the innate lanquidity of the storyline so although Daniel Vilar’s liquid velvet visuals are endlessly seductive to the senses, THE ARTIST AND THE MODEL ultimately fails to engage  the emotions. MT

In A World (2013) ***

Director/Script: Lake Bell

Cast: Lake Bell, Fred Melamed, Demetri Martin, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry

90min    US Comedy ***

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Lake Bell’s debut feature is a screwball comedy drama in which she also stars as a wannabe voice-over artist who has not yet found her groove. Suffocating under the enormous ego and physical hulk of her famous father Sam Sotto (an assured Fred Melamed) who rules their roost and occupies the stratosphere of the voiceover world, he has only one younger rival Gustav (Ken Marino) to threaten his dominion over the airwaves.

The film opens with a tribute to Don LaFontaine, the famous voice artist, and this is a story about fragile egos at the top and the competitive world of show-business.  Lake Bell, as Carol finds herself suddenly ousted from the family home to make room for her father’s doting younger girlfriend and into the flat of her married sister Dani, (Michaela Watkins) and her husband, Moe (Rob Cordry) who are experiencing their own problems.

In A World, has the comfortable feel of a TV soap such as ‘Rhoda’ or even ‘Caroline in the City’ with its New York Jewish humour and sharp and punchy script.  Lake Bell has perfect comic timing and an ability with accents which she trots out with a dead-pan expression as mimicking the people she meets during her day including a squeaky girl who turns out to be a lawyer. Dani plays the reliable older sister who is professional in her work, respectful and down to earth, but it’s clear that these two are resentful of their father and his girlfriend and this plays out in a well-considered and believable way.

In a World, 2013 Sundance Film Festival

A surprise cameo from Geena Davis injects a strong feminist message in the closing scenes and Eva Longoria appears briefly attempting a cockney voice. In A World is a fresh and informative.MT

Museum Hours (2012)****

Director/Writer: Jem Cohen

Cast: Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits

107min Documentary/Drama

After a misspent youth travelling with rock bands, Johann (played by a quaintly appealing Bobby Sommer) has come to spend his days in the quiet splendour of the Bruegel rooms. Every picture tells a story and he is particularly captivated by the sumptuous detail of 16th century life, depicted in all its graphic gore and glory until one day the lost and diffident figure of Anne appears on the scene.  Played by Canadian singer Mary Margaret O’Hara, a stranger to the city, she has come to comfort a dying relative.

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Exploring the city together, Johann acts a guide as the two introverts grow close in a tentative and respectful meeting of minds in everyday surroundings. Against the bleak and wintery Viennese backdrop, the friendship is kindled by the warmth of human kindness and decency as Johann even accompanies Anne on visits to the nearby medical centre. Gem Cohen juxtaposes the complex splendour of baroque art against the rank and random simplicity of everyday objects allowing the viewer to contemplate and meditate on the wonder of art treasures, the nature of friendship and loss, the kindness of strangers and random acts of human generosity in this world of lost and lonely souls.

Museum Hours was a film I nearly didn’t see, tucked away in the industry screenings at the London Film Festival last year. Please don’t let it pass you by. MT

Any Day Now (2012) **

Director: Travis Fine

Cast: Alan Cumming, Isaac Leyva, Garret Dillahunt, Frances Fisher, Gregg Henry.

98min     US Drama

Inspired by true events that took place in the seventies but have increasing relevance now with contempo themes of gay adoption and civil rights, Travis Fine’s tale of a gay couple attempting to legally parent a mistreated Down’s Syndrome boy is somewhat schematic despite its admirable subject matter.

It stars Alan Cummings as Rudy Donatello, a single gay man whose unsocial hours in cabaret bring him into contact with his home-alone neighbour Marco, an appealing boy with Down’s Syndrome. Then one night during the show, Rudy takes a shine to punter, Paul (Garret Dillahunt), and after a brief dalliance, ends up servicing him in the car.  The respectable divorced lawyer falls for his charms and before you can say ‘human rights lawyer’ the two have set up home on the auspices of providing stability for the mistreated Marco.

It has to be said this is very much Alan Cummings’s film. As a drag queen, his tour de force of simmering anger, full blown histrionics and vulnerable charm grabs the limelight whenever he’s in the frame. Playing against the much lesser-known but competent Garret Dillahunt, (who just gets to wear a truly ghastly wig) he simply takes over and the central theme of adoption is forced into second place. As Marco, Isaac Leyva is captivating in a subtle turn that could have offered more in the way of dramatic pull had the script left room for Marco and Paul to develop their characters. Sadly, they are completely submerged by Cumming’s star quality from start to finish.  Fine’s handling of the establishment figures also portrays them as perpetual baddies to the point of caricature, as in Frances Fisher’s crusty old crimplene-clad Judge Meyerson and Paul’s boss, Lambert (Greg Henry): who turns into a ill-judged weirdo to cause him grief.

Obviously, Travis Fine was delighted to have Cummings attached to the project and shoe-horned in the rest of the cast who were happy to be part of a vehicle featuring his acting pipes in a star turn that ends up completely taking over the action.  Where Any Day Now could have been a sensitive, multi-faceted court room drama about a decent gay couple engaged in a laudable custody battle, it just ends up being a rather predicable and strangely unfunny comedy focussing on Alan Cummings star turn. MT

ANY DAY NOW IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

Upstream Color (2013) **** Sundance London 2013

Director/Producer/Writer/:  Shane Caruth

Cast: Amy Seimetz, Shane Caruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins, Meredith Burke

96mins   US Sci-fi Drama

Shane Caruth is a director of sci-fi films and Upstream Color is his second feature. He produces, lenses, scores (highly originally) and also acts here as Jeff, a man whose loose connection to a woman called Kris (Amy Seimetz) arises after they are both seemingly the victims of a radical medical experiment.

 

Technically brilliant and boldly photographed, Upstream Color follows an arcane narrative that has you back-footed and bewildered for most of its 96 minutes. It’s also a challenging and hypnotic piece of experimental filmmaking, the like of which you probably won’t experience again in 2013.

Many may even call it a love story between two people so linked and drawn together by a damaging past that they are destined to spend the future together, eventually accepting one another through force of circumstance.

There’s also an animal testing element to the film, that’s less appealing, involving what appears to be a piglet whose reproduce organs are removed and replaced with those of Kris, so it appears to gestate a piglet derived from her own genetic material.

The story sounds bizarre with the telling in a vacuum without the benefit of its dazzlingly edited images but, suffice to say, this is a film to experience and one which you will either embrace or reject due to its unorthodox nature.

Loosely, Kris finds herself the unwitting subject of a strange medical experiment at the hands of a thief (Thiago Martins) and is forced to eat a strange bug which then grows inside her and robs her of her mind. After losing all her savings, she then undergoes further intervention involving a pig owned by ‘the man’ (Andrew Sensenig). Eventually she meets Caruth, who appears to be connected to her through experiencing a similar trauma in the past. They share a visceral relationship that makes no sense to the outsider, communicating in a disconnected dialogue but remain bonded closely for the remainder of the film, possibly through a human need to make order out of chaos and to relate to each other in what is otherwise a lonely and isolating situation.

The leads gives strong performances expressing the deep trauma they have gone through but this is not in any way an emotionally affecting film nor does it make a strong dramatic impact. The only feeling it illicits is one of perplexity. Upstream Color actually makes haunting, soulless and rather uncomfortable viewing despite its potent visual appeal and imposing metallic score. It is nevertheless required viewing. MT

UPSTREAM COLOR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28TH AUGUST 2013

Hors Les Murs (2013)

Beyond The Walls

Director: Daniel Lambert         Writer: Daniel Lambert

Matila Malliarakis, Guillaume Gouix, David Salles, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin

98mins  French with English subtitles   Drama

The recent batch of gay films has become more romantic and less sexually explicit in tone (Keep The Lights On, Weekend) and this fine example and directorial debut from Belgian writer, Daniel Lambert, tugs at the heartstrings like any classic love story. The thrust here is on the heady mix of power over tender vulnerability and makes appealing viewing for art house  audiences although it’s not quite mainstream fare.

Paulo (Matila Malliarakis) is living with his girlfriend Anka but their sex life has pretty much ground to a halt. When he meets Illr (Guillaume Gouix) the chemistry is palpable and he is immediately seduced by Illr’s forcefully masculine approach.  Exasperated by the lack of bedroom action, Anka throws Paulo out forcing him to move in with Illr despite a certain reluctance on Illr’s part. The two begin a convincing and passionate relationship in which Paulo very much forces the pace for commitment. As the dynamic between them reaches considerable depth and complexity the narrative develops with a well-crafted and involving plot line and authentic characterisations. Matila Malliarakis & Guillaume Gouix 2

An atmospheric music selection from Canada’s Valleys band sets just the right tone for this bittersweet affair and Matthieu Poirot-Delpech’s sensual and distinctive widescreen visuals give poignancy to this indie drama marking Lambert out as a filmmaker with a promising future. MT

BEYOND THE WALLS IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26TH AUGUST 2013

Morrissey 25: Live (2012) ****

Director: James Russell

92mins  Music Documentary

Director James Russell’s passion for music and multi-camera flair is showcased here in this close-up and personal experience of Morrissey performing live in the confines of the Hollywood High School arena in March 2013. Serving it up straight and simple, topped and tailed with idolatrous vox-pops from the visiting fans,  James Russell does not try to put his own creative Morrissey 25 Livespin on the proceedings or to compete with the iconic star.  This is Morrissey’s show marking 25 years of a solo career for the enigmatic English singer and lyricist, who has risen considerably in stature since the days of The Smiths when he rose to fame in 1984 with the words: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.

 

Thirty years later at this intimate gathering he gives the impression of still being pretty miserable. But he’s made his fans extremely happy and they all tell him so in mass hysteria grabbing the microphone when he asks in between songs “Do you want to talk?”. He certainly knows how to connect with his audience without giving away anything of himself, retaining an aura of alluring disdain that occasionally belies the revealingly emotional but candid content of his lyrics, delivered in a strong voice, mournful and mostly off-key.

Running through a range of new material and classics from “Alma Matters”, “Let Me Kiss You”, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”, “Please let me get what I want” and “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side”, Morrissey has an impressive and powerful animal physicality about him. Moving about the stage with relaxed ease,  his blue eyes, broad shoulders and beautifully delicate hands sporting yellow-varnished nails, He’s a man in control of his own destiny but he has no illusions about where that may be.

The camera loves him but he’s oblivious to the filming process focussing firmly on his musical performance and his fans and treating them to regular handouts of his sweat-drenched designer shirts and handshakes as he bends forward into the crowd with impressive athleticism.  By the end, fans are climbing onto the stage to embrace him before being carried away by security guards. Mystique, charisma, the ability to connect on a deep level: whatever it is, Morrissey has it in spades and James Russell’s film has captured it for posterity. It’s a wonderful thing. MT

MORRISSEY 25: LIVE IS A ONE-OFF EVENT ON 24TH AUGUST 2013 AT CURZON, VUE AND ODEON CINEMAS.

 

Circumstance (2012)

Director Maryam Keshavarz

Cast: Nikohl Bosheri, Sarah Kazemy

105mins  Drama

Circ4Politics and sapphic desire go hand in hand in this coming of age drama from Iranian director, Maryam Keshavarz.  It starts off as a fairly formulaic affair focusing on a group of friends kicking against the system of contemporary Iran but soon edges towards a strikingly sensual and provocative story of forbidden love between two lesbians.

Atafeh (Nikohl Bosheri) and Shireen Sarah Kazemy) are clearly in love. Both coming from enlightened backgrounds of affluent Tehran society, Shireen’s parents were victims of the strict regime, Atefeh’s are a professional couple.  Thirty years ago they would have had the glamorous lifestyle of young Westerners but that was pre-revolution and nowadays they could be arrested for holding hands. But when Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Rezo Sixo Safai) turns fundamentalist as a throw-back from addiction and starts laying down shariah law with predictable consequences for all concerned, the picture becomes darker.

Strong images of female discrimination drive the narrative forward and the girls are subtle and convincing as friends and lovers but the standout performance comes from Rezo in his slow and and sinister transformation from sensitive musician to controlling religious bigot.

Meredith Taylor ©

DVD release on 24th September 2012.

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Silence 2013

Director: Pat Collins

Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride, Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Andrew Bennett, Marie Coyne,

Silence

Silence is golden. But a growing number of us in this fast-moving, computer-driven, noise-laden world increasingly value the stillness it brings. Sit in total tranquillity away from it all and notice the calming affect on the psyche and the deep inner calm and healing that come from silence.

Ireland-e1376061525855Irish director Pat Collins has done just that in this part-documentary, part-drama that has professional sound recordist, Eoghan, attempting to discover a totally noise-free environment in the environs of rural Berlin. Taking his recording equipment into the surrounding forest, he hears the distant sound of rock-breakers at work puncturing the natural ambience with a dull and continuous thud. So, after a final meeting with his girlfriend, significantly drowned-out by a passing train, he returns to his native Ireland and sets off into the depth of the countryside on Bullock Island off the coast of Donegal hoping to find an environment away from man-made sound.

Chat-e1376061707417Richard Kendrick’s softly atmospheric visuals accompany this voyage of discovery to find peace and desolation, interweaved with footage from the past. As Eoghan finds peace, a strand of childhood memories gradually start to surface, fleshing out the enigmatic narrative with fleeting but tangible reference to events that occurred in these remote, enchanted islands set in the emerald sea. MT

SILENCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9TH AUGUST 2013 AT CURZON RENOIR, ICA CINEMA, THE BARBICAN CINEMA AND BFI SOUTHBANK.

 

 

 

Paradise: Hope (2012) (Paradies: Hoffnung)

Paradise: Hope is the third feature of the Ulrich Seidl’s trilogy of films focusing on female stories in a contemporary Austria. This one is based Teresa’s 13 year-old daughter Melanie, the 13-year-old daughter of Paradise: Love‘s character: Melanie is verging on obesity and is dispatched to a health camp for teenage fatties in the Austrian Alps, while Teresa goes in search of sex in Kenya.  Once there the homesick Melanie soon finds herself sharing a room with another overweight teen Verena, (Verena Lehbauer) and exchanging sweets and salacious stories about their experiences with the opposite sex.  There’s nothing new here about the sex-tinged gossip, it’s much the same as it was in my day but the obesity is what really stands out in these contemporary teenagers.

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Ulrich Seidl uses the same observational style here that works so well in Paradise: Love, using minimal dialogue and lingering camera shots that leave space to speculate on and enjoy his darkly humorous and provocative narrative. It’s a style that works particularly well here leaving the audience to engage with the characters and the mood of his light but unsettling narrative.

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During the regular medical examinations, Melanie (Lenz) starts to develop a plausible but inappropriate attraction to the in-house doctor, a man in his fifties. Joseph Lorenz gives a brilliant and highly inventive turn as Arzt. He doesn’t come across as a family man and could almost be a player, but Seidl leaves this very much to our imagination and in the process creates a seductive image that provides a clever counterpoint to Teresa’s male predators in Paradise: Love.

Melanie gradually emerges as a vulnerable character with a well-developed sense of her own sexuality and the ability to seduce and beguile: she an utterly normal teenager.  In a quirky but poignant portrait of first love, the strange chemistry that develops between her and the doctor brings elements of suspense and titillation to the proceedings leaving us to speculate on how the story will progress; in other words: who will seduce whom? The outcome is quirky and disturbing but not as you would expect.

The other male lead is the archetypal sports trainer (Michael Thomas) who is only  interested in exercising his ego, coming across as rather a sad figure to whose draconian authority the girls soon subvert with a mixture of tolerance and collective, covert mockery.  Nestling in its placid and orderly Alpine setting, the ‘Clinic’ is a perfectly functioning model of authority ruled over here by dysfunctional role models. Scratch the surface and latent rebellion lurks in every corner and corridor, pointing at some very real concerns beyond. MT

PARADISE: HOPE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2ND AUGUST AT THE ICA CINEMA AND THE LEXI LONDON.

Simon (2012) Netflix

Director/Writer: Antonio Campo | Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Lila Salet, Michael Abiteboul, Solo, Constance Rousseau | 105min   US Psychological thriller

Simon Killer, is a subversive second feature by Antonio Campos: you get the overriding impression that it’s being filmed covertly or by a hidden camera possibly due to the slightly muffled sound effects and a close range hand-help camera that give this psychological thriller an unsettling feeling of doom-laden urgency with its a syncopated score occasionally and abruptly punctured by long periods of uncomfortable silence.

Simon is clearly a disturbed, self-absorbed and morose individual: an American who’s moved to Paris and has just finished a long term love affair brought on by his ex girlfriend’s infidelity, and this plays on his mind.

Sexually he’s also very pent-up and troubled by the past and this comes across in his relationships with the people he comes across in this foreign city.

Paris feels like a dangerous place. Not the romantic city of dreams always billed – but a hostile, jagged and unfriendly place harbouring criminal types and the disenfranchised.

Simon eventually hooks up with a mysterious French call girl who offers him casual sex, and the two become close when Simon asks her for temporary refuge. He becomes increasingly emotionally and sexually involved with in scenes that feel authentic and visceral.The camera plays on their torsos and occasionally scans across the room in an unnerving way. The two engage in experimental and brutal sex that’s explicit and intermingled with feelings from the past for Simon, as he begins a slow and disturbing downwoods spiralling into his fate.

This is a first rate mesmerizing psychological thriller that’s stylishly produced and pulsating with believable performances from the writer and director of the acclaimed Afterschool.MT

SIMON is now on NETFLIX . 




Lovelace (2013)

Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Script: Andy Belin

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone

92min    US Drama

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In this compelling account of how a vulnerable young woman becomes the porn star Linda Lovelace, there are a some dynamite performances. Amanda Seyfried takes centre stage as the delicately elfin Linda with her mop of tousled curls. The product of a dysfunctional home-life that distances her from parents (Sharon Stone is suberb as her buttoned-up, embittered mother), she is thrown into the arms of Peter Sarsgaard’s disarmingly sexy but sleazy hustler and manager, Chuck Traynor. Taking her to New York as his wife, he then peddles her legendary ‘bedroom skills’ to porn directors Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria and Butchie Peraino (Bobby Carnevale) to create the phenomenon Deep Throat (1972): a money-spinning film that created a career for both of them and launched the era of ‘Porno Chic’, bringing pornography into mainstream popular culture.

Through a clever narrative structure, the truth behind the porn legend is gradually revealed in the second half of the film where the tone shifts from light-hearted comedy to disturbing and moving drama. We discover the extent of the abuse that Linda suffered to achieve this financial dream for all those involved (accept herself) and how she eventually manages to move on with courage and dignity. A really entertaining piece of filmmaking that really captures the spirit of the seventies made all the more memorable by its upbeat score featuring hits from T.S.O.P. and George McCrae’s ‘Rock Your Baby’ (1974). MT

LOVELACE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH JULY 2013

 

 

 

 

Roman Holiday (1953)

Roman_Holiday_3Director: William Wyler

Script: Dalton Trumbo, Ian Mclellan Hunter, John Dighton

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert, Margaret Rawlings, Harcourt Williams, Hartley Power

125mins  Comedy Romance   US

DIGITALLY RESTORED IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY

Stylish, poignant and perfectly performed by Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday is a Frank Capra-style fifties fable that delivers on many levels: as a coming of age story; an upstairs, downstairs romance; and moral tale of responsibility over recklessness set in an era when the media still had a sense of fair play and decorum.

Audrey Hepburn plays a British Princess called Ann in a perfectly-timed story that captured the imagination of the public due to a general fascination with the real life romance between Princess Margaret and non-royal Peter Townsend. The idea of a ‘Royal’ slipping away for a day of fun and frolics during an official tour is the stuff of fantasy and escapism but works here in a fifties setting where security was far less tight than nowadays.

That a press hack would respect such a valuable scoop and be so utterly entranced is testament to the power of love and is a theme that gives Roman Holiday its enduring and universal appeal setting it as a sparkling jewel in the Hollywood firmament.  Under the inspired direction of Wiliam Wyler, Gregory Peck emerges as cool as a cucumber with the relaxed demeanour and calm integrity of a real hero and gentleman to Audrey Hepburn’s naive but dignified Princess.

Roman_Holiday_6For her part, Audrey Hepburn is the epitome of poise in a role for which she won 1953 Best Actress Oscar. Delicate and elfin-like, she graces every frame with her elegant diction  (quoting Shelley) and wearing outfits inspired by fifties “New Look” designers such as Dior and Jean-Louis Scherrer, who created soft feminine silhouettes, luxuriating in haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Costumier Edith Head had designed costumers for the Hitchcock films of the era Vertigo, Rear Window  and worked up until the eighties with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.

Frank Capra was originally optioned for the film and had hoped to cast Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant as the leads. But due to financial difficulties with his production company, Liberty Films, and problems working with the blacklisted Oscar-winning legendary screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (a victim of McCarthyism), he was forced to sell it to Paramount.  So William Wyler eventually came on board to work his magic, fresh from directing The Heiress (1949) with Monty Clift and Elizabeth Taylor.

The project was a natural fit for Wyler and allowed him to turn his talents back to light romantic comedy, his first since The Good Fairy (1935) and also to benefit from tax concessions: Roman Holiday was the first American film made entirely abroad. MT

ROMAN HOLIDAY IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM JULY 19TH 2013

Les Invisibles (2012)

Director: Sebastien Lifshitz

105mins   France   Documentary

United by their pioneering homosexuality, eleven elderly men and women reveal their intimate thoughts about relationships nowadays and coming out in the France of their youth.

Accomplished director and professor, Sebastien Lifshitz, offers up an enlightening and poignant documentary made all the more engaging with its evocative wide screen visuals and pleasant soundtrack allowing the audience to build a sympathetic picture of these sincere individuals and gain a wider understanding of what it feels like to be a minority in the mainstream. MT

LES INVISIBLES OPENS AT THE CINE LUMIERE, LONDON SW7 FROM JULY 13TH 2013

Paradise: Faith (2012) *****

Director/Script: Ulrich Seidl

Script: Veronika Franz

Cast: Maria Hoffstatter, Nabil Saleh, Natalya Baranova, Rene Rupnik

113min   Austrian     Drama             German with English subtitles

Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl returns to Austria for the second part of the Paradise trilogy, Paradise: Faith.  In Paradise: Love we met voluptuous, blonde divorcée, Teresa. Here, the mood is more sombre as we meet her less attractive sister, hospital worker Anna Maria (Maria Hoffstatter), who is taking her holiday ‘at home’ in her gloomy apartment block.

This time the focus is on religion and Seidl’s stark and stylised interiors mirror Anna Maria’s empty unhappiness with her life.  Hoffstatter gives a committed performance as an unlikeable and fastidious woman who clings to routine, old-fashioned clothes and a Wagneresque hairdo. As the narrative unfolds, she also emerges as the worst kind of religious bigot.

Ritual is a strong motif in this segment. Ostensibily a devout Catholic, Anna Maria’s days are spent observing meticulous routine: singing hymns and self-flagellating in front of a picture of Jesus. In neighbourhood forays as a door to door ‘Christian’ salesman, she comes across as insensitive and overbearing; projecting herself onto her victims, and  coming to blows with a disenchanted Russian immigré (Natalya Baranova) and forcing a kindly but arthritic man (Rene Rupnik) to pray on his knees in a droll vignette that considerably lightens the tone injecting some much-needed dark humour.

The appearance of her crippled Muslim husband Nabil (Saleh), blows her cover and sheds a new light on her piety.  A healthy physical relationship was obviously the focus of their marriage.  His paralysis has exposed their incompatibility as a couple and caused Maria to ‘re-discover’ her faith, sublimating her sexual frustration into hero worship of Jesus.  Saleh is quietly powerful as a reasonable man who rapidly morphs into a radical, raving mysogynist once rejected sexually. Anna Maria is actively disgusted by him and his religious beliefs and this only goes to heighten her own fervour, making his Islamic views appear strident and as they tussle with religious paraphernalia in the flat, the situation goes from bad to worse.

Occasionally spiked by provocative humour, Paradise: Faith is an uncomfortable film to watch, both from a dour visual perspective and a religious and moral viewpoint.  There are echoes of Kieslowski and Haneke’s deep misanthropy piqued with wicked comedy. An observational style leaves us space to contemplate the deep and fertile complexity of the issues involved and draw our own conclusions in our own time.

As in the other Paradise segments (Love, Faith and Hope), there is a strong atmosphere of subversion at play and Anna Maria’s unhappiness with her marriage and sexual frustration have found a focus on the image of Jesus, as Melanie’s burgeoning sexuality reaches out to the strong male figure of the doctor in Paradise: Hope. As Anna Maria kisses and masturbates with a miniature statue of Jesus, she idolises his physical ‘beauty’ in a deeply disturbing episode that has shades of Vanessa Redgrave’s performance in The Devils (1971) but cleverly steers clear of titillation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like it or not, Ulrich Seidl’s non-judgemental viewpoint tweaks a raw nerve in his depiction of inescapable and inevitable truths that is always tempered with a lightness of touch and knowing humour. A well-pitched and timely comment on the multicultural debate, it also showing how the disenfranchised and disenchanted can subvert their feeling into religious fanaticism, using religious fundamentalism of any persuasion as a badge of honour to hide more covert psychological issues. Paradise: Faith is possibly the most harrowing of the trilogy but also the most apposite in terms of contemporary multiculturalism. Highly recommended. MT

THE PARADISE TRILOGY LOVE, FAITH AND HOPE ARE SCREENING AT THE RIO CINEMA DALSTON ON 16TH JUNE 2013.  PARADISE: FAITH IS THEN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH JULY AT THE CURZON RENOIR.

Sophie Lellouche, Fim Director

Interview with Sophie Lellouche, Writer Director of French Rom-Com, Paris-Manhattan

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Why did you choose to make Paris-Manhattan as your first feature film?

I think it was perfect for a first movie, because a first movie is something that is very special, because you don’t know [yet] if you are a Director… it is something non-real and I was… I am very in love with old movies and some Directors, so… I didn’t know if I could be a Director myself.

So… in this first movie, I give you all my references and all the movies I love and then, by the end of (making) the movie, I will have become a Director.

But you have already made a Short film (in 1999)…

Yes, but after this Short, I gave up directing; it was terrible, a terrible experience and after making it, I said directing is not for me. I am not gifted enough. I was very unconfident and each time I went to see a film directed by someone of my own age, I was always ‘wow, they are so talented…’

I was very complex and I think that is why -when I was writing this movie this thought was not very clear to me- but now, looking back, I realised that I needed the approval of Woody Allen. It’s something weird but it was like, ‘ok, if Woody Allen says no… no I can’t make films, then, ok.

So you are saying, you ask Woody Allen and -if he gives his approval- then that gives you permission and you accept you are a Director…

Yes. Yes.

When you put this film together, in terms of finance, which way round did it go, did you have to get Woody Allen aboard first?

It’s strange, this finance, because the first thing was to get the approval of Mr Allen. But it was the standard way of making a film… I had to find a Producer… that didn’t work… so then I had to find another one. It was very, very difficult.

But then, when Woody came aboard, it wasn’t ‘the answer’, as far as they were concerned. They were like,‘Well it’s just a cameo. Woody Allen is an intellectual’. It wasn’t like ‘Oh Woody Allen! Well, we can get Massive, huge audiences, then’ it was ‘Yes… Woody Allen, ok… then it is (a film) for just a few people; he will reduce the potential audience’(!). So it was… not so good for the financing! [laughs]

I wondered if it was a case of ‘well, if Woody comes aboard, then you get the financing’, but it wasn’t like that at all.

No, no, the money came aboard thanks to my Producer.

Did you approach your Producer after you had finished the script, or during the writing?

I finished the script, then got the approval of Woody Allen, then they loved the script. They also love Woody Allen. They are wonderful Producers- because they love film; they weren’t in it simply to make loads of money. They read it, came aboard and said ‘Ok, now we are fighting to make the movie’.

Ok, so… you felt it was a very individual project that needed very specific producers to make it happen.

Yes. Very much.

So, safe to say, you are a Woody Allen fan. How autobiographical is the film?

Yes, I am of course… It’s not autobiographical; it’s personal. It’s very personal because I think, it was… for me… In Alice, there is alot of me, but I don’t have a sister, there are alot of things here that are not me, that I invented.

But the way that it is very personal, is in the way that she needs to leave her childhood and has to accept- to be herself, even if she doesn’t have… or isn’t what she expects to be -in life.

And for me, it is very personal, because before (making the film), because in the past I was simply dreaming of being a Great Director, but didn’t do anything about it. And now I am an adult and, with this movie I accepted to do my best, to work alot; to try personally to improve, as I make each movie.

But I accept I am not Woody Allen… or somewhere else, like, sitting on a beach… I accept this. And Alice in the movie makes the same decision, she accepts not to have a wonderful, charming prince; that happiness is to accept your own reality.

So when you made the film, was there anything that surprised you with the finished film, away from how you pictured it when you wrote it?

Yes. For instance, I was not expecting the end of the movie. The last ten minutes, it was like it wasn’t mine.

Even though you wrote it…

Yes. The last ten minutes, when Woody appears, it’s very strange. Any time I view the last ten minutes, it’s like I am purely a spectator. Not the filmmaker at all.  I want to cry… there is something very strong. It’s like it is not my movie.

But when I see all the things I don’t like, it’s my movie! [laughs]

Because when you watch your own movie, having made it, all you do is watch the movie in your head of your movie being made…

Yes, yes! It’s very strange.

Also, the script; the things I didn’t like in the script, I also didn’t like in the movie. But we -the Producer and I- we didn’t find any better alternatives… once we got the money, we didn’t have any time. But at the end of the movie, the things I didn’t like when I wrote them, I didn’t like when I viewed it.

How long did it take you to write?      

I write alot… so it wasn’t hard to write. I did ten drafts, and each rewrite took only about three weeks. Speaking to my producer for notes. After I rewrote it, my movie, it was one life, it was Alice, but I wanted to highlight some different aspects of her life… but, having said all this, it was six years [from start to finish] and you know [by the end], you are not the same person you were six years ago.

Did you have a cast in mind when you wrote it?

No. Only at the end.

And were you happy with your cast?

Patrick Bruel its something like… like a dream… I was dreaming to have Woody Allen and… when I was around 18, or 20 years old, I loved Patrick, so it was like something synchronous, so when I was looking I said I know exactly who I want for this role, it is Patrick Bruel.

So he was the one person you had in mind before…?

Yes.

For Alice, it was different; I was searching for her… I wrote the part, but not with an actor in my head. I don’t write with actors in mind.

I knew I was looking for someone blonde… for the light, I wanted….

Someone fair…

Yes, fair, I was looking for someone fair and when I saw an Alice Taglioni movie, I was laughing because she is a comedy actress. She gets a rhythm like a tomboy. She has a very light touch, but also she plays comedy seriously. So for me it was perfect and Alice and Patrick, they fitted together perfectly.

And then there was no… adjustments you needed to make to the script?

Oh yes, there were many. They are both Very experienced and they would say ‘this is not good’ and I would go ‘ok’ and go with their suggestions.

Some spontaneity from the performers?

I was not stressed, so we worked just to find the best thing. And Patrick gets alot of energy; is very playful and has alot of ideas. I loved to work with them and they worked with me and they wanted to make the best movie I had in my head.

How long was your shoot?

Seven weeks. I think I wanted one week more. Because the movie is short and I wanted more. For me, I would have liked ten more minutes to develop more ideas, but the movie, it was good, but the script… Alot of what I wrote ended on the cutting room floor. Well, for my next script I am going to work more… seven weeks [as a shoot length] would be perfect if the script was perfect and it wasn’t perfect on this shoot.

What’s next for you?

I am writing two scripts at the moment, but I don’t know really… one is a comedy, which I love writing, but there is another script which is big. It is an adaptation of a novel and after the holidays, I am going to meet the author, but it is a big movie and I am not very confident [in myself]. I am scared because it is a big movie.

Cubby Broccoli said that all filmmakers are optimistic by nature. They have to be, with everything that can go wrong from beginning to end, making a movie…

I am an optimist and I have faith. So I believe that life is going to choose also, for me. You know, I work and after, there are things that happen that one cannot explain, so…

Sophie, thank you.

You’re welcome.

PARIS-MANHATTEN GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH JULY AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

 

Tropicália (2012)

Director:  Marcelo Machado

Script:     Vaughn Glover, Marcelo Machado, Di Moretti
Producer:  Paula Cosenza, Denise Gomez
Cast:  Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Arnaldo Dias, Sergio Dias, Gal Costa, Glauber Rocha, Jorge Ben, Rogerio Duprat, Rita Lee

Bra/USA/UK   87mins    2012    Music Doc

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When done right, music and film will forever make perfect bedfellows. Concerning Brazil, 1967-1969, but a music documentary about far more than just another band or style, here the music was a vehicle for something much bigger.

‘Tropicália’ was the name attributed to a Liberalist artistic movement that came into being in 1967, in reaction to the dictatorship that came into force in 1964. Encompassing not only music but poetry theatre and film, it was a movement created by the young, fusing together traditional Folk with Rock and Roll, Pop, foreign influences and the avant-garde. It hit the choked populace of martial Brazil like a blast of oxygen. It spoke of freedom; freedom of thought and freedom of expression which to a Brazilian in the late Sixties was either stunningly, bravely, liberatingly beautiful, or a ridiculously dangerous arrestable offence.

Without knowing a great deal of the circumstances prevailing in Brazil at the time, either politically or indeed, musically, some viewers may not grasp the full import of what it is they are watching.  It’s difficult in this day and age to comprehend the notion of a song capable of changing the course of history, or influencing an entire country. What Rodriguez managed in total ignorance in Apartheid South Africa, Caetano et al did with full cognizance in Brazil.

This film chooses to concentrate more on the music aspect of the movement, rather than the theatre and poetry, although there is some film. It follows the stories of the main protagonists of the music and how their influence spread extraordinarily quickly and widely through the nascent medium of television; it’s wonderful that so much original footage, both tape and film, still exists of the singers back when it was all going down.

Filmmaker Machado has also gone to great lengths to make what few grainy black and white still photographs survive of some of the events of the time interesting using various tricks, but this is more than compensated for by the amazing music from the likes of Os Mutantes and Caetano Veloso.

Tropicália explores what the movement was and what the music signified to the people of Brazil, culminating in an album of the films title, employing all the singers and songwriters of the day creating what was effectively, a political manifesto in song. How Rock n Roll is that? Dynamite.

TROPICALIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 5TH JULY AT CURZON SOHO PLUS PANEL DISCUSSION AND RICH MIX ON SUNDAY, 7TH JULY 2013

 

The Wall (2011) Die Wand | Prime Video

Dir: Julian Posler | Wri: Novel: Marlen Haushofer Script: Julian Posler | Cast: Martina Gedeck, Karl Heinz Hackl, Ulrike Beimpold, Luchs | 108min Germany/Austria 108’Inappapp

So taken was Julian Posler with German cult novel ‘The Wall’ (1963) that he waited patiently for nearly twenty years to acquire the rights from author Marlen Haushofer, and another seven years on the script that deals with personal freedom, isolation and loneliness, bearing a remarkable similarity to the experience we have all just through with the covid lockdown.

Essentially a one-hander it’s a memorable and empowering film. Martina Gedeck plays an unnamed woman in her forties who suddenly becomes trapped behind an invisible wall in the Alps. Although on the face of it the experience appears restrictive, she gradually finds strength and a new sense of purpose. Posler describes their working relationship as largely unspoken, relying on mutual trust and body language to feel out a narrative based on fear of the unknown, apprehension and bewilderment.

Filmed in the magnificently scenic landscape of the Paltental Valley in the Steiermark of Austria during the course of just over four seasons, The Wall offers some of the most striking scenery in its lush mountain setting. No fewer than nine cinematographers worked in extreme conditions from deepest winter to the height of Alpine summer immersing themselves in the natural habitat.

The narrative unfolds in flashback with periods of silence which have the therapeutic effect of allowing audiences space for contemplation without Martina’s voiceover interjecting. The silence actually enhances the film’s ability to inspire a growing of sense, uncertainty and introspection. At times, a little less voiceover would have allowed the visual strength of the story greater impact. That said, it’s an impressive piece of filmmaking.

Arriving at a remote hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains with a couple of friends, the woman stays with her dog Lynx (Luchs) while the others go in search of provisions. When they later fail to re-appear, she deciding to explore but she is suddenly hemmed in by an invisible wall that traps her near to the hunting lodge and its immediate surrounds. Escape and communication with the outside world are now impossible, but the woman draws on the healing power of her natural surroundings, animals and the changing seasons to remain calm and in control. Her impressive grounding in animal husbandry and food preparation obviously comes in handy, she fine-tunes her mindset with some deep and far-reaching discoveries. It’s an physically and emotionally-demanding role which Gedeck acquits impressively in her portrayal of survivor who manages to carry on blistered and battle-scarred to the bitter end with its inexplicably tragedy.

The highly unusual and unsettling original soundscape is based on the Earth’s magnetic field, with a few Bach partitas thrown in, enforcing the feeling of suspense and creating gravitas. This is a weirdly moving film that touches briefly on sci-fi but then broadens out into a quietly intense psychological drama that explores our complex  relationship with nature and the animal kingdom. But most of all it’s about finding power and serenity through emotional strength  MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

I Want Your Love (2012) ****

Director: Travis Mathews

Cast: Jesse Metzger, Brontez Pumell, Ben Jasper

Travis Mathews came to public attention earlier this year with his sexually explicit re-imagining of the ‘lost’ 40 minutes of the Al Pacino original Cruising. As Interior. Leather Bar, it starred the well-known TV actor, Val Lauren and screened to rapt audiences at the Berlinale 2013.

This is his latest collaboration with James Franco (that actually pre-dates INB). The selling point here is a really lovely natural and totally convincing performance from Jesse Metzger as Jesse and his group of gay friends based in San Francisco. With scenes of graphic and explicit sex, Jesse plays a performance actor on the point of moving back to Ohio and feeling insecure about developing his career and finding like-minded individuals back East in more traditional territory.  Ok, it’s not a deeply plotted story but the mood is engaging and light-hearted. Mathews gives a gentle and tolerant view of West Coast gays guys seen through their friendships and their relationships where often the boundaries blur in a fascinating and intimate way. Be prepared for some hardcore but surprisingly inoffensive sex. MT

Venus and Serena (2013)

Director Maiken Baird and Michelle Major

With: Serena and Venus Williams, Richard Williams, John McEnroe, Billie Jean King, Anna Wintour

99mins    US Sports Documentary

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When businessman Richard Williams bought a manual on teaching tennis there was no doubt in his mind.  His aim was to hothouse his little daughters to success on the international tennis circuit.

Today Venus and Serena Williams are the first African Americans to have won the World Finals Championships at Wimbledon.  Maiken Baird and Michelle Major’s cinéma vérité piece follows the pair through the 2011 tennis season.  Alex Gibney, the director of Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God has also backed the project which combines early childhood footage of the girls, interviews with family and tennis luminaries such as John ‘You Cannot Be Serious’ McEnroe, together with top moments from the world of tennis.

The Williams sisters share a similar background to that of Michael Jackson: a controlling, even draconian father figure; a gruelling training lifestyle that precludes any childhood pleasure and, above all, a commitment to God.  A self-made man with thriving business interests, Mr Williams was determined that Venus and her younger sister, Serena, would both follow his path to success. But they took things one step further, overcoming countless setbacks along the way due to their unique bond with each other.

Fascinating and fact-filled; Venus and Serena is an absorbing watch, catching the superhuman quality of the girls with their amazonian physiques (and rock-hard thighs). Focusing on their positivity and total lack of self-doubt, it charts their glittering successes and, what is more surprising, their total respect for their father.  At one point Serena calls him ‘Sir’, despite his philandering ways: Williams is on his second marriage. They also discover some astounding home truths about their large family and reveal to us the secrets of their own brand of success which now extends beyond the tennis courts.

Venus and Serena is a well put-together documentary.  With moments of triumph and dark humour, it provides an absorbing account of this classic ‘rags to riches’ story and will appeal to sports fanatics and tennis lovers everywhere, particularly in the run-up to Wimbledon. MT.

The Moo Man (2012) **** Sundance London 2013

Director: Andrew Heathcote

Cast: Stephen Hook

90min  Documentary UK

It costs a dairy farmer 34p to produce a litre of fresh milk. The supermarkets will pay 27p per litre to the farmer and so dairy farmers throughout England are living on the breadline, unable to make money by producing the most vital of all food products and the tax payer subsidises their existence.

Andrew Heathcote’s brings the issue to the fore with a touching documentary focusing on Stephen Hook, an organic dairy farmer with a difference: not only does he run a profitable dairy farm but he believes in having a close and chatty relationship with his 75 cows and particularly Ida, the queen of the herd. It’s a fascinating and surprisingly moving story.

Andy’s approach is observational and relaxed, leaving Stephen to calmly take us through, at close-range, the challenges and joys of his daily life. Often physically hard but always rewarding, the narrative moves backwards and forwards over one year in his delightful Sussex farm amid gentle sounds of nature and a gloriously uplifting original score from Stephen Daltry. The Moo Man is an informative piece of fimmaking that works on three levels: as a narrative on the demise of the local community tradesman, a human interest story about our relationship with the animal world and an important wake-up call to the British Government and the supermarkets about one of our oldest, and most important industries, Farming .

And it’s not all scenes of freshly mown meadows and summer sunsets: the birth of several calves at eye-wateringly close quarters is a difficult sight but life-affirming one.  On a humane leverl, the bull calves are not shot at birth here on Stephen Hook’s farm but manage to enjoy two years before they finally go to their maker and produce organic beef for the locals.

Stephen claims his raw milk can lower cholesterol and blood pressure and get rid of eczema.  Apart from caring about his animals he also prides himself with his shrewd business approach, selling to customers direct through the local farmers’ markets. There’s a wonderful scene where the cows frolic and buck as they are let into the field on the first day of Spring. The success of this film is that it never feels worthy, serious or heavy-going and delivers its message with a lightness of touch and a quiet firmness.  A real gem. MT

THANKS TO THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN THIS FILM IS NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT THE RIVERSIDE STUDIES, LONDON FROM 11TH JULY 2013.

JOIN THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN.

 

 

Night Of Silence – Lal Gece (2012) *** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Screenplay: Reis Çelik

Cast: Ilyas Salman, Dilan Aksüt, Sabri Tutalü

93min  Drama  Turkish with subtitle

Night of Silence is an award-winning Anatolian take on the classic story of Scheherazade. A Muslim teenage bride finds herself on her wedding night in the clutches of a raddled old criminal just out of jail.  Not only that, he’s also ugly, bald and overweight.  After a colourful and boisterous banquet and knees-up with the local fiends and their womenfolk, this cinema verité piece morphs into a two-handed chamber drama between the newly married couple. And, not surprisingly, only the groom is in the mood for love.

What follows is a cleverly drawn study in human dynamics played with grace by a bride who, aided by well-written dialogue, cleverly prolongs the moment of consummation for as long as she can, conjuring up palpable fear mingled with mild disgust at her fate at the hands of this old lover. That said the groom (Ilyas Salman) comes across as benign and gentle rather than lascivious as he blows her smoke rings and engages with her almost as if she was his young daughter. Dilan Aksût’s brilliant turn as the bride starts as timid and sweet and grows more confident and convincing as a chemistry of sorts develops between them with some surprises during the long, tiresome night. MT

 

 

 

Spike Island (2012) ***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Mat Whitecross

Cast: Elliott Tittensor, Emilia Clarke, Nico Mirallegro,

96mins   UK

There’s a brimming glee to Mat Whitecross’s breezy Britflic about a group of teenagers who’ll beg, steal or borrow to see their idols, The Stone Roses, in concert on May 27th,1990 on Spike Island.

It’s the ‘baggy’ era and a big year for music: Eric Clapton sings in Hyde Park, the Stones tour Japan and the Byrds re-unite. But in Manchester, where the prisoners are rioting at Strangeways, The Stone Roses are quite simply where it’s happening and their debut album is the biggest thing to hit the local Rock scene.

Against this background, schoolboys Tits, Dodge, LIttle Gaz and Zippy have formed a band called Star Caster in the hope they may just pick up some stardust from their heroes but somehow homework, girls and stuff get in the way and their biggest goal becomes snaring tickets for concert that will define the decade at Spike Island in the Mersey.

With Chris Cogshill’s slick script, Mat Shawcross stylishly re-creates the furore with this coming of age story which has Elliott Tittensor as the rowdy and rousing ringleader although not the all round good guy, as we discover.  Spike Island is a feelgood film bouncing with affection for the era and featuring some of the best music ever committed to soundtrack. MT

Like Someone In Love (2012)

Dir: Abbas Kiarostami | Cast: Tadashi Okuno, Rin Takanashi | 109min   Drama

Sometimes a one night stand is just that

Like Someone in Love is exquisitely photographed with its references to Yasujiro Ozu depicting ordinary lives of ordinary people as they unfold randomly and realistically with the promise of something intriguing always waiting in the wings.

In Tokyo, Tadashi Okuno’s amiable, retired professor hires a prostitute for the night (Rin Takanashi) and tries to project his humanity on to her vapid character in a bid to connect in a deeper way during their brief time together.  Her disappointed boyfriend feels angry and let down.  It’s not Kiarostami’s finest work: the narrative descends into self-indulgence at times and lacks a clarity of purpose which eventually becomes irritating and even dull in comparison to his early films such as Taste of Cherry and Close-Up; but is certainly worth watching for its gorgeous visuals, soothing soundtrack and playfully delicate performances. MT

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

Much Ado About Nothing (2013) ****

Director: Joss Whedon                       Script: Joss Wheden/Shakespeare

Cast: Amy Acket, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Sean Maher, Spencer Treat Clark, Ricky Lindholme

109min   US     Drama

Joss Whedon’s clever comedic touch and a lively cast make this contemporary version of the bard’s social drama witty and watchable. Set in Whedon’s airy LA mansion (Shaker kitchens, marble floors) it’s sophisticated, remarkably low-budget and classily shot in black and white.

Managing an acting company, as he does, it’s not surprising that the director of Toy Story and Cabin In The Woods also has a feel for the classics and a troupe of actors who can reel off Shakespearean lines with consummate ease while managing slapstick in a production that plays like TV soap ‘Coupling’ or even ‘Seinfeld’.  His Much Ado respects the sensibility of the original version without eschewing modern gadgetry such as smartphones, cuddly toys and a sexy soundtrack.

Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker shine as particularly good farcical lovers Benedick and  Beatrice and there is a well-played absurd twist that turns Nathan Fillian’s inspector Dogberry into a figure of fun as he is let down by his hilariously incompetent henchmen. Shakespeare can be hard work but this light-hearted and vivacious version is sure to appeal to purists and young audiences alike. MT

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING PREVIEWS AT THE BFI AND THEN GOES  ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 14TH JUNE 2013 AT CURZON, VUE, CINEWORLD AND THE BARBICAN.

 

 

Paradise: Love (2012) ****

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Director/Writer: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz

Cast: Margarethe Tiesel, Peter Kazungu, Inge Maux

120min   Austria       Drama        German with English subtitles

With wicked humour and a sinister twist, Ulrich 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 of films eloquently and provocatively probe 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, centres on 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. But when she heads off to Kenya for a much needed blast of sun, her prospects seem to improve.

In an atmosphere laden with post-colonial overtones, alluring young African men line the sandy beaches pandering to the egos of white female tourists and offering their wares: and we’re not only talking coconuts and local crafts here.

Seidl perfectly captures Teresa’s glee and naivety here. Like a child in a sweet-shop, she is flattered by attention and ‘strings free’ sex. Later in the hotel bar, her new friend (Inge Maux) confides the transactional nature of these encounters. Far from innocent, they do offer rich rewards: sex with the young and toned and a welcome change from the tired and baggage-laden men back home. Her new friend has already found a virile biker to sleep with and can hardly believe her luck.

Tiesel tackles the role with aplomb, managing to come across as flirtatious but in control to the first guy she meets, pursuing the usual line of fake conversation laden with intent.  Attempting to ‘teach’ him how to kiss her she then becomes truculent and tearful when he doesn’t play the game.  Wising up, she begins to assert her superiority in a finely-turned turn that combines vulnerability with wilfulness and a certain amount of playful guile. As her skin turns golden, her methods become more sophisticated in the game of looking for love in all the wrong places. Cinematographers Ed Lachman and Wolfgang Thaler’s seductive-looking beach scenes contrast with the hard-edged reality of poverty and humiliation where women turn the hunter as much as they do the prey.

Eric Cantat’s Going South already dealt with the subject of female sex tourism in his acclaimed feature back in 2005, so does Ulrich Seidl bring anything new to the story of passport hunters and white, middle aged cougars, nearly ten years later? The answer lies in his observational approach to the subject matter, allowing us to form our own opinion of the state of play, and in the well-drawn characters. He also takes the narrative forward showing how power can lead to degradation in a role reversal that is both intriguing and novel and adds considerable depth to the male/female dynamic taking it into the realms of anthropology.  Subtle dialogue captures the intricacies of the female mind in this authentic story that’s entertaining and insightful particularly for male audiences. MT

PARADISE: LOVE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 14TH JUNE 2013.  THE ENTIRE TRILOGY CAN BE SEEN ON SUNDAY, 16TH JUNE AT THE RIO CINEMA, DALSTON, LONDON.

 

The Iceman (2013) ***

 

Dir: Ariel Vromen | Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, James Franco, Ray Liotta | 103min    US  Thriller

Every so often you get a central performance that far outweighs the overall quality of the film itself. Take Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, or pretty much any film Daniel Day-Lewis has appeared in, and now we have another entry into that exclusive list, as Michael Shannon turns in a remarkably harrowing performance in Ariel Vromen’s biopic of notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski. A performance that does enough to ensure The Iceman, though flawed, remains a commendable crime thriller worth seeking out.

Beginning in 1986, we witness a weary and discontented Kuklinski, having finally been arrested after what is feared to be over 100 contracted murders. The ageing killer then proceeds to recount his life tale, explaining how this innocent youngster became one of the most feared assassins of all time. Kuklinski had a loving wife (Winona Ryder) and two young daughters, and while they believed he was making a success of himself in the financial world, he had in fact been recruited by crime lord Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) to take out hits on his behalf. As the money began to pour in and Kuklinski developed a taste for it, he spiralled further into a dark and dangerous world, while managing to keep his lifestyle a secret from his adoring family.

In what is an intense character study, Shannon pulls out all of the stops in his performance, fully embodying the role at hand. He plays Kuklinski with a guarded nature, disallowing any of his emotions to filter through to the viewer, though every now and again he lets you in, which feels so precious given its rarity. Physically he is perfect casting too, as his gangly demeanour adds to the chilling aspects of the role, while he has an intensity that prevents the viewer from ever taking their eyes off our protagonist. Shannon plays him as an empathetic character, which is imperative as we need to fear and sympathise with Kuklinski in equal measure.

There is an issue, however, with the crafting of the character itself, and as strong as our lead performance is, by the time the credits roll, we still don’t feel as though we know Kuklinski particularly well. This effectively puts us in the same shoes as his wife Deborah, unable to comprehend him, or to genuinely understand his motivation. We do touch upon his childhood and relationship with his brother (Stephen Dorff), yet we merely scratch the surface, and rarely get to the bottom of these issues, perhaps proving that tackling such a convoluted character over his entire lifespan is too ambitious a task for Vromen. In a sense, this tale may have actually been of more benefit had it been told from the perspective of Deborah instead.

The Iceman struggles in that Vromen doesn’t quite know what his film is hoping to be: half mob flick, half family drama, falling carelessly between the two. In a sense this is reflective of Kuklinski’s life itself, yet the film does lack direction as a result. Although feeling like a picture we’ve seen countless times before, there remains plenty to be admired about The Iceman, with enough in here to suggest that a bright future in Hollywood beckons for our budding director Vromen. STEFAN PAPE.

THE ICEMAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7TH JUNE 2013

 

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

Director: Werner Herzog

Script: Werner Herzog

Producer: Werner Herzog

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Cecilia Rivera, Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling, Daniel Ades, Armando Polanah, Edward Roland

German                                  93mins                       1972               Drama

A quite extraordinary film and for a great many reasons. From a sketchy idea, Werner Herzog took a bunch of 300 cast and crew up the Amazon to make a film that very nearly did for the cast and crew, through both accident and near starvation.

Based on a true story taken from a diary left by one of the original party, Klaus Kinski gives perhaps his greatest performance as an unhinged Richard III type figure, taking a bunch of conquistadors on a raft deep into uncharted territory, circa 1560, in search of the mythical El Dorado, the City of Gold.

Exploring similar inner territory to Apocalypse Now, with a river trip into darkest recesses of the mind, this film is a slow-burner but very much worth the ride. Towards the end it drew gasps of incredulity from the audience. That’s quite hard to do with a bunch of seasoned movie reviewers.

AGUIRRE was all shot on one camera. A camera Herzog liberated from the soon to be Munich film school, when he was refused the loan of one. The Amazon plays the all-consuming Antagonist of the piece and what an antagonist; the ignorant Spanish explorers are surrounded by unseen tribes that threaten to knock off the unwary traveller. Combined with two fine Ladies of the Court, infighting amongst the group, starvation, a lack of experience or equipment and a large bunch of unwilling slaves and it’s a cocktail for disaster.

Aguirre has hovered in the Top 100 Greatest Films Of All time in several illustrious lists. It’s one of those crazy, legendary shoots you read about from time to time, where, despite quite ridiculous odds, the film gets made, although it perhaps isn’t the film they thought they were making when they first set out.

Kinski is a notoriously difficult actor to work with and it’s said that at several points, the crew were so hungry, Herzog was forced to pawn his own belongings to feed them. Whatever the circumstances, the film is quite brilliant. Perhaps the duress that everyone was under lending itself very genuinely to the end product. The performances are terrific throughout and none more so that the single-minded Kinski as Aguirre, the personification of the Wrath of God.

A truly amazing film, epitomising the filmmaking endeavour of the Seventies and a most welcome reboot to boot. One you watch through your fingers, with a growing sense of horror and incredulity. Nothing like it would ever be attempted now. AR

MY BEST FRIEND, (MEIN BESTER FEIND, 2011), Werner Herzog’s documentary about his  work with KLAUS KINSKI and their outrageous love/hate ralationship, is an interesting companion piece to AGUIRRE providing extraordinary, at times hilarious, comment and footage about the making of the film.

Populaire (2012) ***

Director: Regis Roinsard
Script: Regis Roinsard, Daniel Presley
Producer: Alain Attal

Cast:  Romain Duris, Deborah Francois, Berenice Bejo, Shaun Benson, Melanie Bernier, Miou-Miou

Fr    111mins   2012   Romantic Comedy

Populaire (2012) Romain DurisA feature debut from director Roinsard supplies another quintessentially-French kooky rom-com from Duris. Set in 1958 and beautifully designed by Silvie Olive, this is a warm, feel-good film about the travails of love never running smooth, with a light dusting of psychology to ensure it all makes sense.

Duris plays an Insurance boss with a heart, in need of a secretary. And a wife.
Into the frame steps the unpromising ‘Rose Pamphyle’, a village girl growing up in her fathers shop, but harbouring dreams of being a secretary and seeing the world. She proves a rubbish secretary, but a demon two-finger typist. Duris leaps on this talent seeing her as the tool through which he, as a truly competitive spirit, can win. Win what? Win the Fastest Typist Competition, of course.

But the star of the show and what makes it is Deborah Francois. She is beautiful, dissembling and feisty in equal measure and convincingly in love. Her journey from ingénue to woman of the world is an engaging one and Duris plays second fiddle to it.

 

Fans of Duris will presumably not be disappointed. He models a smashing line in single- breasted suits and cuts a fine, slender Gallic figure sporting a Gauloise for the films entirety, but far less is asked of him than from the superior (2010) Heartbreaker and there is alot less comedy to boot.

I feel certain it hits all the right notes for the intended audience. The set design rejoices in the Fifties setting, the costumes, colours and hair-do’s are all sumptuous and beautiful, but it is nevertheless a case of style over content, running a little long at almost two hours.

There’s something missing in the box ticking that went into the creation of this film, which is So ‘There’ in Heartbreaker and The Beat My Heart Skipped.  It’s not that this is a bad one, it’s that we’ve come to expect ‘exceptional’ from Duris and this one isn’t. AT

POPULAIRE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY MAY 31ST IN CINEMAS ACROSS LONDON.  READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH STAR ROMAIN DURIS

Everybody Has a Plan (2012) Todos Tenemos Un Plan ***

Director: Ana Piterberg

Writers: Ana Piterberg, Ana Cohan

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Soledad Villamil, Daniel Fanego, Javier Godino

118 min     Argentinian thriller

The best thing about Ana Piterberg’s Argentinian slow-burning noirish thriller is Viggo Mortensen in the lead role. Speaking in faultless Spanish, (he is an actor obsessed with  really getting under the skin of his character), he plays Pedro, a depressed bee-keeper whose confidence is at a low ebb after being involved in a kidnapping attempt. An interesting premise, then, and an indie which has echoes of the Coen Brothers and offers a challenging role for Mortensen who is utterly convincing here.

He hatches an elaborate plan to fakes his own death and escape from his wife by becoming his twin brother. It’s an ill-thought-out and complex plot, that starts well but ends up having more pitfalls than convincing positives to carry it through a running time of two hours.

Set in the wild and swamp-infested landscape of the Tigre Delta, Piterberg’s ambitious debut does offer some startling scenery which is the perfect backdrop to the psychological twists and turns of the plot and Lucio Bonelli’s camera work evokes an unsettling atmosphere with echoes  of Winter’s Bone, and an atmospheric original score by Federico Jusid. MT

EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN IN ON RELEASE FROM 31 MAY 2013 IN CINEMAS ACROSS LONDON AND THE UK

 

Blood (2012) ***

Director: Nick Murphy

Cast: Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, Natasha Little

95min   UK Thriller

Adapted from a story by writer Bill Gallagher from his own TV series Conviction (2004), Blood tells how a young girl is found brutally murdered and police brothers Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissie Fairburn (Stephen Graham) set out to catch her killer. When their prime suspect is released, due to lack of evidence, they take the inquiry into their own hands but are hampered by the ethical nature of their methods and tragic consequences ensue for all concerned.

Nick Murphy sets his police thriller in the atmospheric surroundings of the bleak and windswept Wirral Peninsula.  It has a sterling British cast: Mark Strong, Brian Cox and Natasha Little all give well-crafted performances. Paul Bettany is well-cast as the angst-ridden local CID officer who discovers Angela’s body at the local skateboard rink and keenly feels his responsibility for finding the killer.  That said, Bettany and Graham don’t make a convincing pairing as brothers: not only are they chalk and cheese looks-wise but they appear to come from completely different social backgrounds.

Policing in a tight-knit community, they go for the underdog and arrest a local paedophile Jason Buleigh. But there’s something about Buleigh that cries out “I’m innocent” and it’s Ben Crompton’s well-drawn and convincing turn that has a vulnerability and sincerity marking him out an innocent man – or is he?.

Brian Cox plays the brothers’ dementia-riddled father. He’s a gruff task-master of the old school and his advice weighs heavily on the two to close the case.  They drive out to a remote beach location in Hilbre Island, and try to force Buleigh into a confession. But the plan backfires in a sinister way. Meanwhile their colleague Mark Strong, the ‘Columbo’ character here, has sniffed a rat and is determined to pursue his hunch in the sorry state of affairs.

So what starts out a simple local murder soon becomes a nightmarish, full-blown thriller that leaves Paul Bettany sweating with anxiety, as he desperately struggles to convince his wife (Natasha LIttle) and daughter of his innocence in an enveloping tide of guilt, family loyalties and professional pride.

Blood is an intense and involving drama if a tad formulaic and occasionally suffering from under-developed characterisation of the support cast, largely due to its modest running time. That said, there strong and enjoyable performances from the leads and a well-crafted and appealing visual aesthetic that help to lift it out of the shifting sands of North West England. It offers decent Saturday night entertainment for mainstream audiences with an arthouse twist. MT

Something In The Air (2012) Apres Mai

Something In The Air           (Apres Mai)
Director:  Olivier Assayas
Script: Olivier Assayas
Producers:  Charles Gillibert, Nathanael Karmitz
Cast: Clement Metayer, Lola Creton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Hugo Conzelmann, Mathias Renou, Lea Rougeron, Martin Loizillon, Andre Marcon, Johnny Flynn, Dolores Chaplin
Fr                    ****                 122mins        Drama

In March of 1968, there was a near-revolution, sparked by events at Nanterre University, leading to ten million workers shutting Paris down, in solidarity with the students.  Olivier Assayas’ hugely accomplished film takes place in 1971, with the pungent tear gas of revolution still lingering in the air, the Sixties having opened a lid that wasn’t going to be put back on and anything felt possible.

Newcomer Clement Metayer plays artist Gilles, son of the middle classes, in love with the unattainable Christine and dedicated to The Fight. On one such night, a student is partially blinded by a brutal Police Force, intent on crushing any resistance. The image of his blooded face becomes an iconic symbol of the struggle for humanity and justice and the stakes and impact on the activists’ lives escalate accordingly.

Assayas’ semi-autobiographical feature won two awards at the Venice Film Festival, including Best Screenplay and it is indeed a beautiful, freewheeling, open, energetic piece, that effortlessly captures the essence of being young, pumped with the exuberance of life, when issues were black and white and immortality, or at least, lack of anny consequences that mattered, was the reality.

However, these revolutionary times prove to be only the picaresque backdrop. The real story is essentially one of growing up, of passion and of unrequited love. That the decisions we make when we are sometimes too young to make the correct ones can prove very bitter and of course in some cases, terminal.

The soundtrack is select and seamlessly woven into the storytelling rather than simply plastered on to create the period and the film is expertly lensed and lit by award-winning DoP Eric Gautier (Into The Wild, The Motorcycle Diaries).

It is also a bastion of independent filmmaking. It resolutely refuses to adhere to the standard, hackneyed rules of film storytelling, going off on its own lyrical riff in the spirit of the Artist and is all the richer for it. What it lacks in directly recognisable plot, it more than makes up for with subtlety, vibrancy and introspection. AT

 

Benjamin Britten: Peace and Conflict (2013) ***

Director: Tony Britten
Script: Tony Britten
Producers: Tony Britten, Katja Mordaunt, Anwen Rees-Myers
Cast: Alex Lawther, Mykola Allen, Bradley Hall, John Hurt, Christopher Theobald

UK                                    150mins       Docudrama

Director Tony Britten (no relation to Benjamin) has had an interesting and varied life; known more for his composition than his directing, even conducting the music for ‘Robocop’. Safe to say then, that he is a fan of Benjamin Britten, still the most performed British composer worldwide, celebrated for operas ‘Peter Grimes’, ‘Billy Budd’ and ‘The Turn Of The Screw’ and of course, his War Requiem.

Born in Lowestoft, 1913, Peace and Conflict marks the centenary of Britten’s birth and takes us from his formative years at Norfolk’s liberal Gresham School, where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of defector, Donald Maclean and one of the founder members of the CND, Roger Simon, through to his trip to Belsen shortly after the war, the US and his final years in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

The film charts his early years, pinpointing some of the heaviest influences on his young life, not least of which being the First World War. One hundred boys from Gresham’s lost their lives in that conflict which had a profound effect on the composer, who abhorred violence of any kind and became a Pacifist and Conscientious Objector for life.

Indeed, Gresham’s banned corporal punishment and became the first public school in the country to form a branch of the League of Nations Union, set up to foster peace and prevent future conflict.

Although a strong and emotive topic, the film is flawed, with the dramatised segments not sitting particularly well with the documented parts. Lawther though, as the young Britten, is a discovery and will undoubtedly go on to bigger and better things. John Hurt provides the narration, with typical aplomb; he is as much a dear and recognisable part of the fabric of Britain, as Sir David Attenborough or, of course, Benjamin Britten. But the overriding star of the show was always going to be the music and Tony Britten has squeezed as much as was humanly possible into the running time.

Although not always thoroughly engaging, it’s still fitting that a coherent record be made of a man who not only profoundly affected, but truly represented a generation. He wrote music for the people and was proud to do so and Peace and Conflict gives a little insight into the single-minded man behind it. AT

Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) **** DVD and BLU-RAY

Director/Script: Jay Bulger

Cast: Andrew S Karsch, Fisher Stevens, Erik H Gordon,

92min    US/South Africa   Music Documentary

Beware of Mr. Baker begins with legendary Cream drummer extraordinaire Ginger Baker, violently and authentically  attacking our documentary maker Jay Bulger, leading us in to what appears to be a comedic tale of an angry and bitter old man who has lived a comprehensive rock and roll lifestyle to its fullest. However this opening scene actually marks the beginning of a somewhat tragic tale of a lonely man whose corruptive nature has seen him make many enemies, and lose many friends, across the course of his remarkable life.

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Bulger had the privilege of staying at Baker’s South African residence, getting to know his subject through a series of candid interviews following a career that has seen him dip in and out of various projects from Cream to Blind Faith to collaborating with Fela Kuti, having aggressive fights with his band members, getting heavily addicted to heroin, marrying four times, and even taking up the sport polo. The key components in this fascinating life: the wives, the friends (and enemies), the abandoned children, are all interviewed too, as we paint a poignant picture of a somewhat unfulfilling livelihood.

To begin with, this feature seems to be heading down a Louis Theroux style of filmmaking, with the director consistently present. But such an approach doesn’t last very long, and Bulger soon detaches himself, avoiding any self-indulgence in the process. His presence is important though, as through Bulger we learn how Baker communicates with people in the present day, which is essential in fully understanding him. Bulger admits to having never heard of Baker prior to taking on this project, and such an innocent form of ignorance is vital too as he enters into it with no personal attachment or preceding knowledge, making for an objective piece of cinema.

When you can see past the initial façade of Baker, we are left with a somewhat sad tale, and while our subject wears sunglasses throughout the course of the film, it’s only at the very end when he removes them that you realise they had been covering up a great deal of sadness and regret. The more affecting moments derive from subtle moments within the movie and some expert editing such as when Baker declares Eric Clapton is the best friend he ever had, only for Clapton to distance himself, with great compassion, from the strenuous drummer. The brilliance of this piece is mostly thanks to the alluring figure that we are exploring. Baker has lived through so many hardships – most of which are as a result of his own wrongdoing. His self-destructive, callous nature leads to many incredible anecdotes, while his charisma ensures we always stay on his side, despite everything.

At times Baker can be guarded, and Bulger has to work hard to earn his respect, but fortunately the surrounding talking head interviews ensure we have people to fill in the gaps, candidly opening up to camera to make sure we are presented with the most authentic picture of this man’s life. As such we truly feel that we are getting into his head, proving that we shouldn’t be in need of a biopic anytime soon, as Bulger has immortalised this temperamental, hugely memorable figure on screen for good. That said, it is somewhat tempting to get one in the works, for the sole factor that Bill Nighy would be perfect casting for the lead role. SP

BEWARE OF MR. BAKER IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU RAY FROM 22ND JULY 2013 COURTESY OF CURZON FILM WORLD WWW.CURZONAE.COM

 

Village at the End of the World (2012)

Directors: Sarah Gavron and David Katznelson

Producer: Al Morrow

76min        UK/Denmark/Greenland   2012

Lars is a tall, good-looking 17-year-old: he has the latest Nike trainers, a tee-shirt emblazoned “Will fuck on first date” and 200 friends on Facebook. But Lars doesn’t live in London or any urban centre; he eats seal meat with a knife and is one of only 59 people living in a remote part of Northern Greenland where there are no girls his own age.

True to his Shamen ancestors and beliefs, if he gets angry or frustrated he makes a ‘Tupilat’ out of sealskin to ward off evil spirits.  Ilannguaq, the only immigrant here was attracted by online dating and ended up dealing with the sewerage. He now feels part of this community and has set up a thriving tourism link with neighbouring countries.

Niaqornat, Northern Greenland is a hostile but ravishingly beautiful lunar landscape, where fish and seal blood stain the snowy beaches visceral red and the inhabitants hunt as a matter of survival, toiling cheerfully to an ambient sound of howling dogs and bitter winds.

And they’re a happy breed these Greenlanders and a handsome one too with their dark looks and almond eyes. There’s something enviable about their apparent good mental health attributable to the fact that everyone here has a role and respects it. Fellow Danes, who still hold sway over this part of the World and who visit on the cruiseships to buy trinkets and marvel: “Nothing has changed here since the old days”. But any condescension towards the islanders swiftly evaporates when we spend some time with them: these are fierce, traditional hunters who kill AND have shrewd 21st century business brains. For mod cons they rely on the visit of the Royal Arctic supply ship but the ice is getting thinner with each passing year.

Told through the eyes of four inhabitants: Lars, the teenager; Karl, the hunter; Ilannguaq, the outside; and Annie, the oldest woman: Sarah Gavron’s documentary starts in Summer 2009 and takes us through a year in the life Niaqornat where’s everyone is related staring the surname ‘Kruse’.  Colourful wooden houses shelter them from the icy blasts but connect them to the rest of the world via satellite, internet and telephone, remarkably.

There is a local school where the kids have ambitions to be pilots and shopkeepers, although there is only one shop and no definitely no ‘Starbucks’.  According to Annie, Brigitte Bardot is the nemesis of these people whose survival depends on traditional fishing and hunting and, thanks to Ilannguaq, craft sales to visiting cruise-ships. The plan to get a fish factory back into production is not going to be easy but for Kark Kruse, head of the village, harpooning a Polar Bear and dealing with Danish Health and Safety execs are all in a day’s work. The villagers don’t want to lose their community but to be self-sufficient. And their fight very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

And it’s a tough story to tell: Greenlandic is a complex visual language based on the weather which naturally made the 3-year shoot a difficult one but what shines through is a fabulous human interest story: David Katznelson’s striking visuals help us live it like a native. With close-up shots on a hand-held digital camera it feels like we’re actually part of the action, from riding the fishing boat and butchering a whale to sharing an arctic sunset or the welcome reappearance of the sun on the first day of Spring.MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10TH MAY 2013 IN SELECTED CINEMAS

 

Scarecrow (1973)

Dir: Jerry Schatzberg | Wri: Garry Michael White | Cast: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Anne Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch, Eileen Brennan, Penelope Allen. Richard Hackman, Al Cingolani | US Drama    112mins”

It’s easy to see why Hackman and Pacino were drawn to this screenplay: it leaves so much scope for the actor to act. Indeed, Hackman cites Scarecrow as his favourite piece of work. The two of them are given full licence to get in some serious character work and went hitchhiking through California in hobo gear to scope out their roles.

The two hander is very much about their interplay, and the chemistry sparkles as this latter day ‘odd-couple’ busk their way across America, via goods trains, casual labour and hitching rides in open trucks.

Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter) provides the cinematography, much of it beautiful long lens stuff extracting the max from the fabulous vistas the journeying buddies find themselves oblivious to.

Hackman’s Max is an ex-con hoping to get across to Pittsburgh to pick up a stash he salted away and set up in the carwash trade. Like tumbleweed, he bumps into ex-Sailor Francis (Pacino) on a dusty, windswept California road, waiting patiently for a ride into town. Any town. Sure enough their individual stories soon get spilled as there’s precious little else to do but talk to each other.

Chanelling Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy, it’s the story of a difficult mission promising nirvana at the rainbow’s end but although the performances are exemplary from two bonafide character actors in the finely observed minutiae of hobo life. There are several great scenes but all this cannot quite compensate for the lack of a plot and distinctly underwhelming ending.

Interestingly, the film did far better abroad than at home, where it tanked at the box office. That said, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Best Foreign Film at Bodil and at the prestigious Tokyo Kinema Junpo Awards; foreign audiences more accepting of this unorthodox, meandering approach to storytelling. What plot there is comes in the final third and, without giving anything away, isn’t in keeping with what we’ve already seen.

Already a big star for the likes of The French Connection and The Poseidon Adventure among many others, Hackman was sincerely disappointed by the film’s performance and vowed henceforth to do more commercial fare.

A great many of us look back at the Seventies through rose-tinted specs, but that isn’t to say they didn’t make the odd star-laden misstep, even then. Without Scarecrow’s undeniable star power, it would never have been considered for the award season. Accordingly, there are perhaps other more worthy 35mm sparklers sitting in cold, dark archives. Let’s hope they get an airing too. Worth seeing then, for vistas, scenes and perfs, but by no means a classic. AT

SCARECROW IS now on AMAZON PRIME

 

 

The Look Of Love (2012) **** Sundance London

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Producer: Revolution films/Melissa Parmenter
Cast: Steve Coogan, Tamsin Egerton, Imogen Potts, Anna Friel, Chris Addison, James Lance, Matthew Beard, David Walliams
105min     UK  Comedy Drama

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Winterbottom’s biopic of sixties porn publisher and property magnate Paul Raymond marks a return to comedy drama for the director and what a cracking film it is!

Starring his regular collaborator Steve Coogan, who’s absolutely magnificent in the role of Raymond: brimming with hard-edged joie de vivre and embuing in Raymond a crude and letcherous charm: The story will have particular appeal to those who remember with nostalgia the swinging sixties for the sheer decadence, joy-filled optimism of an era that broke down the barriers of stiff-lipped tradition.

Told with great gusto, the story really centres on Raymond’s relationships with the main women in his life: his wife, daughter and lover in the shape of Fiona Richmond.  And anybody with an older brother or father will remember her as the first really strong English sex symbol: both alluring and powerful in the early seventies: a business woman AND a centre-page cover girl.  And this is a film about strong personalities but particularly about feisty female characters.

The story charts 30 years of Raymond’s hedonistic life starting in1958 with his brief dalliance as a stage hypnotist through to club owner, theatre producer to property magnate to publishing by 1992. He emerges as a coke-snorting, cold fish but also cuts rather a sad figure who, in the rush to make a commercial success of his life, fails to engage on any meaningful level with the women who really make it all worthwhile.

Anna Friel is gutsy and believable as his wife Jean and mother of his daughter Deborah.  Imogen Poots excels in the role of the vulnerable, needy, yet strong-willed Deborah who casts around looking for a niche, first as an actress and then a singer. The film gives insight into Paul Raymond’s work methods and really unlocks the business man in him, through his relationship with his wife and daughter.  Although Paul loves her madly as a dad, he  lets money stand in the way of her happiness when a West End production she’s starring in fails: “I can’t keep haemorrhaging money into something that’s not working just to keep you happy”. Like many businessmen he sees only the balance sheet and never what money can do to make those important to him feel validated.

But it’s with Fiona Richmond that he really meets his match, sexually and intellectually.  Tamsin Egerton makes for fabulously graceful casting here.  She’s also appears way ahead of him class-wise leaving him slightly back-footed but looking like the cat that got the cream on more than one occasion: they make a appealing double act and are both better looking than the originals.  Sadly, Paul’s eldest son (Derry McCarthy) from his first partner, is played here by Liam Boyle, makes a small appearance but gets short-shrift and goes away empty-handed, as he does in real life.

This is a richly entertaining film and the best that Michael Winterbottom has made in a long while. Particularly appealing to those interested in the era with its excellent footage of London’s Soho and sixties life offering a colourful back-drop from Kettners, Ronnie Scott’s, to L’Escargot in Greek Street; all still going strong.  Paul Raymond emerges as a sad, cypher, reflecting the striking charisma of the women around him, yet possessing little depth and personality himself despite his shrewd business acumen.  He certainly liked money and he liked sex but, at the end of the day, it appears the ‘King Of Soho’ only really loved himself. MT

THE LOOK OF LOVE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 APRIL 2013.

 

Bernie (2011) ****

Director: Richard Linklater

Script: Richard Linklater, Skip Hollandsworth

Cast:  Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey, Brady Coleman, Richard Robichaux

99min    US Comedy Drama

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Rather like Michael Winterbottom, Richard Linklater never follows a straight line with subject he choses to film and here he takes a strange but true story of Bernie Tiede, a real life mortician from Carthage, Texas. This is Linklater’s home territory and his familiarity with the set-up comes across in the wry humour that pokes fun at his fellow citizens but never goes as far as to offend them.

Jack Black plays the leading role as the butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth but slightly tongue-in-cheek mortician and community do-gooder and tells the story of his friendship with rich but mean-spirited widow Marjorie, a savvy Shirley MacLaine. As the story goes, so popular is Bernie and so hated is Marjorie, even by her own miserable family who have tried to sue her for an inheritance, it’s only a matter of time before the relationship starts to hit the buffers.

Told in a jokey documentary style this light-hearted yet dark comedy has some bitter truths at its core. The story makes for great film material, due to it’s ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ quality and spot-on casting of Jack Black who appears authentic and yet there’s something deeply suspect lurking beneath his surface charm. For Black this is a character that’s totally new to his repertoire and yet he creates a fully-rounded Bernie and makes him larger than life despite his shortness in stature.

In a stroke of genius, Linklater uses real inhabitants for the community interviews which gives a documentary slant to the proceedings and adds to the believability of this homely tale with sinister underpinnings. But why has this obvious hit taken so long to grace our screens in the UK? I can remember seeing this at the London Film Festival soon after its release in 2011.

As the action unfolds, the two become inseparable and a strange bond develops and doesn’t bringout the best in either of them. Bernie’s a people person and his insatiable need to offer comfort to the bereft and find time for the local drama group are at odds with Marjorie’s wunderlust and control freakery. In the end it’s up to the local district attorney (Matthew McConnaughey) to prove that Bernie isn’t quite as saintly as he’d have us believe. Go and enjoy this.  You’ll never believe the outcome but when you see what happens it will all make sense. MT

BERNIE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 APRIL 2013.

 

 

White Elephant (2012) ***

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Director: Pablo Trapero

Script: Pablo Trapero

Cast: Ricardo Darin, Jeremie Renier, Martina Gusman

106mins        Drama  Spanish with subtitles  2012

In many large capitals the rich live cheek by jowel with the poor or disadvantaged.  And this is the case in Buenos Aires which is the focus of Pablo Trapero’s latest film Elefante Blanco.  It refers to the proposed structure that was to be Latin America’s largest hospital. It got off the drawing board in 1937 but was never completed and eventually became a drug-infested home to thousands of people subsisting amongst the rat-ridden squalor

In this hell-hole two Catholic priests, Julian (Ricardo Darin) and Geronimo (Jeremie Renier) and a social worker (Martina Gusman) make an emotional journey of salvation hampered by their own considerable personal difficulties.  Carancho Trapero’s previous film was a work of social realism and cross-genre filmmaking.  Elefanto Blanco takes a simple narrative structure without resorting to subplots. Not only is this refreshing but it also allows the importance of its social message to carry more impact.

Trapero’s adroitly-scripted and seamlessly-made film is slow-burning, (and at times too slow) tale charting the struggle and despair of Father Julian. With a masterfully resonant performance from Argentina’s finest actor, Ricardo Darin, he brings relief and succour to the poor no matter what their beliefs or backgrounds. While Martina Gusman’s social worker takes on board the government bureaucracy behind a community that has been largely forgotten. Jeremie Renier gives a mature and measured turn as Geronimo, althoug he doesn’t feel quite right in this role.

White Elephant takes time to get going and although it builds to a powerful climax never really builds enough momentum to be really gripping. It’s nevertheless a well-made and a worthy production and a timely release for Argentinian film in the light of the recent election of Pope Francesco to the Vatican. MT

WHITE ELEPHANT IS OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26TH APRIL 2013

 

Sundance London 2013 25- 28 April O2 Arena

In 2011 Robert Redford decided his indie SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL US should go East so here we go for another year, at 02 Arena London, Greenwich, London. It’s worth the hike from central London to see a terrific slew of indie dramas and documentaries that have only just premiered in snowbound, sunnny Utah in January 2013. This year the focus is on exploring the interplay between independent film and music.

SUNDANCE LONDON 2013 will screen 18 features and a new Britflic spotlight at its Greenwich base, along with music, Q&As and other exciting events to keep you amused over a long spring weekend

Here is our review of what to go for:

THE LOOK OF LOVE **** Michael Winterbottom makes a film a year: some good, some not so good. He’s hit the jackpot this time with a raunchy, upbeat trip down memory lane sixties-style. A dazzlingly entertaining biopic of porn king Paul Raymond, played magnificently here by Steve Coogan and headlining this year’s festival. Tamsin’s Egerton’s legs are to die for and unrivalled anywhere on stage or screen.

UPSTREAM COLOUR: **** Shane Carruth’s intriguing second feature since his hit, Primer, first delighted audiences nearly ten years ago.  Upstream was the talk of the town at Berlinale in February and set to be one of the gems of this year’s festival.

BLACKFISH, a documentary about the killer whale Tilkum has a eco-friendly premise and asks the question: should killer whales ever be kept in captivity?

RUNNING FROM CRAZY:showcases the good and bad of being part of the legendary Hemingway clan. Brought to us by the Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple.

HISTORY OF THE EAGLES PART ONE: Fans will be excited to have a documentary dedicated to this much-loved band that made the best selling album of all time.  Alison Ellwood puts together archival footage and recent interviews with the stars who are still talking..just!  Promises to be an interesting story even for non-fans interested in the life and times of a rock band in the seventies and eighties.

THE MOO MAN: Have you ever wondered how the poor dairy farmers struggle on against the leviathans of mass market food retail ? Here’s a chance to find out how Sussex farmer Steve Hook upped the ante in Andy Heathcote’s delightful documentary. 4*

In the worthy corner is BLOOD BROTHERS, a doco that tells the true story of Rocky Braat who went to India on hols and ended up working with HIV-infected children. (Grand Jury Prize Sundance US 2013).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SUMMIT****: Everest is a walk in the park compared to the dangers of climbing K2. Nick Ryan’s skilful documentary pieces together the events surrounding one mission to the mighty mountain. More people die on the descent of K2 than conquer this treacherous snowy peak.  Winner of the Editing Award: US Documentary at Sundance 2013.

TOUCHY FEELY: ** Massage is a growth industry but what happens if you suddenly lose your desire to touch? A comedy from Humpday director Lynn Shelton and starring the watchable Rosemarie de Witt (Your Sister’s Sister) Has some great performances, particularly from Ellen Page but the uneven pace makes it a turgid affair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE KINGS OF SUMMER: Did you ever leave home as a teenager to spend some time with your friends?  This rites-of-passage teenage bonding drama has some hilarious moments and shows what can happen when things don’t work out exactly according to plan. 3***

EMANUEL AND THE TRUTH ABOUT FISHES: Kaya Scoledario and Jessica Biel star in a surreal comedy about childhood, motherhood and loss.  Freshly told by Italian director, Francesca Gregorini.

IN FEAR:  TV director Jeremy Lovering’s Britflic thriller about fear of the unknown for a couple on a creepy car journey in the depths of the English countryside.

IN A WORLD…: American TV star Lake Bell’s buzzworthy rom-com in which she also stars as a voiceover artist with a gift of the gab where accents are concerned.

PEACHES DOES HERSELF: 3*** Self-styled Canadian, Berlin-based electronic musician Peaches will headline as herself live at INDIGO2 In an outlandish show were she struts her stuff wearing a shredded penis and falls for the ultimate lady boy. She will also present the film PEACHES DOES HERSELF. MT

THE SUNDANCE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS AT THE O2 ARENA FROM 25-28 APRIL 2013.  TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE AT SUNDANCE-LONDON

 

 

Promised Land (2012) ***

Director: Gus Van Sant

Script: Matt Damon, John Krasinski      Novel: Dave Eggers

Cast: Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie de Witt

106min    US Drama

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Gus Van Sant’s latest outing Promised Land highlights the continuing narrative on community survival and corporate greed in the 21st century with a thoughtful and appealing drama centred on the controversial process of ‘fracking’ or extracting natural gas from the ground.

It has Matt Damon, who also co-wrote the script, as Steve Butler who is an energy executive for Global, a company that’s attempting to obtain drilling rights in the small American town of McKinley. In the opening scenes, his game-plan is to tempt the ageing and cash-poor inhabitants with money-spinning possibilities to finance the rest of their lives, naturally playing down potential environmental issues.  They can do this, he claims, by investing in their town’s natural resources in the shape of the natural gas that is locked under their land. All bristling with energy, he arrives in McKinley with his boss Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), a world-weary but philosophical divorcee and mother.

Served by a sharp script, Frances McDormand and Damon make a witty and watchable duo as they work door to door to win over the inhabitants. Damon is utterly convincing as a salesman who appears genuinely to believe his soft-sell patter. Later, there’s an appealing vulnerability to his performance as he kicks back with Rosemarie de Witt’s sharp-edged but sparky schoolteacher, over drinks in the local bar, and is instantly drawn to her. McDormand’s Sue Thomason is more pragmatic about her job, she’s a character who embodies the likeable, middle-aged single woman, bringing up a child alone and simply concerned in getting the money in.  But when they come up against John Krasinski’s glib environmental specialist, Dustin Noble, who’s championing the negatives of fracking, their campaign suffers a set-back with unexpected consequences for all concerned.

While many may focus on the political and environmental side of the story, what most of all appealed to me about this drama is the well-formed character arcs and strong performances of the leads: Krasinski, Damon, De Witt and McDormand all act their socks off and it’s the social story that holds the attention throughout.  Matt Damon has really thought about these ‘guys’ and they feel completely believable. They’re people that you may know or even be, yourself. Where the piece falls down is in the final stages where the narrative becomes simplistic and takes the easy way out, presenting us with a ‘cheesy’ Hollywood ending that detracts from the convincing effort it made to engage us earlier on in the story and, in so doing, settles for the predicable rather than the surprising.  That said, this is entertaining drama for sophisticated audiences who appreciate world class acting and contemporary themes.  If you enjoyed Syriana, or Michael Clayton then Promised Land is a film for you. MT.

PROMISED LAND GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH APRIL 2013

Io e Te (2012) You and Me ***

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast: Tea Falco, Jacopo Olmo Antinori, Sonia Bergamasco

96min      Italian Drama with subtitles.

Bertolucci resurfaced in Cannes last year with this very Italian two-hander, his first since The Dreamers back in 2003.

Set almost entirely in a poorly-lit basement, Io e Te is essentially a character study that focuses on two well-heeled but emotionally-crippled siblings.  Bertolucci is fascinated by Italian youth, and particularly the kids of well-off families. Despite bravado and stylishness, a gnawing vulnerability seeps through these two as they posture and pose in a effort to exude contemporary cool, flirting nonchalently with their nascent sexuality in a desperate bid to find a connection in their troubled lives.

Jacopo (newcomer, Jacopo Olmo Antinori) gives a thoughtful turn as a typical ‘mammalone’: or spoilt child, hiding out in the basement at home, on the pretence of being on a school skiing trip.  He seeks refuge here to escape his mother’s suffocating attention. But his welcome solitude is ruptured by the arrival of his bohemian half-sister, Olivia, who appears in a state of cold-turkey and insists on staying and smoking her way through a packet of fags, much to Jacopo’s irritation. Gradually these two fall into an awkward intimacy that borders on incestuousness and very much echoes Dreamers in conception. However, there’s much less interesting character development here and none of the stylish gad-about fun and frolics although the production does have award-winner Franco Piersanti’s pleasing score to help it along.

These are damaged kids and typical of a generation who somehow, through ‘the sins of the father’, have developed minor neuroses and narcissistic personality issues and both the leads give believable and well-drawn performances in a story that nevertheless feels claustrophobic and uncomfortable.  What could have developed as a fascinating foray into adolescence in the Italian borghesia becomes rather grungy and tedious after the initial stages and fails to lift off onto a really meaningful level despite a decent script (from a novel by Niccolo Ammaniti) possibly because of the unnappealing nature of the characters and physical and visual constrictions of the basement location,

As a study of half-siblings it just about holds the attention but at nearly two hours, it fails say anything that’s fresh or exciting. When you think of the rich and complex work of Bertolucci: from Once Upon A Time In the West to 1900, The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor this is slight in comparison. So don’t go expecting an epic: it’s extraordinary that this great master is still with us, let alone making a brave attempt at continuing his film career. MT

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IO E TE is on general release from 19th April 2013

F*ck For Forest (2012) Kinoteka 2013

Director/Screenplay: Michael Marczak

Cast/FFF Team: Leona Johansson, Tommy Holl Ellingsen, Natty Mandeau and Danny Devero.
86min ***  Documentary
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorAFEakwv4
F*ck For Forest is a registered Berlin charity. But don’t get too excited or offended by the title: it’s not a porn movie.
Michael Marczak’s offbeat documentary kicks off in a luxurious modern home in Bergen where we meet a competitive horse eventer launching into a diatribe about his dysfunctional family. Next is a half-naked girl singing discordantly on stage about animal welfare. All very seemly, so far.
Tommy is in a threesome relationship and living in a nudist flat with other hippy-type animal lovers in Berlin. Another nudist who wonders around a woodland location is claiming F*ck for Forest has saved him from a nervous breakdown.  All these bohemian youngsters have opted out of the mainstream and believe that their venture is worthy and worth pursuing. We see them having a (cleverly edited) orgy enboldened by plant-based psychedelic drugs with some female moaning ‘I vant to be alone’.

So this is  F*ck for Forest.  The aim of the salacious title is to raise funds for environmental causes by commissioning and selling amateur porn via the internet. And there’s nothing really new to say about the content as we could be in San Francisco in the sixties instead of Berlin in the 2012. But the salient point is that these shrewd operators have cottoned on to the fact that nowadays there are people keen to offer up their sexual antics or naked pictures as exhibitionists. It seems to satisfy a natural desire to be voyeurs and flaunt their assets in a cheeky display of pride with total strangers all over the World. But isn’t  this really an excuse just to have a big sexual jolly? They all believe they’re making a difference in a world that’s ceases to care.

The action moves on to the Amazon in South America and so rolicking naked in the rainforest is not a hardship in all that humid heat. The film’s production values are of good quality and the dialogue is frisky with foreign accents adding a twist of exotic authenticity as a hotchpotch of sexual predilections is aired to tightly edited snapshots of kissing, caressing and cavorting.  “Do you get jealous when I touch his dick?”, “Sometimes I have a desire for rough sex” are afew utterances bandied around as souls and bodies are laid bare.  It’s a romp but the local Amazon villagers are less amused and feel taken advantage of and diffident about trusting such a weird venture; albeit in the name of charity. MT

F*ck for Forest was the winner of the Best Feature Documentary at the Warsaw International Film Festival 2012 and screens as part of the 11TH KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013  – 7-17TH MARCH



In The Fog (2012)

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Director:  Sergei Loznitsa

Script: Sergei Loznitsa, Vasili Bykov (novel)

Producer: Heino Deckert

Cast: Vladimir Svirskiy, Vladislav Abashin, Sergei Kolesov, Nikita Peremotovs, Yuliya Peresild, Kirill Petrov, Dimitrijs Kolosovs, Stepans Bogdanovs, Dimitry Bykovskiy, Vlad Ivanov

Ger, Rus, Neth, Bela, Lat       127mins         2012   War Drama

‘The Fog of War’ is a phrase coined in 1837 by Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, encapsulating the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced during conflict, be it confidence in capability, in operations, in strategy, in the campaign as a whole, or in the enemy’s strength or weakness.

It can work at any level, from the soldier on the ground all the way up to chaps in charge in the War Office, where intelligence and counter-intelligence only serve to muddle the issue, to the point where the decision maker in question feels paralysed and unable to make a choice, in case it’s the wrong one, the stakes being so high.

Director Loznitsa has made far more documentaries than fiction; his only previous drama outing being the much-lauded 2010 title ‘My Joy’, which was nominated for the Cannes Palme D’Or and winning top prizes at three other film festivals the same year.

Here, the year is 1942 and Belarus lies under a German occupation showing no sign of weakening. Civilians face a stark choice; either survive in the woods as a freedom fighter, or fold under as a Policeman or crafsman in the job you had before the war, only now working towards German objectives.

Into this pressurised environment of fear and mistrust, where your lifelong neighbour or even family member will sell you out to save their own skin, Loznitsa introduces the epitome of moral rectitude in the shape of Sushenya, in the knowledge that, in a time of war, virtue fast becomes that rarest of beasts, hunted to the verge of extinction in the opening salvo.

Vladimir Svirskiy is excellent as the epitome of unimpeachable courage and unfettered righteousness in the face of impossible odds, where everyone else has a price at which they bail out and all others are judged by that standard, not on their own merits.

In The Fog, running a shade long at over two hours, is nevertheless a fascinating and very real examination of the mechanism that so easily falls into place when a culture is placed under extreme duress and starvation is only a week away. The veneer is soon stripped away and we see what people are made of.

It would be wrong of me to go into the details of what has transpired, as the story unfolds out of chronology and much of the interest is driven by wanting to know what has happened to create the situation the characters find themselves in.

Suffice it to say it is engrossing and believable at every turn; one is made to accept the importance of a single potato, rag and sound in the woods. When life is stripped down to this basic level, it’s no wonder that any of the more elevated qualities of humanity are quickly discarded against the more practical concerns of immediate survival; morals seen as an extravagance no one can any longer afford. One is certainly a member of the masses when one chooses cowardice and compliance above and beyond what may be right and wrong. Andrew Rajan

IN THE FOG IS IN CINEMAS FROM 26 APRIL 2013

Rebellion (2011)*****

Director: Matthieu Kassovitz
Script: Matthieu Kassovitz, Benoit Jaubert, Pierre Geller
Producers:Matthieu Kassovitz,Christophe Rossignon
Cast: Matthieu Kassovitz, Iabe Lapacas, Malik Zidi, Alexandre Steiger,, Patrick Fierry, Macki Wea,

Jean-Philippe Puymartin

France  136mins Drama

Perhaps best known for his break-out 1995 smash, La Haine, if you didn’t like Rebellion, there would be nowhere else to place the blame, other than squarely at the feet of Matthieu Kassovitz.

Rebellion is based upon the real-life happenings surrounding the uprising and events of May 5th 1988 in French Noumea, New Caledonia. In typical fashion, Kassovitz has totally embraced rather than shied away from the central issues and myriad complexities surrounding the highly emotive and politically incendiary actions of the day, coming as they did upon the eve of crucial General Elections in distant France.

Kassovitz is a master minstrel, understanding the camera supremely well and here again manages to convey a great deal with simplicity, without losing the power or authenticity of the moment. Every shot is very carefully considered, both for maximum impact and for yield, and the story he decided to tell is a very well chosen one, not only in terms of what it offers up, but for what is says about where we’ve come to collectively; new values for old.

Kassovitz plays a negotiator sent onto the eye of the hostage storm to try to best hammer out a peaceful resolution. As that key player, he allows us insight into the many forces at work during the crisis, from the hostage takers, the hostages, the police, the army and all of the contingent politics prevailing at the time.

This is a hugely intelligent film, pulling off what could have been terminally mired exposition and plot with a deft brilliance, refusing to simplify or flinch from what happened, even though what transpires is far from France’s greatest hour. All this at the same time as avoiding becoming excessively violent or indeed, preachy.

‘By making believe we are fighting terrorists, we dehumanize our opponents, making violence much easier, to the detriment of future negotiations’. Kassovitz evidently still has the fire in his belly that made La Haine so powerful. But with all of the passion, the anger in his films born of frustration, there also remains no doubt that he is after all, a humanist. Superb storytelling then, as told by a superlative storyteller. AT

REBELLION IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH APRIL 2013.

Simon Killer (2012) ****

Director/Writer: Antonio Campos

Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Lila Salet, Michael Abiteboul, Solo, Constance Rousseau

105min   US Psychological drama 

Simon Killer is subversive in tone: you get the overriding impression that it’s being filmed covertly or by a hidden camera possibly due to the slightly muffled sound effects and a close range hand-help camera that give it an unsettling feeling of doom-laden urgency with  a subtle and syncopated score occasionally and abrubtly punctured by long periods of uncomfortable silence.

Simon is clearly a disturbed, self-absorbed and morose individual: an American who’s moved to Paris and has just finished a long term love affair due to his ex girlfriend’s infidelity and this plays on his mind. Sexually he’s also very pent-up and troubled by his past and this comes across in his relationships with the people he comes across in this foreign city.

Paris feels like a dangerous in Simon Killer.  Not the romantic city of dreams billed but a hostile, jagged and unfriendly place harbouring criminals types and the disenfranchised.

Simon eventually hooks up with a mysterious French call girl who offers him casual sex and the two become close when Simon asks her for temporary refuge. He becomes increasingly emotionally and sexually involved with her in scenes that feel authentic and visceral. The camera plays on their torsos and occasionally scans across the room in an unsettling way and the two engage in experimental and brutal sex that’s explicit and intermingled with feelings from the past for Simon, as he begins a slow and disturbing downwood spiralling into his fate.  

This is a first rate mesmerizing psychological thriller that’s stylishly produced and pulsating with believable performances from the writer and director of the acclaimed Afterschool.MT

SIMON KILLER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 12 APRIL 2013


Love Is All You Need (2012) ***

Director:  Susanne Bier

Script: Anders Thomas Jensen

Producer: Vibeke Windelov, Sisse Graum Jorgensen

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Paprika Steen, Molly Blixt Egelind, Sebastian Jessen, Stina Ekblad, Bodi Jorgensen, Christiane Schaumburg-Muller

Den/Swe/Ital/Fr/Ger                 116mins         2012               Rom Com

Even for his relatively young years, Anders Thomas Jensen has been industrious, scribing over 30 feature films, including the superlative Open Hearts, creating the characters for Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and penning Joe Wright’s The Duchess. This is his fifth for Bier, who also returns to her favourite DoP Johan Soderqvist, to make the most of a sumptuous Mediterranean palette.

Love Is All You Need is an unorthodox love story, ostensibly the wedding of Ida (Dyrholm) and Philip’s (Brosnan) respective offspring, Astrid and Patrick, bringing everybody together in the beautiful Italian setting of Sorrento, for their impending nuptials.

However, this being a Susanne Bier film, you can depend upon things being more complicated than that. Brosnan, seems to have completely cornered the market in successful businessmen who have lost touch with their family and of course, their feelings. Here, he has plunged himself into his work, having lost his wife some years previously. Ida meanwhile, has been receiving treatment for cancer and is far from out of the woods.

Dyrholm is excellent as the sweet, optimistic but strong maternal figure; certainly the role asks a huge amount of her and she acquits herself brilliantly. The rest of the supporting cast are also exemplary, in particular, Kim Bodnia as Dyrholm’s husband and the wonderful Bier regular, Paprika Steen as Brosnan’s sister in law. It’s a great ensemble piece, let down I’m sorry to say, by the Brit of the piece in Brosnan’s unconvincing acting, particularly when asked to emote.

The story reveals itself quite early on and then it becomes a case of how things will unfold to generate the expected ending, but the characters are full and engaging, the dialogue, as expected, tight and well-observed and the beautiful setting of coastal Sorrento in the summer adds greatly to the lemon zest of the piece.

Bier remains the only Danish woman ever to be nominated twice for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (indeed winning for A Better World) and there is no doubting why. More Rom than Com, Love Is All You Need is no return to the top of her form, but it’s certainly no dog either. AT

LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 19 APRIL 2013

Place Beyond The Pines (2012) ****

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Craig Van Hook, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan, Harris Yulin.

140min      Crime Drama    US

Derek Cianfrance last feature was Blue Valentine, a moody arthouse piece that tracked the romance between a young married couple.  His latest outing Place Beyond The Pines is a knockout thriller with rich tonal differences: what starts as a gritty indie drama rapidly switches to pure crime melodrama. That said, it’s one of the most intriguing and enjoyable films of the year so far and it works!

Not does it stand out as a gripping roller coaster, it also serves as a well thought out and ingenious meditation on fatherhood and male responsibility. It stars two of the most desirable male actors currently in Hollywood, Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, fresh from the success of Silver Linings Playbook, and the glittering female support of Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne thrown in for good measure.

Ryan Gosling plays Luke, a musclebound fairground stunt-rider who realises, rather late in the day, that he’s fathered a son, Jason, with his ex Romina (Eva Mendes), who’s now in another relationship. Determined to contribute to his son’s future, he harnesses his motorbike skills and starts robbing banks with a likeable accomplice Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who’s also his boss in a garage business. But the scheme goes wrong and brings him into contact with police guy Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) in an encounter which has disastrous consequences for them both.

At this point the story shifts to Avery and we discover how his life as a lawyer in the police service and son of a local judge, takes him into an area of the law he’d never anticipated and affects his life and those around him, including his infant son. The denouement is quite extraordinary and totally unexpected and deals with the future that he’s brought upon himself due to his choices and actions.

Visually slick thanks to the considerable talents of Sean Bobbitt who shot Shame, Hunger and Oldboy this is a well-paced thriller that never feels long despite its running time of over two hours. With an exciting narrative and well-formed characters that will satisfy even the most exacting cineastes, Place Beyond The Pines combines fast-paced action with subtle insight, shocking violence and a scintillating storyline. MT

PLACE BEYOND THE PINES GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE 11TH APRIL 2013.

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Teorema | Theorem (1968) Venice Classics 2022

Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini | Cast: Silvana Mangano, Terence Stamp, Massimo Girotti

98min | Italy  Fantasy Drama

A Milanese industrialist family is attracted to and then rejected by a ‘divine force’ in the shape of Terence Stamp who plays a young enigmatic English man with inappropriately tight trousers in the style of the era, who visits for a weekend that will change them all forever.

So taken was Pasolini after his first meeting with Stamp, that he never spoke to him again, giving no explanation of the role nor any indication of what he expected from him performance-wise even though he spoke rather good Italian. It’s quite obvious why he  cast Stamp as the young man: He was enchanted with his blue eyes, angelic tousled hair and slim figure and used him to torture, dissimilate and destroy the family members one by one in this intriguing and controversial drama set in a Palladian palazzo in late sixties Milan. It was to blast onto the screens of European cinemas unveiling Pasolini’s pent-up views on his own sexuality, religious beliefs and his hatred of the Italian borghesia and of the political set-up, although the political set-up in Italy has always been subject to controversy.

Pasolini’s camera hangs around on street corners picturing beautiful and suggestively alluring young men in this complex and provocative political parable that portrays the working class southerners as religious bigots and the upper class Italians as intellectually and morally bankrupt because, at this stage of the game, they hold the economic power in Italy along with the Mafia. The industrial triangle of northern Italy (Milan, Turin, Genoa) paved the way to economic success and wealth for the region but the south was to stay relatively poor and agrarian.

Casting aside ‘scholarly interpretations’ for this review – you could go on all night – suffice to say Pasolini was disenchanted with his country. Being a Marxist and atheist, he despised the capitalist North and the South’s devotion to the Catholic Church. Each character in his film is but a hollow shell serving their particular ‘God’ whether it be money or religion and is overly concerned with outside appearances and social status rather than emotional and intellectual  fulfilment.

It’s impossible to review this film without revealing substantial detail but this in no way  diminishes the viewing pleasure: it’s such an extraordinary piece of filmmaking that, like viewing a work of art, there’s always something new to discover, no matter how much you look at it.  It appears that Pasolini actually wrote the script after shooting the film so no one really knew what was expected.

Silvia Mangano is simply magnificent in the role of a society wife and mother. She was married to Dino De Laurentis, at the time, and had four children by him but had found fame due to her earlier romantic liaison with Marcello Mastroianni which lead to international stardom with Bitter Rice (1949).  Here, decked out exquisitely in Capucci Couture, she is the imbodiment of an Italian woman of the era with her impeccable hairstyle, sense of entitlement and expression of extreme boredom. She is empty in every sense of the word but Stamp’s arrival ignites an unquenchable sexual fire in her and after his departure, she heads off in her mini, lust-crazed like some female Nosferatu, in the hthat sexual conquest with beautiful strangers will satisfy the emptiness she’s purported to feel inside. Possibly she is Pasolini, and how he feels confronted with beautiful Italian men and subject to the severe social strictures of Italian society in the late sixties.

The father (Massimo Girotti) gives his factory to his workers and is cast out into the wilderness of a volcanic landscape to roam around naked looking for succour. After sharing a bedroom with Stamp, the son abandons his career and becomes an abstract painter leaving home much to the dismay of his mother who had high hopes for him in the social scheme of things. The daughter goes into a swoon and becomes catatonic before being admitted to a mental asylum.

The maid, Emilia, (Laura Betti) is sanctified and returns to her home in Sicily where she floats dreamlike over her family’s farm, a vision of moral rectitude and grace, possibly embodying the feminine, caring qualities of Pasolini’s mother, who also appears in the film (she is a regular feature in his work) but also scorning the religious pomposity of the Catholic Church. Laura Betti won best actress at Cannes that year for her role. Scored by a innovative soundtrack encompassing natural sounds with Mozart and Morricone, the film placed Pasolini in pole position with the international film luminaries of the era.

THEOREM IS SCREENING IN VENICE FILM FESTIVAL CLASSICS STRAND | 2022

Flying Blind (2012) *

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Director:Katarzyna Klimkiewicz

Script: Naomi Wallace, Bruce McLeod, Caroline Harrington

Producer: Alison Sterling

Cast:Helen McCrory, Najib Oudghiri, Kenneth Cranham, Tristan Gemmill, Sherif Eltayeb, Philippa Howard, Lorcan Cranitch

UK                   *                      94mins                       2012               Drama

Klimkiewicz was offered this feature on the back of her Short Hanoi-Warsaw, which screened at the Encounters Short FF in Bristol. Having seen her film, producer Sterling offered the opportunity of directing her first feature film, so it’s no mystery why she jumped at the chance.

It’s a mystery to me however, why this film was ever made. It has no bite; nothing memorable or remarkable about it at all and in the end comes across as no more than light filler for Middle-England television. It cuts no interesting, dangerous or new ground and if anything is sadly divisive and stereotyped in its portrayal.

McCrory plays a pretty unconvincing middle-aged aerospace engineer, engaged in designing the latest in ‘drone’ technology. Part-time, she also teaches aerospace technology at a college, which is where she meets the young handsome Najib Oudghiri, an Algerian studying engineering in Bristol.

Described as ‘a strong, bright woman making her way in a man’s world’, Frankie strikes more as an un-engaging, unsympathetic character designing bomb delivery for the MoD and behaves extraordinarily stupidly not just once, but throughout the film. There’s never the slightest whiff of authenticity as Frankie samples the ‘dangerous’ delights of forbidden fruit. Her relationships with her work colleagues, her father, the stab at aero-engineering, all of it smells fake and unexplored. 

Having also played a role in 2007 title Rendition, I truly hope that Oudghiri’s career goes on to cover far more than merely that of playing terrorists for UK/US boring, stereotypical alarmist fodder; his ability demands alot more than this script, this role, ever afforded.

The audience is always more than one step ahead of the action, which is leaden and signposted. The dialogue never lifts off the page and all the characters remain resolutely stuck in the mud. Nothing about it is exciting. I would like to say ‘dull as dishwater’, but even dishwater can sometimes have depth. Flying Blind will sink without trace. AT

FLYING BLIND  will tour through key cities in the UK throughout April including London , Bristol , Cardiff , York , Cambridge , Oxford , Nottingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh , Glasgow , Manchester and Brighton .  Each event will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and/or cast TBC.

Thursday 11th April – Barbican, London (Additional screenings 12th – 18th April)

Saturday 13th April – Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Sunday 14th April – Watershed, Bristol (Additional screenings 12th – 18th April)

Tuesday 16th April – Greenwich Picturehouse

Wednesday 17th April – York Picturehouse

Saturday 20th April – Cambridge Picturehouse

Monday 22nd April – Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton

Tuesday 23rd April – Ultimate Picture Palace , Oxford

Wednesday 24th April, Hackney Picturehouse, London

Thursday 25th April – Nottingham Broadway (Additional screenings 26th April – 2nd May)

Friday 26th April – Sheffield Showroom

Saturday 27th April – Edinburgh Filmhouse

Sunday 28th April – Glasgow Film Theatre

Tuesday 30th April – Manchester Cornerhouse

Thursday 2nd May – Brighton Komedia

For a full list of tour dates and tickets go to http://www.flyingblindfilm.com/

 

 

A Late Quartet (2012) ****

Director: Yaron Zilberman

Script: Yaron Zilmberman/Seth Grossman

Cast: Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Imogen Poots, Mark Ivanir, Wallace Shawn

104min  ****  US  Drama

A Late Quartet is not the first feature in recent times to focus on the trials and tribulations of a four-piece musical act, following Dustin Hoffman’s comedy Quartet earlier this year; yet we now return in somewhat more sophisticated circumstances (and with a relatively younger cast), in Yaron Zilberman’s directorial debut, assembling a stellar cast in this quaint and affecting drama of an accomplished, once prospering string quartet.

Although Peter (Christopher Walken), Daniel (Mark Ivanir) and married couple Juliette (Catherine Keener) and Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are supposedly celebrating their 25th successful year together, ahead of their forthcoming season they are shaken by the news that Peter – the all-important cellist, and natural leader of the pack, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Expecting his peers to strengthen and unify at hearing such a disconcerting announcement, instead Peter witnesses his colleagues comprehensively entering into self-destruct mode, as they use this news as a catalyst for their suppressed emotions. Not only do Juliette and Robert find their marriage is disintegrating, but their daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) becomes embroiled in the quartet’s issues: a quartet that is on the brink of being torn apart once and for all.

A Late Quartet is a delicately-crafted piece, and one that takes a wry and astute look into the lives of four friends, seemingly bound together by an infallible bond and love of music, yet now finding themselves on the verge of indefinite termination.  Zilberman manages to portray a poignant, affecting theme of one man suffering from a potentially fatal illness, and although exploring the themes of death and despair in a wistful manner, he intelligently adds an intense melodrama to proceedings, as we watch how this heartbreaking news can be the instigator for this sudden display of conflicting emotions.

Such melodrama works wonderfully against the contemplative ambiance, enhanced greatly by the plethora of classical numbers, bringing a strength and energy to an otherwise measured piece, as Zilberman unapologetically displays his own inherent passion for music. The symmetry and elegance of the film perfectly reflects the movements and moods of Beethoven’s Opus 131, a clear inspiration to this production.

Effectively this is a character study and we are therefore reliant on the performances of the leading cast members, and they do not disappoint in the slightest. Seymour Hoffman stands out, bringing a humility to the role but also an intensity, as you never quite feel fully at ease with his character, consistently reminded of his flaws and uncompromising nature. Meanwhile Walken is also terrific, and although not sharing quite as much screen time as his colleagues, he brings an empathetic vulnerability to the part, complete with a sadness behind his eyes reminiscent of the late John Cazale.

A Late Quartet is perhaps guilty of verging towards quite conventional, soap-opera like themes at times, but given it’s dressed up in such refined surroundings it works effectively. Although the characters may be struggling to come together and produce a beautiful piece of music, it’s fair to say that for everyone involved in this production, they’ve managed quite the opposite, joining forces to create an intelligent and provocative piece of cinema. SP

A LATE QUARTET RELEASES ON 5TH APRIL 2013 ACROSS THE UK

 

 

 

 

Yurt (2011) Home

Director: Muzaffer Özdemir

Cast: Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan, Muhammet Uzuner, Muzaffer Özdemir,

75min     Turkish with subtitles

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In 2002 Muzaffer Özdemir won Best Actor at Cannes for Distant (Uzak) and has appeared in many of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films.

Yurt in which he also stars, is his directorial debut. Essentially an arthouse piece it has a similar melancholic feel to Uzak and the wide screen visuals of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, although it lingers a little longer on them possibly reflecting the artistic leanings of its central character, Dogan, (Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan) a world-weary architect from Istanbul.

There’s also a mountain freshness to this tale of introspective nostalgia that sees him going back to his home Gumushane, in the verdant valleys and sweeping mountainsides of Anatolia, in the hope of taking time out to meditate on his life and re-connect with a positive past. It’s almost as if he is hoping to tap into a font of rejuvenating power to sooth his jaded palette of the fast-moving modern world of Istanbul. Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan gives a quietly resonating performance as the gentle but probing Dogan: he talks to a primrose at one point and creates light reflections in a stream with the bell rescued from a dead lamb. It’s a delicate touch symbolic of the fragility of nature and a technique that also appears in Jîn, Reha Erdem’s recent Anatolian fantasy drama.

What Dogan finds is no more the peaceful and luxuriant playground of his childhood but a region over-developed and harnessed by industry with locals fighting officialdom to retain rights to their homeland and cultural heritage and suspicious of strangers. In a cruel twist, he even has to prove that he was born in the region.

Yurt is a paean to the simplicity and serenity of pastoral life in danger of disappearing due to modern progress. A richly contemplative and observational film that examines the feelings of sadness and alienation brought about by increasing urbanisation in contemporary Turkey. MT

YURT WAS THE WINNER OF THE GOLDEN WINGS AWARD AT THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL 2011 AND GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 5TH APRIL.: THE ICA,

 

 

 

Point Blank (1967) ****

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, John Vernon.

92min    US   Thriller

John Boorman’s 1967 Hollywood debut Point Blank was quite exhilarating even by American standards even though the 50-year-old-thriller does now feel quite dated and very sixties: It’s always the soundtrack that gives it away but Johnny Mandel’s original music was highly innovative for the time.

The coordinated ‘futuristic’ interiors by Oscar-winner Henry Grace (North by Northwest and The Man From U.N.C.L.E) and Philip Lathrop’s strikingly modern visuals of LA cityscapes must have been quite exciting for European audiences of the time. A prolific cinematographer, Lathrop also worked on sixties titles The Pink Panther and They Shoot Horse Don’t They?

Then there’s Angie Dickinson’s mini-skirts and geometric hairstyle by Brit, Sydney Guilaroff, credited with making Lucille Ball a redhead and giving Claudette Colbert her bangs; and that tell-tale frosted lipstick, not to mention the eye-liner that was all the rage back then and screamed “Mary Quant” and “Courreges”: all high-profile icons of the era back in the UK and Europe.

 

Using a dream-like fractured narrative Point Blank centres on Lee Marvin’s Walker, who has been stitched up by his partner Reese (John Vernon) during a heist and then left for dead in Alcatraz prison off the coast of the San Francisco Bay. He pursues his partner, aided and abetted by a strongly sensual Angie Dickinson as his sister-in-law, and the strange figure of Yost (Keenan Wynn) in order to recover a sizeable amount of money from a syndicate of crims called “The Organisation”. Sharply-scripted and intensely gripping, this is a real sixties classic and not to be missed.The Curzon Mayfair would be the perfect place to screen this movie with its ‘iconic’, futuristic interiors that have thankfully survived a refit up to now.  MT

POINT BLANK IS SCREENING AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK FROM 29TH MARCH UNTIL 11TH APRIL 2013 AS PART OF A MAJOR JOHN BOORMAN RETROSPECTIVE.

 

 

In The House (2012)***** Dans La Maison

 

Director/Screenplay:   François Ozon  Juan Mayorga (original play)

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Fabrice Luchini, Emmanuelle Seigner, Ernst Unhauer

97mins      Drama      French with Subtitles

François Ozon is a master of the dark domestic drama inhabited by clever, feminine women who always have the upper hand such as Potiche (2010), 8 Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003).  He once declared his muse to be Charlotte Rampling and over the years has cast the crème de la crème from Catherine Deneuve, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Jeanne Moreau to Ludivine Sagnier, Emmanuelle Béart and even Isabelle Huppert. His latest release has echoes of Chabrol: it’s a sardonic, rather outré tale of sophisticated French provincials with a superb cast headed by Fabrice Luchini and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Kristin Scott Thomas is a natural as the chic but frustrated art curator wife of Fabrice Luchini’s Romain, a French literature teacher bored by his pupils’ lack of imagination in their written work.  One exception is Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), a teenager emotionally intelligent beyond his years.  For homework, he writes about his exploits at schoolmate Rapha’s house in a tone that makes the prof prick up his ears in fascination and even envy, awakening dormant memories of his own failed writing career.  

Ozon’s latest outing is a tightly-plotted and smartly-scripted affair with captivating performances from Luchini and Kristin Scott Thomas who interact gracefully as a seemingly contented married couple who eat dinner and queue for the cinema together; each harbouring an agenda that’s completely covert until the final dénouement.  Emmanuelle Seigner, who is in real life married to Roman Polanski,  is an interesting choice for the role of Rapha’s mother, a bored suburban housewife who flicks through magazines all day waiting for her bumptious husband (Denis Menochet) to come home. Watching her quietly on the sofa, it’s difficult to eradicate from the memory her glowering turn as a sex siren in Bitter Moon (1992) or as Michelle in Frantic (1988). Newcomer Ernst Umhauer is perfectly pitched as the sensitive but subversive schoolboy whose difficult childhood forces him into fractured adulthood well before his time. MT

IN THE HOUSE is showing on general release from 29 March 2013.  Read our interview with Francois Ozon.

 

 

Good Vibrations (2012)

Director: Lisa Barros D’Sa

Script: Colin Carberry, Glen Patterson

Producers: Bruno Charlesworth, Andrew Eaton, David Holmes, Chris Martin

Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodie Whittaker, Dylan Moran, Mark Ryder, Killian Scott, Adrian Dunbar, Kerr Logan

UK/Ireland           140mins         Biopic

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I love this film.  It’s all very well as a reviewer sitting po-faced thinking up embroidered sentences, but sometimes… you know? Already winning awards for script, Best Film and Costume at Dinard, Galway and the Irish Film & TV Awards, this is one to savour. Brim-full of life energy, Good Vibrations is the biopic of Terri Hooley, gleefully charting his childhood through the Sixties and Seventies in a world riven with hatred, mistrust and death.

For anyone growing up in Ulster during the Seventies, Good Vibrations is legendary. A record shop-turned label for young Punk kids surviving the battleground, that was living in the Troubles of Northern Ireland, where everything was shot to shit and prospects were sub zero but for the vision and grace of one Terri Hooley, a local man who decided one day to set up a record shop in the last bit of road that wasn’t a bomb crater and went on to launch the careers of a generation of Irish Punk bands.

Good Vibrations is a film that was long in the gestating; about 13 years. One might call a genuine ‘passion project’, with a pilot shot originally to raise money for the full feature. One can only imagine the journey the filmmakers went through to convince the financiers to stump up the cash. But thank the Protestant and Catholic Gods that they eventually did.

Joining a small but growing canon of brilliant Punk Movies, alongside Sid & Nancy, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and The Punk SyndromeVibrations is a great script, properly acted, with a superb central performance by Richard Dormer as Hooley, exquisitely shot and effervescent with spirit. In edit and direction, it’s quite simply a joyful, life-affirming film, rather as Searching For Sugarman is; a bright, brave, resilient bloom flowering in the darkest of times and a testament to the human spirit.

As the great Joe Strummer of The Clash is quoted:

“When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and the shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious moment.”

Get maximum value for every punt you spend on a cinema ticket: go see this most excellent of fillums. A film full of heart about a man who is all heart. AT

The Servant (1963)

Dir: Joseph Losey | Wri: Harold Pinter |

Britain can thank its immigrants for the renaissance it had in filmmaking in the Sixties and Joseph Losey is a fine example taking refuge in England in 1951 at the onset of MacCarthyism, realising that his career was over, to all intents and purposes, in the States.

The Servant is a classic film and groundbreaking for  several reasons. Losey brought with him a completely different approach, doing away the rather staid practices over here and bringing something new and fresh to the table. He is also responsible for discovering both Edward and James Fox.

With music by John Dankworth and his cinematographer of choice Douglas Slocombe, Losey got hold of Robin Maugham’s novel, which Pinter had previously made into a play, and then adapted further into a screenplay. They almost came to blows over the finished script, but Losey persisted and it proved time well-spent; The Servant is a remarkable film.

Good timing too for Dirk Bogarde, who had long since tired of stock ‘leading man’ roles and wanted something a bit more interesting and dirtier to get his teeth into. Great turns also by a host of household names, Sarah Miles, Patrick Magee, Wendy Craig, Annie Firbank and even Pinter himself.

The Servant centres on an aristocrat (Fox) not long back in the country, who has bought a London townpad and feels the need for a manservant; an already outdated notion in the early Sixties. The film opens with potential, Bogarde, approaching the house for his interview. What follows is a brilliant concoction of Pinter’s dialogue, Losey’s direction and two very handsome actors at the top of their game.

Exploring myriad themes of the day: the class divide; the bankruptcy of the aristocracy; the moral bankruptcy of the working classes; the sexual revolution; homosexuality and a general shaking off of the value system of the day, principally, this is a film about power. Heady stuff, the impact of which cannot be underestimated, in terms of both content and style, on work to come thereafter.

Losey is quoted thus: ‘Films can illustrate our existence…they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But not give the answers’. It’s a complex piece with many characters, none of whom escape untarnished and is all the better for it. Gone are the stock stereotypes of yore, where it was easy to know who the baddie was, or who to ridicule.

A sharp black and white blade of a film with plenty to say and no little style in the doing. Andrew Tomlinson

UK PREMIERE of the 4k restoration EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 19th August 2021 | COLLECTOR’S EDITION BLURAY, DVD, DIGITAL from 20th August 

Compliance (2012) Mubi

Dir/Wri: Craig Zobel  Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy, Philip Ettinger, Matt Servitto, Ashlie Atkinson, Nikiya Mathis, Bill Camp | 90min                      US Drama

If this story wasn’t based on real events in the US – that happened not just once, but 70 times in 30 states, you would write this off as the most far-fetched nonsense requiring a suspension of disbelief beyond the stiffest resolve. Unfortunately, it is and you can’t.

Dreama Walker plays Becky, a young girl struggling to survive on low wages in a dreary fast food joint.  Then one day, a call from someone purporting to be a Police Officer turns her world upside-down in the most extraordinary and humiliating way.

The acting throughout is quite superb. Ann Dowd, the unquestioning manager of the restaurant is brilliant. Everyone there is convincing in their depiction of the characters who might staff such an establishment. But as a sentient adult with an IQ anything over 40, you find yourself sitting there squirming and watching the film through your fingers, needing to shout at the screen for someone somewhere to come to their senses.

Whether Craig Zobel intended this as a sinister straight drama or some kind of Corporate Educational video for anyone working in the fast food industry in dealing with the potential dangers of scam calls, is questionable. But Compliance certainly beggars belief. He would go on to make The Hunt an equally dark and discombobulating thriller, some years later.

If you are at all worried that, as a species, we infact peaked some years ago and are now sliding back towards the swamp at a rate of knots then, whatever you do, don’t go and see this. It’s all the proof you needed. Only in America. But also – increasingly – over here.

COMPLIANCE is now on MUBI

Post Tenebras, Lux (2012) ***

Director/Script: Carlos Reygadas

Cast: Adolfo Jimenez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo, Willebaldo Torres.

120min     Spanish with subtitles

After darkness, light

Carlos Reygadas’ latest outing was greeted with boos and cheers at Cannes last year where it went on to win the feisty Mexican: Best Director.  An provocative film then, and very much an acquired taste.

The opening scenes of magnificent natural allure showcases the Mexican countryside and contrast with the unflinching originality of more experimental sequences and a slightly disorientating, fractured narrative.  The focus is Natalia and Juan, a couple with kids, who appear to be at the end of the line. Reygadas looks at their story from different perspectives and phases all interwoven with subplots and tonal contrasts through a vignetted, wide-angle lens. The effect is awesome but what’s it all about? Reygadas leaves us to our own conclusions in a similar way that Bruno Dumont does with Hors Satan.  “The real proof of a film’s quality is not what the ciritics say or how many prizes it wins, but what happens when you see it more than once.” The more I think about this, the more it applies to all good films. MT

 

Shell (2012) ***

Director/Writer: Scott Graham

Cast: Chloe Pirrie, Joseph Mawl, Tam Dean Burn, Morven Christie

90min       UK Drama

Scott Graham’s debut feature is a beautifully-crafted and gently haunting mood piece of indie, arthouse cinema.  In the desolate Scottish Highlands a young woman mans a petrol station alone. Her dark locks and a marble white looks seem at one with the moaning wind and angry skies of this remote landscape and are as much company as her sullen father (Joseph Mawl) who suffers from epilepsy. The two are viscerally close. Shell’s mother is no longer around.

Chloe Pirrie gives a restrained but engrossing performance as Shell, a dutiful and self-contained daughter who occasionally takes a gun into the hills and comes back with venison for the long winter evenings by the fire.  A dark horse whose story gradually unfolds through the occasional visitor who passes by, Shell seems opaque and deliciously mysterious.

The unexpected denouement to does feel slightly at odds with the slow and patient narrative build-up of a drama that started life as short. But nevertheless marks out Pirrie and Graham as talents to watch out for. Joseph Mawl is watchable and intriguing in this understated portrayal of familial claustrophobia and mental illness. MT

 

 

The Spirit of ’45 (2013) ***

Director/Writer: Ken Loach

94min    UK Documentary

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A moving documentary tribute to the Second World War replete with original footage of war torn London and impartial commentary from ‘ordinary’ people who speak of their wartime experiences and give their personal impressions of the era.

Following on from the allies victory under Churchill’s leadership, Ken Loach focuses his documentary on the immediate postwar period with a rousing tribute to the new Labour Government of the time under Clement, Earl of Attlee, describing how he set up the NHS, nationalised major industries and embarked on a much-needed housebuilding programme.

Post-War Britain in 1945 was a picture of economic and social devastation, so what’s new? With The Spirit of ’45, Loach attempts to illustrate how the solidarity and chin-up approach of the British people carried the nation through the immediate aftermath of economic depression and how, buoyed up by this optimism, the nation made a positive new start that subsequently paved the way social euphoria in the late fifties and sixties.

Where is this ‘spirit’ now, it asks? And that’s the one big failing of the documentary: while providing a great deal of food for thought about the British people and their attitude post war, it fails to analyse and engage with the fundamentals and examine why that frame of mind existed in the forties and whether it has possibly died due to cultural, ethnic and social change that has shaped Britain in the intervening 75 years.  MT

Beyond the Hills (2012)**** Dupa Dealuri

Director Christian Mungiu

Cast: Cosima Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta

150mins     Drama     Romanian with subtitles

A great hit at Cannes, this is a disturbing and melodramatic tale of sexual politics and grinding poverty overlaid with religious pomposity and centres on the masterful central performances from Cristina Flutur (Alina) and Cosima Stratan (Volchita) who best won Best Actress this year at the festival.  Purportedly based on real events that took place only recently in Romania’s Tanacu monastery, it has all the trappings of a medieval horror story rather than one based in 21st century Europe. The two girls are reunited in the monastery, where Volchita has become a novice, after growing up together in an orphanage in Germany.

It difficult to tell whether they are in love but there is certainly an emotional and physical closeness at work and Alina uses bond to persuade Volchita to follow her back to Germany to a life in the secular world away from the path she’s chosen as a submissive bride of Chris.  In doing so, Alina comes across as a subversive and manipulative character in contrast to Volchita’s gentle and accepting personality. Alina sees these positive traits as evidence of a lack of strength and self reliance which causes Volchita to question her own beliefs and motives with tragic consequences for all concerned.

Christian Mingui’s intimate portrait of the mysterious yet brutal sisterhood of the monastery is beautifully shot and superbly crafted and yet hard-going with its menacing overtones, in much the same way as his last Palme D’Or win, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007) was, although more visually alluring with scenic shots of the Romanian countryside and stunning interiors. MT

 

 

 

 

 

Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema (1990) ***** Kinoteka 2013

Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema   (Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolnosc’)

Director/Script:  Wojciech Marczewski    

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41f-6lqo0LM

Cast:  Janusz Gajos, Michal Bajor, Artur Barcis, Aleksander Bednarz, Zygmunt Bielawski, Jerzy Binczycki, Henryk Bista, Monika Bolly

87min Poland           Surreal comedy.  Polish with subtitles              

 

Set just before Poland’s communism came to an end in 1989, Janusz Gajos plays a tired, middle-aged provincial cog in the machine, having long sold out his ideals as a poet and a writer to become one of the enemy; a regime censor.

Things remain stultifying until ‘Daybreak’, the dull, new film screening at the local cinema takes an unexpected turn when the actors in it elect to strike, refusing to adhere to the unedifying script, thereby directly confronting our hero, who has to scramble to sort out the mess. 

A brilliant idea, owing not a little to Bulgakov’s The Master & Marguerita and Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, but given a new spin here by Marczewski, has the town in a frenzy and the authorities in a spin as they try to work out how best to deal with this most surreal and unexpected of situations.

Gajos is perfect as the seasoned, divorced and disillusioned protagonist, well versed in the machinations of the hypocritical administration for which he works, in this supremely well-pitched and well-crafted satire of the times.

The supporting cast are also exemplary, especially Artur Barcis as the projectionist Aleksander Bednarz as Edward and Teresa Marczewska; a rich cast of strong character actors providing a secure comedy backdrop upon which to hang the central conceit.

1989 and Lech Wałęsa all seem like such a long time ago, as this snapshot from the past amply illustrates, in a time before mobile phones, when movie posters were hand-painted onto the cinema billboards, but it’s also worth noting that, as is so often the case, it often takes adversity to force creatives to come up with the truly brilliant over the merely pedestrian. One only needs to look at what’s currently on offer in the West End to realise this. Thoroughly recommended. AT

ESCAPE TO THE ‘LIBERTY’ CINEMA IS SHOWING DURING THE KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013 IN LONDON, LIVERPOOL, BELFAST AND EDINBURGH 

Manhunt (2012) **** Oblawa Kinoteka 2013

Director: Marcin Kryzysztalowicz
Script: Marcin Kryzysztalowicz
Producer: Krysztof Gredzinski, Malgorzata Jurczak
Cast: Marcin Dorocinski, Maciej Stuhr, Sonia Bohosiewicz, Weronika Rosati, Andrzej Zielinski, Bartosz Zukowski, Alan Andersz, Andrzej Mastalerz

Poland  2012 96mins War Drama

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Based on a true story and shot in Slomniki, Malopolskie, this WWII Polish resistance movement flick is the epitome of grit. Rightly nominated for the Grand Prix at Montreal FF last year, Kryzysztalowicz has delivered the goods here and on a miniscule budget.

Grim in the extreme and minutely observed, utilising a finely constructed fractured narrative, Kryzysztalowicz tells his desperate story of a partisan group living close to starvation in the Polish woods. A completely convincing Dorocinski plays ‘Wydra’, a resistance soldier given the odious task of rounding up Gestapo informers from the nearby town and executing them unceremoniously; the lives of the resistance fighters depend on it.

Kryzysztalowicz doesn’t blink, doesn’t blanch, either from the immediacy of war nor the unrelenting bleakness, the on-going struggle, the existence that the partisans had to wring from the land during their exile from their homes and families. One can almost smell the soil and taste the pitiful stew.

As one has come to expect now from Polish fare, the cinematography is again exemplary, here from the very experienced and award-winning Arkadiusz Tomiak.

It’s nine years since Kryzysztalowicz last made a film and let it be hoped he doesn’t have to wait as long before delivering another. His script, like the story it is based on is wiry and honed, stripped bare of any fat, any spare. The acting is superb throughout and the story smartly told. The very evident humanity lifting it above the standard war pic.

It’s the tale, if indeed any were needed, about the extremity of war and what it makes people capable of, once there is simply nothing left for them in life, once brutality has left its bootprint indelibly on their souls and, by extension, forces you to ask of yourself- what would you do? How would you react, given the same stimuli?

Go with a strong nerve, but go. These stories need to be told and, moreover, they need never to be forgotten. AT

Caesar Must Die (2012) *** Cesare Deve Morire

Directed by Vittorio and Paolo Taviani (screenplay)

Cast: Cosimo Rega, Salvatore Striano, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca

77mins     Drama

Caesar Must Die won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year, a fitting tribute to the Taviani Brothers who are well into their eighties and veterans of the silver screen.  Padre Padrone (1977) was their brilliant adaption of the novel by Ledda Gavino that dealt a Sardinian farming community but nobody expected that they would be back again to the limelight with this piece of social realism similar in tone to Padre Padrone nearly 40 years later.  That said, Caesar Must Die was always going to divide the critics and, indeed, audiences for its contraversial subject matter.  For all its theatricality, vim and vigour, it’s a stark film to look at and a heavy one to watch.

You might expect a film about a mis-en-scene of Julius Caesar within a prison by its hardened criminal inmates to be gutsy and volatile but what you might not expect is that it could be emotional and heartfelt.  All all these are actors who’ve committed crimes: murderers, rapists, thieves and embezzlers. People who’ve destroyed lives and caused untold misery to their victims none of whom are up for an award but who are coming to terms with loss, grief and heartache.  But the Taviani brothers have given them a chance to express themselves through the medium of theatre and to act out roles in a play that originally featured characters who possess the same traits as they do.  So who better to portray roles such as Brutus and even Caesar himself than inmates of Rebibbia maximum security jail on the outskirts of Rome.

Beginning with the ending of the performance the film then flashes back to the start of rehearsals.  The actors ‘audition’ face to face with the camera as they talk about their families and their personal lives. As they craft their individual performances they start to compare how the subject matter reflects their own lives in such a way that boundaries between reality and artifice are sometimes blurred or hard to define.  In this way, the Taviani’s on-screen prison becomes a metaphor for contemporary life, a microcosm of modern Italian society with its power struggle, social dynamics and contemporary political scene.  A very clever film yes but an appealing one, not really. MT

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Side Effects (2012) **** Berlinale 2013

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Jude Law, Catherine Zeta Jones, Tatum Channing, Ronney Mara
104min  ****   US Thriller
Side Effects is a more persuasive endictment on the pharmaceutical industry than any worthy documentary on the subject of prescription drugs such as the recent  Fire In The Blood. It really should be on doctor’s orders.
Steven Soderbergh’s cool and clinical  thriller was a much needed shot in the arm at Berlinale this year and is purportedly the swan song for this successful indie revolutionary who broke onto the scene with Sex Lies and Videotape in 1989 and went on to win an Oscar (for Traffic) and create a lucrative franchise in the shape of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen and now seems set to retire from directing; at least movies, that is.
Set in contemporary New York it opens as a timely tale about a fall from grace suffered by a young wife, Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), whose trader husband is in prison for insider dealing. It portrays the fear, the spiralling humiliation and the hopeless depression engendered when we lose almost everything we have achieved.  And even when husband Martin (Channing Tatum) comes home the blues don’t leave. “Depression is the inability to be able to construct a viable future” says her sympathetic Dr Jonathan Banks: Jude Law in one of his most brilliant turns so far.  In fact Law’s performance is the one of the best things about Side Effects.  He comes across with genuine integrity as an ethical doctor who’s not without his own family turmoil and financial worries. And recommends the ideal pick-me-up to his patient Emily a pill that supposedly works wonders for depression. Gradually the tone turns from character study to gripping psychodrama where nothing is as it seems.
Rooney Mara as Emily is unstable and aloof but then there’s a reason for this which gradually comes to light as the horror unfolds.  Catherine Zeta Jones is sinister and surprising as Emily’s previous clinician Dr Victoria Siebert. Exit Soderbergh on a high then with an ingenious, dark Hitchcockian thriller that has more twists than a child-proof bottle. MT
SIDE EFFECTS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 8TH MARCH AT THE TRICYCLE, VUE, CINEWORLD AND HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE.

Stoker (2013) ****

Director: Park Chang Wook

Writers: Wentworth Miller and Erin Cressida Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Mia Wassikowska, David Alford, Phyllis Somerville, Jackie Weaver

98min   Drama

After the blatant bloodiness of OldBoy and The Last Stand, Stoker opens as a lush arthouse drama In English, for a change.   With magnetic performances from Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode this visually acute and tightly-scripted study is of family dysfunction brought into focus when Uncle Charlie comes to visit his niece India and widowed sister-in law Evie after the tragic death of his brother Richard.

Uncle Charlie sends shockwaves of potent sexuality through the females in the family with his hypnotically powerful presence. Both women develop a visceral attraction to him but Uncle Charlie’s glib smarminess also belies a secret that slowly starts to unravel and we discover that his smart clothes and accessories, designed by Kurt and Bart, don’t just cut a sartorial swagger.

Chun-hoon Chung, his regular cinematographer (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Thirst), knows his lenses like the back of his hand and uses them to sublime effect to create a sumptuously stylised and visually impeccable portrait of social dynamics. Shot in a palette of pistacchio, eau di nil and aqua spiked with cinnamon, Stoker has the emotional feel and distance of an Edward Hopper painting with Hitchcockian undertones.  There are also servings of the auteur’s brutal signature violence lightly steamed through with the swampy heat of Tennessee all set to Clint Mansell’s discordant score.  Chang Wook Park may have gone to America but his indie streak and black humour is very much alive and kicking. MT

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STOKER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 1ST MARCH 2013 AT CURZON CINEMAS

 

 

The Gospel According To Matthew (1964) Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo

Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini | Cast: Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini, Marcello Morante, Mario Socrate, Settimio Di Porto, Ferruccio Nuzzo | 137min  *****  Historical Drama

In 1962 Pier Paolo Pasolini found himself in Assisi invited by the Pope to attend a seminar at a Franciscan Monastery. He was a Marxist homosexual and the Pope wanted to engage with non-Catholic artists in a bid to raise the bar on traditional Catholicism and the organised Church. Pasolini didn’t believe in God or religion and yet his experience led him to make this low budget indie that is possibly the most important and starkly powerful film about Jesus and his life story.

Conjuring up the spirit of Italian neo-realism, Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo features a cast of non-professional locals taken from the villages of Apulia and Basilicata, and a script based exactly as the Gospel is written. As its core is a mesmerising performance from Enrique Irazoqui, a Spanish newcomer  Pasolini had met by accident in the street after days of searching for the ideal actor.  He is perfect for the role of Jesus, exuding a gentle magnetism that is the closest to ‘goodness’ imaginable. With the innocence of a child divested of centuries of awe and the inculcation of a religious believer, Pasolini creates a surprisingly devout version of Christ’s passion, set in the barren countryside of Basilicata in place of Palestine.

That said, the purity of Christ’s message is rooted in Christian beliefs of unflinching modesty, simplicity, social respect and equality. The miracles performed are so low-key they actually feel authentic and transcend moral statement or scorn in a drama delivered without sentimentality, cant or glorification. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Venice that year, and was screened in Notre Dame as a result of being awarded first prize from the International Catholic Office of the Cinema . Forget Terrence Malick, if any film deserves to be called To The Wonder it is this one MT

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW IS on

 

Lore (2012)

Director: Cate Shortland,  Screenplay: Robin Mukherjee

Cast: Saskia Rosendahl, Nele Trebs, Andre Frid, Mika Seidel, Kai-Peter Malina, Nick Holaschke

109min      Wartime thriller based on The Dark Room.  German with Subtitles

Australian director Cate Shortland’s first feature Somersault was a light-hearted look at love and sex. In Lore she takes on more challenging subject matter and skillfully explores the nature of racism, sexuality and conflict without judgement or blame in this refreshing and well-crafted wartime drama.

Lore is a story of a journey; a gruelling journey across Nazi Germany for a young family during Allied occupation.  And for teenager Hannelore (Lore) it’s also a journey from innocence into adulthood.

Gracefully played by newcomer Saskia Rosendahl,  Lore confronts her family responsibilities and fear of the unknown with courage and perseverance when she is forced to leave her home with her younger siblings when they are abandoned by Nazi SS parents fearing capturing during the occupation. To survive the gruelling journey Lore cooperates with a stranger (a sinister Kai Peter Malina) who repells her but awakens her sexuality in a relationship that could have been more visceral on his part. Based on a story from Rachel Seiffert’s Booker-Prize nominated The Dark Room, Shortland paints a bleak portrait of personal loss and wartime deprivation brightened by Adam Arkapaw’s strikingly lush visuals of the German countryside and touching performances from the children, newcomers Nele Trebs, Andre Frid, and Mika Seidel.  MT

Previewed as the Centrepiece Gala at Jewish Film Festival at the Tricycle Cinema on 10/11/12, the film will be on general release from 22 February 2013 nationwide.

 

Jîn (2013) **** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director: Reha Erdem

Cast: Deniz Hasgüler
Onur Unsal
Yildirim Simsek

122mins   Drama  Turkish/Kurdish with subtitles

Time And Winds and Kosmos director Reha Erdem projects his ideas onto a broad canvas with visionary widescreen dramas that seem to have an otherworldly dimension.

Here he places the destructive Turkish-Kurdish conflict as the counterpoint to a sumptuous nature study set in the breathtaking beauty of eastern Turkey. The focus is a young but fiercely independent Kurdish refugee/guerilla (a superb Deniz Hasgüler) who is forced to extricate herself continually from the clutches of potential rapists who cross her path as she makes her way to safety across the breathtaking but hostile mountain terrain like an exotic bird perpetually in flight.

Erdem’s regular collaborator Florent Henry, captures the awesome scenery from rocky over-hanging cliffs to emerald green forests and portrays the wildlife in a tenderly gentle almost anthropomorphic way as the girl communes with nature rescuing a donkey who is later blown up by mortar fire and gingerly feeding a wild bear in an enchanting fairytale cameo.

It’s a touching film but also a wild and brutal one that juxtaposes the frailty of nature with the harsh intrusion of wartorn conflict in the troubled territory. Hildur Guonadottir’s unsettling score perfectly complements the feeling of potential doom and constant danger.  Jin is a visually captivating adventure drama but one that ultimately fails to reach any conclusion due to a minimal script and basic lack of narrative conclusion but as a piece of alluring and cinematic contemplation it has a spellbinding quality that continues to resonate long after the titles have rolled. MT

18TH LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 FEBRUARY UNTIL 3 MARCH 2013 AT THE ICA, RIO DALSTON AND CINE LUMIERE LONDON.

Side By Side (2012) ****

Director:                                 Chris Kenneally

Producer:                               Keanu Reeves

Cast:                                        Keanu Reeves, Danny Boyle, James Cameron, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Chris Nolan, Steve Soderbergh, etc

 

US                                    99mins                       2012               Doc

With the tag ‘Can Film Survive Our Digital Future?’ Keanu Reeves is our window into the world of filmmakers, cinematographers and the twilit world of post production, but the interview list is nothing if not comprehensive. Over 40 of the movie ‘rich and famous’ grace this (digitally shot) documentary on the relative merits of 35mm over its rapidly maturing bastard offspring, digital.

Giving us an in-depth potted history of the story so far, with films that changed the way things were done, either in camera or in Post, Keanu talks to the movers and shakers about what they did, why they did it and what the outcome was. There are the staunch filmophites such as Chris Nolan, director of the latest in the Batman franchise and on the other side of the room, George Light Sabre Lucas, who could only see the drawbacks in shooting 35mm.

This film is fascinating, although I do wonder how interesting it might be for the casual popcorn-muncher. Certainly the girl next to me woke herself up with her own snoring; I’m not kidding. But it does give a clear understanding of the development of digital, the need for it and what all the essential terminology means like CCD, or ‘Red’ Camera, ‘2K’, ‘4K’, or what a Colourist does. 

If you work in film, or have any deeper interest in film beyond simply rocking up at the local Vue forFast & Furious 8- What Happened To My Underpants? Then this is a valuable documentary, quite aside from the on-going argument on which is better: film or digital.

As more and more effects are called for in Post Production, the fiscal answer is always leaning toward shooting on digital but the aesthetes will forever lean towards emulsion. Then there’s the cost of distribution, the degradation that occurs with film prints… and there’s the whole archiving problem. Already there are films made digitally and stored on tapes that no longer have a machine that can play them.

The film really is a ‘Who’s Who’ of directors, cinematographers and Visual Effects guys and is almost worth seeing for that alone. The discussion will rumble on for some time, of that there is no doubt. And there will always be merits for using either. I do hope though that digital won’t signify the end of 35mm. And for some reason, filmmakers being the bunch they are, I don’t believe it will.

Go and be enlightened. Keanu never looked so bright. AT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No (2012)

Director: Pablo Larrain
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers
115mins   Political Drama

NO is visually an unattractive film and at nearly two hours long this is not a point in its favour. In an effort to evoke the eighties, it looks like one of those trashy, florid cinema ads for carpets from that era and it’s subtitled.
That said, it’s worthy subject matter and the storyline engages your interest from the get go with its persuasive message and convincing central performance from Gael Garcia Bernal.  He plays Rene Saavedra, the spunky and persuasive advertising executive who brought down Pinochet with his appealing NO cam
paign devised to rouse fun-loving Chileans in 1988.
Spiked with irreverent humour, it’s a fascinating slice of South American history.  Go if you’re politically inclined or a big fan of this suberb actor but it won’t set the night on fire for an evening out at the flics. MT

I Wish (Kiseki) (2011) ****

[Director:Hirokazu Kore-eda

Script:Hirokazu Kore-eda

Producer:Kentaro Koike, Hijiri Taguchi          

Cast:Koki Maeda, Ohshiro Maeda, Ryoga Hayashi, Cara Uchida, Kanna Hashimoto, Rento Isobe, Hoshinosuke Yoshinaga

Japan                               128mins                     2011               Drama

I Wish, Or ‘Miracle’, more literally translated, has already done a good slew of top tier international festivals bagging along the way a nice clutch of awards, including Best Screenplay at San Sebastian and a Special Mention at the Hong Kong IFF, hence it’s relatively tardy arrival in British cinemas. However, it is certainly worth the wait.

Following on from his superb 2004 title, Nobody Knows, which also blazed a trail across the festivals, Kore-eda cements himself as an extraordinary talent at directing children, eliciting naturalistic and wonderfully engaging performances.

Having written a script for I Wish, Kore-eda went off in search of his cast only to discover the two real-life Maeda brothers who were also comedians. Having met them, he tore up his script and completely rewrote it to reflect and complement his find. It was time well-spent 

I Wish is a real slow-burner, taking time to reveal its purpose, but loses nothing in the doing. 12-year old Koichi is living with his mother, living apart from both his father and his much-missed younger brother Ryunosuke through his parents acrimonious divorce. However, his imagination is captured by the new bullet train, about to connect his city of Kagoshima with Fukuoka, home to his estranged brother. 

The film explores the lives in minutiae of these two separated boys and how they cope in their new disparate worlds; their friends and the stresses and strains peculiar to kids; how they relate to each other, their dreams and their aspirations. The gang of wonderfully engaging youngsters are backed up by an amazing older cast, including Joe Odagiri, Nene Ohtsuka, Isao Hashizume and Masami Nagasawa.

As I watched this universal story, told with such simplicity and clarity so often difficult to recreate with child actors, I not only pondered on how poorly it might be remade by Hollywood, but also, as the film unfolds, how the events simply couldn’t happen in America as they do here in Japan due to the cultural differences.

The very things that draw you to this film- and since Nobody Knows, I am already a huge fan of Kore-eda – would be so absent from an American mainstream remake. It is entirely devoid of schmaltz, sentimentality or over-statement and its final message both a surprising and an interesting one.

As with all the best in arthouse film, this is an elegant essay and insight into humanity and is sure to delight those left high and dry by more populist fare. AT

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 


I Give It A Year (2013) ****

Director/Writer: Dan Mazer

Cast: Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris, Minnie Driver, Jane Asher, Jason Flemyng

87mins  Comedy

Borat writer Dan Mazer choses a tricky genre for his first outing as director: the Wedding Romcom. If you normally give these films a wide birth, don’t be deterred by I Give It A Year. Particularly with the current slate of lengthy films on heavy topics: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty; it’s refreshing to find a light-hearted, intelligent comedy feature that’s sharply scripted and perfectly timed at 87mins.

What starts as a fairly typical storyline: eyes meet across a crowded room leading to white wedding with lewd Best Man’s speech, soon becomes something more interesting and authentic: The grim realisation that some love affairs are not meant to get past the first flush of feelings. Not every romance ends in wedded bliss and the patter of tiny feet. So enough of cliches: I Give It A Year takes the story further and is underpinned by some great gags and solid performances from a starry lead cast of Anna Faris, Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall and Simon Baker.

The couple in question  are Rose Byrne as an uptight PR woman Nat, who falls for Rafe Spall’s housebound writer, Josh. Cracks start to show in the marriage even before the champagne has run dry and each are drawn elsewhere. Nat to a dashing American client (Simon Baker) and Josh to his ex, Chloe (Anna Faris). Olivia Colman gives a strung out turn as a marriage guidance counsellor with anger management issues. And Minnie Driver, Jane Asher and Jason Flemyng provide a Greek chorus of positive and negative approval as family members.

From the start, each character is well-thought out and authentic with ghastly brother-in-law Stephen Merchant toeing the Ricky Gervaise line, Rose Byrne still in character from ‘Damages’, and Simon Baker fresh out of Hollywood charm school with real star quality.  Gradually their roles start to gel with hilarious moments and tearful ones playing out to a surprising and feelgood finale. A touch formulaic but a wonderful start for Dan Mazer’s directorial career and a witty way to kick off the comedy year and blow away the February blues on Valentine’s Day. MT

I GIVE IT A YEAR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE IN LONDON FROM 8TH FEBRUARY 2013 AFTER PREVIEWING AT THE BFI AS PART OF THE LOCO LONDON COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL 2013

 

A Place In The Sun (1951)

A Place In The Sun - Copyright BFI All Rights Reserved - Dir: George Stevens | Writer: Theodore Dreiser (Novel) Michael Wilson, Harry Brown (Screenplay) | Cast: Montgomery Clift,  Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle | 122mins   Drama

A melodramatic film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s best seller ‘An American Tragedy’ and a remake of the Josef von Sternberg 1931 version.

What George Stevens lacked in prestige as a director he more than made up for in his  shrewd decision to cast a 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor together with Monty Clift as young lovers across the social divide: Angela Vickers and George Eastman. Their potent sexual chemistry and screen kiss is considered one of the most erotic in Hollywood history especially considering Monty’s homosexuality.

They continued their friendship after the picture and when Liz Taylor pulled Monty from the reckage of his car after the near fatal crash that was to change his career forever, the two became close confidantes despite an age gap of thirteen years.

But Shelley Winters was not so happy cast as George’s needy and downmarket girlfriend, Alice Tipps, and took a long time to get over this role even though she was nominated for best actress for her performance. In the event, the film went on the win six Oscars
and George Stevens won Best Director for the outing. The best actress award that year went to Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Elizabeth Taylor is absolutely enchanting in her portrayal of society rich kid Angela Vickers and although many critics say the story is out of date with its societal divides, I would argue that there are plenty of Anglela Vickers and Alice Tipps around in today’s world of social extremes and the same type of spoilt young woman is still in existence, sadly lacking the poise and grace that Liz gave to the role in 1951. Her “White Lilac” dress became a fashion sensation overnight. There also a convincing turn from a young Raymond Burr who plays District Attorney Frank Marlowe.

A Place In The Sun may be slow-moving and sombre in tone but the romance is real: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift where never lovelier as these star-crossed lovers. MT

 

 

 

Hitchcock (2012) ****

Director: Sasha Gervasi

Writers: John J McLaughlin/

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, James D’Arcy, Richard Portnow, Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Wincott,

98mins   Drama BIOPIC

Alfred Hitchcock has been having a hard time of it lately with Julian Jarold’s portrayal of our most notorious English film director as being something of a dirty old man. This Hitchcock, though, based on Stephen Rebellos’s non-fiction book, is more uplifting and entertaining than Jarold’s TV offering as well as being fascinating for its sparkling treatise on the Hitchcock marriage. It will certainly go down well with anyone interested in how Psycho came into being and how it ushered in a new level of acceptable violence and sexuality to cinema screens in the early sixties.

Anthony Hopkins brings his subtle charms to the role of Hitchcock and gives an insight into a man who, according to this version set in Hollywood in 1959, felt mystified, misunderstood, and misled by the female of the species.  On one hand, it has him giving in to his uncontrollable urges as if he’s some kind of psycho himself; possibly due to a strict upbringing marked by lonliness and obesity, and on the other dressing his difficult behaviour up as the natural personality profile of a creative genius just trying to get a film made.  I tend to side with the latter but that’s for you to decide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And apart from flirting with Scarlett Johansson’s delightful Janet Leigh (which man wouldn’t) and looking through a peephole at scantily clad Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) in her dressing room, ‘Call me Hitch (hold the cock)’ confines his real emotional cut and thrust to his relationship with his savvy wife and erstwhile assistant director, Alma Reville. Helen Mirren excels herself in this role despite being physically unlike the real Alma; described as small and birdlike.

There’s definitely a complex chemistry between this couple and it plays out with consummate ease by two watchable, heavyweight talents portraying with humour and emotion the strengths and weaknesses of a marriage that had endured 33 years when Hitch decided to remortgage their mansion to finance Psycho (1960). The picture had been turned down for financing by Paramount and the Censors due to issues of nudity and the notorious shower scene because it involved a lavatory….rather than the web of political intrigue that had gone down so successfully in North by Northwest the previous year.

So, not surprisingly, Hitch is starting to feel the need for the support of his canny wife who is getting very chummy with a younger screenwriter, elegantly played here by Danny Huston. Sacha Gervasi’s film places the battle for Psycho as a delicate counterpoint to the crisis in the Hitchcock marriage.

Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography is not quite up to his usual standard in rendering the sixties technicolor feel to the piece.  The trick of having Ed Gein (the serial killer who inspired the original novel by Bloch) haunting various scenes as Hitchcock’s nemesis, is also questionable as is the drift in tone from comedy drama into psychological thriller that this entails.  James D’Arcy is edgy as the shy and diffident Anthony Perkins but lacks the characteristic spooky voice that was his calling card for the role. Support is well-cast and wonderful: Scarlett Johansson has poise and sparkling star quality as Janet Leigh, Toni Collette is a perky and switched-on studio girl Peggy Robertson, and Michael Stuhlbarg’s portrayal of Hitchcock’s shrewd agent has style and believability although none of these roles is really given much scope for character development.

As Alma, Helen Mirren is subtle in the quiet moments of pain she experiences as a woman who knows her relationship is in jeopardy to Hitchcock’s flirty blondes as much as her glorious Hollywood home and swimming pool. But she shines out as a strong and capable woman who punches above her well-toned weight in the creative partnership despite their very un-starry domestic arrangements.

Although lacking Hitchcock’s dark looks, Anthony Hopkins brings a layered sensitivity to the part, portraying him as a naughty boy in a marriage to Mirren’s ‘mean mummy’ who couches her frustration at always being the unseen contributor to his success.  But the in studios Hopkins evokes our pride and respect for this cinematic national treasure who comes across as very much his own man, who, despite human failings, pulls off a stroke of genius and is endowed with much more than just creative flair. MT

HITCHCOCK IS SCREENING AT CINEWORLD ACROSS LONDON FROM 8TH FEBRUARY 2013

Hyde Park On Hudson (2012) ***

Director: Roger Michell

Producer: Kevin Loader, David Aukin, Roger Michell

Script: Richard Nelson

Cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West,

95mins  UK Drama

Roger Michell is a South African director who brought us Notting Hill, Enduring Love and Venus.  Hyde Park on Hudson is a glossy and elegant outing with nostalgic echoes of The King’s Speech ‘American Presidential-style’ that centres on Franklin D Roosevelt’s “special relationship” with his distant cousin Margaret “Daisy” Stuckley based on correspondence discovered after her death.

The romantic story is underpinned by a much more interesting relationship that develops one weekend in 1939 when George VI, a very insecure ‘Bertie’  played sensitively here by Sam West, pays a Royal visit to Bill Murray’s FDR in his upstate New York residence.  He’s hoping to secure America’s backing for the impending Second World War.

The role of Franklin D Roosevelt showcases Bill Murray’s gutsy talents as an impishly ingenuous seductor and shrewd politician and West’s performance is a perfect foil for Murray’s charismatic President. Laura Linney as the sweetly naive Margaret narrates the story, which swings back and forth between the romance and the political shananigans, the latter proving far more fun and engaging. It also has Olivia Colman as a frosty Queen Elizabeth playing to Olivia Williams’s rather more outré Eleanor Roosevelt. And although the Royal pair rubs along well here, they are pale in comparison with Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter.

Lush and beautifully crafted, Hyde Park on Hudson is a deliciously lightweight historical concoction that will appeal to audiences looking for an entertaining costume drama without serious pretensions of the lengthy Lincoln and Les Mis. Great for an easy night out with transatlantic overtones.MT

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY

 

 

Antiviral (2012) **

Director/Writer: Brandon Cronenberg

Cast: Caleb Jones, Sarah Gadon

106mins     Fantasy Drama

Not being big on sci-fi but keen on David Cronenburg,  I wanted to know out of sheer curiousity, if the apple falls near to the tree, Cronenburg-wise.  And this is Brandon’s debut feature.  In many ways Antiviral has an challenging premise and very much a Cronenberg family feel to it: that punters could be infected with the viruses and cultured cell-lines taken from their favourites celebrities.

It has Hannah Geist as Sarah Gadon who’s infected with a fatal virus that Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) has to demystify and dismantle in order to save his own life.  And what emerges from this dystopian futuristic world of X Factor on speed is attractively packaged, visually exciting and tightly written but ultimately requires us to project our imaginations onto ideas and characters we care very little about and recognise even less. Don’t give up Brandon,  better luck next time! MT

 

Bullhead (2011) Runskopp ****

Director: Michael Roskam Cinematography: Nicolas Karakatsanis

Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeroen Perceval, Jeanne Dandoy, Barbara Sarafian

124mins Drama French/Dutch/Flemish

Matthias Shoenaerts is emerging as the thinking woman’s Jan Claude Van Damme. First we saw him as a beefy love-struck boxer in Rust and Bone, here he plays a muscle-bound farmer who harbours a tragic secret. You wouldn’t want to mess with him on a dark night.
Bullhead is a meaty hulk of a movie, packing a powerful punch as writer director Michael Roskam’s debut feature and Belgian’s 2012 entry to the foreign language section of the Oscars lost out to an equally strong but subtler opponent, A Separation.

It’s a difficult film to watch in many ways as it grapples with themes of impotency and loss of face, and deals with them in fractured narrative that works to its advantage in expressing the bleak and buttoned-up emotional paralysis of its central character who at outset declares expressively “In the end, we’re all fucked”. This is a bonding moment in the film: we know we’re in for a tough ride but a meaningful one. And that’s what Bullhead delivers.

The story revolves around Jacky Vanmarsenille played with potency by Matthias Schoenaerts, pumping as much testosterone into his own body due to his condition as the cows he breeds in a Belgian cattle community. Farming here is a male-dominated world where even the females are butch and mouthy and Dutch lends itself very well to mouthiness with its strong and fricative consonants – as we see in weighty turn from Barbara Sarafian as rival Eva Forrestier.

This is big sky country tempered with gentle morning mists nuzzling the fertile landscape. Jacky’s a raging bull in sheep’s clothing but underneath the macho bluster there’s a wounded ego desperate to connect with a woman but lacking the skills to know how. The woman concerned is Lucia Schepers (Jeanne Dandoy) a childhood love interest from a rival breeder, who re-emerge from the past. A testosterone-filled brain is hard-wired to avoid tenderness although that is what he needs most. Jacky’s tale is set against a storyline involving a fraternity of competitive farmers who scheme to outwit each other in a shady deal involving illegal beef.

Bullhead is gripping throughout, if you can keep your grip on the plot, and has a great supporting cast. But it’s really Matthias Schoenhaerts who carries this film with his magnetic emotional presence and corpulent physique echoing Robert De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull. MT

BULLHEAD OPENS AT THE BARBICAN ON 25TH JANUARY 2013 AND WILL BE ON GENERAL RELEASE THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND THROUGHOUT LONDON AND THE SOUTH EAST.

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The Tenant (1976) ****

Director: Roman Polanski,

Writers: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach.

Cast: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Shelley Winters, Jo Van Fleet

Producers: Andrew Braunsberg, Alain Sarde

Original Music: Philippe Sarde

126mins **** Thriller

The Tenant is the last in the ‘Apartment Trilogy’ following Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby and is a faithful adaptation of the 1964 novel Le Locataire Chimerique. Not only does Roman Polanski play the leading role of Trelkovsky, a Polish emigré, in this twisted psychodrama, but it could also be described as his most obliquely “personal” film and a allegory of the outsider in society: a self-parody his public image and of the elements that his audiences have taken as being distinctively ‘Polanskian’.

Dark and unsettling and steeped in doom, it is a portrait of paranoia centering on a shy and retiring bank clerk who rents a Paris apartment from which the former tenant committed suicide. While Trelkovsky remains a cypher, he gradually takes on the guise of Simone Choule, the previous occupant of the rue des Pyrénées.

It’s a commandingly persuasive and subtle performance from Polanski and so pervasive that you actually start to question your own sanity as the storyline unravels. Strangely he received no acting credit for the role.  It demonstrates Polanski’s particularly brand of enigmatic psychosis: the outsider’s descent into self-inflicted purgatory that eventually becomes self-fulfilling or does it?   Underscored by a suavely syncopated soundtrack from Philippe Sarde and a standout cameo by Shelley Winters as the concierge; this is quintessential seventies Polanski. MT

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THE TENANT IS SCREENING AS PART OF A MAJOR POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, LONDON DURING JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2013

Django Unchained (2012)


Dir: Quentin Tarantino | Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo Di Caprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson, Walton Scoggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, David Steen, Dana Michelle Gourrier, Nichole Galicia, Laura Cayouette, Ato Eassandoh, Sammi Rotibi, Clay Donahue Fontenot, Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, James Russo | US  165mins 2012 Western

It is very easy to be up in arms about this film for any given reason: for the violence; the Black story being told by a white man; for politically correct motivations and so on. Tarantino has long been a fan of the Western and Spaghetti Westerns in particular. Django Unchained was a long time in the making; ten years, infact, and it came following an illustrious and not so illustrious line of ‘Django’ Spaghetti Western films.

Like it or not, the slave trade is a (deeply regrettable) part of history for black and white alike. To see it on the screen with just a minute few of its countless atrocities witnessed has to be a good thing. How many times do we see twee period dramas, all spotless lace and heaving corsets, ignoring the reality that made it all possible? How often is the Black experience, the Black story ignored?

So here we have black actors portraying a true facsimile of what it was to live then. Interesting on several levels, not least of which being that here is a $100M movie, that millions are going to see now it’s on Netflix, populated by a massive Black cast and with a Black lead.

All of that aside and moving onto the film itself, is it any good? Well, yes it is. After a terrible blip in the risible Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino returns to form with a really well-constructed, well-thought out and well-made film. The locations, in the Californian Alabama Hills, Jackson, Wyoming and New Orleans in the Deep South, are simply stunning, with Tarantino concerned to use the real and not CGI to create authenticity.

On top of the general genre of Western and the Black/White slave thing, it’s a story of empowerment, of love and of sacrifice and there are many notable cameos: Don Johnson; Bruce Dern; James Russo. But the stand out performances belong to Jamie Foxx and Di Caprio. Di Caprio is as guilty as any of being in some steaming turds in his time, but then, isn’t every actor? He was also always a good actor. Anyone witnessing him in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape could see that. Here, given free rein and the time to really inhabit his plantation-owning character, Calvin Candie, he really pulls off something special.

Foxx is asked for a truly committed performance and committed he is; his journey from slavery to freedom about a man learning to inhabit himself when even his name is not his own, is a well-drawn one, albeit attuned to a wide audience, rather than the sensibilities of an arthouse one.

We’ve moved on a great deal in the past decade since the film premiered and the argument will continue to run and run as to violence depicted in the cinema and its impact upon the viewing public, but it would have been a bigger crime to remove the teeth from a film about slavery and thus somehow sanitise it, than not. AT

NOW ON NETFLIX

 

Underground (1928) ***

Director: Anthony Asquith
Script: Anthony Asquith
Cast: Elissa Landi, Brian Aherne, Norah Baring, Cyril McLaglen

UK  94mins 1928 Thriller

Asquith shot this feature in the final years of the silent movies, penned by himself at the tender age of 26. The son of prominent politician HH Asquith, Anthony made several notable films including Pygmalion; The Importance Of Being Earnest; The Browning Version and The Yellow Rolls Royce. He always favoured adapting stage-plays, in particular the works of Terrence Rattigan, rather than opening out to the more specifically cinematic unlike his fellow filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock.

Having undergone extensive restoration, made possible only by recent developments in digital technology, Underground is here being released to mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground and what a remarkable snapshot it proves to be of London life in the 1920’s, showing more than a brief glimpse of what the Tube looked like back in the day.

Many of the locations are recognisable, albeit a world away from the underground we now know and there is also a fine scene upon an open topped bus as it swings through the streets of a bygone era. Brian Aherne is the Ticket Collector who falls in love with Elissa Landi one day whilst at work, Cyril McLaglen the rival for her affections.

Despite Asquith’s sensibilities, this is a lower working class tale from top to bottom, a story of the proletariat; the tube worker, the shop-girl, seamstress and electrician, all scraping a threadbare existence in bedsit-land London, managing to steal a moment of joy, a smile, from wherever they can get it in the daily grind that is the Smoke.

‘Underground’ takes a while to get going and again, the acting technique of the day -what was expected from the actors- can at times feel very stagey and melodramatic, but by the end, Asquith has successfully ramped up the jeopardy even for today’s audiences. The denouement is undeniably tense and moving aided and abetted by Neil Brand’s score (played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra) exploring the dark as much as the bright facets to love and the potential consequences of jealousy and a love thwarted.

In terms of directing, Asquith is quite assured for one so young and employs some finetechniques with panache, especially towards the end. There are also some diverting cameos, but the final word must go to the fifth lead of the piece: London in the 20’s. What an amazing backdrop it is. For me, in true Cockney geezer style, it manages to run away with the film. AT

At the BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide from January 11th 2013

What Richard Did (2012)

 

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Cast: Jack Reynor, Roisin Murphy, Sam Keeley, Lars Mikkelsen

Drama     Ireland  87mins

Based on the book ‘Bad Day In Black Rock’ by Kevin Power and a script by erstwhile jobbing writer Malcolm Campbell, who came up through TV with notable work on The Bill, Skins, andShameless, among others, this is a fine debut from Director Lenny Abrahamson.

This is a new generation of film, used as we are to some (quite wonderful) films about The Troubles, What Richard Did comes as a breath of fresh air and paints what feels to be a very authentic, poised and evocative story of the next generation of Ireland’s youth.

The ensemble cast is superbly pitched by one and all, with crucial cameos (Gabrielle Reidy particularly) finely played, making this unassuming little gem a very well-judged, mature and beautiful meditation on coming of age and the nature of friendship.

The music is sparse and unobtrusive, the soundscape gentle and the cinematography unfussy, measured and translucent, sensitively edited by Nathan Nugent, allowing crucial space for the performances and all of these elements come together to reward the audience with a really genuine and moving experience. AT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT RICHARD DID IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 JANUARY 2013 AT CURZON CINEMAS AND THE RITZY PICTUREHOUSE, LONDON.

Midnight Son (2011) ***

Director/Writer : Scott Lebrecht
Cast: Zak Kilberg, Maya Parish, Jo D. Jonz, Arlen Escarpeta, Larry Cedar, Juanita Jennings

USA  88mins  Vampire Drama

Director Scott Lebrecht bills his debut Midnight Son as a “thinking man’s horror film”.  I wonder what impact he’s hoping his film will have on female audiences?  Well it’s certainly not aimed at the teenage market but hopes to approach the genre in a mature and sensitive way while appealing to the “monster-movie-loving kid inside us all”.

And he’s certainly picked an excellent male lead in ZAK Kilberg; a Robert Pattinson lookalike with acting skills honed in TV’s ‘Lincoln Heights’, ZAK (a sobriquet for his initials) possesses a haunted, gap-toothed frailty that’s perfect for the role of Jacob, a vapid security guard with a congenital skin condition that prevents him from spending time in sunlight.

 

Mostly shot at close range with a grainy feel and bleak urban locations, this unsettling but not overwhelming modern vampire story is unmistakedly indie fare.  From the clanging opening sequence (scored by Kays Al-Atrakchi) we meet Jacob scoffing down the contents of his ‘fridge with a hunger that clearly indicates some kind of illness or mental aberration.  But it’s not until he drains the polystyrene tray of his supermarket steak that this signifies blood-lust. Very soon he’s hanging around the clinical waste bins at the local hospital and decanting blood products offered to him by a crooked hospital orderly called Marcus (‘Everybody’s got their thing’) into Starbucks paper cups for his journey to work.

Jacob hooks up with Mary (Maya Parish) and develops strange physical changes when her nose starts to bleed during love-making.  But there’s nothing rapacious or outlandish about his reactions and, on her part, it sparks off a desire to care for him. The chemistry between them is subtlely played but meaningful and Maya Parish brings a sexy sensitivity to her role as a hobo with a kind heart that echoes Let The Right One In. Less successful is the twist involving hospital crim Marcus (Jo D. Jonz) and the FBI but don’t let this put you off what’s otherwise a worthwhile and watchable addition to the Vampire genre. MT

MIDNIGHT SON IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11TH JANUARY AND COMES OUT ON DVD THROUGH MONSTER PICTURES ON 11 FEBRUARY 2013 (£13.99).

Roman Polanski’s short films (1957-61) ****

Roman Polanski talks about his early life in the recent Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir and the events leading up to success at  securing a place at the prestigious Lodz film school in the late fifties. Here he made a series of short films themed around voyeurism, victimisation and violence.  His screen debut at Lodz was The Crime (1957) a 3-minute silent film about a gratuitous murder. Next up was Toothful Smile (1957) about a Peeping Tom who gets an alarming surprise as he watches a young girl through her apartment window.  Already setting the tone of subversion and subterfuge, Polanski followed these with a mockumentary piece: Breaking Up The Party (1957) where he actually arranged for a gang of hoodlums to arrive and sabotage a get-together between friends, creating the perfect situation for improvisation. Rather than viewing this idea as highly original and ingenious, the School took a dim view of his efforts and threatened him with expulsion. Even his tutor Andrzej Munk was appalled by the stint but stood by him and his unusual endeavour and accepted it as part and parcel of Polanski’s burgeoning creative talent and unusual line in storytelling.

Theatre of the absurd piece Two Men and a Wardrobe followed in 1958. The filming was disrupted by outbursts of uncontrollable anger from Polanski: he stormed off the set several times leaving the cast and crew bewildered only to return later to complete the shoot (according to his biographer John Parker). Two Men was to earn him a prize at the 1958 Brussels World Fair and a great deal of respect in international circles followed in its wake. It also heralded his commitment to work with only the creme de la creme of the film world and to seek excellence and perfection in all his collaborators.

When Angels Fall (1959) was Polanski’s first foray into colour and his graduation film from the Lodz School. Taken from a short story ‘Kloset Babcia’, it tells of a lavatory attendant who is forced to witness an endless stream of males relieving themselves in front of her. The lavatory attendant was played by a elderly non-professional but he hired a young actress to play her character in flashback, in the shape of Barbara Lass. He fell in love with Barbara during filming and she became his first wife later starring in Rene Clement’s Che Gioa Vivere (1961) with Alain Delon.

In 1961 Polanski made The Fat and The Lean: a two-hander portrait of power and domination seen through the eyes of a servant and master. Dominance and humiliation where themes that Polanski was to revisit time and time again in Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and even Chinatown.

THE BFI, SOUTHBANK ARE SCREENING A SELECTION OF POLANSKI’S SHORTS AS PART OF A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE STARTING ON 1 JANUARY 2013.

Chinatown (1974) *****

Director: Roman Polanski

Script:    Robert Towne
Producer: Robert Evans
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Burt Young

US 1974 *****    Mystery Drama

Nicholson’s private eye struggles to stay afloat in Polanski’s stylish, classic noir, set in pre-war Los Angeles. The first film as producer for Bob Evans, ex-Head of Paramount Studios, was not altogether a bad place to start. Nominated upon its release in 1974 for 11 Oscars, it only eventually managed to walk away with one; for the script by Robert Towne.

And what a script. It is said in the industry that it is quite possible to make a bad film from a good script, but entirely impossible to make a good film from a bad script. Held up now as ‘The Perfect Script’ and a byword in how best to construct and write a screenplay for film schools around the world, Towne’s only thought at the time was to ‘make it make sense’. It took him 9-months to complete a first 180-page draft and then a rather arduous couple of months with the director painstakingly going through a rewrite, entailing bits of paper stuck all over the wall whilst they worked out the plot and how it needed to unfold.

The genesis, as is so often the case, is interesting in itself. Towne, who had previously written a fair amount for TV and had also done some uncredited work on Bonnie & Clyde and The Godfather, had a screenplay stuck in ‘turn around’ called The Last Detail. Homeless, in need of money and casting around for ideas whilst he waited for Detail to go, Towne turned to his ex-roommate Jack Nicholson and said ‘What if I wrote a detective story set in L.A. of the ‘30s?’ Jack responded- ‘Great’.

Looking around LA, he had realised that there was a fair amount still there in terms of architecture from the 40s, a time he could still remember. He also liked the concept, based upon LA’s own dubious history, of having a story of power and corruption at the highest level rather than just a basic play-by-numbers murder mystery; “Water and Power” was infact an early candidate for the film’s title. Accordingly, he went off and did a load of research, read some Chandler and set to work.

Of great advantage to its realisation was that many involved in the project were old friends. Towne, Warren Beatty, Nicholson, Polanski and Hal Ashby were all dining companions, as were exemplary Production and Costume designers Richard and Anthea Sylbert. Had they not been the film, in all probability, would never have happened. But Polanski was looking to work with Nicholson and he was also first choice of director for Chinatown by Producer Bob Evans, who wanted a darker feel to the movie than he thought an American director might bring to the table.

Prior to Chinatown, Nicholson would never have been considered as a lead actor. Indeed, he had also had quite a few lean years before he launched; even his agent had recommended that he ‘go get a proper job’. But Towne always wrote with Nicholson in mind for the part of Gittes. The part of Evelyn Mulwray had been intended for Ali McGraw, wife of Evans, but she forfeited the role when she left him to be with Steve McQueen. Julie Christie then turned it down, so both producer and director were happy with the choice of Faye Dunaway.

Alot went wrong. Off the bat, shooting went badly, with Polanski’s Cinematographer Stanley Cortez fired soon after production began because his cumbersome classical style failed to match the fleet-footed naturalistic style Polanski wanted for the film. He had initially wanted William A Fraker, his collaborator on Rosemary’s Baby, but producer Evans felt that this alliance of DoP and Director might prove too difficult to control, so nixed it.

Late in Post Production, they also realised that the score by Phillip Lambro was all wrong and so brought in Jerry Goldsmith at the eleventh hour, with only ten days to (inspirationally) re-score the film. Interestingly, Polanski also elected to remove the Gittes explanatory voiceover in Post, thus allowing the audience to discover the plot at the same time as the detective and this masterstroke proved key to the film’s success.

The feeling by the end of all the trials and tribulations was that it was going to be a flop, but early screenings indicated otherwise: and the rest, as they say, is history.

Chinatown is an amazing blend of talents; all filmmaking is a collaborative process, so there are legion ways that it can all go pear-shaped. But Polanski’s meticulous attention to detail; in the casting, the lighting, the design and his use of camera and camera grammar is seamless to the point where as a viewer, of course, you don’t notice it at all. You are simply pulled in by the power of the piece as a whole. It’s a brilliant film that carries you along, suspended in a timeless thrall, from start to finish.

Towne had originally intended Chinatown to be the first in a trilogy, the second part being The Two Jakes, later directed by Nicholson himself. Principally though, he was just relieved to have pushed through with a successful script, on the eve of turning forty; happy that his ageing father could now relax and that his next films would get made. He indeed went on to write a great many successful films, including Shampoo, The Missouri Breaks, Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Tequila Sunrise, Days Of Thunder and Mission Impossible. Robert Towne, the Legend, started here. AT

 

CHINATOWN WILL BE RELEASING AS PART OF A MAJOR POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK FROM 4 JANUARY 2013 + SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

 

Roman Polanski Retrospective at the BFI January and February 2013

Possibly the most notorious and provocative talents of international cinema, Roman Polanski is known for his precision direction and hauntingly moving films that plummet the depths of the human psyche often showcasing the loner, the underdog, the marginalised or the misunderstood.  But his protagonists don’t elicit pity: the women are often scheming and the men cold-blooded. Does his work stem from his experiences of an early life of oppression and sadness? Undoubtedly. His films can strongly evoke our feelings but are they ever intimate?  Polanski’s interest is in the behaviour of his characters under stress, when they are no longer in comfortable, everyday situations where they can afford to respect the conventional rules and morals of society, a theme that runs through all his thrillers from The Ghost,  Carnage and The Pianist to  Frantic, The Tenant, Cul de Sac and Bitter Moon.

Unlike many film directors, Polanski doesn’t have favourite actors but surrounds himself with a coterie of the best industry professionals: Cinematographer Pawel Edelman; Composers Krzysztof Komeda and Philippe Sarde and his brother as producer Alain Sarde; Scriptwriters Ronald Harwood and Gérard Brach. His meticulously crafted psycho-dramas are often uncomfortable to watch, drawing the audience into a private world of painful compulsion or twisted psychology: of servant and master, of an unhappy partnership; of a man trounced by his wife or an unhappy partnership or brought down by his own petty insecurities or the system. Apart from his most successfully acclaimed works such as Chinatown, The Pianist or the Rosemary’s Baby there are some niche thrillers that never made it at the box office but nevertheless offer insight into his creative genius in projecting the traumatic and the macabre such as The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Tragedy of Macbeth and the Ninth Gate.  He also made a selection of short films during his time as a student at the prestigious Lodz film school in the late fifties

Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant and Repulsion form part of the ‘apartment trilogy’ portraying  emotional trauma in social alienation. His forays into edgy psycho-sexual themes in Repulsion, Tess and Bitter Moon tap into the subconscious in a unique way. From early success in pristine black and white with Knife in the Water and Cul de Sac to his more questionable films such as What? (described as an oversexed version of Alice in Wonderland) and The Fearless Vampire Killers, and his recent outings with The Ghost and Carnage and upcoming Venus in Furs (2013); Polanski never fails to move, to provoke and to entertain.

Other features in this Roman Polanski
 retrospective are the Academy Award-winning Tess (1979), an adaptation of Hardy’s classic novel (which had been suggested to him by his late wife Sharon Tate), the comedy swashbuckler Pirates (1986), followed closely by the thriller Frantic (1988), starring Harrison Ford as an American in Paris whose wife mysteriously disappears from their hotel room. His later work has shown a great diversity in subject matter and themes, including the revenge drama Death and the Maiden (1995), adapted by Ariel Dorfman from his own play, and the occult drama The Ninth Gate (1999).

But it was The Pianist (Le Pianiste, 2002) that reminded both audiences and critics, once again, of his remarkable talent. The film won awards around the world for the powerful depiction of a Jewish man in hiding from the Nazis and confirmed the importance of his films in the context of world cinema. Polanski continues to make films that explore a darker side of life with The Ghost (2010) and Carnage (2011), his work remaining thought-provoking with great appeal to audiences of all ages.

His latest film, a drama entitled Venus In Fur (2013) features his current wife, Emmanuelle Seigner as an actress who attempts to convince a director to cast her in his upcoming movie.  Venus In Fur is due for release in the UK later this year. MT

During January and February 2013 the BFI celebrates Roman Polanski together with a programme of his short Films in a major retrospective that begins on 1 JANUARY 2013 AT BFI SOUTHBANK.

 

 

Quartet (2012)

Director: Dustin Hoffman     Producer: Finola Dwyer, Stewart Mackinnon

Cast: Tom Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Sheridan Smith, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly

UK     97mins             Comedy

Ronald Harwood adapted his own 1999 stage-play of the same name for this big screen outing.  A long time in the making, Tom Courtenay originally had the desire to make this film with his long-term friend and compatriot, Albert Finney. However, the project resolutely refused to move forwards until Dustin Hoffman came aboard to direct, quite late on in the project, where most of the leads were already cast. That other inveterate irascible Billy Connolly takes Finney’s part.

Harwood deserves to be both a household name and undoubtedly a National Treasure, alongside Stephen Fry and Sir David Attenborough; his huge career has seen an Oscar and some extraordinary, enduring and diverse scripts, such as The Dresser, The Browning Version, The Pianist and The Diving Bell And The Butterfly.       

It is often difficult with all-star casts to divorce the actors from the part enough to enjoy the piece in and of itself; this said Quartet is an enjoyable enough romp, funny and moving, the actors are in fine fettle, stars certainly, but I’m not convinced that I ever believed they were opera singers. There is no doubt however, that this film will have any problem finding an appreciative audience.

As Maggie Smith opined later in the conference, too few films are made for a more mature audience and, that being the case, there is a hungry mob out there who cannot wait to see their own favourites back up on the big screen again. All of the ensemble cast are ex-professional singers and musicians and they obviously still have it, so it is great testament to the film that they are given this opportunity to shine again and let’s hope more films begin to see the advantages of appealing to a more mature audience, both in terms of enjoyment, but also no doubt, returns…AT

McCullin (2012) *****

Director:    David Morris, Jacqui Morris
Producer:  Jacqui Morris
Cast:          Don McCullin

93mins       Documentary

[youtube id=”7VWjo5XUIfw” width=”600″ height=”350″]

As a young man he delighted in the excitement of action and covered most of the world’s conflicts from the Congo, Lebanon, Biafra, Vietnam (fifteen times) and Northern Ireland. His dedication and sensitivity to the subjects he photographed made him a household name by the Seventies.

Quite aside from the extraordinary catalogue of photographs that we are here privy to, it’s the unfolding of one man’s very personal journey as much as the stories behind the pictures that makes this film so moving. Some of the photos are almost impossible to look at such is their power.  And it’s Don McCullin’s facing of himself through his subject matter, mostly of men, women and children dying in the most desperate of circumstances, that is so captivating.

He attempts to explain why he documented what he filmed and the times and reasons that he did not: that he felt that he was doing a service to humanity by telling stories that could only be told by photographing them and sending them back to the magazine. He fervently hoped they would make maximum impact after Sunday breakfast back home in Blighty. But he was never comfortable, always questioning both his own ethic and also what was suitable and what was not.

There are also some simply joyous photographs of England in the Fifties, a lost age captured and preserved here in a raw and real way. McCullin always endeavoured to empathise with his subjects; this was the source of his initial breakout success and he adhered to it for the rest of his professional career, literally going into war zones with soldiers and mercenaries alike to get the photo verité rather than dabbling at the edges. This methodology cost him dear.

David and Jacqui Morris have triumphed with this documentary, sensibly retaining an almost invisible profile, content just to let the story tell itself. Yesterday’s news this definitely ain’t. You cannot fail to be moved. AT

 

West of Memphis (2012) ****

Director: Amy Berg  

Writers: Amy Berg, Billy McMillin

Producers: Damien Echols, Lorri Davis, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh

Score: Nick Cave

146mins             Crime Documentary

A big hit at Sundance this year, the West of Memphis story was so ‘fresh off the press’ with some of the real life interviews having taken place just days before its opening at the festival’s 2012.

Amy Berg’s compelling documentary tells of the Memphis 3:  Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley who were eventually freed in August 2011 after serving nearly 20 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit but remain nevertheless guilty of in the eyes of the Law and will never be fully declared innocent.

Berg has assembled a dazzling array of interviews, timelines, and news footage together with graphic photos and videos from the crime scene to describe how three young boys were murdered on the night of May 5th 1993, and how the Memphis were convicted erroneously of their crime and the twists and turns that finally lead to their release from prison due to a crowd-sourced campaign led by Damien Echols’ wife Lorri Davis (they married whilst he was in jail) and support of well-known personalities including filmmaker Peter Jackson, Pam Hobbs, whose husband Terry who is now seen as the chief suspect,  and an upswell of public opinion.  It’s a fascinating insight into the outrageous workings of the criminal justice system and an testament to a story of injustice that looks like it will never be put to rights. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD

 

Love Crime (2010) **

Director/Writer: Alain Corneau

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier,

French with subtitles

104mins  Thriller

 

Thomas Middleton declared ‘Women Beware Women” in his Jacobian tragedy of 1657. And Alain Corneau once again proves that there’s nowhere as competitive as the workplace for women and their own sex.

In his final film, he takes this theme and explores it to the full using the provocative chemistry of Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier as his leads in a highly charged ‘erotic’ thriller.

It’s a well-judged casting: the coquettish Ludivine Sagnier as Isabelle in a powerplay with Kristin Scott Thomas’s experienced older woman. After a titillating opening sequence you wonder if this is a lesbian arrangement? No, it soon emerges that these two feisty females are boss and protege in a powerplay that plays out in the boardroom of a French multinational where sexual competition seems less important to them than a coveted New York job. And although Corneau and Carter’s script lacks believability, it’s held together by his lusty leading ladies but eventually loses steam. No matter how manipulative Ludivine Sagnier’s methods are Kristin Scott Thomas’s acting skills were always going to eclipse her French counterpart.

The Brian de Palma remake Passion using Rachel McAdams and Noomi Repace premiered at Toronto this year and by all accounts was not an improvement on this original version. MT

Chasing Ice (2012)

Director:  Jeff Orlowski      Writer: Mark Monroe

Cast:  James Balog, Svavar Jonatasson, Adam LeWinter

USA           Documentary             76mins

If I were able to give this six stars, I would. If I were able to make it statutory viewing for anyone in any position of power; in industry, in commerce, in politics in religion or in state, I would.

Presumably, anyone going to see this is already clued in to global warming and the state of the planet, so in the main, this film will only ever preach to the converted, which is its eternal shame. This said, it is also a stunning visual feast. James Balog is an eminent and quite brilliant photographer, who has committed his life to photographing ice in all its resplendent timeless, awesome (in the true sense of the word) glory.

Balog has spent most of the last decade travelling to the likes of Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Glacier national Park, Bolivia, Canada, Nepal and the Alps perfecting time-lapse cameras that will operate in vast wastelands in -40 degrees to capture the receding glaciers around the world and tabulate in concrete form, the true visible impact of global warming and chart in a manner that the average person can understand, the rate at which the ice worldwide is melting, never to be replaced.

Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski decided to commit his filmmaking efforts to projects that he felt had importance and therefore an impact on global humanity and his decision to follow the driven visionary that is James Balog was an inspired one. We aren’t subjected to endless diatribes, graphs and crusty, bearded boffins lecturing us on concepts that, even if we wanted to, we simply cannot grasp. Instead, we are witness to some quite remarkable footage and stunning stills of ice and light from around the world, which tell their own story in an unarguable, horrific, monumental simplicity that absolutely anyone can understand.

‘Global Warming’ has almost become a swear word in the English lexicon. As soon as the word is uttered, people will spring onto one side of the fence or the other so it has quickly become a taboo topic of conversation as it will tear apart the politest of parties. Orlowski’s stance is unequivocal but quite beautifully stated; the silence thereafter, deafening. AT

AT THE RITZY (PICTUREHOUSE) BRIXTON FROM 3 DECEMBER AND THEN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 DECEMBER 2012 www.chasingice.co.uk

 

Babette’s Feast (1987) Bfi Player

 

Dir:  Gabriel Axel | Cast: Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson | Denmark  Drama | 102mins

Based on Karen Blixen’s 1950 short story, originally set in Norway, but here transposed to 19th Century Jutland by Franco-Danish director Gabriel Axel, the project initially struggled to launch. For 14 years, Danish producers proved somewhat recalcitrant. Babette’s Feast finally received finance from the Danish Film Institute, a funding body actively encouraging independent productions. A remarkable tale in itself, when one considers the films enduring worldwide appeal, amply illustrated by wins including Cannes and BAFTA, topped off with a Best Foreign Film Oscar. But, notably, nothing in Denmark. Interesting.

Broadly then, a film about the relationship between spirituality and sensuality, translated here to the microcosm of a small, windswept coastal village, governed in totality by a stern Lutheran pastor and father to two beautiful women; the quintessence of stifled austerity.

Upon the original release, Axel was interviewed by Sight & Sound and, when quizzed upon the finer details of the film, he responded: “I was asked recently if I was a believer, if I thought the Church has a role. All I can say is that in Babette’s Feast, there’s a minister, but it’s not a film about religion. There’s a General, but it’s not a film about the army. There’s a cook, but it’s not a film about cooking. It’s a fairy tale and if you try to over explain it, you destroy it”.

It is so often evident, especially with period dramas, when it was made. A 1940s version of Sense and Sensibility is markedly different from one made in the 1970s, and all are watermarked indelibly with their decade; by the production and prevailing style of the day. But Axel’s austere, minimalist, piece, set in a time and a place where there was little to get excited about- even if you well went out and looked for it- has aged tremendously well; the human, nuanced performances timeless depictions of… well, humans through the Ages. The responses and reactions feel real. Nothing is forced by plot. It all just unfolds naturally and unhurriedly, but so lucidly. It’s basically the epitome of what you go to the movies for and now available on Bfiplayer from a new digital transfer. AT

NOW On BFI PLAYER

 

Baraka (1992)

Director: Ron Fricke

Original Music: Michael Stearns

92min  Documentary

If you enjoyed Samsara, here is Ron Fricke having fun with his lenses again, capturing human life and the natural world in a stunning re-release to celebrate its 20th Anniversary.

Once again he takes us through a awesome array of time lapse sequences from a gently meditative monkey to baby chicks tumbling through the food system likening them to commuters sprewing through Grand Central station at rush hour. Fricke touches on all the major religions offering up images of peace and tranquility contrasted with the horrors of the Auschwitz, now quiet and weirdly eerie. He makes no comment, only beautiful pictures.

There is beauty, cruelty, wonder and death here: a sequence on the Ganges introduces a spark of humour as a woman takes out her false teeth and rinses them in the holy waters while further down the bank we witness the shocking burning of corpses, all in a day’s work.

Travelling through 24 countries on 77mm film stock to a hypnotic soundtrack, Baraka is an exotic holiday for the eyes and a soothing balm for the senses leaving you relaxed and ready for the Christmas rush.

BARAKA HAS WON VARIOUS AWARDS INCLUDING THE FIPRESCI AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE ON THE YEAR OF ITS RELEASE.

Out on 14th December 2012 in the Curzon Mayfair and Panton Street W1.  Click on the images below for the DVD and BLU-RAY information.

You Will Be My Son (2011)***

Director/Screenplay: Gilles Legrand

Cast: Niels Arestrup, Patrick Chesnais, Anne Marivan, Lorant Deutsch, Nicolas Bridet

102min  French with Subtitles

Family dysfunction, wine-making and inheritance are the themes that gently ferment in this well-made and watchable French drama set in the renowned vineyards of Saint Emilion, Bordeaux. Gilles Legrand adapted the screenplay from the 19th novel and cleverly blends wine trade terminology and its deep-seated traditions and snobbery of terroir into this full-bodied study of family politics and professional rivalry. It stars Niels Arestrup as a truculent widowed dad who owns a successful domaine with his talented viticulteur Francois, a quietly powerful Patrick Chesnais.

But all’s not well in Paradise: Francois has a terminal illness and Paul is not convinced that his son Martin is equipped to carry the business forward retaining the prestige of his fine wine. And Francois’s son, Phillippe, just back from a California winery, is more suitable for the job.

You Will Be My Son is the sort film Claude Chabrol might have made back in the sixties with more overtly sinister undertones.  Legrand’s characters are supremely believable and the storyline is appealing and plausible. But what makes this so enjoyable, apart from Yves Angelo’s striking visuals, are the strong performances from Patrick Chesnais, Nicolas Bridet (as his son Phillippe) and Lorant Deutsch as Martin. Anne Marivan is also convincing as Martin’s wife Alice, who stands up to Paul in a feisty turn.

Niels Arestrup is particularly powerful as Paul. He’s a versatile actor who can be warm and paternalistic as in War Horse or distant and uncomprimsing as in Our Children and here in this portrait of a bitter and sadistic old man intent on blocking his son’s chances of inheritance with unexpected consequences for all concerned. Wine buffs with love this foray into the world of wine. MT

SHOWING AT THE CINE LUMIERE FROM 7-21 DECEMBER 2012

A FREE GLASS OF CLOSERIE DE FOURTET WILL BE OFFERED TO EVERY CINEMA-GOER (OVER 18) ON THE OPENING WEEKEND OF RELEASE IN ENGLAND.

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Director/Writer: Martin McDonagh

109mins UK/USA Comedy

Cast: Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish

In Bruges goes to California here on a less successful jaunt.

If you laughed all through In Bruges you won’t find this latest outing from Martin DcDonagh nearly as funny. In Bruges is a hard act to follow and the day I saw this at the London Film Festival the place was full of film students who were laughing sycophantically throughout detracting from the moments of this black comedy that were funny.

True, it’s a sparky little number but feels too self-conscious for its own good.  If you do go you won’t be disappointed by the stellar cast though: Once again McDonagh’s teamed up with Colin Farrell who’s just right as Marty, a self-mocking Irish writer working on a script called Seven Psychopaths. On the plus side too, it has Christopher Walken as Hans, a weirdly likeable long-term criminal in partnership with Sam Rockwell’s mysogynist failed actor Billy, a role that he manages to make both charming and off-the-wall. In a convoluted storyline, Hans and Billy have kidnapped a fluffy dog from Charlie (Woodie Harrelson), an arch bad-guy who’s distraught at the loss of his pet and planning his revenge here as another silly baddy, a style which he’s perfected since No Kingdom for Old Men.

Take this jaunt as light comedy that applauds the very things it pillories, or see if you can find anything deeper in the convoluted Tarantino-style violence blended with the silliness of The Darjeeling Limited. MT

Great Expectations (2012)

Director: Mike Newell              Screenplay:  David Nicholls

Cast: Helelna Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane, Holliday Grainger, Ewan Bremner, Jason Flemyng, Toby Irvine.

128mins     Drama adaptation of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens could have been a scriptwriter: his work is highly visual with a terrific range of emotion and characterisation.  There are comedic elements and complex storylines involving the intricate social politics and history of the day. The coming of age classic Great Expectations (1861) has had many screen adaptations with David Lean’s definitive 1946 version arguably hard to beat with its spectacular graveside opening scene.

And Dickens also created great dialogue.  David Nicholls (One Day), who adapted the screenplay for this version, calls it the most “humane, warm, emotional” of all Dickens’s novels, depicting, from his experience, “that awful period between when we want to escape our childhood selves before knowing what we really want to aspire to”.

Filmed partly at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire and partly in an underground disused factory teeming with rats, this latest outing is certainly warmly emotional and dark, quite literally: But do we really need another version of the film?  Does Mike Newell have anything new to bring to the table with the story of Pip Pirrip, a boy who goes from rags to riches: the 21st century equivalent of winning the National Lottery?.

Helena Bonham Carter heads a starry cast, in a hairpiece to die for, as a foxily haughty Miss Haversham.  As mistress of the put-down, she also has a warm and sensitive heart burning through her frosty exterior (especially when it catches fire) and her coterie of mannered acolytes inject a glint of humour in one or two comic set pieces. As Young Pip, Toby Irvine is well cast in his screen debut.  Jeremy Irvine wanted to create a “more driven” Pip for the main role, adding a certain hard-nosed edge “bred out of childhood poverty and emotional abuse” to the part.  He manages his gentrification well, complete with plummy accent, and also conveys the heart-pinging emotion of teenage love in palpable on-screen chemistry with Holliday Grainger who shines as Estella.  Ralph Fiennes is strong as the sinister Magwitch.  Robbie Coltrane plays the indifferent solicitor Jagger, who can shave a moral principle ‘as fine as paper’ and has the great line: “to be guilty and to be found guilt are two very different things”. Olly Alexander is a convincingly kind Herbert Pocket.               

Faithful to the era, some interior shots seem to rely on natural firelight or candlelight à la Barry Lyndon. The outside scenes are mostly gloomy giving an impression of black silhouetted figures flitting across rainy streets or windy landscapes which is very effective.  Flashbacks are shot as blurred-edged vignettes through a looking glass.

All in all, it’s a skilful piece of filmmaking with some great performances and a gorgeous visual aesthetic. David Nicholls’s meaningful screenplay successfully brings through the emotion of teenage romance and there are some moving and humane moments accurately reflecting the original novel.  Mike Newell has given the archives a version which engages our sympathies and has a beating heart and a warm soul.  At just over two hours it’s a tad long; but on balance this is a great Expectations. MT

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I, Anna (2012) ****

Director:  Barnaby Southcombe   Screenplay: Barnaby Southcombe, Elsa Lewin (Novel)

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Hayley Atwell, Eddie Marsan

93mins       Drama

If your mother was Charlotte Rampling you’d be delighted to have her in your film, particularly your screen debut.  And I, Anna is very much a family affair and one that stays in the memory due to la Rampling’s mesmerising turn as a divorcée with a foxy past, great legs and a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’; despite her reduced circumstances on the man front.  As Anna Welles, she’s lonely in a small flat somewhere near the Barbican and lamenting the dearth of desirable males.  Hayley Atwell, as her daughter, suggests some ways of extending her circle and she flips through the usual suspects who naturally don’t appeal.  Then one night she emerges with wrist injuries from the home of another unsuitable candidate and later runs into Gabriel Byrne as Detective Bernie Reid. The chemistry is instant, but it turns out he’s investigating a murder and Anna may be connected.

Cleverly adapted from the novel by Elsa Lewin, I, Anna is one of those subtle and ambiguous thrillers where no one appears to be straightforward least of all the main characters and these two actors are past masters at portraying the obsessive and the uncertain.  Charlotte Rampling simmers seductively in trench coat and stockings, tension mounts in seedy hotels rooms and dark, rainy streets shot in hues of grey against harsh angles of concrete, seen through a clever lens.  Gabriel Byrne is perfect as Bernie, all seedily sexy and unsatisfactory.  In contrast to Hayley Atwell’s no nonsense young mother, Charlotte Rampling is a clever antithesis of ‘mother as femme fatale’.  It’s a well thought out and brave attempt at film noir and it succeeds despite a few plot holes. But with the capable talents of Charlotte Rampling in the leading role how could it possibly fail? MT

Releases at CURZON CINEMAS from Friday, 7th December 2012

 

The Hunt (2012) Jagten

Dir:Thomas Vinterberg | Cast Mads Mikkelsen. Susse Wold, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Anne Louise Ranthe | Drama, Denmark.  111mins. 

Thomas Vinterburg’s study of abuse strikes at the core of his beloved Danish roots and follows in the footsteps of Festen without the Dogme. Jagten‘s gripping screenplay by Tobias Lindholm sails right up to the wind and never lets go in this mischievous psychodrama set in a close knit community in the heart of the Danish countryside.

Mads Mikkelsen is Lucas, an appealing metrosexual man who has returned to his childhood roots after a difficult divorce and a custody battle for his son. The performance won him best actor in Cannes in a bumper year where Michael Heneke’s Amour won the Palme D’Or.

Working as a teacher in the local mixed infants, Lucas soon strikes up a relationship with pushy colleague Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport) and gets back in touch with old friends and family. His laid back nature makes him popular with the kids and particularly with little Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) who is the little daughter of his best friend Marcus (Thomas Bo Larsen).

the-hunt_021-e1356991383433The popular idea that kids are innocent is proved wrong here when Klara’s infant imagination gets out of control. It’s easy to dislike her, although this was never Vinterberg’s intention at the start, and the little girl turns in a convincing performance as a nonpro. The theme of viral networking is twisted into the plot at this point when Klara casually blurbs her mixed  message which rapidly becomes fact, spreading like wildfire through the village and leading to a catastrophic fallout, revealing what happens would spoil the tightly wound plot. But the repercussions of what happens next provide much food for thought and are still relevant, even though the film was made nearly a decade ago.

Vinterberg has won over 60 international awards for his films in a career that have been in the spotlight for nearly three decades. Yet he still considers his 1993 graduation film Last Round, to be his best. Ironically, this echoes his latest feature Another Round (2020), and now Denmark’s hopeful in this year’s Academy Awards, so for Vinterberg – the spotlight’s back. MT©

THE HUNT is on ARROW PLAYER

The House I Live In (2012)

Director: Eugene Jarecki
Producer: Melinda Shopsin, Sam Cullman, Christopher St John
Cast: Nannie Jeter, David Simon

US  108mins Documentary

As a Jew acutely cognisant of his own ancestral history and the price his parents paid for his freedom, Jarecki returns to visit his parents’ home help, his Nanny, in an effort to try to understand current laws governing drug crime in America.

In starting this dialogue he achieves the impossible; he offers up an astonishing insight and overview on the seemingly endlessly labyrinthine process of both the inherent misery and the War On Drugs policy, making it so crystal clear that even a five-year-old could grasp it with ease.

One of the Executive Producers, a certain Brad Pitt, had this to say on the subject:
“My drug days are long since passed but it’s certainly true that I could probably land in any city in any state and get whatever you wanted. I could find anything you were looking for. Give me 24 hours or so. And yet we still support this charade called the drug war. We have spent a trillion dollars. It’s lasted for over 40 years. A lot of people have lost their lives for it. And yet we still talk about it like it’s this success”.

Jarecki has done his homework and picked perfect targets to interview to best enable his story to be told. One of the interviewees is David Simon, creator of the amazing HBO series concerning the Great American ghetto and drugs, The Wire. The House I Live In examines the origins of the drug war, how it came into being and why it persists to this day; even though the devastation it incurs is evident to all from those arrested, those left behind, the Police, the judges, the DEA and the Prison Officers.

It may be surprising to note that historically opium, cocaine and marihuana were all legal in America and anyone suffering addiction was treated with sympathy and, indeed, remedy in the past. That these drugs were outlawed for reasons of Race, is just about as uncomfortable a truth to swallow as any that America has needed to over its recent rather indigestible past. That in more recent times the reason has slid over to one of poverty can hardly be any more comforting.

Fact after fact that rolls out of this film is simply jaw-dropping. As the movie continues, a growing realisation occurs and it becomes at once profoundly sad, frustrating and enraging in equal measure as the full impact and ramifications set in. I could sit here and list any number of them, but would only succeed in reducing the impact, thereby robbing both film and audience. I can only urge one and all to see it for themselves. AT

 

 

 

End of Watch (2012) ***

Director: David Ayer Screenplay: David Ayer Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Natalie Martines, Anna Kendrick, David Harbour 109min     US Detective Thriller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A heartstopping action thriller with knockout performances from dynamite duo Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as police officers patrolling the gang ridden streets of downtown Los Angeles.  As they dive deeper and deeper into danger, they eventually become marked men.         

Sharing their patrol car and their daily banter, we can almost smell the venti cappucinos as we bond with their lives and loves:  Natalie Martines and Anna Kendrick give convincing support as romantic partners but their connection with  each other as pals on the beat is the relationship that shines out as being most convincing and real.  Contrasting this soft centred police pairing is the grittier turn by David Harbour’s hard-bitten older cop, Officer Van Hauser.

End of Watch compells and propells the narrative forward in an adrenalin rush of gruelling police life, from dawn to dusk.  Although the private love lives of the detectives is a little sugar-coated for some tastes, the gut-wrenching immediacy of the central story is skillfully evoked. Roman Vasyanov’s superb cinematography with its slick visuals and awkward camera angles and David Ayer’s (Training Day) snappy screenplay make it all seem so real as we track the action at fever pitch. MT

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RELEASES THIS WEEKEND AT ODEON, VUE, CINEWORLD AND PICTUREHOUSES.

 

 

Starbuck (2012) ***

Director:  Ken Scott

Script: Ken Scott, Martin Petit

Cast: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand

Canada        109mins  Comedy  French with subtitles

This multi-award winning French-Canadian comedy was the most successful ‘domestic’ film at the Canadian Box Office last year and is about to be remade by Dreamworks, albeit with the same director, but starring Vince Vaughn.  Mr Vaughn is not to all tastes and, as with so many remakes this new version may lose a lot that supplies it current charm. This (subtitled) rom-com is a mature gem, despite its perhaps unpromising teen-male premise.

With the self-chosen pseudonym ‘Starbuck’, 40-something permanent adolescent David Wozniak financed his late teens perpetually masturbating into a cup at the local sperm bank. And now as he faces up to his current relationship, his past in the shape of 142 of his progeny, go to court to assert their right to find him.  

Apart from a few minor plot-holes and character simplifications so prevalent in today’s comedies, what follows is actually a very sweet, poignant and funny dissection of what it means to be a father and guarantees some laugh-out-loud moments and a feel good factor by the end. AT

‘STARBUCK’ OPENS IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK ON 23RD NOVEMBER AND IS ALSO SCREENING AT THE UK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2012 8-30 November 2012 at the Cine Lumiere.

Amour (2012) ***** Palme D’Or winner Cannes 2012

 

Director: Michael Haneke

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert

127mins   Drama      French with English subtitles

How many films deal with mature love as elegantly as Michael Haneke’s latest outing? Here he gives us a thoughtful and profoundly graceful study of a happily married couple in their eighties.  Blissful in their long-standing relationship and living independently in an elegant apartment in the heart of Paris, Anne and Georges are professional musicians.  The intimacy of their closeness is quiet and understated and their everyday conversation is cordial, respectful and refreshingly free from tension or any kind of discord.  Refreshingly also, they are not overly engaged in the life of their grown-up daughter Eva, well played by Isabelle Huppert, and her English husband Geoff, who do not appear as content in their relationship and live abroad.

Jean Louis’s Trintignant’s mature performance as Georges and his muted expression of concern and fear mingled with gentle love for the woman of his life is a joy to behold.   Moving with ease and confidence in the role of an accomplished gentleman in his twilight years he exudes loyalty and integrity.   When Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) has a stroke he is composed and understanding and this demeanour continues until her life gradually fades. The only anger he displays is short-lived and borne out of frustration with her paralysis.  It’s a restrained turn but a satisfying one dealing with the domestic drudgery of life with elegance and discretion.  The only tearful, raw emotion comes from Isabelle Huppert’s character crying for the bereavement of her own marriage as much as for the impending loss of her mother.

There’s a touch of pure brilliance when a dove flies into the apartment on two occasions, possibly signifying a soul set free, as often happens.  On the second visit Georges captures and cuddles it in an imaginative flourish that signifies gentleness as much as a need to express the physical affection that was maybe intended for his wife in her final days but somehow seemed to be submerged by the demands of caring for her less appealing physical needs.  This is an assured piece of filmmaking from an auteur at the peak of his creative genius.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

Alps (Alpis) 2011 *****

Director:Yorgos Lanthimos

Script:Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

Producers:Yorgos Lanthimos, Athina Rachel Tsangari

Cast:Stavros Psyllakis, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed, Aggeliki Papoulia

Greece        93mins     Drama

Yorgos Lanthimos’ last film, Dogtooth floored me with its terrific economy and power, in its performances but also in its storytelling style where, as an audience, one is left to stew, wondering, thinking, trying to work out what is going on and why. But, as with any Master storyteller, it is always wisest to allow yourself to trust in the filmmaker; let them unravel the story how they would wish to unravel it and simply sit back and enjoy the delicious ride.

Ordinarily, I hesitate to tell you anything at all of any given film plot, happier that you simply accept it might be worth seeing. Confident that you would be content that the surprise of not knowing what is going to happen will increase your enjoyment tenfold. Alps is no different. Infact, it is almost more important with this director in particular, that you see the film knowing nothing. I would much rather you went along and allowed Lanthimos to tell his story as he would wish, over almost any other filmmaker.  He has a fiendish wit and an exquisitely black sense of humour, but a sense of humour nevertheless.

His films are proving not for the fainthearted, but reward any with a sharp mind willing to be led blindfold around the next corner and are absolutely built on anticipation; on information withheld; to be thrown down as titbits and teasers along the way, very much in his own time and all the more succulent for it.

Lanthimos is a great student of the human condition, his films are a direct product of that and the cast accordingly, is exemplary throughout. I am a huge fan of his work and look forward to each serving with the rapt anticipation of a Doberman awaiting a tardily served morsel. If you liked Dogtooth, I am certain you won’t be disappointed by Alps.  If you haven’t yet seen Dogtooth, shame on you. See Alps, then get hold of Dogtooth and get bitten by the bug. AT

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ALPS IS SHOWING THIS WEEKEND FROM 9TH NOVEMBER 2012 AT CURZON CINEMAS

 

Aurora (2010) ***

Writer/Director: Cristi Puiu

Cast: Cristi Puiu Clara Voda, Valeria Seciu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Catrinel Dumistrescu, Gelu Colceag

181min     Romanian with subtitles

Aurora has Cristi Puiu flitting about nervously in his Bucharest neighbourhood with sparse but trenchant dialogue, he’s also written and directed this cinema vérité drama. Tension mounts when he starts to build a gun but after an hour it’s difficult to keep watching his  endless daily routine without some clue of what’s really going on with his life.  Friends and family come and go but none stands out enough to keep our attention although Puiu does offer a good insight of life in contemporary Romania.  When the action finally gets going after nearly three hours of watching and waiting, the Kafkaesque showdown comes as an anticlimax .

Cristi Puiu’s debut feature, darkly funny The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005), won critical acclaim in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes but was unsuccessful at the Box Office, and I suspect this outing will go the same way due to its long running time which is taxing on the viewer and commercially unfeasible for independent cinemas: a shame because Cristi Puiu has some real talent as a director and writer.  MT

AURORA is showing from 9th November 2012 at the Curzon Mayfair

My Brother The Devil (2012) Best British Newcomer LFF 2012

Director/Writer: Sally El Hosaini

Cast: Saïd Taghmaoui, James Floyd, Fady Elsayed, Letitia Wright

111mins Drama UK

Sally El Hosaini won critical acclaim at Berlin, Sundance and London this year for her debut feature that has newcomer Fady Elsayed in a cracking turn as Mo, a teenager growing up in a traditional Arabic household.

Beyond the front door of the family’s modest London flat is a completely different world: the streets of Hackney. The impressionable Mo idolizes his handsome and charismatic older brother Rashid  (James Floyd) and wants to follow in his footsteps. However, Rashid wants a different life for his younger brother and will do whatever it takes to send him to college. Desperate to be seen as cool,  Mo takes a job that triggers a fateful turn of events and forces both brothers to confront their inner demons.

David Raedeker’s cinematography and Sally El Hosaini’s sensitive direction brings a fresh and poetic feel to this sink estate story of two young men on the crossroads to criminality who find redemption through their brotherly love for one another.  Saïd Taghmaoul adds a touch of class to the proceedings as an urbane Franco Egyptian photographer who plays the pivotal role that lifts the story above familiar territory without sacrificing its believability; reinforced by a script reflecting street patois and jargon. The superb production values and subtle performances particularly from James Floyd and Letitia Wright as his girlfriend Vanessa, make this a distinctive and memorable drama marking El Hosaini out as a striking new talent. MT

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SHOWING THIS WEEKEND AT CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK and at the Picturehouses Ritzy and Hackney and Cineworld Cinemas from 9th November 2012

Argo (2012) ***

Director: Ben Affleck

Script: Chris Terrio

Producers`:  George Clooney, Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher Denham, Kerry Bishe

120min    USA                                       Drama

 

Based on true events of 1979, when the American Embassy in Iran is overrun and hostages taken, the ride we are then taken on is literally fantastic and quite probably unbelievable, if it weren’t based upon factual events, recently coming to light, as the CIA allow previously Top Secret documents to be published.

Affleck has gone to great pains in some ways to recreate the circumstances from footage and photos taken at the time and, as with his previous title, The Town he has really pulled out all the stops for a sense of authenticity. It is interesting that this film has been made on several levels. It is quite probable that it would never have seen the light of day, if it had been pitched in Hollywood by anyone else, but with heavyweights and known politico ‘s Affleck and Clooney behind it, it was always going to get funded and it was always going to get made. And made pretty well.

Alot of ingredients then; Argo runs essentially as a political thriller. The performances are fine throughout, with a fair splashing of humour to offset the threat and the drama of the piece being served up by those most dependable of old hands, Arkin and Goodman.

The downside to the generous dollop of Tinseltown, is that it veers close to another example of Heroic American tub-thumping. It is after all, a Movie; the tension ramped accordingly. Many of the characters are less than complete in their depiction and I was disappointed to see the now bog-standard stereotyping of the Middle Eastern Bad Guy, even if the film does get points at the front for laying much of the blame for the circumstances in which the protagonists find themselves, squarely at the feet of Brit-American foreign policy.

Worth seeing then, but seeing with a healthy pinch of salt. It would be dangerous to think that this is a documenting of fact, rather than a yarn told well, but this said, the (movie) ending delivers. AT

RELEASES THIS WEEKEND AT CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK at the Cineworld, Odeon and Vue from 9th November 2012.

The Master (2012)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams.

144mins        US Pyschological Thriller

Joaquin Phoenix was shared Best Actor at Venice this year for this dramatic portrayal of a mercurial Naval veteran who emerges emotionally damaged from the wreckage of the second World War to face an uncertain future.  Dazed by the spotlights of a spiritual cult named The Cause, he falls under the spell of its charismatic and delusional leader, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman as joint Best Actor) who peddles past life regression therapy to the great and good of Philadelphia in 1950.

 

Stanley Kubrick had a look at Scientology-style cults with Eyes Wide Shut and this is Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on the secret and slightly sinister cult.  Magnolia was another outing where he glamorised a cult leader in the shape of Frank Mackey who was played by Tom Cruise.  But this time Anderson paints more just a portrait of a cult: this is a landscape of America at that time.

 

Dazzlingly shot on 65mm format, there’s certainly nothing cultish about the look of this film with its alluring aesthetic, dazzling camera work and authentically crafted ’50s detail. Jonny Greenwood’s unsettling orchestral score gives the film a disturbing undertone; but it’s Joaquin Phoenix and Seymour Hoffman, who really make this story as utterly involving as it is, and for over two hours, and that’s some achievement.  Seymour Hoffman fills the screen with his ebullient presence and paternalistic strength appealing to Phoenix’s almost childlike need for stability and acceptance as they slowly develop a strangely interdependent chemistry that verges on the visceral and, at times, even the sexual as’servant and master’.

 

In some ways Phoenix’s Freddie Quell represents the broken America rising from the ashes of War and finding a new sense of direction and power represented by The Cause and Lancaster Dodd.  But whichever way you see it The Master is an exciting and vibrant piece of cinema from a Paul Thomas Anderson at the top of his game. MT

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WTM8eO1Oec

 

THE MASTER releases on 2nd November in 65mm format exclusively at the Odeon West End and then from 16th November nationwide.

Rust and Bone (2011) De Rouille et d’Os

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Marion Cotillard,  Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure.

116mins          Drama     French with English subtitles

 

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Marion Cotillard plays Stephanie, a tough French whale tamer, in this gutsy and moving drama about love, loss and reconciliation.  Out on the town one night in the French coastal resort of Antibes she meets Ali, an unemployed bare-knuckle wrestler who’s recently moved to the area with his son Sam.  Blessed with a fabulous figure and a beautiful face that hardly ever cracks into a smile, Stephanie doesn’t take nonsense from anyone, especially the whales she trains at the local Aquarium. Ali asks for her number and they go their separate ways.  But Stephanie’s not a girl who’d phone a guy back, least of all in the middle of the night.  Until one day when disaster strikes.

What develops is a story that’s admirable and gorgeous to look, with well-executed CGI and a real sense of place but not nearly as awe-inspiring or as visceral as Audiard’s last outing A Prophet (2010) (which also won the top prize at the LFF in 2009).  Despite its tragic subject matter the only relationship that really rings true here is that between Ali and his young son.  MT

RUST AND BONE is on DVD/BLU

 

 

 

Elena (2011)

Dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev | Cast:  Nadezhda Markina, Andrey Smimov, Elena Lyadova, Alexey Rozin | 109′  Russia |  Russian with subtitles

The mystery is…why has it taken so long for this to be released in the UK?  Elena won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section in 2011. With a magnificent central performance and excellent cinematography this somewhat slow film holds the attention of its audience from start to finish.

Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is married to her former patient Vladimir (Andrey Smimov) who she met 10 years previously.  He is extremely wealthy and the couple, who are in their sixties, live together in harmony in his well-equipped Moscow apartment.  Although they do not share a bedroom, he is still keen to invite her to bed after breakfast before he makes his way to the gym in his own car.  During the day they pursue different activities.   

Both have children from their previous marriages.  Elena’s son, Sergey (Alexey Rozin) is lazy.  He has no job and sits around at home with his wife, Tanya, and their children.  His teenage son runs with a gang, but also enjoys sitting around at home playing videogames.  Elena travels by bus to her son’s dilapidated flat, taking him food and money.  Sergey keeps asking his mother to get money from her husband in order to pay his son’s University fees. The lad wants to go to College not because he is so keen to study, but to avoid military service.  Vladimir has become estranged from his only daughter, Katerina. While not an easy man, he seems genuinely keen on Elena.  He considers her son a scrounger, who does nothing to support his own family.  In turn Elena believes Vladimir’s daughter has been given everything she needs, but shows no affection towards her father. When Vladimir suffers a heart attack, Elena faces a difficult decision regarding her own future and that of her son.

Everything is understated in the film, helped by the cinematography ((Michail  Krichman), who manages to reveal the luxurious world Elena inhabits contrasting with the run-down block of flats where her son lives.  Writer director, Andrey Zvyagintsev has complete command of the film from the casting of a look-alike son and father to the atmospheric slow, almost lyrical depiction of Elena’s emotions as she looks at herself in the mirror.  Above all his choice of actors is absolutely right and the uptight Vladimir and useless Sergey are portrayed with consummate skill by Andrey Smirnov and Alexey Rozin respectively. Elena Lyadova’s interpretation of the egotistical Katerina is spot-on and the development of a kind of love between her and her father in hospital is handled with sensitivity. Nadezhda Markina gives us a luminous portrait of the plain Russian woman, Elena.  Her conflicts become apparent without over dramatisation. Carlie Newman.

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ELENA IS AVAILABLE ON DVD AT AMAZON.COM

Room 237 (2012) MUBI

Dir: Rodney Ascher | Cast: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner | US Doc, 103mins    

A documentary about conspiracy theories surrounding THE SHINING (1981)

In the grand firmament of filmmakers, there’s no one director that inspires more awe, more frowning or hushed tones than the legendary Stanley Kubrick. The man. The myth. There is also nothing quite like a Kubrick standard to bring the geeks, the nerds, the conspiracists and the plain unhinged out from under their desks, their rocks and their bunkers to superimpose their own interpretation of what this film is about, confident in the knowledge that Kubrick has indeed put layers in there, and is happy to play around with an audience, giving them licence to postulate and reinterpret, ad infinitum.

Kubrick was a great director for a good many reasons: from his sheer invention with the camera; to production design; shot composition; edge of frame detail; colour; costume;  editing; and with the strength of his ideas and concepts, he still allowed the actor the freedom to improvise. That is genius.

But it’s highly unlikely that he meant for The Shining to be watched literally frame by agonising frame in an attempt to uncover hidden meanings. Or, for it to be run backwards, superimposed simultaneously over itself running forwards. If you’re going to look hard enough for long enough and with any sort of allegorical agenda, you probably could find the deeply sinister in a daytime TV weather report.

Room 237 is one such endeavour, (it’s a film about genocide); it lurches from the considered through to the improbable and the downright risible, with a certain panache. Too often, the talking heads of the five various Shining experts leave Rodney Ascher with precious little to go on, so we are left perusing images from any number of, not only Kubrick’s films, but a big clutch of others.

The diverse theories begin to stream thick and fast, some start on the basis of illustratable plausibility, only to lose their way. Others starting from a point of implausibility, never even to attempt to find something resembling sanity; undoubtedly a genius then, but quite how Kubrick ‘photoshopped’ his own image into the clouds a clear ten years before Photoshop was even invented, beggars belief.

All in all, Room 237 is a befuddling and for the most part interminable exercise, albeit sprinkled with a few interesting moments. It may leave you frustrated, and looking forward to substantive insight.  It will certainly make you revisit The Shining again and gain.

Room 237 is like going out for a promising evening, only to end up trapped in the corner with the comb-over, who simply won’t shut up. And therein lies the point. The Shining itself is endlessly entertaining, haunting, emotive, disturbing, unquantifiable…  a true classic and should be enjoyed as such. By dissecting anything, all one does, by definition, is reduce it. Ask any frog. AT

NOW ON MUBI

 

Sister (2011) L’Enfant d’En Haut

Dir:  Ursula Meier | Cast: Lea Seydoux, Gillian Anderson, Kacey Mottet Klein. | France, 97mins |Drama | French with subtitles

Using a swanky mountain ski resort as a setting, this robin hood story of social deprivation has Kacey Mottet Klein as a dysfunctional orphan, Simon, who steals from rich holidaymakers to feed himself and his sister, Lea Seydoux, who live in a pokey flat in the valley.  But Simon doesn’t just take food, he actually trades the goods he steals and hustles for a decent profit, lying and swindling the while. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him, Meier leaves this open to interpretation but it’s also difficult not to admire him for his efforts to be the family breadwinner with certain amount of chutzpah. Unlikeable too is his tarty ungracious sister along with Gillian Anderson’s upmarket yummy mummy. Agnes Godard’s stunning Alpine locations contrast with a dystopian character study of disturbing proportions. MT

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Ginger & Rosa (2012)

Writer/Director: Sally Potter   Editor: Anders Refn (father of Nicolas Winding)

Prod: Christopher Sheppard

Cinematographer: Robbie Ryan

Cast: Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Annette Bening, Alexander Nivola, Alice Englert (daughter of Jane Campion)

89mins  UK Drama

Known mostly for her highly original and visually exciting concoction Orlando (1992) featuring Tilda Swinton in a exotic journey through time, the multi-talented Potter is back with this complex mood piece originally entitled Bomb for reasons that become evident as the story unfolds.

 

Ostensibly a coming of age drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, Ginger & Rosa explores deep-seated and unsettling truths for two broken middle class families kept together largely by the childhood friendship of their teenage girls, Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert).  And at the core of the turmoil is Roland, a glib and self-righteous man who has neglected Ginger and her mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks) to pursue his own beliefs which somehow appear entirely reasonable, thanks to the charismatic acting skills of Alexander Nivola in this pivotal role.  Roland poses a threat to Ginger and Rosa’s close friendship and undermines Natalie, a downtrodden but not completely believable artist, (more Mad Men here than sad housewife) causing emotional dust-ups and desperation all round.

 

Sally Potter choses her leads with great care and Elle Fanning, like Tilda Swinton, has a face that is so radiant you could look at it for hours.  As Ginger, she is intoxicatingly good as a teenage Londoner (despite being American) with just the right amount of diffident naivety, burgeoning sexuality and wilfullness to fall for a cause like CND while remaining, at heart, a sensitive girl who writes poetry while her world is collapsing around her. She eclipses Alice Englert’s Rosa, who never really develops her character. Both despise their mothers in equal amounts and so, in some ways, do we.  Aided an abetted by godfather Timothy Spall,his boyfriend Oliver Platt and their feminist friend Annette Bening, who manages to have the last word, this is an intense and compelling drama.

With Robbie’s Ryan clever cinematography it’s also stunning to watch with an eye-popping palette of rustic green, mauve and teal: at one point Ginger’s hair exactly matches the peeling wallpaper in her father’s bedsit.  Potter’s script is loaded with complex meaning that when spoken, seems to convey so much more than the words on the original page and with a seductive score of sixties soundbeats from Stephane Grapelli to Dave Brubeck this is one hit not to miss. MT

 

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Director: Benh Zeitlin

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry

91mins  Drama

In a remote part of the Bayou cut off by time and tide lives Hushpuppy a tiny Southern Belle..except her ‘big hair’ is a thatch of Afro curls and on her feet are dirty wellies.  All cute and petulant, she clambers amongst the rubbish dumps and make-shift dwellings called the Bathtub, tending her garden of driftwood and her baby farmyard animals in a place where fantasy and reality seem to co-exist in a bubble.

You’re going to fall in love with her: she’s an adorable kid who doesn’t need to act; she just plays herself. her daddy Wink, a loose-limbed masculine dude who doesn’t seem to give a damn about the authorities or the tropical storms is well played by Dwight Henry. Theirs is a love hate relationship bound by blood ties and the memory of a mum who is deeply missed. The local community of lushes and lost souls is a strong and resilient one borne out of self-sufficiency: suffering but proud and resistant to chance threatened by the guys on the mainland who think they know better. Hushpuppy is played by local school girl Quvenzhane Wallis and her dad is Dwight Henry another non-actor. Based on a play by Lucy Alibar who wrote the screenplay with young director Benh Zeitlin this film is nothing short of magical. Gorgeous visuals and its imaginative setting also make a winner. It took the Sutherland prize at London zfilm Festival 2012. MT

On General release from 19th October 2012 at Everyman, Tricycle and Curzon cinemas.

 

 

On The Road (2012)

Director: Walter Salles

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Steve Buscemi

124mins                    Drama

Many have tried and few have succeeded to make Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical Beat classic and here it finally makes it to the screen courtesy of Walter Salles of Motorcycle Diaries fame.  There were mixed feelings about this feature at Cannes when it premiered at Cannes this year and many felt that it had failed to capture the zeitgeist despite clinging close to the novel.  It’s so desperate to be “cool” that it almost fails in that endeavour; to my mind at least, but it’s at starry as the road it follows through the Beat era: a pretty long one at just over two hours – but has Viggo Mortensen, Sam Riley, Steve Buscemi and Kristen Stewart to keep you amused on the journey.MT

 

 

Untouchable (Intouchables) (2011)

Director/writers              Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache

Cast             François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot

112mins                       Comedy (French) Subtitled

Based on the true life story and with the blessing and close collusion in the making of Philippe Pozzo Di Borgo and his care assistant Abdel Yasmin Sellou, this is by turns both a moving and hilarious comedy, breaking box office globally; we are infact one of the last to see it released in the UK.

If the idea had been manufactured: a black ex-crim from the Parisian projects becoming chief caregiver to a properly minted paraplegic, I can only imagine what a saccharine, clumsy hash of things Hollywood would have made of it.  As it is, this delicate, perfectly poised piece, sensitively scripted and directed by Toledano and Nakache really illustrates what can be achieved when filmmaking is truly collaborative. The actors have been allowed to do what actors do; meet the people their roles are based on and develop both their characters and their relationship with each other.    

This film stands or falls on the believability that these two could indeed meet and find a commonality and a deep mutual understanding and respect, despite their wildly divergent life experience and background. Both learn and are healed to some degree by the other, but not in any rote or predictable manner.  This writer/director team obviously thrive on their careful method of working, which nonetheless allows for the spontaneous and the ungoverned to be captured and this translates so well onto the screen and, from the interview with both actors, they obviously thrived on it too.

Untouchable is a savvy collaboration, bringing together execs Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the producers of that other recent French comedy delight Heartbreaker and the acting chops of Cluzet, Le Ny and Sy; and it works. It So works. See it and be delighted. AT

 

 

 

Cross of Honour (Into the White)

Director           Petter Naess

Script            Ole Meldgaard, Dave Mango, Petter Naess

 

Cast               Florian Lukas, David Kross, Stig Henrik Hoff, Lachlan Nieboer, Rupert Grint

Drama            Running time: 100mins

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Director Petter Naess came to prominence with his second outing, Elling in 2001. Also Known as Into The WhiteCross Of Honour is Petter’s ninth feature and is described in the opening credits as being loosely based upon real events, where two dogfighting aircraft are downed over Norway in the middle of winter.

Unfortunately for all, very little of what must indeed have been an extraordinary true story remains in this clumsy, dull and unconvincing portrait of adversarial airmen forced to cohabit.  All the more extraordinary then, when one considers that these roles are based upon real people, that they muster only two dimensions per character on celluloid.

The relationships feel contrived all round and, as the action takes place for the most part in a shed, it plays out like a stage-play with characters taking it in turns to open up to very little satisfaction all round. Considering this film will be heavily sold on Rupert Grint even though it is very much an ensemble piece, he has pulled up a very unconvincing Liverpudlian accent and, without the weight of the Potter Blitzkrieg behind him, there was precious little magic to speak of. His performance is misjudged; at odds with the others as well as the film as a whole.

Aside from some stellar exceptions, pieces in English directed by foreign directors have often been known to lose a wheel. Perhaps it was in the translation of nuance, either in script or in the playing of the characters. Certainly the English dialogue was leaden, the laughter forced and the audience remained firmly ahead of the action with never any threat of surprise. There never felt to be any real jeopardy at all and therefore very little drama.

It may be that this film still cuts a return from the very solid fanbase that Grint undoubtedly retains but, unless obligated by a young member of your immediate family, I would avoid…AT.

The DVD releases on the 1 October 2012 

 

Barbara (2012) Mubi

Dirr/Wri: Christian Petzold | Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Block | Germany, Drama

In an East Germany of 1980, Nina Hoss gives a stunning performance as Barbara, a cool teutonic blond doctor exiled to a remote Soviet-style cottage hospital by the Stasi, leaving her lover in the West. With a fine line in sexy underwear and a reserved bedside manner that masks her exquisite vulnerability, Barbara is initially immune to her colleague Andre’s cosy but magnetic sexuality and growing interest in her that goes beyond her talents as a pediatrician.

Sumptuously shot in a palate of muted colours with fine attention to period detail by cinematographer Hans Fromm, this is an accomplished piece of cinema. It works on two levels: as a well-detailed social study of the East/West conflict, and a subtle, slow-burning love story that’s desperate to burst out of its clinical strictures but never quite does due to Barbara’s, and our own, uncertainty of Andre’s motives.  Hemmed in by the tense paranoia at being monitored by a Stasi officer (Rainer Block) rifling through her drawers, Barbara escapes for clandestine meetings with her lover in West Berlin until the past and present start to close in around her.  Christian Petzold won best director at Berlin with this Cold War psychodrama of a woman caught between desire and subterfuge.MT

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Killing Them Softly (2011)

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta

97mins     Thriller

Tightly plotted and intensely gripping, Andrew Dominik’s take on the savage world of sub-criminals is brutal and clever with a political dimension thrown in for good measure.

Set in a recession-bound America of 2008, Brad Pitt and Sam Rockwell are the badfellas taking part in a mob betrayal story adapted from George V Higgin’s 1974 thriller Cogan’s Trade.  They both give dynamite performances as stupid and ruthless psychopaths who get increasingly involved in a violent cock-up which deteriorates into mass gun killing at long range or “killing them softly” as Pitt as Coogan calls it: so he is spared the emotional fallout of his victims.       

Andrew Dominik’s direction is suave and masterful with plenty of slo-mo scenes set to romantic music (“Love Letters” et al ) and slick set-pieces intercut with glimpses of American presidents on the TV news.  A narrated overlay from Cogan  completes the rather clunky political backstory.  It’s unapologetic, bloody and smart but if you like your thrillers caustic and male-dominated, go for this one. MT

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel (2012) London Fashion Week

 

 

Dir: Lisa Immordino Vreeland | US Doc, 91′

A documentary portrait of maverick and socialite Diana Vreeland (1903-89), who through her insight, sense of style and over-riding self-belief helped to influence the world of 20th century fashion and beauty during her 50-year at the helm of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.  She “discovered” Twiggy and Lauren Bacall and hung out with the likes of Cole Porter and Cecil Beaton amongst other luminaries of the last century.  Directed by her niece and brought to life with a dazzling array of archive material and interviews with her family, former colleagues and key figures such as David Bailey, it keeps its wry perspective throughout never losing sight of the fickle and ephemeral nature of the fashion world that is all about attitude, trend-forecasting and self-promotion.  A fascinating film for fashionistas everywhere. MT.

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Arthouse film for the weekend -14th September 2012

The heat may have gone out of September but there’s plenty to warm you up on the arthouse circuit this weekend.  First we head down to the South of France for The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Robert Guediguian’s heart-warming social drama about love and solidarity.  It features Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Ariane Ascaride and is showing at the Cine Lumiere from Friday 14th.  We met Robert to talk about the film and his next project. 

The long-awaited release of A Separation director Asghar Farhadi’s 2009 film About Elly opens on Friday 14th.  It’s another gut-wrenching rollercoaster of a film that follows a group of Tehrani friends to the shores of the Caspian Sea for a weekend celebration that ends in tragedy for all concerned.  See it at the Curzon, Soho.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if you could use a laugh after all that wailing and gnashing of teeth then what better than Woody Allen’s latest:  To Rome With Love.  Set in the sun-baked city with a starry cast of Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni and, of course, Woody himself, it’ll raise a few laughs but not many….on general release from Friday.        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you that don’t know, Anton Corbijn is a highly industrious photographer turned filmmaker who helped to create brands we now know as U2, Lou Reed, Depêche Mode

amongst many others.  His biopic Anton Corbijn: Inside Out releases this weekend at the Curzon Soho and the Lighthouse Cinema Dublin.

And at the Rio, Dalston, there’s still a chance to see the digitally-remastered Chariots of Fire starring Nigel Havers, Ben Cross, Ian Holm and John Gielgud and featuring the amazing soundtrack by Vangelis that was commissioned by Mohamed Al Fayed who also financed the original production in the eighties.  Read my interview with Mohamed for some background flavour to this all time classic and for a last hurrah as the 2012 Olympics well and truly bow out..phew!

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Over at the Southbank the BFI are preparing for an extended version of the London Film Festival that kicks off on October 11th 2012.  See my outline of what’s in store this year under Festivals.  Priority booking for members opens on Thursday 13th September 2012.

Also on release this weekend at the Southbank is Canadian maverick Guy Maddin’s extraordinary supernatural thriller Keyhole featuring the sultry siren of the silver screen Isabella Rossellini.  The Hitchcock Season continues there with Dial M for Murder although due to extreme popularity it’s practically sold out, so get on down there fast…


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And last but not least Nostalgia for the Light, Chilean director Patricio Guzman’s visually arresting poetic meditation set in the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, is still showing at The Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square.  Have fun!  Meredith

 

Still showing……

Mists, mellow fruitfulness and movies on the arthouse film scene 7-14 September 2012

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

Director/writer: Robert Guediguian

Cast: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Ariane Ascaride, Gerald Meylan, Maryline Canto, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet.

90mins    Contemporary Drama from the Director of Army of Crime (2009)Snows-with-Family

 

Not to be confused with the Gregory Peck “Snows” of 1953, this film was inspired by a Victor Hugo poem “Les Pauvre Gens”.  Set in writer/director Robert Guediguian’s home town of Marseilles it’s a deeply touching and human story of social realism resonating with the current mood of economic uncertainty: a far cry from the glamour of Hollywood.  It has Jean-Pierre Darroussin as Michel, who is looking forward to a new lease of life with his family after recently losing his job as a union rep in the local neighbourhood of L’Estaque.  But when he and his wife Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride) are violently robbed by an ex-colleague their love for each other and successful marriage are put to the test and they start to re-examine their working-class values of solidarity and socialist take on life.      

Guediguian regulars Jean-Pierre Darroussin and his on-screen wife Ariane Ascaride make a strong and believable couple and create some poignant moments in this involving and provocative drama which proves that life is all about the people we meet along the way.  Robert Guediguian could be France’s answer to Ken Loach.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

About Elly (2009)

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Shahab Hosseini, Taraney Alidoosti

118mins    Dramaimage001

Only last year, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s fifth feature, A Separation, won massive critical praise and wowed audiences all over the World with its complex moral tale from contemporary Iran . This year About Elly (2009) has finally been granted a UK cinema release.

It’s not quite as mind-blowing as A Separation but nevertheless offers up another moving and multi-layered tale of social mores and societal duty that’s open to discussion and debate while remaining an unremittingly bleak and deeply effecting human drama.  With some really powerful performances especially from leads Golshifteh Farahani and Shahab Hosseini, there are some early moments of fun that soon dissolve into pure hysteria but the general mood is of unleavened gloom.

In About Elly, what starts out as an light-hearted invitation soon leads to tragedy for all concerned during a weekend celebration for a group of ex-university friends on the shores of the Caspian Sea.  The men are all kitted out in sports gear, the women all carefully covered up: this is current-day middle class Tehran.  One of them Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), has recently split from his German wife so the organiser of the trip, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani ), decides to invite her kid’s teacher Elly, in the hope that Ahmad might finally settle down with a nice Iranian girl in a relaxed setting of friends.  It’s inspired matchmaking on her part but the seemingly innocuous idea soon turns out to be a really bad one.  At first Elly seems reluctant to come along but gradually she warms to the weekend celebration until an unexpected turn of events leads to her mysterious disappearance. At this point Sepideh realises how little she really knows about her friend Elly.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

Anton Corbijn: Inside Out (2012)

Director: Klaartje Quirijns

Starring: Anton Corbijn, Bono, Martin Gore

80mins             Biopic about photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you that don’t know, Anton Corbijn is a highly industrious photographer turned lauded filmmaker who, through the use of his camera, helped to create the brands we now know as U2, Lou Reed, Joy Division and Depeche Mode, amongst many others.

This mostly subtitled Dutch documentary by Klaartje Quirijns spends time with the photographer at his studio, on the set of The American with George Clooney, at his childhood home and with his immediate family; his mother, sister and brother. There are also brief interludes with the likes of Bono, Metallica, Lou Reed and Arcade Fire.

It is without doubt an in-depth, frank and open discussion held with an artist whose work must inarguably be accepted as trailblazing and iconic. He is a man driven to the exclusion of all else by his work, finding both camera and music at a young age and pursuing both thereafter as his passion; his raison d’etre.

Inside Out also dwells briefly on the two films he has made; the very excellent debut Control and the not so sublime The American, where there is a perhaps telling scene between Corbijn and his lead actress concerning the interpretation of a line in regards to her character. He is most definitely a visual man rather than a dramaturg.

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Quirijns shines a light on the hitherto hidden recesses of Corbijn’s life and life-story and Corbijn is both brave and open in his revelations; the son of a preacher man from a small Dutch village, as he is. But the story of an unhappy childhood, distance from his parents, of loneliness and the analysis of why he chooses the shots he does only serve to reduce rather than enhance the legend.

It is indeed therefore a very insightful film that reveals the man behind the myth, but actually in the end, I simply wanted to admire his many, beautiful portraits telling their thousand words and not hear Corbijn admit that the reason he chose the side of a tanker with a huge steel cable draped like a smile, was that it depicted ‘heavy metal’ for the Metallica shoot, or learn that he, like so many of us mere mortals, is still running around seeking his fathers approval and feeling incomplete as a man.  On top of this, the banality and ineloquence of various smug pop stars waxing less than lyrical over photographs of themselves only made me reflect that perhaps it’s a case here of not actually wanting to meet ones heroes… Some people or things are great because of their mystery; some pictures wonderful as much for the personal lens through which we view them. AT

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Movies, mists and mellow fruitfulness on the indie scene 7 – 14 September 2012

September ushers in a cool array of arthouse movies to enjoy now the evenings are drawing in. First up is Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ complex and involving drama that compares the loneliness of old age with the excitement of youth.  Shot in black and white it’s an achingly romantic tale of a Portuguese woman looking back on her glamorous life in Colonial Africa.

Tabu is showing at the ICA Cinema, Rio Dalston and Odeon Panton Street from Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And from the wilds of Africa to the frozen steppes of Russia comes another lovelorn glamourpuss this time in the shape of Countess Anna Karenina. Keira Knightley takes centre stage for Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of the timeless Tolstoy tome and Atonement director Joe Wright presents this glitzy merry-go-round of a movie in a theatrical setting and supported by a stellar cast of Jude Law, Matthew McFadyen and Aron Johnson. See it at the Everyman, Curzon and Clapham Picturehouse.

John Hillcoat’s drama Lawless also opens this weekend. Written for the screen by musician Nick Cave, the film is a true-crime take on a tale of thirties prohibition seen through the eyes of a band of brothers.  Gary Oldman, Tim Hardy and Shia LaBeour star.  Showing at the Everyman, Tricycle Cinema, Gate Notting Hill and Vue all over London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skyfall, the eagerly-awaited new Bond movie is coming up in October.  With Daniel Craig on his third mission as 007, Sam Mendes directs and Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench and Albert Finney take part in this 23rd adventure of the suave English spy.  It’s not strictly arthouse but everyone loves a Bond movie and this one’s set to knock your socks off.

If you you’re up for a slice of social realism, then head over to the Southbank for a chance to see Mike Leigh’s classic TV film from the seventies archives Play For Today. The main attraction here is Alison Steadman’s standout performance as a struggling middle-aged mum stuck in a loveless marriage.  It also has Ben Kingsley in one of his first appearances on film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hitchcock season continues at the Southbank with his most abstract psychological drama, The Birds. Tipi Hedren stars as a sparkling socialite who pursues her love interest to a seaside town and gets more than she bargained for.

Documentary -wise this weekend sees the release of The Queen of Versailles, a funny, sad and cautionary tale about an American Dream turned nightmare for one family.

Shut Up And Play The Hits,  is Will Lovelace’s musical portrait of reluctant rockstar James Murphy and charts the last 48 hours of his highly successful band LCD Sound System featuring the celebrated showcase showdown at Madison Square Garden in 2011.

 Meredith Taylor ©

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Tabu (2012)

Director: Miguel Gomes

Cast: Teresa Nadruga, Ana Moreira, Laura Saveral, Carloto Cotta, Henrique Esprito Santo

118mins    Portuguese with English subtitles

aurora-ventura-camaDoes anyone really live happily ever after or is old age a pale reflection of our past?  This is the universal theme that Portuguese director Miguel Gomes explores in this enigmatic and spectacularly moving feature told in two parts.  After a quirky lead-in, the first half is a desultory and amusing affair based in and around Lisbon where three women from completely different backgrounds are dealing with the loneliness of old age and their memories of the past.  Pilar (Teresa Madruga) works tirelessly for worthy causes, Santa (Isabel Cardoso) is laid -back and resigned to her work as house-keeper for an eccentric and well-off woman called Aurora (Laura Soveral).  And Aurora is the dark horse of the trio.  Stumbling around on the foothills of dementia she’s obsessed with crocodiles, voodoo and a mysterious man called Gianluca Ventura.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She also harbours a naughty slot-machine habit and a secret past that gradually comes to light as we’re transported back to the savannah of colonial Mozambique, where, in her younger days, she has a farm on the foothills of Mount Tabu.  Marrying well she is then drawn into a passionate and visceral love story with the charismatic GianLuca Ventura (Carlotto Cotta), who turns out to be a stunningly attractive and rakish friend of the family.

Shot through with exotic images of heat, lust and hedonistic decadence, this is far the most artistically imaginative strand and plays like a silent movie narrated by Ventura, combining black and white cine-style footage with a score featuring soundtracks from pop music of the era. These two different cinematic styles successfully reflect the dreams and adventurous promise of youth where everything is possible in contrast to the pedestrian mondanity and isolation of old age where fantasy is largely brought on by medication or the vagaries of mental decline.  This bravely ambitious feature has shades of Out of Africa and shows Gomes to be a filmmaker of great flair and insight.

Meredith Taylor ©

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Keyhole (2012)

Director: Guy Maddin

Starring: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Keir

94mins  HorrorHyacinth-and-Manners

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin took the inspiration for this black and white thirties-style horror film from Carl Dreyer’s “Vampyr” the daddy of all horror movies.  Entirely shot on digital, it has a surreal mood and eerie soundtrack that completes that otherworldly feel.

The story goes as follows: Jason Patric’s Ulysses returns home to a mansion creeping with the ghosts of family members and tries desperately in a repetitive sequence that’s part dream part reality to reach his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) who is locked upstairs in her bedroom. He is visited by ghosts of his son and daughter as well as his wife’s lover and father and re-visits the psychological trauma of their deaths over and over again in order to reach some sort of emotional catharis.  

Guy Maddin is an acquired taste and has been widely compared to David Lynch.  Keyhole is a hypnotic film to watch, bathed in its monochrome visuals, but by the end it becomes exhausting:  Suffused with double-exposures, billowing curtains and dreamlike images that fade away into the ether, it also teeters on the edge of kinkiness in a ‘Diane Arbus’ sort of way.  If you’re not a fan, be prepared to swallow a large dose of phantasmagoria that may not go down entirely as the director intended.

Meredith Taylor ©

Lawless (2012)

Director: John Hillcoat.  Writer: Nick Cave

Cast: Shia Lebeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman.

Prohibition brought a sense of dread and restlessness to Virginia in the 1930s.  John Hillcoat’s savage tale of bootlegging gangster brothers is punctuated by short sharp shocks of brutal violence and permeated with an overriding sense of dread. With some solid performances particulary from LeBeouf, it’s a suberb study of social meltdown and sibling loyalty but as a chronicle of the era it’s as empty as an alcoholics memory of the night before.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

Anna Karenina (2012)

Director Joe Wright    Screenwriter: Tom Stoppard

Starring: Jude Law, Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Aaron Johnson

Atonement director Joe Wright has placed the writing credits of this take on Tolstoy’s timeless masterpiece in the safe hands of Tom Stoppard as Keira Knightley takes the stage, quite literally, in the leading role. Focusing on the eternal love triangle and the choice that every woman has to make between romantic love and the security of marriage and social position, this version takes place within the confines of a theatre in a railway station, an ice rink and other snowy locations.  Of the standouts, Jude Law gives a sleek and buttoned-up performance as Karenin and Matthew MacFadyen’s cheeky turn as Anna’s brother is fresh and dynamic. Be-decked with fur and diamonds and breathtakingly spectacular, the ambitious setting seems to draw the attention away from the heart of the drama which is the scandalous love story that develops between Keira Knightley’s Anna and Aaron Johnson’s dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky.  With echoes of her tearfully poignant performance in Duchess without the visceral punch, the film immediately becomes less emotionally engaging and more of a theatrical romp with pseudo rumpy-pumpy and Strictly Ballroom thrown in.  But as a piece of filmmaking it’s an intoxicating and innovative statement from a director very much at top of his game.

Meredith Taylor ©

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Twenty8K (2012)

Directed by: David Kew, Neil Thompson.  Writers: Paul Abbott, Jimmy Dowdall

Cast: Stephen Dillane, Parminder Nagra, Kaya Scodelario

106mins  Action thriller

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East London is the setting for this well-paced Britflic as riddled with stereotypes as it is with bullets.  Panoramic scenes of London locations punctuate the action revolving around a gang-related shooting that leaves young Asian teenager Vipon banged up as the main suspect.  His elder sister, Deeva, a Paris-based fashion executive played by Bend it like Beckham star Parminder Nagra flies back to town and turns detective to get her little brother, newcomer Sebastian Nanena, off the hook.

Well you’re in safe hands with Paul Abbott (State of Play) writing the screenpaly and Stephen Dillane shines out in the role of DCI Stone. It’s honest and well-acted and jogs along nicely but does it really have anything new to say and does it move you?  Well probably only in the direction of the exit doors as the closing titles roll. See this one when it comes out on DVD.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

Once in a Blue Moon on the indie film scene 31 August 2012

Tagou-Wushu-Academy-Zhengzhou-ChinaThis weekend’s Blue Moon brings sensuous delights to the silver screen with the opening of Samsara, Ron Fricke’s breathtaking visual meditation on the cycle of life.  A sequel to his highly acclaimed film “Baraka”, this extraordinary documentary takes you on a globe-trotting tour through 25 continents, all filmed in eye-popping clarity and the highest definition known to mankind in cinemas today.  The Curzon Mayfair is celebrating this release with a specially created Chili Lychee Martini.  Samsara is also showing at the Everyman, Hackney Picturehouse and Apollo West End.  You really need to see it on the big screen.

Peter Strickland’s dynamite follow-up to “Katalin Varga” is the highly original “Berberian Sound Studio” a chilling tale from Rome based on the Italian “romanzi gialli” of the sixties and seventies.  With its blood-curdling sound-track and Toby Jones’s edgy portrait of an ordinary guy slowly losing his mind, it’s my top recommendation for this weekend. See it at the Curzon, The Everyman and The Barbican.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And talking of mind games, “The Possession” may appeal to those of a psychic persuasion. Based on A S Byatt’s Booker award-winning novel, it tells the story of a little girl who becomes entranced by an antique box and shows how curiosity gets the better of her.  Dealing with themes such as OBE and mediumship, it’s not to be taken lightly but is possibly one of the better versions of “The Exorcist” currently around.  But don’t get carried away, while you’re “out of body” something else could jump in…… Showing at Vue and Cineworld cinemas from Friday 31st August.

Still with the supernatural in mind, The Everyman “Late Nights” are showing David Bowie in Jim Henson’s gothic tale of fantasy “Labyrinth”.  They are also hosting a Q&A on John Hillcoat’s upcoming “Lawless” that premiered at Cannes this year. Tickets available online at Everyman Film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Rio, Dalston, there’s another chance to see Jan Kounen’s mesmerising love story “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky” ((2009) starring Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis. It divided the critics but who could baulk at two hours of exquisitely designed interiors, sumptuous clothes, delightful music, lush photography and electric performances from two attractive actors. For those who loved “A Single Man” it will appeal.  I won’t mention the sex scenes…

 

 

 

 

 

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And last but not least is an engaging and powerful Polish political drama set in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall entitled “Yuma”. With echoes of the 1957 “3:10 to Yuma”, it’s a little bit rough round the edges, but well-directed with some strong performances particularly from the central character Zyga (Jakub Gierszal) and provides an valuable insight into the era.  If you’re interested in European history or communism then “Yuma” is for you.  Showing at the Odeon cinemas and Cineworld from Friday 31st August 2012

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Meredith Taylor ©

and still showing….

 

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Dir/Wri  Peter Strickland | Cast: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Tonia Sotiropoulou | 90mins Thriller

It’s 1976, and in a sleazy sound editing studio somewhere in Rome two monstruous egos are working on “The Equestrian Vortex” a cheap and nasty horror flick based on the “Gialli” paperback thrillers of the era. Francesco (Cosimo Fusco) is the mercurial producer and Santini (Antonio Mancino) the womanising director. Frothing with self-importance and seventies machismo, they are arrogant and faintly ridiculous. Then into the mix slips Gilderoy (Toby Jones) a timid English techie all the way from Dorking. Still living with his mother he is remarkable only for his well-honed skills at mixing and manipulating sound on analogue equipment. His unique ability at producing sounds with a variety of fruit and veg that mimic flesh and bone being crushed and severed by unknown forces and supernatural powers is matched only by his meagre financial demands to get the job done.  But no one is being paid for this gig and Gilderoy’s blokish modesty is at odds with the Italians’ smouldering sexuality.  Their snide banter, jibes and bare-faced chauvinism towards the women “screamers” in the studio creates a palpable ambiance of provocation and some minxy female characters with Bond girl Tonia Sotiropoulou standing out as the sultry and recalcitrant PA.

Gilderoy steadily works his magic on the sound effects but the toxic brew of personalities and claustrophobic interiors start to have a negative impact as he longs for soft memories of home. Losing his grasp on reality, Gilderoy sinks into a morass of auto-suggested horror echoing that of Roman Polanski’s character in “The Tenant”, strangely of the same year. There’s a a lot of early Polanski here: the lighting and sinister shadows, the misery of tortured souls and anxiousness of the outsider. It’s a subtle and finely-tuned performance from Toby Jones and Cosimo Fusco strikes just the right balance between absurdity and condescension. Peter Strickland is a director first feature Katalin Varga won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2009, his latest, a comedy entitled Flux Gourmet, was back in this year’s Berlinale Encounters strand, but came home empty-handed. MT©

ON ARROW PLAYER 

 

 

 

Samsara (2011)

Director: Ron Fricke                  

Writer: Mark Magidson

Documentary

Samsara is a visual tour de force that will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world or the origins of humanity.  Taking its name from the Sanskrit word for the circle of existence, Ron Fricke spent five years to putting this documentary together: the result is a crystal clear pastiche of images shot on 70mm film in the highest definition footage in available in cinema today, accompanied by a dynamic score from Lisa Gerrard who sang on the soundtrack “Gladiator”.

Samsara is certainly the most relaxing film you’ll see so far this year.  The global odyssey unfolds sensuously with eye-popping clarity and total calm, as the camera pans through five continents and twenty five countries in the form of a guided non-narrative meditation showing how the rhythms and symmetry of the natural World are mirrored in our own life cycles and creativity.  Gradually it becomes more sinister and takes a non-judgemental look at the legacy of our existence focusing on the imprint of  industry, pollution and natural disasters and leaves us to form our own conclusions. Just lie back and think of England, Burma, India, Canada, Nepal, France, Germany, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, Argentina and many more.

Meredith Taylor

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Shadow Dancer (2012)

Director/Writer: James Marsh

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen, Aidan Gillen, Brid Brennan, Gillian Anderson

101mins  Thriller

Andrea Riseborough is well cast as Colette, a mother and IRA member in 1990s Belfast who is forced to become a double agent for MI5 during an aborted bomb attempt.  Torn between her family and the political set-up she gradually falls for Clive Owen as detective Mac and they become emotionally involved in a slow-burning love affair.  Andrea Riseborough strikes just the right note of seriousness and vulnerability and Clive Owen’s subtlely nuanced performance as an MI5 professional whose credentials are called into question by his feelings is well-pitched and believable. Atmospheric visuals, authentic interiors and fine attention to the historical context make this a gripping and suspenseful feature from director and writer James Marsh who is best known for his documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim.

Meredith Taylor ©

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August Bank Holiday 2012 – Latest from the arthouse scene

Just in time for the Bank Holiday wet weekend there’s plenty to see on the big screen. The long-awaited IRA espionage thriller Shadow Dancer from Oscar-winning director James Marsh finally hits cinemas this Friday.  Starring Andrea Riseborough (Made in Dagenham), Clive Owen (Croupier) and Gillian Anderson (The X Files), it’s a gripping and atmospheric British drama that exposes the emotional fault lines of two people, an MI5 operative and an IRA informant in nineties Belfast. See review for showtimes.

 

 

77_IMP_Frederic_InterviewThe Imposter is a spin-chilling “film-experience’ and Director Bart Layton’s extraordinary debut feature.  A true-crime documentary with a noirish psychological twist, it explores the sinister aftermath of the real-life kidnapping of a young boy in San Antonio, Texas in 1994.

The Imposter is showing at the Everyman and Vue Cinemas throughout town from Friday.

The BFI continues its retrospective with F for Fake, Orson Welles’ innovative masterpiece and documentary about fraud and fakery, directed in the last decade of his life and starring himself in the leading role – who else!   Showing at the BFI and ICA London from the 24th August 2012

And finally Maryam Keshavarz debut is a forbidden love-story from Iran. “Circumstance” is a coming of age drama focusing on a lesbian relationship and won best audience award at Sundance this year.  See reviews for listings.

Shireen Arshadi and               

Nikohi Boosheri star in

Circumstance (2011)

 

 

 

 

And still showing……………….

The Bird (2011) (L’Oiseau)

Director/screenwriter: Yves Caumon

Cast:  Sandrine Kimberlain, Clement Sibony, Bruno Todeschini

France. 94mins   French with English subtitles    DramaLOISEAU2

Spare on dialogue but easy on the eye, this enigmatic film set around Bordeaux tells of Anne (Sandrine Kimberlain) who works as a chef although we never actually never get to see her cooking.  She is reserved with colleagues but one of them takes a fancy to her even though she resists his constant advances.  Raphael (Clement Sibony) is drop-dead gorgeous but Anne needs to be alone to process her feelings of grief over a tragic past.  The delicately emerging story, gentle camera work and subtle performances are what makes this film a really touching portrait of a woman in crisis.

Meredith Taylor c

 

Take This Waltz (2012)

Director  Sarah Polley

Seth Rogan, Michelle Williams, Jake Kirby, Sarah Silverman

117 mins      Arthouse romantic comedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After success with her debut “Away From Her” Canadian director Sarah Polley offers this colourful and unflinching portrait of Margot, a vapid twentysomething who drifts through life waiting for something to happen.  Husband and cookery writer Lou (Seth Rogan) is a stabilising influence while Margot experiments with writing and dabbles in a slow-burning flirtation with sultry neighbour Daniel (Luke Kirby) eventually coming face to face with her own emptiness.  There’s plenty of fun and frolics with her girlfriends from full frontal nudity at a cringeworthy poolside scene to threesomes with Daniel once she’s thrown in the towel. Polley’s clever script offers plenty of insights and Michelle Williams’ delicately nuanced performance makes Margot appear more interesting and multi-layered than her character actually is.  Despite all this, the arthouse vibe feels suffocating and unreal and you come away feeling nothing for the characters accept possibly Seth Rogan’s grumpily honest ‘good guy’ Lou.  Take This Waltz shows that while you can’t be loved-up every day in a marriage you do need a real life and a focus to bring to the table; not just chicken and babyish chitchat.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQTNY5yaVk

 

The Devil’s Business (2012)

Writer and Director: Sean Hogan

Billy Clarke, Jack Gordon, Jonathan Hansler, Harry Miller

75mins   Supernatural horror  Cert18

 

This edgy low-budget horror flick wanders into supernatural territory when two hit-men are sent to murder an associate of gangland boss Bruno (Harry Miller) and discover that their quarry Kist (Jonathan Hansler) is also big on devil worship.  In a similar vein to The Liability (with Tim Roth – coming up later this year), hardened hit man Pinner (Billy Clarke) finds himself working alongside Jack Gordon’s useless rookie Cully, who rapidly lets the side down. The pair are slowly sucked into a maelstrom of horrific goings-on involving Wagnerian opera, witchcraft and a wickedly sinister child from hell – think Chucky on a bad hair day.  Sean Hogan’s script builds in moments of real dread spiked with mordant humour (“If you were paid to think, you’d struggle to make the minimum wage”). A spooky soundtrack and slick performances make this a worthwhile watch.

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Meredith Taylor ©

 

I Against I (2012)

Directors  Mark Cripps, David Ellison, James Marquand

Starring: Kenny Doughty, Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, Mark Womack

82mins     Thriller

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I Against I is a half-baked noirish thriller that slips down more easily that it has a right to given its poor script and insipid central character Ian (Kenny Doughty). Ian is a night-club owner who is suspected of killing gangster boss (John Castle) together with Russian hitman (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson).  Both are then forced to kill each other by the son (Mark Womack) of the gangster boss.  None of the characters are convincing but there’s a menacing feel to the film that makes it watchable as a lightweight thriller with plenty of shouting, knifing, underground car parks and a rather good techno soundtrack.

Meredith Taylor ©

Showing at the Apollo, London W1

Still showing..

Sundance award-winning documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” opens this weekend and exposes the world of the dissident Chinese artIst best known for his Sunflower Seeds installation and the recent transformation at the Serpentine in London. Showing at the Everyman and Curzon cinemas.

 

 

Over at the Southbank the Hitchcock season continues with the restored version of an atmospheric silent film from 1926 starring Ivor Novello: “Lodger: A Story of the London Fog”.  Sight and Sound have recently voted him “best filmmaker of all time”.

 

From Albania comes “The Forgiveness of Blood” the second feature from “Maria Full of Grace” director Joshua Marston.  It tells the real life story of a contemporary family caught up in the age-old Balkan code of Law and is based on months of documentary research and interviews and employs of cast of local talent. Showing at the Curzon and Odeon.

Caught up in lottery fever is the Norwegian comedy caper “Jackpot”; another Jo Nesbo offering riding on the back of the recent Scandinavian wave of thrillers. Despite the capable of direction of Magnus Martens it fails to match the excellent “Headhunters”.  Showing at the Rio Dalston, Ritzy and Hackney Picturehouse along with the Odeon and Cineworld.

Another feature that isn’t quite on the money is Fernando Meirelles’ new film “360” starring Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law and Rachel Weisz who embark on an interconnecting series of hook-ups. Read my review to find out more about this glossy globe-trotter.   Meanwhile from the rather more earthy back-drop of the Avon countryside comes Tony Siddon’s new film In the Dark Half, a touching part ghost part sink drama.  Jessica Barden (Tamara Drew) grapples with issues surrounding teenage angst, depression and a mysterious death.  Showing at the Ritzy Brixton and Empire Leicester Square.

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And on the home entertainment front Tilda Swinton fans will be pleased to know that all time classic masterpiece Orlando is now out on Blu-ray.

httpv://www.moviemail.com/film/blu-ray/Orlando/

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

And still showing from last week, 3rd August 2012 is a fascinating film for lovers of modern art and all things American. Eames: Architect and Painter looks at the life of Charles Eames and his partner Ray who designed that famous chair in leather and chrome.  The BFI Southbank is showing Julien Temple’s dynamite documentary, London: The Modern Babylon which celebrates London’s indomitable creative spirit.  It features a stellar cast including Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton.  Rutger Hauer makes a brief appearance in Neil Jones’  Vampire Britflic “The Reverand”.  And it you’re bored of London and the Olympics then why not head down to the peaceful shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy where the 65th Locarno Film Festival is in full swing.

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Heading to the Far East, Christian Bale plays an American misionary in “The Flowers of War”, Zhang Zimou’s questionable but visually stunning take on the Japanese invasion of China, seen from the perspective of a young girl.  And, on a more mundane level, Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s “study of an ageing servant and her employer (Andy Lau) “A Simple Life” is beautifully observed and poignant.

Olympic furore takes over the capital from now until the end of August and the controversy behind Batman continues to crowd the film headlines but there’s still plenty to look forward to on the indy and arthouse scene.    If you only see one film, make it Searching for Sugar Man, an intriguing music documentary that probes the mystery behind the disappearance of ’60s musician and cult hero Sixto Rodriguez. From Barcelona comes El Bulli a foodie film that will give you a delicious taster of the fascinating world of the culinary genius and celebrated chef Ferran Adria.  Now booking for next year…

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On the South Bank, the BFI are screening Red Desert, Antonioni’s ground-breaking sixties take on spiritual isolation in the modern world.  Starring screen goddess Monica Vitti it was his fist colour film and is sure to resonate with contemporary audiences.  Fans of Anthony Quayle will enjoy the digitally remastered version of fifties love triangle Woman in a Dressing Gown.  He plays a long-suffering husband who is forced to choose between his office sweetheart (Sylvia Sims) and his slovenly wife (Yvonne Mitchell) whose only crime appears to be forgetting to take the rubbish out, permanently….

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Leos Carax with his Leopard of Honour at Locarno 2012

 

French Auteur Leos Carax has been awarded the Leopard of Honour at   Locarno Film Festival. His entire filmography is currently being screened at this year’s festival which is in full swing at its picturesque Lake Maggiore setting until 11th August:  His five features are “Boy meets Girl” 1984, “Bad Blood” 1986, “Les Amants de Pont Neuf” 1991, “Pola X” of ’99 and his latest “Holy Motors” that competed in this year’s Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Holy Motors

Swandown (2012)

Swan2Director: Andrew Kötting

Writer: Iain Sinclair

94mins     Poetic Travelogue

Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s offbeat travelogue uses poetry, song and dry humorous banter to chart a very English voyage from Sussex to Hackney….by Swan-shaped pedalo.  Boarding the pedalo beachside at Hastings, they begin a slow and silly journey shot through with magical sunsets, morning mists, lyrical interludes and down to earth exchanges with the people they meet along the way.

To complete the eccentric feel Kötting wears a beautifully tailored suit which deteriorates into a mud-soaked rag in the final stages but neither men complain or utter a cross word.  The film has a strange hypnotic power to woo you with its gentle rhythm and quirky charm.  There’s no anti-Olympic agenda as such but Sinclair has a soft dig at the games on reaching the site barriers where heavy metal chains and signage warn them to keep out.  Swandown reminds us of the real reasons to be cheerful about England and being English.  It’s a pleasure cruise.

Meredith Taylor ©

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Vampyr (1932) 90 Anniversary Blu-ray release

Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Fantasy Horror | 83 mins

Deep, dark and undeniably disturbing Carl Dreyer’s 1932 experimental feature based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘In A Glass Darkly’ was actually financed by the main actor, Baron Gunzberg.

As young traveller Allan Grey, he comes across an old castle in the village of Courtempierre and decides to stay there, entranced by a series of weird and inexplicable events that capture his imagination or is it his imagination?:  A grim figure carrying a scythe, a ghastly landlady who appears at nightfall, shadowy figures flitting across walls, revolving sculls and a nightmare where he is buried alive. Events come to a head when the elderly squire of the village voices his fears for the safety of his young daughters and gives him a strange parcel to be opened after his impending death.  According to local folklore, souls of the unscrupulous haunt the village as vampires, preying upon young people in their endless thirst for blood.

Dreyer evokes an eerie and supernatural beauty to all this as the camera sweeps gracefully across luminously-lit rooms and chiaroscuro passages in the ancient castle. Curiously disembodied shadows counterbalanced by a soundtrack of strange voices, primal screams and periods of unsettling silence add to the feeling of otherwordliness. To create the curious half-light, filming took place during the early hours of misty dawn with a lens black cloth.

The performances are really strong considering the only professional involved was a household servant. Sybille Schmitz as daughter Leone, gives a bloodcurdling series of expressions when she realises her vampire fate ranging from abject fear and misery through to madness and finally menace (see clip). Grey’s burial scene is also eerily evocative as he looks up through wild and staring eyes as the lid is screwed down on his coffin and a candle is lit on the small window above and he is carried through the streets looking up at the drifting clouds and lacy treescapes on the way to his macabre interment.  This is a film that stays to haunt you a long time after the Gothic titles have rolled.  MT

90th Anniversary Blu-ray release through www.mastersofcinema.com 

 

 

 

 

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God Grierson Award Winner LFF 2012

Director: Alex Gibney

Cast: Jamie Sheridan, John Slattery

104mins   Documentary   US HBO Documentary Films

Of all the documentaries at the London Film Festival 2012, this was the most coruscating not only for its subject matter but also for its implications for the leaders of the contemporary Catholic Church: namely the Vatican and the Pope.  Did he tender his resignation this week purely on the basis of age?: one has to wonder after seeing this.

What starts as a ‘simple’ case of child abuse in a sixties Catholic Church School for deaf/mute children rapidly escalates throughout the Church system demonstrating the wide instance of abuse cases and showing how there was a continual whitewashing in the system that appears to “protect, defend, and produce sexual abusers”.  The story develops into a serious outing of the organised Church not only demonstrating cracks in its organisational facade, but also garnering the involvement of well known and highly respected human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robinson QC, who is an active and prominent figure in the everyday life of Britain.

In this fascinating exposé Alex Gibney also shows us the inner workings of the Vatican. Frank in tone, it’s a watchable and well-put-together tale that presents a vast array of photographs and video footage from the Sixties right up to the present day.  The phrase “a simple case of child abuse”; is in no way intended to demean the gravity of paedophilia but that the sixties were fifty years ago and one would sincerely hope that by the turn of the 21st Century the situation would have altered somewhat, so these incidences could have been eradicated by grassroots change so that this story could end on a positive note, and it does in some ways.

Mea Maxima Culpa sets out not only to bring to light new evidence but also to cristallize an argument that most of the World is already well aware of concerning cover-ups in the Catholic Church and to put it to bed – if you’ll pardon the expression – with hard evidence that cannot be debunk

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012)

Dir: David Gelb | Cast: Jiro One, Yoshikazu One, Masuhiro Yamamoto,  Daisuke Nakazawa, Hachiro Mizutani, Hiroki Fujita, Toichiro Iida, Akihiro Oyama, Shizuo Oyama | Doc 82′

For any self-professed sushi nut, this film is a must see. Jiro One is a legend in his own lifetime; a man devoted to the creation and serving of sushi for 75 years from the basement of a faceless Tokyo office building in a restaurant that only seats ten. The sushi is served up in specific order and you are expected to demolish it piece by piece, under his rather intimidating gaze in about 15minutes flat, shelling-out something like £300 for the privilege. That makes this one of the most expensive restaurants in the world.

What is remarkable though is the skill, dedication and thought that has gone into a meal. And the rest of the world has recognised this: Jiro’s tiny, unassuming Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi bar has garnered all three Michelin Stars and, as the makers of this film attest, global recognition.

Jiro One is one of the old school; a believer in hard work, total commitment and dedication to a chosen field, whatever it may be. To serve an apprenticeship under Jiro is to spend ten years of dedicated to the most gruelling, repetitive, thankless work in the kitchen, learning the trade. And all this against the prevailing tide of today’s theme of growing fat doing the minimum with little application or indeed mastery in any field, all the while aspiring to coin maximum cash.

 

The title alludes to Jiro as a young man dreaming of making not just sushi but the best sushi. This film illustrates how Jiro never believes he has arrived, and that there is always room for improvement be it in the choice of the fish, the preparation of the rice, or the serving of the sushi. In doing so it opens out the film as an allegory or lesson in life and how best to live it. But also demonstrates how hard it must be for his sons to live under the shadow of a man who has truly reached the pinnacle of his profession, even if he himself doesn’t see it as so.

Food and film often make for successful lovers and any gourmand who truly appreciates the subtleties and depth of haute cuisine will relish this one. Make sure to eat beforehand or you will find yourself scrambling to a sushi bar straight after, only to feel all but affronted that it isn’t Jiro’s hand that serves up a concerto in seafood for, hereafter, nothing else will do. AT

NOW ON MUBI

The Absence of Love | Michelangelo Antonioni Retro

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only in a few cases, when they act in solidarity with others, do they have a chance to become part of something whole.

Antonioni grew up in Ferrara in the Po Valley not far from the setting of his documentary short GENTE DEL PO (1943-47). Visconti was in the throws of filming Ossessione nearby. Despite its neo-realistic moorings, this is a personal statement: an effort to interpret the world via the moving image, rather than the other way round. Antonioni’s realism is not to show anything natural, humane or  dramatic, and particularly not anything like an idea, a thesis. Memory alone forms the model for his art. Memory in the form of images: photos, paintings, writing – they form the basis of his later work – an adventure, where the audience peels off the many layers, like off an onion: a painting, more than once painted over.

Antonioni was already 38 when he made his drama debut with Cronaca Du Un Amore (1950)  Superficially a film noir, in the mood of Visconti’s first opus Ossessione, this expressed the overriding existential angst, loneliness and alienation that would permeate his work. Paola and Guido grew up in the same neighbourhood in Ferrara, and want to do away with Paola’s rich husband Enrico Fontana. This is no crime of passion, because Paola and Guido are unable to love, or even imagine a life together –  but they both stand to profit from Fontana’s death. And the city of Milan is much more than a background: life here is a reflection of the state of mind of the conspirators: like a drug, the street life full of chaos, the neurotic atmosphere in the cafes. All this is unreal, jungle like: modern urbanity as hell, a central topic of Antonioni’s opus. And he observes his main protagonists often, when they are alone, not only in dramatic scenes. This way, he creates an elliptical structure, with two combustion points: action and echo. As Wenders said: “The strength of the American Cinema is a forward focus, European cinema paints ellipses”.

I VINTI (1952) is set in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK), and tells the stories of youthful perpetrators, who commit their crimes not out of material necessity, but just for fun. Even though the crimes are central, Antonioni is not much interested in the structure of the genre. The police work is secondary, as are the criminals themselves: Antonioni is fascinated with the daily life of his protagonists, the crimes are more and more forgotten, the investigations peter out – shades of L’ Avventura and Blow Up.

In LE AMICHE (1955) Antonioni finds the structure for his features, seemingly overpopulated with couples and friends – who are all busy, but play a secondary role to their environment, in this case Turin. Clelia who comes to Turin, to open a designer shop for clothes, falls in with four other young women, all of them much wealthier than she is. Their changing couplings with men end tragically. Set between Clelia’s arrival in Turin and her leaving for Rome, LE AMICHE is a kaleidoscope of human frailty, in which the audience is waiting for something to happen, some sort of story of boy meets girl story, but when something like it really happens, it is so secondary, so much overlaid by all the small details we have learned before, that we are as dislocated as the characters: we flounder because Antonioni does not tell a story with a beginning and an end (however much we pretend), but he tells us, that the world can exist without stories. Because there is so much more to see in the city of Turin, as there will be in Rome: Clelia is only the messenger, send out by Antonioni to be a traveller, not a story teller. In so far, she is his archetypal heroine.

Aldo, the central protagonist in IL GRIDO (1956/7) is the most untypical of all Antonioni heroes: he has been expelled from paradise, after his wife left him. His travels are romantic, because he does not let himself go, but sticks to his environment, travelling with his daughter in the Po delta. Whilst looking back on his village, towered over by the factory chimney, it is his past history, which forces him to leave. He becomes more and more marginalised: an outsider, even when living near the river in a derelict hut, he becomes the victim of the environment, of the background of landscape, seasons and the history of his live, spent all here. El Grido ends tragically, because Aldo (unlike most other Antonioni heroes) insists on keeping to his past: he does not want to cross the bridges, which are metaphorically there to be crossed. And Aldo’s titular outcry becomes a good-bye, even though he is back home. Il Grido is also Antonioni’s return to neo-realism, another contradiction, because he never really was part of it.

 

L’AVVENTURA (1960) has four main protagonists, three of them humans, but they are dwarfed by Lisca Bianca, a rocky island in the Mediterranean See. A group of wealthy Italians visit the island but when they want to leave, the main character Anna, is missing. Her boyfriend Sandro starts the search, but is soon more interested in Claudia, Anna’s best friend. When they all leave, without having found Anna, Claudia and Sandro are ready to start a new life together. Antonioni is often compared with Brecht. Like the German playwright, he refuses the dramatization of the narrative, because it is a remnant of the bourgeois theatre. Analogue to this comparison, L’Avventura is epic cinema. Brecht’s plays are often transparent, because the actors do not identify with their roles. The audience is not drawn into the play, but left outside to observe. The same goes for Antonioni, because, as Doniol-Valcroze wrote “to direct is to organise time and environment”. Antonioni genius is, that he first introduces time scale and environment, before he develops the narrative, via the actions and words of the protagonists. The breakers on the island, are the real music of the feature. The fragility of the emotions manifests it selves mainly in the way the protagonists talk –  but mostly they are on cross purpose. Yet the overall impression is not that of a modern film with sound, but of a very sad silent movie. At Cannes in 1960, the feature was mercilessly jeered at the premiere, but won the Grand Prix nevertheless – a rarity of the jury being ahead of the public.

 

In LA NOTTE (1960) we observe twenty-four hours in the live of the writer Giovanni and his wife Lydia. Whilst their friend dies in a hospital, they have to accept that their love has been dead for a while. Antonioni uses his characters like figures on a chess board. They are real, but at the same time ghosts. He does not tell their story, but follows their movements from one place to an another. There is no interconnection between them and their environment. They have lost the feeling for themselves, others and the outside. Their world is cold and threatening. Antonioni offers no irony or pity. He is the surgeon at the operating table, and his view is that of the camera: mostly skewed over-head shots. It is impossible to love La Notte. Whilst Antonioni is the first director of the modern era, he is also its most vicious critic.

 

When L’ECLISSE (1962) starts in the morning, it feels somehow like a continuation of La Notte. Before Vittoria (Vitti) ends her relationship with Francisco, she arranges a new Stilleben behind an empty picture frame. Next stop is Piero (Delon), a stockbroker. Vittoria is like Wenders’ Alice in the City: a child in a world of grown ups, repelled by their emotional coldness. Piero, very much a child of this world, is all calculations and superficiality, his friend’s remark “long live the façade” sums it all up. Long panorama shots show very little empathy with the eternal city, particularly the shots without much noise (music only sets in after the half-way point of the film), are representative of a ghost town populated by little worker ants, dwarfed by the huge buildings. The couple’s last rendezvous is symbolic for everything Antonioni ever wanted to show us: none of the two shows up, we watch the space where they were supposed to meet for several minutes. L’Eclisse will lead without much transition to Deserto Rosso, where Monica Vitti is Guiliana, wandering the streets, getting lost in a fog on a very unlovable planet.

 

DESERTO ROSSO (1963/4)

 

Guiliana: “I dreamt, I was laying in my bed, and the bed was moving. And when I looked, I saw that I was sinking in quicksand”. Guiliana’s world is threatening, everything is monstrous, the buildings of an industrious estate are unbelievable tall. The machines in the factories, the steel island in the sea, and the silhouettes of the people surrounding her are enclosing around her. We travel with her from this industrial quarter of Ravenna to Ferrara and Medicina. She is never still, only at the end she is standing still in front of a factory gate. In Deserto Rosso objects become blurred, they seem to be alive, making their way independently. The camera never leaves Guiliana during her nightmare. We see the world through Guiliana’s eyes: “It is, as if I had tears in my eyes”. In the room of his son she sees his toy robot, his eyes alight. She switches it off – but this the only activity she is allowed to master successfully. There is always fog between her and everybody else, even her lover Corrado is “on the other side”. And the fable, which she tells her son Vittorio, who cannot move, before he is suddenly running through the room, lacks anything metaphysical. Roland Barthes called Antonioni “the artist of the body, the opposite of others, who are the priests of art”. For once, Antonioni is one with the body of his protagonist: Guiliana’s body is not one of the many others, she will never get lost.

 

BLOW UP (1966)

 

A feature one should only see once – never again. Otherwise one will suffer the same as Thomas photos: Blow Up. Antonioni to Moravia: “All my films before are works of intuition, this one is a work of the head.” Everything is calculated, the incidents are planned, the story is driven by an elaborate design. The drama, which is anything but, is a drama perfectly executed. Herbie Hancock, the Yardbirds, the beat clubs, the marihuana parties, Big Ben and the sports car with radiophone, the Arabs and the nuns, the beatniks on the streets: everything is like swinging London in the 1960ies: a head idea. Blow Up is Antonioni’s most successful feature at the box office – and not one of his best.

 

 

 

 

ZABRISKIE POINT (1969/70)

 

Given Cart Blanche by MGM, Antonioni produced a feature in praise of the American Cinema. Zabriskie Point is the birth of the American Cinema from the valley of the Death. Antonioni has to repeat this dream for himself. But he had to invent his own Mount Rushmore, his Monument Valley, to make a film about this country in his own image. A car and a plane meet in the desert. The woman driver and the pilot recognise each other immediately. The copulation in the sand is metaphor for the simultainacy of the act, when longing and fulfilment, greed and satisfaction are superimposed. Then the unbelievable total destruction: the end of civilisation; Antonioni synchronises both events, a miracle of topography and choreography. This is Antonioni’s dream: the birth of a poem.

 

Both, the TV feature MISTERO Di OBERWLAD (1979) nor IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA (1982) have in any way added something to Antonioni’s masterful oeuvre. The same can be said of his work after he suffered a massive stroke in 1985, leaving him without speech partly paralysation: BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), a collaboration with Wim Wenders, and Antonioni’s segment of EROS (2004). AS

A RETROSPECTIVE TAKING PLACE AT  THE BFI EARLY IN 2019

 

 

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