Otto Preminger’s last film in black & black provides confirmation that as a general rule those he made in black & white were better than those in colour.
Here working with a British cast spanning decades of acting talent ranging from Finlay Currie to Anna Massey, despite Preminger’s reputation for self-serving sensationalism here the general mood is subdued, especially Laurence Olivier, who does an impressive job of suppressing his tendency to ham.
In the later stages madness increasingly takes over and among the various eccentrics on view Noel Coward manages to stand out as Carol Lynley’s poisonous landlord. @RichardChatten
A stylishly slick but formulaic film sees Ian Mcshane (now 81) booted and suited in Fuerteventura as a soulful professional hitman called Wilson.
The canary island provides a suitably inhospitable widescreen backcloth for this curio that feels less and less like a thriller the more it plays out as a drama with some dark humour and a gently lilting score from Remate.
Wilson, a gravelly voiced tattooed war veteran, is there todo away with ‘the target’ who is not at home when he turns up at his swanky modernist villa to kill him. Instead a young French woman is swimming in the pool. So Wilson roams aimlessly about the moon-scaped island and ends up playing pool in a nearby bar and quaffing vintage whiskey served to him by said French girl (Nora Arnezeder) Gloria, who apparently works there and offers him lunch with her mother a wonderfully drole Fanny Ardant, who is no fool when she meets the suave silver fox.
Softening elements arrive in the shape of Wilson’s gauche and shaggy-haired sidekick Ryan (Adam Nagaitis) who turns up from Lancashire offering to help, instantly lowering the tone along with an irritating little boy called Max (Oscar Coleman) who hangs around the hotel. The American Star of the title turns out to be a vast and rusting shipwreck that provides a scary interlude when it starts creaking ominously in the waves.
The film showcases McShane’s talents as an affable and intuitive killer who knows how to charm the birds and the boys but can still be brutal when necessary. For once he gets a leading role and carries it off with style in director Gonzalo López-Gallego’s visually appealing offbeat thriller. @MeredithTaylor
A sweary bit of brutal British gangster violence offers a stylish depiction of the Kray Brothers’ era, elevated to a cult classic by a watchable cast of Paul Bettany, Malcolm McDowell, Saffron Burrows and David Thewlis.
Writing credits go to Sexy Beast team Louis Ellis and David Scinto whose original screenplay is adapted by Johnny Ferguson as a betrayal and revenge story following Bettany’s rookie gangster through the Sixties early Seventies when he morphs into social misfit McDowell, never quite vanquishing his boss Freddie Mays (Thewlis) whose spunky onscreen lover Burrows kicks ass as Karen. @MeredithTaylor
Vertigo Releasing is planning to release the title across digital platforms on 13 December 2024.
Dir: Nicolas Ray | Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood | US Drama
‘Rebel Without a Cause’ started life as a modest black & white exploitation item about disaffected youth, but allied to Nicholas Ray’s flair for colour and penchant for melodramatics – heightened by Leonard Rosenman’s dissonant score – ultimately emerged in widescreen & colour as an ambitious vehicle for an emerging star.
It’s been observed that the youngsters display more careworn than their parents and they certainly seem to derive little satisfaction from a life of cheap thrills and mindless violence; which is why it’s a cathartic moment when James Dean finally has to take the conciliatory role with Plato at the film’s conclusion.@RichardChatten
Dir: Guy Maddin, Evan & Galen Johnson | Canada 118′
Cult Canadian director Guy Maddin is an auteur in his own right with an eclectic stash of avant-garde films under his belt and a loyal fanbase. Recently he joined forces with Evan and Galen Johnson and here joins them for a curious pulp horror outing worth seeing only for its stellar cast.
It all starts off rather straighforwardly in a lakeside gazebo in the grounds of a German castle at a G7 conference hosted by Kate Blanchett’s spritely president Helga Ortmann. She is joined by Denis Menochet (for France); Charles Dance (bizarrely for the US) a pigtailed and horny Roy Dupuis (Canada) who proceeds with his offbeat powers of seduction; Nikki Amuka-Bird (for the UK) Italy’s Rolando Ravello and Takehiro Kira (Japan). The motley crew start work on a crisis paper until proceedings take a deep dive into Dr Strangelove territory.
During their arrival Ortmann has proudly showed the heads of state the recently discovered remains of a prehistoric body perfectly preserved in a nearby peat bog. And this atavistic relic gives rise to a strange turn of events that doesn’t quite live up to expectations. But never mind about that, the cast makes this a worthwhile, if overlong, watch with some witty exchanges debating the world as it grinds to a holt ecological, socially and spiritually @MeredithTaylor
Rumours – In UK cinemas 6th December from 6th December 2024
Dirs: Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan | Doc, India. 81’
The world of moths is probed in this peaceful and poetic new documentary set in the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas on the border of Bhutan and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh where their life spins on the phases of the moon.
For just ten days leading up the new moon these mysterious nocturnal creatures whizz frenetically in all directions drinking the nectar of flowers. All this activity is to generate heat.
Filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan try to identify the moths as thry settle on a bluish softly glowing light screen during the hours of darkness. What emerges is a hazy tableau buzzing with life of different shapes and sizes.
Meanwhile back in the lab the ecologists must try and make sense of why so many moths species use the nighttime to engage in their vital life process. What they do know is that for the last 300 million years the hardy creatures have held our planet together. There are so many different species,, around 160,000 compared to 17,500 types of butterflies. Sadly they are often considered poor relations of their butterfly cousins. Yet adorned with silvery wings and striking colours they have a distinct allure of their own and follow the moon guided by its phases as they go about their nighttime forays for food.
Lulled by a gossamer often eerie score of ambient – sounds of the forest that vibrates with all kinds of life from birds to elephants, this is very much a sensory film and you may drift off into a pleasant reverie.
In the soothing nocturnal soundscape, Manis a quantitative ecologist, leads a mission to take stock and catalogue every type of Himalayan moth in order to better understand the impact of so-called climate change. With her assistant Bicki, who belongs to the indigenous Bugun community, she has decided to focus on the hawkmoth. With digital cameras the two start to photograph the moths as they are drawn into the light. There’s a strange allure to the Death’s-head hawkmoth, so called because its upper thorax resembles a skull.
A beguiling film that once again showcases the stunning biodiversity of the natural world celebrated by two pioneering ecological filmmakers. @MeredithTaylor
NOCTURES won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at SUNDANCE 2024
The name ‘Robert Eggers’ used to have critics gagging with anticipation. His early offerings The Witch and The Lighthouse were well received , even The Northman had a certain gritty appeal, but once again this indie filmmaker may have sold his soul to the devil with a pale also-ran remake of Murnau’s 1922 original, and Werner Herzog’s 1979 outing based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.
Remember how Tomas Alfredon’s Let the Right One In was killed stone dead by the US remake Let Me In.? Sadly the same is true here. A star-strewn cast of Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson and Willem Dafoe fails to set the night on fire and does nothing to lighten the load of this torpid period potboiler that splutters its way towards the finishing line growing shriller and more gory by the moment, and further sapping our enjoyment with a running time of over two painful hours.
True to the Gothic genre, the focus here is the sexual allure of the vampire, but although Corrin does a good job of moaning, Skarsgard’s Count Orlok just looks too ludicrous to seduce even the most susceptible victim so encumbered is he with the over wrought costume and make-up. Looking more like Freddy Kreuger while struggling, unsuccessfully, to pull off Gary Oldman’s eerie vocal delivery that won him best actor in Dracula (1992). All this stifles the supernatural mystery and sheer terror engendered by Kinski and Max Schreck.
Called simply Nosferatu this is at best an ertsatz piece of horror that sucks elements from previous outings offering an over-laboured melodrama that starts off promisingly with Jarin Blaschke’s visual wizardry and shadow-play and an evocative original score from Robin Carolan, but soon sinks under the sheer weight of it own bloodlust.
Eggers’ version fails to add anything of its own except for lashings of gore and sensationalism: the 2024 update lacks both the subtle resonance and beauty of Werner Herzog’s visionary Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) or the sheer terror of Murnau’s 1922 ethereal shocker A Symphony of Horror. It may well excite avid horror fans or those new to the ‘Nosferatu’ stable, but Eggers over eggs the omelette with his lurid treatment: a more subtle approach would have delivered another welcome addition to the canon. @Meredith Taylor
Dir: Aaron Schimberg | Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson | US Drama 112′
Looks aren’t everything. A man who blames his lack of success on his appearance soon finds out that his problems are more than skin deep in this persuasive portrait of identity and self-loathing.
This incisive and intelligent third feature for US writer director Aaron Schimberg won him a Silver Bear at Berlinale 2024. Fresh from his role as Donald Trump Sebastian Stan gives a nuanced turn as budding actor Edward who suffers from neurofibromatosis (on screen and in real life). Alongside him is The Worst Person In the World’s Renate Reinsve
In New York Edward (Stan in prosthetics) is absolutely miserable and we really feel for him, struggling alone to carve a career as an actor in lowkey instructional videos about physical deformity. Neighbour Ingrid (Reinsve), a writer, is his saving grace. But their relationship is only platonic prompting Edward to go for experimental surgery to cure his condition
There would be no point in this film if everything was fine and dandy. but it’s safe to say Edward soon becomes the man of his dreams in the shape of Guy, although his emotional reality is quite different. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ as the saying goes. But Guy seems chipper at first enjoying his transformation and informing all and sundry that his former self committed suicide.
Discovering later that Ingrid has written a play about her friend Edward, he decides to audition for the part only to find out that he has a competitor in the shape of Oswald (Pearson, who really has neurofibromatosis), and he becomes fascinated.
Schimberg covered similar territory with his 2019 comedy Chained For Life which also also starred Pearson. He explores his subject with integrity and humour never looking for easy answers or preconceived ideas. But like many physical conditions, how can anyone really know how it feels unless they are directly affected.
Reinsve is once again effervescent as a woman who is so wrapped up in her own work she fails to really engage with Edward on anything but a superficial level, appearing not even to acknowledge his deformity, until a surprising turn of events in the third act.
Oswald is an ebullient self-possessed character who gives us much food for thought as Guy reflects on his own personality and how it held him back despite his deformity. Stan on again shines as he takes on two roles with consummate ease and aplomb. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Oliver Stone | Cast: Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon | US Drama 183’
Not to be trusted as history – John Frankenheimer’s TV movie ‘Path to War’ is much fairer to LBJ – but amply compensating for the childish bombast of most of Oliver Stone’s oeuvre, ‘JFK’ deservedly won Academy Awards for photography and editing.
A lot of dirty linen has since come out about Kennedy, while Jim Garrison is simplistically portrayed as played by Kevin Costner as a bespectacled, pipe-smoking everyman, while feminists may take issue with Sissy Spacek’s thankless role as Garrisons’s whiny wife. The greatest casting coup has to be Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald – the principal villain naturally being a Brit – with Donald Sutherland coming close.
New Orleans is very well used as a location, but paradoxically the meticulous attention to period detail creates a false sartorial impression since the action manages to continue into the late sixties without any of the men growing shaggier. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Brady Corbet | Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pierce, Alessandro Nivola, Raffey Cassidy, Joe Alwyn | US Biopic Drama 235′
Brady Corbet’s exhilerating epic imagines the life of a penniless Hungarian architect who arrives in America having the fled Nazi concentration comps where he was forcibly separated from his wife due to red tape.
Recalling and reinforcing his tour de force in The Pianist Adrian Brody is once again magnificent, in the lead role of László Tóth, a enigmatic character whose creative energy and initiative shapes the foundations of post-war America as he revives his once illustrious career in this engrossing piece of filmmaking. The film is so exciting because it confirms that Cinema as a form of artistic expression is still alive and kicking thanks to Brady Corbet who won Best Director at Venice.
The title could refer to Brutalism as a style of architecture that showcases the bare beauty of the building materials, such as marble, over the decorative design, as seen during the Belle Epoque. Or it could refer to the rich client that Toth meets when he arrives in New York emerging from the depths of the immigrant ship that brought him from worn torn Europe. Guy Pierce is Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy but quixotic industrialist who recognises and envies Toth’s brilliance and vision that shows up his own innate lack of style and sensitivity. This unleashes dark forces within the American that project as contempt. he continually undermines Toth’s efforts to deliver the project while, at the time applauding and encouraging his artistic talents and exquisite attention to detail. A metaphor for America’s gradual decline into mediocrity.
Tóth is at first welcomed and given board and lodging by his cousin Attila (Nivola) who has converted to Catholicism, and offers him a job in his Philadelphia furniture store. But Toth allure and magnetism stirs up unsettling feelings in Attila’s American Catholic wife who suggests sexual impropriety with her inlaw and this forces the architect back onto the streets where he meets Gordon (de Bankolé) who becomes his only male friend. Toth emerges as an imperfect hero with temper and his reliance on opioid drugs as a result injury during him time in Dachau makes him all the more human
Van Buren and his family are deeply antisemitic and embody the same fear and deep-seated envy that had given rise to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and was now seeping into Wasp America and whipping up an unsettling xenophobic in its cosy community whose cultural mediocracy resented anything new or different such as European culture and finesse.
Despite his vast wealth Van Buren exerts his authority over Toth by employing a project manager to cost-cut and knit-pick on the massive project to design a vast community centre in the town in memory of his late mother. This undermines Toth’s artistic control of the scheme and causes angry confrontations between the parties with tragic results.
The Brutalist is a thrilling and confident adventure that lives up to its three and a half hours running time filling the screen with its dynamic storyline and artistic flair, yet there is also a mysterious quality at play that makes it all the more enthralling, along with a daring and discordant score.
Brody’s Toth embodies the creative personality that is by turns vulnerable and confident, and his indomitable wife Erzsébet (Jones), a gifted writer, is equally endowed on the creative front as the two soul mates drive each other forward with their deep and enduring love anchored by mutual suffering. Their orphaned niece Zsófia (Cassidy) is denigrated in a plot involving a sexual encounter with Harry (Alwyn), Van Buren’s conniving son.
Corbet and his co-writer Mona Fastvold seem to be basing their narrative on a real story but the fact that it is all entirely fictional adds another dimension capturing the imagination as we cast our minds back through the possible sources for his extraordinary creative inspiration. @MeredithTaylorr
THE BRUTALIST is in UK Cinemas from 24 January 2025 |
Dir: Robert Wise | Cast: Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Brad Dexter | US Drama
Over the years Robert Wise has shown a bewildering versatility, and occasionally tried his hand at war movies, a genre in which you might even include ‘The Sound of Music’.
This particular example has been pejoratively labelled ‘Run Noisy, Run Shallow’, but Wise’s experienced editing keeps things moving despite the confined setting.
Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster – the latter working for his own production company – make an unlikely team and as usual spend more time fighting among themselves rather the Japanese. While Russell Harlan does a good job photographing what must be every cameraman’s worst nightmare. @RichardChatten
A new documentary exploring the Hitchcock’s debut career in England during the 1920s and 1930s is directed by Laurent Bouzereau and narrated by American radio host and film critic Elvis Mitchell.
As the title suggests the first part of this dense doc is dedicated to his first British talkie Blackmail (1929) highlighting the English director’s predominant style as a visual filmmaker whose talents and enjoyment lay in setting up the scene and crafting the interplay between light and shadow. For Hitchcock image was king and drove the narrative forward with the dialogue coming second. By his own admission he found writing a task.
Blackmail, starring Andy Ondra as a woman who kills in self defence, was first released in 1929 as a talkie with although the first part is largely silent with minimal dialogue, the silent version following,
Hitchcock always made an appearance in his own films suggesting he possibly wanted to be an actor, but this was far from the case. So he always staged these vignettes early on in the narrative so as not to draw the viewer’s attention away from the film as a whole.
Becoming Hitchcock moves steadily through its paces with a focus on lead actors and main themes: of violence, intrigue, blackmail and, of course, love, with the thriller being a particularly English passion. Hitchcock was also a master of psychology and his villains were invariably charming and often smiling as they inveigled their victims.
So the spoken word was of lesser consideration for Hitchcock. But for Bouzereau the opposite is true. The film’s narration is verbose and dominating. The radio celebrity talks continuously throughout the film as if reading from a prepared script, with plentiful images and black and white sketches added almost as an embellishment, and clearly emphasising Mitchell’s talent for broadcasting. Becoming Hitchcock would perhaps work better as a radio broadcast. The criticism here is the lack of time given over for quiet reflection, let alone digestion, in a spare running time of 72 minutes.
A shame, also, that Bouzereau chose an American rather than an English voice to narrate this quintessentially English story, given that the Leytonstone-born Hitchcock spent a good fifteen formative year’s crafting his career in Blighty before moving across the pond in 1939 and taking US citizenship in1955. @MeredithTaylor
The New Year That Never Camewon the Golden Pyramid for best film at Cairo’s 45th International Film Festival (CIFF). The dark comedy unfolds on the cusp of Romania’s 1989 revolution and took the ‘Horizons’ award for best film along with the Fipresci prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival. It was written and directed by Romania’s Bogdan Mureșanu.
Russia’s Natalia Nazarova won the Silver Pyramid award for Postmarks, an upbeat drama about a woman with cerebral palsy whose life changes when she meets a sailor. A special mention was awarded to Alina Khojevanova and best actor was won Maxim Stoyanov.
The Bronze Pyramid award for the best first or second film by a director went to Brazil’s Pedro Freire for drama Malu.The lead Yara De Novaes, was award the best actress prize.
Egyptian melodrama Spring Came Laughing, took the Henry Barrakat Award for its director Noha Adel. The film also won best artistic contribution, the Salah Abu Seif Award for best director and the Fipresci prize.
The Arab film prize was awarded to A State Of Passion– which also won the Special Jury Prize for Feature Documentary. Abu Zaabal 89 took the Best Feature Documentary Award.
Earlier in the festival, Hussein Fahmy, President of CIFF, expressed his enthusiasm for a new agreement emphasising the festival’s commitment to fostering international cooperation in the film industry with partnerships that aim to spotlight Egypt as a global cinematic hub, offering extraordinary filming locations and modern infrastructure. The aim is to continue attracting major international productions to the region, and supporting the film industry locally and globally, while promoting Egyptian culture and heritage on the world stage.
In a related announcement, the festival revealed a new collaboration with Media Production City, aiming to expand opportunities for cinematic production and establish Egypt as a central hub for global filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor
45th CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 13-22 NOVEMBER 2024
Dir: Edward Berger | Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rosellini, Bruno Novelli, Carlos Diehz, Sergio Castelitto, Lucian Msamati | Drama 120′
The pope is dead. But his death is surrounded in controversy in this tense thriller and lugubrious papal conspiracy thriller from German director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front).
When Ralph Fiennes is in the cast we are always in good hands and he doesn’t disappointment as the suave yet sombre Cardinal Lawrence, dean of the cardinals’ college, who is ostensibly the manager of a power struggle to elect a new pope in the Vatican. Intricate twists and turns keep even the most demanding viewers on the edge of their seats with themes of treachery and sexual impropriety at heart of the narrative.
After the sudden death of a fictional, unnamed pope (Novelli), Lawrence must take control of the voting process. Three candidates quickly emerge as leading contenders. They are the liberal minded Cardinal Bellini (Tucci); a radical Cardinal Adeyemi (Msamati) and the wildly traditional Cardinal Tedesco (Castellito). A forth hopeful is the Canadian, Cardinal Tremblay (Lithgow).A mysterious latecomer then rocks the boat in the shape of Cardinal Benitez (Diehz) who claims the late pontiff intended to nominate him in the runningbefore his untimely death.
But a final outcomeis going to be prickly and full of pitfalls as rumours fly in the clandestine corridors of power and mud soon flying at each each candidate. But whether it will stick is the ultimate question.
An intelligent scrip,t written by Peter Straughan and based on the 2016 page-turner by Robert Harris, plays fast and loose with cannon law. Lawrence soon confesses doubt at his being a suitable future pope due to issues connected to prayer.
But there are some far more outré reasons why his fellow candidates may fall at the last hurdle, and these include one candidate’s sexual impropriety and another’s anatomy. These setbacks add a refreshing modern-day spin to the matter at hand.
Lawrence posits that the ultimate sin is certainty, and this elevates the narrative and provides the film with a visionary concept on which to ponder. An elegantly crafted and chewy piece of filmmaking.@MeredithTaylor
NOW ON RELEASE IN THE UK | CONCLAVE PREMIERED AT VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 |
A lively documentary despite its tragic subject matter charting the history of modern Sudan through the lives of three people in today’s Khartoum.
The country has experienced turbulent upheavals but on the streets of the capital there is an indomitable spirit at play. Here ordinary people are striving for democracy buoyed by their sunny enthusiasm and determination to bring about change. To keep us appraised of Sudan’s recent history the director makes ample use of inter-titles with key dates and historical facts.
Acting as his own DoP and editor Mohamed Subahi sets the scene at a pivotal moment in the Sudanese Revolution that began in December 2018. The three are campaigning in various local movements but their interweaving stories are full of positivity and hope, and the mood is enhanced with vibrant camerawork by Subahi and his co-DoP Algaddal Hassan who capture the febrile intensity and the passion of the Sudanese youth who aspire towards a fully democratic republic irrespective of creed and colour. Sadly, the only violence seem to come from the authorities. Despite ugly scenes that see the police opening fire, the people press on with their peaceful protest, terrified out of the lives. @MeredithTaylor
Euthanasia is a hot topic at the moment with The Room Next Door taking the Golden Lion at Venice 2024 and now this end of life drama from Spain’s Carlos Marques-Marcet who puts a positive spin on the subject winning an award Toronto and Valladolid only weeks later.
The film is so upbeat and pragmatic it incorporates jaunty dance sequences and even are aria from Maria Callas into the storyline that kicks off with a histrionic outburst from Claudia (Molina), an actor who has been struck down with a brain tumour and is quickly calmed down by her theatre director husband Flavio (Castro) in their comfortable home. Many may find the comedy treatment inappropriate but it suits the emotional pitch of a couple who are facing up to the final years with jokey humour and dignity.
Claudia wants to go to Dignitas Switzerland but Flavio refuses to left be left alone and opts to die by her side. But their daughter Violeta (Batet) is not convinced, and finds herself engaging in persuasive debate between her parents in a discussion that give the drama potent emotional freight although the subject is not played out with quite the same rigour as the feeling that erupt.
Such is their devotion to one another that Claudia and Flavio decide to renew their vows with some cringeworthy moments for their extended family. It’s always awkward and faintly embarrassing when long-term couples insist on egging the omelette by imposing their declarations of devotion and undying love for each other on their nearest and dearest. But these two are so wrapped up in one another they fail to notice or even care. And in some ways this adds grist to the drama that plays out, as predicted, with an airing of privately shared songs as so on.
When Claudia is asked by the clinic to provide a “playlist to die to” it soon becomes clear that she is very much a diva who wants her ‘swansong’ to be a memorable performance for everyone in the family whether appropriate or not. Veteran actor Molina certainly gives gusto to her dying character as the star turn of this intense and intelligent film. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea @MeredithTaylor
CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | Special Screening
Dir/Wri: Noha Adel | Cast: Main cast: Reem Safwat, Rehab Anan, Carol Ackad, Kawthar Younis | Egypt/France. 2024. 96mins
Conflict is never far away in this female centric film inspired by a poem from Egyptian Salah Jahin that begins ’Spring came on laughing but finds me in sorrow’.
A first feature for Egypt’s Noha Adel, screening at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival, shows how an upbeat anodyne conversation can suddenly take a turn into darker more confrontational territory when four women get together to discuss their lives, loves and dreams in Cairo. Tonally the drama feels rather one note with emotions running high and often out of control, each person raising their voice but not really listening to the another.
The film is made up of four spring-set tales and a wrapping finale. It opens with Salwa (Sally Abdou) and her daughter Reem (Reem Safwat) meeting their elderly neighbour Mukhtar (Mukhtar Younis) and his son Shady (Shady Hakim) for afternoon tea. A polite cultural exchange of views about theatre, cinema and literature suddenly turns tense when someone says the wrong thing, and the dynamic switches from convivial tete-a-tete to pistols at dawn. .
The next segment takes place in May at a birthday lunch for Zazou (Rehab Anan). The entente cordiale once again turns sour in a celebration that should have been joyful. These women seem intent on jumping down each other’s throats, and when a simple misunderstanding causes offence, longterm friends turn into sworn enemies.
The previous month, in April, the scene is set at a beauty salon where one of the staff, Abeer (Reem Al Aqqad) is suddenly accused of theft, unearthing a litany of petty grievances as souls are bared in no uncertain terms, and events turn histrionic. A March wedding is then disrupted when Kawthar (Kawthar Younis), an uninvited guest, makes an unwelcome appearance much to the consternation of the bride Lili (Carol Ackad).
Sometimes feeling like four short films welded together, rather than a cohesive whole feature, Spring Comes on Laughing feels repetitive with the same grievances being aired and the same hysterical soul-searching. The women want to project an image of success and satisfaction but this is only skin deep. Scratch the surface and they are actually dissatisfied, angry and negative, especially about the men in their lives. This chaotic vibe is accentuated by Sara Yahia’s mobile camera that ducks and dives in an attempt to keep up with the mayhem.
So a brave attempt at allowing women to air their views but a space for calm contemplation and measured debate, rather than continuous hysteria, would be have been most welcome. MeredithTaylor
The Beggar is a lyrical love story directed by Houssaim El-Din Mustafa who looks at one man’s search for the meaning of life in 1970s Cairo.
This seventies cult classic really captures the era with a score of hits from Marc Bolan (“Jeapster for your Love”), Semprini and even Jimi Hendrix. A nightclub singer croons Shirley Bassey’s “Something in the Way He Moves”; a teenager rocks false eye lashes and black ‘kinky boots’. There’s snogging in bed, cleavages aplenty (and that’s just the women). There’s even a product placement for Johnny Walker whisky.
Sexual jealousy, infidelity and religion must have been provocative themes in the Middle East back then, yet Egypt emerges as a fun, permissive place to be, at least for middle classes. But what starts as a lighthearted comedy often drifts into dark melodrama. These tonal shifts are managed with dexterity, the humour giving way to some emotionally fraught scenes in chintzy domestic settings by the Nile with a riverside panorama that shows the 5-star Cairo Sofitel still under construction.
The focus is Mr Omar (Mahmoud Moursy), a sharp-suited lawyer caught in a midlife crisis and a loveless marriage to Zeinab (Maryam Fakhruddin). The stooge is his beret-toting, pipe-smoking friend Mr Mustafa (a sort of Egyptian Jacques Tati) who introduces him to nightclub singer Miss Margaret. Things move fast, but sadly married men are not her bag, and Omar realises his predicament.
The lawyer then meets Belly dancer Warda at the Capri Nightclub. And he’s smitten. Put off by his marital status and kids, Warda also turns him down. So Omar vents his frustration by accelerating at top speed when driving her home: it’s a clever psychologic ploy that uses terror to create sexual tension allowing Omar to finally get his leg over. Trying to change his life, he creates a kitsch love nest with a wardrobe full of the latest fashions for Warda, but soon, as predicted, he loses interest.
Omar’s problem is not clearly sexual frustration, but a lack of self-realisation. Financial success is not the only goal in life. Wracked with guilt at lying to his wife and daughter, and unfulfilled by his romantic encounters, the lawyer gives up his practice to a former colleague Osman, and turns to Sufism in the hope of enlightenment, amid scenes that use magic realism to push home the spiritualism of this branch of Islam.
The Beggar is an intelligent and entertaining film despite its rather convoluted and confusing ending. Seventies Egypt is still a man’s world where most women are seen as simpering side-kicks, happy to stay and home and look after the children, even though some are outwardly emancipated in the creative industry. Interestingly the director highlights the close father/daughter relationship that sees Omar, by his own omission, as his teenager’s close friend, and not just her loving her father. @MeredithTaylor
Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi are close friends of the Abu Sittan family and explore from an intensely personal angle the life and work of Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah who works tirelessly to save lives in his native Gaza.
Hassan is actually based in London where he runs a Harley Street clinic specialising in complex lip surgery. But when duty calls he jumps on a plane to the region and provides emergency support, just as he has done during five conflicts involving Israel, as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.
An opening segment makes uses of mobile phone footage and storyboarded images to introduce the well known surgeon who is passionately driven in a humanitarian cause to treat survivors of airstrikes and bombs blasts during the recent conflict in Gaza that has touched so many lives.
There are interviews with his mother and wife Dima who describe their fears of living with a close loved one whose life puts him in danger every single day. The film them scrolls backwards and forwards describing his childhood and education and his determination to become a doctor.
Avoiding sensationalism the directors follow Ghassan’s emergency surgery in the only single functioning hospital in the war zone where he is forced to choose which victims are worth saving. He remembers one night performing six amputations involving children. The injuries are brutal and indiscriminate so he operates a tough triage system. Sometimes only limbs are discovered in the rubble. There is a cemetery dedicated to children’s appendages.
In scenes of utter devastation we witness bomb sites strewn with tee-shirts and plastic shoes that have literally melted in the heat of the blasts. Gruelling, almost unwatchable scenes in the aftermath to an incursion bear witness to the broken bodies and blood-soaked floors. No family is left untouched by the ghastly events.
Most recently he has been lobbying in the UK parliament for end to the genocide, citing Israel’s purported use of white phosphorus in attacks on children and babies. Together with his solicitor he is mounting a war crimes case. And it’s here that the documentary claims the Israelis are trying to discredit his efforts. @MeredithTaylor
A pioneer in the African and Arab world Egyptian cinema has an impressive legacy that dates back to the 1890s. With over four thousand features, shorts and documentaries produced across the region, the country’s film industry has been a cornerstone of creativity showcasing the nation’s cultural heritage and creating a bridge between the generations.
Flaws are removed by hand | copyright Filmuforia.com
Many of these film classics are being restored to their former glory at the Egyptian Media Production City, on the outskirts of the capital Cairo. This vast hub stretches over two million square metres in addition to one more million square metres located within the Media Free Zone. EMPC is home to ninety state of art film studios, where new films and series are currently in production. These services contribute to providing Arab and foreign production companies with all the necessary facilities for shooting their films including sound stages, backlots and a state of the art Dolby Atmos studio for sound mixing.
copyright Filmuforia.com
In the Heritage Restoration Centre a team of highly experienced craftsman undertake the process of restoration of TV and classic films which includes repairing and correcting flaws, cleaning, scanning and transforming into digital content. This gives cineastes and newcomers to classic cinema the chance to experience films for the first time in high resolution formats.
colour correction before and after at EMPC | copyright Filmuforia.com
This year’s Cairo International Film Festival presented fourteen newly restored classics for screening in their own special strand. Festival president, director and actor Hussein Fahmy, is fully supportive of the restoration of classic cinema and is currently committed to restoring a further ten films at the Egypt Media Production City. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Payal Kapadia | Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon | India Drama 110′
Writer-director Payal Kapadia‘s Mumbai set feature All We Imagine As Light was the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in nearly three decades; an impressive achievement for a first time filmmaker, especially an Indian woman who went on to win the Grand Prix in 2024.
The last time an Indian film made it into the main competition was Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994. Sadly it went home empty-handed losing out to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Kapadia’s poetic yet powerful documentary, A Night of Knowing Nothing, won the Golden Eye for best documentary at Cannes in 2021.
Unfolding in two parts and shifting deftly from realism to reverie All We Imagine As Light centres on two women caught in impossible love stories in modern day Mumbai. Prabha, a nurse, shares a flat with Anu, yet they hardly know each other and are further constrained from forming a friendship due to shameful secrets that trap them from sharing their personal lives. Both women are disappointed by love, for differing reasons, and this emotional claustrophobia pervades the first part of the drama.
Anu, a Hindu, is in love with a Muslim man and forced to conceal her relationship due to societal constraints. All the two of them want is to make love but this is frowned upon, even nowadays.
Prabha is caught in an arranged marriage with a man who has since cleared off to his village. One day, out of the blue, a rice cooker arrives in the post, supposedly from her estranged husband. This innocent gift sends Prabha into a deep depression, opening up fresh wounds of romantic disillusionment and upsetting her emotional equilibrium once again. She is a married woman constrained by all the ties that it implies, but the disappearance of her husband leaving her lonely and desperate.
The second part of film brings an uplifting almost dreamlike tonal shift that sees the women freed from their inertia when they set off on a road trip to a beach resort where a mystical forest creates space for dreams to be unleashed.
Kapadia’s film touches on traditional themes of abandonment, religious intolerance, female friendship and sexual liberation that are still all too relevant in today’s India with its impressive technical and financial advances: Men are free many women are still sadly stuck in the dark ages. Meanwhile in the West men and women are enjoying the freedoms of gay marriage, gay parenthood, and sexual transitioning. A thoughtful, richly thematic and beautifully captured film with two sensitive performances from leads Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha. @MeredithTaylor
An intelligent and thoughtful film kicks off this year’s CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Passing Dreamsis a feature-length Palestinian film written and directed by Rashid Masharawi. Upbeat and full of optimism throughout the film follows Sami, a 12-year-old boy, who embarks on a journey across Palestine with his uncle (Ashraf Barhom) and teenage cousin Maryam (Emilia Massou)
It will be an eventful voyage of discovery – of each other, and the people the meet along the way who share their stories reflecting the difficulties of restrictive life and a thwarted existence. So whatstarts as a family-centred road movie broadens out into a complex study of this Middle Eastern country and its hopes and aspirations in the occupied territories.
The trip will take them from a refugee camp in the West Bank, where Sami lives, to other Palestinian cities such as Bethlehem, the Old City of Jerusalem, and Haifa all atmospherically captured in Duraid Munajim’s limpid camerawork and set to a lilting score from Johanni Curtet.
Significantly the pigeon is carrying a ring bearing a small blue pearl, a keepsake from Sami’s grandma to help him through life. In some ways this pigeon comes to represent hope and the future, so finding it is vital to keep Sami’s dreams alive. Sometimes there’s a safety in hope: It can suspend us from to need to achieving anything but brings us closer to our each other in the process. And that’s surprising upshot of this tenderly crafted latest feature from the award-winning Palestinian filmmaker. @MeredithTaylor
THE CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 13-23 NOVEMBER 2024
There a several apocalyptic animated films on at the moment. Dreamlike, dazzling and enchanting they capture tragedy from the perspective of two species forced to adapt and collaborate with the animal kingdom in order to survive.
In some ways this is a metaphor for upheaval in our human world but seen through the eyes of cute furry creatures the impact of the parable is somehow softened and made accessible to both young and old.
The Wild Robot pictures an appealing robot forced into a motherly role of guiding a vulnerable fledgling gosling through the first days of its life on a desert island.
In Flow a solitary black cat is forced out of his bosky base in a forest and embarks on an intrepid odyssey when his home is devastated by a flood. Rather like in the bible story of Noah’s Arc, Flow must team up with the others and make the best of the situation. The emphasis one again is kindness and empathy.
Seen entirely from the point of view of nature and animals this is a simple but engrossing story that requires nothing of the audience but to watch and listen to the ambient sounds as the images glide by.
The previous outing by director Gints Zilbalodis, Away (2019), was an almost entirely solo effort, with the Latvian animator crafting the entire film from storyboarding to score and sound editing. This new feature – that also made its debut at Annecy Animation film festival – is more ambitious but has the same delicate look.
Zilbalodis builds a strange 3D world where giant statues of cats tower over the trees; there are relics from a world that humans once built. After a torrential flood of biblical proportions all the cities are drowned under water, and the cat finds himself with a dog, a capybara. Soon they are joined by a bird and a lemur and gradually begin working together.
Flow is entirely free of dialogue but Zilbalodis avoids sentimentality or anthropomorphism in this gentle depiction of the animal kingdom face to face with so-called ‘climate change’. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Robert Wise | Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson | Thriller 1963
Like ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ Robert Wise’s ‘The Haunting’ received the backhanded compliment of an unnecessary remake and with Jack Clayton’s ‘The Innocents’ qualifies as the second of probably the two finest achievements of the horror genre of the sixties, and despite competition from the vivid colour of Hammer Films they provide definitive proof that the proper medium for ghost stories was black & white.
Plainly the work of a director who cut his teeth under Val Lewton, Wise employs modern refinements like infra-red photography. The acting is consistently good, with the transferral of the film’s viewpoint from the opening narration of Dr Markway to the use of interior monologues by Julie Harris particularly effective. The single scariest moment has to be when Rosalie Crutchley smiles; and the fact (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) that the final line is given to the previously flippant Russ Tamblyn underlines the gravitas of the conclusion. @RichardChatten
Truong Minh Quy’s VIET AND NAM closed this year’s Bfi London Film festival as Eight Postcards from Utopia opened with bold challenging conceptual filmmaking. These are contemporary films confronting the sometimes-tortured psyche of respective nations with filmmakers looking for answers from past histories while opening up the possibilities of the future. Viet and Nam is a dark but strangely illuminating film reflecting in part on how the “American war “of 1955/1975 in Vietnam has repercussions decades later with a sense of history underlying the film’s fusion of both written /spoken poetry linked to sensitive visual imagery.
The spirit of slow cinema filmmakers such as Lav Diaz and Tsai Ming-liang is also evident although these sequences are edited into shorter segments creating a rich range of texture. The focus rests on two young Vietnamese men who express love for each other most deeply in the darkened spaces of coal mines where both are making a living through low paid work as a way to escape national poverty. At home they try to reconcile difficult relationships with fathers and families, discreetly avoiding drawing attention to the nature of a same sex relationship. With damaged lungs and Cocteau like line drawings burnt into cuts as tattoos, the two naked bodies of the lovers are sometimes barely perceived as intimate sources of lighting that appear to merge both bodies into one. Poetry references include descriptions of beaches as graveyards for the crushed crumbs of seashells. In the film’s final sequence, the two attempt to leave Vietnam in a shipping freight container on an ocean filled with as much beauty and danger as the cold forbidding earth from where they are escaping.
For Minh Quy, the sea becomes another forbidding and dangerous space with the two lovers locked in a floating freight container adrift. The surreal spirit of Jean Cocteau along with the power of Frank Borzage is evident and this is another creative work inspired by the idea of souls made great by adversity. Although Vietnamese authorities have banned Viet and Nam for “gay content” and negativity, there is nothing negative about this film and its beautiful incandescent mapping of redemption through the power of love.
Dir: Ridley Scott | Writer: David Scarpa | Cast: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, Connie Nielsen, Denzel Washington | Action drama 148’
Ridley Scott delivers another ambitious and robust epic that combines moments of contemplation and intrigue with monumental set pieces in the Colosseum. The bloody battle scenes complete the swashbuckling spectacle with some unsubtle use of CGI.
Paul Mescal’s Gladiator is more soulful than his swaggering counterpart Russell Crowe who was cocky and convincing in the Oscar-winning original. That said, this sensitivity adds a modern twist to a tale set in Numidia and Ancient Rome. The Caesar brothers are a weird gay couple who simper and saunter around their sumptuous palace, one of them rocking a monkey permanently clasped to his shoulders like a living stole. And these contemporary touches ensure a refreshingly novel feature that remains a reassuringly true follow-up to the 2000 action drama.
Gladiator II opens with a sensational sea-based sequence as a fleet of Roman warships powered by oars and sails storms its way to attack a port city in North Africa defended by Lucius (Mescal). General Marcus Acacius (a muscular Pedro Pascal) is at the helm and in the ensuing battle conquers the city capturing Lucius who loses his wife to a single arrow, motivating him to seek revenge.
Taken prisoner with other soldiers and transported back to Rome (where he was born) he falls into the hands of Macrinus (Washington) and his gladiatorial trainer, the brutish Vigo (Lior Raz). But Lucius is a dab hand at fighting off his assailants in the arena (including some savage CGI baboons) and soon wins over the crowd. Macrinus has backed a real winner.
Meanwhile Lucilla and Acacius are planning a goodwill mission to free the gladiators from cruel slaughter under sibling emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) whose reign of terror knows no bounds, with further campaigns planned in India and Persia. And this is where Derek Jacobi comes in as Gracchus. He joins Lucilla and Acacius in the plot to restore Rome to its former glory when Lucilla’s fondly remembered father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius held sway. But someone is eavesdropping in the wings.
Meanwhile Lucilla realises that Lucius is the child she sent away from Rome for protection. Now she is torn between loyalty to her husband, a war hero of supreme dignity, and love for her child who vows to kill Acasius to avenge his beloved wife in a tragic chain of events that provides the story with its heart-punching denouement.
David Scarpa (who also scripted Napoleon and All the Money in the World) picks up from where David Franzoni started in Gladiator, twenty four years ago, with characters from back in the day and welcome roles for veterans Derek Jacobi and Tim McInnerny (as Thraex) and a camped-up Matt Lucas as master of gladiator ceremonies Cassius.
Denzel Washington is the star turn and brings a welcome dash of sly humour as the exotic-looking Macrinus, a scheming former slave who earned his freedom and is now pimping out a stable of young gladiators while plotting to improve his status even further by aligning himself to the Caesars.
Paul Mescal certainly looks the part with his beefy muscles bulging through the leather straps of his butch rigout. Emerging as the true exiled son of Russel Crowe’s Maximus and Lucilla (the regal Connie Nielsen, once again desperately trying to regain the trust of a man). But his lack of conviction diminishes the peerless performance he throws around in the arena. An actor well known for his intensity Mescal certainly simmers with rage and revenge but emotionally the Irish heartthrob is as vulnerable as a baby. His Lucius certainly delivers the words but seems unconvinced by them in a role that Crowe played with gutsy masculinity. But then again the dialogue offered him is minimal and mostly restricted to clipped statements.
Where he does shine is in contemplative exchanges with Ravi (Alexander Karim), another former slave and gladiator who cashed in his chips but now serves as a doctor and spiritual healer. Mescal is clearly better suited playing soulful metrosexuals of All of Us Strangersand Aftersun. Rakish heroes are not for him. @MeredithTaylor
GLADIATOR II is in UK CINEMAS FROM 15 NOVEMBER 2025
Dir: Kevin McDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards | UK Doc 90′
Kevin McDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ One to One: John & Yoko is an assemblage of archival film and aural recordings, exploring the life and times of John Lennon and Yoko Ono who after the breakup of The Beatles in 1969 left an affluent lifestyle in rural England with preference for the edgy life style offered by New Yok of the early 1970s.
There are many telling details including how Ono felt about the way she was viewed by The Beatles, the background behind benefit concerts including support for child victims of the Willowbrook Scandal and comparisons with the exile and return of Charlie Chaplin to USA happening alongside Lennon’s own fight with immigration authorities. Both Lennon and Ono were fascinated by the growth of Television as an early form of social media which they saw as replacing the traditional family routine of sitting around a fireplace as the centre of family life.
Difficult relationships with activists like Jerry Rubens, which ended after differences involving the use of force became problematic, are covered along with both Lennon and Ono settling into more conventional family life with the arrival of a son that would culminate in tragedy. The death of Lennon is fleetingly referred to by the filmmakers.
Documentary assemblage is not the film’s only function as One to One develops in its second half as a visual essay and a chronicle of times past, reflecting the present. The life of Lennon and Ono in America was a key cultural element of the times which involved a highly contentious war in Vietnam, movements about race and gender and the rise of students with acts of protest. This was reflected by a rich tapestry of music which Lennon and Ono added to with songs like Give Peace A Chance and Imagine.
One to One contains vivid contemporary footage linked to the election of 1972 which provided the Republican Richard Nixon with a landslide victory against the Democrats which he would lose two years later after the disgrace of Watergate. Parallels with today and 2024 America are felt as the film progresses into a thought-provoking visual essay and chronicle of our times, raising questions as to how much has changed between 1972 and 2024. With music as a force to not only imagine but also give peace a chance, it could be argued that this was much more organic and easier in 1972 than in 2024. Peter Herbert
ONE TO ONE premiered at Venice and London Film Festivals 2024 | Coming to UK Cinemas in 2025
Dir: Luca Guadagnino | Cast: Daniel Craig, Daan de Wit, Jason Schwartzman, Drew Starkey, Henrique Zaga | US Drama 135′
Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is a study of a defeated American man living in exile in 1950’s Mexico, unsure of himself and in need of human love and contact. His fragile state will lead him into a relationship with a younger man.
Based on the semi-autobiographical life of William S Burroughs, the novella ‘Queer’ was troubled after the success of his 1951 debut ‘Junkie 1951’ as Burroughs battled withdrawal symptoms from heroin addiction linked to his resurgent libido. ‘Queer’ would be shelved and dismissed by its author until after the success of ‘Naked Lunch’ in 1959. Rewritten from discarded fragments and published in 1985, the financial success of Queer would support the writer until his death in 1997.
Given the troubled nature of the book, Guadagnino and scriptwriter collaborator Justin Kuritzkes have bravely tackled source material although problems have not entirely escaped the filmmakers.
Guadagnino is at his most effective drawing sensitive performances from actors involving focused material. Arguably his best film so far is Challengers (2024) with its focus on doomed relationships resulting from wrong decisions at the heart of a three-way relationship.
Queerestablishes a vivid first half in the sensuous stylised recreation of a seedy Mexican City inhabited by a coterie of restless, rootless characters with visible on-screen references to both Cocteau’s Orphee and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano as another study of a doomed man struggling with addiction.
The second half of Queer moves to Ecuador in South America where the American continues to not only search for his inner self-worth but also the drug Yage with powers to bring enlightenment. These were sparse references in Burrough’s writing which are fleshed out by Guadagnino as a mish-mash of frenzied hallucinations involving a witchcraft doctor in a jungle where the queer relationship with his lover starts to collapse. The film begins to resemble The Spiral Road (1962) in which Rock Hudson and Burl Ives sweat it out with black magic and hallucinations on an Indonesian jungle-based 1961 studio set.
Guadagnino confirms his skill with sensitive character relationships and uniformly fine acting from an ensemble cast including Drew Starkey as the male lover, Jason Schwartzman reviving his career as an ageing camp man, and a startling cameo by Lesley Manville. It is however the central performance of Daniel Craig that holds Queer together and brings the disjointed meandering structure of the film together.
Playing William Lee, a washed-up exiled American forced to live for legal problems in downtown Mexican City, he wastes away his time frequenting sleazy bars with coded 1950s gay networks. Craig is fearless as he continues to shake off his James Bond persona with a sensitive edgy performance, much as Sean Connery took on with films like The Hill and The Offence.
As in the novel, Queernever finally resolved the central characters’ troubled battles with desire and obsession. It is Craig who provides the film with a beautiful final coda focusing on the face of a defeated lost soul, accepting the inevitability of death which equals the haunting final close-up of Julie Christie as a junkie adrift in Robert Altman’s 1971 McCabe and Mrs Miller. These two final closeups make for beautiful, sublime connections. Peter Herbert
QUEER premiered at Venice Film Festival and screened during the London Film Festival 2024
Peter Herbert found the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL in rude health in its 68th year with an impressive offering of 252 films in a rich slice of contemporary cinema alongside a smaller but effective archival strand. It would be impossible to see all of these films over 15 days but Peter managed 12 films mostly without UK distribution including a couple of exceptional films which were all worthy of screening.
Various strands and themes became apparent as the days rolled. One is the fascination to divide films into chapters both orderly and disorderly which in some cases works though not always.
Another observation is the growing power of documentary archival film assemblage and how this is moving into new forms of film essay cinema for some of the worlds key filmmakers. Here are Peter’s views and comment on twelve films viewed over twelve days.
Radu Jude and co-writer/director Christian Ferencz-Flat’s Eight Postcards From Utopia (below) was made over a period of seven years using film clips compiled from advertisements as a commentary on Romania’s transition from communism into capitalist democracy with entry into the European Union in 2007.
Steve McQueen’s Blitz opens with powerful emotional scenes of mother love set against the carnage of the bombing of London during the blitz of WW2. The ‘blitz’ of London and other parts of England by Nazi Germany killed over forty three thousand people and damaged two million houses during a short but intense blitz during 1940/1941 – although for McQueen this is background so as to foreground personal stories of characters impacted by the upheaval of war.
Alain Guiradie’s Misericordia (main pic) is a perfect new companion piece to Stranger by the Lake from 2013. The earlier film is arguably one of gay cinemas seminal films that turned a lake with forest woodland into a gay Garden of Eden/stroke evil. Created with a rigorous visual sound scape, the earlier film moved from dawn into night over a single day as a range of characters experience all of the life forces of love, life, sex and death. Guiradie returns to aspects of the earlier film with Misericordia which opens with a man travelling by car from the city into a remote rural French village. He has come to express condolences for his well-liked, respected former boss who the film intimates was also his long term secret lover. Warmly welcomed by the dead man’s widow who may or may not have known of the relationship, he is viewed with growing suspicion by the dead man’s son and disturbs members of the local community including local cops and an ageing priest with secrets who ventures into the forest collecting mushrooms but gets more than bargained for. The forest becomes for Guiradie another garden of beauty and doom filmed with his characteristic natural sound, lighting and no music bar the sounds of nature. The film mixes drama and comedy with razor sharp precision, unravelling sacred and profane twists to relationships with a few additional red herrings. After a series of over complicated films that preceded and followed Stranger By the Lake,Guiradie is back in control.
Grand Tour (below) which won for the Portuguese’s filmmaker Miguel Gomes the Best Director award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and has been reviewed on Filmuforia . These are additional notes prior to its world-wide release in the new year. Grand Tour offers consummate filmmaking which will take viewers on a journey into new places and far away states of mind.
Gomes was inspired by two passages from W Somerset Maughan’s 1930 travel writing The Gentleman in the Parlour and the film book ends its tale of an obsessive passion of one for another which will never be reciprocated with an approach that is beguiling and disturbing. Acknowledging F W Murnau’s Tabu (1931), Gomes uses the delirious quality of quasi monochrome, tinged with real or subdued colour to create his vision built mainly on studio sets alongside location filming. Another source of inspiration is Josef Von Sternberg and in particular the crazy amour fou between Dietrich and Cooper on a studio conceived vision of Morocco (1930).
Coincidentally Japanese director Kohei Igarashi ‘s Super Happy Forever was made concurrently and shares similar structure, themes and musical references. The two films will make for interesting crossover viewing.
Roshan Sethi’s A Nice Indian Boy is a feelgood film edited into chapters with titles including love, music and family, for no obvious reason as it unfold its story about two gay men Naveen (Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff) as they hesitantly but gradually fall in love.
Kevin McDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’s One to One: John and Yoko is an assemblage of archival film and aural recordings, exploring the life and times of John Lennon and Yoko Ono who after the breakup of The Beatles in 1969 left an affluent lifestyle in rural England with preference for the edgy life style offered by New Yok of the early 1970s.
Sergei Loznitsa’s The Invasion is one of the outstanding films of the festival. The director, born in Russia and raised in Ukraine is a documentary/fiction filmmaker who since 1996 has built up a recognisable collection of twenty one documentaries and four fiction films.
Yasuzo Masumura’s Manji (1964) was screened in the reduced but vital archive section of this year’s festival and received a masterly well informed, passionate introduction from Robin Baker, the BFI head of Cultural Partnerships, and Miki Zeze from Japanese distribution company Kadokawa who plan to restore and release other films from the fifty plus films made by Masumura (1924-1986).
The 42-minute Leos Carax featurette It’s Not Me (below) uses chapters to structure a self-portrait of the director’s thoughts as a freewheeling stream of conscious cut up of images and sound. This doesn’t exactly bring coherence to its visual story board concept although the film, inspired by the cut-up sound and image style of late Godard and Histoire du Cinema in particular, emerges a sparkling spinning disco ball of a film. Clips include Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter and a very beautiful sequence from Murnau’s Sunrise also uses extensive still archival photographs to explore and comment on ideas and themes relating to the massive gap and change that bridge creativity during the transition of the 20th and 21st centuries.
After the films screening at the ICA, the 64-year-old Carax discussed how he feels that it is now up to and the right of new artists to explore where creativity is heading particularly in the current state of challenging world-wide change and upheaval.
Along with scenes capturing how the camera eye captures movement, extracted from copious clips from his films including The Night Is Young, Bad Blood (1986) and Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1991), there are also sequences that gaze at the beauty of youth with the life experience of actors who were once younger (Juliette Binoche and actor Denis Lavant ) and whom we see age in clips from films before our very eyes.
The film is not afraid to tackle the darker sides of the creative personality with at least one contentious reference to Roman Polanski and his early years marked by the holocaust, with a link to his later notoriety that damaged his late career. There is little time to stop and question Carax and some of his reasoning during his hellzapoppin of free-flowing thoughts but at the heart of the film he remains a positive force.
After the final credits there is a treat in the form of an ode to joy involving the beautiful puppet from Annette and the music of Bowie singing Modern Love. A modern film indeed.
Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is a study of a defeated American man, living in exile in 1950s Mexico, unsure of himself and in need of human love and contact which which will draw him into a relationship with a younger man.
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio opens with a family fast asleep while a new day dawns on the remote hillsides of the Trentino-Alto Adigo region of northern Italy. The family awakens to the daily routine of a village community including a father as head of family who prepares to open a classroom while shepherds tend to animals. There is little to suggest these are the last years of WW2 although there are ominous sounds of warfare in the distance. The tone changes with the arrival of a soldier who has deserted the army and will stir up the awakening feelings of a young woman bringing heartache and trauma to family and herself as well as to a wider range of village and city communities.
Truong Minh Quy’s Viet and Namclosed the festival – as much as Eight Postcards from Utopia opened it – with bold challenging conceptual filmmaking. These are contemporary films confronting the sometimes-tortured psyche of respective nations with filmmakers looking for answers from past histories while opening up the possibilities of the future. Viet and Nam is a dark but strangely illuminating film that fuses written and spoken poetry with sensitive visual imagery. Peter Herbert
Sergei Loznitsa’s The Invasion is one of the outstanding films of the festival. The director, born in Russia and raised in Ukraine, is a documentary/fiction filmmaker who since 1996 has built up a recognisable collection of 21 documentaries and 4 fiction films.
The Invasion opens with a mass for the dead and divides into chapters filmed during recurring four seasons linked to cycles of life including a wedding, funeral, communal baptism ceremonies, children at school, rifle training, abandoned dogs turned feral, recovery from wounds as well as the delivery of food.
The film is created out of 25/30 commissioned documentary short films supervised by Loznitsa between March 2022 through to early 2024. All the sequences employ Loznitsa’s characteristic natural soundscapes with neither music or narration and all filmed mid shot and long distant wide screen camera viewpoint without closeups.
These are not ordinary times though, as all the films are of people living everyday life during the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started on 24/2/22. Unlike other current documentaries made on the battleground or directly filmed inside war zones, this is more about an invasion felt, heard but not shown directly as if for the Ukrainian’s people this is an enemy which dare not speak its name.
Harrowing scenes of real time footage of severely wounded bodies being cared for by nurses and doctors showing neither blame nor anger become silent, quiet testaments to the power of others to heal and repair. In one of the most powerful sequences, books are bound with rope, transported into trucks and wait in a queue to be thrown onto conveyor belts.
Titles sporadically appear on the screen: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekov as they move alongside titles of philosophy, science and religious books. All will be destroyed and the viewer left to decipher the value and meaning of how what we love and learn from can also be systematically erased when countries suffer during warfare. At one point an elderly man muses that after 32 years of independence, life in Ukraine still feels like 1942.
Loznitsa is a filmmaker with archival knowledge of his country. With The Invasion he has created a moving requiem of resilience and resistance with febrile cross over links between sensitive fictional stories about people (A Gentle Creature and Donbass) and harrowing archival documents including the record of genocide massacre in Bab Yar Context 2021. He is a filmmaker who may well be unable to rest until life in Ukraine returns to normal.
Described by Siegfried Kracauer as “a crime picture visibly influenced by the Swedes” and itself a probable forerunner of La Regle du Jeu, the plays of Agatha Christie and Gosford Park, Schloss Vogelodis superficially more realistic than one might expect from F. W. Murnau, although the bizarre dream sequence depicting a huge hand reaching in through a window would alone qualify it as one of his fantasies.
Murnau’s films usually concerned themselves with the grotesque and the predicament of outsiders; but the casual elegance of Hermann Warm’s oppressively large sets and the immaculate dress of the occupants more properly belong to the world of Marienbad. @RichardChatten
Manji was screened in the reduced but vital archive section of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and received a masterly well informed, passionate introduction from Robin Baker, the BFI head of Cultural Partnerships, and Miki Zeze from Japanese distribution company Kadokawa who plan to restore and release other films from the 50 plus films made by Masumara (1924-1986).
Manji (alternative title All Mixed Up) is a stylish semi comic melodrama bristling with wide screen colour elegance as it unfolds the wayward obsessions and perverse game playing between two couples making this treatment of a foursome daring for its time.
Masumura worked from a script by established film maker Kaneto Shindo in what was to be the first of his three films based on the novels of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki. Reflecting influences that the director learnt from working with Kon Ichikawa, films like Ichikawa’s 1959 feature Odd Obsession act as a kind of strange bedfellow companion piece to Manji.
Masumura was deeply fascinated by Yukio Mishima and suicide pacts involving poison and blood are weaved into the film’s beguiling chess board game of dangerous games that lovers play. The beauty of the 4k restoration invites interest to explore more of his work which is always one of the pleasures gained from archive screenings. Peter Herbert
Dir: Roshan Sethi | Cast: Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff | India, Drama 2024
Roshan Sethi’s A Nice Indian Boyis a feel good film edited into chapters with titles including love, music and family, for no obvious reason as the story, about two gay men Naveen ( Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff), unfolds as they hesitantly but gradually fall in love.
With Indian family traditions to be honoured and a marriage to be arranged that will involve familial consent this is a comedy with a slice of social comment that finds perceptive moments of depth. These are linked to a brother/sister relationship and in particular to Jay, who is a white gay man, raised by adoptive Indian parents and how this will impact on his Indian partner’s family and friends.
The film is based on a Canadian stage play quite possibly derived from a real-life situation which places A Nice Indian Boy rather neatly into a gender-based social comedy. Feelgood traditions of Brit films like My Beautiful Launderette and Unicorns mixed with a dose of the original successful concept in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Themes relating to class, love, gender and social cohesion/division of a universal nature provide the film, which is mostly soft and generous in tone, with moments of observant introspection aided by the skilful handling of the film’s entire ensemble casting. Peter Herbert
LONDON FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW 2024 | A UK release is set for early 2025
Dir: Steve McQueen | Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paul Weller, Elliot Heffernan | UK Drama 2024
Blitz Steve McQueen’s Blitz opens with powerful emotional scenes of mother love set against the carnage of the bombing of London during the blitz of WW2. The ‘blitz’ of London and other parts of England by Nazi Germany killed over forty three thousand people and damaged two million houses during a short but intense blitz during 1940/1941 – although for McQueen this serve as background to foreground personal stories of various characters impacted by the upheaval of war.
Saoirse Ronan is a mother living with her father (Paul Weller) and mixed-race child (Elliot Heffernan) on a Stepney Green council estate in London’s East End. Many of these sequences, held together by a lyrical fast moving camera ducking and diving with sharp editing, build up vivid scenes of families living together, the women working in ammunition factories with life constantly interrupted by sirens prefiguring bombs forcing evacuation into underground train stations.
As the film progresses it shifts tone with the child’s evacuation into the countryside. This upheaval of the mother/son relationship allows McQueen to explore well-known interests including the importance of popular music as barometers of cultural identity.
There are a number of powerful sequences about racism involving black and marginal communities as they were in England during this of time. The film also provides a mixed bag of sequences that veer between Dickens’ Oliver Twist with a glimmer of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress as the boy navigates his dangerous journey through London, encountering a range of grotesque old school vaudeville villains played by Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke. The film brings back memories of Children Film Foundation films of the 1970s with children pitted against often adult social problems, and a sequence of child abuse exploitation recalling Freda Jackson as a menacing cruel wartime landlady in Daniel Birt’s No Room at the Inn (1948).
The trouble here is that it is difficult to decide whether McQueen is playing these scenes with sense and sensibility – or sentimentality. The skill with his actors is undeniable, as is his visual storytelling with intriguing moments that recall Mc Queens original gallery installation period. This includes a visual reference to Dead Pan 1997 where McQueen stands avoiding a collapsing wall, as well as static screen shots of light and bombs creating textured wallpaper patterns.
At its best, Blitz recalls another film about the loss of childhood viewed through adult eyes. This is Alexander McKendrick’s thoughtful journey film Sammy Going South (1964) about a boy travelling across Africa during the 1956 Suez crisis in a picturesque journey where he is reunited with a remotely-remembered Aunt. Unfortunately, McQueen’s content is less controlled than McKendrick’s and by the time it reaches its final redemption scene of mother and child love, Blitz feels more mannered than moving. Peter Herbert
Dir: Mike Leigh | Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, David Webber, Jonathan Livingstone, Tuwaine Barrett, Michele Austin | UK Drama 97’
Not an easy film to watch but certainly true to its title. Mike Leigh’s latest brings together all the negative elements of urban life today for a black family.Lacking the gentle humour and endearing characters of Life is Sweet or Secret and Lies, Hard Truths pictures the coal face of middle-age misery for hard working mum Pansy (an obdurate Marianne Jean Baptiste) whose only joy is her spotless North London home and comfy settee.An oafish out-of-work son Moses (Barrett) lounges around upstairs, and a loveless marriage to decent manual worker Curtley (Webber) offers little respite from her days of endless depression where everything gets on her nerves and communication only leads to ugly confrontation, even with her easygoing sister Chantal (Austin). Pansy needs to find some joy or salvation in her life, but somehow she can’t. Brilliant characterisation and performances all round but not many laughs in this plangent portrait of despair. @MeredithTaylor
HARD TRUTHS IS NOMINATED FOR THE GOLDEN GLOBES and BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS 2024
DirWri: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck | Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Hugh Grant, Chloe East | US Thriller
Hugh Grant turns to talents to psychological horror as the bad guy in this warped and unnerving three hander.
Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East play two young Mormon missionaries who arrive at his spooky house in a remote rural backwater. Mr Reed (Grant) is charm personified. Inviting the girls in for blueberry pie he oozes brisk appeal as an erudite married man Reed claiming his wife is baking in the kitchen: Mrs Reed never appears.
We all know how psychopaths gain the confidence of their victims from films about Ted Bundy, John Christie and Dennis Nilsen. But Reed has a different agenda that grows more sinister and disarming as the creepy feature directed by A Quiet Place’s Scott Beck and his regular co-writer Bryan Woods unfolds with increasingly chilling consequences accompanied by a pithy script and an iconic score that screams cognitive dissonance .
With a patronising rictus on his face Reed calls the Mormons’ bluff with reverse psychology and academic bluster, mansplaining the various religious persuasions and encouraging an intelligent debate which he manipulates with patronising ease. Turns out his views are quite radical. Reed is laid back, glib and plausible, but the girls are out of their depth, paralysed with fear as Heretic gradually descends into the realms of horror with plenty of gore, girly jump cuts and possibly even AI or this could be just an Act of God. @MeredithTaylor
NOW IN UK cinemas |NOMINATED FOR A GOLDEN GLOBE 2024
Dir: Mark Robson | Boris Karloff, Anna Lee | US Fantasy horror
Evidently a subject close to his heart, the film with which Val Lewton concluded his series of low budget but intelligent horror films for RKO was one of the few on which he actually took a writing credit, albeit under his pseudonym ‘Carlos Keith’, with results so raw that the British censor paid it the backhanded compliment of banning it outright.
Lewton bore his erudition lightly but he displays moments of sly wit as when moving pictures are shown to be the idea of a patient in a lunatic asylum and he demonstrated the lethal effects of applying coat of gold paint to the skin over ten years before Ian Fleming had the idea in ‘Goldinger’.
As the asylum director, Boris Karloff plays one his most fiendish, leering villains, and comes to a satisfactorily grisly end; while Anna Lee is charmingly different as the heroine. @RichardChatten
Dir: Lucy Lawless | With Christiane Amanpour, Margaret Moth | US Doc 85′
A swashbuckling CNN combat camerawoman and trailblazing female icon; the unbelievable, yet entirely true, story of award-winning journalist, Margaret Moth, is brought to vivid light by acclaimed actress and activist, Lucy Lawless, in her directorial debut.
An inspirational and unflinching biography, which includes both testimonials from the people who knew and worked with Moth, and dramatic footage from the war zones she covered, Never Look Away delves into the life and work of an incredible woman, a true pioneer known for her tireless work to capture catastrophic events and atrocities on film, no matter the risk.
After her first assignment to cover the riots that followed Gandhi’s assassination in India, she would go on to travel to the heart of the most dangerous conflicts in the world including the Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian War and the 2006 Lebanon War. However, underneath her fearless persona, candid interviews with colleagues and family reveal a self-destructive and emotionally fraught woman who would struggle when anything got in the way of her appetite for adrenaline and efforts to document the worst of humanity.
Never Look Away is in UK cinemas from 22 November 2024
Breaking news from Afghanistan: the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has decreed that women’s voices are now considered awrah, a term connoting nakedness or ‘that which must be covered.’
Female voices may no longer be heard in public: particularly by other women, who must refrain not only from singing songs, but even from reciting the Quran in the presence of females. “When an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear,” the Minister, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, declared. “And how could they be allowed to sing if they are not even permitted to hear each other’s voices while praying?”
In some areas of the Western press this immemorial edict, only now unearthed by the diligent scholarship of the Taliban (whose name, after all, translates as “students, or seekers of knowledge”), is being called “bizarre” and “absurd”. But it’s perfectly rational from the Taliban’s perspective. For the twenty years in which they were out of office, they had to watch as a generation of Afghan women benefited from a reasonable measure of education and freedom, and aspired to an entirely new range of goals.
The new declaration of awrah is very obviously calculated to mute this group and prevent them from spreading their knowledge to younger cohorts (one suspects that speaking, rather than singing, is the real issue here). A curtain must be drawn across their experience, and the possibility of different forms of life and thought expunged from the record.
Bread and Roses focuses on three women whom the Taliban would very much like to silence. They are representatives of those whose condition improved before the American military pulled out in 2021 (a decision made during the Trump administration, but enacted by Joe Biden) and who are now fighting against the shameless war of revenge being waged by the Taliban against half the country’s population.
Indomitable but kindly activist Taranom Seyedi is forced to leave the country and eke out life in a meagrely appointed safe house in Pakistan: cold, penniless, lacking proper washing facilities, and surrounded by hostile wild animals. “We are the future presidents of our country,” she reminds the women with whom she shares the house. One day this may come true, but right now it seems a far-off dream.
The gentle and reserved Sharifa Movahidzadeh previously worked as a government employee, but is now reduced to the boring pursuit of sewing garments to pass the time and staring out across the cityscape of Kabul from the roof of her family house, where she is mostly confined.
The term “bright spark” could have been specifically coined for the intensely likeable Zahra Mohammadi, who makes wearing colourful clothing and perfume part of her rebellion. Despite coming from a conservative background, she qualified as a dentist and started her own practice, but now the Taliban has closed down all female-run enterprises. Zahra begins to organise activists on her former premises; she is arrested and sees women she knows tortured so badly that they are virtually unrecognisable.
The courage and dignity of all three women is outstanding, but it begs the question – why should anyone be obliged to lead lives that require such massive reserves of fortitude? Why can’t they simply… live, like the rest of us?
The film shows women protesting against the closing of schools, and water cannons and tear gas being used against them. it shows armed Taliban fighters brutalising defenceless demonstrators, and threatening to kill a woman who has been arrested for continuing to speak. If the moral imbecility of all this isn’t enough, a few simple statistics illustrate the insanity of the regime on a merely practical level.
Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia, with 4.5 children being born on average to every Afghan woman. The current population (around 35 million) is estimated to reach 47 million by 2025, and 76 million by 2050.
The country’s Gross Domestic Product declined by more than a quarter in 2021 and 2022, and there’s no sign of any significant recovery on the horizon.
Meanwhile the rate of participation in the labour force among males is 69.1%.
Among females, it’s 4.8%.
But it would be wrong to think that disaster is inevitable, or even that the Taliban are the natural rulers of Afghanistan: a highly complex nation riven with tribal and ethnic divisions. Their first period of control lasted just five years, and one can only hope that their second will not only be shorter, but also their last. Bread and Roses is an important document, and it should be seen.
@_i_a_n_l_o_n_g_
In selected UK cinemas | Apple+ TV | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN EYE 2023
This year’s Jewish Film Festival offers a chance to discover a spectacular range of films exploring Jewish and Israeli life and culture throughout the UK and all over the world.
Taking place from 7 – 17 November in select venues all over London, and nationwide throughout November in Glasgow, Manchester, Bath, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, Oxford and York. The festival will open at London’s Curzon Mayfair with Jesse Eisenberg’s Golden Globe nominated comedy drama A REAL PAIN (2024).
The Festival will close with Shira Piven’s THE PERFORMANCE. Adapted from an Arthur Miller short story it stars Robert Carlyle and follows a troupe of American tap dancers on a tour of Europe in 1937.
There is also a chance to see THE SPOILS a powerful new documentary that delves into the flight for the restitution of Nazi-looted art. The film reveals the complexities in the ongoing battle for justice in art ownership amidst the rise of the far right in Germany.
The film’s focus is the story of German-Jewish art dealer Max Stern, who escaped Germany during the Second World War and settled in Montreal, becoming one of Canada’s leading art dealers. The Düsseldorf City Museum planned an exhibition in honour of Stern for 2018, but the exhibition did not go on view until 2021, delayed by discussions about art restitution and how the project was being handled. The Spoils highlights the challenges faced in honouring Stern’s legacy against the backdrop of a larger crisis in the art world.
Selected features and short films are also available online.
This November and December the Austrian Cultural Forum celebrates the long and colourful life of Francis Lederer (1899-2000).
Austria’s answer to Maurice Chevalier, Lederer’s international career spanned the silent era and continued well into the 1970s. A selection of four films will be screened to reflect his best known performances, including Maman Collibri
THE AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM | LONDON SW7 | 21 NOVEMBER 2024
Cairo International Film Festival is internationally accredited as the oldest and only continuously running film festival in the Arab world, Africa, and the Middle East. Taking place from 13th November to 22nd November the 45th edition is led by its President Hussein Fahmy and his director Essam Zakaria.
This year’s celebration will include 194 films from 72 countries around the world and will open with the World Premiere of Passing Dreams (in competition) directed by Palestine’s Rashid Masharawi and starring Ashraf Barhom, Emilia Masson and Adel Abu Ayyash who plays a young boy pursuing an elusive carrier pigeon across Palestine believing it will return home.
Passing Dreams (2024) courtesy of Cairo International Film Festival
The Golden Pyramid Award – International Competition 2024
An international jury headed by Danis Tanović will decide on the winning film in this competition strand. Helping him are Ahmed Hafez (Editor, Egypt), Andrea Pallaoro (Director, Italy), Ángela Molina (Actress, Spain); Aisha Ben Ahmed (Actress, Tunisia); Anocha Suwichakornpong (Director, Thailand); Sylvie Pialat (Producer, France).
Moondove (2024)
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Competition hopefuls include this year’s top titles: Julie Delpy’s Meet the Barbarians (2024); Golden Globe nominated Memoir of a Snail, an enchanting anime with intergenerational appeal. There’s also another chance to see Constance Tsang’s Cannes 2024 awarded drama Blue Sun Palace.
Premieres include Necmi Sancak’s Ayse (2024), a family drama set against the changing face of Istanbul; 4 O’Clock Flowers, the feature debut from Egyptian fimmaker Khedija Lemkecher; and Moondove written, directed and produced in 2024 by award-winning filmmaker Karim Kassem.
4 O’Clock Flowers (2024) courtesy of Cairo International Film Festival
Arze (2024)
HORIZONS OF ARAB CINEMA
The latest Palestinian feature documentaries will compete in this section that includes the Best Palestinian film award.
Amongst the titles Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi’s A State Of Passion: Ghassan Abu Sittah, raises the profile of British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Ghassan Abu Sittah, who worked tirelessly around the clock for over a month in the casualty department of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals.
Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed’s Gazan Tales, centres on the lives of four men in the Gaza Strip and Maxime Lindon’s Holidays In Palestinefollows 30 year old Shadi, an activist who leaves France to return to his village in Palestine.
Other films in this selection include Diaries from Lebanon (2024) a Berlinale-winning documentary looking at the tragedy unfolding in and around present day Beirut; and Mira Shaib’s feature debut Arze (2024) a family drama that sees a single mother and son struggling to survive in the city after they lose their source of revenue: a scooter.
The Second Wife (1967)
CAIRO CLASSICS
Celebrates a selection of international cult classics included renowned director Salah Abouseif’s timeless masterpiece of Egyptian cinema The Second Wife, (1967) – a microcosm of Egyptian country life is reflected through the story of a corrupt mayor who controls the village. Stars Suad Hosny, Salah Mansour and Shukri Sarhan.
CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL | TRIBUTES 2024
THE GOLDEN PYRAMID – HONORARY TRIBUTE
Yousri Nasrallah – Director and Writer, Egypt
In a film career spanning over four decades, Nasrallah began as a film critic for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir. In 1982 he was an assistant to filmmaker Youssef Chahine in the film An Egyptian Story, followed by Goodbye Bonaparte, for which he co-wrote the screenplay. He soon became one of the leading protagonists of the auteur cinema movement with dramas such as the epic love story Bab el Shams (2004/5). Nasrallah is the first Egyptian filmmaker to chair the short film jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Other collaborations include working with German director Volker Schlöndorff and Syrian director Omar Amiralay.
FATEN HAMAMA – EXCELLENCE AWARD
Danis Tanović – Film director, producer, screenwriter – Bosnia & Herzegovina
The Bosnian film director, producer and screenwriter studied piano at the Sarajevo Music Academy before enrolling at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo. However, in 1992, the siege of the city forced him to stop studying and instead to turn his talents to documentary films, which he continued in Belgium after a spell at the Institut Supérieur des Arts in the Belgian capital.
Tanovic went on to write and direct the 2001 Bosnian feature No Man’s Land, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the European Film Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the César for the Best First Feature film, and a the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film amongst others. His filmography also includes Iron Picker (2013), Tigers (2014), Death in Sarajevo(2016), which was awarded the Silver Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. He is the only director from Bosnia and Herzegovina to win an Oscar.
FATEN HAMAMA – EXCELLENCE AWARD
Ahmed Ezz – Actor – Egypt
After studying English at Ain Shams University. Ezz embarked on a film career gaining international recognition with his breakthrough in A Teenager’s Diary directed by Inas El-Degheidy in 2001. Roles in blockbuster films include Private Alexandria (2005), The Hostage in 2006, and Transit Prisoner in 2008, all directed by Sandra Nashaat. Other performances include the big budget war film The Passage about the Arab-Israeli War of Attrition, his first collaboration with the great director Sherif Arafa. The two worked together for a second time in The crime (2022), and in the same year, he presented the film Kira And Jinn with director Marwan Hamed in their first collaboration.
Cairo Film Connection (CFC) also takes place during the festival (17-20 Nov). The 10th Edition comprises a series of eighteen projects in their development stage. The selected works include six from Egypt, two each from Tunisia, Iraq, and Lebanon, and one each from Kuwait, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria.
CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 13 – 22 NOVEMBER 2024
Dir/Wri: Andrea Arnold. UK/France. Drama, 119 mins
A lyrical spadeful of social soil soaked in the English countryside and served up with a dash of magical realism is the best way to describe this latest feature from Andrea Arnold.
Set in her native Kent on the fringes of Gravesend on the Thames estuary Birdmakes multiple visual references to its avian-themed title but also features butterflies, bees, horses, foxes and dogs along with a cast of British actors, a German, Franz Rogowski, being the standout. He plays the titular hero Bird, a charismatic wayfarer who will soon come to represent everything decent and honourable in this squalid corner of broken Britain where living off the State has become an acceptable social norm.
Arnold’s Cow, a devastating documentary portrait of a dairy farming in the 21st century, came to Cannes Film Festival several years ago but went home empty-handed. Bird stands to gain more leverage due to its international stars Rogowski, and Barry Keoghan who plays Bug, a selfish, tattooed layabout who fathered a kid (Hunter) at fourteen, and is now set to be a granddad and an accidental father to his savvy young daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams in a stunning debut).
Apart from the animals, Bird is a chaotically poetic film full of music, dancing and fighting (courtesy of its male contingent). Coldplay, Fontaines D.C. and Sophie Ellis-Bextor all feature in a rambling storyline that centres on twelve-year-old Bailey who lives in a dingy seaside flat with Bug and her slightly older brother Hunter (Jason Edward Buda) who is also heading for teenage fatherhood. None appear to do a day’s work or have anything approaching a job. Bug’s plan is to harness the slime of his recently purchased Colorado River toad which exudes a pricey hallucinogen he can flog on the black market.
So Bailey is forced to make her own life until she befriends Bird after falling asleep in a field full of daisies beside the M2 – and these scenes are particularly gorgeous to look at; Arnold knows how to ‘smell the roses’ cinematically-speaking and Bird is a film that takes itself slowly along the byroads, alighting on nature in all its summery beauty as well as the dregsville domestic interiors, not to mention bodily functions. Is Bird for real? – at one point Bailey gives him a Chinese burn just to check, but he’s the nearest thing to a decent bloke she’s ever come across and so begins their subtle love affair.
Arnold’s 2009 feature Fish Tank embarked on a similar scenic journey for its lost heroine but this time the English filmmaker heads in an unexpectedly new and inspired direction, and this really makes the film special although thematically we’re on traditional territory. The handheld camera may leave you in a daze but that’s all part of the slightly unreal life these drifters lead. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Chris Cottam | Cast: Colm Meaney, Paul Reiser, Lucianne McEvoy, Jane Levy, Dés Keogh | Comedy drama 102′
The film starts so reassuringly in the Emerald Isle with its stereotypical green landscapes stretching out to a lakeside in county Wicklow, all set to the lilting sound of the fiddle. What follows is a scrappy saga that gradually loses steam in championing that ’special relationship’, Americans fondly seeing Ireland as some sort of idyllic fatherland. Apart from a few minor gags, there’s none of the caustic wit of Martin McDonagh here. The Problem with Peopleis directed by German-born Chris Cottam. Wally Marzano-Lenevich co-writes with Paul Reiser who also stars.
Back in the distant past two Irish cousins fell out and one moved to Brooklyn never to return. On his deathbed the Irish descendent’s fondest wish is to reunite the family, once and for all. So it falls on his son Ciáran (Meaney) to invite his New York-based cousin Barry (Reiser) to patch things up, although the two have never met. Warmly greeted by the locals on his arrival, Barry sees the benefits of Ciáran’s bucolic existence. But the bonhomie is short-lived. When the father dies his Will incudes Barry in half of the estate, creating a rift that spreads throughout the village.
Subplots involve Barry’s gay daughter (Levy) who soon joins the party and forms a bond with Ciaran’s ex-wife (McEvoy. The characters are given a contemporary twist but the plotlines are largely implausible with clunky dialogue lacking authenticity. With its strong cast, The Problem with People works best as a riff on family relationships, grief and remembrance with arguably greater appeal for US audiences than those on this side of the Atlantic. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Maureen O’Hara, Robert Newton | Drama 108’
Hitchcock’s period dramas tend to get a bad press but ‘Under Capricorn’ at least is worthy of considerable respect.
‘Jamaica Inn’ – the last of the British phase of Hitchcock’s career and the first of three adaptations of made of the work of Daphne du Maurier – was even included in the book ‘The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time’ and both Hitchcock and du Maurier personally disliked it; in the case of the latter probably not helped by liberties taken like the addition of Sir Humphrey Pengallan.
Possibly Hitchcock’s most violent film, this rollicking yarn boasts sumptuous production design, mobile photography by Harry Stradling, a bizarrely made up performance by Charles Laughton as Pengallan (although he predictably proved difficult to direct, especially since it was made for his own company), a game young heroine played a by Irish actress Maureen O’Hara, who gets an ‘Introducing’ credit and promptly accompanied Laughton to Hollywood; and distinctive supporting contributions from Leslie Banks, Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams, Marie Ney, Basil Radford and Hay Petrie, to name but a few; and a memorably harrowing scene at the conclusion in which Stephen Haggard pleads for his life. @RichardChatten
Dir: Daniel Petrie | Cast: Susan Howard, Michael Craig, Diane Baker, Edward Judd | UK Drama 97’
That rarest thing, a remake that improves upon the original.
Prefaced by an elegant title sequence by Maurice Binder to the accompaniment of Mort Lindsay’s melancholy score, the treatment throughout is much more subtle than it was in ‘Dark Victory’
Susan Hayward is a more robust presence as the heroine, and at the ending isn’t required to compete with the music as Bette Davis had had to with Max Steiner.
Being made in Britain probably contributed to it being more understated, where shot in sumptuous colour it makes good use of Cornish locations and gains added poignancy from the fact that Hayward herself also later died in eerily similar circumstances. @RichardChatten
Dir: Cey Sesiguzel | Prod: Andreas Tokkallos | 90′
Many may remember flicking through holiday brochures back in the early 1970s when Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, was still a thriving resort and a popular location to enjoy a sunny break. Since then the beach has been abandoned although one company now offers tours of the deserted area from the Ayia Napa.
2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion that led to bloodshed dividing the island into Greek and Turkish sectors. Turkish Cypriot filmmaker Cey Sesiguzel and his Greek producer Andreas Tokkallos try to put history into context offering an unbiased view with reportage from archival footage and the recollections of those whose lives where torn apart of that tragic day in July 1974.
But the Turkish Cypriot question had for a long time been a source of friction. The division was deeply-rooted in conflict that dated back to the 1570 Ottoman Conquest and the Island’s era under British rule that led to the Republic of Cyprus in 1960. All this culminated in a Greek military-financed coup d’etat that eventually came to a head when the Turks invaded in 1974.
Sesiguzel and Takkallos make a brave attempt to flesh out the complicated historical context by adopting a ‘made for TV type’ format with facts, views from expert witnesses and personal outpourings making it often feel like a didactic lecture rather than a dynamic and cinematic piece of filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Clint Eastwood | Wri: Jonathan Abrams | Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina, Kiefer Sutherland, J.K. Simmons, Gabriel Basso, Cedric Yarbrough, Leslie Bibb, Francesca Eastwood, Amy Aquino, Adrienne C. Moore | US 113’
The truth can be a dangerous thing as Nicholas Hoult finds out in Clint Eastwood’s chewy courtroom drama. Informative and complex rather than nail-biting Juror #2 is an absorbing film with its intelligent look at the US justice system in all its anomalies and unpredictable uncertainties.
In Savannah, Georgia Hoult is Justin Kemp, a squeaky clean family man and recovering alcoholic who finds himself called up for jury service in a high-profile murder trial that brings to light a chilling realisation: the poor guy was actually there at the scene of the crime. His wife Allison (Deutch) is about to give birth to their first child after a previous miscarriage, adding further anxiety to an already stressful state of affairs.
The man in the dock, James Sythe (Basso), was out drinking with his girlfriend (Eastwood’s daughter, Kendall Carter) on the night of the crime. He’s been charged with her subsequent death by Faith Killebrew (Colette), a confident county prosecutor, who is also campaigning to be the new district attorney.
So while Sythe’s life hangs in the balance, Justin is paralysed by a moral dilemma as it dawns on him that the ‘deer’ he hit that night was actually the victim. Should he come clean, or stay quiet and protect his own family – that’s the predicament.
Juror #2 is not just about a murder trial, it’s about a man’s sense of justice and moral probity. It explores the growing guilt and suspicious behaviour that comes into play as his character plunges further and further into a state of emotional turmoil. Hoult is rather good as the culpable party – he starts to blush and shake as he reaches out to his solicitor friend Larry Lasker (Sutherland) for insight and support. Clint and his writer Jonathan Abrams ask us all “what would you do in the circumstances”?
Sixty years after Clint was bewitching us in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) his versatile career as actor, director, producer and composer continues to flourish. About time one of the big festivals gave him a tribute. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Jeffrey Reiner | Shea Whigham, Carrie Coon, Glenn Fleshler, Max Casella | US Thriller 98′
With a gun to his head an ordinary man called Don is forced into a hitman gig in Jerry Reiner’s neat little Neo noir B-movie.
The plot is simple and well-executed from the get-go and hooks you in with its appealing central duo. Ex-con softie Don (Whigham) has done time and is now ready to collect his share of the money from L.A. gangster Armen (Glenn Fleshler). But Armen has other plans in store for Don and they involve him killing Armen’s ex Phyllis (Coon).
So Don, looking for an easy way out, agrees to kill Phyllis. But after taking her to the Adirondack foothills near Lake George there’s an unexpected twist. Unable to pull the trigger, put-upon Don combines forces with middled-aged Phyllis and the unlikely pair of grifters hatch a plan to get the money back, and more.
There’s always an audience for a decent thriller and Lake George is certainly watchable with its plausible plot, snappy dialogue and pristine production values from a veteran director and producer of TV fare such as Fargo and High Fidelity. Here he re-works a classic noir format with a feisty female and a world-weary petty criminal who just wants to retire gracefully.
A caustic dark vein of humour tempers some of the more violent episodes particularly the one where Don and Phyllis stage a robbery and find themselves witnessing a rather bizarre sex scene interrupted by a dog. The ludicrous sums involved are so minimal this only adds to the comedy as the two amusing desperados try to swing things to their advantage against the odds in some shady circumstances. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Edgar Wright | Cast: Simon Pegg, Cate Blanchett, Bill Bailey, Martin Freeman , Bill Nighy, Bill Cornish, Billy Whitelaw, Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine | Uk Comedy 121’
‘Hot Fuzz’ belongs to that select group of movies that on its original appearance received a lukewarm critical response, but by the time it reached television had already deservedly achieved cult status.
When it first hit cinemas critics sniffily compared this gleeful spoof of everything from the Avengers episode ‘Murdersville’ to ‘The Wicker Man’ unfavourably with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s previous collaboration, ‘Shaun of the Dead’, but it sounded fun so I went to see it anyway and was certainly not disappointed.
Particular thought has gone into the casting, with Cate Blanchett’s unbilled cameo being particularly memorable. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Alain Guiraudie | Cast: Félix Kysyl, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Catherine Frot, Jacques Develay, David Ayala | France, Thriller 102′
All over France the village bakery is becoming a thing of the past. Many places don’t even have a local bar anymore and Alain Guiraudie mourns the demise of rural life in his latest, a comic thriller, exploring repressed sexual desire and the power of the Catholic Church in a leafy French backwater.
Guiraudie’s sinister 2013 debut Stranger by the Lake, follows a familiar theme of the outsider coming to town and disrupting the status quo. But this time with a delicious twist.
It all begins with a funeral in a remote village in Aveyron, near Toulouse. The family come together to revisit past and present. The deceased, Jean-Pierre, ran the local bakery but his troubled son Vincent (Durand) is in no state to take over and his widow Martine (Frot) is in disarray. But she soon cheers up when Jeremie (Kysyl) arrrives to pay his respects. He used to work in the bakery as a teenager but has long left the village. Vincent is not keen to see him, and is irritated when his mother welcomes Jeremie back into the fold, inviting him to stay.
There’s a whiff of Claude Chabrol to this dark little dramady that sees the tight knit locals flitting between each other’s households, their apparent friendliness couching a savage air of mistrust. And while keeping their motives and backstories hidden, Guiradie keeps the tension taught through the fleeting expressions that flicker across the faces of Martine, her son Vincent, their friend Walter (Ayala), local vicar Father Grisolles (Develay), and particularly Jeremie who is the most expressive of the lot.
Clearly things have gone on in that close community, although outwardly they all appear to be straight; Martine and her husband Jean-Pierrre, Jeremie purportedly with a girlfriend back in Toulouse. But when Jeremie runs into Vincent in the woods, their rough horseplay seems to have suggestive undertones, and soon ends in tragedy whereupon Jeremie is forced to cover his tracks. He then bumps into Father Grisolles, picking mushrooms, who seems a bit too keen to offer Jeremie a lift. Jeremie makes a swift exit then swings by to catch up with his old friend Walter. After a few beers, he strips off and propositions him, Walter chasing him away with a rifle. The two later fluff over the episode, on the grounds of being drunk.
So all these interactions are ambiguous but somehow suggestive of a fluid sexuality at play. Félix Kysyl is particularly good at being all things to everyone in his role as Jeremie. For the local gendarmes, he is the number one suspect in Vincent’s disappearance, and yet his implicated guilt always appears to be the elephant in the room during questioning, his presence seems to unearth unwanted elements of guilt and remorse that have lain buried in this small community for many years.
Although they all trust in the eminence grise, Father Grisolles, we soon begin to realise that he is a subversive force, but not necessarily a force for evil as we soon discover in the film’s gripping third act where Jeremie will find salvation where he least expects it in the moody and muted autumn tints of this suspenseful and slyly amusing thriller. @MeredithTaylor
Misericordia’ wins top prize; Spain’s indie success; MISERICORD In UK arthouse cinemas from December
Dir: David Bickerstaff | Prod: Phil Grabsky | UK Art Doc
Exhibition On Screen is a series of documentary portraits of painters and their iconic works. It goes behind the scenes at major galleries and museums – this time London’s National Gallery – offering detailed insight from experts and curators and dramatised scenes that bring the artists to life.
David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky already highlighted the Vincent Van Gogh’s letters with his brother Theo,(1853-90) in the 2015 documentary Van GoghA New Way of Seeing. This time they once again bring the letters to bear with a lyrical look at works from the artist’s most vibrant, less sensational, period when he discovered the power of colour and sunlight during a two-year sejour in the South of France.
Through forty seven paintings and fourteen drawings, the focus here is Van Gogh’s imagination as a visual poet rather than the tragedy of his personal life. The theme of lovers dominates in the opening room with his portrait of “the lover”, lieutenant Paul Milliet, the Zouave regiment soldier who Van Gogh saw as a ladies’ man. The artist was clearly aware of his seductive powers: “Milliet’s lucky, he has all the Arlésiennes he wants, but there you are, he can’t paint them, and if he was a painter he wouldn’t have any.”
La Berceuse 1889
This image is paired with that of the “the poet” – his Belgian artist friend Eugène Boch (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) whom he considered a more sensitive soul, framing him against an azure background of stars. In the middle of these two works is a picture of two embracing lovers strolling through a shady park, in fact the public park opposite the famous yellow house Van Gogh rented in Arles and shared, at one point, with Gauguin during 1888-9 when he painted ‘The Yellow House’, and ‘The Bedroom’.
During this time he also depicted his short spells in the local asylum just outside Saint-Remy-de-Provence. These stays, when he stopped working altogether, enabled Van Gogh to recuperate and recalibrate his emotional state before getting back to work with renewed vigour. Far from the troubled madman he is so often depicted as, this exhibition and film lays bare the artist as a sensitive and deeply poetic soul uniquely able to convey the beauty of his surroundings on canvas.
Central to the exhibition is the spectacular ‘Starry Night over the Rhone’ (main picture) and Self-Portrait further illustrating his successful time in Arles.
With valuable contributions from art specialists and curators: Christopher Riopelle, Lachlan Goodie, The Times’ critic Rachel Campbell Johnson and others, the film also offers a detailed look at detailed marks and brushwork from a selection of rarely seen paintings from private collections all over the world. ‘The Poet’s Garden’, ‘The Trinquetaille Bridge’ and ‘The Public Garden, Arles’.
Poets and Lovers shows how Gogh had started to build his work into a series that could work together. An example of this is the so-called ‘triptych’, with two of the Sunflowers surrounding ‘Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle’ (La Berceuse) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The National Gallery owns the ‘Sunflowers’ on a yellow background, which is displayed with one of Van Gogh’s two versions on a blue background, this one on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All the three paintings are displayed on one wall.
Ironic, then, to think that Van Gogh was unable to sell his work during his lifetime, relying on the financial support of his brother Theo, when Nowadays his paintings go under the hammer for eye-watering amounts of money, even running into the millions.
Enriched with dramatised sequences this is a spectacular film to watch and keeping re-visiting about Van Gogh’s hopeful and productive time in the South of France. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Howard Hawks | Cast: Rock Hudson, Paula Prentiss, Maria Perschy, John McGiver | US 120’
Although Howard Hawks was something of an anachronism by the 1960s and ‘Man’s Favourite Sport’ is usually overlooked by critical assessments it compares favourably with Hawks’ classic comedies, complete with an appearance by veteran Hawks player Roscoe Karns.
Rock Hudson may be no Cary Grant, but then, who is? Paul Prentiss though is woman enough for both of them, and after spending much of the story dressed (presumably intentionally) as a bluestocking gets to model Edith Head’s most unusual creation in the form a wetsuit (“Can you get out of the water wearing that?” Hudson asks) which cost $10,000 but you’ll definitely agree was certainly worth every penny. @RichardChatten
Saoirse Ronan is the star of this dour character drama set in the Orkney Islands where she plays a struggling alcoholic in a dysfunctional family.
Some people have terrible lives and really suffer to keep on the right path but why do we lionise those who resort to drugs and drink to keep going when there are so many who manage to triumph through sheer grit and determination in the face of tragedy and strife.
Saved by some the ethereal landscapes and some watchable performances from Ronan, Saskia Reeves, and Stephen Diane (as her parents) you nevertheless come away wondering why this overhyped, plotless and un-involving film with its jump cuts to dismal London and gorgeous nature shots needed to go on for two whole hours. The seals are the highpoint of a sad but otherwise rather average portrait of addiction based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot. @MeredithTaylor
A wonderful dreamy opening with a classical score glides is thought the night streets of Moscow, a dog called Dingo looking wistfully out of the windows of a car. And then we are in the midst of a flowery meadow. And Dingo is nursing a leg wound.
A close knit family of stray dogs and the homeless keep themselves going in the urban wastelands just south of Moscow. A post industrial web of factories has gradually ground to a semi-halt. Where once machinery whirled at peak production the pace has slowed, and the stream of workers who kept the stray dogs alive with regular titbits has now dwindled to a bare handful: one woman called Nadja and seven dogs.
Shot from the animals’ point of view a co-dependency blurs as these two species live in close proximity, each lending the other succour and sustenance, emotional and physical. Snow gradually arrives to chill this union of souls in the bleak midwinter but the two continue to protect each other against the biting cold giving the old woman something to live for in her fight for survival. But Nadja is also desperate to free herself from this modus vivendi and become independent and her struggle eventually culminates in a parting of the ways.
Austria’s Elsa Kremser and Germany’s Levin Peter made their first appearance on the arthouse scene with their 2019 debut Space Dogs, another cinematic riff that explored Moscow’s canine world through a magical story of Russia’s first space bound dog (Laika) returning to Earth as a ghost. Dreaming Dogs is resolutely land-based but there’s a spiritual dimension in this union of souls that elevates the film to a timeless essay that explores man – or woman – and a best friend who has adapted itself over the centuries as a method of survival. The directors accompanied the group over a period of three years that saw woman and beast survive in a minimalist existence against a background of financial collapse and societal crisis. @MeredithTaylor
Marguerite Duras is not exactly renowned as a crowd pleaser, I didn’t really expect to enjoy this film – especially since it was shot in drab black & white with probably deliberately inexpressive acting by the leads – when I dutifully sat down to see it, but in its playfully sinister way it proved quite diverting.
Lucia Bose and Jeanne Moreau play two women in early middle age, who live together alone, whether siblings or lovers never being made clear.
Perhaps the film’s highlight involves a young Gerard Depardieu as a washing machine salesman nervously attempting to interest the two women in purchasing a new model. The two ladies just stare and constantly contradict him, and one is never sure if they intend to rape him or kill him. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Pedro Almodovar | Cast: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro | Drama 108’
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton are the Oscar-winning stars of this penetrating character drama that sees two writer friends reunited in the current day after they first met in the 1980s.
Martha (Swinton), suffering from cancer, has decided to end her life after a terminal diagnosis and asks Ingrid (Moore) to stay in the room next door in a rented holiday home, where she intends to take an illegal pill procured on the dark web.
Euthanasia is a hot topic in the news at a moment when many find themselves alone, estranged from family or friendless, when faced with an unbearable illness.In his first film in English Pedro Almodovar bravely tackles a highly emotive subject head on, and he clearly fervently believes in it. And this is not the first of his films about facing fears and doubts, Pain and Glory explored the subject back in 2019, but that was more autobiographical. Here he projects the idea onto a female friendship, his stock in trade, as we saw in Women on the Verge and Talk to Her amongst others.
It’s also true to say that Almodovar’s films always feel slightly angst-ridden, even his comedies. There is always deep-seated anxiety and a Hitchcockian undertone to his work and The Room Next Door revisits the same territory, with the same dull, discordant primary colours, in a story that takes place in lonely woods and alienating New York skylines.
Even when Tilda’s character is upbeat it all feels desperately doom-laden, with Moore cast as her ever faithful friend, even though the two haven’t seen each other for decades. The false bonhomie Ingrid exudes in her efforts to gee her friend along is forced and quite frankly false, unless she has an ulterior motive of using this experience as material for her next book. The two of them get along like the Bobbsey Twins with rarely a cross word or a confrontation – quite something considering their lack of closeness; but maybe this lack of an intimate past is what’s needed to accompany someone to their demise.
Moore’s character is a ‘yes woman’; an eternal martyr who seems to take the weight of Martha’s angst on her delicate shoulders. Meanwhile Martha quite understandingly veers from depression to acceptance – and sometimes even relief – at her impending doom. And that’s the film’s most valuable take-away. Tilda has never looked so drawn and dissipated than in this latest incarnation which she embraces full-heartedly in a tour de force that feels brave and unflinching.
With the help of these two experienced actors Almodovar manages to convey his ideas on euthanasia and death with subtlety and restraint in a tribute to all those forced to suffer the indignity of dying a slow and painful death. Few of us are frightened of death but what we dread is the pain and loss of control and dignity, and this is also the thrust of Almodovar’s nuanced narrative. @MeredithTaylor
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR | GOLDEN LION winner VENICE 2024
This year the Viennale are screening a retrospective of American filmmaker Robert Kramer, who comes from roughly the same stable as Chris Marker and Jonas Mekas in his style and ideology.
We are told in the festival press brochure that Robert Kramer (1939- 99) first appeared on the scene in the early 1960s when he became a leading proponent in the independent film movement of the era, most of his work was political and from a left-wing perspective.
Growing up in New York City he studied philosophy and Western European history at Swarthmore College and Stanford University where he became engaged in leftwing politics, working first as a community organiser in Newark, and then as a reporter in Latin America.
Before moving back to the States his first film arrived, a short entitled. The People’s War, the first of a trilogy exploring the radical left, and here the focus is on the guerrilla movement in Venezuela. In New York he founded Newsreel, an underground media collective which produced some sixty documentaries and short films about radical political subjects and the anti-war movement.
It was during this time that Kramer developed his highly distinctive cinematic style, a blending of fiction and documentary filmmaking. By the early 1980s he had moved to France, where his work was treated much more seriously than in his homeland and remained there until he died in 1999.
THE EDGE, the second of Kramer’s trilogy on the ‘Radical New Left’ is shot in black and white on 35mm and sees a cast of non-pros play a group – nine men, four women – of rather pleasant and well-spoken ‘young revolutionaries’, the men dressed conservatively in sports jackets, white shirts and ‘slacks’ (as they used to call them back in the day). Mostly un-employed and directionless (one is potter, another works in a factory) they are disgruntled in a very passive way, and their gripe centres on the US government’s intensification of bombing Vietnam. A placid lot, they mooch around town and on windy beaches, talking endlessly of a desire to change the world, but none of them looks like they could kill a fly.
Eventually, Dan, the most disenchanted, is galvanised into action in his goal to kill the president. His thought processes are worked up over six days, announced in intertitles, and sadly end in tragedy but the tone is thoughtful and tentative throughout rather than vehement or angry. Worth seeing for the period details. @MeredithTaylor
In The Country (1967) and ICE (1969) make the trilogy, screening at this VIENNALE 2024
Amy Adams’ character in Nightbitch is a stay-at-home mum, looking after a planned child in a well-appointed suburban house. But she hasn’t reckoned with the effect on her psyche of 24/7 life with a toddler while dealing with an inattentive, mostly absent husband. She feels her IQ shrinking by the day, and her identity – bound up with her now-stalled, but previously burgeoning, career as an artist – dissipating.
Facile musical afternoons at a local library and encounters with uninspiring women with whom she has little in common other than the brute fact of motherhood only increase her frustration. Not even comfort food, in the form of chunky fritters fried in great dollops of butter (Adams has bulked up considerably for the role), seems to help.
And as her anger builds, she notices that it is accompanied by some strange physical changes: thick hair sprouting on her back, rows of teats on her torso, even the beginnings of a tail…
Dogs and wolves have frequently been used in stories to illustrate the wild or unbound side of human nature – which is perhaps strange, given the rigidly hierarchical, pack-based nature of canine social organisation. The figure of the werewolf looms large here. In films like The Company of Wolves and Ginger Snaps it serves as a metaphor for the rawness of female adolescence; in Wolf, as a tonic for the diminishing powers of an ageing literary editor, played by Jack Nicholson.
But Nightbitch isn’t by any means a werewolf film, or really a horror film at all. There’s no sense that Adams’ character has been infected with a supernatural curse, or otherwise inducted into a lineage of monsters. She’s never shown to be a danger to anyone else, least of all her son, with whom she’s unfailingly sweet – no matter how many provocations the narrative hurls at her – and writer/director Marielle Heller mostly downplays the tale’s few weird or gory moments.
The story feels more like a slice of magical realism – the kind of thing which, in their wilder moments, a John Updike, John Cheever or Donald Barthelme might have come up with as a metaphor for suburban angst.
The three major characters are nameless, suggesting that Heller is aiming for an exemplary or prototypical picture of the nuclear family, as seen from “Mother’s” perspective: a point-of-view signalled by the preternaturally careworn Scoot McNairy’s designation as “Husband”, rather than the more standard pairing of “Father”.
The narrative is carefully slanted in Mother’s favour, and doesn’t delve into the privilege at work in her choice to take time out of her career for her child’s formative years – and still to feel radically discontented. And, typically of US cinema, her relatively opulent house is almost assertively antiseptic: a show-home rather than a place where people actually live, with little human grain, much less the scruffy or bohemian touches one might associate with an artist.
To call the scope of the film limited would be to undermine its strongly expressed core message: that the battles, victories, defeats and sacrifices played out by women at the domestic level are not just visceral and atavistic, but the very foundation of human life. However, the story doesn’t find a way to escalate its concerns into something truly compelling, and its third act is mostly concerned with the successful balancing-out of Mother’s relationship with Husband rather than anything more dark or gripping.
Having said this, the relationship between Mother and the hugely charming Son (actually played by twin brothers Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) is one of the joys of a film which also provides a generous amount of laugh-out-loud comedy. The playful bond between them is so palpable that I wasn’t the only person at my screening who wondered whether Son was in fact Adams’ own child. Adams’ performance is superbly nuanced, and to be relished. Where others might have chewed the scenery, she signals oceans of exasperation with the subtlest tilt of her head and lift off an eyebrow. @_i_a_n_l_o_n_g
SCREENING AT VIENNALE 2024 | IN UK CINEMAS 6
Ian Long is a screenwriter and story consultant, and runs workshops on the ‘Deep Narrative Design’ of storytelling.
This year’s Viennale Film Festival pays tribute to Vienna’s homegrown star, the actress Helene Thimig, born in Austria when it was still Austria-Hungary.
Helene Thimig (1889-1974), a member of a well‐known Viennese theatrical family, made her debut during the Weimar republic, starring in Gustav Ucicky’s 1932 romantic drama Man Without a Name. Fleeing Nazism with her second husband, the producer Max Reinhardt, he directed her in Franz Werfel’s theatre production The Road of Promise in 1937. They had already met in 1917.
A successful film and stage career followed with performances in around eighteen Hollywood outings. After the war she returned to Vienna to combine work on the stage, cinema and TV both in Austria and Germany until her death at 84.
MAN WITHOUT A NAME (1932) Gustav Ucicky (Austria) ***
Weimar Germany is the setting for this wartime drama, shot in Babelsberg studios and inspired by the Balzac novel Le Colonel Chabert. Helene Thimig plays Eva-Marie, the wife of a successful businessman Heinrich Martin (Werner Krauss) conscripted into the First World War in 1914 where he is reported dead. In actual fact he is merely shell-shocked and reappears years later in 1932, his memory intact, to discover Eva-Marie has re-married his close friend, who has taken over his business. Not Ucicky’s finest film but Thimig gives an impressive performance in her screen debut.
THE HITLER GANG (1943) John Farrow (US) ***
Along with The Great Dictator this gangster film is one of the first biopics about Adolf Hitler, made when he was still alive and kicking. It pictures him as a machiavellian figure determined to thwart other politicians as a means to controlling Germany, setting the seeds of Nazism.
John Farrow directs on a shoe string budget, but none the worse for it. Hitler’s rise to power starts in a military hospital at the end of the Great War, with Germany forced to its knees, and ends on the eve of World War II. The soon to be Fuhrer, played by a spirited Bobby Watson, joins the National Socialist Party infiltrating as an army spy in an ambitious narrative that takes in the Beer Hall Putsch, the writing of Mein Kampf and the burning down of the Reichstag.
The Jews are implicated in Germany’s defeat in the First World War, and although there is no mention of the Death Camps we get a good feel for Hitler’s psychopathic tendencies with the mysterious death of his niece Geli Raubal (played by Poli Dur) leaving us wondering if she actually committed suicide or whether Hitler was responsible. Helene Thimig plays Geli’s mother Angela in a small but not insignificant role. A solid script and decent cast make this worth watching.
STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT (1944) Anthony Mann (US) ****
Anthony Mann’s B movie runs for just under an hour but packs a palpable head of steam as a 1940s-set feminist psychodrama with timely references to the current social media phenomenon of ‘catfishing’ It’s a jaunty affair that kicks off with William Terry as injured serviceman Johnny Meadows thriving on letters received from an enigmatic ‘Rosemary Blake’. Cut to a hilltop mansion where Helene Thimig is convincing as crippled psycho Hilda Blake doting on a portrait of her (fictitious) daughter Rosemary, and terrorising her put-upon assistant Miss Miller (Barrett), and her new physician Dr Ross (Virginia Grey), a woman she rejects rudely for not being a man.
Thimig really excels in a sinister performance, controlling her submissive friend Ivy and inveigling all around her including Johnny who has made a bee-line to the mansion to find his ‘lover’ Rosemary whose portrait will ultimately provide the gruesome denouement. A really entertaining thriller with gowns by Oscar-nominated Adele Palmer.
ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945) Mark Robson (US) ***
Boris Karloff stars alongside Helene Thimig in this inspired horror outing that derives its eerie atmosphere from the gruesome twosome and Jack MacKenzie’s subtle lighting effects and shadow play. Written and produced by Val Lewton, it sees an international cast (Jason Robards, Ernst Deutch, Ellen Drew) dying one by one while quarantined on a Greek island during the Balkan War of 1912. But Karloff soon discovers the plague isn’t the only danger in this remote outpost. Thimig plays a Greek peasant woman, once again creating a sinister presence as ‘Madame Kyra’ influencing Karloff’s austere but patriotic general into believing that one of their midst is a demon. And it ain’t a man. Gripping stuff despite its 71 minute running time.
THE ANGEL WITH A TRUMPET (1948) 138’ ****
Hartl pulls out all the stops in this gorgeously filmed romantic epic set in the late 19th century, charting the ups and downs of an upper class family of Viennese piano-makers during fifty years (1888-1948).
Often seen as an Austrian national story, the various allegorical aspects are embodied in the characters and the house itself, a classical mansion with the figurine of a trumpeting angel over its front door. The house represents Austria and shots of the little white angel appear at regular intervals reminding that all is well, even when it’s not. There are moonlight scenes, musical interludes, romantic trysts, duels and family gatherings with the men in full military regalia, not to mention flags unfurling against darkening skies, representing the Nazi’s arrival (the with scenes of destruction in wartorn old Vienna. The family will weather all this stoically until the 1940s.
Often drifting into melodrama the 1948 feature is based on the much darker novel of Ernst Lothar who rewrote the book in English while in exile in the US, and this spawned another 1950 outing narrated by Jack Hawkins and starring Wilfrid Hyde-White along with some members of the original cast in minor roles.
Lothar was a great friend of Max Reinhardt, but Hartl’s film is more triumphant and lyrical than the novel and stars Paula Wessely, Maria Schell and Helene Thimig, who once again plays a matriarch. It’s not a significant role but one that offers dignity as the stately chatelaine of the double fronted villa in old Vienna.
The story unfolds from the perspective of Henriette Stein, a Jewish academic (played by Wessely) who has had a ‘light-hearted’ affair with Crown Prinz Rudolf (Fred Liewehr) who then commits suicide at Mayerling. Henriette comes to live in the house when she then marries the piano manufacturer Franz Alt (Attila Horbiger), on the rebound. It’s a marriage of convenience (for her at least) that provides a family. But their union will soon lead to deception, murder and ultimately, death as Austria’s eventful history plays out.
Decision Before Dawn | copyright TCM
DECISION BEFORE DAWN (1951) ****
This spy movie by Anatole Litvak, adapted from George Howe’s novel Call it Treason is not in this year’s Viennale tribute to Helene Thimig, but I thought it was worth including with its eclectic cast and Oscar nomination in 1952 Academy Awards. Thimig plays alongside Hildegard Knef and Dominique Blanchard. According to our critic Richard Chatten, Basehart is top-billed, his observations bookended the film, but the real star is Oskar Werner – beset as usual with doubts – as the ironically nicknamed ‘Happy’.
Like earlier Hollywood productions shot in Germany this goes for a harsh, monochromatic realism. Unlike them, it’s actually set back during the war itself from the point of view of the Germans (most supporting cast consisting of authentic locals, including fleeting glimpses of youthful versions of Klaus Kinks and Gert Frobe) at the point when it had finally sunk in on the majority of them just what a terrible mistake they had made in electing Hitler.
CINEMATOGRAPHY : HELENE THIMIG | VIENNALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Jesse Eisenberg) and Kieran Culkin are the ultimate odd couple in this autobiographical buddy comedy road movie .
Benji and David are cousins meeting again after years apart. They were once close buddies and have decided to join a tour group and go in search of their beloved grandmother’s former home in Poland. David, in particular, wants to get to grips with his family history and explore how his own emotional issues rank compared to those who suffered during holocaust.
But tensions soon surface as the two revisit their childhood in this hilarious and insightful and self-assured second feature, written by Eisenberg who deftly combines comedy and pathos and directs a solid cast featuring Will Sharpe and Jennifer Grey .
Benji (Culkin) is brash and emotionally open but totally lacking in self-awareness while his banner ad-salesman cousin is a thoughtful and sensitive, missing his wife and little daughter and confessing to a touch of homesickness. It’s a dynamic that offers both humour and awkwardness. We tend to root for David as the most respectful of the two, although Benji’s blind-sightedness provides cringeworthy elements yet points to a deep sadness in his life as a kid who never seems to grow up, but would never admit to it. He’s an unstable character who thrives in momentary relationships but manages to hit off with Jennifer Grey’s divorced mothe.
Clearly this group trip is fraught with memories of a tragic past treading on delicate ground involving visits to concentration camps and ghettos. Although A Real Pain is a film that explores our collective past as a universal family. All this cries out for decorum and sensitivity that the blundering Benji seems to lack in spades, although the men clearly love each other deeply, and this comes out particularly for David. Will Sharpe, as the group leader, tries desperately to iron over the interpersonal cracks with platitudes in this cleverly calibrated threesome.
At one points Benji rails at the seemingly hypocritical fact of them all travelling First Class in a train that, back in the grim past, could have carried their ancestors to their terrible graves. But he also suggests that his fellow trippers leave a commemorative stone on appropriate gravestones, in line with tradition. This idea does not go down well with the new owner of their grandmother’s former home who considers it a possible tripping hazard for the old woman who now lives there.
Eisenberg really fleshes out the rest of the tour group here, including a Rwandan refugee (Kurt Egyiawan) who has converted to Judaism and a recent divorcee (Grey) who bonds with Benji’s offbeat take on life, although the final scene is a telling reflection on his state of limbo “Anyone could be a friend”. @MeredithTaylor
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL WALDO SALT SCREENWRITING AWARD | SCREENING DURING VIENNALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dir: Tony Scott. | Dir: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Cliff De Young | Horror 97’
Although this glossy adaptation of Whitley Streiber’s novel was originally greeted with raspberries posterity has been kind to ‘The Hunger’, and today it continues to enjoy cult status on the strength of its sapphic chic and the star power of its three leading players.
Catherine Deneuve is a worthy successor to Delphine Seyrig in ‘Daughters of Darkness’, as a glacial blonde lipstick lesbian in chic shades who employs Delibes to seduce Susan Sarandon who describes her as “different, she’s…European”; while the scene where David Bowie’s (age inconveniently catches up with him) swiftly became a classic. @RichardChatten.
Dir: Jacques Audiard | Wris: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius | Cast: Edgar Ramirez, Selena Gomez, Zoë Saldana, Adriana Paz | France, Musical thriller 129′
It’s hard to imagine someone as dapper and debonair as auteur Jacques Audiard creating rip-roaring films that travel to the badlands of France, India and now Mexico. But beauty and sensitivity is always there a core of his work and this is particularly so in his latest, a vibrant musical thriller, EMILIA PÉREZ.
Zoe Saldaña is Rita, a hard-working Mexico City lawyer held back by her gender and Latino background not to mention a demanding mother and a long-held desire to have a family herself. Despite all this she keeps singing and smiling (in dazzling dance routines) until an offer she can’t refuse comes along that will ultimately lead to salvation of sorts in the shape of frightening cartel boss Manitas del Monte (Gascon).
The mission is well -paid but perilous: to organise the crime lord’s disappearance, relocate his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and family safely to Switzerland and make him the woman of his desiring. Enter Israeli plastic surgeon Dr Wasserman (Mark Ivanir), the man for the job.
Karla Sofia Gascón is a knockout in a brilliant transgender role that sees her morph from macho Manitas (with gold teeth) to steely but vulnerable EMILIA PÉREZ in a range of bold and boosterish Saint Laurent outfits and a set of pearly white nashers.
This timely tale is often a bit fuzzy around the edges in a script co-written with Lea Mysius and Thomas Bidegain. But Audiard brings all the strands together in a tense adrenaline fuelled denouement that certainly packs a punch despite setbacks along the way. Emilia Perez makes it clear that blood is still thicker than water, even though the water element is all about our need to be loved and find meaning in life even if that means pushing the boundaries out. Emotions run high for all the characters and the heat is palpable with a lush spectrum of dazzling colours in the desert setting.
Exuberant musical interludes somehow add zest to this raunchy ride through Mexico (entirely filmed in a studio) driving the story forward in a similar vein to Annette although here the score is from French vocalist Camille and composer Clement Ducol. @MeredithTaylor
Now in cinemas in France, and the UK from October 25. Streaming on Netflix Nov 13, 2024.
Dirs: Davide Livermore, Paolo Gap Cucco | Cast: Valentino Buzza, Mariam Battistelli, Vincent Cassel, Fanny Ardant, Caterina Murino, Rossi De Palma, Angela Finocchiaro | Italy 106′
Fans of opera will adore this cinematic hybrid opera imagination of Orpheus et Eurydice. The film is inspired by the Greek tragedy with music originally created by the bohemian composer Gluck. A high-profile cast fused the world of film and opera: Vincent Cassel, Caterina Murino, Fannie Ardant, Rossy de Palma and award-winning Italian soprano Mariam Battistelli.
This new creation from stage director Davide Livermore and creative director Paolo Gep Cucco, also contains instantly recognisable arias from Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Mozart, Vivaldi, Band with pop classics such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power Of Love thrown in for new audiences.
Premiering at this year’s Rome Film Festival the film really dazzles as a piece of entertainment, even if you’re not keen on opera. Cucco created the recent production of Aida, the first opera in the world exclusively made up of video scenes, that played at the Sydney Opera House.
This film was shot in Prodea Led Studios in Turin and is one of the first on-set virtual production. LED panels are used as a backdrop for a set on which video or computer-generated imagery can be displayed. It’s a new departure for filmed entertainment and certainly works well for this kind of production offering audiences the chance to experience the colour, vibrancy and musical clout of opera without the exorbitant prices.
The Opera! Is also one of the acclaimed fashion house collaborations. Dolce&Gabbana created the costumes: Fanny ardent looks resplendent in a white suit, with a black moon glowing against a burnished copper background. Other fashion collaborations include Bad Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliette: the Montegues were kitted out in Prada and the Capulets in D&G for the respective houses. Almodovar’s recent Strange Way of Life was costumed by Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. Not forgetting, of course, Giorgio Armani’s slick suits in Paul Schrader’s 1980 classic American Gigolo. @MeredithTaylor
THE OPERA! World premiered at the recent ROME FILM FESTIVAL 2024
ThIs haunting and atmospherically shot arthouse drama imagines the steppes of Kazakhstan during the deadly Soviet regime of collectivisation when it was claimed that no one would be hungry or poor during the Soviet famine of the 1920-30s.
Approximately one third of the Kazakh population purportedly perished, according to sources. The era is stunningly brought to life by Ardak Amirkulov in sultry black and white images that focus on the poetic and pitiful suffering of the people rather than resorting to sensationalism or melodrama.
The focus is Jupar, a starving herder woman, who embarks on a journey to find the place of her birth in the Land of Still Winds. With her two young children she is forced to scavenge for food in the bleak landscape. She comes across a dead horse and preserves a joint in salt to provide food for her two children as they travel through a barren wasteland. Vultures circle above them preying on the moribund bodies of people and animals.
Along the way she meets Baimukhan, a Soviet employee hated by everyone in the village. He has fallen into a ditch and Jupar helps him out, although we are not entirely sure why she shows him mercy.
Beautifully composed shots linger over a landscape where sickness prevails. Jupar is just one one of the victims of this cruel regime that has robbed the people of their farms, harvest and cattle promising an equality that never happened, instead they are reduced to poverty, and pitted against one another, the weak often poisoned and eaten by the strong who offered them contaminated crops. In one scene an old woman shares some millet with Jupar and her boys. But when they are sick they realise this was merely plan to kill them to satisfy her own hunger.
Just one of the setbacks in a gruelling journey where Jupar is forced to struggle against the forces of evil in the shape of wolves, birds of prey and the Red Army, all emblematic of the suffering Kazakhs faced during this harsh period of Soviet history. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Bob Ellis | Cast: Norman Kaye, Wendy Hughes | Australia, Drama 91’
This Australian drama starts deceptively quietly as music teacher Wendy Hughes quietly picks up an unassuming little salesman played by Norman Kaye, which proves something of a red herring as Kaye is never seen again.
What then follows resembles ‘Looking for Mr Goodbar’ as Miss Hughes resumes her travels and turns into a regular chameleon, her appearance transformed as she adapts to every new man.
The most extraordinary development comes when she is enlisted in a conspiracy to assassinate a conservative politician whose eye she catches by vigorously joining in a performance he’s giving of ‘The Internationale’, which ironically enlists your sympathy for the intended victim since few real conservatives would have the wit to declare “I hate the sentiment – as you know – but I love the tune!” @RichardChatten
Dir: Charlie Chaplin | Cast: Merna Kennedy, Al Ernest Garcia | US 72’
It was probably inevitable that Chaplin would eventually set a film in a circus and the film that resulted was a typically painstaking job but since has remained one of his least known although it compares well with his earlier work.
It begins with a song sung by Chaplin himself but fortunately the score that follows doesn’t deliver the sentimentally that threatens and a couple of sequences makes good use of a xylophone.
Although we only fleetingly see the pugnacious little runt of earlier days when he imagines he’s kicking his boss up the backside the emphasis is largely on slapstick with Charlie making good use of a hall of mirrors and early doing a memorable impression of a mechanical clown. @RichardChatten
This observational documentary about psychics doesn’t make any judgements. Simply, it offers the audience a chance to make up their own minds about whether those who seek insight or guidance are disillusioned, lonely – or even bored – and are looking for solace and inspiration.
Choppy excerpts of seven New York ‘unconventional healers’ talking to their clients flash before our eyes: A medic shares her deep anxiety over witnessing the death of a child; a film creative has chosen to combine his psychic power with his screenwriting; another was inspired to develop her spiritual gift by the films of John Waters. For the most part the clients are looking for direction in their careers, their family relationships or their love lives.
While being a genuine source of comfort and fascination for some – seeking psychic help to understand an animal seems bizarre: one woman is keen to known why her Boston Terrier hates being on a lead. The psychic’s answer is banal: “Dottie (the dog) says there’s a lot of anxiety to it”. Spending money to to scope out your dog is clearly a ‘thing’ in New York.
Most people take their sessions really seriously, yet the questions they ask often come across as faintly absurd or even facile in the scheme of things. There are few ‘life or death’ concerns, although one man does want to find out about a connection with his dead father.
When someone has died in tragic circumstances there’s an understandable need to try and find answers beyond the grave, but few interviewed seemed really distraught or desperate for clues. One client wants clarity about the feelings of a young man who killed himself. The psychic asks whether the cause of death involved breathing. And when the client reveals the man hung himself, the response is almost ridiculous: “Well, that would be a breathing issue,” It’s difficult not find this vaguely hilarious. But is Wilson (best known for her Taylor Swift outing Miss Americana) really seeking to amuse. It seems so with this funny but often rather moving film.
Through personal experience I can testify to the powers of a particular psychic: their insight was remarkable and invaluable, so I’m no sceptic. In the UK psychic services are considered an ‘entertainment’ in line with the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951. @MeredithTaylor
AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL from 10 OCTOBER 2024
Ute Lemper, Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi star in this lyrical classically styled biopic about Avantgarde Sicilian maestro Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936).
Antonietta Portulano, his wife, suffered poor mental health despite outliving him for several decades in an asylum. His turbulent family relationships and controversial stance on fascism were also a constant cause of conflict and sadness throughout his career, and his desperate love for a young actress and muse Marta Abba tantalised him until his dying day.
Reflecting back over his life the film opens in 1934 on a train to Stockholm to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature. In Fabrizio Bentivoglio’s soulful turn Pirandello comes across as philosophical and wistful in reminiscing over the many colourful and inspirational personalities he had occasion to work with. And these sequences are evocative of the past in Michele D’Attansio’s assured camerawork lifting the film into another dimension as it moves seamlessly from Sicily to Berlin, Rome, America and beyond.
The drama really gets into the spirit of Pirandello’s wild imagination with ‘staged’ excerpts from his theatre pieces in Italy, and Germany during the Weimar years. The ghosts of an entire existence pass before his eyes: the stormy bond with his children who clearly felt diminished by his genius and the public scandal caused by the subversive nature of his stage productions.
Pirandello never rages but simply looks back with sorrow as he reflects on his emotional world. He was clearly an artist of great humanity with his passions, his obsessions and his most intimate existence trapped between his explosive and impossible love for Marta and his tormented relationship with his wife Antonietta’s painful illness. Once again we witness how unhappiness can be transformed into creativity and a source of comfort for the Artist @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING AT ROME FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 16-27 OCTOBER 2024
Dir: Justin Kurzel | Cast: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Marc Maron , Alison Oliver | Aust, Thriller 116′
Austrailan auteur Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) is back with true-crime action thriller that dabbles briefly in white nationalism before kicking back into a standard eighties-set shoot-out affair.
In Denver, a zeitgeisty opening sequence provides contrast to the rugged machismo of the fighting scenes and revolves Alan Berg (Marron), the local Jewish broadcaster who captured Oliver Stone’s imagination for his 1988 outing Talk Radio, and offers another string to the film’s main narrative.
Jude Law is spot on as Terry Husk, a raddled, pill-popping FBI agent weary from fighting the KKK, and now relegated north west, for health reasons, to small-town Idaho where a Neo-Nazi cult – The Order – is slowly gaining force, under the beady eye of Tye Sheridan’s local cop Jamie Bowen, who has an old friend in its midst. Nicholas Hoult is The Order’s big boss Mathews who is plotting to overthrow the US government. He’s a classic racist and petty criminal with a solid family background and a bit on the side (in the shape of Odessa Young) who is also pregnant with his child. His wife (Saltburn’s Alison Oliver) is unaware or in denial of his extramarital set-up, but not stupid as to where the money is coming from.
Inspired by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book ‘The Silent Brotherhood’ scriptwriter Zach Baylin doesn’t delve into the ideology of the group, the focus here is their violence and resurgence that feels timely in the light of current Neo-nazi activity in the US and further afield. Meanwhile Mathews is breaking away from the establishment’s extreme right group Aryan Nation headed by Richard Butler (Slezak).
Once again Justin Kurzel drives the narrative forward with a pounding score from his brother Jed, and some ferocious action and robbery sequences. Sadly, the female characters are kept quietly in the background in this macho, male-only terrain with its rugged Pacific landscapes that contrast with Adam Arkapaw’s pallid vision of 80s America. @MeredithTaylor
Playing Kafka is a video game that explores one of the most famous novels of all time, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, as a narrative adventure that places the audience at the heart of the story.
Playing Kafka, by Czech studio Charles Games, is part of this year’s Games Lounge at the BFI London Film Festival, a free showcase of creative projects playfully looking at alternative storytelling methods and diverse approaches to audience interaction and game design.
Director: Charles Games | Main team: Lucie Formánková, Ondřej Javora, Lukáš Kolek, Ondřej Paška, Alex Petrova, Vít Šisler, Ondřej Trhoň, Lucie Tvarohová
Goethe-Institut Prague: Hannah Jung, Monika Loderová, Thomas Meyer, Luisa Rath
Czech Republic 2024
Language: English
12 OCT 2024 – 27 OCT 2024 | Bargehouse at OXO Tower Wharf, London UK
The Made in Prague Festival returns to London for its 28th edition which runs from 31 October – 30 November 2024.
Look forward to the latest in Czech cinema from the international festival circuit and beyond. This year’s highlight is an exclusive new documentary about the final few years of the playwright, dissident and later President Václav Havel.
Film venues: ICA, Regent Street Cinema, The Garden Cinema, The Gate, and the Czech Embassy cinema at the Czech Centre + online
The year marks the 35th anniversary since the Velvet Revolution that ousted the Communist regime and brought on democracy. So it offers a perfect opportunity to honour the leading figure of the revolution, the playwright and dissident turn President Václav Havel with the UK premiere of Petr Jančárek’s documentary Havel Speaking, Can You Hear Me?
On Havel’s invitation, the filmmaker was granted unlimited access and creative freedom to capture the last few years of his life. The result is an extraordinary time-lapse documentary reflecting on Havel’s political legacy and universal human issues with absolute openness through previously unseen footage.
Screens at ICA on Thursday 14 November, followed by Q&A with director Petr Jančárek.
Additional highlights include the gripping true-life Cold War drama Brothers, chosen as the Czech Republic’s entry for the 2023 Academy Awards;
The UK premiere of Our Lovely Pig Slaughter, a comedy debut by director Adam Martinec and winner of A Special Award at Karlovy Vary International Festival 2024;
UK premiere of Waltzing Matilda, a tragicomic family drama that takes its title from Tom Waits’ song celebrating resilience.
Dir: Audrey Diwan | Cast: Noemie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Naomi Watts, James Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang, Anthony Wong | Erotic thriller 94′
Emmanuelle is an evocative exploration of female desire set in plush surroundings with captivating performances from Noemie Merlant, Will Sharpe ad Emily Watts.
On an empty plane a woman imagines being in the ‘mile-high’ club with a dark stranger. French actor Noemie Merlant is Emmanuelle and this is the first of her erotic fantasias in the Orient.
In HongKong, ensconced in the sensuous elegance of a swish skyscraper (actually the St Regis Hotel) her mission as a shark – or quality control agent of a leading hotel group – is twofold: to rate the hotel’s facilities with coded colours, and to find a way of ousting the impressive Guest Relations manager Margot Parson who is deemed ‘too expensive’ in her job of analysing the establishment’s regular FITs (frequent international travellers) and responding to their individual needs. Emmanuelle’s first task will be easy, the second not so: Naomi Watts is superb in the role of Parson, a consummate professional who’s cannily aware of her potential demise. She’s just one of the authentic characters who inhabit this rather sinuous, erotic thriller; easy on the eye with its glamorous ambiance devised by award-winning designer Katia Wyszkop (The Beast), impressive camerawork from DoP Laurent Tangy, and a rhythmic soundtrack from Evgueni and Sacha Galperine.
The film’s writers Rebecca Zlotowski and Audrey Dirwan (who also directs) were inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s 1967 best seller which formed the basis of an uneven series of films starring Sylvia Kristel. Full of cliches and maxims the spare script perfectly fits the campy ambiance, so don’t expect deep social commentary: this is ’90’s style soft-core sortie into female imagination, an erotic take on Anita Brookner’s ‘Hotel du Lac’ – or even Fatal Attraction, but here the women are in control. Certainly knocks Fifty Shades of Grey into a cocked hat. If Emmanuelle were trans it would certainly ramp up the critical acclaim.
Noemi Merlant plays the eponymous siren as a curiously stiff, snide and disapproving businesswoman, but not without sex appeal, in her starchy colonial style outfits and silky negligee. After a languorous bath in her suite over-looking the bay, a stiff-one in the bar leads to un-involving sex with a couple she meets there. Another strand, involving an escort called Zelda (Huang) posing as a literature student, doesn’t quite come off (although strangely these are the film’s most sexually explicit scenes (for men) with the women touching themselves up etc (just off camera).
Merlant soon mellows when a mysterious Asian stranger catches her eye. She noticed him on the plane and was intrigued by his indifference: And there’s nothing that irks a woman more than a dishy professional man who fails to submit to her enticing body language, albeit subtle, as in this case. Will Sharpe’s Kei Shinohara is just the man for the job, and Emmanuelle’s imagination smoulders.
According to security (Anthony Wong) the ‘ocean’ engineer always books suite 2701 but never sleeps there, coming and going at will, often disappearing. Mysterious. Effortless. Emmanuelle is drawn under his spell (even drinking his bathwater, and sleeping in his bed alone). This is a layered look at how a woman can become sexually obsessed by the thought of a remote, seemingly unobtainable man, who also claims to have lost his desire. This acts as a red rag to Emmanuelle’s ecstasy. She’s actually enjoying herself in the process and nothing has happened between them. But a slow, tantalising seduction has begun, in her mind, at least. But what about him? Is this reverse psychology? Shinohara’s enigmatic charms and casual insouciance are key to his exotic allure, along with the subtle come-on he offers her, a gold lighter with an inscription, leading her on a febrile escapade through the steamy gambling dens and mahjong salons of HongKong to pin him down, and getting tremendous pleasure in doing so. He is the trigger but her pleasure is self-actualised.
The final scene is a steamy tour de force. You’ll either smile or throw up your hands in disbelief but this latest incarnation may even become a cult classic along with the 1974 original. @MeredithTaylor
PREMIERE AT SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL | NOW IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE/BELGIUM before a NETFLIX release
Dir: Francois Ozon | Cast: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasco, Ludivine Sagnier, Pierre Lottin, Garlan Erlos, Malik Zidi, Sophie Guillemin, Paul Beaurepaire, Sidki Bakaba | France, Drama 102’
Burgundy is a perfect location for this wise and wistful family saga that centres on a muted murder mystery and stars veteran actors Josiane Balasco and Helene Vincent. This time around the popular French director adds a dash of the supernatural to his signature blend of irony and dark humour in a fable of ordinary folk.
Despite its awkward (US translated) title “When Fall is Coming” this is a warm and comfortable film about real people who’ve not succumbed to plastic surgery and love nothing more than family, good local food and wine. And being October it’s time for mushrooms: everyone has their own little secret spot for picking them. And Michelle (Vincent) and her close friend Marie-Claude (Balasco) meet to share this seasonal pleasure in the woods near their home in Cosne sur Loire. The poisonous ones are to be avoided at all costs, but Michelle has a guide book at hand, and prepares a delicious family dinner.
Despite her care, one of mushrooms has a bad effect on her daughter Valerie whose fractious arrival and swift departure back to Paris, with her nine-year-old Lucas (Erlos), breaks the gentle rhythm of this mellow autumn rendezvous. After the mycological mishap, Valerie refuses Michelle access to her treasured grandson Lucas, leaving the poor woman tearful and depressed. And her mood is not helped by the dying days of this damn squib of a season.
Undeterred Michelle makes a surprise visit to Valerie in Paris to plead with her, but is given short shrift at the front door. Michelle and her daughter clearly don’t see eye to eye, despite Michelle’s generosity in giving Valerie the flat in the first place, but that’s all part of the problem and largely due to this mother’s risqué Parisian past that financed her family, but also caused them shame. As usual, Ozon drips feeds us clues leaving us to fill in the plotholes.
When Marie Claude’s son Vincent (Lottin) is released from prison Michelle offers him a lifeline. And Vincent is so thankful to the older woman, and protective of Michelle and his mother’s past, he decides to give Valerie a taste of her own medicine, and therein lie the dramatic tension as the story unfolds towards its climax, Evgueni and Sacha Galperine once again supplying the ansty score. MeredithTaylor
SILVER SEASHELL JURY PRIZE WINNER | SAN SEBASTIAN 2024
Dir: Alfred E Green | Cast: Larry Parks, Evelyn Keyes, William Demarest, Bill Goodwin | US Biopic
This technicolour musical biography purports to tell the life story of American singer Al Jolson with Larry Parks in the main role
‘The Onion’ once carried a report that Al Jolson was lynched in error by the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t recall the last time they showed this film on television but it probably suffers the same odium as ‘Song of the South’ which makes it seem shockingly unWoke rather than the mild family entertainment as which it was originally received, with Evelyn Keyes benefitting handsomely from a makeover.
Anybody pondering upon the capacity of one era to impose its standards upon an earlier one should consider that Jolson was originally Jewish and both the star and the screenwriter were both subsequently blacklisted. @RichardChatten
The Viennale is Austria’s most important international film event, as well as one of the oldest and best-known festivals in the German-speaking world. Every October, the Viennale takes place in beautiful cinemas in Vienna’s historic centre, providing the festival with an international orientation and a distinctive urban flair.
The Viennale will open on October 17 with Leos Carax’ latest film, a documentary entitled C’EST PAS MOI (IT’S NOT ME) that premiered at this Cannes Film Festival.
Festival creative director Eva Sangiorgi describes it as ‘an unconventional, essayistic and very personal film by Leos Carax that combines autobiography, film history and contemporary history in just 42 minutes. The director reflects on his medium, his role models such as Vertov, Chaplin and Godard, and creates a lively mix of cinematic influences. A multi-layered reflection on love, beauty and cinema”.
The Festival will conclude with Mati Diop’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dahomey, a poetic documentary about the return of plundered royal treasures and their return to Benin from a Paris museum.
Albert Serra is best known for his intricate dramas: The Catalan auteur has won awards for, Story of My Death (2013), Last Days of Louis XIV (2016) Pacification. Now he turns his camera on reality with this romantically entitled observational documentary.
In fact there’s nothing remotely romantic about the vainglorious sport of bullfighting. But despite its demure title Afternoons of Solitude is a difficult to watch with its prolonged focus on extreme animal cruelty. The powerful, confused bull has no intent but to defend itself from the vicious jibes of a highly-trained and courageous chancer.
Peruvian bullfighter Andres Roca Rey, 28, is now at the top his game. A tall, rangy, alpha male he is surrounded by acolytes to aid and abet his performance in the ring. One of them describes the traits of the next bull on his killing list: “enough!” is his peremptory reply. He is the master, the macho male, all primped and suave in his impeccable outfit.
Not for nothing that the bullfighter’s costume is called the “traje de luces” (suit of lights): In an homoerotic episode in Madrid’s Ritz Hotel we see him lifted into his skin tight suit by his male valet. Stepping into highly polished pumps, delicately braided pompoms clasping his slender shins are secured with a silver ‘dagger’. Coiffed black hair is slicked back to reveal chiselled cheekbones, an ivory rosary dangling around his neck. The immaculate elegance of it all in contrast to the sweaty bestiality of the bull. And always a kiss and a prayer for the Virgin Mary.
Once in the ring, DoP Artur Tort Pujol captures the intimacy of the choreography between bull and matador, each glance a telling insight into the killer’s macho psyche. A peacock intent on subjecting a bull to a reign of psychological pain and torture – for no other reason than his own personal gratification and preternatural pride posing as ‘duty’. There are no commentaries or interviews. Back in the safely of his black limousine Andres basks in the glory of his victory, the adoration, boosted by compliments from his male entourage, he nurses his wounds with insouciance. The camera focuses on fleeting facial expressions providing ample insight into his dominance and his respect for the ancient tradition.
Yet bullfighting doesn’t come without its dangers for the matador. He must place himself in constant peril to gratify the crowd, goading the beast nearer and nearer, often with the red cape behind him, dicing with death. And one of them must die. The blood flows. The camera’s focus is the bull’s oozing gashes. No mercy. The bull pants in exhaustion, his body shudders, wracked with pain, woozy with thirst. The matador’s expression is pure concentration mingled with angry justification at his cruel task. The bull is disorientated, confused, desperate – destined for death. The fatal dagger goes in and the beast collapses. His is the solitude in that that lonely afternoon in the ring. @MeredithTaylor
Afternoons Of Solitude won the Golden Shell for best film at the closing ceremony of the 72nd edition of the Spanish festival
Dir: John Huston | Cast: Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Colette Marchand | UK Drama 119’
They say success has many proud parents yet failure is an orphan. When the technicians at Technicolor laboratories first set eyes of cameraman Oswald Morris’s extraordinary work capturing the vibrant colour of Nineteenth century Paris they insisted on adding a disclaimer because they didn’t want to be associated with the result.
History has had the last laugh and it went to be only the first of several bold exercises with which John Huston became associated.
in this fictional biopic of French artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec the casting of Jose Ferrer satisfied the need for a reputable stage actor for the lead but he didn’t begin to emerge himself in the role like Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh in ‘Lust for Life’. The film won the Silver Lion at the 14th Venice Film Festival @RichardChatten
This ambitious undertaking, forty years in the making, should have been called ‘Magaflopolis’. Ok it’s easy to criticise, but a veteran director such as Ford Coppola has a duty to his audience: not to confuse them, or bore them rigid for over two hours – but that’s exactly what he does in this over-inflated piece of filmmaking that masquerades as an inspired satire.
Megalopolis is pretentious and posturing and ultimately vacuous. Discombobulating images continuously flash before our eyes along with a talented cast of Hollywood’s best. But there wasn’t a scene or a performance I enjoyed as the actors all seem caught up in the grandiosity of it all in displaying the worst traits of each sex. The women were grasping and bitchy. The men arrogant and ego-driven, in fact, Jon Voight was the only one with a shred of vulnerability and a cheeky grin of playfulness as canny banker Hamilton Crassus III with Aubrey Plaza hamming it up as his lover Wow Platinum. Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf is cast as Hamilton’s curious and corrupt trans-looking grandson Clodio Pulcher.
Coppola aims high, as he should do, but the film feels like an flashback to the 1980s; all gilded, burnished and blundering like a fancy-dress school play of Shakespeare with a sci-fi makeover that somehow looks old-fashioned in the scheme of contemporary special effects: the actors poncing around and quoting their literary lines in the hope this will give some integrity to what is really a confounding mess.
Adam Driver is the main character: he plays Cesar Catilina, a Nobel prize-winning ‘starchitect’ who is still recovering from the death of his wife, who he purportedly murdered: The jury is still out on this ambiguous plot line. Apparently he has invented a substance called Megalon which makes the building process more flexible. He intends to re-design and re-build parts of the city in a utopian scheme. Also tenuous is his mysterious control over time and space (?). Aubrey Plaza is fabulously vociferous as his long-term blond lover all done up in leopard skin with roots as dark as Kunta Kinte (she’s a busy woman romantically – it seems – as she also has a clinch with Clodio not to mention Crassus). But then Cesar falls for Julia the bland daughter of Cicero (Esposito) the city’s mayor (and his arch rival) who is all about noble things like decent pay, sanitation, new schools and hospitals. Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is all about ‘creating a home’ and these various factions come into conflict with each other: the creative, forward-thinking and the social-minded face of urban existence.
There are some inspiring elements: Driver and Emmanuel riding a sort of watch face that floats over Manhattan. I seem to have forgotten the others. But the idea that America is still great gradually fades with hollow laughter. Brazen, brash and bloated this is a step too far; but that may just be the step you’re willing to take. @MeredithTaylor
NOW OUT IN THE UK and Ireland from 27 September 2024
Wri/Dir: Alice Lowe | Cast: Alice Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost, Tanya Reynolds, Aneurin Barnard | UK Drama 90′
A love-affair pursued throughout the ages via a succession of incarnations would be a great basis for a sci-fi/fantasy romance. But an infatuated, somewhat annoying woman pursuing a baffled and apathetic man over the centuries offers a tragicomic scenario – which could, in theory, yield a decent mix of humour and pathos.
However, Timestalker ultimately looks better on paper than it comes off in execution.
Early sequences give us Agnes (played by Alice Lowe, who also wrote and directed the film) as a seventeenth-century Scottish villager smitten by Aneurin Barnard’s masked cultist, an eighteenth century English aristocrat in love with a highwayman played by the same actor, and a nineteenth century schoolteacher who… well, maybe it’s best to draw a veil over what happens to her.
These sequences are built from scenes so short that they feel more like TV sketches than elements of a feature film, and while Lowe’s poker-faced comic style can be effective, she doesn’t have the actorly chops to pull off a range of period characterisations, even ones which are too truncated to be much more than gestures towards portrayals.
The film only hits its stride when Agnes finds herself in the 1980s. The pace slows, the characters get a bit more fleshed-out, and Lowe seems more at home with the vein of comic targets offered by the era: aerobics dance classes, New Romantic music, risible fashions and hairdos, female bedrooms decorated with Pierrots, etc.
In this time-period her fixation takes the form of Alex, a Bolan-esque, Adam Ant-ish pop star who speaks with a high-pitched estuary accent and whose music is an amusingly accurate parody of 80s synth-pop. When Agnes confronts him in his dressing-room she’s wearing a convincing ‘dandy highwayman’ outfit, made all the more hilarious by the fact that in the 80s, people actually did go out to gigs and nightclubs dressed like this.
As they talk, Alex off-handedly suggests that Agnes isn’t really a time-traveller, but a psychotic fan lost in a fantasy world. Which raises the question: were her previous ‘incarnations’ just make-believe, and have we somehow been unwittingly inhabiting her fantasies? It’s an interesting, slightly head-swirling moment, but it doesn’t get fully developed.
All the ‘Alex’ characters seem to lack any awareness of, or interest in Agnes, which makes her intense attraction to him feel ludicrous – but also difficult to warm to, with the result that the film never really catches fire. It’s a shame, because the idea has potential and Lowe is supported by a talented cast including Nick Frost as an appalling, bison-like husband and Tanya Reynolds as a willowy friend and ally.
There are things to enjoy in Timestalker, but it doesn’t fully deliver in terms of humour, it isn’t at all moving, and the time travel element isn’t thought through cleverly enough. Perhaps Lowe’s go-to mode of comic bathos doesn’t really suit the material, or maybe her talent has just been overstretched by the effort to write, direct and perform the starring role. If so, she’d be better served by delegating at least one of these functions in future productions. @IanLong
Ian Long is a writer, screenwriting teacher and story consultant at www.ianlong.org
The 68th BFI London Film Festival runs from between October 9 and October 20 in London and other major UK cities.
Over 12 days from October 9 to October 20 London’s iconic cinemas, including the BFI’s own South Bank cinemas, the Prince Charles Cinema, the ICA, Curzon Soho and Mayfair and Vue West End expect to see award contenders along with a selection of this year’s premieres from the international festival circuit.
This year’s festival will open with BLITZ an Second World War drama starring Saoirse Ronan and Stephen Graham – along with newcomer Elliot Heffernan as a 12-year-old boy who goes missing amid the Nazi bombing campaign on London.
Also screening:
ENDURANCE (2024) UK/US
The actual voices of British Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew come alive in thanks to AI techniques in this new documentary charting their remarkable journey to Antarctica in 1914
MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (2024) Australia
Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot’s tale of separated twins in 1970s Australia is a funny and poignant stop-motion story seen from a woman’s perspective and suffused with all the anguish of modern life. This tender tale of loss and alienation it soon branches out into a relatable stop meditation with appeal for all ages.
MY EVERYTHING (2024) France, Anne-Sophie Bailly
Laure Calamy is the star of this amusing family drama that centres on a mother and her disabled son. Their uplifting relationship and two terrific central performances makes this a positive pleasure despite the tricky issues involved.
MALDORDOR (2024) Belgium
In his second film of the season thriller supremo Fabrice du Welz (Adoration,Alleluia, Calvaire) gets together with regulars: Laurent Lucas and Beatrice Dalle in a gritty thriller that explores an episode of institutional dysfunction and police corruption so parlous some claimed they were ‘ashamed to be Belgian’.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT India
Unfolding in two parts and shifting deftly from realism to reverie this Cannes-awarded first feature from Payal Kapadia is about two women caught in impossible love stories in modern day Mumbai.
THE BRUTALIST (2024) US (main photo)
Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones shine in Brady Corbet’s wartime epic that tells the story of the American Dream through the lives of visionary architect Laszlo Toth and his wife Erzsebet.
MANJI (1964) Japan
Directed by the Japanese auteur Yasuzo Masumura and based on the novel ‘Quicksand’ by Juinichiro Taniziki this stylishly sensual ‘folie a deux’ sees a married woman (Kyoko Kishida from Woman of the Dunes and a ruthless young girl (Ayako Wake) engaged in a doomed love affair. Remade many times but never living up to the original).
Dir: Joe Stephenson | Cast: Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Ed Speleers, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno, Eddie Marsan, Emily Watson | UK Drama 112′
When Beatles manager Brian Epstein died in August 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the band went into meltdown. “We collapsed,” John Lennon recalled. “I knew that we were in trouble then. I didn’t really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared.”
Epstein’s unwavering belief drove the Beatles to fame. He moulded their early image and helped them negotiate the initial phases of their monumental success. Then he was gone, leaving the stricken band to limp on, demoralised and disintegrating, for three more years.
Was his early death an avoidable accident? Were his demons poised to drag him to hell, no matter how grand his achievements? Or was he collateral damage of the Beatles’ meteoric rise? It isn’t entirely clear whether Midas Man has an answer to this, although it seems to err towards the second option.
But this leaves out the psychic maelstrom of the Sixties. No one could have foreseen how the decade would unfold, and nothing could have prepared a man, whose business experience lay in running the music department of his family’s department store, to deal with these pressures. Who’d have thought a Liverpool rock ‘n’ roll group would have the power to rewire global culture – seemingly almost overnight? Certainly not Epstein, not even when he was sitting in the offices of HMV, Pye and Philips, trying to impress the special qualities of his boys on sceptical record company executives.
The Sixties are far away now, and its events seem fixed and immutable. So it’s easy to forget the wild flux of the time, and how rapidly things were moving. Not everyone could keep up: certainly not Billy J. Kramer, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and some of Epstein’s other charges. But the Fab Four rode the wave with astonishing élan, graduating from cheerful teen anthems like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ to the avant-garde mash-up of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in three short years.
Epstein had instituted the matching suits, the unison bowing, and the haircuts which, though long by the standards of the day, always looked combed and clean. All this gave the Beatles’ early presentation a showbiz neatness, but more importantly it fed a public sense of ‘the group’ as shared identity, a unified collective aligned towards some common goal. Within a couple of years, though, these early trappings looked fussy and old-fashioned. History had rolled on.
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd’s Epstein is tall, rangy, chiselled, and tormented. Organised and decisive in his business dealings, he’s shown as passive and masochistic in an emotional life mostly comprised of joyless fumblings with strangers in dark, sordid places. While pursuing the al fresco gay sex which leaves him vulnerable to assault and robbery, Epstein yearns for the settled joys of home and family: an irreconcilable combination which can surely end only in tears.
And there’s worse in store. In New York, Epstein meets struggling actor John ‘Tex’ Ellington, who seems to offer some prospect of meaningful connection. Tex arrives in London, moves into Epstein’s grandiose hotel suite – and disappears with a briefcase containing £20,000. The chaos of Epstein’s personal life has finally erupted into the disciplined world of his career; the cycle of shame and humiliation is complete. Unsurprisingly, he has a breakdown. It’s inferred that his energies are henceforward increasingly sublimated into his work, although the film doesn’t delve into the rumoured sexual dimensions of Epstein’s dealings with the band.
But the question remains – how to get the terminal velocity of the Sixties on screen? Midas Man covers a time of great experiment in film – the Pop Art deconstruction of Jean-Luc Godard, the kinetic energy of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – but it stays mostly within the cinematic conventions of the standard biopic. When it moves into more inventive territory, we see what might have been.
In the sequences recounting the band’s U.S. and international tours, the screen is divided into three sections. The middle segment has Epstein walking towards the camera but never getting any closer, all the while accepting pills and drinks from unseen hands. Collaged photos limn a whirl of impressions. The effect is bold, graphic, dreamlike, and a clever encapsulation of the risky hamster wheel Epstein is walking. The film comes alive in these moments.
Like Back to Black a few months ago, Midas Man sets out to celebrate its protagonist’s life, and like the earlier film it spares us Epstein’s sad, possibly self-inflicted end. Instead, it concludes with the studio recording of ‘All You Need is Love’, broadcast to 25 countries and over 400 million people two months before Epstein’s death. This is presented as a personal apotheosis, although it was a technical achievement (the first-ever live global TV link) rather than an emotional milestone.
After this, the circumstances of Epstein’s death are conveyed in a brief onscreen text. But I think it was a mistake to cut the narrative at this point. If we’d been given a sense of the grief and confusion following Epstein’s death we might have truly felt his loss, and perhaps grasped how genuinely precious the Midas Man had become. @IanLong
Dirs: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Natalie Hewit | UK-USA 2024. Doc, 100min
The actual voices of British Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew come alive in thanks to AI techniques in this new documentary charting their remarkable journey to Antarctica in 1914.
The Endurance, his boat, would sink without trace but the crew diaries and original expedition footage and photos kept by team member Frank Hurley survive to tell the tragic tale for the first time ever, restored by the BFI National Archive,
Interweaving past and present in a tense step by step expose, a team of current day explorers reveal how the ship was located over a century later in the Spring of 2022, some 3000m beneath the icy depths of the treacherous Weddell Sea. It was intact.
Crucially Shackleton’s indomitable spirit, perseverance and courage was key to the survival of his 27-strong crew after the Endurance went down after being locked in solid pack-ice. Shackleton had continuously boosted the morale of his men and their trusty pack of dogs for an entire year.
The Endurance22 expedition team, onboard the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II, made use of state of the art search technology to find the Endurance led by their Dr John Shears, expedition subsea manager Nico Vincent, director of exploration Mensun Bound and historian and broadcaster Dan Snow (son of ‘swingometer’ supremo John Snow).
Keeping alive the memory of Sir Ernest Shackleton the documentary serves as both a gripping slice of history and a tribute to all those who risk their lives in courageous endeavour. @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING DURING THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dirs: Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha | Iran, Drama 97’
The currentsuccess of a new Iranian filmMy Favourite Cakein the UK press isremarkable. This achievement comes at the same time that we are viewingnews bulletins containingimages of increasingly repressive morality laws curtailing the rights of women, videos of Iranian women wearing veils and singing so as to be heardbut not seen,as well as news of the house arrest of the filmmakers of this remarkable film that follows their award-winning Ballad of a White Cow.
The film was first screened at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival where it garnered worldwide distribution after winning the FIPRESCI and the Ecumenical Jury prize. The fate of the filmmakers is not yet known with charges against them involvingscenes of women without veilsand the drinking of wine, which is forbidden. The message behind the universal themes ofthe film however feelseven more potent now.
My Favourite Cake is essentially a two hander betweenMahin, played by Lily Farhadpour, and Faramarz, playedby Esmail Mehrab, which exploresfeelings of love and affection that grow between two people who meet and engineer a clandestine night together. This may in other hands seema straightforward and simple form of romcom but there is a subtle and very real difference as the drama happens within a framework of laws governing the lives of Iranian women.
The film opens on a quiet new day and ends with the dawn of another new day when nothing will be the same for Lily.She is a warwidow who lost her husband years ago, has a grown-up family who live abroad and whom we hear on the phone but never see. The film includes a meal for a group of herenlightened women friends who all meet from time to time to discuss life, remember days of youth and poke gentle fun at the conventions of contemporary Iranianlife. The film viewsLily as a woman possibly constrained by the concerns of awider family, and the daily pressure of life that includes nosy intolerant women in the apartment block where she lives.Framarz has spent a life time diligentlyworking hard as a taxi driver. He was once married, never had children and is divorced. The two meet on an evening together with the knowledge that Iranian law forbids women to meet men without the presence of male members of familyand as well as intimate relationships between men and women outside of marriage.
Directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha are a married couple who have created a sensitive and beautiful film that echoes the mood andtempothat Rainer Werner Fassbinder bought to Fear Eats the Soulin 1972. Links with theearlier German film about a relationship between an older woman and a younger Arab man are remarkablewith both films exploring how personal freedomsand sexualdesire are challenged and thwarted by the pressure of socialand political convention.They also contain gentle naturalistic performances anduse initial cross cuts between two peoplemerging into a single frame asboth rediscover feelings and a sense of belonging through the power of love. The use of a car as an enclosed private space in which people grow and change is effective, as are references to mirrors and the use of lighting along with scenes involving a television screen whichis how Lily escapes into the romantic world of golden age cinema. Fassbinder included a coterie of women around his central character commenting on life and in My Favourite Cakea group of taxi drivers are observed talking about the meaningless nature of war and how better life was before the revolution of 1979. An image of a Viagra package is one of manytiny telling instances of detail that build up the fabric of the film.
Final scenes containan element of framing involving melodrama whichhas always been part of the power of cinema to engage an audience and the poignant heart-breaking conclusion of My Favourite Cakereflects this, as well as evoking thefilm that inspired Fear Eats the Soul. This is All that Heaven Allows, a 1955 American film by Douglas Sirk,about the relationship between a widow and a young man which is all but ruined byproblems of class, convention and repressionwhich are ideas present in this latest film.Sirk commented that he intended the title of his film to be a metaphor for what little heaven allows and howstingy this can be. My Favourite Caketakes this provocative concept a stage further by offeringtwo people a mere slice of a beautifulblossom orange cake that may never actually be tasted or eaten.
PETER HERBERT – CURATOR MANAGER – THE ARTS PROJECT
Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Elizabeth Taylor,Richard Burton, Noel Coward| Drama 118’
Well, the money is certainly up there on the screen.
There are few sights to be savoured more than several rich and honoured creative people making a bunch of complete fools of themselves, while that loud noise you can hear is of several hard-earned reputations imploding.
Marking yet another step in his seemingly determined efforts to totally dismantle the reputation that Joseph Losey had painfully established, he took his cast all the way to the isle of Capri with a crew including top cameraman Douglas Slocombe only to throw any credibility he had left straight out of the window as his expensive talent just talked and talked and talked. @RichardChatten
Dir: Robert Siodmak | Cast: Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Edgar Barrier, Sabu | Fantasy thriller 71’
Bette Davis once denied posterity the chance to savour the young Bette in Technicolor since for her it was the script that counted and if a script was any good it didn’t need the ‘gimmick’ of Technicolor so colour was her salad days usually synonymous with lousy writing.
‘Cobra Woman’ certainly provides yet a further demonstration of how awash Hollywood was with talent during the forties in Universal’s ability to squander a classy German director and the miracle that was Technicolor – photographed and designed by the same team that only the year before had collected an Academy Award for photography and art direction – on such a load of ripe hokum with a leading lady the limits of whose ability was photographing well in Technicolor.
But when you see Miss Montez perform her dance of death you’ll find that’s quite enough, thank you. @RichardChatten
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy | Cast: Edward D Robinson, Marian Marsh, H B Warner | US Drama. 97’
Joseph, an editor of a tabloid, goes against his journalistic morals when he tries to stimulate public interest in a 20-year-old murder case in order to raise the circulation of the newspaper.
Mervyn LeRoy is one of those bizarre anomalies sadly common in film history that his career continued well past its peak with the result that his reputation suffered accordingly. Had he died or retired in 1935, or simply stuck to producing (‘The Wizard of Oz’ was one of his) posterity today would accord him much more respect.
Consider ‘Five-Star Final’ (the title refers to the final edition of a newspaper), sandwiched between authentic classics ‘Little Caesar’ and ‘I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang’, a morality tale which still resonates today on the question of journalistic responsibility, with its adroit use of split-screen and a supporting performance by a then unknown actor called Boris Karloff as a character so vile preview audiences actually protested that he was allowed to reach the end still alive. @RichardChatten
Dir: Jean Renoir | Cast: Nora Gregor, Gaston Modot, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain | France, Drama 110’
Some of the recent choices in critics polls for the greatest films of all time have been getting pretty idiosyncratic of late but my own nomination for the top spot remains ‘La Regle du Jeu‘, which plainly served as the template for Robert Altman’s ‘Gosford Park’ which in turn became ‘Downtown Abbey’. (Although the resemblance to ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ may be just a coincidence).
Set like many films in a huge country house but unusually depicting it as a fully functioning entity it remains a film of overwhelming humanity staged with a vibrancy that should make it compulsory viewing for all aspiring filmmakers. @RichardChatten
Dir: Nicolas Ray | Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau, James Mason | US Drama 97’
One of several bold choices made by James Mason that undeservingly died at the box office, resulting in his relegation to supporting roles. It’s always the the measure of an actor that he’s prepared to be unlikable and Mason manages to be absolutely terrifying in the throes of (SPOILER COMING:) drug addiction (his line, delivered deadpan to Walter Matthau that “God was wrong” has to the definitive expression of megalomania).
It comes as a surprise to see this intimate drama made in colour and ‘scope, but the huge close-up of Mason smugly drawing on a cigarette after scandalising a PTA meeting by declaring that “childhood is a disease and our job is to cure it”provides conclusive proof that close ups WERE possible in widescreen, while director Nicholas Ray makes several vivid use of colour as when in an early scene the screen is filled with yellow cabs, and at the climax when Mason brandishes a bible with red edges that makes it resemble a hot coal. @RichardChatten
Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Alexis Smith, Alexander Knox | Drama 89’
Even today Victor Hanbury is still regularly described just as a mere pseudonym for the blacklisted American director Joseph Losey with the themes in ‘The Sleeping Tiger’ usually attributed to Losey.
Hanbury though had been very much a real person whose career went back to the thirties and dealt with similar subjects in films he had recently produced like ‘Death Comes to School’ and ‘Glad Tidings’.
Alexander Knox in the first of several roles for Losey plays a typically obtuse Hanbury male completely oblivious to the passion welling within his wife – played by Alexei Smith who Losey when she first arrived took her to Speakers Corner where she was staggered to hear people openly saying things that would get them lynched or arrested back home – for bad boy Dirk Bogarde. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Dea Kulumbegashvili | Ia Sukhitashvili, Kakha Kintsurashvili, Merab Ninidze | DoP: Arseni Khachaturan | Georgia, Drama 134′
Birth, life and death in the Caucasian Mountains is the focus of this extraordinary existential film. Aprilis a Tarkovskian slow-burn thriller, part love story, part murder mystery, competing for the Golden Lion at Venice 2024 and certainly deserving of its award of Special Jury Prize. This penetrating portrait of guilt, alienation and quiet trauma is a second film for Georgia’s Dea Kulumbegashvili who swept the board with her 2020 debut Beginning, and now has Luca Guadagnino as a producer. It explores the state of existing as a woman without fulfilling traditional expectations.
High in a mountain village a mummified, atavistic figure plods along in pitch black while voices of children sing outing the void. Rain falls on a muddy puddle: April showers. A woman gives birth in a traumatic scene. The baby dies. There’s a great deal of darkness in April. All this contrasts with bursts of blinding light: the zinging colours of Spring, a rebirth: neon cherry blossoms, acid green meadows where scarlet poppies dance in the sunshine, a skylark soars into the heavens.
In a darkened room an investigation gets under way between the respected obstetrician Nina, (Sukhitashvili), her male colleague (Kinturashvili), and the hospital director (celebrated actor Merab Ninidze). This was apparently an unregistered pregnancy. The woman wanted to give birth naturally, but the medical profession demanded a caesarian. Nina respected the woman’s wishes. Her life is dedicated to serving the female community, above her own private life and, at times, the law.
On an open road travelling into the night Nina harks back to an incident where he sister nearly died in a lake. She felt powerless to help her. Feelings of guilt flood back, overwhelming her once again. The zombie-like figure reappears, an enigmatic motif for Nina’s emotional torture and self-loathing. Motherhood has slipped away from her in this devoutly Orthodox Christian village where bearing children is a woman’s main duty. Her jeep grinds away in heavy mud transporting her high into the mountains to deliver (or kill) the offspring of dutiful women, some of them still in their early teens. And there is one woman, a blind mute, who never had a choice.
Scenes unfold where Nina is clearly present but out of the frame, suggesting her to be enigmatic with complex motives, viewed with suspicion and a questioning supplication by her doctor colleague, a man she once loved, and rejected. He looks into the camera in one of the most emotionally intimate sequences even committed to celluloid: appealing desperately to, Nina, his former lover: “If you don’t want a man in your life, at least have a child”.
Nina is seen visiting a nighttime cattle market where disorientated livestock stare out from their sordid trailers, the farmers circling their prey. Nina defies convention to plow her own lonely furrow. This is her mission in life. She has no choice. April is not an easy film but one you will always remember. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Ali Abassi | Script: Gabriel Sherman | Cast: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Ben Sullivan, Mark Rendall, Joe Pingue, Jim Monaco, Bruce | Biopic Drama, 120′
As Donald Trump storms back to the Presidency for a second term of office the words: “You’re either a killer or a loser” still ring true. This is the advice a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) gets from his acerbic mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) in this polarising political biopic written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abassi (Border) and Holy Spider (who is now perhaps best known for his involvement in The Last Of Us).
Cohn, the lawyer responsible for putting the Rosenbergs on the electric chair and a key figure in the McCarthy witch hunts, offers up three key bits of business advice during The Apprentice– an entertaining romp that zips briskly through its two hours running time sketching out Trump’s early career as an eager apprentice trained under the high-flying lawyer, and eventually trumping him in a tale of machiavellian morals, ethics and business acumen.
There are elements of poetic licence at play here: in other words Sherman plays slightly fast and loose with the facts in fleshing out Trump’s backstory. The result is a fairly even-handed feature that on the one hand sees the US former president as cold-eyed and devious, but on the other opines that these are the very tools of the trade for those wanting to get on in big business – or politics, for that matter. Crucially it also highlights the recent concept of the truth being a construct open to individual perception.
The focus narrows in on Trump from a broad brush opening outlining the corruption of the Nixon years and the inherent dishonesty that is now rife in all circles of power, not least in America. It contrasts the ‘losers’ (those on welfare) with the killers, the ‘unscrupulous’ hard-working income generators during the Reagan presidency that led to the phenomenon of ‘corporate greed’.
The Apprentice sees Trump starting out during the 1970s working for his property magnate father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan). Dressed in a suit Donald is tasked with doing the rounds to collect rents. One disgruntled tenant throws a pan of boiling water in his face, another swears at him. The family business comes then under fire from a civil rights action alleging discrimination against Black tenants. Cohn wins the case, as his lawyer, with Trump senior claiming: “How can I be racist when I have a Black driver?”
But Donald is determined to make it alone and sets his sights on transforming the downtrodden area around Grand Central Station where he vows to make a success in a project of urban regeneration involving the dilapidated Commodore Hotel, bringing jobs, European tourists and a facelift for Manhattan.
Family wise we also meet Donald’s kindly mother Mary Anne (Catherine McNally), and his brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick) a failed pilot with emotional problems: Fred admits to having been tough on his boys. But Donald is hellbent on success and soon bonds with Cohn after a chance meeting at a fancy Manhattan nightclub frequented by the top flight business community. Working together they soon go from strength to strength in a business alliance with Trump styling himself in the same vein as Cohn with his fast-talking intransigence. His transformation into fully fledged killer who lives by his own standards happens almost overnight and feels a little too fast even given the film’s ample running time. But Stan grasps Trump’s essence charting his character’s transformation from reasonable business man to self-seeking hardliner.
Trump soon becomes a man who takes his own advice often rubbing Cohn up the wrong way, while at the same time chosing to turn a blind eye to his ‘strange way of life’ and hedonistic habits. Trump’s puritan background sees him gradually distancing himself from the lawyer who berates him for his lack of financial probity. Their relationship eventually sours during the AIDS crisis, although Trump offers an olive branch in the finale.
The marriage to Ivana Zelnickova, against Cohn’s advice, is handled deftly and with some humour. Trump follows Ivana to Aspen to clinch their romance then falls flat on the ice after claiming to be a good skier. The Czech model is a little two sweet and sympathetic despite her purported savvy business sense, but Trump soon tires of her, claiming to find their home life ‘more like coming home to a business partner than a wife’. A shocking episode sees him beating Ivana, but whether this has a factual basis, despite his widely reported misogyny, is uncertain. Stan’s Trump may be polarise public opining in coming across as too likeable but this is surely the essence of a maverick who can charm as well as chastise and here he gives a compelling performance.
With a killer score of hits that just reeks of the ’70s and ’80 and a scuzzy retro texture this is a compulsive portrait of an indomitable man whose rise to power is all-encompassing and more relevant now than it was back in the day. @MeredithTaylor
IN CINEMAS ACROSS UK & IRELAND from 18 October 2024
Trying not to tread on anyone’s toes Amos Gitai’s latest is timely, in the context of Hamas’ attack on Israel, but offers no answer.
Why War is a question without a question mark, a rhetorical question. And well it might be. Like those who frame every statement as a question, this opens a debate that is timeless and inconclusive, so what’s the point.
As an Israeli Jew, and there are plenty of Israeli Muslims, Gitai is fully aware of the tiny country, the size of Wales, is surrounded on all sides with few friends in its vicinity. So it feels understandably vulnerable and permanently ready for attack in these continuously turbulent times
The title gets its name from regular correspondence between Jewish luminaries Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud in 1932. But even these great minds where unable to unearth a cogent answer to this age old conundrum, albeit providing much food for thought.
In Tel Aviv, during an outdoor yoga class we witness the many posters bearing the faces of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on that fateful day in October 2023. This serves as a permanent reminder to those going about their daily lives that some innocent citizens are still in captivity somewhere.
To live in Israel is to be in a constant state of flux with war a constant possibility, and with soldiers, both male and female, ever-present in cafes, bars and malls. Each Israeli does military service from the age of 18 and Gitai was no different, so naturally his work and films such as Kippur (2000) is suffused and informed by this experience and this mulls over the same territory but brings nothing really new to the party that plods on philosophically hoping for the best but always preparing for the worst. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Lynne Ramsay | UK Drama | Cast: Samantha Morton
This adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel suffers from various central improbabilities and a queasily amoral tone starting with the eponymous heroine waking on Christmas morning and discovering her boyfriend has committed suicide leaving a fully completed novel on his computer.
Miss Caller then does a truly shocking thing (SPOILER COMING:) when showing absolutely no emotion she simply substitutes her name as author for her boyfriend’s and sends it to a publisher.
In reality any publisher presented with a manuscript from a first-time author might have eventually got round to replying expressing interest but stipulating “you’ve first got to change this, This, THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS (contd. P.94.) before we continue any further”.
But no, before you can say “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” the book is a runaway best seller and Miss Caller spends the rest of the film as one of the ideal rich. The End. @RichardChatten
Ruth Goldman (Kathleen Chalfant) enjoys living in her comfortable mid-century styled house in California, but with dementia life has to change. US filmmaker Sarah Friedland draws from her own experience as a care-worker and choreographer in this accomplished debut feature.
Why are people patronised when they grow old, and often referred to in the third person: ‘She’s had a fall”; “does she take sugar” and similar expressions, are often levelled at family members rather than to the individual.
Ruth is a widowed wife, mother and published author. Yet despite physical elegance and accomplishments her increasing state of health means a move to what is euphemistically referred to in the US as an ‘assisted living facility’ where staff regard her with mild and knowing amusement.
Chalfont seems fully aware of her altered state and maintains her sense of purpose. But her efforts to exude authority in her new environment – which she initially regards as an hotel – are often lightly brushed aside in this empathetic look at ageing as experienced through the eyes of a respectable woman who is no longer as capable as she once was. Friedland’s feature deals sensitively with its subject reflecting Ruth’s innate dignity in maintaining a sense of self despite the life-altering condition.
Familiar Touch is probably not the first film you opt for as entertainment but it’s certainly informative and enlightening – and if you’re familiar with the territory- it certainly rings true. Friedland, who won Best First Film at the Orrizonti strand at the 81st VENICE FILM FESTIVAL collaborated with the staff and clients at ‘Villa Gardens’ in California which is one of those specialist retirement homes for female educators.
Chalfont’s graceful performance as a woman keen to maintain her distance with her assigned nurse Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle), has a tragic ring to it. And we all nod in acknowledgement that one day, in the hopefully very distant future, this could possibly be us. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | HORIZONS BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD
Hovering between fantasy and horror Isabella Torre fleshes out her debut feature Nymphs which premiered at Venice in 2018.
In deepest Calabria, a murky mystery unfolds in the remote and rugged Aspromonte mountains overlooking the Straits of Messina where an archaeologist (Crosset Hove/Godland) is searching for an ancient treasure. The dig unfortunately unleashes mythological creatures intent on wreaking havoc and retribution on the local inhabitants.
Similar to many outings in the genre, the film rides on its atmospheric visuals, sinister score (by Andrea de Sica) and troubling horror tropes – rather than suspenseful storytelling. Torre and her DoP Melanie Akoka concoct a creepy and uncomfortable sense of foreboding with this imaginative idea based on local legend, with the menacing message: ‘mess with nature and nature will bring you death and destruction’.
Many believe that when tampered with the earth and its supernatural forces will deliver a nasty sting in the tail to prospectors who disturb and plunder its resources disturbing the status quo. And we’ve certainly had a dose of it with the recent pandemic which, according to some sources, had its origins in an undiscovered bat cave.
In real life Calabria is mafia or ‘Ndrangeta’ country and well known for nefarious goings on such as kidnappings, disappearances and the like. Torre inventively sublimates fact into fiction with an imaginative tale about forces of evil that manifest as glassy-eyed nymphs roaming around and spooking the male archaeologist and his team with their unearthly presence, their nakedness suggestive of succubi-like beings that work their ‘magic’ at night in the subconscious, making a refreshing change from the ubiquitous vampires (and possibly inspired by Gustav Klimt’s 1899 painting ‘Water Nymphs’. An intriguing, well-crafted film that will certainly appeal to horror fans with its visual flair and evocative sense of place. Once again Elliott Crosset Hove lends a touch of religious fervour to this deeply ungodly feature. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | CLOSING FILM AT VENICE DAYS 2024
A good-humoured exhortation to women of Britain that working in a headscarf and factory overalls was just as important to winning the war as serving in uniform, whose expressive use of Beethoven on the soundtrack once more demonstrated the British capacity for magnanimity even in time of war.
Gilliatt & Launder’s first venture into direction proved the only occasion on which they actually stood side by side on the set to give instructions; a practice that proved unwieldy so they subsequently took it in turns in all their later films (Launder, for example directed the St Trinian’s films).
Several of those involved were already well established with Launder & Gilliat at Gainsborough – including the cameraman, producer & editor of ‘Oh! Mr Porter’ – with the supporting cast including Gainsborough veterans Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters & Caldecott in uniform and Moore Marriott as Patricia Roc’s father who joins the Home Guard. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Jethro Massey | Cast: Marie Benati, Jérémie Galiana | UK
In a summery Paris boy meets girl. She is a french lesbian who occasionally dates men. He is a straightforward American photographer, and their names, Paul and Paulette, give this stylishly offbeat-foodie themed romcom from debut filmmaker Jethro Murray its generic title, playing in this year’s Venice Film Festival Critics’ Week.
History tells us that in 1941/2 the United States intended to make France a ‘vassal’ state and almost succeeded with ‘Amgot’, De Gaulle objected. Despite all that the nation has taken up American spellings and US voiceovers in many transport systems. Deciding to re-enact the guillotining of Marie Antoinette Paul severs Paulette’s hair. Phone numbers are exchanged.
Inviting him to the soigné apartment borrowed from a friend she tries to seduce Paul by spinning a yarn about France’s first celebrity murderer in the Malle Sanglante affair. And so begins their relationship. Roaming around the French capital they do fun things together like imagining foodie treats and what a variety of iconic characters might taste like – from Ghenghis Khan to Hitler and even Kim Jong Un. They even ‘discover the pubic hair’ of Elvis Presley, Paulette’s teenage idol. They mull over the complexities of love and living together: “If things go sideways you shouldn’t go back”.
But Paulette’s flirty loucheness fails to impress the uncomplicated American Paul: “You’re always putting on a show it must be exhausting”. In other words she’s a pretentious drag.
Smitten despite all this Paul hires a VW Beetle and persuades Paulette to join him on an ad-hoc adventure. She agrees, reluctantly, but must visit her parents Charlotte and Gilles, an ex rugby player who murdered a child. When the young couple arrive we discover a dysfunctional household. And the young couple start to question their own motives in this vague ‘nouvelle vague’ romcom that winds its scenic way through Paris, Alsace and Munich.
There is a whiff of the Sixties in the snoozy score and the mid-century furniture in the apartment the couple stay in on their romantic interlude. This is a confident debut that has its moments but doesn’t really stand out in the genre despite game performances from Galiana and Benati. @MeredithTaylor
Dr/Wri: Mehdi Barsaoui | Fatma Sfar, Nidhal Saadi, Yasmine Dimassi, Hela Ayed | Thriller, 123’
Aïcha, the sole survivor of a bus crash, secures a new identity in this exciting and enlightening change of life thriller from Tunisian filmmaker Mehdi Barsaoui.
Working as a chambermaid in a luxury hotel, Aïcha has been in an impossible situation. Her parents are in debt, and forcing her into a loveless marriage. She’s also caught up in an affair with a married man who promises more than he can offer. So the crash, although traumatic, offers a reprieve and the chance to disappear and totally reinvent herself in another part of Tunisia. There were no witnesses to testify to her survival.
Mehdi M. Barsaouiavoids melodrama to offer a fascinating look at the North African nation through the eyes of a clever young woman who has gains agency due to chance and sheer chutzpah on her part.
We get to know Aïcha through a nuanced characterisation that shows how she is shaped by the past and tradition while being very much a modern woman. In the capital, now calling herself Amira, she gets a room in a house owned by a forward-thinking girl Lobna. They venture out on the town – not a head covering in sight – and enjoy themselves with two friends Rafik and Khaled. These scenes are set to a tranquil score in contrast to a street fight which Aïcha tries to break up, introducing us to another of Lobna’s friends. But they’re a fiery crowd and violence and danger is never far from the equation.
Being at the wrong place at the wrong time Aïcha later finds herself in police custody, wearing a brief red dress and without her identity papers, bringing us starkly back to reality of this paternalistic society. Once again Aïcha’s sheer grit comes into play as this haunting social drama rapidly morphs into a noirish police thriller, Barsoui handling the subtle tonal shift with dexterity in this brilliant follow-up to his award-winning debut feature A Son.Aïcha is screening at this year’s Venice Film Festival in the Horizons sidebar. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch | Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Cesar Romero | Drama
One of the advantages of living alone is you can watch any old rubbish you like on TV without having to justify your choice of viewing to your family; a lesson I learned the hard way one afternoon in the bad old days when households only had only the one telly when I settled down to watch this film and barely ten minutes into it my sister indignantly exclaimed “What a TERRIBLE film!!” Whereupon I stormed up to my room and had to wait over twenty more years before finally getting a proper opportunity to see it.
Although historically most notable as Lubitsch’s final film – much of it actually being the work of Otto Preminger, a director not exactly noted for his light touch – on its own terms it can be enjoyed as a nostalgic return to Lubitsch’s old stamping ground of mittel-European romantic comedy with the additional embellishments of a sumptuous Technicolor production – which at $2.4 million had the largest budget Lubitsch ever commanded – immaculately photographed by Leon Shamroy. @RichardChatten
A Swiss mother of three finds herself on mean streets in this filmic but rather flat family drama premiering at this year’s Toronto Film festival.
Jule (Ophélia Kolb) is a difficult character to engage with. In the film’s early scenes, set in the gloriously scenic Valais region of Switzerland, the attractive 40 year old blonde abandons her well-behaved kids during a family outing only to reappear much later without much explanation. 10-year-old Claire, her eldest, seems mature for her age and has a non-plussed but philosophical attitude towards her complicated mother. Along with eight-year-old Loïc, and six-year-old Sami — these kids have learned to take care of one another, and while their rather self-entitled parent, a working bookkeeper, clearly feels disgruntled at not being able to offer them the life they all dream of, her attitude does not help their cause.
Because this is Switzerland, a wealthy country, the film explores whether all its citizens should share this wealth, and Jasmin Gordon’s focus here is the ‘working poor’. July has set her heart on a charming home amid pleasant surroundings but it is just beyond her reach financially and she lacks agency in pursuing her ideal future. Without much social grace, Jule tackles the various housing representatives by going off on a series of misguided tantrums, flouncing out of one office, and berating the estate agent in change of her desired home, and this does not help her cause, despite her difficult situation.
In her feature debut, The Courageous Gordon invites the viewer ‘to set aside judgements and step into someone else’s shoes’, according to the film’s notes, but a more vulnerable, appealing central character would certainly help the audience to do so and feel Jule’s pain. In contrast Laure Calamy’s depiction of social desperation in the recent Venice title My Everything garners much more sympathy helping the viewer to root for her all the way despite her understandable rants. @MeredithTaylor.
The fate of an embryo is at the heart of this complex female-centric second feature from Huang Xi (Missing Johnny) a confident new voice in Taiwanese cinema. Starring well actor Sylvia Chang, Daughter’s Daughter is a bold and nuanced character study that shows how older women have as much agency as the younger generation in deciding the future of their family to be.
Jin Aixia, Mrs Fan, (Chang), a wealthy divorcee, enjoys a relaxed existence living in a beautiful apartment where she dabbles on the Stockmarket, socialises in her sports club, looks after her glamorous but rather confused mother, and has two daughters of her own who never met until they were grown up. Emma (Karena Lam), lived in New York, and Fan Zuer (Eugenie Liu), in Taipei. An attempt at IVF with her partner Jiayi, finally brings them to the US. But after a successful outcome the couple are sadly killed in an accident—leaving Aixia as the legal guardian of their potential offspring.
Now in New York, and in deep shock, Jin Aixia must decide the fate of this embryo. Overwhelmed with grief, she is faced with a choice: should she donate, terminate, or find a surrogate for the viable embryo. Having been a natural mother herself Jin Aixia has absolutely no idea how to proceed in the world of IVF or how to cope with the changes to her family; it’s a process totally foreign to her, along with how to deal with street beggars in the US capital. Confused and disorientated her mind seesaws backwards and forwards as she grapples with the present and a new experience, in a foreign city.
Financed by Taiwanese New Wave master Hou Hsiao-hsien this is a sleek and elegant contemporary feature that explores the difficult issues involved without stinting on visual appeal and with a sensitive and thoughtful central performance from Sylvia Chang. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Maura Delpero | Cast: Tommaso Ragno, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Giuseppe De Domenico | Italy Drama 119′
In a snowy mountain village high in the Italian Alps, largely untouched by the hostilities, a family gathers for breakfast. It’s 1944 and the Second World War is coming to an end, but for this family the trauma is only just beginning. By a stroke of fate a refugee soldier will bring tragedy of a different kind just as Europe finds peace.
Premiering in the main competition at the 81st Venice Film festival Vermiglio is an endearing classically styled drama unfolding in four chapters. A Sicilian soldier, Pietro (De Domenico), is hailed as a hero and the girls are excited, particularly Lucia (Scrinzi) who is drawn to this chance of romance in this isolated mountain setting.
Soon the two are in love but their relationship will change the village forever as deep-seated misogyny resurfaces both here in the far North of the country, and in Pietro’s Sicilian village where a secret slowly emerges. A beautiful film full of nostalgia and solid performances, Vermiglio has commercial appeal but nevertheless feels rather formulaic in picturing women trapped in traditional roles and forced to accept the strictures and errors of their menfolk. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Nader Saeivar | Cast: Maryam Boubani, Abbas Imani, Ghazal Shoji | Iran, Drama 100′
Iranian dramas usually turn on some grave moral dilemma as this latest one, a clever social commentary, co-written by Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar, on how Iranians are forced to bow to government pressure, or suffer the consequences.
Veteran actor Maryam Boubani is Tarlan, a retired teacher, living comfortably in Tehran. But her peace of mind is shattered when her friend Rana is murdered by her own husband, a well-known politician. Tarlan faces a stark choice: yield to political pressure or risk losing her reputation and livelihood.
By Iranian standards this is a sleek and cinematic social drama, well acted and with a pithy story at its core, offering solid entertainment for the arthouse crowd @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Sophie Deraspe | Cast: Félix-Antoine Duval, Solène Rigot | France, Canada Drama 114′
A Canadian fetches up in Arles needing to rethink his life in this rustic game-changer from Sophie Deraspe one of the leading figures in new Canadian cinema.
From the get-go the locals advise Mathyas (Duval) against being a shepherd in rural Arles – it’s a gruelling way of life, and Deraspe doesn’t try to glamourise it in a ‘back to nature way’. But being a shepherd is an occupation much needed in this friendly part of Provence, and an obvious choice for a young man who loves nature and is looking for a new start (Mathyas actually wrote the book on which the film is based).
Strangely enough a work permit is the sticking point for Mathyas, a Quebecois from Montreal. Everyone who’s tried knows how amazingly difficult it is for an outsider to get a visa in France – you have to apply in your country of origin – contacts or no contacts. But let’s suspend our disbelief for the sake of this cinematic and confident drama.
Farming is a rude and rustic awakening for the naive former ad exec: And the sheep are the least of his problems. After a run-in with his boss, and several other locals, female company arrives for Mathayas in the shape of Elise who, in exchange for a roof over her head, offers to cook, a task she finds challenging the main diet being sheep lungs.
After a lucky break the two start afresh and manage to make ago of things. Good to know that no animals were harmed in the film’s production. @MeredithTayor
At the conclusion of ‘The Fall of Berlin’ (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the Soviet leader’s plane lands in Berlin (an extremely unlikely occurrence since Stalin – portrayed by Mikhail Gelovani as a genial, pipe-smoking old cove in a gleaming white uniform – was afraid of flying) and a woman promptly rushes up to him, puts her arms around him and gives him a hug; when in reality she wouldn’t have got five feet before being clubbed to the ground. Which gives you a pretty good idea that this film should to be taken with a considerable pinch of salt.
Not long before Goebbels, after screening his recently completed Napoleonic epic ‘Kolberg’ to his bemused staff famously declared that a hundred years from now another fine colour film would be made commemorating the terrible times Germany was then going through. The Doctor’s prediction was answered far more swiftly than he could possibly have imagined since only four years later he featured as a limping caricature in the Soviet Union’s seventieth birthday present to their Dear Leader, resplendent in captured Agfacolor and with a score by Shostakovich (who later said that the assignment saved his bacon since at a critical moment he was engaged upon valuable work for the state) and by the look it probably consumed most of the Soviet Union’s GDP for 1949. @RichardChatten
To working class Naples, and the typically southern port town of Torre Annunciata in the distant shadow of Mount Vesuvius, where Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s drama centres on real events and a follow-up up to their 2021 drama Californie. This time they’re backed by Nanni Moretti as producer.
Vittoria assembles a cast of newcomers aka ‘non-actors’ giving this slice of dreamy realism an off-the-cuff feel in depicting the story of a gutsy woman desperate to extend her family with a much-wanted girl.
Hairdresser Jasmine (Marilena Amato), a fiercely independent woman not to be messed with, has a classic ‘heart of gold’, and consults a fortune-teller. The rest is history, as they say.
Married to Rino, (Gennaro Scarica) a strong silent type who works tirelessly as a jobbing carpenter, the two have a son Vincenzo (Vincenzo Scarica) who is helping his mother in her salon, and two younger boys in a household where mum clearly holds sway. But the desire for a daughter in the family haunts her dreams (along with her dead father). It’s what motivates and bugs Jasmine so much she’s prompted to act on it.
The cast’s strong Neapolitan dialect and a heady score add authenticity and emotional weight to what is a moving piece of filmmaking with a touch of lyricism and possibly the duo’s most appealing to date. @MeredithTaylor
You may think you know the story of Apollo 13 but this filmic documentary offers further insight into the crisis that unfolded on April 13th 1970, when a catastrophic explosion rocked the Apollo 13 spacecraft, stranding three astronauts halfway to the moon.
Within a few hours, the primary oxygen and power supply failed, setting the stage for one of the great survival stories in human history. The following days involved a tense rescue mission as the world watched with bated breath.
Apollo 13: Survivalplunders the archives and adds never-before-seen film materials and archival interviews with the crew, their families and the team at Ground Control in addition to covering much the same ground as Ron Howard’s 1995 feature starring Tom Hanks.
Here Middleton adds the voice of the astronaut Jim Lovell recorded right after an electrical fault shorted the power on their craft on its way to the moon. Nasa scientists were forced to devise a plan to circuit the moon while making best use of the dwindling oxygen supplies in bringing those famous men back to earth. Catnip for space travel fans. @MeredithTaylor
APOLLO 13: SURVIVAL launches on Netflix on 5th September
Dir: Carol Reed | Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Ernst Deutsch | UK, Thriller 104′
The Third Man starring Joseph Cotton, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles is now considered pure cinema gold. This iconic cult classic, shot partly on location in postwar Vienna and partly in Shepperton Studios, captures a very short moment in time yet has stayed with us and is now celebrating its 75th Anniversary immaculately restored by Studiocanal.
Harry Lime’s speech about the cuckoo clock always seemed to me just sophistry and his remark about people being just dots to him reveals that he’s a sociopath for all of his charm; which necessitated him (SPOILER COMING:) killing the film’s most likeable character to justify his comeuppance (a moment that always comes as a shock to me no matter how many times I see it).
Although it seems starkly realistic, The Third Man is a triumph of artifice, since Welles is only in the film for about ten minutes (he wasn’t actually in Vienna for much longer, which is why you so seldom see his breath in closeups). The sewers in Vienna don’t actually provide the unbroken passage throughout the city the film so vividly suggests and the famous final shot in the cemetery wasn’t shot by Oscar-winning cameraman Robert Krasker, but an uncredited Hans Schneeburger (who did get a credit a few years later for his second unit work on Carol Reed’s The Man Between).
The opening narration by the way (only heard in the British version) is by director Reed himself (who’s fingers are seen coming through the grill at the climax). And two of my favourite moments belong to Bernard Lee: his admiration for the craftsmanship that went into Valli’s forged documents and his reassurance when reading through her love letters, “That’s all right miss, we’re used to it. Like doctors”. @RichardChatten
At a talk on in celebration of the restored film second unit script supervisor Angela Allen, now in her 90s, recalls that Orson remained elusive throughout the shoot, rushing around Europe in a bid to raise money for his other projects, and although he had a certain charisma he kept himself to himself, unlike Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli and Trevor Howard who were popular and professional. She also recalls how, when presented with Wiener schnitzel in one Viennese restaurant, some of the crew claimed: “we’re not gonna eat fish done up as meat”. @MeredithTaylor
NOW CELEBRATING its 75th Anniversary THE THIRD MAN is back in cinemas on 6 September and on 4K this Autumn
Dir. Lav Diaz | Cast: Ronnie Lazaro, Janine Gutierrez, Hazel Orencio, Paul Jake Paule | Drama 250′
There is possibly no other contemporary filmmaker like Lav Diaz in the fact that his life’s work is the history of the Philippines, and how that history has created what could be looked on as the cursed earth of post imperialism taken over by warring religious factions, social values and their deterioration, and issues about distorted history and its psychological effects on the nation and its people. The Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán is another, of course, but his work is documentary form and not drama.
With his latest, Phantosmia premiering Out Of Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival (which has become his preferred location to unfurl new work), he sees the completion of a loose trilogy that follows When the Waves are Gone and Essential Truths of the Lake which examines the cyclical trauma and endless violence of Filipino history.
The film centres on Hilarion Zabala (played by Diaz regular Ronnie Lazaro), whose mysterious olfactory problem has recurred. A psychiatrist suspects it to be a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by trauma, a deep psychological fracture. One recommended radical process to cure the ailment was that Hilarion must go back and deal with the darkest currents of his past life in the military service. Re-assigned to the very remote Pulo Penal Colony, he must also confront the horrific realities of his present situation.
As has been his wont in the majority of his films Diaz opts to film in a beautiful monochrome which he describes as assuming the role gunita (memory) for him and transports him back to the primal seasons of his youth.
Diaz is mistakenly referred to by that pejorative term “Slow Cinema”, which is the simplistic reasoning to do with the length of his films rather than a narrative description. He is most definitely a cinematic formalist but he takes and plays with genres and their construction to alight on something of his own making. A singular vision that is if anything a “Rhythmical local cinema”. The rhythm of the countryside, but definitely not ‘slow cinema’.
An audience coming afresh to a Diaz film will perhaps think his scenes seem banal taken on their own, but the power of his National cinema is the culmination of them, their juxtaposition that couldn’t be anything less than what they are.
There are quite a few tropes from classic American cinema in Phantosmia, from the late Westerns of the 70s that show the dying of a particular warrior culture with a man both out of place and time who endeavours to do what he feels is the morally correct decision while also searching for a redemption that he won’t be given. With the decision to rescue a young woman forced into prostitution we of think of Taxi Driver, which is of course a loose remake of The Searchers. There the inevitable violence is mundane and banal, and certainly not cathartic. Hilarion, if anything, resembles Paul Scrader’s God’s angry man, dictating his thoughts and confessions into a journal.
Dir: Gianni Amelio | Cast: Alessandro Borghi, Gabriel Montesi, Federica Rosellini, Giovanni Scotti, Vince Vivenzio, Alberto Cracco, Luca Lazzareschi, Maria Grazia Plos, Rita Bosello | Italy 104’
1918 and Italy’s wounded are winding their weary way back from the First World War across a wintry November landscape in this lavishly styled and sombre tragedy from seasoned director Gianni Amelio (Thé Patient’s Room) competing for the Golden Lion.
Strange things are happening both on and off the battlefield. In the local hospital an order goes out to treat all patients including those who have deserted. Giulio (Borghi), the compassionate but rather academic ward doctor, takes special care of a badly injured: an 18-year-old farm worker, a mustard gas victim and one cheerful soldier desperate to get back to the Front. Others are not so lucky: one man is now deaf, another will lose a leg.
Amid this well of suffering Giulio re-kindles a relationship with a friend from student days, a nurse (Rossellini) who believes some soldiers are avoiding a return to battle with self-mutilation, a crime punishable by firing squad. Giulio becomes obsessed with these self-harmers. Meanwhile, on the front, a mysterious infection is felling the troops and is gradually spreading to civilians.
Battlefield is also the story of two medics caught in the cross fire: one from a privileged background, the other, a less fortunate woman struggling for credibility despite her intelligence and talent. A solid premise then and a film that explores an un-chartered episode in the Great War with a solid script and committed performances, but one that will struggle to win a prize given this year’s spectacular main competition entries. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | GOLDEN LION COMPETITION.
Alexis Manenti is the brooding star of this simmering arthouse western from writer director Frederic Farrucci best known for his TV fare.
On the coast of Corsica he plays a goatherd who is offered a decent price for his land. An offer he rejects. Joseph, one of the last shepherds on the Corsican coast, soon realises the mafia is behind the offer. But during their discussions the mafia man who came to intimidate him is accidentally killed and his death will naturally have devastating implications for everyone involved, not least his valuable flock.
The Corsican coast of Cape Santa Manza and forest becomes becomes a feral hunting ground in Farrucci’s arthouse thriller where a merciless hunt plays out in the sweltering heat of the summer. As the days go by, the film unfolds as an ethnographical portrait of a a dying community combined with a tense road movie that builds momentum with its focus on ‘Le Mohican’ Joseph – who embodies a resistance movement no one on the island deemed impossible. HIs feisty female companion Vannina adds a female dimension to this impressive sophomore feature screening in the Horizons Extra strand at the 81st Venice Film Festival. @MeredithTaylor
A lyrical aria from Puccini ‘Mio Babbino Caro’ seems a fitting opening accompaniment to this film about marital strife and infidelity. A Chinese couple are having dinner. They are clearly at odds. The wife suspects her husband of cheating. And in Beijing this entitles her to engage the services of a professional ‘snoop’ who will be invited to join the couple for a meal to sound out the husband’s issues. ‘But not for long’ advises the ‘dispeller’. ‘Men don’t like to talk that much’.
In China, a new industry has emerged devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity. Wang Zhenxi is part of this growing profession, a “mistress dispeller” who is hired to maintain the bonds of marriage — and break up affairs — by any means necessary.
Mistress Dispellerfollows a real, unfolding case of infidelity as Wang attempts to bring a couple back from the edge of crisis. Their story revels the confusion and mixed emotions that can blow a marriage off course. And we gain a real understanding of the dynamic between the trio: mistress, wife and husband.
Hong Kong native Elizabeth Lo’s second film couldn’t be more different from her feature 2020 debut Stray that followed an ownerless dog around Istanbul. But both films share the same sense of poignant defeat and abandonment.
Mistress Dispeller is also very much about that sense of belonging, or ownership. That of a husband by his wife. The doc gives us intimate access to a real love triangle. The detective serves as a dispute resolver, councillor and a shoulder to cry on: Shame and failure being something that the Orientals find difficult to admit to. Divorce – the only alternative – and its aftermath ‘the dating scene’ – involves a sad litany of singletons searching for a soulmate through the small ads. So there’s a vested interest on all sides to heal the rift so the divorce court can be avoided at all costs. Wang skilfully manipulates the husband into giving up his ‘flirt’ so the mistress feels revalued and loses interest. But can feelings be so easily rationalised? Is it that simplistic?
During a meal with the married couple the wife engineers an excuse to go out leaving Wang to tease out the husband’s feelings. He admits to have developed a close friendship with a work contact. “With my wife it’s real life, with Fei Fei it’s like being in the sun”.
Surprisingly the wife takes a pragmatic approach aware that there is so much at stake. The husband’s pretty young friend is seen encouraging him to come with her to a local peony festival while the dispeller works on lowering the mistress’s expectations by providing her with the husband’s negative feedback gleaned during a follow up tete a tete with him. Once feelings are aired in a calm and frank exchange of views everyone gains clarity and the husband acknowledges that his wife and child are the most important people in his life and he needs to focus on improving that relationship. It’s a ‘win win’ situation for all sides, avoiding unnecessary heartache in the long run.
With imaginative camerawork and an operatic score this is another sensitive and intelligent film from Lo, and her co-writer Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. @MeredithTaylor
MISTRESS DISPELLER has its world premiere at Venice on 2 September 2024
A coming of age meets female empowerment drama sees a young girl forced to grow up pronto when her debt ridden father has a major financial crisis affecting the whole family. .
Carefree JINDŘIŠKA (23) is like any other teenager, throwing up the morning after an alcohol fuelled party the night before.
But she sobers up pretty quickly when the bailiffs arrive to empty the squeaky clean family home of all possessions – including an IKEA lamp – and blocking the credit cards.
In an instant Jindřiška’s world falls apart, forcing her to choose between helping her father or saving herself before it’s too late. The rest of the family are unhelpful. It appears they are owed money too.In the street Jindriska and her friend are then intimated by another debtor
Set in the serene Czech countryside this crisp and straightforwardly mature film is Vojtech Strakaty’s feature debut– a relatable drama that deals with an issue that other filmmakers have failed to tackle since Ramon Bahrani in his 2014 finicial thriller 99 Homes but one that resonates with a wide audience in today’s debt ridden world.
Doing the rounds with her father to rustle up money it emerges that Jindriska could raise a loan to help the family although she only has a part time job so it would be a drop in the ocean.
Eliska Basusová is convincing as a disdainful daughter gradually realising her rather profligate is no longer the man she thought he was, and is shifting his responsibility onto her young shoulders – and what’s worse– his arrogant cavalier attitude makes her feel justifiably uncomfortable and leaves her on the horns of a dilemma. But the narrative loses power in the final stretch which sees the girl cutting lose and focusing on her friends and freedom. Despite a rather enigmatic ending this is a nice-looking watchable film from the Czech newcomer, making its world premiere in the Orrizonti Extra strand at the 81st Venice Film Festival. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Jan-Willem van Ewijk | Cast: Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Reinout Scholten van Aschat, Laija Ledergerber | Dutch, Thriller, 100′
Stunning mountain scenery is the setting for this chilly psychological‘anti-buddy’ thriller, an artful first feature for Dutch filmmaker Jan-Willem van Ewijk.
In a snowbound resort high in the Alps a confrontation between two skiers sets an edgy tone for an unsettling chain of events involving one of them, Rein, a musician, who is still recovering the death of his mother.
When his father Gijs arrives it becomes clear their shared grief is sparking conflict between the two and the film’s title gives us insight into a possible cause without offering any backstory.
The uncomfortable vibe worsens when the widower admits to have started dating – not only a younger woman but also known to them both.Glijs’ innocent attempt to flirt with Rein’s love interest Rega is also a bone of contention between the men especially as Rega is playing hard to get with Rein, and this only adds to his insecurity and general feeling of jealousy and alienation.
Gijs vulnerability when he inadvertently sheds a tear of grief triggers Reva’s protective instinct and she reaches out to the widow offering support and further irritating Rega.
The subtle interplay between the three adults is feels real and convincing possibly helped by the fact that actors Gijs and Reinout Scholten van Aschat are also father and son in real life.
Once on the slopes an intriguing power play begins, Rein, a snowboard teacher, is a fitter and more daring skier than his father who panics when the young man opts for a vertiginous descent and this sparks an avalanche with tragic and unexpected consequences
Never resorting to melodrama Alpha is a spare and visually stylish film Douwe Hennink’s camera keeping a well-judged distance from the protagonists creating a sense of remoteness and disconnection as the men feel isolated and alone in their grief further adding to the frigid sense of unease. An impressive debut. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Andrei Ujică: with the voices of Shea Grant, Therese Azzara, Tommy McCabe, Sarah McCluskey | Docudrama 86’ | France, Romania
Suffused with the gentle nostalgia of the Swinging Sixties this peach of a movie kicks off in the mid-Atlantic where the pioneering independent station Radio Caroline was born out of a desire to broadcast pop music and did so in an offshore battleship in those pre-internet days.
So begins this glorious look back – not in anger, but in sheer joy – at an era of innocence captures in grainy black & white by Romanian writer/director Andrei Ujică: best known for his documentaries Out of the Present and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (2010)
Amongst other treasures it records the moment in 1965 when The Beatles descended from their plane and onto the tarmac, their iconic BOAC bags tucked under their arms, to give a sold-out concert at New York’s Shea Stadium (at 5.50’USD a ticket), all chewing gum, they disappear into a black limo, Paul not realising the windows are automatic when he tries to respond to a photographer’s question.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon leads the press conference, with a cheeky unpolitically correct comment when asked why the two unmarried bands members are sitting together.: “It’s because we’re queer – but don’t telling anyone”. All totally candid and unmanaged. One journalist described the event as “being in the eye of the storm”.
The Sixties, that wonderful moment in the sun, is like nothing you’ve probably seen before, or since. It was innocent; freewheeling, chilled out and much treasured in my memory. Ujică adds a black sketched figure, superimposed rather like an invisible voyeur, who narrates the story, as he remembers it. We move from Manhattan to Jones Beach. State Park in Wantagh New York where bathers enjoy the balmy weather far away from the horrors of Vietnam.
Switching to Los Angeles police riots involving the ‘Negro’ community are captured on film. They talk about being victims of abuse and police brutality. But then they dance ‘The Twist’ like no one else can. And in upstate New York a teenage girl dresses for the concert while a woozy trumpet plays ‘I Can’t Get Started with You’ as the early hours of that August day dawn. And the girl makes her ways through Holland Tunnel – the world’s first mechanically ventilated underwater vehicular passage. And we arrive in ‘the city’.
A cast of thousands is summoned—each separate sphere, face, and place given equal weight, each instant is meaningful, the excitement mounting as the girls – now painted, superimposed figures – make their make their way through the New York World’s Fair. There’s a haunting, dreamlike, ghostly quality to this reverie that makes us ache for those simple summers back then, with florescent butterflies floating into the air. (delicately rendered by Yann Kebbi). So many friends and family members have vanished but their memories and these images live on and we shed a soulful tear. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | until 7th September 2024
Dir: Rusudan Glurjidze | Cast: Salome Demuria, Sergey Dresden, Vladimir Daushvili, Vladimir Vdovichenko | Georgian, Drama 132′
In late Autumn 2006, Russian authorities detained thousands of Georgians and expelled them to Georgia, including those residing legally in Russia.
Set in modern day St Petersburg this impressive second film from Georgia’s Rusudan Glurjidze is a classically styled and darkly humorous ‘odd couple’ movie about an unlikely duo thrown together by circumstances beyond their control arising from turbulent times.
Set against the hopes and aspirations of migrants in an uncertain world where people are constantly on the move – through choice or necessity due to war and oppression – The Antique bears testament to the brutal and indiscriminate ways in which politics derail human lives.
Medea (Demuria) has sold her house in Georgia and is working in an antique shops where she meets fellow Georgian Lado (Daushvili) who is an antiques smuggler. Ready to move on with her life Medea bags herself a bargain flat in St. Peterburg’s historic centre only to find out that a curmudgeonly old man in the shape of Vadim Vadimich is already in residence. An inter-generational and personality clash ensues as the two are forced to make the best of their shared accommodation as the disorientated young woman tries to forge friendships while dealing with the past in the wintery city.
Giurjidze’s confident direction and Gorka Gomez Andreu’s widescreen camerawork capture this spectacular snowbound location and the majestic rambling interiors where the odd couple rub along. One relatable bone of contention is when Vadim strongly objects to Medea throwing his personal, if seemingly old, possessions away, including a strand of his brother’s hair. Another sees the old man arrested after he mistakenly goes into the wrong flat and raises merry hell with the current resident. The Antique offers another snapshot of Georgia’s rich culture infused with an endearing sense of the ridiculous. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | VENICE DAYS 2024 COMPETITION
Rusudan Glurjidze is a Georgian film director, screenwriter, and producer. From 1989 to 1991, she studied French language and literature at the Tbilisi State University, then switched to film studies. From 1990 to 1996, she studied film directing and scriptwriting at the Georgian State Film and Theatre Institute, taking Georgiy Shengelaia’s classes. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union destroyed the Georgian film industry, Glurjidze worked in advertising. She has been a producer and creative director of the Cinetech Film Production Company since 2007. Her feature directorial debut, House of Others, premiered in the East of the West competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, taking home the Grand Prix. The film was selected for numerous international film festivals, winning an array of awards, and became Georgia’s candidate for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards.
Dir: John Huston | Cast: Jennifer Jones John Garfield, Pedro Armendariz, Gilbert Roland | US political thriller
It’s well known that John Huston played an acting role as ‘White Suit’ in ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’, but most people are unaware that shortly afterwards he also briefly appeared in an unbilled bit as a bank clerk in ‘We Were Strangers’ since so few have seen it.
One of the subjects frequently favoured by Huston was the activities of a North American abroad finding himself a fish out of water (a role in which he memorably cast Humphrey Bogart) combined in ‘We Were Strangers’ with the usual depiction of Latin America as riven with revolutions.
Later dismissed by Huston as “pretty frail material”, while attacked by the ‘Hollywood Reporter’ as “a shameful handbook of Marxian dialectic…and the heaviest dish of Red theory ever served to audiences outside the Soviet Union”. Despite Russell Metty’s usual exemplary photography the fundamental artificiality of the piece shows in the regular use of process work and casting John Garfield and Jennifer Jones – good as they both are – as a Cuban and a Mexican; although mitigated by the presence in supporting roles of authentic Latinos like Pedro Armendariz, Ramon Novarro and Gilbert Roland.
@RichardChatten
Dir: Peter Kerekes | Cast: Erica Barbiani, Lucia Candelpergher, Peter Kerekes, Vic Schmarc, Ralph Wieser, Vanja Jambrovic, Stefano Centini, Peter Kerekes | Drama 98′
Wishing on a Starreceived its world premiere in the Horizons strand of the 81st Venice Film Festival and is a quiet, gentle film that feels like a small unassuming drama doc, unafraid to tackle big themes of life.
While there is, strictly speaking, no clear narrative, the film offers a visual tapestry intercutting between stories of a gallery of players. Often cut together over a period of time and in some cases without finding out what happens next, several stories are left for the viewer to imagine resolutions. With references to astrology, the film provides viewers with questions as to whether we are the architects of our lives or simply life’s travelling players.
The film was co-written by the filmmaker with Erica Barbiani and focuses on stories about the search for love, relationships and re-birth with a number of sequences that hit home with more power than others. One character is a Neapolitan astrology therapist who invites people to imagine they are in foreign countries without actually travelling. Another character is a funeral director who inherited the family business, never found time to find a partner and still lives with his Italian mother who nags him to settle down. He decides to interview a group of women and chooses one to run the business while he is on holiday with Kerekes filming a meal for three seated around a table with deeply felt unspoken tension.
One of the most moving sequences involves a gentle older woman who has devoted her life to her mother. Now finally free, she embarks on a journey that will find her, by chance, swimming in a forbidden lake. Arrested by authorities, her action feels like a liberating sense of civil disobedience of a type never before experienced. Disappointment with life is not far away for some of the players and Kerekes is fascinated by twins, introducing at one point a surreal visual chessboard of multiple sets of twins.
The pace of Wishing on a Star may be too slow or languid for some and feels aimed at mature viewers willing to adapt to a pace and flow far away from the rapid style of current digital filmmaking. The spiritual mentor of the film could be Federico Fellini in his early documentary- flavoured period reinforced by the sounds of a Nino Rota inspired soundtrack complimenting a mosaic of ordinary characters made unique by the power of chance and imagination.
Wishing on a Star is Kerekes’ first feature length film that draws upon a background as a documentary filmmaker of short films which enables the Slovakian director to capture a sense of – often comic – dramatic fiction out of the beautifully observed natural movements and rhythms of ordinary people. There are also several expertly sustained long takes often filmed from mid-range viewpoints. The film is an accomplished production involving Italy, Lebanon, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia with a flyaway sequence to Taiwan that looks and feels like a kind of European funded co-production without involving the UK in this post Brexit era.
PETER HERBERT / CURATOR MANAGER THE ARTS PROJECT
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Dir/Wri: Xiaoxuan Jiang | Malaysia, US, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, 2024, 98′,
Struggling with power cuts, drought and hostile weather out on the snowy steppe, Saina, a divorced Mongolian horseman, makes a meagre living between country and city in a gruelling schedule. During the day he tends a flock of sheep and horses on his ranch. Nighttime sees him back in the city performing horseback routines to finance his father’s gambling debts and raise his son. Unlike the proud cavalryman he portrays in the show, Saina realises his traditional way of life is no longer tenable, forcing him to sell his flock of sheep, but keep the horses. The future for animals is also bleak.
Saina’s daily struggle very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world keen to carry on the ancient way of life of those that went before them while keeping pace with the modern world. The disintegration of the family unit is part of the problem he faces: his ex-wife has left for a better job in the city and is more demanding, his father is also giving him grief. The life he grew up in has dramatically changed.
In her first feature, a sensitive snapshot of masculinity in crisis, Xiaoxuan Jiang contrasts Saina’s ‘glamourised’ life under the bright lights on the big arena, all decked out in vibrant traditional costume, with the gruelling days managing animals on the windswept plains.
What shines through here is a fabulous human interest story. And the film’s stunning cinematography, captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, helps us experience it all like a native. It often feels like we’re actually part of the action. All this is in stark contrast to modern life in the big city with all the usual ‘mod cons’. An impressive and intelligent study of masculinity caught between the future and the past. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Türker Süer | Cast: Ahmet Rıfat Şungar, Berk Hakman | Turkey 87′
Duty and honour are pitted against family loyalties in this sober and stylish arthouse thriller that swings on moral and ethical concerns for two brothers, gradually exposing Turkey as a nation more polarised that ever and caught between East and West.
Sinan and Kenyan have always been close but their brotherhood is put to the test reflecting the narrative’s societal fractures when Sinan, a lieutenant in the Turkish army, is asked to hand over his brother Kenan to a military court, charged with disobedience and desertion.
Still troubled by their father’s tragic death and the questions surrounding their own cultural identity (their mother was not of Turkish birth), the brothers embark – Midnight Run style without the humour – on a journey through a country marked by political unrest. During a military coup it soon emerges that evidence that caused their father to commit suicide was fabricated and Sinan used as a pawn by his superiors. In a country where the State demands absolute loyalty, the brothers must decide if they are ready to face the sacrifices required by their duty and their conscience despite their own fragile status.
Turkish directors love the widescreen camera and that’s exactly what you get here with Matteo Cocco’s cinematography serving the film well. A resonant score brings to mind that unforgettable 1970s title Midnight Express. Spare of dialogue and seething with atmosphere this noirish existential thriller never outstays in welcome. Simple but deadly. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | HORIZONS EXTRA 2024
oots, acceptance always seemed fragile, like a residence permit that could be revoked at any time. One mistake, and everything you achieved could lose its value, much like the two brothers on constant probation. Though set in Türkiye, the story’s themes are universal: navigating an increasingly authoritarian system and struggling to maintain one’s identity amid prejudice and mistrust. Gecenin Kıyısı / Edge of Night tells the story of a man leading his brother to doom, reflecting a society on the brink of losing its humanity.
Dir: Sidney Lumet | Cast: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau | US Political thriller
In the Simpsons episode ‘Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming’, in addition to the predictabe references to Dr Strangelove, the producers as usual showed that they’d cast their net wide by quoting both Fail-Safe and the notorious ‘Countdown’ election broadcast of 1964.
Made almost simultaneously with Dr Strangelove but held back so the two films didn’t clash, director Sidney Lumet was always of the view that the films were released in the wrong order since Strangelove had achieved such an impact ‘Fail-Sale’ could only suffer by comparison; which is a shame as the characters in Strangelove were a bunch of buffoons who plainly deserved everything they got, while ‘Fail-Safe’ depicted sane men trapped in an insane situation. @RichardChatten
Dir: Anne-Sophie Bailly | Cast: Laure Calamy, Charles Peccia Galletto, Julie Froger | Drama, France, 95′
Laure Calamy is a put-upon mother juggling a dependent son and an elderly mother in this captivating first feature from Anne-Sophie Bailly.
Mona lives with her adult son, Joël, in a cramped apartment in the Paris suburbs. Now in his early thirties, Joël has suffered from dyspraxia since childhood and works in a specialised facility where he is in love with his disabled coworker Océane who soon soon becomes pregnant leaving Mona to deal with a potential minefield in this morally complex character drama.
But what could have been a gloomy, demoralising film ends up being a real joy to watch due to Bailly’s clever script, Mona and Joel’s uplifting relationship and two terrific central performances making this a positive pleasure despite the tricky issues involved. @MeredithTaylor.
Dir: Fabrice du Welz | Cast: Anthony Bajon, Alba Gaia Bellugi, Alexis Manenti, Sergi Lopez, Laurent Lucas, David Murgia, Beatrice Dalle, Lubna Azabal, Melanie Doutey | France/Belgium 155′
In his second film of the season thriller supremo Fabrice du Welz (Adoration,Alleluia, Calvaire) gets together with his regulars: Laurent Lucas and Beatrice Dalle in a film that explores an episode of institutional dysfunction and police corruption so parlous some claimed they were ‘ashamed to be Belgian’ after this grim episode of the country’s crime history.
Maldoror is a gritty thriller and once again du Welz doesn’t hold back on the realism or his ‘stock in trade’ of crafting tricky characters and psychopaths of the highest – or lowest – order making this difficult to watch in its gruesome depiction of true events involving pedophilia and murder when two little girls go missing. The story is structured around the personal and private life of an impulsive young police recruit, Paul Chartier, who finds himself assigned to a secret unit investigating a circle of sex offenders entitled ‘Maldoror’.
It soon emerges the police are implicated so naturally Chartier’s efforts are thwarted by his chief (Lucas). Chartier (Bajon) has the tenacity, resilience and verve to take matters into his own hands pitting himself against the law and his Calabrian family-in-law, who are not the most conciliatory characters to deal with, at the best of times. In short, a real head-banger of a movie to add to his archive. @MeredithTaylor.
Ali Kalthami’s debut feature Is a taut and caustically comedic thriller set in Riyadh where a decent but down on his luck local guy comes a cropper.
Mohammed Aldokhi is robust and darkly humorous as the saturnine central character Fahad who is burning the candle at both ends in difficult circumstances. Bored – and frankly bad – at his day job in a call centre, nighttime sees Fahad grafting as a mandoob (courier) to earn money for his ageing father’s medical treatment.
Everyone knows that Saudi is an alcohol free zone but when Fahad is inevitably fired he makes the mistake of stealing booze from an illegal dealer with the hope of trading it on for cash. And so begins his descent into a world of crime in a country of zero tolerance on all levels – unless you’re Arab Royalty or in the Diplomatic service.
For the favoured set Saudi is a glitzy place framed by skyscrapers, swish cafes, snazzy hotels, magnificent shopping malls and vibrant nightlife. All this is showcased in DoP Ahmed Tahoun’s dazzling cinematography in an impressive debut to his promising career in film,
Dir: Charles Saunders | Cast: Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes | Jack Bentley | UK Drama 58’
This is the sort of film that should be obligatory viewing for students of the narrative construction in the cinema for the sheer fascination of the single-mindedness with which the narrative is pared to the bone with not a solitary digression allowed to interfere with its determined pursuit of its goal of achieving its remit to deliver a dramatic conclusion.
In particular, it manages to include a gay character since the only possible motivation of the killer could come from the vengeful desire to satisfy the thwarted longings of one in the pangs of the love that then dared not speak its name. @RichardChatten
Dir: Thomas Napper | Cast: Haley Bennett, Tom Sturridge, Sam Riley and Ben Miles.
Raise a glass to this English language biopic about a resolutely French wine and its female vintner in the male-dominated wine industry of the 19th century.
Family politics and female empowerment are at the heart of Thomas Napper’s lavishly styled biopic that sheds light on the storied champagne dynasty of Veuve Clicquot. For father-in-law Philippe (Ben Miles) it’s strictly business but for his emotionally unstable son sensitivity and craftsmanship are key: Francois (Tom Sturridge) sings to the grapes while in the distance Napoleon Bonaparte is suffering a crushing defeat. The film brings to mind Gilles Legrand’s 2011 outing You Will Be My Sonwhere Niels Arestrup heads up a prestigious vineyard in St Emilion with his son. But this time the key figure is a woman.
Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot could never be described as bubbly but she certainly takes control of the budding wine business the couple had steered forward, after Francois’ sudden death. Amid turbulent political change and financial crisis Barbe-Nicole fights off competition from competitors Moet revolutionising the world of champagne with an ingenious trade link with broker Louis Bohne (Sam Riley), taking the iconic brand and its special vintage ‘comet’ to fizzing heights as one of the world’s first successful businesswomen.
Haley Bennett is a modest but serious presence in the lead role of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot. Navigating the stormy waters of her husband’s laudanum addiction Bennett resolutely powers forward but never really sets the night on fire as the determined female figurehead. So although Widow Clicquot is a rather sombre in its direction and storytelling Barbe-Nicole’s love affair with Francois is certainly convincing exuding a simmering chemistry as they romp in candlelit flashbacks between the sheets in a lightly sparkling affair. @MeredithTaylor
In UK cinemas from 23 August | Released in cinemas on Friday 30th August
Dans ce road movie en noir et blanc, Béatrice Dalle, marche sur les traces de la vie de Pier Paolo Pasolini. Béatrice Dalle place très haut dans son estime Pier Paolo Pasolini. Selon elle, Pasolini et Jean-Luc Godard sont les meilleurs réalisateurs.
Dans ce film documentaire, l’actresse française, bien connue pour Betty Blue parcours l’Italie à la rencontre de ceux qui ont connus Pasolini. D’Ostie, lieu de l’assassinat de Pasolini, à Matera, lieu du tournage de l’Évangile selon Saint Matthieu, Béatrice Dalle et son traducteur, Clément Roussier, explorent les lieux importants de Pasolini.
Nous découvrons Pasolini à travers l’amour singulier de Béatrice. Nous découvrons aussi Béatrice Dalle avec le regard complice de Clément Roussier. C’est une écorchée vive de la vie. Elle est attachante lorsqu’elle parle de ses passions et aussi de ses conneries. @Gerard Marcade
Dir: Kurdwin Ayub | Austria/2024 93′ German and Arabic
Personal fitness gets a Middle Eastern work-over in this Ulrich Seidl produced sophomore feature from Kurdwin Ayub that sees an Austrian martial artist travel to Jordan to work with three princesses.
Tough on the outside but troubled and directionless Sarah gets a fresh lease of life on landing a well paid gig in Jordan after a brief online interview. The young Austrian flies from Vienna to a lavish Moroccan palace in Amman and is soon reminiscing with an Arab prince about his travels to Vienna where he enjoyed Sachertorte on his family visit.
Agreeing to sign a non-disclosure agreement that confines her to the training room and her lavish hotel this includes a strict embargo on social media. But the entente cordiale soon turns sour when the fitness guru taps into a misogynistic vibe between the prince and his teenage siblings which soon leads to a sinister discovery.
The next days sees Sarah (Florentina Holzinger) putting the girls – Fatima, Nour and Shaima – through their paces in a gruelling exercise regime that doesn’t agree with their couch potato lifestyle. The following day a visit to the mall takes precedence over exercise – these girls are not committed to anything but doing their makeup and chilling in their gilded internet free cage where bickering seems to be the order of the day, along with the odd prayer session in hijab and abaya.
Despite the draconian presence of body guards the girls still manage a sneak look at Sarah’s instagram.It soon emerges that self defence classes is what they want, and for good reason. When Sarah later hears frightened knocking sounds from upstairs and realises Fatima is calling for help her blood turns cold.
Asking to borrow Sarah’s phone one if the girls tries to publish footage of abuse afflicted on the fourth – hidden – sister Aya. Next day Sarah is summoned to Abdul’s office. The brother reminds the trainer of the strict code of not getting close to the girls. He claims Fatima is a troublemaker and to ignore her attention-seeking behaviour. On the other hand Sarah is pushing the boundaries and is clearly not emotionally mature enough to handle her mission and maintain a professional distance from the client.
Later that evening an attempt to flirt with the barman falls flat showing Sarah is clearly out of her depth, overwhelmed by events unfolding around her.She wants to bond with the girls but clearly this contravenes her rules of engagement and we start to fear the worst for her safety especially when she exchanges confidential information with the waitress. During these inadvisable exchanges it emerges the wealthy family is known for its mafiosi style with an omertà style code of silence. In trying to help the girls Sarah, in her naivety, makes a fatal error and events take a tragic turn.
Rather than simply exposing negative attitudes to women in the Middle East, the Iraqi-born writer director takes an even-handed approach in her startlingly unsettling documentary-thriller that occasionally veers into melodrama in exposing stark contrasts – and similarities – between Western and Middle Eastern youth culture for the of today. Both have drifted too far away from a healthy balance. MeredithTaylor
Dir: Alaeddine Slim | Tunisia, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar · 2024 · DCP 2K · Color · 102′ · o.v. Arabic
A woman emerges from the sea. A shepherd disappears from the hillside in a remote Tunisian coastal town. Local cop Fathi investigates the bizarre events in this arthouse thriller from Alaeddine Slim who melds murder mystery and surreal sci-fi in Agora, a mesmerising follow-up to his award-winning feature debut Tlamess
In the abattoir three macabre corpses await the mortician. Blood seeps from their bodies. Piecing together local gossip Fathi finds out they are victims of a brawl in a massive tanker moored in the port. But the search for shepherd Mabrouk in the bosky backwater reveals no clues.
In his pre-apocalyptic portrait the Tunisian filmmaker makes evocative use of the hostile surroundings: decrepit buildings, contaminated seawater, a dead crow. Rotten veg and putrid fish in the market all bear testament to a failed harvest. The sea is throwing out its dead. Stray dogs are sickening and dying in the creeping malaise.
Then Detective Omar Walli, from Tunis section 19, arrives in town to oversee the investigation and contain the damage. But nobody feels comfortable with his sinister presence. “You can’t trust people from the capital”. says a man in the bar. Indeed. In the privacy of his hotel bedroom Omar defers to a bald, cancer-stricken woman who uses a voice box to issue her instructions.
The slow-burn police procedural is laced with fantasy sci-fi elements serves as a metaphor for global unease. Man has destroyed the environment and the earth is screaming in pain. Police and politicians are corrupt and under the cosh of an enigmatic big brother. Intertitles threaten dire warnings. “No one will be spared!” Meanwhile the mosques spew out a stentorious message that God is great.
A seething soundscape combines ambient sounds of thunder and an inventive electronic score. Neon-infused colours evoke a toxic environment where decay and degradation is endemic. One terrific scene sees birds flying frantically in all directions to escape the farmer’s poisonous fumigation.
The deaths remain unsolved but behind closed doors Omar and his female sidekick pander to an enigmatic cabal with gleaming neon blue eyes and white socks. Sounds weird but it works in this strikingly unusual fantasy thriller from the talented Tunisian auteur, screening in competition at this year’s 77th Locarno Film Festival. @Meredith Taylor
PARDO VERDE AWARD | LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Teenage girls in the changing rooms. A scuffle breaks out. Against a back drop of Soviet Brutalist buildings a girl plays basket ball with the men of the village. Marija is a tomboy. And new to the village. Staying with her grandma, a flower seller, she has to make friends. But how when they disdain you and steal your jeans?
Lithuania’s Saule Bliuvate draws on her own experience in this feature debut, an artful snapshot of a Lithuanian backwater where the mundane melts into the surreal. Marija makes a friend. Two girls at a loose end dream of escaping from the dour reality of their dingy domesticity to the glamour of a new world where anything is possible – if your face and body fits. They will do anything to get taller, slimmer, rangier, even if it involves taking tapeworm tablets to get ‘the look’.
Every three years a model agent visits the village looking for fresh young faces to work in the model industry. Talk of New York, Paris, and Tokyo where life is an endless party and everything is free. So much to discover. Tall and slim with an androgynous look Marija is a big hit in the casting call.
Bliuvate abandons a straightforward narrative to paint and impressionist picture that lingers in short cinematic scenes capturing this post soviet dystopia set amongst a disoriented youth where young girls are reduced to passive victims who offer themselves up to all kinds of abuse to find a life they think might be better. Meanwhile back home the older generation are discovering new things too.
Acid green landscapes zinging with Spring vegetation contrast with the grunge of dilapidated huts, mangled cars, a sordid environment. Young bodies entwine with each other as they explore and discover their sexuality. Naivity meets experience in this poignant and picaresque picture of emerging youth. @Meredith Taylor
The Pardo d’Oro winner Akiplėša (Toxic) LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
100,000,000,000,000 the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Director and writer Virgil Vernier is one of the singular new voices in French cinema whose work blends fiction, documentary and myth.
His look at grifters on the Cote d’Azur carries an unsettling message from China but ultimately overstays its welcome at just over an hour with some superficial scenes and a confusing opening.
Essentially a three-hander this narrative documentary drifts along aimlessly offering snapshots of the scuzzy characters inhabiting its glitzy location of Monaco: a male mixed heritage sex worker, a Serbian ‘stone healer’ and the 12 year old daughter of Chinese immigrants purportedly building their island to escape the threat of a forthcoming apocalypse.
Anyone can carve a niche for themselves in a place where there is money to burn and people who want to burn it. Vernier’s third feature aims to give a voice to his drifters but only skims the surface of their empty lives. There is nothing appealing or vulnerable about this trio to help us feel sympathy or engage with them particularly the male prostitute who has a high opinion of himself for no apparent reason and regards his clients with scorn. At least the Serbian woman Vesna is trying to find herself and make a better life. Vacuous like the characters and location they inhabit. A lost opportunity to make us engage with their plight and understand their motivations @Meredith Taylor
Afine, la trentaine, vit à Monaco. Un matin, un homme qui court six jours par semaine, lui propose de devenir son coach sportif de façon à lui sculpter un corps de rêve. On se demande si Afine a eu une relation avec cet homme. La scène suivante montre Afine en présence d’une femme beaucoup plus âgée. Il est un gigolo. Il se botox les lèvres et mène une vie oisive sur la Côte-d’Azur.
Un peu plus tard, Afine et trois amies discutent de leurs relations sexuelles avec les clients. Le sujet est surtout de gagner un maximum d’argent pour pouvoir vivre plus aisément. Les trois amies s’en vont à Singapour en espérant y trouver une vie meilleure.
Noël 2022, il partage le réveillon avec une amie serbe qui a la garde d’une adolescente. Lors de cette veillée de Noël, on a l’impression que les trois personnes forment une jolie famille recomposée. Il n’en est rien. Son amie serbe est, elle aussi, une prostituée qui se cherche une reconversion. L’adolescente est une chinoise dont les parents font du business dans le bâtiment. Ils construisent un complexe immobilier à Monaco et aussi une île quelque part.
Les scènes très lentes et surtout les plans fixes, semblent montrer l’ennui de cet hiver 2023 ou peut-être seulement l’ennui du protagoniste principal. C’est au tour de son amie serbe de partir. Nous sommes en janvier 2023. C’est la fin des vacances scolaires. L’adolescente chinoise doit reprendre l’école. Afine regarde son amie serbe et la jeune chinoise partir en hélicoptère. La vie d’Afine est vide. On ne lui voit pas de centre d’intérêt. Gérard Marcadé
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | MAIN COMPETITION
48,359 Russians have so far lost their lives since Russia invaded the Ukraine in February 2022. Meanwhile on the other side of the conflict a lonely old woman gathers her things. She’s chosen to stay in her building. Her son leaves her with a final kiss.
English air workers Elizabeth and Jonny, from British Expeditionary Aid and Rescue, are on a mission to care for Ukraine’s ageing and infirm – some are blind, some crippled – and to keep them relatively safe from danger, and identity the dead. They present the new face of the burgeoning aid effort.
Austrian auteur Juri Rechinsky turns his artful camera on the survivors – mostly women with babies and young children. These are the forgotten people. Philosophical and positive the old look on the bright side. Cheering each other up. “I nearly died nine times down the mines. It wasn’t my destiny. Who knows what my fate will be”.
Then there are the volunteers. Bringing up the bodies. A jaw, a skull. The back of a head. A gold ring and a bracelet stuffed into a bag and stuck with a note on the white plastic covering. People with children wait in the station, wondering where to go. This is the messy side of war, if ever there was one clean one. Far away from the front lines. Where is the glory here?.
How can you make an arthouse film about death, mud and broken bodies?. This one manages to see the beauty in the beastly. A burning sunset. An ambulance chasing along to the mortuary in the frosty light of dawn. The camera records the intimate details. It captures the physical effort of carrying dead bodies, forcing them into body bags and slipping those into coffins. Form filling. Endless cataloguing. Finding order in chaos. Old ladies having their hair styled by a coiffeur eager to offer his services. No one needs hairdressers now.
The voyeuristic camera takes us into the mortuary to watch as relatives grief in their jagged sorrow. People kneeling along the roadside to honour the dead. Rechinsky keeps his distance from this grim subject but there is dark humour too, especially for the old ones who take a measured view of war and suffering. Impossible not to shed a tear. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | CRITICS’ WEEK
Dir: Tato kotatishvilli | Georgia, Netherlands · 2024 · DCP 2K · Color · 95′ · o.v. Georgian
After a family funeral young Gonga and his cousin Bart, a sort of Georgian Laurel and Hardy combo, find a suitcase full of rusty crosses in a scrapyard, Bart gets the idea to turn them into neon crucifixes and sell them door-to-door to the gullible inhabitants of Tbilisi.
After spraying the crossed they spend the night in their van only to be woken the next morning by a Roma coffee seller and enjoy a breakfast of fruit and bread. Passers by then offer them marketing tips to sell their wares
Following a chronicle three act progression the two finally manage to make abit of money and toast their friends to a long life with “plenty of eating drinking and fucking” until Bart makes a fatal mistake that provides the piece with a minor dramatic twist.
In their eventful crusade through the suburbs of the city the director captures the essence of his hometown Tbilisi through a series of moving tableaux.Holy Electricity is as much a travelogue as a demonstration of how Georgians forge love and friendship through this story of Gonga and Bart. Listening to Tbilisi’s music, absorbing its colours and textures, feeling its mood and capturing the zeitgeist.
We meet the famous stray dogs their ears tagged to demonstrate their vaccinated status and fed by passers-by, and a community of cats, a beggar singing got his supper reveals the poignancy of a nation where the poor are really pool (not just professionals out to make a buck).
Although second billed to Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price’s first effective horror lead came nearly fifteen years before ‘House of Wax’ succeeding Claude Rains in the title role of ‘The Invisible Man Returns’. Again the character is heard not seen, requiring an actor with an impressive voice (although as with the original the appearance of the actor playing the invisible man is more familiar to the viewer today than when the film was originally released).
Lacking the ruthlessness of James Whales’ version, visually the production is up to Universal’s usual high standards, with novelties such as an invisible guinea pig, the invisible man silhouetted by a puff of smoke from Cecil Kellaway’s cigar and helping himself to a scarecrow’s clothes. Richard Chatten
Enigmatic award-winning cinematic maverick Ben Rivers, who crossed between the chasm that separates cinema and video art, returns with another look at Jake Williams; who he has featured in his early shorts and the feature film Two Years At Sea. The film will premiere as part of the International Competition at this year’s Locarno film festival.
Made over a period of around a year, Rivers went up to Scotland five times during that period, staying for 10 days on each visit, and as usual he shot on his own old Bolex and a super 16mm Aaton. Like the previous film this gives the film an unworldly look akin to the silent cinema of both Dreyer and Murnau.
The subject of Bogancloch is Jake Williams, a spiritual cousin to the American transcendentalists. A modern day frontiersman who lives in the highlands of Scotland. His life is very much a physical one. He’s a musician and he also used to work as a supply science teacher at a local school. One sequence shows him in the classroom with a group of kids who listen in rapt attention as he explains the inner workings of the sun. This is very much a different way of living, one even that can be envied.
There is a sense of stillness, always it seems in the work of Rivers, alongside sound and found musical experiences, which feature among others: everything from jazz to campfire singalongs to Persian and Indian music and even a bit of the poetry of Seamus Heaney.
There is no explanation or simplistic contextualisation, there just is. There are colourful inserts of degrading photographs the younger Jake had taken on his travels as a merchant seaman mainly in the Middle East and India. Everything you need to know should breathe in through the lines of Williams’ face. A face that makes one think of other lived in faces of experience: Auden and Beckett.
This a film of purity, of both vision and existence. At times there is a dancing sense of kinesis at the edge of the frame that makes it seem like remembrance of things past while being situated in the real. A flickering in sparks and electricity that indicates the flickering flame of Brechtian doubt which proves the real.
As we watch in wonder one thinks: are we observing reality or in reality? Rivers seems to discover a place where he is forgotten and his subjects just are. He has discovered the anti uncertainty principle it seems.
Illustrating time is difficult (as it is a construct), it is different when anxious or happy. That is subjective time, then there is objective time which is mechanical and cannot be argued with. The Greeks know and understand this and separated time into either Chronos time or Kairos time which is the qualitative time of life. Kairos dictates what is said and done, and must be done at the right time. This is pure cinematic Kairos.
Sarah est autrichienne. Elle est passionnée de MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). On lui propose d’être coach de fitness en Jordanie. Cela lui semble être un super boulot, lorsqu’elle découvre son nouveau lieu de travail, une magnifique villa de la banlieue d’Amman. Son boulot se transforme vite en tout à fait autre chose que ce qu’elle avait imaginée. La première séance de fitness a à peine commencé que l’une de ses clientes, trois sœurs, se retire en prétextant être blessée. A la fin du premier jour de travail, on pense que les trois sœurs, sont plus intéressées par les séries TV, le maquillage et le shopping que par le goût de l’effort de faire du sport. On pense qu’elles sont capricieuses.
Petit à petit, Sarah découvre une autre réalité. Elle comprend que les trois sœurs sont enfermées dans une prison dorée. La villa familiale est luxueuse. Mais les trois sœurs sont totalement privées de liberté. Les parents sont absents. Leur frère veille sur elles, mais est aussi le geôlier. Les trois sœurs ne sortent pas sans garde du corps. Elles n’ont pas d’accès libre à Internet.
De son côté, Sarah semble être perdue. Y a-t-il du sens à sa vie? Elle se saoule au bar de son hôtel. Complètement ivre, elle s’en va en discothèque seule dans ce pays qu’elle ne connaît pas. Elle est complètement inconsciente des risques qu’elle prend. On a peur pour elle.
Sarah se lie avec les trois sœurs. A nouveau, elle prend des risques inconsidérés lorsqu’elle accepte d’apporter son aide aux trois sœurs qui veulent s’enfuir. Lors de la scène interminable où Sarah conduit une voiture dans le parking d’un grand centre commercial, avec les trois sœurs à bord, nous comprenons très vite que la fuite est vouée à l’échec.
De retour en Autriche, Sarah retrouve sa sœur et sa nièce. Le contraste, entre sa vie en Autriche et son aventure en Jordanie, est saisissant. La réalisatrice nous laisse imaginer ce qui a pu arriver aux trois sœurs jordaniennes.
Gérard Marcadé (qui accepte de jouer le jeu et s’improvise critique de cinéma)
John Sturges of The Great Escape fame started life as an editor before Harry Cohn, president of Columbia, offered him a job after the war when the studio made cheap pictures appealing to distributors. Sturges’ final film there was this high quality western made in Death Valley where the mercury was touching 49 degrees.
An intrepid search for gold – purportedly buried in a waggon – kicks off on the Mexican border where the shifting sands sparkle in Charles Lawton Jr’s chiaroscuro cinematography. The bounty hunters are Randolph Scott, William Bishop, Jerome Courtland and Ella Raines and their turbulent travails are accompanied by the dulcet strains of crooner Josh White’s guitar. Such was the heat that the sweat evaporated from the actors’ bodies so Sturges was obliged to adorn them in grease and glycerine to mimic it. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | RETROSPECTIVE 2024
Episodes from the life of Luce an aimless young woman living in Rome is the latest feature from director duo Luca Bellini and Silvio Luzzi.
Partly told in Roman dialect the drama unfolds in bleak winter in a cold and rainy Southern Italy: One day on the beach, Luce has a sudden inspiration, and from that moment on her life also becomes someone else’s. A voice on her cellphone provides a tenuous line between her desires, her imagination, and the world around her.
Luce is disillusioned by love and life in general. By day she works in a noisy leather factory – and this is film that is incredibly noisy with its jarring score – by night she hangs out with an unreliable photographer in a relationship that’s heading nowhere. The women in her life are mostly unsupportive and tell her not to take life so seriously. So much for the sisterhood.
But one day on the beach she gets an idea in her head and becomes obsessed by it. Then come the anonymous phone calls from a man claiming to be her father. This disembodied stranger offers comfort and stability and the intimacy she has been missing. But is this just another man to let her down, or is it her real father?. Fact and fantasy meld and mesmerise us in this fuzzy reverie.
Essentially a one-hander with close up and personal camerawork from Jacopo Caramella and driven forward by its antsy atmosphere we really gets inside Luce’s world and experience what it’s like to be a downcast twenty something: confused, depressed and lonely. Marianna Fontana gives a soulful and sensitive interpretation of Luce in this intimate and refreshingly novel portrait of modern womanhood untethered by kids, companionship and close caring family. @MeredithTaylor
Radu Jude’s fascination with death is taken up again here in his enigmatically entitled Sleep#2 which makes a suitable companion piece to his 2017 outing The Dead Nation commemorating the Romanian Holocaust with a stunning collection of photos of long-dead uncelebrated Romanians from 1930s and 40s.
The Romanian auteur thought it would be interesting to focus this latest macabre documentary – one of two films he has screening in this year’s 77th Locarno International Film Festival – on the phenomenon of post mortem surveillance with an offbeat look at the final resting place of the American artist and trend-setter Andy Warhol (1928-87) in Pennsylvania. During his lifetime Warhol, a Rutherian Catholic, celebrated celebrity culture coining the phrase “15 minutes of fame”, and this film shows how his own celebrity status still draws visitors to his grave in St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, Bethel Park nearly forty years after his death. This time there are no faces to gawp at only a stone commemoration.
A static camera pictures the Warhol grave site 24/7 throughout the seasons, by night and day. Those seeking a more dynamic action film can look away, this is very much in the style of documentarian Sergei Loznitsa’s 2016 outing Austerlitz. and says as much about the spectators as the subject matter itself. Jude films the livecam footage from a collaborative project between the Warhol family and EarthCam called simply ‘Figment’
We see the burial place in early summer with its stunning blue cornflowers right through to Christmas time as rain and snow fall heavily eventually engulfing the tombstone with its ever present decoration of Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup tins (from the 1962 painting) serving as a constant tribute to the artist’s pop art endeavour. The ambient score of traffic thunders on in the background and visitors and caretakers come and go each making their passive and active contributions. Inter-titles aim to offer placatory and euphemistic musings on death etc. What is the message here? Well let’s say it’s open to interpretation. Make of what you will. @MeredithTaylor.
SCREENING AT LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dir: Richard Quine | Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovaks, Hermione Gingold | Fantasy Drama 106′ 1958
If you thought your in-laws are weird check out Kim Novak’s brood in this film.
Cary Grant actively sought the lead in this glossy comedy in colour; which Hitchcock ironically used as the excuse not to cast Jimmy Stewart in ‘North by Northwest’, and is now vaguely remembered as the ‘other’ film he made with Kim Novak (whose beauty always seemed almost supernatural).
Dir: Richard Hunter | United Kingdom · 2024 · DCP 2K· 108′ · o.v. English / Mandarin
Richard hunter has made a bit of a name for himself in the disgusting horror genre so his feature debut more or less speaks for itself and lives up to expectations with its vile and often ludicrous compendium of short stories vignetting the unkind, unpleasant or squeamishly ghastly unfolding as a collection of filmed sequences all based on reality.
Along similar lines to TVs Candid Canera – if you remember it – albeit with a macabre twist, this has to be seen to be believed. The characters are nasty, weird and some are just downright sad – like the guy who orders a pair of six inches long shorts. Or the porn addicted vicar stuck in a sexless marriage and plagued by maggot-infested cupboards conjuring up the worst fears of sleeping in your own bedroom.
Hunter intertwines them together to provide a running gag that ramps up a low level tension. It keeps us gripped to the screen throughoutthe feature’s one and three quarter hour’s running time. Ultimately watchable and entertaining this is easy and enjoyable viewing although the final reveals are more bathetic than satisfying. @MeredithTaylor
FOUL EVIL DEEDS (CONCORSO CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE) Saturday 8th at 6pm
Dirs/Wri: Matthieu Delaporte, Alexandre De La Patellière | Cast: Pierre Niney, Anaïs Demoustier, Bastien Bouillon, Laurent Lafitte, Patrick Mille, Anamaria Vartolomei, Vassili Schneider, Julien De Saint-Jean, Pierfrancesco Favino | France. 2024. 178mins
The Napoleonic era is seen in a different light from Ridley Scott’s recent epic in this swashbuckling sortie into French history from 19th literary darling Alexandre Dumas based on his storied hero The Count of Monte Cristo.
In 1812 Napoleon’s fleet is embattled in churning seas when a dashing young sailor gets his kit off to save a young woman from drowning. It’s an act that will bring him promotion to captain of the fleet and to ask the hand of his sweetheart. He is Edmund Dantes (Pierre Niney), she is Mercedes (Demoustier). And what a lovely couple they make. Edmund shyly sexy and Mercedes quivering with nubile bliss. But there’s a niggle in the woodpile in the shape of a jealous rival – in fact several – determined to thwart him at every turn. And no sooner than the lovers’ lips are dry from their post nuptial kiss than Edmund is seized on a charge of treason and imprisoned on the forbidding Chateau d’If in an island off the Marseille coast.
This epic adventure written by Delaporte and De La Patelliere is a tale rife with revenge and intrigue in a complex plot bursting with romance, sword play and fabulous settings. And it’s Niney’s most ambitious role to date. There are several baddies to contend with, Fernand de Morcef (Bouillon) who fancies Mercedes, scheming prosecutor Gerard de Villefort (Lafitte) who imprisons him without trial, and the curiously named Danglars (Mille) whom Edmonde replaced as captain. But of course Dantes is the focus as we soon find out why in his intriguing character evolvement from earnest young salt to hard-bitten hero.
After fourteen years of incarceration in his dank dungeon Edmund miraculously tools through a gap in the stone walls and comes face to face with a distant relative of the Monte Cristo in the shape of fellow prisoner (Abbe) Pier Francesco Favino. A close bond of trust forms in these challenging circumstances and Abbe divulges the location of his family treasure before tragedy strikes on the eve of a tension-fuelled escapade to uncover the secret of the hidden booty. But on returning home Edmund discovers that his love is now married to his ‘best friend’ and that his father has died of a broken heart.
Zipping through its three hour running time this tale of derring-do then transports us to a lavish palace where our hero has slipped into a more mysterious guise as the soi disant Comte de Monte Cristo, a raffish, tee totaller seeking justice but killing only in his defence, and supported by sidekicks, Andréa (Julien De Saint-Jean) and the enigmatic Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), who both have axes to grind with Edmund’s enemies. Residing in an opulent palace showcasing his newly acquired fortune Edmund sets out to exact retribution, and we root for him until the end, in this classically styled adventure drama with solid gold production values and sweepingly romantic score. @MeredithTaylor
A girl inherits her mother’s failing sewing business but soon finds herself spinning the perfect crime with the tools of her trade in this ingenious, if repetitive, feature debut from Freddy McDonald screening at the Locarno International Film Festival’s 77th edition
Barbara’s mother’s has only one customer left – and boy is she difficult and rude. Grace Vessier (Caroline Goodall) is getting married for the third time — her house is in an Alpine valley; providing the film with its stunning scenery. Quite why it’s set in Switzerland is never explained as all the characters speak English.
During the fraught fitting Barbara (Eve Connolly) drops a vital pearl button from Grace’s dress, so she must rush back to base on a life-changing journey. And it’s here that matters turn criminal. On the road back Barbara comes across an accident – or is it? Two bleeding bikers (Calum Worth, John Lynch), a briefcase, two guns and several bags of a white powder are strewn across the tarmac.
Sew Tornis a tricksy bit of Neo noir Macdonald making use of repetative motifs in a multi-stranded narrative that mulls over Barbara’s possible options in what soon emerges is a botched drug deal.
Should she commit the “Perfect crime… Call the police… Drive away.” Her mind whirls with questions. At first she thinks of driving off with the briefcase, presumably full of loot.Barbara mulls over the three options, each is explored with their various outcomes, and this is where the repetitive element kicks in. None are ideal but probably the final one that involves a dance routine in a bar is watchable. Barbara may have an ailing business on her hands but she sure is imaginative. MeredithTaylor
Christmas time in 1980s Vicenza. And a child is born to Maria (Valentina Bellé), the spoilt and troubled wife of a wealthy doctor Osvaldo (Paolo Pierobon) . But this little girl Rebecca (Sara Ciocca) faces a lifetime of rejection simply because the birthmark flies in the face of her mother’s pride and selfishness exposing deep fault lines in this illustrious family.
La Vita Accanto is the sensitiveand classically styled latest film
from award-winning director Marco Tullio Giordano who directs from a script by Marco Bellocchio (who also produces) based on the book by Mariapia Veladiano
Sadly Maria was never fulfilled despite wealth and a loving husband and when her daughterborn with a facial blemish she had the perfect excuse to channel her anguish into Rebecca’s blemish making her young life fraught and miserable
Fortunately Rebecca’s aunt, a famous pianist, instills in her the love of music and restores her faith in her appearance. And her faithful friend Lucilla and her mother Beba also rebuild her confidence. Her father is also endlessly patient and kind.
With its rousing classical score and immaculate direction this is a highly intelligent and elegantly crafted drama that shows how a mother’s mental illness not only causes family dysfunction, but seriously disrupts a daughter’s wellbeing affecting her development. Crucially the body can also heal itself because medicine is not an exact science. MeredithTaylor
Ever thought of killing someone dear to you? Mar Coll is a Goya awarded Catalan filmmaker competing in this year’s Golden Leopard competition and her latest feature Salve Maria certainly presents a convincing portrait of a woman on the edge with murder in mind .
Based on a novel by Basque writer Katixa Agirre it follows Maria a new mother struggling with her baby: the breastfeeding, the gruelling tiredness; the constant grizzling are all getting her down. And you really feel for her. So when she hears about the case of a French mother, accused of murdering her infant twins, Maria is shocked but not altogether surprised.
Maria becomes increasingly obsessed by this terrible crime and begins to fantasise about her own stressful situation until the idea of killing seems less outlandish than she originally thought. A grave orchestral score strikes the sombre mood lifting this domestic thriller elevating into much darker territory despite a rather underwhelming denouement. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Courtney Stephens,Callie Hernandez | Writers: Callie Hernandez, Courtney Stephens | Cast: Callie Hernandez, Sahm McGlynn, Lucy Kaminsky, Tony Torn, James N. Kienitz Wilkins | US Drama
“Of all the ways to lose a person death is the kindest“
On a tight budget Carrie picks out a black plastic box for the body of her conspiracy-minded father in the aftermath to his death. The only thing he leaves her – the patent for an experimental healing device, and a pile of debts. A fascinating premise turns into a sensitive psychological drama from US filmmakers Stephens and Hernandez, who also plays the main role.
Carrie then embarks on a series of meetings with her father’s collaborators in an attempt to discover more about her legacy and her dad’s life. Through these offbeat encounters she gradually builds up a picture of the man she hardly knew, and she also discovers some bizarre conspiracy theories.
Featuring archives from Callie Hernandez’s late father, this oddball and darkly comic film explores the process of mourning for a madcap parent. Oddly, the filmmaking itself becomes a part of the process with its electronic organ score and some visual flourishes adding to the bizarre ambiance.
There are some inventive ideas here and the filmmakers adopt an episodic approach to the narrative that plays out with a series of wacky character sketches and imaginative concepts. Occasionally the camera cuts to a bleached out sequence that feels like a flashback but is ultimately confusing in the scheme of things. There are also clips of filmed footage featuring other outlandish gadgets and inventions and these give this watchable and memorable film its tongue in cheek humour. The directors also point out the following which I found relevant and insightful: “Invention also serves as a portrait of America in its late period, a country in which widespread disappointment infuses the culture with hopeful fictions and toxic nostalgia”. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | Pardo for Best Performance | Callie Hernandez | CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE
Dir: Liliana Cavani | Cast: Mickey Rourke, Helena Bonham Carter | Italy, Docudrama, 157’
A film by the director of ‘The Night Porter’ starring Mickey Rourke – depicted as less of a tree-hugger but complete with obligatory skinny-dipping scene – as Francis of Assisi might sound like a grotesque joke, and ‘Francesco’ certainly generated more headlines than ticket sales over the controversy worked up by the papers when they collectively threw up their hands in outrage at reports that Rourke had donated his proceeds from this film to the IRA.
Wri/Dir: Aislinn Clarke | Cast: Clare Monnelly, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya| Ireland, Horror, Gaelic Irish 103’
The past comes back to haunt a young Irish care worker in this macabre fantasy horror from director and first time feature scripter Aislinn Clarke.
In rural Ireland Catholic guilt and fear remains an oppressive theme even today in the 21st century. And it certainly troubles a young bride who takes her own life on the night of her marriage, in the film’s opening scenes.
In this Irish Gaelic feature, billed as the country’s first horror outing in the language, Clarke, best known for her director debut The Devil’s Doorway, makes inspired use of all the evocative horror tropes connected to Irish folklore: horseshoes, Billy goats and dispossessed voices – not to mention a glowing scarlet cross. Clarke confident direction relies on atmosphere to string together a series of terrifying events in the domestic environment where women are struggling in difficult circumstances.
The main character Shoo, recovering from a personal tragedy, has a gruelling and unforgiving time as a trainee care worker tasked with looking after an agoraphobic patient in a remote country setting. You can’t help feeling sorrow for Shoo’s poor charge Peig (Brid Ni Meachtain) a tortured widow desperately missing her dead husband Daithi (Og Lane) and coping with early onset dementia and plagued by the Na Sídhe – sinister entities whom she believes abducted her decades before. Peig clearly just wants to be left alone in her own home and is plagued by But somehow the women’s past traumas intermingle with alarming results, despite Peig’s initial antipathy towards her young helper.
There are certainly shades of The Whicker Man and St Maud (2019) here but the accent is on female camaraderie and this Irish horror outing doesn’t quiet exert the same chill or twisted humour as Rose Glass did in her care-worker thriller with its unnerving sensory specificity, despite some impressive ideas and committed performances from TV and theatre actor Clare Monelly in the lead role. @MeredithTaylor
After winning the Best Director prize at the 2021 Berlinale Ramon & Silvan Zürcher return with what they describe as the third film in their animal trilogy which premiered in the International Competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
We are introduced to a pastoral scene that envelops a sense of dread as a bourgeois household begins to welcome a family get together to celebrate a birthday. Karen lives with her husband Markus and their children in her idyllically located childhood home. For Markus’ birthday, Karen’s sister Jule, her husband Jurek and their two children come to visit. All of them looming among the lush green of summer and with the regal blaze to come alongside the brute centre part of an iridescent moth.
The normal representations of a very similar scenario are all here: Families and their oppressive nature, tension between sisters, mothers and daughters and the constant competition and finally the way a family home holds memories and negativity. The problems with these tropes are the need to distinguish yourself from the great works that have come before you. For a time Der Spatz im Kamin manages to do this and intrigues the audience with what will come.
As we slowly begin to engage with the characters, the tropes slowly merge into cliche: the duality of the sisters, Karen is stern and rigid, constantly internalising her sense of self hatred and Jule, easy going, rhythmical and superficially happy. Jules’ daughter Johanna and the back and forth between them of boundaries being pushed which seems to hide more than the usual teenage rebellion. An unspoken visual clue is how alike both emotionally and physically Johanna and Jule are. Of course alongside that is Johanna’s burgeoning sexuality and her discovery of that power.
Like their previous films this is constantly surrounded by animals, insects and nature both in the house and outside of it. In fact the house is completely open, with windows and doors allowing the coexistence of both human and nature. In fact the house in itself and it’s unspoken history is alive to the constant discourse (both internal and external) between characters that always seems to take place in rooms and doorways.
Brushing against their family at certain moments is Liv who recently moved into the small house on the edge of the woods and who harbours numerous secrets most predictably that she is sleeping with Karen’s husband Markus.
In the second half it really loses its way and descends into the obvious with metaphor after metaphor: cracked plates, smashed glass. For a film that is trying to go beyond verbal language it really begins to sell itself short becoming a constant metaphor intermingled with tonal non sequiturs. A low rent Angela Schanelec is what springs to mind and to come we have children murdering animals and of course a burning house and the idea of character rebirth and wife/mistress swapping roles and personalities. Like I have pointed out earlier trope after trope that doesn’t won them and do anything different than we have seen in far better films.
Locarno International Film Festival 2024 starts on August the 7th on the mountainside shores of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland’s Ticino canton. Here are some films to look out for:
PIAZZA GRANDE strand
La Deluge
The last days of Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV play out in the lavish costume drama from Gianluca Godice and starring Guillaume Canet and Melanie Laurent.
Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Directed by Orson Wells this cult classic is screening as part of this year’s Retrospective ‘Lady with a Torch – The Centenary of Columbia Pictures’. The film has been restored from a 4k scan of the original negative with a restored audio from the 35mm nitrate original soundtrack negative
Gaucho Gaucho (2024)
Dwek and Kershaw’s pristine black and white images are the stars of this fascinating sortie into the world of the Argentinian horseman, both male and female
Timestalker (2024)
The definition of madness: Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. English writer/director Alice Lowe’s entertaining imagination looks at one woman’s amorous experiences.
CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE strand
Foul Evil Deeds (2024)
Evil knows no bounds according to this horror feature from UK director Richard Hunter who dives into the minds of the bad and bizarre with his candid camera.
La Passion Selon Béatrice (2024)
Belgian maverick director Fabrice Du Welz returns this time in black white and casting Beatrice Dalle in a physiological thriller
FUORI CONCORSO strand
Romanian auteur Radu Jude wowed audiences with his proactive comp title Do Not Expect much From the End of the World that took the jury prize at last year’s Locarno. This time he has two films at this 77th edition – the enigmatically entitled Sleep #2 (that has no dialogue) and Eight Postcards from Utopia that captures his post-socialist homeland through the medium of advertising.
Raiz (2024)
Past and present collide in this enchanting award-winning drama from Franco Garcia Becerra that had already garnered prizes at Berlinale and Seattle this year, and follows an eight-year-old alpaca farmer Feliciano. He is ecstatic when Peru has the opportunity to qualify for the World Cup.
CRITICS WEEK strand
Beyond Guilt (2024)
The true crime genre is perhaps one of the most popular with the audience today. TV series, podcasts, and documentaries all over the world investigate murders, disappearances, and other crime events with an emotional emphasis on victims and perpetrators. In contrast Beyond Guilt looks at the “collateral” victims of a shocking serial murder case, documenting the daily life of the parents of Niels Högel, a German serial killer nurse convicted of killing about 90 patients.
Dir: Tim Harper | With the voices of: Amandla Stenberg, Dean-Charles Chapman, Donald Sutherland, Laura Dern | Animation 97’
Ozi is an adorable orphan orangutan who is separated from her family during a manmade fire and uses her special influencer skills to save her forest and home from deforestation.
It’s a measure of the increasingly high profile that animated features are enjoying that the late Donald Sutherland lent to this film his vocal talents to the role of a crocodile called ‘Smiley’ (rather aptly since Sutherland’s menacing smile had long been a characteristic of his)
Ozi himself is a cute little tyke, with a mop of bright red hair, big brown eyes, secure in her cuteness for her father to plead vainly “Don’t do the eyes!”, blessed with a worldly wit and able to operate an ipad.
Human rapaciousness inevitably gets short shrift; humanity’s Humanity’s saving grave coming in the form of two friendly forest rangers. @RichardChatten
Dir: Edgar Pera | Experimental/Fantasy Doc | Portugal 2024
Hats are the watchwords in this beguiling cinematic creation from Portuguese maverick filmmaker Edgar Pera.
Zooming in over the skyscrapers of New York this monochrome musing explores and draws comparisons between the enigmatic lives of two contemporary writers from the modernist literary movement: Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), who adopted a series of different noms de plume each with their own separate intellectual Identity, and the horror poet and novelist Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937).
Worlds apart yet united by their unique brand of science fiction horror the two engaged in correspondence, although they never came face to face. Pessoa was best known for his idiosyncratic heteronyms (a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling eg ‘tear’) to reflect on how individuals can also have multiple personas and different facets of their own lives. The multi-coloured frames contain a series of black and white photos of be-hatted men who each utter maxims from the annuls of literature.
The maverick Portuguese moviemaker Edgar Pera makes us of split screens, Ai generated images and a syncopated electronic score with his signature echoing voices (think O Barao) creatingpossibly the most meaty and accomplished experimental horror of his career to date. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | CONCORSO INTERNATIONAL 2024
Dir: Cesar Diaz | Cast: Berenice Bejo, Fermin Martinez, Leonardo Ortisgris, Julieta Egurrola, Matheo Labbe | Drama 89’
Another fascinating slice of history from Latin America in the Seventies that unfolds in Guatemala, 1976. A terrified woman runs along the street with a baby boy. She is Maria, a Guatemalan rebel activist fighting against the corrupt military dictatorship. Now desperate to save her life amid death threats she must flee to Mexico, leaving her son behind.
Ten years later, when he comes to live with her, she is forced to choose between her duties as a mother and continuing her revolutionary activism. Berenice Bejo gives her all in this passionate portrait of divided loyalties from La fremis-trained director Cesar Diaz of Amores Perros and Our Mothers fame. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | CONCORSO INTERNATIONALE 2024
There’s a retro 1980s feel to this noirish neon crime thriller set in Luxembourg’s louche underworld.
La Mort viendra (Death Will Come) is writer director Christoph Hochhäusler’s follow-up to his Berlinale Silver Bear winner Till the End of the Night. Screening in the main International Competition lineup in of this year’s Locarno film festival this is a tense and twisty thriller that certainly punches above its weight elevated by an evocative score and gritty monochrome street scenes reminiscent of Seventies crime fare Day of the Jackal and the French Connection although on a much more modest scale.
The film follows a stylish crime boss (Louis-Do de Lencquesain) who hires a sassy hit woman called Tez (Sophie Verbeeck) to track down one of his most valued couriers. But Tez – a sort of grown up Nikita – soon gets out of her depth and becomes entangled in a conspiracy in the criminal underworld that rather runs out of steam in the final stretch but it’s decent and watchable – and guess what? – there’s a lesbian twist. MeredithTaylor
Dir: Edward D Wood Jnr | Cast: Bêla Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Tony McKoy, Loretta KingUS Horror | 69’ 1955
During the sixties Orson Welles had at one point planned to end his version of Don Quixote with a nuclear explosion, a goal in which he was preempted by Ed Wood by ten years.
Talking Pictures preceded this afternoon’s screening with the disclaimer that viewers might find this film disturbing. But anybody perplexed at the brevity of Bela Lugosi’s final screen appearance in ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ will not be disappointed with this earlier film he made for Edward D. Wood Jr.
Wood on this occasion doesn’t show his tendency to sermonise, even demonstrating a little imagination with some mumbo-jumbo about the origins of the Loch Ness Monster. Lugosi is given a much more substantial role, top-billed as whip-wielding mad scientist Dr Erich Vornoff hiding out in a cottage in the middle of a swamp whose most extravagant feature is an enormous laboratory in the basement where he keeps a pet octopus to which the good doctor and his mouth-breathing assistant Lobo by feeding it guests. @RichardChatten
Dir: Francis Searle | Cast:· Michael Medwin. Ronnie Martin · Garry Marsh. Kapel · Yvonne Owen. Sally Martin · Hugh Latimer | UK Comedy drama 1950
A young Michael Medwin overacts like crazy in a rare leading role in this second adaptation of a play first filmed as a thirties quota quickie; an impression reinforced by the presence of Garry Marsh and Danny Green as the heavies.
The whimsical nature of this early production by Hammer veteran Anthony Hinds is established from the outset as the cast cheerfully breach the fourth wall turning and smiling at the camera (although the scene where Marsh menacingly bears down on the bound heroine wielding a lighted cigar would have seemed like strong meat even in Hammer’s later horror thrillers).
The acoustics of the country house already a familiar feature of Exclusive productions and the actors’ breath in the exteriors adds substance along with Walter Harvey’s atmospheric high contrast photography. @RichardChatten
A story of everyman lost in the crowd yet relevant to each one of us. King Vidor’s 1928 silent epic sees a young couple, John an advertising copywriter, and his wife Mary very much in love as they struggle through their ordinary life with all its pettiness and glory. John’s dream is to write an award-winning slogan but their world is turned upside by a family tragedy. Full of hope and sadness and Vidor’s magnificent mise en scène Thé Crowd shows man as a cog in life’s machinery on widescreen shots of New York, the Niagara Falls, the parks and the beach. Vidor captures the universality of experience with two expressive performances from Eleanor Boardman and James Murray and a rousing score by Carl Davis.
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | August 7 – 17 2024 | opening film
Dir: David Drury | Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Denholm Elliott, Greta Scacchi, Ian Bannen | UK political thriller 96’
Opening with a night scene taking place in East Anglia but rather strangely described by an onscreen caption identifying the location as ‘East England’; back in the capital what follows is a prime example of the didactic political dramas that did so much to tame the iron heel of Thatcherism in eighties Britain.
Although affecting the style of a thriller and enlivened by the presence of the likes of Ian Bannen, Denholm Elliott , Fulton Mackay – and Robbie Coltrane – the film, based on a novel by Martin Stellman, contains my favourite example of a character doing something that one would only ever do in a movie when Gabriel Byrne (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) empties a newly opened carton of orange juice (we actually see him take it from the fridge and tear it open so there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s full) straight down the sink rather than into a jug simply to use the empty carton to place documents inside it. @RichardChatten
The Trouble with Jessica is of those spiky satires that hangs on a series of conundrums, the characters tossing the ball from one to the other as they scope how each thorny dilemma with ultimately affect them.
It all takes place in the leafy literati village of Hampstead, North London, where Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (Alan Tidy) have invited a coterie of close friends for a pre-sale last supper in their flashy double-fronted mansion. The dish of the day, a cherry clafoutis (a type of French pudding), features as the star turn, and may be the reason the film won the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at last year’s Dinard British Film Festival.
Shirley Henderson is terrific as the hard-as-nails hostess Sarah, her husband Tom is an architect. The plot turns on their desperate need to the family house or face financial ruin. Rufus Sewell is a hot shot barrister. Much to Sarah’s annoyance, his wife Beth (Olivia Williams) has brought along her friend Jessica (Indira Varma) who seems to have dated all the men and still carries for them, flirting outrageously. Suddenly, after a seemingly trivial spat, Jessica goes into the garden and hangs herself. What happens next will have you on tenterhooks although the outcome is authentic and satisfying.
Written by Matt Winn and James Handel The Trouble is witty and fun and full of insider gags that may prove less amusing for those unfamiliar with the territory. Let’s say it’s an adult affair for heterosexual highflyers. @MeredithTaylor
Redeem Me by Rechel Hananashvili took the Chalet Mestia Award for Best Project at Georgia’s Svaneti International Film Festival nestling amid vertiginous mountains in one of highest villages in Europe. The film takes place in an Israeli-Georgian household where a 12-year old girl is adjusting to domestic turmoil.
Tea Vatsadze’s Gravity won the Best Project by a Female Director Award. Gravity sees donkey farmers taking over in a post-Soviet society. A Special Mention went to Abustumani by Mariam Karkashadze
Founded and headed by local filmmaker Mariam Khachvani (Dede) in 2021, this year’s event paid tribute to two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Ostlund and showcased a comprehensive retrospective of his film archive. During the closing ceremony he also received the festival’s Honorary Goddess Dali Award and gave a masterclass on his filmmaking techniques in the UNESCO awarded village of Ushvilli that stands at 3000 metres in stunning scenery
In the Short Film Competition two additional awards went to Timur Chopliani for Best Film with Its Not Far From Here and Kim Toress from Costa Rica who won Best Director for The Moon Will Contain Us
An international jury of programmers and producers presided over the two competitions, selecting the various winners.
A programme of four digitally restored Georgian classics from the silent period was also shown during open-air late-night screenings.
Here is the full list of the winners:
Pitching Forum Competition Awards
Chalet Mestia Award for Best Project
Redeem Me – Rechel Hananashvili (Georgia)
Best Project by a Female Director
Gravity – Tea Vatsadze(Georgia)
Special Mention
Abastumani– Mariam Karkashadze(Georgia)
Short Film Competition Awards
Best Film
It’s Not Far From Here–Timur Chopliani (Georgia)
Best Director
Kim Toress– The Moon Will Contain Us(Costa Rica/USA)
Dir: Alexandre Tsutsunava | Georgia, Silent, Historical drama 190′
On the final night of the festival, on 21st July, we took to the deckchairs in Mestia’s main square to watch this dazzling snapshot of Georgian history.
According to sources, the 1920s was one of the most significant decades for Georgian cinema in terms of aesthetics and channelling the ideology of the era. Director Alexandre Tsutsunava (Qristine,1916, Who Is at Fault?/1925, Khanuma 1926, Two Hunters,1927) was one the first Georgian feature directors and studied at Moscow Art Theatre School before honing his filmmaking craft under Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
In A Rebellion in Guria Tsutsunava makes use of national motifs and artfully draws on his experience as a theatre and opera director to conjure up the seething sentiments of the Georgian ‘peasants’ who mounted a wide scale revolt against Russian colonialism in 1847.
Based on Egnate Ninoshvilli’s novel this three hour historical epic features spectacular battle set pieces and impassioned performances from A Mesniaev, K. Eristavi and I Korsunskaya chronicling the rebellion that took place in western Georgia during. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Shawn Levy, Writers: Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, Shawn Levy | Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Matthew Macfadyen | US Actioner 127′
The screen’s nerdiest superhero returns in tandem with Wolverine in a tale that probably owes as much to Shawn Levy’s earlier comedies as to Marvel comics.
The humour’s perversely juvenile considering – although it includes references both visual and verbal to other movies and the film business in general to tickle the tummy of the cinema-savvy – since the bad language, sex talk and eye-watering violence means it carries a 15 certificate.
As usual the characters devote more energy to fighting amongst themselves than evil-doers, and when they eventually do it’s almost as an afterthought.
Predictably it’s overlong and garrulous with several false endings; as our hero ruefully admits in one of the last of his frequent breaches of the fourth wall. @RichardChatten
The last and least of his Ealing comedies – dismissed by Alec Guinness as “the wretched, boring ‘Barnacle Bill’ – which I never wanted to do but only did out of friendship to Charley Friend” – ‘Barnacle Bill’ features playing yet another authority figure whose boundless self-confidence is completely unspoiled by failure and whose hubris involves sleeping in a hammock.
Recalling the depiction of the D’Ascoigne family in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ with Guinness’s ancestors played by Guinness; while lacking the subtlety of the classic Ealing comedies of yesteryear with a galumphing score by John Addison it ended the studio’s history with a whimper rather than a bang but affords the agreeable sight of Guinness shaking a leg with a young Jackie Collins in slacks and a ponytail. @RichardChatten
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Ray Milland Grace Kelly | Thriller 90’
Alfred Hitchcock doesn’t get sufficient credit for his technical enterprise which here comes into full play in his exploitation of colour and 3-D in what in less ambitious hands would have been a simple piece of canned theatre, whereas Hitchcock makes almost no attempt to open the action out; instead employing the third dimension to draw you into the action as the ten-minute take had done in ‘Rope’.
Despite his mercenary nature Ray Milland is a classic charming villain in the Hitchcock tradition who commands far greater sympathy than Grace Kelly who after all is cheating on him with Robert Cummings, whose desire to get her off the hook whose motivation is purely selfish, and John Williams – who plays an Anglo-Saxon Columbo – increasingly finds a nuisance.
Kudos too to Dimitri Tiomkin’s score, the last he wrote for a Hitchcock film. @RichardChatten
Once Chaplin finally began to talk onscreen it swiftly became apparent how fond he was of the sound of his own voice, and from that point on he never stopped – even reciting a soliloquy from Hamlet’ at one point – in ‘A King in New York’; while in support his boy Michael proves a regular chip off the old block, to whom he passes the mantle “the little fellow”.
Historically important as Chaplin’s final lead, ‘A King in New York’ proved like most of Chaplin’s later work a film whose lack of availability for several years maintained the notion that it was something special, although later reappraisal sadly proved otherwise; while Chaplin’s critique of American crassness and vulgar materialism proved heavy-handed, with it’s depiction of the HUAC as naive and simplistic as his portrayal of Hitler in ‘The Great Dictator’.
Dawn Addams’ dark gamine looks make her a classic Chaplin ingenue, Oliver Johnston, who plays his ambassador, obviously met with Chaplin’s approval since he was later invited back for ‘A Countess from Hong Kong’; while the fact that the film was made in Britain is indicated by the large number of expatriate Americans, along with Sid James in the days when he was an honorary one. @RichardChatten
Dir: Robert Rossen | Cast: Mercedes McCambridge, Joanne Dru, John Ireland, Broderick Crawford | US Noir
John Carpenter’s Escape from New York has always seemed deeply flawed by the central implausibility that a man who looked like Donald Pleasance could have been elected President in the first place.
A fundamental shortcoming that has long afflicted Presidential politics in the United States is the stress perennially placed upon ‘charisma’ which perversely encourages style over substance, encouraging demagogues and going a long way towards explaining why two of the most grotesque chancers to have occupied the presidency since the turn of the current century had little more to offer than that overrated virtue.
Actual newsreel footage of the original Huey Long attests to his great vibrance and charisma, while the current pretender to the White House more strongly resembles the venal bully Willie Stark than Long himself.
Another major similarity between the final scene of All the King’s Men (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) based on what originally happened in Baton Rouge in 1935 and Saturday’s events in Pennsylvania was the sheer lack of finesse that characterised the response of the security details on both occasions. @RichardChatten
Is hope always a good a thing, or is it just a concept there to serve our own selfish needs? This is the question Tinatin Kajrishvili explores in her latest feature.
In a remote Georgian mining town, a saint’s stone statue mounted on a crucifix presides over the surrounding countryside and serves as a fatherly figure to those who come in tribute and also ask for help and protection
Citizen Saint – screening at this year’s Svaneti International Film Festival – reflects on the way Christian symbols of all kinds provide a comforting focus to believers all over the world.
According to local folklore the saint was crucified before turning to stone three days later. But when the man on the cross mysteriously disappears during restoration work a silent stranger (George Babluani) sporting stigmata and seemingly possessing mystic powers appears in the village causing the locals to assume this is the reincarnation of the statue. Some even reflect on the many secrets they have shared with him.
Miracles soon start to happen: the stranger finds a path through the caved-in tunnel where one of the villagers, a modest man called Berdo, once lost his son in a mining accident. Up to now he has only communed with his son’s ghost but now he can connect with him. The mine becomes a place of pilgrimage with believers coming from near and far in search of hope and healing including Mari, a woman whose husband was injured in the same incident. But the focus is always on the pilgrims’ own needs and expectations rather than the saintly man himself.
The Carpathian mountains surrounding the Svaneti International Film Festival provide an evocative backcloth for viewing this intriguing parable, a third feature for Kajrishvili who crafts an imaginative story about our ability to use representational icons to our own ends. Agile camerawork by Bulgarian DoP Krum Rodriquez is one of the triumphs of this resonant feature capturing the widescreen splendour of the craggy peaks, valleys and caves in pristine monochrome with fabulous use of light and shadow.Tako Zhordania‘s score adds to this surreal ambiance, combining ancient instruments, including the two-stringed erhu, and an Orthodox choir. @MeredithTaylor
NOW SCREENING AT SVANETI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
This noirish black comedy is the lusciously lensed latest offering from Hu Guan and his longtime collaborator Rui Ge and stars awarded filmmaker Zia Zhangke alongside celebrated actor Eddie Peng who is strangely compelling in the main role.
It all starts with an accident in the remote steppe of north west China where a Clint Eastwood style drifter called Lang (Peng) comes home only to uncover the ghosts of his past. But this is no ordinary odyssey.
After escaping unscathed from an accident in the bus the skinny ex-prisoner fetches up in his hometown to discover the place is under threat from a rabid black dog. After joining the local dog patrol tasked with eliminating strays the two bond eventually and this is their unusual story.
Immaculately shot on the widescreen and brimming with thematic richness: civic and family duty; animal welfare, urban degeneration and so on this is a real treat with its sly humour, Pink Floyd score, visual acuity and an off beat script that takes its time and goes to unexpected places in telling an imaginative and moving story about a man and his best friend @MeredithTaylor
BLACK DOG will have its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (August 15-21, 2024), where it has been selected to screen Out of Competition.
Dir/Wri: Jason Yu | Fantasy Thriller, South Korea 95’
Sleep is the debut feature title of South Korean writer director Jason Yu and specifically references classic 1970s paranoia films such as The Exorcist and The Driller Killer. But the deeper resonance may be the ground breaking Ira Levin/Roman Polanski novel/film Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
Sleep is divided into three chapters and explores the relationship of a married couple for whom pregnancy and impending birth starts to engulf the wife with doubt about the intentions of her husband. This will test how much he deeply cares for her and the unborn child. While the husband starts to behave ominously during the night, scratching his skin raw while asleep as well as sleep walking, the wife has to think outside of the box with more and more desperate ways to protect both her husband and unborn child.
During the second of three chapters the wife begins to adapt the apartment they live in with padlocks, lights at night, hand gloves, bedding straps and rails over windows. A medium will visit and offers exorcism, the wife’s mother provides unhelpful advice, food becomes an issue and a charming pet dog will become an unwelcome target for the couple. As strange behaviour increases during the hours of sleep, the film speculates on the nature of marriage and is aided here by accomplished sympathetic performances from Jung Yu-Mi and Lee Sun-Kyum as the couple.
Director Yu carefully uses architectural spaces to reveal inner states of mind which will also include a bath and a car doubling up as spaces to sleep in. As the wife fights to save the marriage, with the mantra “together we can overcome anything” visible on a wall, she talks to her husband about sharing life together providing a warm, loving, romantic touch to the film’s darkening paranoia.
Unlike Rosemary’s Baby, not everything in Sleep is clear about what is causing the states of paranoia. If not related to specific references to satanic malevolence, what are the other forces and factors at play here? In the final chapter, the film shifts focus towards the wife. Her loyalty and love within boundaries of familial relationships will also be tested.
The film has been described by Bong Joon Ho (the director of Parasite as an accomplished debut which it certainly is. As Yu learnt his craft working on films including Okja, an apt title for the film could have been Parasomnia which resonates with the theme of disturbed patterns of sleep. Peter Herbert
PETER HERBERT is CURATOR MANAGER at THE ARTS PROJECT
Konstantine “Kote” Marjanishvili, also known by his Russian name of Konstantin Aleksandrovich (1872 – 1933), was best known as the founder of Georgian modern theatre and is widely celebrated for his part in the development of pre and post-revolutionary stage productions which were known for their lavish style and prodigious output
Born into a well-to-do literary family in Kvareli, then part of Russian empire, he started life as an actor/director during the early years of the 20th century before joining a troupe in Moscow where he later made a name for himself as an accomplished follower of Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and went on to direct six films of various genres during the 1920s including this silent drama Amoki in 1927.
Inspired by Stefan Zweig’s Indonesian-set short story Amok the director heads off on an avantgarde flight of fantasy in his silent feature debut, a murky morality tale translocated to India. It sees a drug-addled alcoholic doctor (played by Aleksandre Imedashvili) descend into a hallucinogenic opium trip after suffering a breakdown and fetching up in an Indian village where he exploits the locals and attempts to take advantage of a married woman who requests his services in performing an abortion which will end in tragedy for both of them.
Serving both as an ethnographic snapshot of rural life in India at the time and an imaginative social drama the stealthy pacing and a sinister soundtrack only adds to the tension of this opium infused sortie into the imagination of a corrupt medic taking advantage of the characters he meets along the way (Nato Vachnadvili is particularly expressive and suitably dressed in the fashionable style of the era). The scene involving a bicycle theft is accompanied by the rhythmic whir of the wheels while also providing a palpable metaphor for colonial oppression. DoP Sergei Zabozlayev experiments with a dazzling array of inventive cinematic techniques including double exposures, aerial shots and soviet montage. A brave experimental film even by today’s standards. @MeredithTaylor
SVANETI international film festival 15-21July 2024
Kneecap begins with a montage of newsreel explosions, as a laconic and contradictory voiceover tells us that all films about Belfast start in the same way, but this one won’t. It’s clear from the off that this is one movie which will to use all means, fair or foul, to have its effect on the audience.
The film tells the story of the real-life rap group of the title, a trio from working-class West Belfast who play themselves in a drama which probably takes some liberties with the actuality but brims over with mischief, energy and inventiveness while making telling points about the Troubles and their repercussions down the generations.
In the 1990s, IRA man Arlo illicitly christens his son Móglaí Bap at a sacred Catholic rock in a wood outside Belfast. When British Army helicopters scope out the spot, Arlo becomes a marked man. He fakes his own death and goes into hiding, leaving his son in the care of a mother who promptly zonesout and retires to her sofa.
Bap and his friend Mo Chara grow up as self-confessed ‘low-life scum’. In theory the directionless duo are drug dealers,but their consumption levels are such that little is left for their customers. One of their few redeeming features is an enthusiasm for the Irish language, Gaeilge – or its slangy and idiosyncratic West Belfast variant.
A turning-point in their story comes when Mo is pulled in by police on suspicion of dealing. When he refuses to communicate in English, music teacher and Gaeilge evangelist J.J. Ó Dochartaigh is brought to the station to translate. Quickly falling into complicity with the suspicious youth, J.J. palms an as-yet-unnoticed blotter of acid and uses his position as intermediary to report the impenetrable curses Mo hurls at the peelers as a sober and watertight case. J.J. strikes up a friendship with the boys and encourages them to continue rapping in Gaeilge – in his view, “the light that guides us towards our freedom”.
Donning a woollen tricolour balaclava to hide his identity, J.J.steps in as producer, organiser and third member under the pseudonym “DJ Próvaí”. He also reverts to his youth as an enthusiastic drug-taker, which doesn’t sit so well with his girlfriend Caitlin.
Ó Dochartaigh does a good job in a role which requires a little more complexity than those of Mo and Bap, although they acquit themselves perfectly well. Conversely, Michael Fassbender’s brief incursions into the film as the mostly-absent Arlo bring a quasi-supernatural gravitas somewhat at odds with the generally harum-scarum tone.
Kneecap feels a bit like a hallucinatory take on the methods of French New Wave as the fourth wall is broken, the image paused and fast-forwarded, and striking visual effects and plasticine models mimic the drug states experienced by the band. Despite the cartoonishness and undercurrent of humour, though, the film gives us a sense of what it’s like to grown up in a violent and psychologically damaging place. Even if Mo and Bap see PTSD only as a useful pretext to claim prescription drugs, they probably are suffering from it. The music in the film demonstrates that Belfast Irish is a good fit for the rhythms of hip-hop, and we hear material steadily developing into its fiery and impressive current form as we watch the boys graduate from performing to a handful of elderly and indifferent drinkers in a small green box of a pub to striding large stages with grandstanding aplomb.
It’s always clear which side of the political fence the film is on, but Kneecap doesn’t try to hide the thuggery, gangsterism and chauvinism that infects the Irish Republican cause (as it does almost every other nationalist movement).These things are apparent in the name of the band and film’s joint title, of whose darker meaning we are left in no doubt by the story’s otherwise upbeat end. @IanLong
Not many people could have been Eno. Quite possibly, he was the only one qualified for the job.
Consider his early life in 1950s rural Suffolk, whose rivers, flatlands and vistas attuned him to landscape, and perhaps gave the best of his music its curiously wistful, pastoral quality (many of his most affecting songs sound like sea shanties). Nothing too surprising there, maybe.
But there was a futuristic side to this bucolic backwater. The area was temporary home to a rolling contingent of U.S. airmen, many of them Black, so local juke-boxes throbbed with the futuristic sounds of cutting-edge R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, country and doo-wop, much of it too outré for radio play.
Eno (and it’s good to see the exotic mononym back in place after fifty years of eclipse by the more prosaic Brian) was enthralled by the enigmatic ‘mystery music’ that permeated his environment. Much of his subsequent career has been a series of strategies (a favourite Eno word) to recreate the exciting, baffling, galvanising effects it had on him.
Eno drew all the time. He sang in choirs and loved hymns. His grandfather had a barnful of player pianos, hurdy gurdies and other exotic instruments which in retrospect seem like early versions of the synthesizers whose sounds would define his grandson’s career (the joint arrival of Eno and synths was serendipitous; unable to play an instrument, he found himself performing on one which was so novel that no one knewwhether or not it was being played ‘correctly’).
Eno went to art school. His dandy tendencies blossomed, but he was a serious student, accumulating ideas that he would develop for decades to come (his output may be varied, but at root Eno is nothing if not consistent). One of the most important of these was the ‘systems’ approach to art.
Here, the artist’s main creative task is not to make artworks in the time-honoured, hands-on way. It’s to devise rules, or apparatuses, which will generate them. A somewhat detached and cerebral attitude which he’d bring – with hugely successful results – to the visceral, expressionistic arena of rock music.
Yes, Eno was positioned to benefit from a unique set of cultural confluences. But we care about him because he had the imagination and intelligence to integrate them and put them to use. He loves passion and strangeness, but he achieves them in an idiosyncratically rigorous way.
All this brings us to ‘Eno’ the film, and its Unique Selling Point. From time to time as we watch, skeins of computer code skitter down the screen. This isn’t some facile Matrix-lite trope, but a peep behind the wizard’s curtain: the tumbling digits are the actual workings of a specially-devised ‘generative engine’ which is selecting, in real time, the next piece of footage we’re going to watch.
Mirroring its protagonist’s preoccupations, director Gary Hustwit has made a ‘systems-based’ film about Eno’s artistic life. While its first and last scenes are always the same, the rest is different every time it’s screened.
Having said that, all ENO’s major career beats – early fame in Roxy Music, work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2, discovery of African music, return to the visual arts with videos and light-based pieces, etc – were covered in the iteration I saw.
So it seems that the material isn’t totally randomised (perhaps a pointless exercise) but batched into subject areas, from each of which the engine chooses a representative sample for each screening. There probably won’t be versions of ‘Eno’ which refuse to admit that its subject ever went to art school, joined Roxy Music or dallied with David Bowie, just as there won’t be renderings which harp endlessly on one or two of these things.
It’s a worthy experiment, and Eno is the perfect topic for a generative documentary. But will it work for other subjects? Despite the collage-like construction method, the film flowed well (the editing process was understandably laborious, sincethe ending of every piece of footage needed to be juxtaposablewith the beginning of all the others). The visible computer coding gives the film a modernist feel, like a Pompidou Centre-style building where exposed water pipes and heating ducts become design features. But I can imagine that future generative films will want to do without the cascading incursions.
Although ‘my version’ of the film gave a general overview of Eno’s career, the generative engine could presumably be primed to select material from batches of interest to specific audiences – say, environmentalists, cyberneticists, or music producers. This could be a useful way for filmmakers to dealwith the increasing volumes of material which mass around any given topic. Rather than making a series of films, they cannow just morph one movie to target its viewers.
Eno is a very good talker, often seeming to discover new thoughts as he articulates them. Some ideas that emerged in my version were: the need to create a persona to perform a song, why we should show less respect to Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, fears and remedies about the human impact on the environment, and why repetitive music shows you how your brain works.
But the film has a mildly impersonal feel. Despite Eno’s engaging qualities – he’s funny, affable, self-deprecating – it tells us little of him beyond his work. Recent footage shows him mostly alone as he potters about his home, studio and garden, and doesn’t divulge who else is in his life (a partner, children, family, friends – although I did see a cat). And there’s no sense how the Eno enterprise, presumably now quite sizeable, is organised.
At one point, Eno discusses the principles he uses to choose whether to go with a potential new project. These include “money,” “glory,” “physical exercise,” and “how long it would take.” “Sex” isn’t mentioned, but there was a time when no interview with Eno was complete without extended,often florid and perverse reflections on the subject. If the generative engine is persuaded to linger over these batches, some versions of ‘Eno’ could be particularly intriguing. @IanLong
UK RELEASE: 12 JULY 2024
PICTUREHOUSE CINEMAS | Soundtrack released on streaming, CD/vinyl on July 12 on Universal Music Recordings. https://brianeno.lnk.to/EnoOST12
Dir: Neil Boyle, Kirk Hendry | With the voices of Cillian Murphy, Raffy Kassidy, Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe | Anime 85’
Adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s classic book Kensuke’s Kingdom suggests a Japanese manga but the young hero is plainly European, the title referring to an old Japanese hermit (who we learn in a flashback was a former sailor shipwrecked soon after Nagasaki) who takes Michael under his wing after he learns the hard way the danger of disobedience when he gets shipwrecked.
The island is no tropical paradise since we see a Komodo Dragon gobble up a mud hopper in one gulp, while Michael gets bitten by ants and stung by enormous jelly fish.
Michael soon bonds with the local Orang Utangs, an idyll cut short by dive bombing sea gulls (in keeping with their current bad press) and three hunters in big boots, carrying guns and a big cage. Tougher kids will love this. @RichardChatten
KENSUKE’S KINGDOM | IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS FROM 2 AUGUST 2024
Dir: NELICIA LOW | Cast: LIU HSIU-FU, TSAO YU-NING, DING NING, LIN TSU-HENG
Nelicia Low melds competitive sport with a sinister sibling centred thriller in her feature debut Pierce screening in World Premiere at this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
In Taipei the film follows Zijie a young fencer longing to re-build bridges with his beloved older brother when Zihan mysteriously returns after seven years in juvenile prison for killing an opponent during a fencing match. Their mother Ai Ling has suffered social embarrassment from Han’s conviction and is also recovering from the loss of her husband to cancer. A professional singer in a nightclub she has found love with awidower Zhuang (Lin Tsu-Heng).
Meanwhile behind back her sons growcloser, training together as the elder help the younger to up his game with Zijie improving by leaps and bounds getting selected to compete at the upcoming National Championships. Although their mother is furious with Zihan for hood winking her, Zijie tries to see the best in his brother until Zihan’s hostile past is triggered after an argument, leaving Zijie to fnally question whether his beloved sibling might be a violent sociopath after all.
Pierce brings to mind the recent Berlinale title Brief History of a Family and the cut and thrust of the elegantly performed fencing interludes provides a dynamic contrast to the seething psychological thrill of the family interactions when Han pulls rank physically and emotionally over his younger brother with the added dimension of enigma provided by the covert expressions behind the masks primped by the often discordant score.
Low exerts a confident control over her cast and narrative to deliver a really gripping first feature in this impressive start to her big screen career. @MeredithTaylor
KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL | BEST DIRECTOR AWARD – NELICIA LOW
Dir: Richard Fleischer | Cast: Charles Bronson, Linda Crystal | US Drama 103’
Behind this exotic title and given its provenance in a story by Elmore Leonard it comes as an agreeably pleasant surprise, being a surprisingly funny comedy; not a quality one naturally associates with either its star or its director, while the part of a poor but honest melon farmer isn’t exactly typecasting either.
Unlike your common or garden thriller this one’s played for laughs and that goes for the late Al Letierri whose regulation mean-faced thug gets a little carried away in his pursuit of Mr Bronson to the extent (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) of unleashing a real mean bunch of heavies to turn their artillery on a great big pile of Bronson’s melons. @RichardChatten
Dir: Henry King | Cast: Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald | US Biopic 154’
James Agee paid a backhanded tribute to the ambition of Darryl Zanuck when he began his review that “‘Wilson’ is by no means the first film in which one might watching Hollywood hopping about on one foot trying to put on long pants”.
It was certainly brave of Zanuck to lavish a £4 million budget on an ambitious Technicolor biography on the founder of The League of Nations in wartime and bold to entrust to actor rather than a star, he rather hedges his bets by convincing he’s just a regular guy by devoting far too much footage to Wilson cheering on baseball matches and sing songs round the old piano; although for the connoisseur seeing the likes of Marcel Dalio as Clemenceau has its pleasures. @RichardChatten
Dirs: Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux | France, Docudrama 81′
I once read that an oak tree provides a home for over 500 creatures. So living opposite a mature one for over twenty years I was fascinated to discover my neighbours. And this exquisite French doc follows life through the seasons in an oak tree that first sprouted in the Loire Valley in 1821.
Heart of the Oak plays out like a thriller with differently timed sequences so it isn’t strictly a documentary. There are moments of high tension in a film that isn’t preachy but peaceably silent apart from occasional bursts from Dean Martin’s tune-book. Gradually Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux set the scene in the vast branches of this ancient habitat showing how the tree’s root systems communicate to provide for an entire community of animals that each play their part in creating a seamless ecological environment: there are predators but nature’s helpers too, and as the titles roll at the end, there are some Latin names to conjure with, and their French and English common names. Immaculate aerial and close-up photography, using the latest audiovisual technologies (including 360-degree virtual cameras, machinery and special effects), and cutting edge innovations allowed the team to approach the microscopic worlds and glide through this miraculous bosky expose to offer an intimate understanding of the daily interactions between wood mice, jays, acorn weevils, goshawks woodpeckers, barn owns and red squirrels and many more. Truly a miraculous insight into the workings of our natural world. @MeredithTayor
Heart Of An Oak will be in UK Cinemas from 12th July and on Digital Download from 12th August
Dir/Wri| Adam Elliot | With the voices of Sarah Snook, Eric Bana, Jackie Weaver | Australia 90’
This delightful Australian anime is an endearing sob story seen from a woman’s perspective and suffused with all the anguish of modern life. A tender tale of loss and alienation it soon branches out into a relatable stop motion meditation with appeal for all ages, cleverly debunking modern trends and sharing human truths with a particularly uplifting message on mental health.
Written and directed by Academy award winning animator Adam Elliot Memoir of a Snail is crafted with a grungy aesthetic that sets the scene for the birth of Grace Prudence Pudel, a sickly twin whose mother dies in childbirth leaving her a snail collection and giving the film its enigmatic title.
Grace (Snook), a bit of an oddball to say the least, grows up with her pyromaniac brother Gilbert (Smit McPhee), paraplegic French film maker father Percy (Pinon) surrounded by the snails, her beloved guinea pigs and a collection of weirdos such as James, a magistrate defrocked for masturbating in court (who makes a crucial contribution later on in the film). Grace pours out her heart to a female snail called Sylvia (Williams).
Percy’s charisma inspires little Grace to become an animator but his sudden death from alcoholism forces the twins into foster homes: Grace with a childless couple in Canberra far away from her brother Gilbert who gets a family of God-fearing fruit farmers in Perth.But her real foster mother and confidente soon becomes Pinkie (Weaver) who delivers that well-known chestnut: ‘Life has to be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards’.
In his richly crafted narrative Elliot doesn’t look for easy solutions or short cuts. Ultimately Grace must realise her true vocation and embrace inner peace. There are no magic bullets. A wry dark humour sets Memoir apart front the average anime. With chuckles aplenty and believable characters (rather than the usual cyphers) this absorbing crowd-pleaser also benefits from a strong cast and its modest running time. @MeredithTaylor
World Premiere in Competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 10th BEST FILM London film festival 2024.
Dir/Wri: Olivier Assayas | Cast: Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine D’Urso, Nora Hamzawi, Maud Wyler, Dominique Reymond, Magdalena Lafont | France, drama 105′
In this uneventful little drama Olivier Assayas takes us back to a time most remember with a sigh and a sinking heart: the first pandemic lockdown.
Suspended Time certainly captures the sentiment, but let’s hope it’s the last of this rash of Covid-set films with nothing to say: a time some found reassuring, others restrictive. Endless days in the sunny Spring of 2020 when details loomed large, such as cleaning everything to within an inch of its life, as the world was thrown into forced navel-gazing and anxiety.
Assayas has assembled a watchable cast led by Vincent Macaigne as Paul, a laid back journalist enjoying the slightly angst-ridden months in his family’s bijou mansion deep in the Chevreuse Valley, not far from Paris, a backcloth Paul amply fleshes out in reflective monologues that take us back to a happy childhood.
Ensconced with his broadcaster brother Etienne (Lescot), Paul realises the two have nothing now in common. Joining is his slightly neurotic girlfriend Morgane (d’Urso), and Etienne’s other half Carole (Hamzawi) who are both sketchily drawn in a mildly amusing comedy of manners.
Suspended Time certainly looks very pretty thanks to the reappearance of Eric Gautier as the director’s longtime DoP, the two last worked together on Personal Shopper and that’s perhaps Assayas’ most interesting film of late, if you don’t count the TV series Irma Vep. Sadly Assayas fails to strike any emotional chords between his key players in a drama that’s pleasant enough but instantly forgettable. @MeredithTaylor
NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | BERLINALE 2024 PREMIERE
Wri/Dir: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat | Cast: Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala and Raghav Juyal | India Thriller
Considering the extreme length of current commercial cinema, it comes a pleasant surprise to find a Bollywood movie that clocks in at a slim 105 minutes; probably due to the absence of songs, although it would be fun to see the makers try to stage an Indian dance routine aboard a speeding train.
Kill starts off fairly quietly but the introduction of a bunch of inbred malcontents, who spend plenty of time kicking dogs before learning the hard way that you don’t mess with an off-duty commando.
There follows 57 varieties of stabbings, gouging, shootings and stranglings amid copious quantities of bloodshed. The audience responded to all this with laughter, groans and applause with equal measure. Great fun if you like that sort of thing. @RichardChatten
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam, US Thriller 75’
The jury is still out on which was the better version of the only one of his films Alfred Hitchcock ever remade, but having just seen them in close proximity I can confirm that there’s very little in it.
The extra hour in the later version was due to a much greater length of time devoted to the foreign preliminaries, the bulk of the original taking place in a rather Germanic-looking London.
Anybody who saw the remake will be startled to find that the very same cantata is also used in the earlier version, and whereas the scene that follow is in the embassy in the remake comes as something of an anticlimax the original ends with a rip-roaring finale – originally based on the Siege of Sydney Street and probably also drawn from a recent viewing of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse quite unlike anything Hitchcock would ever attempt again.
The film also contains what later became Hitchcock’s trademark point-of-view shots, Nova Pilbeam makes a much more appealing hostage than the annoying Christopher Olsen in the remake; while it boasts a memorably ghoulish collection of conspirators, including Peter Lorre in his only film for Hitchcock and the late Cicely Oates as Nurse Agnes. @RichardChatten
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings | US Thriller
Although largely forgotten today, ‘Saboteur’ was praised by Julian Maclaren-Ross in his seminal 1946 piece on Alfred Hitchcock, and represents probably the most substantial link in the chain that connects his thirties chase thrillers like the 1935 version of ‘The 39 Steps’ with ‘North by Northwest’.
Hitchcock’s well-known flair for making unorthodox use of famous locations takes us through Edmund Gwenn’ s plunge from Westminster Abbey in Foreign Correspondent’ through Norman Lloyd’s fall from the Statue of Liberty at the conclusion of ‘Saboteur’ to the famous climax of ‘North by Northwest’ on the face of Mount Rushmore; while the scene in which Robert Cummings bluffs his way out of a high class party where every exit is guarded by goons was later memorably done for laughs when Cary Grant disrupted an auction by mischievous bidding in ‘North by Northwest’ @RichardChatten
ACTOR CLIVE OWEN TO RECEIVE KVIFF PRESIDENT’S AWARD
British actor Clive Owen, recipient of a Golden Globe, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Oscar, will be a special guest of this year’s festival. At the closing ceremony of the 58th KVIFF, Owen will be presented the KVIFF President’s Award.
On the occasion of Clive Owen receiving the KVIFF President’s Award, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will show the award-winning Closer, which was released twenty years ago following on from his role in Mike Hodges Croupier.
KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 28 JUNE – 6 JULY 2024
THE WILD ROBOT and its DreamWorks team were greeted by a hyper enthusiastic crowd at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival as first clips of Universal’s long-awaited release, due to arrive in cinemas this Autumn, finally hit the big screen.
Inspired by Titus Wong and Studio Ghibli and based on Peter Brown’s 2016 bestseller The Wild Robot is directed by Oscar-nominated Chris Sanders and brought to life by DreamWorks’ 54 animators and 10 artists as a powerful story about the discovery of self, a thrilling examination of the bridge between technology and nature and a moving exploration of what it means to be alive and connected to all living things.
The main focus is kindness and empathy as a tool for survival in a Bambi-style parable. Refreshingly, there are no real villains or cultural associations just a bunch of feral forest animals with tender and relatable emotional beats that will appeal to all audiences.
The DreamWorks creative team with Margie Cohn (President) and The Wild Robot’s director Chris Sanders (both far right)
Joined by a lively cast of Bill Nighy and Pedro Pascal, Lupita Nyong’o voices ‘Rozzum 7134’, a robot that’s clueless and vulnerable when she blows off course and lands on a remote island totally unprepared for what comes next.
The film also features the voice talents of Emmy winning pop-culture icon Mark Hamill (Star Wars franchise, Matt Berry (The SpongeBob Movie franchise) and Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction).
The Wild Robot combines a timeless quality with a message of hope when ‘Roz’ is forced into a motherly role of guiding a fledging gosling in its first days of life.
Blending 2D and 3D images the DreamWorks design-team have created a unique aesthetic with painterly handcrafted images and with an original score by Chris Bowers. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Mike Hodges | Cast: Clive Owen, Alex Kingston | UK Thriller 94′
Mike Hodges died last year at the age of ninety, and this and ‘Get Carter’ are the two to remember him by (No, I haven’t forgotten ‘Flash Gordon’). Over a quarter of a century after the former, the latter marked a triumphant return from the doldrums and anybody familiar with the original James Bond novels will agree our hero Clive Owen (described by Ann Billson as “possessor of one the most interesting, funereal faces in films”) resembles 007 to a ‘t’.
Presumably Owen just wasn’t interested, but his role in ‘Croupier’ alongside Alex Kingston, will always provide a tantalising reminder of what could have been. He plays Jack Manfred an aspiring writer who is hired as a croupier where he realises that his as life in the casino would make a great novel.
Paul Mayersberg does such a lovely job on the screenplay I can almost forgive him for making such a pig’s ear of ‘Captive’ (obviously he was more suited to writing than directing his own material). @RichardChatten
The fourth annual Svaneti International Film Festival runs for a week from 15 July 2024 in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Svaneti, a region nestling in Georgia’s Caucasus mountains.
SIFF is the brainchild of general director Teimuraz Chkhvimiani, and artistic director Mariam Khatchvani who rose to the international stage with her awarding-winning feature debut Dede.
The Festival showcases the latest world cinema short films across the genres providing an opportunity for talented directors, producers and writers from all over the world to share their work in an exciting international environment.
Described as ‘breathakingly wild and mysterious”, Svaneti is now accessed by Queen Tamar Airport in the nearby capital Mestia. Tamar reigned as Queen of Georgia (1184-1213) during its Golden Age when the country became the most powerful in the region. Svaneti’s emblem is the koshki (defensive stone tower), created to house villagers at times of invasion and local strife (until recently Svaneti was renowned for its murderous blood feuds). Around 175 koshkebi, most originally built between the 9th and 13th centuries, survive here today and provide a stunning contrast to Mestia’s ultra modern airport designed by the German firm J Mayer H Architects.
SVANETI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | SVANETI, GEORGIA 15-21 July 2024
Artificial Intelligence via ChatGPT is making it possible to talk to the dead, according to a disturbing new US documentary that delves into the pros and cons of this alarming new technology.
When a loved ones dies being able to contact them is a comforting thought for the bereaved especially in this day and age when death is taboo and people feel increasingly isolated or lonely. Joshua, one of the film’s contributors, has been doing just that with his late fiancée. He filled in a questionnaire with a few facts and next thing he was having an exchange with Jessica via‘Project December’. It felt spookily real.
The ‘Afterlife Contact’ industry is clearly worth millions but it also raises moral and ethical concerns. Instead of the natural process of grieving, which we all have to go through, surely Joshua is just ‘holding on’ rather than ‘moving on’.
The market in the US is already awash with AI startups that aim to sell computer packages promising immortality. But government bodies and even some AI engineers are increasingly concerned about this industry of turning the dead into a business. There are real fears that it is out of control and messing with people’s lives. AI systems have developed ‘thanobots’ that work by taking a person’s digital footprint, analysing it and then replicating the personality, or even – more freakily – creating avatars that enable the living to interact with the dead using genuine exchanges that have previously occurred. “I wanted to have the last conversation I never had with him,” explains a grieving contributor. And this is understandable in cases where loved ones have not had a chance to say goodbye. One of the most sinister incidences is the case of a South Korean woman called Ji-Sung, who agreed to appear in a televised experiment to meet her dead daughter in virtual reality, right down to gloves that let her “touch” her. But where does this bogus interaction lead to?. Chatting to an avatar masquerading as a loved one is surely a hiding to nowhere.
For the younger generation, who are emotionally more detached from dead members of their family (such as grandparents) AI could provide a way of finding out about and even learning from their elders. But some people have managed to come to terms with death. One contributor preferred to remember her dead husband just as he was rather than knowing ‘whether he’s in Heaven or even in Hell’.
Eternal You certainly offers food for thought in a measured documentary that offers some visually striking images. The most moving encounters are those between the living. Perhaps we should learn to remember our loved ones as they really were, rather than messing with nature. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Billy Wilder | Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson | US Drama 110′
Hollywood in its heyday is now so far removed it’s practitioners have long since passed on; but when Billy Wilder wrote Sunset Boulevard it was still very much a thriving concern in which luminaries of yesteryear like Cecil B. DeMille, Max von Stroheim and Buster Keaton (who later admitted he never saw the film) were still active.
Writers at the time came very low in Hollywood’s pecking order but their facility with words frequently gave them literally the last word. Wilder had arrived in town as one those proverbial “schmucks with Remingtons”, but by the time he made Sunset Boulevard the tables had well and truly turned and he was in a position to unload the baggage that had long built up and pillory the money men that had so blighted his life in his salad days. @RichardChatten
Flow a relatable drama from Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis (Away), centres on a cat that survives a destructive deluge on a boat and is forced, against its solitary nature, to collaborate with a collection of other animals in order to survive in a new world. The film, premiering at this year’s Cannes Festival, won the jury award and audience prize at Annecy Animation Festival, voted for by Annecy attendees. @MeredithTaylor
ANNECY ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2024 | BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC, JURY AWARD, AUDIENCE AWARD 2024
The English countryside is one of the most depleted in the world in terms of wildlife; a quarter of our beloved mammals now face extinction in a dying landscape. But there is good news, according to this uplifting new eco documentary from David Allen. His stunning film shows that given the right conditions nature can heal itself. And Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell have proved this with their regenerative rewilding project in Southern England. Allen bases his film on Isabella’s 2018 book ‘Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm’
Wilding documents a transformation that started fifteen years ago in Knepp, a crenellated country estate 19th castle in Horsham, deepest Sussex. When the young farming couple took over Knepp the surrounding farmland was drenched in chemicals and the oaks were dying. A fizzing underground chemical circuit board had destroyed the vital microrrhizal network that allows plants – and particularly native oak trees – to thrive and enrich the ground with organic life to grow nutritious crops and re-create a landscape that been missing since the advent of intensive agriculture after the Second World War. Despite their best farming efforts, Charlie and Isabella knew a new approach was needed.
In 2002 ‘Countryside Stewardship’ funding allowed the couple to roll out a an avant garden conservation project where nature ‘takes over’. They took the advice of Dutch ecologist and pioneer Dr Frans Vera and it was revealing: a natural landscape is not devoid of animals, but actually driven by herds of ancient wild stock that hold back the trees and assist in rebalancing the environment. So gradually the ancient animals were introduced to Knepp; but would they survive and breed?.
The task ahead was going to be fraught with difficult because the Knepp’s radical approach was weighted by so much public negativity. Intensive farming methods are hard-wired into the national psyche. To their dismay, the couple’s presentation was greeted with horror and anger by local farmers: “how are we going to feed the population without intensive farming?”. Many others felt the ‘privileged’ couple threatened to destroy the nature of the British landscape – as we know it – even allowed ragwort to prosper. ‘Creeping thistle’ is the enemy of farmers and is strictly controlled with pesticides – but more on that later.
With government support, the project eventually got under-way, and ancient breeds of wild native animals were allowed to run free and roam: Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies, red deer and longhorn cattle. Farm animals get fed but this new stock was going to have to fend for themselves. Surprisingly the beasts not only survived, but thrived. Freed from the restrictive practices of intensive farming, the animals reverted to their original natures, pigs even swam and dived for food. In fact, the Tamworth pigs seem to be the smartest, we watch as the sow nourishes herself with nettles for iron after giving birth to her first litter in the Spring.
Gradually wildlife returned to the land and it became a haven for near extinct and dwindling species: Turtle doves, nightingales and field mice numbers were boosting. Today, Knepp has the highest density of songbirds in Britain. And it’s the large grazing animals that provide the space needed to foster a habitat for thousands of native species. Beavers have since arrived to control the wetlands – since being granted a government licence – so no more floods that can cause havoc each year.
Eleven million butterflies headed to Britain in 2009 and those landing on the Knepp estate fed off the creeping thistle and devoured it. The following year no creeping thistle came back to the land. Charlie analysed the soil and cowpats and made the discovery that bugs that had been wiped out when the land was turned over to intensive farming had since returned. Now 19 different species of earthworms enrich the soil and provide the rich nutrients that eventually ends up in our food. Sixteen years into the project, Isabella introduced a pair of storks into Knepp – and the birds bred and provided stork chicks, for the first time in 600 hundred years.
But the question still stands. How can this small project restore Britain’s natural ecosystem and provide nutritious food for the growing population? Well that’s the subject for another film but the findings are positive. We can save the world if we really want to, thanks to Isabella and Charlie’s brave experiment. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Terence Young. Cast: Anthony Quayle, Andrew Ray, Sarah Churchill | UK Drama 91’
If you’re too young to remember Doris Day before she was a virgin you’re probably not old enough to remember Cliff Richard when he was a sneering Teddy Boy in a leather jacket in this further contradiction of the received wisdom that an ‘introducing’ credit means the kiss of death to any aspiring actor, since in ‘Serious Charge’ that dubious distinction belongs to our Cliff when he was modelling himself on Elvis Presley before he saw the light and brought Jesus into his life.
Made in the days when erring vicars where popular tabloid fodder, the scenes with the grown-ups are what gives the films its weight, particularly those involving Sarah Churchill, who movingly demonstrates the destructive passions a middle-aged woman is capable of.@RichardChatten
Terence Young was riding high on his reputation as the original director of James Bond when he was entrusted to make an opulent new version of the tragic love story of Prince Rudolf and Marie Vetsera that ended in tears at Mayerling in 1889.
Despite a distinguished supporting class headed by James Mason as Franz Joseph and Ava Gardener as the Emperor Elizabeth, an expensive production and Khachaturian on the soundtrack to give it a veneer of class, as a whole it’s all rather tinny and lifeless. Omar Shariff isn’t really mad enough to be convincing as Rudolf and even with the addiction of spectacles Catherine Deneuve is too robust to be so easily persuaded to cooperate in Rudolf’s (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) mad scheme. @RichardChatten
Dir: Jean-Paul Melville | Cast: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret | France, Action drama 145’
With the D-Landings currently commemorating their 80th anniversary here’s a film that reflects on the behind the scenes heroism of the French Resistance with a sombre sense of grandeur.
L’Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows), adapted by Jean-Pierre Melville, a veteran of both the Resistance and the Free French Army, from Joseph Kessel’s 1943 novel, was released in 1969, ushering in a spate of Occupation-centred films that adopted a more critical approach: The Sorrow and the Pity and Lacombe Lucien come to mind.
Melville celebrates these underground heroes with a sense of gangster-like pride familiar in Un Flic, Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge. The men lived by a code of honour tempered with ruthlessness, yet watching this week’s BBC coverage compiled from the accounts recorded during real live interviews with the survivors in the immediate aftermath to the Siege of Normandy (that started on the 6th June 1944 and ended on 30 August) the allied soldiers talk of real vicious savagery from both sides on the battlefield. Soldiers were lynched and decapitated, their body parts removed and even stuffed in their mouths such was the fervour to bring the six-year conflict to a final close in ‘Operation Overlord’. This is the ugly side of war at the coalface but Melville’s focus is on escape, capture and subterfuge and this is particularly well illustrated by the scenes featuring Lino Ventura and Paul Meurisse when they embark on a secret 1943 expedition to England by submarine. The two have time to see Gone with the Wind in London, and Meurisse, whose character is based on Jean Moulin, even gets a medal from de Gaulle. @MeredithTaylor
NOW ON DVD and DIGITAL in a 4k restoration on Vintage World Cinema courtesy of STUDIOCANAL
Dir: Giuseppe De Santis | Cast Lucia Bosé, Carla del Poggio, Elena Varzi, Lea Padovani, Delia Scala, Raf Vallone, Massimo Girotti, Paolo Stoppa | Italy Drama 107’
Unusually among neo-realist dramas ‘Roma, Ora 11’ – like the directors’s earlier ‘Riso Amaro’ – in that it largely deals with the plight of women. The film has echoes of ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey’ and foreshadows the work of Costa-Gavras in its combination of angry social comment and the thrills of an action drama, heightened by the imaginative use of the tap of typewriter keys at certain key moments.
Although the cast contains several faces prominent in the Italian cinema the drama works as an ensemble piece dividing into two parts so that when you reach the midpoint the narrative reaches another level as the action moves from the scene of the accident to a packed casualty ward were the staff have to clean up the mess and everyone squabbles over who was responsible. @RichardChatten
Belarusian authorities continue their “purge” of independent voices punishing all who fall out of line. And with this in mind filmmaker Mara Tamkovich follows a freelance journalist in the lead up to and aftermath of her brutal arrest after reporting on a peaceful demo taking place in the Square of Changes in Belarus capital Minsk.
Based on real events that occurred on November 15th 2020, this sober and dispassionate feature debut from the Belarusian Polish filmmaker shows how Belsat journalist Lena Antonova (Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich) and her partner Ilya (Valentin Novopolskij) live an ordinary life in Minsk until she covertly films the event from the window of an apartment overlooking the square.
A police drone floating nearby picks up the activity and takes draconian action. From then on Lena, her partner and colleagues are plunged into a world of uncertainty and anguish as the powers that be sentence The journalist to seven days of administrative detention followed by more serious criminal charges, imposed in a secret trial. Under The Grey Sky tracks the process in a classically styled and immersive socio-political drama that shows how the aftermath impacts the couple with long term consequences for all concerned.
Under the Grey Sky is a calm but affecting portrait of modern day persecution fleshed out from the writer/director’s short film LIVE (2022). Tamkovich never loses control of her well-paced narrative that avoids melodrama to tell a tension-fuelled tale, still all too common in countries which turn a blind eye to modern day human rights issues. Seasoned stage actor Vaitsekhovich gives a remarkable central performance as Lena, and we feel for her character’s plight.
According to Amnesty International, hundreds remain behind bars on politically motivated charges and face ill-treatment in detention. No rights organization is able to operate legally in Belarus.
Belarusian authorities have prosecuted critics of Russia’s war in Ukraine and brutally dispersed anti-war protests, while allowing Russian forces to use Belarus territory to support their invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022.
Belarus remains the only country in Europe and Central Asia to use the death penalty and expanded the crimes to which it can be imposed in 2022. @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING DURING NEW YORK’s TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2024 |
Dir: Sydney Gilliatt | Cast: Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling, David Attenborough, John Le Mesurier | UK drama
Kingsley Amis only agreed to allow Launder & Gilliatt to film his novel on condition that if Bryan Forbes’ adaptation took too many liberties he had the right to have his name taken off the credits; evidently he was satisfied with the results since his name is prominently displayed for all to see.
Peter Sellers strongly disliked making this film and was convinced it would be a flop, which probably accounts for his subdued performance which the film is all the better for.
The basic situation is eternal, but a couple of topical references (newspapers & posters precisely locate the action in April-May 1961) include the inevitable reference to Lady Chatterley and Sellers’ young daughter’s imaginary friend’s concern about The Bomb. The supporting cast inevitably includes Kenneth Griffith and Meredith Edwards, while there’s a ingenious cameo from John Le Mesurier and a memorable turn from Richard Attenborough as a bearded literary pseud who declares that he’s been “toying with the idea of translating Kafka into Welsh”. @RichardChatten
Dir: Benjamin Brewer | Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, Sadie Soverall | US Horror 92’
Uninvolving post-apocalyptic thriller that sees Nicolas Cage as Paul, a harried dad living with teenage sons in a remote wilderness where they come under attack from unknown forces.
Paul claims responsibility for this odd lifestyle although no explanation is given as to why. One night their cabin sustains a furious onslaught and in the morning a battered door bears testament to the attack with massive claw marks that seem to point towards a mysterious Alien-style monster in much need of a manicure.
The twin boys are continuously at loggerheads so scripter Mike Nilon decides to soften the feature with a romantic twist for Thomas (Jenkins) who soon starts a tentative relationship with Sadie Soverall’s local girl. But this never really catches fire in a convoluted horror thriller that is not gripping enough to keep us engaged for even 90 minutes.
For fans of Cage’s comedic brand of disaster-struck hero caught in a melodramatic meltdown this will go down a treat, and he certainly carries the film with a slightly more believable role than in The Surfer. That all said the off-the-railsplot and over preponderance of scares in the semi-darkness and macho grunting makes Arcadian eventually feel rather tedious. @MeredithTaylor
Described by David Thomson as a “gloating portrait of cruelty”, with characteristic modesty Charlie Chaplin claimed it “the cleverest and most brilliant film I have yet made”.
Although a consummate actor (displaying a fastidiousness that had been part of his screen persona since his days playing a gentleman of the road) if the final results had managed to combine the cinematic imagination of Orson Welles – who gave Chaplin the original idea for which he receives a credit and who on his own films often demonstrated a deft sense of period, a quality ‘Verdoux’ completely lacks – with Chaplin’s performance it would have been quite a film.
With those two Napoleons on board the clashes of personalities would have been insurmountable. But at least we can be grateful that Chaplin’s performance survives; while the scene with Martha Raye in the rowboat wickedly parodies ‘An American Tragedy’. @RichardChatten
Dir: William A Wellman | Cast: Carole Lombard, Frederic Marc | US Comedy 77’
With the benefit of hindsight there’s a bitter irony in Carole Lombard playing a girl defined by her own mortality as she seems so vibrantly alive for the duration of ‘Nothing Sacred’ – her own doctor declaring “You ain’t goin’ to die, unless you get run over or somethin’!” – yet within five years of the film’s release Lombard had indeed joined the ages.
The comedies of the 1930s were famed for their iconoclasm, qualities to be found in abundance in ‘Nothing Sacred’, the plentiful verbal wit provided by screenwriter Ben Hecht well complimented by some adroit sight gags devised by director William Wellman, with Wellman regular George Chandler playing an early paparazzi; while even composer Oscar Levent provides an early example of his cynical wit with a brief snatch of ‘Hearts and Flowers’ on the soundtrack at one point.
One strange feature is that whenever a photograph is seen a glamour shot of film star Carole Lombard is used rather than an accurate representation of Hazel Flagg herself. Modern woke sensibilities might be offended by the portrayal of black Americans as casually dishonest but the people of small town America are portrayed equally unflatteringly as sullen and monosyllabic. @RichardChatten
Dir: Miguel Gomes | Cast: Crista Alfaiate, Gonçalo Waddington, Cláudio da Silva, Lang Khê Tran | Fantasy drama 129′
Sashaying between past and future, documentary and drama this tender tension-tinged travelogue captures the glory days of Colonial times and the delicate exotic mystique of the Orient, at a time when it was still full of grace.
Grand Tour is unique, a plot-free tale of doomed love and betrayal blends seamlessly with a beguiling black and white kaleidoscope of swirling images reminiscing on the past. Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, in his first time Palme d’Or entry, gives life to his own brand of cinema: dreamlike, quirky and romantically absurd, in similar vein to his 2012 feature Tabu .
Surrender yourself to this timeless reverie set in Southeast Asia around 1918, where Goncalo Waddington’s English civil servant Edward has caddishly fled Rangoon on his wedding day. His dogged fiancée of seven years Molly (Crista Alfaiate) pursues him peripatetically despite his feet of clay.
Laughing childishly whenever his name comes up in conversation Molly is clearly in de-Nile on the Yangtze river as they glide effortlessly through ‘Burma’, Singapore, Tibet, Bangkok, Vietnam, Shanghai and Chengdu in a parallel continental odyssey all crafted in grainy black and white.
Niche in the extreme this is a diaphanous patchwork of a film may not appeal to everyone as it floats in filigree on the silver screen. It tells of an era of heady romance and adventure for Colonial types when the world was still an enticing oyster to discover. Now and then, the recent past surfaces through a crevice in the old world with modern music – a crooner sings in a crowded bar in Manila as modern motorbikes circle incessantly in the centre of ‘Saigon’.
At one point Molly is courted by a wealthy landowner (Cláudio da Silva) who offers her sanctuary when she falls ill. Here in this idyll, deep in the tropical jungle, she bonds with his servant Ngoc (Lang Khê Tran) and they decide to embark on an ill-advised journey North. Discover Grand Tour and immerse yourself in the mind-bending potential of the Orient. A fabulous film quite unlike any other. Quintessential Gomes. @MeredithTaylor
Anyone who remembers Ilie Nastase, the talented Romanian tennis player who entertained us in the 1970s with his Wimbledon antics, will enjoy this new documentary directed by his fellow countrymen Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu and Tudor D. Popescu. premiering at this year’s Special Screenings section of Cannes the feature should have widespread interest for sports lovers everywhere so garnering a younger audience.
Nastase was a polarising figure, to say the least, and we see him winning his first US Open, qualifying for both Wimbledon and the Davis Cup finals, and generally blazing an eventful trail to the top of his game and so gaining a place in the annals of tennis history.
Ranked world number one player in 1973 ‘Nasty’ cut a colourful figure in every match he played but his provocative pathway was fraught with trials and tribulations. So he certainly broke the mould with his fractious behaviour and mercurial temperament laced with a dash of cheekiness. The Romanian player’s endearing charisma and dusky good looks went on to capture the public’s hearts and minds.
This is an enjoyable film chockfull of memorable footage from the archives and incisive commentary from tennis stars: John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, Björn Borg, Stan Smith, and more recent players such as Boris Becker and Rafael Nadal. @MeredithTaylor
Annecy International Animation Film Festival is a global event dedicated to animation. This year, from 9-15 June, the biggest names in the sector gather together on the French lakeside town of Annecy (Haute Savoie) to celebrate the creative and diverse animation styles and techniques.
Main Competition Line-up
INTO THE WONDERWOODS | France/Luxembourg
10-year-old Angelo dreams of being an adventurer and explorer. Until one day, in the car with his family on their way to visit his beloved Granny, who is very ill, he is suddenly forced to show the extent of his bravery: he is left behind by mistake at the motorway services. Angelo decides to take a shortcut through the forest to reach his Granny’s house. He finds himself in a mysterious land inhabited by strange beings threatened by an enemy even worse than the local ogre.
FLOW | France/Latvia
A cat wakes up in a world covered in water, where the entire human race seems to have disappeared. He seeks refuge on a boat with a group of other animals. But getting along with them proves to be an even greater challenge than overcoming his fear of water! Everyone will need to learn to overcome their differences and adapt to this new world they find themselves in.
GHOST CAT ANZU | Japan/France
11-year-old Karin is abandoned by her father at her grandfather’s house, the monk of a small town in the Japanese countryside. Her grandfather asks Anzu, his jovial, helpful, although rather capricious, ghost-cat to look after her. The clash of their strong characters causes sparks, at least at the beginning.
THE COLOURS WITHIN | Japan
Synesthete Totsuko can see others as colors. Honour student Kimi has dropped out of school but still pretends to attend for her grandmother’s sake. They reunite and decide to form a band with Rui, who dreams of composing on analog synthesizers but whose mother expects him to become a doctor. Together, they find freedom, joy, and love.
At little Totto-Chan’s Tomoe School during the Second World War, she learns what racism and intolerance are, and discovers the grim reality of war.
MEMOIR OF A SNAIL | Australia
In 1970s Australia, Grace’s life is troubled by misfortune and loss. After their mother dies during pregnancy, she and her twin brother, Gilbert, are raised by their paraplegic-alcoholic former juggler father, Percy. Despite a life filled with love, tragedy strikes anew when Percy passes away in his sleep. The siblings are forcibly separated and thrust into separate homes.
ROCK BOTTOM | Spain/Poland
Through Robert Wyatt’s music, this animated musical plunges you into Bob and Alif’s passionate love story. They are two young artists immersed in the creative whirlwind of early 70s hippie culture.
SAUVAGES | Switzerland, France, Belgium
In Borneo, near the tropical forest, Kéria rescues a baby orangutang in the palm oil plantation where her father works. Kéria’s cousin Selaï comes to live with them seeking refuge from the conflict between his indigenous tribe and the logging companies. Kéria, Selaï and the little orangutang, now named Oshi, will have to fight against their forest’s destruction.
THE BOAT IN THE GARDEN | Luxembourg/France
In the early 1950s, on the banks of the River Marne, François, a young 11-year-old boy, is intrigued to discover that his parents are building a boat in their little garden, a replica of the famous sailor Joshua Slocum’s sailboat. As the years go by, in post-war France, François drifts from adolescence to adulthood. While the boat is being built, and with a tender and poetic look at his mother and father, the young boy embarks on his own adventure, one that will take him down his own passionate route of the sea and drawing.
THE IMAGINARY | Japan
Rudger is a boy no one can see, imagined by Amanda to share her thrilling make-believe adventures. But when Rudger, suddenly alone, arrives at The Town of Imaginaries, where forgotten Imaginaries live and find work, he faces a mysterious threat.
THE STORM | China
Torrential rain leads you into a colorful world of traditional Chinese ink art. A century-old sunken ship emerges, mysterious theater troupes come to life again. With countless masks worn by people and a world filled with intricate changes, what kind of bizarre story is unfolding?
ANNECY FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | MAIN COMPETITION | FEATURES
Four Little Adults looks at different ways of loving for a polyamorous couple (including a vicar!), from Oscar winning Finnish director Selma Vilhunen.
Polyamory has certainly been around for centuries but only recently has it become ‘mainstream’ as a socially accepted way of exploring the different ways people choose to live out the way they feel and desire.
Selma Vilhunen vaunts the concept cinematically in her upbeat and positive comedy drama that presents her characters as down to earth everyday people we can all relate to. And this is the crucial element in this amusing social satire that certainly offers provocative food for thought and some entertaining performances all round. @MeredithTaylor
NOW IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS | ROTTERDAM PREMIERE 2024
Fans expecting a nice traditional potted portrait of the maverick Paris-born filmmaker’s life C’est Pas Moi will be disappointed.
Predictably Leos Carax steers clear of a straightforward narrative to offer an artful, multi-faceted collage of his four decade career. That all said, this self-portrait is both mesmerising and tantalising in the true style of the director himself, blending a pot pourri of the experimental, psychedelic and personal that echoes – even pays tribute to – his fellow countryman Jean-Luc Godard in films like The Image Book.
The project was intended to be shown as an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre a few years ago where the organisers has asked him to respond to the simple question: “Who are you?”. So Carax (aka Alex Christophe Dupont, 1960-) answers enigmatically but cinematically with a montage of exuberant images that channel his life and art.
Accordingly It’s Not Me, is a mixture of everything that appeals to him – from the Hollywood firmament to his own films like Holy Motors, Annette and Les Amants de Pont Neuf; snippets from family photos (but not of his estranged mother), snaps of his one time lover Juliette Binoche, his pets, actors he has worked with, like Denis Lavant and fellow directors Jean Vigo and even David Bowie. It’s Not Me is a real visual panoply but Carax is nowhere to be seen: He remains Mr Enigma. @MeredithTaylor
The credits proudly declare this film ‘Sheldon Reynolds’ Foreign Intrigue’, this being the film version of his TV series which he brought to the big screen – complete with Charles Norman’s ‘Foreign Intrigue Concerto’, which keeps popping up on the soundtrack with annoying regularity – with the added attraction of Bob Mitchum talking French and Swedish in a big suit against the backdrop of attractive colour location work of Vienna and Stockholm.
This 1956 feature is full of shots of people trudging down darkened streets away from the camera, along with two classy European female leads in the form of Genevieve Page and Ingrid Thulin (spelt ‘Tulean’ in the credits); although the most interesting character by far is a fellow named ‘Spring’, played by Frederick O’Brady who’d performed a similar function in Orson Welles’ ‘Confidential Report’, with which this film has been compared.
Happily while a large part of the preliminaries are garrulous and uninvolving it gets much better in the final half hour. @RichardChatten
To be considered ‘de nos jours’ every film festival must now include a film about trans people, sex workers, immigration, racism and the Holocaust – so The Most Precious of Cargoeswas this year’s Palme d’Or hopeful on that theme
French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, of Lithuanian heritage, rose to the international stage with his Oscar-winning film The Artist (2011) and thence to Redoubtable (2017) and this year’s Cannes Film Festival with this painterly wartime animation. Adapted from the book by Jean-Claude Grumberg The Most Precious of Cargoes tells the story of a Jewish baby who survives against the odds.
Narrated by the late French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and voiced by a sterling French cast this appealing fable turns on a miracle with universal appeal: a father throws his baby daughter from the window of their slow-moving Auschwitz-bound train in the hope of a better future, the deep snow cushioning her landing.
In so many ways a holocaust of sorts is still unfolding on all over the world today. And the film once again touches on the ongoing debate about the extent we are all prepared to go to protect and further our own lives and interests for the benefit (as in this case) or at the expense of others.
Fortune shines on this little girl who becomes the pride and joy of a poor childless woodcutter and her burly husband deep in a snowbound forrest somewhere in East Europe during the 1940s. The film works on two levels: a simple story that ripples out into deeper territory, much in common with the Ghibli tradition which this year’s 77th Cannes Film Festival tributes. A cartoon format and childlike appeal has nevertheless fast-reaching implications, not least making kids aware of the horrors of displacement and the dangers that lie on their path ahead. This child is given a chance in life, and the woodcutter also gets an opportunity to fulfil her own motherly wishes and at the same time protect her living bundle from the authorities out to exterminate Jews. Meanwhile the girl’s family fades away into the background, supposedly dying in the gas chambers, with only the father reappearing, in the final act, as a ghost of his former self. The ending is enigmatic but actually offers hope for the future in a rather lovely finale.
Aesthetically the film is beautifully realised in softly glowing water-colours, each frame flowing into an often harrowing Holocaust adventure. But The Most Precious of Cargoes also tends on the didactic often sentimental side with a narrative that starts off with promise but doesn’t follow through with the same fluidity of its visual style. Despite these narrative flaws this is certainly a film for kids as well as adults, and a welcome a valuable addition to the Holocaust sub-genre. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos | Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer | Thriller, 162′
Yorgos Lanthimos selects a quality cast and has them star as different characters in three quirky interlocking stories. The first, a bizarre film that sets of this bemusing trio on the theme of control freakery, is the most watchable.
Here Willem Dafoe gets the upper hand as Raymond, a bossman who bankrolls and therefore holds sway over Jesse Plemons’ modest guy called Robert Fletcher. He gets to live in a modernist villa with his obliging wife (Hong Chau) courtesy of Raymond’s money, and is therefore totally in thrall to this control freak. He will do anything to make Raymond happy, and that gives the first segment its scary twist in the tale.
For those who prefer the Greek ‘weird wave’ director’s early fare such as Dogtooth and The Lobster, Kinds of Kindness will appeal, and reunites him with his co-writer on those projects, Efthimis Filippou. But the triptych of weird stories becomes increasingly so, often giving the impression that Lanthimos is just trying a little bit too hard to be perverse, just for the sake of it.
The first part certainly has you glued to the screen – not least for its visual incongruousness. Plemons sports a polyester Windolene-coloured roll-neck that contrasts with his greasy carrot-coloured hair. It’s an enigmatic tale whose pieces gradually fall into place, and this was the segment I found most engrossing.
From then on proceedings grow more dark, violent and unsavoury, but watching Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley and Emma Stone do their stuff in varying roles is always intriguing – even though countenancing this ghastliness for nearly three hours is stretching it a little bit, and you may feel yourself coming over all queer (in the old-fashioned sense of the word).
The titles of each story are built around the initials R.M.F. (played by Yorgos Stefanakos) who doesn’t really have much a role to speak of – in fact he doesn’t get to say anything – but is merely there to serve the narrative as the car crash victim Fletcher is supposed to kill in order to please Raymond, in a final act of submission.
Margot Qualley entertains us on the electric organ with “How Deep is Your Love” the twin theme to the trilogy. She is variously Raymond’s wife Vivian (Qualley) and then a vet with life-giving powers in the final story. Meanwhile Emma Stone is Rita, a glam optician who falls for Robert in the second part of the control-themed scenario. But the standout in Kinds of Kindness is Jesse Plemons who really comes into his own in the new Hollywood firmament pulling off an impressive range of performances; his final turn as Daniel, a flesh-eating policeman is the least appealing, but in a good way. @MeredithTaylor
The Substance is a loud, lewd, violent sci-fi shocker about the horrors of ageing for women. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s flashy follow-up to her vicious vengeance thriller (Vengeance) follows Demi Moore’s fading fitness fanatic, Elizabeth Sparkle, a one-time LA TV aerobics star, fall by the wayside when her younger version Sue (Margot Qualley) takes over. Their reptilian boss-man Harvey (Denis Quaid) announces his intention to give Liz the push, and she overhears the damning conversation in a garish red public loo just like the one in The Shining.
Sue has firmer buttocks, peachier skin, and sparklier eyes. But when Elizabeth discovers ‘The Substance’, an injectable youth-giving elixir, warning bells ring. And very loudly at that. Expect plenty of squelching body horror, gore, 80’s style spandex and Alien style images. A sad, but inevitable, indictment on modern Hollywood. @MeredithTaylor.
Now on MUBI from 20 September 2024 | Coralie Fargeat won best screenplay at #Cannes2024 for ‘The Substance’CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dir: Ali Abassi | Script: Gabriel Sherman | Cast: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Ben Sullivan, Mark Rendall, Joe Pingue, Jim Monaco, Bruce | Biopic Drama, 120′
“You’re either a killer or a loser” is the advice a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) gets from his acerbic mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) in this polarising political biopic written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abassi (Border) and Holy Spider (who is now perhaps best known for his involvement in The Last Of Us).
Cohn, the lawyer responsible for putting the Rosenbergs on the electric chair and a key figure in the McCarthy witch hunts, offers up three key bits of business advice during The Apprentice– an entertaining romp that zips briskly through its two hours running time sketching out Trump’s early career as an eager apprentice trained under the high-flying lawyer, and eventually trumping him in a tale of machiavellian morals, ethics and business acumen.
There are elements of poetic licence at play here: in other words Sherman plays slightly fast and loose with the facts in fleshing out Trump’s backstory. The result is a fairly even-handed feature that on the one hand sees the US former president as cold-eyed and devious, but on the other opines that these are the very tools of the trade for those wanting to get on in big business – or politics, for that matter. Crucially it also highlights the recent concept of the truth being a construct open to individual perception.
The focus narrows in on Trump from a broad brush opening outlining the corruption of the Nixon years and the inherent dishonesty that is now rife in all circles of power, not least in America. It contrasts the ‘losers’ (those on welfare) with the killers, the ‘unscrupulous’ hard-working income generators during the Reagan presidency that led to the phenomenon of ‘corporate greed’.
The Apprentice sees Trump starting out during the 1970s working for his property magnate father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan). Dressed in a suit Donald is tasked with doing the rounds to collect rents. One disgruntled tenant throws a pan of boiling water in his face, another swears at him. The family business comes then under fire from a civil rights action alleging discrimination against Black tenants. Cohn wins the case, as his lawyer, with Trump senior claiming: “How can I be racist when I have a Black driver?”
But Donald is determined to make it alone and sets his sights on transforming the downtrodden area around Grand Central Station where he vows to make a success in a project of urban regeneration involving the dilapidated Commodore Hotel, bringing jobs, European tourists and a facelift for Manhattan.
Family wise we also meet Donald’s kindly mother Mary Anne (Catherine McNally), and his brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick) a failed pilot with emotional problems: Fred admits to having been tough on his boys. But Donald is hellbent on success and soon bonds with Cohn after a chance meeting at a fancy Manhattan nightclub frequented by the top flight business community. Working together they soon go from strength to strength in a business alliance with Trump styling himself in the same vein as Cohn with his fast-talking intransigence. His transformation into fully fledged killer who lives by his own standards happens almost overnight and feels a little too fast even given the film’s ample running time. But Stan grasps Trump’s essence charting his character’s transformation from reasonable business man to self-seeking hardliner.
Trump soon becomes a man who takes his own advice often rubbing Cohn up the wrong way, while at the same time chosing to turn a blind eye to his ‘strange way of life’ and hedonistic habits. Trump’s puritan background sees him gradually distancing himself from the lawyer who berates him for his lack of financial probity. Their relationship eventually sours during the AIDS crisis, although Trump offers an olive branch in the finale.
The marriage to Ivana Zelnickova, against Cohn’s advice, is handled deftly and with some humour. Trump follows Ivana to Aspen to clinch their romance then falls flat on the ice after claiming to be a good skier. The Czech model is a little two sweet and sympathetic despite her purported savvy business sense, but Trump soon tires of her, claiming to find their home life ‘more like coming home to a business partner than a wife’. A shocking episode sees him beating Ivana, but whether this has a factual basis, despite his widely reported misogyny, is uncertain. Stan’s Trump may be polarise public opining in coming across as too likeable but this is surely the essence of a maverick who can charm as well as chastise and here he gives a compelling performance.
With a killer score of hits that just reeks of the ’70s and ’80 and a scuzzy retro texture this is an compulsive portrait of toxic narcissism even more relevant now than it was back in the day. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN FINITOWORLD.com
Dir: Frank Capra | Cast: Jean Harlow, Loretta Young, Robert Williams, Don Dillaway | US drama 89’
Don’t be fooled by the title, Jean Harlow may have the title role, and Loretta Young is technically the star, but the film belongs to the late Robert Williams.
One of the many satisfactions afforded by the study of old movies is their ability to preserve as in amber fleeting moments for the delectation of posterity, while in a very real sense bringing the dead back to life.
If you only knew Frank Capra from the films he made after the draconian Production Code rigidly enforced after June 1934 this film will come as a revelation for the briskness that Capra was then capable of bringing to the proceedings before he began taking himself very seriously.
But true value of ‘Platinum Blonde’ lies is the record that it provides of the charismatic Williams who aged only 37 succumbed to peritonitis following an appendectomy within weeks of the film’s completion and himself never saw it. @RichardChatten
Dir: Jessica Palud | Cast: Anamaria Vartolomei, Matt Dillon, Giuseppe Maggio, Céleste Brunnquell, Yvan Attal, Marie Gillian
Last Tango in Pariswas certainly a ground-breaking film shocking audiences to the core back in 1972. A woman directs this new biopic about the abused French actress Maria Schneider, who at age of 19, landed a role alongside Marlon Brando in the Bertolucci film that would make her a star but also destroy her life.
Berlolucci wanted to make a film about two people, Jeanne and Paul, indulging in a sexual relationship without any trappings. They would meet regularly in room and just go from there. But, crucially, without asking or her consenting, the Italian director and his 48-year-old male star sprung an unscripted rape scene on the young woman asking for real ‘rage’ and ‘humiliation’. And that’s what happened. Even though sodomy never took place the fear and loss of control is devastating. And we feel for Maria even though Brando assures her: ‘it’s only a film’. She has seen him as a mentor only to be deceived. And even now, in the light of the #MeToo era, this sequence is particularly resonant.
Maria is from an educated if broken home: her father (Attal) is the seasoned actor Daniel Gerlin who has gone on to form another family after leaving home. Her volatile mother Marie-Christine (Gillain) throws her out of the house – quite literally – for reconnecting him after the two meet and reconnect on a film set in the opening sequence. The twice rejected Maria then moves in with her uncle, but is clearly damaged by her life experience thus far.
Being Maria is directed by Jessica Palud (who has a handful of directing titles behind her: Revenir, Les Yeux Fermes), and co-written with Laurette Polmanss, freely adapting the novel ‘Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider’ by Vanessa Schneider, Maria’s cousin, It paints a convincing portrait of this young woman desperate to forge a career in acting.
Encouraged by her father in this endeavour, she contacts an agent and then finds herself in a café where she meets Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio who authentically, like the director, doesn’t role his ‘r’s). He has picked her out for the fateful role. (‘roles chose actors, not the other way round’ says her father). But after the furore of that pivotal scene, which happens early on. The film has nothing more to say thereafter and unravels as does Maria’s life. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Emma Benestan | France, Fantasy thriller 101′
Experience the dizzying bull run at Saints-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue and you’ll understand the sheer terror pulsating through the crowd when the bulls are released from the arena to run wild through the streets, commandeered only by a group of bareback riders.
After training at La Femis in Paris, Algerian filmmaker Emma Benestan honed her craft as assistant editor on the 2013 Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Colour. And her feature debut, a neon-tinged neo western, captures the rush of adrenaline and fizzing energy of the bull run fusing it into a surreal bovine thriller that joins the sub-genre of women triumphing in a male dominated ‘world’. Conceived as a supernatural fable Animale blends classic body horror with a potent revenge piece imbued with the spirit of Palme d’Or winner Titane ,The Eagle Huntress and Zahori all rolled into one dynamic piece of filmmaking.
In a cast of newcomers and established actors, breakout talent Oulaya Amamra plays Nejma, a 22-year-old woman keen to make her mark in the macho bullfighting corrida, and to this endeavour trains fearlessly in the bullring and afterwards endures a night of heavy drinking with the boys. Waking the following morning Nejma suffers more than just a post-binge hangover. Her whole body feels strangely transformed. Then comes that news that some of the experienced guys have been found dead, and a rogue bull is on the loose.
The struggle with the bulls come to represent Nejma’s battle to be accepted as a woman, albeit a tough one. The bulls can be fierce and frightening when riled but they are also creatures capable of a certain sensitivity, and strangely seem to empathise with their female trainer. Nejma’s own feminine quality is seen in the bulls’ latent soulfulness that DoP Ruben Impens captures again and again in their frightened gaze. Animale is a novel and atmospheric feature that marks Benestan out as a talented auteur. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Lorcan Finnegan | Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak, Rahel Romahn, Finn Little, Charlotte Maggi | Australia/Ireland, Fantasy thriller 99’
Nicolas Cage seems to be enjoying his current screen persona: a decent family man who becomes increasingly disturbed and emasculated. In Lorcan Finnegan’s latest film, a psychological buddy thriller premiering at Cannes Film Festival, Cage is a harried, ego-driven dad hellbent on revenge: Australian set-psychodramas Long Weekend (1978) and Wake in Fright (1971) will both spring to mind in tone and intensity.
Set in beachside Australia, possibly Perth, this is a film about masculine pride and ego. But what starts as a plausible concept thriller soon drifts into much darker (more disgusting) territory and eventually grows tedious with its rather sad commentary on the male of the species.
Cage kicks off in a Lexus – hardly emblematic of success, – but that’s what it’s billed as here. His son in tow, he’s aiming to buy the house on the coast where he grew up as a killer surfer. But the locals, a pack of butch beach bums, don’t want him here. Father and son make their way down to the beach where they are confronted with the local gang of thuggish surfers, led on by Scally (Julian McMahon) who tells them to sling a hook, or a surfboard for that matter, and get the hell out of there.
Thus begins Cage’s descent into Hell. Beset by oncoming failure: his loss of face with his son, a failure to secure his dream property, and even the theft of his brogues, Cage turns his anger on the world at large – and the focus is the Bay Boys. What a pathetic sight he becomes, and in some ways we feel for him in a series of things that go impossibly awry: All these feelings of angst are reflected by the local flora and fauna: a cawing Kookaburra, a vicious scorpion, a rabid dog, the merciless sun that bakes down on the now delusional, dehydrated dad.
And his loss of self-esteem stares back at him in the negative attitudes of those around. Rather like Polanski’s character in The Tenant, he starts to doubt himself in a self-persecuting masculine meltdown. Sadly Finnegan’s finale doesn’t quite reach a satisfactory outcome, lost in mixed messages and bravado, but The Surfer is worth watching for Cage alone. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Christophe Honoré Cast: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, Benjamin Biolay, Melvil Poupaud, Hugh Skinner, Stefania Sandrelli | France, Drama 120′
A girl wakes up one day feeling a bit sorry for herself and decides to dress up like her late father in this starry, soft-hearted nepo-baby flick from French director Christophe Honore.
Of course Chiara is no ordinary girl, she is the likeable daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni and her penthouse apartment overlooks Paris’ Tour Montparnasse. After turning up for a casting in a new film, the director (Nicole Garcia) asks her to play her role “more like Mastroianni than Deneuve.” And this sets Chiara contemplating the past in a film imbued with the spirit of Paris, and of French and Italian cinema.
Clearly more like her father than her mother Chiara decides to take on Marcello’s famous guise from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, chopping off her hair and donning a black tailored suit to take a trip down memory lane – speaking Italian – for her role in a film that poses everlasting questions but never really lives up to its high-concept premise instead playing out in a series of jokey vignettes, musical interludes and reveries.
Catherine Deneuve looks proudly on as Chiara is mentored by Fabrice Luchini, schmoozes ex lover Melvil Poupaud, parties with musician Benjamin Biolay and hooks up with a ginger-haired Spaniel padding through the nighttime streets of Paris where she also bumps into Hugh Skinner’s lovelorn British soldier taking time out from his NATO barracks (that’s the film’s fascinating revelation – and qualifies its entry in the Queer Palme competition). Fizzing with fun and nostalgia this is a lovely little film but Palme d’Or material?. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Guy Maddin, Evan & Galen Johnson | Canada 118′
Cult Canadian director Guy Maddin is an auteur in his own right with an eclectic stash of avant-garde films under his belt and loyal fanbase. Recently he joined forces with Evan and Galen Johnson and here joins them for a curious pulp horror outing worth seeing only for its stellar cast.
It all starts off rather straighforwardly in a lakeside gazebo in the grounds of a German castle at a G7 conference hosted by Kate Blanchett’s spritely president Helga Ortmann. She is joined by Denis Menochet (for France); Charles Dance (bizarrely for the US) a pigtailed and horny Roy Dupuis (Canada); Nikki Amuka-Bird (the UK) Italys’ Rolando Ravello and Takehiro Kira (Japan) who gather to work on a crisis paper until proceedings take a deep dive into Dr Strangelove territory.
During their arrival Ortmann has proudly showed the heads of state the recently discovered remains of a prehistoric body perfectly preserved in a nearby peat bog. And this atavistic relic gives rise to a strange turn of events that doesn’t quite live up to expectations. But never mind about that, the cast makes this a worthwhile, if overlong, watch with some witty exchanges. @MeredithTaylor
UK 1948. Dir Basil Dearden. With Joan Greenwood, Stewart Granger, Peter Bull,Flora Robson. 96min. U
The attention paid to Ealing’s comedies has long been at the expense of their dramas, an oversight that has perennially overshadowed the work of Basil Dearden; although his importance to the studio was amply attested to when entrusted by Michael Balcon with the responsibility of making Ealing’s first production in Technicolor.
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.
Although Ealing’s comedies seemed contemporary at the time, they are now as much period pieces as Saraband (for Dead Lovers), set in the early eighteenth century. Conceived as a Gainsborough romance for grown-ups – for which Ealing enlisted Gainsborough leading man Stewart Granger (who recalled it fondly in his memoirs) – it was a pet project of Balcon’s, but proved something of a poisoned chalice to Dearden, being the second of two ambitious box office failures based on novels by Helen Simpson (the second being Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn).
Nevertheless with production design by Dearden’s regular collaborator Michael Relph and photography by Douglas Slocombe it’s ravishing to look at, with a haunting score by Alan Rawsthorne. Among the supporting cast Peter Bull makes the future George I a memorable ogre, Flora Robson and Françoise Rosay a formidable pair of grande dames; while if it it only had a young Joan Greenwood in Technicolor playing the waif-like Sophie Dorothea that alone would make it well worth viewing. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: David Cronenberg | Cast: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt | Canada 119′
In David Cronenberg’s latest sci-fi love story a grief-stricken man mourns the loss of his wife. But was he more obsessed with her body than her mind? Sexual desire is just one of the themes in this macabre but melancholy thriller. On his return to Cannes after Crimes of the Future, the Canadian director mulls over psychosomatics, freewill, life after death and the power of Al in a filmic hotchpotch of complex and avantgarde ideas. Exciting to watch but needlessly convoluted in its plotline.
Here Vincent Cassel is France’s answer to Vincent Price: the chiselled cheek bones, haughty gaze, powerful physicality, penetrating blue eyes and shock of white hair make for a creepy cemetery entrepreneur who goes by the name of Karsh Relikh, an atheist who believes in the afterlife, but is also surprisingly vulnerable. The death of his wife Bekka has been a body blow, so much so that his teeth are actually rotting in response to the anguish (according to his dentist): he hasn’t had sex since her death four years previously, although this celibate status will be short-lived. Bekka leaves an almost identical sister Terry in the shape of Diane Kruger who deftly takes on both roles.
Weirdly it takes Karsh nearly the entire film to discover that Bekka’s body is what he misses most and he admits to experiencing a visceral desire to have been interred with her. And so he takes ‘great comfort’ in watching her corpse slowly decompose after burial in a “shroud” lined with multiple X-ray cameras. Bekka also visits him in her dreams complete with mastectomy scars. And when he finds out that their relationship was not as exclusive as he imagined, the jealousy is destructive. Meanwhile his limp brother in law Maury (Guy Pearce), is also emotionally unhinged by his divorce from Terry, and is trying to get his own back on Karsh for enigmatic reasons. Cronenberg envelopes his various themes into this simple story of sorrow and sadness.
Ultimately The Shrouds seems to serve as a cinematic valedictory to Cronenberg’s own wife who died of cancer several years ago. It has the same cold beauty as his recent works but none of the dark humour of his early films. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Andrea Arnold. UK/France. Drama, 119 mins
A spadeful of social grit soaked in the English countryside and served up with a dash of magical realism is the best way to describe this latest feature from Andrea Arnold.
Set in her native Kent on the fringes of Gravesend on the Thames estuary Birdmakes multiple visual references to its avian-themed title but also features butterflies, bees, horses, foxes and dogs along with a cast of British actors, a German, Franz Rogowski, being the standout. He plays the titular hero Bird, a charismatic wayfarer who will soon come to represent everything decent and honourable in this squalid corner of broken Britain.
Arnold’s Cow, a devastating documentary portrait of a dairy farming in the 21st century, came to Cannes Film Festival several years ago but went home empty-handed. Bird stands to gain more leverage due to its international stars Rogowski, and Barry Keoghan who plays Bug, a selfish, tattooed layabout who fathered a kid (Hunter) at fourteen, and is now set to be a granddad and an accidental father to his savvy young daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams in a stunning debut).
Apart from the animals, Bird is a chaotically poetic film full of music, dancing and fighting (courtesy of its male contingent). Coldplay, Fontaines D.C. and Sophie Ellis-Bextor all feature in a rambling storyline that centres on twelve-year-old Bailey who lives in a dingy seaside flat with Bug and her slightly older brother Hunter (Jason Edward Buda) who is also heading for teenage fatherhood. None appear to do a day’s work or have anything approaching a job. Bug’s plan is to harness the slime of his recently purchased Colorado River toad which exudes a pricey hallucinogen he can flog on the black market.
So Bailey is forced to make her own life until she befriends Bird after falling asleep in a field full of daisies beside the M2 – and these scenes are particularly gorgeous to look at; Arnold knows how to ‘smell the roses’ cinematically-speaking and Bird is a film that takes itself slowly along the byroads, alighting on nature in all its summery beauty as well as the dregsville domestic interiors, not to mention bodily functions. Is Bird for real? – at one point Bailey gives him a Chinese burn just to check, but he’s the nearest thing to a decent bloke she’s ever come across and so begins their subtle love affair.
Arnold’s 2009 feature Fish Tank embarked on a similar scenic journey for its lost heroine but this time the English filmmaker heads in an unexpectedly new and inspired direction, and this really makes the film special although thematically we’re on traditional territory. The handheld camera may leave you in a daze but that’s all part of the slightly unreal life these drifters lead. @MeredithTaylor
Richard Boleslavski died just short of his 48th birthday – his death probably hastened by the rigours of having recently directed two temperamental stars in the Arizona desert – and is largely overlooked by modern students of the cinema, but left behind him an interesting body of work, including this historic production in Technicolor.
Greta Garbo’s favourite photographer William Daniels once lamented that his greatest regret was that he never got the chance to record her lovely blue eyes for posterity. Fortunately Marlene Dietrich appeared to good advantage in several intermittent Technicolor productions of which ‘The Garden of Allah’ was the first.
Considering the unwieldy nature of Technicolor technology at the time the camerawork is fluid and mobile – and deservedly won an Academy Award – while it’s new-found ability to register the colour blue is seen to good effect in the succession of diaphanous blue gowns worn by Dietrich. @RichardChatten
The past and the present collide in this straightforward Romanian melodrama, a third feature for filmmaker/actor Emanuel Parvu, and his first time in the main competition at the 77th Edition of Cannes Film Festival.
17-year-old Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) is back from Bucharest to spend the summer with his God-fearing parents in their idyllic painted wooden house on the edge of the Danube. The young man has everything going for him: looks, intelligence and a good start in life. Until he suffers a savage attack on the way to the village disco, the future looked bright.
The action unfolds in a simple chronological way with strong performances all round: you may recognise Adi’s father Bogdan Dumitrache from his brilliant performance in Spiral and A Decent Man. This is Chiujdea’s feature debut and he feels convincing as a young man determined to get on in life despite his overbearing mother (Laura Vasiliu).
Shocked at the severity of Adi’s wounds his parents decide to file a complaint with the local police. But this is a small, tightly-knit community and the culprit is soon identified as the son of another local man to whom the father owes money. What also emerges is that this is a gay-bashing. And it doesn’t there with bitter repercussions as the parents remain in denial of their son’s sexuality, blaming his life in the big city, and hoping that a spell in a monastery will ‘sort him out’.
The story has its twists and turns which often feel rather uneventful but gain resonance in Parvu and his co-writer Miruna Berescu’s clever script. Three Kilometres is also made all the more watchable by the enchanting settings and some superb limpid visuals that create a real wonderland of this rural paradise in the Danube Delta, a throwback in time. @MeredithTaylor.
This ambitious undertaking, forty years in the making, should have been called ‘Magaflopolis’. Ok it’s easy to criticise, but a veteran director such as Ford Coppola has a duty to his audience: not to confuse them, or bore them rigid for over two hours – but that’s exactly what he does in this over-inflated piece of filmmaking that masquerades as an inspired satire.
Megalopolisis pretentious and posturing and ultimately vacuous. Discombobulating images continuously flash before our eyes along with a talented cast of Hollywood’s best. But there wasn’t a scene or a performance I enjoyed as the actors all seem caught up in the grandiosity of it all in displaying the worst traits of each sex. The women were grasping and bitchy. The men arrogant and ego-driven, in fact, Jon Voight was the only one with a shred of vulnerability and a cheeky grin of playfulness as canny banker Hamilton Crassus III with Aubrey Plaza hamming it up as his lover Wow Platinum. Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf is cast as his curious and corrupt trans-looking grandson Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf).
Coppola aims high, as he should do, but the film feels like an flashback to the 1980s, all gilded, burnished and blundering like a fancy-dress school play of Shakespeare with a sci-fi makeover that somehow looks old-fashioned in the scheme of contemporary special effects: the actors poncing around and quoting their literary lines in the hope this will give some integrity to what is really a confounding mess.
Adam Driver is the main character: he plays Cesar Catilina, a Nobel prize-winning ‘starchitect’ who is still recovering from the death of his wife, who he purportedly murdered: The jury is still out on this ambiguous plot line. Apparently he has invented a substance called Megalon which makes the building process more flexible. He intends to re-design and re-build parts of the city in a utopian scheme. Also tenuous is his mysterious control over time and space (?). Aubrey Plaza is fabulously vociferous as his long-term blond lover all done up in leopard skin with roots as dark as Kunta Kinte (she’s a busy woman romantically – it seems – as she also has a clinch with Clodio not to mention Crassus). But then Cesar falls for Julia the bland daughter of Cicero (Esposito) the city’s mayor (and his arch rival) who is all about noble things like decent pay, sanitation, new schools and hospitals. Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is all about ‘creating a home’ and these various factions come into conflict with each other: the creative, forward-thinking and the social-minded face of urban existence.
There are some inspiring elements: Driver and Emmanuel riding a sort of watch face that floats over Manhattan. I seem to have forgotten the others. But the idea that America is still great gradually fades with hollow laughter. Brazen, brash and bloated this is a step too far. @MeredithTaylor
A joyful, earthy coming of age film about one of the most important things in life: Good food.
Holy Cow is also a first feature for Courvoisier who makes her debut along with lead actor Clément Favreau in this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar.
In the Limousin dairy farmer’s son Totone (Clement Favreau) lives a carefree existence until his father’s sudden death forces him to grow up quickly and take charge of a younger sister (Luna Garret).
Landing a job in a neighbouring farm making cheese has its complications. First of all the farmer’s son is his love rival and Totone gets beaten up on day one. Then the cheese-making machinery gets the better of him. Worse of all, work starts at 4am and his sister must be taken to school.
But Totone is determined. And we get a crash course in the fine art of Comte cheese-making into the bargain. And when Totone meets fellow farmer Marie Lise (Barthélémy) they make a natural team with some dramatic heft provided by a heifer. But predictably the course of true love doesn’t run smoothly.
With a lively upbeat score and some lush rural cinematography Holy Cow is a breakout bucolic hit with a range of naturalistic performances from Clement Favreau and his fellow cast in an impressive feature debut. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Payal Kapadia | Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon | India Drama 110′
Writer-director Payal Kapadia‘s Mumbai set feature All We Imagine As Light is the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in nearly three decades; an impressive achievement for a first time filmmaker, especially an Indian woman. The last time an Indian film made it into the main competition was Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994. Sadly it went home empty-handed losing out to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Kapadia, however, is not new to Cannes. Her poetic yet powerful documentary, A Night of Knowing Nothing, was the winner of Golden Eye for best documentary during the 2021 edition of Cannes Film Festival.
Unfolding in two parts and shifting deftly from realism to reverie All We Imagine As Light is about two women caught in impossible love stories in modern day Mumbai. Prabha, a nurse, shares a flat with Anu, yet they hardly know each other and are further constrained from forming a friendship due to shameful secrets that trap them from sharing their personal lives. Both women are disappointed by love, for differing reasons, and this emotional claustrophobia pervades the first part of the drama.
Anu, a Hindu, is in love with a Muslim man and forced to conceal her relationship due to societal constraints. All the two of them want is to make love but this is frowned upon even nowadays. Prabha is caught in an arranged marriage with a man who has since disappeared back to his village. One day, out of the blue, a rice cooker arrives in the post, supposedly from her estranged husband. This innocent gift sends Prabha into a deep depression, opening up fresh wounds of romantic disillusionment and upsetting her emotional equilibrium once again. She is a married woman constrained by all the ties that it implies, but leaving her lonely and emotionally frustrated.
The second part of film brings an uplifting almost dreamlike tonal shift that sees the women freed from their inertia when they set off on a road trip to a beach town where a mystical forest creates a space for the womens’ dreams to be unleashed. Kapadia’s film touches on traditional themes of abandonment, religious intolerance, female friendship and sexual liberation that are still all too relevant in today’s India with its impressive technical and financial advances. Yet despite all this, many women are still sadly stuck in the dark ages, while in the West men are enjoying the freedoms of gay marriage, gay fatherhood, and sexual transitioning. A thoughtful, richly thematic and beautifully captured film with two sensitive performances from leads Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Magnus Von Horn | Cast: Vic Carmen Sonne, Trine Dyrholm, Besir Zeciri, Ava Knox Martin | Sweden, Drama
After training at the world famous film school in Lodz (Poland), Swedish director Magnus von Horn soon won international recognition in 2020 with his confident first feature Sweat a slick and scathing satire on social media celebrity.
The Girl with the Needlecouldn’t be more different in tone or style but the theme is the same – sort of. A relentlessly grim atmosphere pervades this Palme d’Or hopeful, another tale of female empowerment turn of the century-style. This time set in 1919 Copenhagen where the macabre shadow and privations of the First World War still hang over Europe, affecting Denmark even though they were neutral.
Here a young girl called Karoline (Carmen Sonne) becomes reliant on all the help she can get after her husband Peter (Zeciri) disappears, suspected of being caught up in the hostilities. Karoline tries to apply for a widow’s pension but because Peter has not been technically declared dead she falls foul of the rules, according to Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the owner of the garment factory where she fetches up and whose needle give the film its gruesome title. She is soon pregnant by Jorgen who has no intention of marrying her.
Enter Dagmar (Dyrholm) a benevolent shopkeeper who purportedly helps poor mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted babies. The two bond and Karoline agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to become a wet-nurse, until it soon emerges that there is a terrible secret behind this work.
Unfolding in pristine black and white – and DoP Michal Dymek does a great job visually along with set designer Jagna Dobesz – this is a full blown horror story with all the hallmarks of Robert Lynn’s Dr Crippen (1963) and Fritz Lang’s M (1931) not to mention Dickens or The Brothers Grimm (but this is no fairy tale). The echoing, plangent soundscape and special effects – a series of leering faces that morph from a smirk to a gurning glower – are really sinister while feeling totally in keeping with an era fraught with human death and destruction in the trenches. Carmen Sonne and Dyrholm, really plummet the depths of Hell to dredge up these two ghastly women: one forced, through force of circumstance, to be dreadful; the other evil incarnate.
Needles become a metaphor for the pain and suffering that they deliver throughout the film: whether it be morphine, ether or an abortion attempt. Peter soon reappears maimed and disfigured and wearing a mask and unable to eat without making disgusting noises. Another ghastly character is Dagmar’s seven-year-old ‘daughter’ Erena (Knox Martin) another evil concoction – a blond female answer to Damien from Omen II. Not for the feint of heart and certainly not for those frightened of needles. @MeredithTaylor
Best known for his Rotterdam FIPRESCI-winning drama Mauro Argentina’s Hernan Roselli comes to Cannes’ 77th Edition with an intriguing crime drama.
Difficult to imagine that this seemingly decent family could actually be involved in something as dodgy as the criminal underworld. But Roselli’s third feature, which he writes and directs, blends found footage with fiction delving into the underbelly of organised, if low-level, crime in the outskirts of Buenos Aires the Felpetos have been running a clandestine lottery business for several decades.
Alejandra runs the administrative side of things, while her daughter Maribel heads up the team who log the bets from the privacy of their own living room. But the authorities have recently started to crack down on the activities of local bookies bringing a unsettling tonal shift to proceedings particularly when it emerges that the Felpetos have been concealing a burning secret.
The film, screening at the this year’s Directors’ Fortnight competition strand combines the same seething atmosphere as previous Argentine fare such as Azor, A Common Crime and Shady River in reflecting the unsettling history of the country with intriguing modern day realism that brings a striking note of reality to this assured piece of filmmaking marking Roselli out as a director at the top of his game. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2024
Las Novias del Sur premieres in the Queer Palm competition at this year’s 77th CANNES FILM FESTIVAL. It’s another unique snapshot of life in Southern Spain from Elena Lopez Riera who has carved out a niche for herself with similar ethnographical fare such as El Agua (2022), Those Who Lust and The Entrails.
Screening during Cannes Critics’ Week Southern Brides features the stories of various mature women who discuss their intimate experiences of love and marriage from the middle of the last century. Whether positive or negative this emotional heritage provides a shared history for themselves and their future generations.
Lopez Riera, who is unmarried and childless by choice, comes to the realisation that this vital thread connecting her to the future is missing, setting her adrift in the Universe.
Whereas the recent Costa Rica documentary Memories of a Burning Body (2024) focused on the sense of freedom and self-realisation middle age entailed for a group of now single women, here the director combines interviews with archive footage to craft a documentary where the accent is more on the personal voyage of discovery gleaned from sharing these sometimes poignant and riveting revelations. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Quentin Dupieux | Cast: Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphael Quenard | France Comedy | 80′
Best known for his ‘zany’ comedies (The Deerskin,Incredible But True) writer director Quentin Dupieux gets the opening slot at this year’s 77th Edition of the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL with his latest The Second Act that follows a group of bored actors on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The task here is trying to make their boredom funny, and Dupieux doesn’t quite pull it off.
The film stars Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon and Louis Garrel (who has recently turned his talents to comedy) and the action revolves in the confines of The Second Act, a diner in the middle of nowhere, where Garrel is David, the love interest of Seydoux’s character Florence who is keen to introduce him to her father (Lindon) as ‘the man of her life’. Problem is, David doesn’t really fancy her and tries to get his friend Willy (Quenard) involved. But Willy isn’t convinced.
When they all eventually sit down together the bickering continues between their characters in the film being made and the actors they play in the actual film. There’s an inspired scene where the waiter (Manuel Guillot), clearly a lonely depressive, tries to serve them an expensive Cote du Rhone, but, due to stage fright, manages to spill it everywhere but in the glasses.
The Second Act is occasionally funny and Dupieux’s script full of good ideas and topical themes such as sexuality and racism and also touching on more contemporary subjects like the emergence of AI for budget filmmaking, and the late arrival to the French film industry of cancel culture and the #MeToo movement. But Dupieux just doesn’t know how to bring this all together into a story with a dramatic arc that leads to a satisfactory denouement. Ultimately the film outstays its welcome in a series of amusing skits brilliantly performed by a talented cast who eventually run out of steam with their laborious, receptive dialogues. A missed opportunity with some fun moments. @MeredithTaylor
Following his recent success with triple-award winning documentary Who’s Stopping Us (2022) Jonas Trueba’s latest, a comedy crowd-pleaser, follows a longterm couple in the throws of an amicable break-up.
After fifteen years together Ale (Itsaso Arana), a filmmaker, and Alex (Vito Sanz) have decided to call it a day. So to celebrate this rite of passage the two plan to invite their nearest and dearest for a knees-up in their Madrid flat.
Competing in the Directors’ Fortnight section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival this upbeat relatable romcom from the multi-award-winning is co-written by Trueba and his lead duo in a mumblecore style with its focus on sassy dialogue and slightly cooky performances from Arana and Sanz who are so plausible as an ordinary couple with the usual doubts and complexes that none of their close coterie can actually believe this relationship will – or indeed – should come to an end.
A party to mark the end of their life together is certainly a novel idea and the story goes to provocative places in exploring what happens when expectations fall short and long-term love just doesn’t set the night on fire anymore, although a strong and workable friendship is still alive and kicking, and many couples eventually decide to stick together their shared history and close ties with others binding them in a lifelong affair. The Other Way Round is a light-hearted look at deconstructed coupledom that ultimately asks the question: is everyone lucky enough to remain ‘loved-up’ forever or is this state of grace just a pipe dream, or even a mindset, for the lucky few? @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2024
Fans of quirky humour will warm to this interconnected selection of parables from the Matthew Rankin whose breakout comedy hit The 20th Century swept the festival board back in 2019.
Rankin is a one-man potted Canadian version of Monty Python, and here along with his co-writers Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, dreams up a series of witty off-the-wall tales set, of all places, in Winnipeg and featuring a (predominantly) Farsi-speaking cast.
Universal Language is certainly an acquired taste: the humour is eye-pokingly prurient, politically incorrect and bizarre. The sets are provocative and the stories surreal, but will certainly have you pinned to your seat staring at the screen aghast – in anger, bewilderment or amazement at the weirdness of it all. In contrast to the content, visually it looks all quite bland and washed out colour-wise but that just adds to almost whimsical nature of the perfectly framed set pieces: the turkey shop is a case in point, as is the school scene that opens in a snowy urban landscape; clearly Winnipeg has some great architects, and you get a tour of the city by a character called Massoud who certainly adds value to his travelogue of the town. The man and his mother tale is another well-worn chestnut but the Quebec setting is novel.
Whatever you make of it Universal Language is a bracingly inspired piece of filmmaking from a director who thinks out of the box and deserves a place in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight selection at Cannes Film Festival 2024.@MeredithTaylor
A young man grows up in the rural surroundings of Spain’s Navarra region in Armendar’s poignant ethnographical portrait of working lives that echoes Victor Erice’s El Sur, created two years previously.
Armendáriz adopts a meditative approach to his minimalist depiction of Tasio’s powerfully visceral world that comes to life in Jose Luis Alcaine’s incandescent camerawork. Spare of dialogue yet speaking volumes, the film shows how Tasio ekes out a modest existence making charcoal. It’s a slow-burning (quite literally!) and arduous process: wood is piled into enormous mounds and then set alight as it gradually smoulders into a sooty mound of dense black remains. Tasio, the `carbonero’, pokes and prods the mass making sure it gets just enough just air to continue its process in a centuries old cottage industry that still exists in parts of Spain.
The film was shot on the borders of the Basque Country (Euskadi), in the extreme west of Navarra (Navarre) around the villages of Aranarache, Eulate, Urra, Baquedano and Zudaire, villages forming the area known as Améscoa not far from the bosky slopes of the Sierra de Urbasa. A simple but noble look at times gone by. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Luis Federico | Cast: Lorenzo Ferro, Kiara Supini, Pehuen Pedre | Argentina, Chile, Uruguay | Drama 97′
Argentinian filmmaker Luis Federico makes a brave and inspired attempt to work with the physically and mentally impaired in his feature debut that explores alternative lifestyles and parallel universes centring on an unlikely trio as they navigate the world from an original perspective.
Communities all over the world thrive in the margins of what is known as “society”. This is often what happens when the gene pool is restricted or concentrated to a small circle of people who find themselves compromised in all sorts of ways, allowing them to experience our world through different eyes.
The film centres on Simon (Ferro) a strong-jawed, capable man who, looking for a change of direction, hooks up with two disabled teenagers (played by Kiara Supine and Pehuen Pedre). Simon is well-versed in bed-making but not cooking or cleaning. For some reason he becomes into contact with two disabled kids and this leads to an often unnerving journey of friendship and discovery.
It was the American comedian W.C. Fields who once said: “never work with children or animals”. He was of the opinion that they can be unpredictable with their ability to steal scenes. But this quality only adds to this film’s allure, and Federico manages some extraordinary results from his fist time young actors. One scene in particular, involving an exchange between Supine and Pedre, is electric in its intensity and this just goes to show the enhanced sensibility between those experiencing challenges in other areas and makes Simon of the Mountain a touching, surprising often darkly humorous experience lead by two outstanding debut performances. @MeredithTaylor
BEST FEATURE WINNER CRITICS’ WEEK | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dirs: Yossi Bloch, Duki Dror | With: Shoval Roberman, Tomer Weiner, Racheli Nahmias, Michal Ohana, Noam Cohen, Gali Amar, Amit Amar, Ilan Regev, Hananya Benjamin | Israel doc 2024, 52′
A new documentary from Israeli filmmakers Yossi Block and Duke Dror brings to life that fateful Autumn day when Hamas reportedly attacked more than 20 Israeli towns and kibbutzim killing 1200 people in one day.
On the morning of Saturday, October 7th, 2023, thousands of young Israelis were dancing in the desert at a major international trance-music festival. Euphoria then devastation. Suddenly dozens of terrorists on motorcycles drove into the crowd while militants on hang gliders cut the sky. The terrorists surrounded them, blocking the roads, ambushing escaping cars, grabbing hostages, and leading them violently and triumphantly into Gaza.
This film provides a retrospective of 24 hours at the Nova festival in Re’im through the lens of young individuals who endured the horror. The initial filming began 48 hours after the catastrophic incident, during which the filmmakers documented eight partygoers. The narrative unfolds chronologically, weaving together their first-hand accounts to construct a record of the events.
Interviewed to camera, the kids describe their initial excitement of breaking free from their daily lives to enjoy the outdoor music festival. A cautious comment comes from one of the girls who questions why the location, at the Re’im Junction, is so near to the border with Gaza.
But the festival is now in full swing and fireworks seem to fall from the sky. Or wait a moment. They’re missiles, dozens of them. Calm turns to mild panic when the guards tell the festival-goers to leave the area due to a missile attack.
Director Duki Dror deftly combines the survivors’ own phone footage and face to face interviews with Hamas recorded footage to show how the ground-based units fire missiles that rain down on Israeli territory. A shout goes out ‘God is Great’ and Hamas soldiers make their way into the crowd.
By now day has dawned. But 4000 people trying to leave the festival site at once is no joke.And those who finally get on the road are ambushed by Hamas soldiers who open fire on them indiscriminately (according to Hamas filmed footage). In scenes like something out of the D-Day landings Israeli teenagers are seen running like hell across the open fields while they are fired upon by Hamas soldiers. Some run towards a prefab hut where they take cover and tend to the wounded. Others hide wherever they can. But someone tells them to run if they want to save their lives.
Some of the teenagers found their way to a shelter but Hamas soldiers pelted the metal shack with grenades killing and maiming many of those inside. One young man tells how he slid under a dead body to avoid death. Another grabbed a severed leg and put it over him describing an overwhelming smell of blood, faeces and gunpowder.
At one point a shout goes out from a Hamas soldier: “she’s a war slave, throw her in the back” (of a truck). He grabs a young man by his hair. All around are bodies and burnt out cars.
One dad, Ilan Regev, follows his kids’ phone footage and decides to grab his gun and head south in his truck. He watches as his kids Maya 21, and 18 year old Itay, are captured. Luckily they were eventually released after over seven weeks in captivity. Others who escaped the mayhem speak of their feelings of guilt and are haunted by images of blood and limb-less bodies. They arethe lucky ones. This devastating massacre shocked the world with its extremely graphically violent images. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Lou Ye | Cast: Ming Liang, Qin Hao, Mao Xiaorui, Xuan Huang, Xi Qi, Zhang Songwen | 105′
Do we need another film about the pandemic? Well, this new documentary/drama from Chinese director and his co-writer Yingli Ma certainly offers additional insight and will have its world premiere on 16 May 2024 at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, in the Special Screenings section.
Set in January 2020 it sees a film crew reunite near Wuhan to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier, only to share the unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown. The original film was never finished and remained frozen in time. But here what starts as an ordinary working day for a film crew soon develops into mayhem as Lou Ye and his co-writer blend a real sense of unease punctuated by poignancy and even humour as events unfold during Christmas 2019 and culminate in April 2020.
Naturally the pandemic offered dramatic potential to a vast array of dramas and documentaries, but unlike previous tragedies such the Second World War and the Holocaust all of us have lived through this latest world crisis and experienced it at the coal face, maybe even losing loved ones in the process. And those terrible memories of anxiety, desperation and even boredom all come flooding back when watching An Unfinished Film. Fascinating to see how the Chinese cope with the unfolding events and how the authorities perform, often with violence and draconian measures: and the Chinese public’s reaction is not as meek and obedient as the global image would have us believe.
What emerges here, as the film’s ultimate takeaway, is a story about ordinary people trying to get on with their lives in horrible circumstances: working, loving, dreaming, praying, suffering – and celebrating just like we all did during those fateful few years. @MeredithTaylor.
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | SPECIAL SCREENINGS 2024
Dir: Thierry de Peretti | Cast: Victoire Du Bois, Alexis Manenti, Louis Starace, Marc-Antonu Mozziconacci, Thierry de Peretti, Antonia Buresi, Cedric Appietto | France 110′
Screening in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight In his Own Image is Thierry de Peretti’s fourth feature that follows on from The Apaches (2013) A Violent Life (2017) and Undercover (2023) winning awards at San Sebastián and the Cesars.
Based loosely on a book by Jerome Ferrari this docudrama follows Antonia, a driven young photographer on a local newspaper in Corsica where her personal life mirrors the island’s turbulent political landscape from 1980s until the dawn of the 21st century.
With all the romanticism of a true love story In His Own Image unfolds before our eyes in de Peretti’s poignant potted political and social story of his island homeland. The director has clearly poured his heart and soul into this cinematic chronicle and infused it with a palpable sense of national pride and identity – and it draws us in from the first scene.
Peretti himself stars as Joseph, a priest in the small southern town of Bastelica where he is also godfather to a young woman called Antonia. Her extraordinary life plays out from the late 1970s onwards and serves as a classic tale of female empowerment, showing how she finds her chosen métier; parties with her friends and falls for her lover Pascal (Starace) who is 21 in the summer of 1979. It also shows how this woman is seen through the prism of a man. A selfish man who puts his country rather than his partner at the centre of his life, and both of them rather suffer the consequences.
The action is evocatively captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up, accompanied by an evocative score and enriched by archive footage that sets off with a devastating opening sequence and then flashes back in time to witness the local political unrest that sees Antonia’s new lover drawn into the conflict between the French authorities and local activists. They are fighting for Corsica’s liberation in a violent civil war, and Pascal is one of the them and becomes a ferocious freedom fighter.
In January 1980 Ajaccio is held under siege and archive sequences provide the film with a seething sense of unease and dramatic tension. During the events, Antonia corresponds avidly with Pascal, helping to raise awareness of his plight with her outstanding personal photo archive that speaks volumes: a photo tells a thousand words.
Antonia remains obsessed by her lover as she follows his cause. Her commitment and passion will eventually land her a job at the local newspaper Corse Matin. Despite her age and lack of experience this gives her a sense of independence and agency way beyond her years.
Now living in flat in Ajaccio Antonia is able to conduct a relationship with Pascal on his release from prison. When Guy Orsini, a freedom fighter, is murdered Antonia captures even more photo coverage. But she also comes to the realisation that being a photographer isn’t always an honourable profession – if you want juicy photos – and that working for Corse Matin is limiting her career progression and talents: obits, sport, village dances and trivial fare is not where it’s at for an inspired career photographer, and so Antonia must try to forge her own way, and also break away romantically with new lover Simon (Mozziconacci).
De Perretti elegantly balances all these elements: family, love, career and craft in a compelling drama that avoids sensationalism or melodrama to create a vibrant sense of a nation and a real woman of the late 20th century. Ordinary but also extraordinary In His Own Image is a real triumph. @MeredithTaylor
A film that continues to cause controversy – Philip French once opined that if you could turn ‘Gertrud’ into a sleeping pill it would make the perfect tranquilliser – with a tiresome, self-centred heroine who spends an inordinate amount of time staring into space while seemingly oblivious to the blandishments of a succession of alpha males.
It’s too bad that veteran Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer failed to realise his original aim to make ‘Gertrud’ in colour, as what to prove his swan song (although he continued to furnish ambitions to make a life of Christ) limpidly photographed by Henning Bendtsen it would have looked even better than it already does. @RichardChatten
Dir: Laetitia Dosch | Cast: Laetitia Dosch, Anabela Moreira, Anne Dorval, Francois Damiens, Pierre Deladonchamps | France, Comedy 83′
Laetitia Dosch first came to Cannes in Leonor Serraille’s Golden Camera winning Jeune Femme (2017). Here she stars in her own confident first feature as an animal rights lawyer determined to fight for her client, a recidivist dog.
Based on a true story, the comedy satire takes place in a small Swiss town where Maitre Avril Lucciani (Dosch) is a sucker for lost causes; much to the annoyance of her barrister colleague (Deladonchamps). We first meet the two of them in a cafe where he is complaining about Avril’s lousy track record. He meanwhile makes no excuse for misogynistic comments in extolling the virtues of a recent trip to Italy (“the women are amazing, their breasts are like fruit waiting to be picked – and they give wonderful blowjobs”!). The pace here is brisk and the humour eye-wateringly outré in the style of French comedian Blanche Gardin.
The next day Avril predictably takes on another lost cause: that of Cosmos, a dog who has bitten several people and is now being sued by a Portuguese cleaner (Moreira), and her barrister played by Anne Dorval. Cosmos’ owner (Damiens) clearly has a screw loose but Avril is convinced by her argument that dogs should have just as many rights as humans. She pleads that Cosmos is not ‘a thing’ but ‘an individual’ who also has needs (and here she illustrates with the dog’s need to pee). Meanwhile the prosecution claims the animal should be put down. Noisy courtroom scenes jostle with filmed footage of street demonstrations and contemplative domestic settings where Avril reflects on her ability to fight for her cause.
Dosch’s arguments are well thought out and she doesn’t look for easy answers in a pithy dark comedy co-written with Anne-Sophie Bailly. What starts as a satire lampooning animal welfare and the French legal system soon ripples out into the thornier territory of street violence, casual misogyny, racism and even trivial consumer concerns. Going from strength to strength, Dosch clearly now has a talent for comedy in her tightly scripted debut that never outstays its welcome @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | CAMERA D’OR | UN CERTAIN REGARD 2024 |
PALM DOG WINNER 2024 IN CANNES
SENIOR STRAY KODI SCOOPS TOP PRIZE FOR
SWISS-FRENCH COMEDY DOG ON TRIAL
GRAND JURY PRIZE GOES TO LITTLE XIN IN CHINESE DRAMA BLACK DOG
Dir: Elia Kazan | Cas: Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet | US Drama 110′
Probably Elia Kazan’s greatest film, though seldom acknowledged as such. The film’s failure both critical and commercial broke Kazan’s heart, to whom it had been a deeply felt project since he’d wanted to make a film honouring the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority since his days as an idealistic young leftwing firebrand.
By the time Kazan was finally able to command the resources to release this goal he’d grown older and his sympathies had shifted from the official representing the New Deal to Ella Garth who in Kazan’s mind had by then come to personify the individual against the state. As photographed by Ellsworth Fredricks in mellow autumnal hues it remains one for the ages with its dynamic cast of Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick. @RichardChatten
Every day at 9:30PM, the Festival de Cannes reinvents itself as night falls, transforming the Croisette’s Plage Macé, opposite the Majestic hotel, into an open-air cinema. In addition to the screenings, meetings and Official Selection events held at the Palais des Festivals, this is another way for everyone to get involved to the great cinema party. On the programme for the 77th Festival: teams on stage, world premieres, suspense, action, Jackie Chan, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Rachid Bouchareb, Tony Gatlif, Danny Boyle, the continuation of the tribute to Studio Ghibli, and much more… This now traditional rendezvous is open to festival-goers and all audiences, with a choice “warm-up” act every evening: the duo TwinSelecter. Rock, pop, soul, funk, punk, mambo, electro, film soundtracks, jazz, disco, psychedelic, hiphop, garage, to get you going before the screening!
THE PROGRAMME!
Tuesday May 14 TRAINSPOTTING (4K Restoration)
Danny Boyle
1995 – 1h34 – UK
Wednesday May 15 MOI AUSSI
Judith Godrèche
2024 – 17mins – France Screening in the presence of the film team
Followed by SILEX AND THE CITY
Jean-Paul Guigue & Julien Berjeaut
2024 – 1h20 – France, Belgium Screening in the presence of the film team
Thursday May 16 MY WAY
Thierry Teston in collaboration with Lisa Azuelos
2024 – 1h18 – France Screening in the presence of the film team
Friday May 17 AFTER HOURS
Martin Scorsese
1985 – 1h37 – USA
Saturday May 18 TRANSMITZVAH
Daniel Burman
2024 – 1h40 – Argentina Screening in the presence of the film team
Sunday May 19 INDIGÈNES (Days of Glory)
Rachid Bouchareb
2006 – 2h10 – France Screening in the presence of Rachid Bouchareb
Monday May 20 – A short night with Ghibli TALES FROM EARTHSEA
Gorō Miyazaki
2006 – 1h55 – Japan Screening in the presence of Gorō Miyazaki
Followed by PORCO ROSSO
Hayao Miyazaki
1992 – 1h33 – Japan
Thursday May 21 EXILS
Tony Gatlif
2004 – 1h43 – France Screening in the presence of Tony Gatlif
Wednesday May 22 SLOCUM ET MOI
Jean-François Laguionie
2024 – 1h15 – Luxemburg, France Screening in the presence of the film team
Thursday May 23 ARMOUR OF GOD II: OPERATION CONDOR
Jackie Chan
1991 – 1h57 – China
Friday May 24 NINE QUEENS (Nueve Reinas)
Fabian Bielinsky
2000 – 1h54 – Argentina
Saturday May 25 PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
Brian De Palma
1974 – 1h31- USA
Keff is an American-Taiwanese screenwriter, director, musician and artist who grew up in Hong Kong and now comes to Cannes Critics’ Week with his feature debut, a follow-up to his second short film, Taipei Suicide Story.
Locustfuses a visually alluring neon-infused cinematic style with some violent gang scenes in 2019 Taiwan where Zhong-Han, an orally-challenged young man in his twenties, leads a double life slaving in a family-run restaurant during the working hours while nighttime sees him running a racket on behalf of Triad-style local gangsters.
When a shady businessman takes over the restaurant from his decent, hard-working former boss, Zhong-Han soon realises that his family and friends are in danger, forcing him into a swift ‘volt face’ in order to confront his own gang, that also serves at a metaphor for all that’s wrong in modern Taiwan, especially the corruption in the country’s corridors of power.
Locust is an assured, if a tad overlong, debut for the filmmaker who showcases his impressive writing talents and ability to transmit his ideas to the screen in a powerful and filmic first feature. @MeredithTaylor
Adapted from Dostoevsky’s story about a young man and woman’s chance encounter as they gradually fall in love over four successive nights in Paris. The tentative nature of their gradual obsession for one another is echoed in Pierre Lhomme’s luminous cinematography that creates a delicate dreamy landscape of the French capital where anything could happen as their erotic passion grows into love. The Bresson version transcends mawkishness and sentimentality. However, unsure their actions are these two believe in the mystical power of love to transform their ordinary lives. In 1957 Visconti filmed another version using the original title White Nights.
RESTORED PRINT | SCREENING during CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 in the presence of Nathanael Karmitz, Chairman of the board of mk2
This simple but never simplistic study of profound and repressed grief takes place in springtime Reykjavik where a young pan-sexual woman’s joy is turned to sorrow after a tragic event sends her on a rollercoaster ride to emotional hell.
When the Light Breaks is the Icelandic director’s fourth feature and follows his 2019 portmanteau feature Echo that won the Youth Jury Award at Locarno Film Festival.
Once again the tone is sombre but this time the narrative lacks the bite of his previous fare in particular Sparrows (2015) and plays out as a predictable story of loss that is nevertheless moving in its depiction of collective grief. It centres on Una (breakout teenage star Elín Hall) who is in the early stages of a relationship with Baldar Einarsson’s Diddi when they are separated by tragedy. The remainder of the film explores the aftermath to the event and the affects it has on Diddi’s circle of friends and particularly on Una who is unable to reveal their nascent affair for reasons that will soon become clear as the film unspools.
DoP Sophia Olsson makes atmospheric use of Iceland’s rugged landscapes that contrast with the sleek architectural framing of modernist interiors and the particularly resonant scenes that take place in Reykjavik’s expressionist neo-gothic Hallgrímskirkja Church of Iceland that soars 244 feet into the blue yonder. Something to behold and very much in keeping with the film’s spiritual undertones. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Antoine Chevrollier | Cast: Sayyid El Alami, Amaury Foucher, Damien Bonnard, Florence Janas, Artus Solaro, Dahan Lamort, Axelle Fresneau, Mathieu Demy
Motorcross racing makes for a high octane subject in this stylish teenage buddy movie from French filmmaker Antoine Chevroillier.
The Loire-born director is competing for the Golden Camera in the Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique competition and shares script duties with Bérénice Bocquillon and Faïza Guène in his big screen debut which stars Damien Bonnard and Mathieu Demy alongside Sayyid El Alami the young lead of his hit TV series Ouseekine.
Teenagers Jojo (El Alami) and Willy (Solaro) have been inseparable since childhood and spend their all free time training at the Pampa race track honing their biking skills much to the annoyance of their parents (Mathieu Demy, Damien Bonnard) who want them to focus on school work. And what starts as a heady, fun-filled romp soon turns into something more serious as Willy’s long held secret threatens to destroy not only their friendship but also the unsteady relationship there have with parents.
This dazzlingly photographed portrait of teenage ennui kicks over the usual intergenerational conflicts: truancy, drugs, etc and also adds sex to the list. The summery rural landscapes of France provide a pastoral contrast to a story of lost childhood and tainted dreams in A well-paced action drama punctuated by tension fuelled conflicts between the boys and their parents and two terrific central performances by El Alami and Solaro. @MeredithTaylor
SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dir: John Emerson | Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Bessie Love, Allan Sears | US short film 25’
Douglas Fairbanks stars in this slapstick comedy whose curious title refers to the inflatable fish employed by early California surfers.
James Monaco once stated that the shock of discovering PreCode Hollywood cinema was a basic part of the education of every serious student of the film; The Mystery of the Leaping Fish preceding that fault line by a full fourteen years.
When ‘Easy Street’ was televised back in the sixties the heroine briefly found herself menaced in a cellar by a wild-eyed weirdo brandishing a hypodermic whose identity the narrator explained was that of a mad scientist eager to try out his new formula. Seen today it’s pretty obvious what was really happening.
Every generation thinks it discovered sin, The Mystery of the Leaping Fish shows that more than a century ago the state of California already possessed that quality in abundance, to the extent that when Aleister Crowley passed through Hollywood in 1916 with uncharacteristic primness he dismissed the natives as “the cinema crowd of cocaine-crazed sexual lunatics”.
Described by Kevin Brownlow as “one of most the bizarre films ever produced”, an unrecognisable young Douglas Fairbanks plays a detective with the incredible name ‘Coke Ennyday’ upon whose desk sits an enormous box with ‘Cocaine’ in big letters on the side and like Sherlock Holmes in the opening scene of ‘The Sign of Four’ is shown shooting up.
Venturing out disguised in a Kaiser Bill moustache (later revealed to be fake), walking with a Groucho Marx lope in a variety of loud checks in pursuit of a gang of criminals, he comes across a box of opium, his face lighting when he samples the contents into which he then enthusiastically tucks in, it promptly putting a spring in his step. @RichardChatten
A leisurely look at the filmography of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, forever to be known as The Archers. Made In Englandwhich premiered at this year’s Berlinale and is directed by David Hinton (longtime director of numerous episodes of The South Bank Show). The documentary has a trump card that raises it above ‘run of the mill’ linear telling of their dual careers in that it is guided and contextualised by long time supporter Martin Scorsese.
To say that Scorsese narrates the film is to do it and him a disservice; he starts with a tale he has told many times before and that is his own cinematic origin story, from discovering the adventure fantasy that Michael Powell co-directed in 1940: The Thief Of Bagdad. Scorsese, although he watched it on a tiny B&W television, remembered the name of the director and his formal experimental mise en scene that he wanted to see more of. Made in England is very much in the vein of Scorsese’s two documentaries that focus and US and Italian cinema.
People think having the internet and access to unlimited information makes them more informed and engaged with the world, but the opposite of that is true, and we sometimes forget how it was in the pre-internet era. I discovered Powell and Pressburger through the prism of Emeric Pressburger which is unusual. I read an essay he wrote for the Faber annual film journal Projections entitled: The Early Life of a Screenwriter, which sent me on a mission to discover the films this man had written.
After relating his discovery of Powell & Pressburger Scorsese – in immense detail – takes the audience on a journey through the ups and downs (mainly ups) of their career, which encompasses WWII, the creation of their partnership as The Archers and adventures through the UK and US studio system, and the eventual split of the partnership, with Michael Powell’s career being destroyed after the release of Peeping Tom.
Scorsese numerous times talks about their representation of love which they told through a visual language that can only be described as ‘pure cinema’; the juxtaposition of Colour; light; music and movement. One thinks of what Jean Luc Godard said about Nicholas Ray, but which can also stand in for Powell & Pressburger: “There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth, there is cinema. And the cinema is (Nicholas Ray.) Powell and Pressburger”.
Their cinema gives a Kierkegaardian dizziness of freedom, it shows the impulses but also the limitations of love. It is a cinema that stops the written in its tracks and deals a death blow to its descendent: the imaginary. This is its virtue: to switch off, to put a stop to make believe. Their universe is a hermetically sealed one that is disgusted by the rigour of humanity, and they continue to remind us that what interests them is the rigour of angels and romanticism, rather than the logic of chess masters
Dir: Cristobal Leon, Joaquin Cocina | Drama, Chile 64′
World premiere
Following their first feature-length animated film The Wolf House (2018), visual artists and filmmakers, Chilean Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña have focused on stop-motion animation and creating worlds that are as disturbing as they are absorbing.
The Wolf House was inspired by the story of Colonia Dignidad, the film could also have been straight out of Walt Disney had he had an equally bizarre imagination as these two.
Los hyperbóreos is certainly out there even for an experimental affair. It is a film within a film in which Antonia Giesen, actress and part-time psychologist, decides to make a thriller about what goes on in her patient’s mind – but that’s easier said that done.
The film takes shape inside a vast studio where we are led by a woman who is by turns a storyteller, actress and illusionist – who interacts with Méliès-style cardboard sets and effigies, following in the footsteps of a very real man: the Chilean neo-Nazi Miguel Serrano (1917-2009), a writer who was very much avantgarde in his wacky ideas and theories. This brave piece of filmmaking is an acquired taste and not for the feint-hearted but with its quirky mise-en-scene will certainly appeal to diehard cineastes. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2024
Olivier Gourmet, Lea Drucker and Alex Lutz are the stars of this rather good arthouse thriller – written and directed by ex Cahiers du Cinema critic Pascal Bonitzer – in fact his tenth film – about the heady world of art auctioneering.
A deliciously caustic opening scene sets the tone for an intriguing affair set amid the beau monde of Mulhouse, New York and Paris where Andre (Alex Lutz) is an upscale auctioneer at ‘Scottie’s’ and has just landed a commission for a painting he believes to be a fake. Andre is at loggerheads with his trainee Aurore (Chevillotte) who ends up providing the missing link to the narrative, with an intriguing backstory.
Andre and his colleague and ex-wife Albertina (Drucker) decide to visit the long-lost painting that’s now hanging in the ordinary home of a shift worker Martin Keller in Mulhouse. It turns out to be the real work by Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele that was seized by the Nazis in 1939 and discarded as part of the Nazi purge of degenerate art. An Austrian Jew called Wahlburg had bought it in 1918 but had to escape Austria leaving it behind. Andre sees the unexpected find as an opportunity for promotion, and moves in quickly when Keller expresses no interest in it at all.
Andre and Albertina join forces with a provincial lawyer (Hamzawi) to track down the Wahlberg family in the shape of Bob Wahlberg who is one of nine heirs to the painting and a particularly generous man. He wants Martin to benefit from the canvas worth millions and be considered the tenth heir. Wahlberg is happy to sell it for 8 million. But Andre smells a rat and doesn’t want it to go for a song, as he considers the market for Schiele particularly strong. And that’s where Aurore comes in.
Auction is another juicy tongue in cheek satire with a hint of tension, and it looks really good too in Pierre Million’s camera with natural performances especially from Lutz and Drucker who dazzle with their stylish chemistry. The only bum note – a cheeky lesbian twist which feels contrived and serves no real purpose. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger | Cast: Jack Hawkins, Kathleen Byron, UK Drama
The director Michael Powell once opined that The Small Back Room was probably his best film, while Emeric Pressburger’s personal favourite was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; therefore anyone in any doubt as to the contrasting personalities behind The Archers should go no further than this austere black & white adaptation of Nigel Balchin’s novel which further develops the pair’s preoccupation with the emotional fallout from the national trauma of World War II.
Focusing on the emotional truth of a tortured love story the British noir takes place during 1943 with the Germans dropping explosive booby-traps over Britain. Meanwhile the troubled expert tasked with disarming them fights his own private battle with alcohol. The expressive use of sound was already a Powell characteristic and in the expressionistic sequence depicting delirium tremens combining the ticking of a clock and an enormous whiskey bottle.
The incisive depiction of office politics probably also originated with Balchin (likewise the treatment of physical disability) although one wonders which studio executive was being parodied by Powell in the sequence with the Whitehall ignoramus played by Robert Morley. @RichardChatten
AT THE BFI from 28 May | DIGITAL AND BLURAY/DVD RESTORATION RELEASE ON 3 JUNE 2024 | STUDIOCANAL VINTAGE CLASSICS |
In the ‘wonderful kingdom’ of Covas do Barroso, a peaceful Northern Portuguese mountain village, life was sweet until something started spooking the horses according to this pastoral parable premiering at Cannes 2024.
And horses aren’t stupid. In fact they’re the first notice the subtle changes that the villagers decide to investigate way up in the mountains above their homes. This is a film about the power of the people. Their determination to stand up and activating against un-democratic change, especially when it challenges their environment and their threatens their way of life.
Eco Documentarian Paulo Carneiro is well known on the festival circuit for his similarly themed short Water to Tabato in 2014 and his first feature-length documentary in 2018, Bostofrio où le ciel rejoint la Terre. The Portuguese director Portuguese filmmaker is back in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sidebar with a hybrid doc re-enactment filmed on a shoestring budget – and none the worse for it – that sees local villagers getting together to stop a government incentive aimed at extracting lithium via their contractor Savannah Mines.
The locals stage colourful demonstrations marching with uniforms, mock swords and banners bearing the slogan “A mafio do litio” (The lithium mafia). They even kidnap a suspected mineworker and put him in a barrel – just for fun. Throughout the country environmentalists and opposition parties echo their sentiments and the government takes note, at least for a while. But that’s not the end of the villagers’ fight against the mining company. And it’s still raging on today. A generous, darkly funny film that nonetheless has serious undertones. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT 2024
The frequently reproduced shot illustrating Warhol’s Empire misrepresents what the film is actually like to experience since the archetypal view of the Empire State Building at dusk is soon over, and for the remainder of the film’s duration all you see is just the illuminated windows surrounded by darkness.
I must be one of the very few people pedantic enough to have actually sat down and watched the whole thing through (although I have to confess that even I didn’t watch the film in it’s entirety, since Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort Of… was showing on the screen next door and I snuck out to catch it and when I returned the only thing that had changed was that one of the office lights had been switched off), and I have certainly have had far, far worse experience – Lonesome Cowboys’ for example- than when I settled down to see it at London’s South Bank in 2007.
Since so few people have been rash enough to have submitted to the entire experience they’ve missed out on the irony that the film’s dramatic highlights are in fact the reel changes; since each time Warhol himself is seen reflected in the window, as predictably he couldn’t be bothered to turn off the lights when he set the camera running again. @RichardChatten
Dir: Olivier Casas | Cast: Yvan Attal, Matthieu Kassovitz | France, Drama
Oliver Casas makes a well-intentioned tribute to all the child survivors who lost parents in the aftermath to the Second World War with his sophomore feature Freres – a noble idea but sadly that’s all it is.
Based on a true story Freres is a worthy piece of filmmaking whose only plus point is a central casting of Matthieu Kassovitz and Yvan Attal as adult brothers (their young selves – aged 5-8 – are played by a dusky duo of Enzo Bonnet and Victor Escoude-Oury).
We’re supposed to be moved by the men’s plight as children in a torpid narrative arc (cobbled together by three writers) that sets off in their childhood. But not even this veteran French couple can jazz up a buddy movie that relies heavily on the sweeping landscapes of France and a dramatic score droning away in the background during endless elliptical stretches where neither men speak (and you can’t help thinking of Terrence Mallick) but look into the distance with pained or poignant expressions for the best part of two hours.
In early scenes we see their kid counterparts living in a cabin in the woods after being mysteriously abandoned by their mother in 1948. They represent the many “lost children” left behind by the war. Pat feels somehow responsible for Michel and this devastating experience creates an everlasting bond between the two as they survive for nearly seven years in a hostile environment where testing events shape their future in the name of brotherly love. Kassovitz’s character Patrick, a doctor, tells Yvan Attal’s younger counterpart Michel, an architect “If you want to live, I have to go away. And so he does – at the age of 43. Why exactly, and do we even care?
Freres flips backwards and forward in time until one day, after marrying and raising two adult kids, Michel gets a call from Quebec to say Pat has gone awol from his family home. So he drops everything to investigate. Once again, reunited with Michel, he goes back to the cabin in the woods this time to play chess and reveal a little bit more of the past, but nothing really tangible quantifies Pat’s need to depart this world. And the suspense in waiting for a plausible reason is almost unbearable (pause for laughs) in this glossily filmed epic filmed on the wide screen and in vignettish close-ups by Magali Silvestre de Sacy. If you want to see some really worthwhile films on this subject I would recommend the following: Germany Year Zero (1948) Au Revoir les enfants (1987) or Rene Clement’s magical wartime fable Forbidden Games (1952) @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick | UK Drama 99′
One of the qualities that makes the cinema so satisfying is its ability to preserve precise moments for posterity; qualities displayed in abundance in ‘The Trouble with Harry’, made when Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers, headed a team both talented and loyal (including his initial collaboration with Bernard Hermann) and marked the debut of a fresh young talent in Shirley MacLaine (who turned ninety last Wednesday).
The comic element in Hitchcock’s films is often grievously overlooked but finds probably its fullest expression in The Trouble with Harry. Hitchcock himself was fond of declaring that one of his most fervently held desires had always been to show blood dripping onto daisies (which evidently inspired the truly revolting shot of blood dripping onto a bread roll during a picnic in Chabrol’s Le Boucher, and which Hitchcock had himself already anticipated in the shots of Florence Bates and Jesse Royce Landis subbing out cigarettes in a tub of cold cream and a fried egg in Rebecca and To Catch a Thief respectively); and by locating a tale of grisly murder in idyllic sylvan surroundings ‘The Trouble with Harry’ showed exactly where the wily old fox was coming from. RichardChatten
Thierry Fremaux, festival director, has unveiled the long-awaited line-up for this year’s 77th edition of The Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25)
The competition includes a glittering selection of world premieres from David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Audiard, Andrea Arnold, Yórgos Lánthimos, Paul Schrader and Paolo Sorrentino including the long-awaited latest outings from auteurs Leos Carax, Ali Abbasi, Alain Guiraudie, Jia Zhang-Ke and Miguel Gomes.
The Festival opens on the 14th May with Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act (out of competition) with festival president Greta Gerwig leading the festival jury who will decide the winner of this Year’s Palme d’Or.
COMPETITION
Megalopolis – Francis Ford Coppola
An architect wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster in this Sci-fi epic starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight (image above)
The Apprentice – Ali Abbasi (above) copyright Apprentice Productions Ontario Inc.
A dive into the underbelly of the American empire that charts a young Donald Trump’s ascent to power during the 1970s through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn.
Motel Destino – Karim Ainouz
The Brazilian Algerian director is back in Cannes a year after The Firebrand with a love story between a man and a woman struggling against their demons.
Bird – Andrea Arnold (above)
Following her Cannes 2021 triumph Cow, Arnold returns to her native Kent for this male-centric family story starring Franz Rogowski in the title role alongside Barry Keoghan.
Emilia Perez, Jacques Audiard (below)
Mexican drug carte thriller with – you guessed it – a trans twist.
Anora – Sean Baker (above)
Mikey Madison stars in this comedy about a sex worker in New York and Las Vegas
The Shrouds – David Cronenberg (above)
The Canadian ‘Baron of Blood’s eagerly awaited return stars Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger in a sci-fi adventure that follows a grieving widower’s attempts to contact the dead.
The Substance– Coralie Fargeat (Qualley – above)
The Revenge director’s latest is simply billed as ‘a horror story’ and stars Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid and Demi Moore.
Grand Tour– Miguel Gomes (above)
A man desperate to leave his fiancée on their wedding day in Rangoon, 1917, flees across Asia with his bemused ‘ex’ in tow
Marcello Mio – Christophe Honoré
Chiaro Mastroianni takes on the guise of her father Roberto – right down to the last detail – in this curious but inspired drama that also stars her mother Catherine Deneuve, Fabrice Luchini, Melvil Poupaud and English funnyman Hugh Skinner. (image below)
Caught By The Tides – Jia Zhang-Ke (below)
All We Imagine As Light Payal Kapadia
Kapadia returns to Cannes after winning the The Golden Eye for his feature-length debut A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021).
Kinds Of Kindness – Yórgos Lánthimos (below)
Three characters cross paths in the Greek auteur’s follow-up to Oscar- winning Poor Things that once again stars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, along with Jesse Plemmons and Margaret Qualley.
L’amour Ouf – Gilles Lellouche (below)
Beating Hearts follows star-crossed lovers Francois Civil and Adele Exarchopoulos from different sides of the track: Audrey Diwan co-writes with three others (ouf!) based on a novel by Neville Thompson.
Wild Diamond– Agathe Riedinger (below)
This feature debut from the French director centres on tempestuous teen Liane, 19, who lives with her family in Frejus, Côte d’Azur and is hellbent on stardom when she lands an audition for TV show Miracle Island.
Oh Canada Paul Schrader (below)
Great to see this much underrated director, and writer of cult classics Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Raging Bull in the competition line-up with a drama about one of sixty thousand Canadians who refused to fight in Vietnam. Richard Gere stars alongside Uma Thurman.
Limonov – The Ballad, Kirill Serebrennikov (below)
Ben Wishaw stars in this drama, co-written by Oscar winning Pawel Pawlikovski, about the maverick Soviet poet Eduard Limonov.
Parthenope – Paolo Sorrentino (below)
Another gorgeously lensed drama from the Italian auteur that centres on a woman: is she a siren or a myth? Gary Oldman, Stefania Sandrelli and Luisa Ranieri star.
The Girl With The Needle – Magnus Von Horn (below)
Sweat, his feature debut, was an assured piece of filmmaking. Here the Swedish director dives back in to the past for a female centric “fairytale about a horrible truth” starring Trine Dyrholm.
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (below) Mohammad Rasoulof – According to a press agent, Rasoulof has apparently escaped Iran without permission in order to be in Cannes for the screening of his competition hopeful, and asks the international community for ‘effective support”.
LA PLUS PRÉCIEUSE DES MARCHANDISES – Michel Hazanavicius
Another Second World War tale told in animation. Voiced by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant, along with Gregory Gadebois and Denis Podalydes, follows the story of French Jewish family deported to Auschwitz. During the journey the father throws one of his kids out the train where he’s discovered in the snow and taken in by a childless Polish couple. (below).
TREI KILOMETRI PANA LA CAPATUL LUMII – Emanuel Parvu
The Romanian director and actor won the Heart of Sarajevo (2017) for his feature debut Meda.
OUT OF COMPETITION
The Second Act– Quentin Dupieux Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – George Miller Horizon – An American Saga, Kevin Costner She’s Got No Name – Peter Chan Rumours, Evan Johnson – Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
Twilight Of The Warrior Walled In – Soi Cheang I, The Executioner Seung Wan Ryoo The Surfer Lorcan Finnegan The Balconettes – Noémie Merlant
CANNES PREMIERE
Miséricorde – Alain Guiraudie C’est Pas Moi Leos Carax Everybody Loves Touda Nabil Ayouch The Matching Bang Emmanuel Courcol Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot – Rithy Panh Le Roman de Jim, Arnaud Larrieu – Jean-Marie Larrieu
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
La Belle De Gaza – Yolande Zauberman (documentary) Apprendre – Claire Simon The Invasion – Sergei Loznitsa Ernest Cole, Lost And Found – Raoul Peck Le Fil – Daniel Auteuil
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Norah – Tawfik Alzaidi The Shameless – Konstantin Bojanov Le Royaume – Julien Colonna Vingt Dieux!– Louise Courvoisier Who Let The Dog Bite?– Lætitia Dosch Black Dog– Guan Hu The Village Next To Paradise– Mo Harawe September Says – Ariane Labed (below)
L’histoire De Souleymane – Boris Lojkine The Damned – Roberto Minervini On Becoming A Guinea Fowl– Rungano Nyoni My Sunshine– Hiroshi Okuyama Santosh – Sandhya Suri Viet And Nam – Truong Minh Quý Armand – Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel
100 years of Columbia Pictures GILDA
Charles Vidor
1946, 1h50, United States
A Sony Pictures Entertainment presentation. Restoration from the original 35mm nitrate negative and a 35mm nitrate internegative. 4K digitization and digital image restoration by Cineric, Inc. Audio restoration by John Polito at Audio Mechanics from the sound track of the original 35mm nitrate negative. Color correction, conformation, additional image restoration and DCP creation by Motion Picture Imaging colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp. Screening in the presence of Tom Rothman, President of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The 40th anniversary of Paris, Texasby Wim Wenders, Palme d’or 1984 PARIS, TEXAS
Wim Wenders
1984, 2h28, West Germany/France
A Wim Wenders Stiftung presentation. A 4K restoration commissioned by the Wim Wenders Stiftung under the supervision of Wim Wenders and with the kind collaboration of Argos Films.
Distribution France Tamasa, release July 3, 2024. Screening in the presence of Wim Wenders.
Le siècle de Costa-Gavras LA VÉRITÉ EST RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE – L’AVEU
Directed by Yannick Kergoat, written by Edwy Plenel
2024, 52mins, France
Michèle Ray-Gavras presents a KG Productions production with the support of INA, Gaumont Pathé Archives, ERT.
Presentation of one of the ten episodes of the documentary series « Le Siècle de Costa-Gavras », dedicated to the history of the film L’Aveu. Screening in the presence of Costa-Gavras, Edwy Plenel and Yannick Kergoat.
The ultimate film of Jean-Luc Godard SCÉNARIOS
Jean-Luc Godard
2024, 18mins and 34mins, France/Japan
An Écran noir productions production in association with ARTE France and Nekojarashi Llp (Roadstead). Scénarios is the title Jean-Luc Godard chose for his final 18-minute film, made, literally, the day before his voluntary death. In addition, Jean-Luc Godard recorded a 34-minute film in which, mixing still and moving images, halfway between reading and seeing, he outlined his project for Scénarios. Screening in the presence of Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Luc Godard’s assistant, and Mitra Farahani, producer.
The 70th birthday of the Seven Samourai THE SEVEN SAMOURAI
(Les Sept Samouraïs)
Akira Kurosawa
1954, 3h27, Japan
A presentation of Toho Global Ltd. Digital restoration by Toho Co.,Ltd. For the 4K restoration, the 35mm print was supplied by Toho and produced by TOHO Archive Co, Ltd. Images and sound respectively digitized by ARRISCAN and SONDOR RESONANCES. Restoration carried out to celebrate the film’s 70th anniversary since its first Japanese cinema release. French distributor : The Jokers Films. Screening in the presence of Shion Komatsu (Toho).
The complete works of Frederick Wiseman LAW AND ORDER
Frederick Wiseman
1969, 1h21, United States
A presentation and restoration by Zipporah Films in association with Steven Spielberg, with the participation of the Library of Congress.
New version restored in 4K from the 16mm image negative and original sound. Digitization and color grading carried out at DuArt and Goldcrest laboratories in New York. Calibration and restoration by Jane Tolmachyov, under the supervision of Frederick Wiseman and the production direction of Karen Konicek. Digitization of the complete works of Frederick Wiseman, which will be the subject of retrospectives around the world from autumn 2024. Screening in the presence of Frederick Wiseman.
Raymond Depardon Photographer LES ANNÉES DÉCLIC
(The Declic Years)
Raymond Depardon
1984, 1h07, France
A Presentation of the Films du losange. Restauration in 4K under the supervision of Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon at TransPerfect Media laboratory from 35mm image, magnetic and sound negatives. Screening in the presence of Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon.
Lucy Barreto, a producer in Brasil BYE BYE BRASIL
(Bye bye Brésil)
Carlos Diegues
1970, 1h42, Brazil
A presentation and restoration by Lucy and Luiz Carlos Barreto for Produções Cinematográficas LC Barreto, in association with Quanta, Alexandre Rocha and Marcelo Pedrazzi, financed by Rede D’Or. Screening in the presence of Lucy and Luiz Carlos Barreto, Paula Barreto.
The 60th anniversary of Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Palme d’or 1964 THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
Jacques Demy
1964, 1h32, France
A presentation by Ciné-Tamaris. 4K restoration under the supervision of Mathieu Demy and Rosalie Varda-Demy from the original negative, scanned in immersion to reduce the effects of time on the film by the Eclair Classics and L.E. Diapason laboratories in Paris. Sound restoration based on a three-track stereophonic mix of music and vocals. Screening in the presence of Rosalie Varda-Demy and Mathieu Demy.
JACQUES DEMY, LE ROSE ET LE NOIR
Florence Platarets
2024, 1h28, France
An Ex Nihilo, Ciné-Tamaris, ARTE France and INA production, with the participation of Ciné +, Cineventure 9, and the CNC. International distribution by mk2 Films. Screening in the presence of Florence Platarets and Frédéric Bonnaud (screenwriter).
DOCUMENTARIES
FAYE
Laurent Bouzereau
2024, 1h31, United States
A Needland Media, Amblin and HBO production.
The first feature-length documentary about Faye Dunaway who speaks about her career, with landmark roles in Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown and Network. Joining Faye are her son Liam, colleagues and friends such as Sharon Stone, Mickey Rourke, James Gray and many others. Screening in the presence of Faye Dunaway and Laurent Bouzereau.
JIM HENSON IDEA MAN
Ron Howard
2024, 1h51, United States
An Imagine Documentaries and Disney Branded Television production.
Welcome to the mind of Jim Henson, a singular creative visionary, from his early years as a puppeteer on local television to the worldwide success of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and more. With unprecedented access to Jim’s personal archives, Oscar-winning director Ron Howard offers a fascinating and insightful look at a complex man whose vivid imagination inspired the world. Screening in the presence of Ron Howard.
WALKING IN THE MOVIES
Lyang Kim
2024, 1h28, South Korea
A ZONE Film, Kookje Daily News co-production with the participation of Busan’s Committee for Local Press.
A portrait of one of the key figures in the rise of Korean cinema: Kim Dong-ho, founder of the Busan International Film Festival. The film describes his own dedication and creativity in the service of cinema and asks: “How could a high official fall in love with cinema?” Screening in the presence Dong-ho Kim and Lyang Kim.
JACQUES ROZIER, D’UNE VAGUE À L’AUTRE
Emmanuel Barnault
2024, 1h, France
An INA and mk2 Films production, with the participation of Ciné+ and the CNC.
Jacques Rozier or the fierce, independent itinerary of a filmmaker in perpetual disarray, admired by his peers and pampered by the critics. Screening in the presence of Emmanuel Barnault.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES
Nanette Burstein
2024, 1h41, United States
A Zipper Bros Films, Gerber Pictures, Sutter Road Picture Company and Bad Robot production.
Thanks to access to Elizabeth Taylor’s personal archives and seventy hours of newly-discovered intimate recordings, the film by Nanette Burstein, who won acclaim at Cannes a few years ago for The Kid Stays in the Picture, which she co-directed with Brett Morgen, lifts the veil on the star, revealing a woman far removed from her public image. Screening in the presence of Nanette Burstein.
FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, LE SCÉNARIO DE MA VIE
David Teboul
2024, 1h38, France
A co-production of 10.7 production and INA, with the participation of France Télévisions, CNC, Procirep-Angoa and Fondation La Poste. International sales mk2 Films.
At the end of his life, gravely ill, François Truffaut took refuge with his ex-wife Madeleine Morgenstern. She tried to keep him occupied during his long agony. The filmmaker confided in his friend Claude de Givray, with the intention of writing his autobiography. Too weakened, he abandoned the project. The film reveals part of this final story. Screening in the presence of David Teboul and Serge Toubiana (screenwriter).
ONCE UPON A TIME MICHEL LEGRAND
David Hertzog Dessites
2024, 2h, France
A MACT Productions and Le Sous-Marin Productions production with the participation of OCS, in association with Dulac Distribution, Mediawan Rights and Indéfilms 10.
Michel Legrand, jazz musician and composer extraordinaire, has left his mark on the history of cinema, including the films of Jacques Demy, especially The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the 60th anniversary of which is being celebrated in Cannes. Using never-before-seen archives and personal accounts, the film looks back on a lifetime dedicated to music, and the career of a man who served it masterfully to the very end. Screening in the presence of David Hertzog Dessites.
RESTORED PRINTS
SLAP THE MONSTER ON PAGE ONE
Marco Bellocchio
1972, 1h28, Italy/France
A Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna presentation. Restored in 4K by the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Surf Film and Kavac Film, under the supervision of Marco Bellocchio at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Screening in the presence of Marco Bellocchio and Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS
Steven Spielberg
1974, 1h50, United States
A presentation and restoration by Universal Pictures. Special thanks to Steven Spielberg for his oversight of the 4K restoration of this film. Screening in the presence of Cassandra Moore, Vice President, Mastering & Archive at NBCUniversal.
CAMP DE THIAROYE
Ousmane Sembene and Thierno Faty Sow
1988, 2h33, Senegal/Algeria/Tunisia
A presentation of The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the Tunisian Ministry of Culture and the Senegalese Ministry of Culture and Historical Heritage. Thanks to Mohammed Challouf. Restoration funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Screening in the presence of Margaret Bodde, Executive Director of The Film Foundation.
A Studiocanal presentation. 4K restoration created from the original 35mm negative and sound negative carried out by L’Image Retrouvée. Screening in the presence of Juliette Hochart, EVP of Library, and Thierry Lacaze, Head of French theatrical, video and VOD distribution, Studiocanal.
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN
Dalton Trumbo
1971, 1h52, United States
A Gaumont presentation. New 4K digital print, produced by GP Archives. Malavida will be released in France on October 2, 2024 in this new 4K print. Screening in the presence of Nicolas Seydoux, Chairman of Gaumont.
ROSORA AT 10 O’CLOCK
Mario Soffici
1958, 1h42, Argentina
An Argentina Sono Film presentation. Restored in 4K by Cubic Restauration in collaboration with the Society for Audiovisual Heritage, coordinated by Fernando Madedo and supervised by Luis Alberto Scalella. Restored in the original AlexScope 2.35 format from the original 35mm negatives in the archives of Argentina Sono Film, the owner of the film. Screening in the presence of Luis Alberto Scalella, president of Argentina Sono Film.
TASIO
Montxo Armendáriz
1984, 1h36, Spain
A presentation of the Cinémathèque Basque, Spain. 4K restoration financed by the Basque Government and carried out by the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory from the original negative, supervised by director Montxo Armendáriz and with the agreement of production company Enrique Cerezo, PC. French distribution by Tamasa and release in French theaters in 2025. Screening in the presence of Montxo Armendáriz.
THE ROSE OF THE SEA
Jacques de Baroncelli
1947, 1h26, France
A Pathé presentation. 4K restoration, based on the original nitrate negatives, an image negative and an optical sound negative, as well as a 1st generation standard brown. Work carried out by the L’Image Retrouvée laboratory (Paris-Bologna). Screening in the presence of Sophie Seydoux, President of the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation.
BONA
Lino Brocka
1980, 1h26, Philippines
A Kani Releasing and Carlotta Films presentation. New version restored in 4K by Carlotta Films and Kani Releasing at the Cité de Mémoire laboratory (Paris) from the original 35mm image and sound negatives preserved by LTC Patrimoine. Special thanks to Pierre Rissient and José B. Capino. French theatrical release: September 25, 2024. Screening in the presence of Vincent Paul-Boncour, director and co-founder of Carlotta Films.
MANTHAN
(The Churning)
Shyam Benegal
1976, 2h14, India
A presentation of Film Heritage Foundation. Restored by Film Heritage Foundation at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post – Studios, Chennai and L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd., the cinematographer Govind Nihalani and the director Shyam Benegal. Manthan was restored using the best surviving elements: the 35 mm original camera negative preserved at the NFDC-National Film Archive of India and the sound was digitised from the 35 mm release print preserved at Film Heritage Foundation. Funding supported by Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. Screening in the presence of actor Naseeruddin Shah, the family of actress Smita Patil, producers of the film and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Director, Film Heritage Foundation.
SHANGHAI BLUES
Tsui Hark
1984, 1h42, Hong Kong
A Film Workshop presentation to mark the company’s 40th anniversary. 4K restoration of the original negative supervised by Tsui Hark and Nansun Shi, in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, soundtrack remixed by One Cool Sound. Screening in the presence of actress Sylvia Chang.
FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER
Robert Bresson
1971, 1h23, France/Italy
A mk2 presentation. Restored in 4K by mk2 Films with the support of the CNC from the image negative and magnetic sound at ECLAIR CLASSICS, Paris/Bologna.
Restoration and color grading supervised by Mylène Bresson. Color grading by Christophe Bousquet. Sound restoration by L.E. DIAPASON. French theatrical release by mk2.Alt and Carlotta first quarter of 2025. International distribution: mk2 films. Screening in the presence of Nathanaël Karmitz, Chairman of the board of mk2.
REMINDER!
Napoléon par Abel Gance (1927) to open Cannes Classics NAPOLÉON PAR ABEL GANCE (1927)
Abel Gance
1927, 3h40, France
After 16 years in the making, here is the first part (3h40) of Abel Gance’s Napoleonic epic (from Bonaparte’s youth to the Siege of Toulon). Screening in the presence of Costa-Gavras, President, and Frédéric Bonnaud, General Director, of the Cinémathèque française.
The screening will take place in Salle Debussy on Tuesday May 14 at 2PM.
Childhood seemed like an endless journey of discovery for filmmaker Kit Vincent until he was diagnosed with cancer and given four to eight years to live at the tender age of 24.
Terrible news, so much so that his father collapsed with a heart attack – quite literally. And in his debut feature Red Herring it rapidly becomes clear that Kit’s devastating condition affects his close family just as much as himself. And so the film takes over, their daily lives together becoming the main focus – rather than the concer.
But not everyone is as keen as Kit in being part of the film and not least his girlfriend Isobel, the two will embark on fertility treatment and she naturally wants these conversations to remain private, unlike kit whose way of coping is to share everything including his seizures and key parts of his treatment. Kit’s father Lawrence, a professor and former college principal, is certainly a strong character and draws on his recent conversion to the Jewish faith for guidance, and this leads to some fascinating philosophical chats with his son.Kit’s mother, a healthcare worker, finds a way of dealing with the personal rather than professional trauma by immersing herself in raising a brood of chickens.
Conversations with his family often bring up difficult episodes in Kit’s childhood and provide a beneficial therapy for dealing with the past. In this way they all thrash out their feelings and these scenes give Red Herring a positive often moving spin in contrast to the darker moments. Well-paced at 94 minutes, the director never loses sight of the film’s cinematic quality.
Kit is adamant about not wanting to make a depressing film about impending death and he certainly succeeds. Red Herring is first and foremost about a family fronting up to an uncertain future and the transformative dynamics that come into play as each member reacts to changing circumstances in their own personal way.And for that it’s a watchable and uplifting triumph. @MeredithTaylor
RED HERRING IS IN SELECT UK CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND FROM 3 MAY 2024
Dir: Pat Collins | Cast: Barry Ward, Anna Bederke, Ruth McCabe, Lalor Roddy, Sean McGinley | Ireland, Drama 111’
Pat Collins’ leisurely lyrical tale of rural Ireland forty years ago isbeautifully captured on the wide screen and in rather stagey domestic interior scenes were the local characters shoot the breeze and sometimes touch on more philosophical themes in the style of the Ambridge residents of the popular BBC series The Archers.
Based on internationally acclaimed Irish author John McGahern’s award-winning novel of the same name, the story centres on middle aged creative couple Joe, a writer, and his East European painter wife Kate respectively played by Barry Ward and Anna Bederke with a dash of bohemian charisma. Others include Lalor Roddy’s Patrick who pops in to supply the village gossip – but nothing too controversial to rock the tranquil tenor of this bucolic backwater.
This is a gentle pastoral affair that could have been directed by the late Terence Davies, and whose main attraction is the day to day lives of Irish country folk as they go about their business and the glorious vistas of the Emerald Isle in the changing seasons luminously photographed by Richard Kendrick all accompanied by a plangent occasional score. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Allen H Miner | Cast: Anthony Dexter, Martha Roth, Lon Chaney Jr, Robert Clarke | US Action Drama 74’
As others have observed the budget for this 18th Century yarn about buried treasure didn’t even run to a ship so the pirates of the title arrive by rowboat; what visual grandeur it possessed instead supplied by the El Salvador locations elegantly and vividly shot in Ansco Color by cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton (a process that highlighted the worldly charms of a young lady by the name of Marta Roth as a worldly serving wench whose red lipstick matches her dress and proves pretty sharp with a broken bottle).
The pirates themselves certainly are a mean and ugly bunch (aided by the presence of a leering Alfonso Bedoya), while in a film shot closer to home the scenes of bloodshed and flogging would surely have encountered greater problems with the Breen Office.
Massacre (1956)
Dir: Louis King | Cast: Martha King, Dane Clark, James Craig, Miguel Torruco | US Western 76’
Having visited El Salvador to make ‘The Black Pirates’ producer Robert Lippert’s later depiction of criminal activity moved inland (once again employing Gilbert Warrenton’s fluid Ansco Color location photography to compensate for lack of more substantial production values) to Mexico where he once again availed himself of the talents of Mexican actress Martha Roth, who unlike the glossy serving wench she played in ‘The Black Pirates’ this time superficially appears at first glance a more robust young lady, and gets to show herself quite a horsewoman; while for the cognoscenti the presence of Luis Bunuel’s Man Friday Jaime Fernandez is worth noting.
The film also marks a considerable departure from the wholesome Technicolor family entertainment usually associated with director Louis King; the cynical tone of his final film firmly established from the outset by the opening sequence depicting a funeral cortège which turns out to be carrying illicit rifles. @RichardChatten
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret| UK Thriller 143’
A film by Hitchcock set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis sounds promising, but this adaptation of Leon Uris’s novel just doesn’t work and despite being one of Hitchcock’s most expensive and elaborate films is also one of his dullest, dying at the box office and today languishing in well-deserved obscurity.
Seriously compromised by undercast leads, denied the talents of key personnel from his halcyon days of the fifties and largely devoid of his characteristic black humour, the British veteran’s frequent indecision during filming – including a hastily contrived alternative ending – shows in the end result.
Bad Hitchcock of course is better than no Hitchcock and ‘Topaz’ contains at least two scenes worthy of The Master involving Philippe Noiret and Karin Dor. @RichardChatten
Dir: Walter Forde | Writers: Arnold Ridley, J.O.C. Orton Val Guest | Cast: Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison | UK Comedy
Gainsborough Studios long seemed to have held a predilection for trains since they were responsible for the original silent version of Arnold Ridley’s classic play, along with Oh! Mr Porter and The Lady Vanishes (which also featured Linden Travers); while director Walter Forde’s background in comic shorts and his classic 1932 drama Rome Express made him just the man to undertake this third version as a vehicle for the egregious Arthur Askey.
Oh! Mr Porter also concerned a local legend concerning a stretch of haunted rail line (and shares a baleful Herbert Lomas with ‘Ask a Policeman’), but the plot has been brought up to date by making the baddies Nazi fifth columnists rather than IRA gun runners, with such topical references as jokes about food coupons and ration books and when Askey challenges a parrot to say ‘Heil Hitler!’ @RichardChatten
So who is the man of a thousand faces? He introduces himself as Daniel, Alexandre or Ricardo and apparently comes from Brazil or Argentina. Sometimes he’s a surgeon, others an engineer. The women he meets and moves in with are disarmed by his looks, charisma and accomplishments. They fall in love, one even falls pregnant. Meanwhile the fantasist flits around the world juggling these various relationships, always an excuse in hand for his absence.
Documentarian and screenwriter Sonia Kronlund (The Prince of Nothingwood) is fascinated by the story and decides to investigate with the help of a private detective. We meet the women involved. They are intelligent, grounded and articulate. No histrionic outbursts just calm refections of incredulity as they gradually dissect and come to terms with their nemesis. Can they ever be the same again?. When your lover says his father has been killed in a car crash, is it churlish to reply: Really? This is the vestigial damage they are left to work through in their future relationships. Falling in love demands a certain innocence, a vulnerability. Can that ever be regained?
Kronlund knows the territory. What emerges is another tale of self-reinvention, rather like in The Prince of Nothingwood. The French filmmaker herself admits to having been duped by unsatisfactory past relationships so there’s an empathy of kindred spirits and a deep satisfaction at work here as she constructs her extraordinarily subtle expose of a pathological liar. A man unable to be straight with others – let alone himself.
Adopting a classic three act structure Kronlund gradually works her way towards the finale as she peels back the layers of this arch psychological scandal, checking her facts with a lawyer who is able to demonstrate that the man’s entire existence is based on the dissemination of images of lives which are not his – a face can be slotted into an online uniform or guise that bears no resemblance to reality. Finally we see the real ‘Ricardo’ ‘hoisted by his own petard’ in this clever piece of investigative filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Marco Orsini | Doc With Omar Nour and Omar Samra, Made in conjunction with the UN Refugee Agency | 80′
Billed as a heroic tale of rescue Marco Orsini‘s documentary Beyond the Raging Seaattempts to jump on board the current wave of sympathy for the refugee boats in chronicling how two inexperienced mariners embarked on a cross Atlantic voyage in a rowing boat – admittedly a top of range piece of kit – but what was the point of this foolhardy act of ‘derring do’?
Told in a flood of talking heads – mainly by the guys themselves – Egyptians Omar Nour and Omar Samra – we hear how in 2017 they decided to take part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge – a sort of seabound equivalent of the Paris-Dakar race – but in rowing boats, across the Atlantic from La Gomera in the Canaries to Antigua; a 3,000-nautical-mile, 40-day undertaking.
The going was rough and the guys soon found themselves in difficulty when their vessel capsized in ferocious seas – and there’s a great deal of jaw-dropping thrashing about in the wet that gives the film a certain dramatic heft, although the fact they lived to tell the tale slightly takes away the tension. It seems the feckless duo did it out of solidarity with the refugees whose testimonies then feature in a 10-minute tacked-on coda. @MeredithTaylor
This year’s 77th edition of Cannes Festival will award an Honorary Palme d’or for the first time to a group rather than an individual: Studio Ghibli.
Alongside the Hollywood greats, the Japanese studio embodied by two superb storytellers, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, and a host of cult characters, has unleashed a fresh wind on animated film over the past four decades the Japanese animations have brought a breath of fresh air to the genre appealing to both kids and adults with vibrant universes and sensitive, engaging stories that brings together traditional and contemporary.
The Wind Rises (2013) @StudioGhibli
The Festival de Cannes was an early explorer of the animated film adventure. In the early years, Walt Disney productions presented short films (1946) and the feature Dumbo (1947). In 1953, Walt Disney himself took Peter Pan to the Croisette, where René Laloux won a special Jury Prize in 1973 for his first feature, Fantastic Planet. After a long absence, animation returned to Cannes in force with Shrek (2001) and Shrek 2 (2004), Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), Persepolis (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), which all received awards in the Competition, or even Up, which opened the Festival in 2009. Many other films, such as Inside Out,Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, and more recently, Elemental, and Robot Dreams have also left their mark. Moreover, Un Certain Regard welcomed The Red Turtle (2016), Studios Ghibli’s first collaboration with a European production company.
It all began 40 years ago. The success of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 enabled him to establish Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata in 1985. Today, the films are watched by people all over the world, and draw many visitors to the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka and Ghibli Park to experience the world of our films for themselves. And although Miyazaki and Takahata are now veterans of their craft Studio Ghibli will continue to take on new challenges, led by a new generation who will carry on the spirit of the company.
Back in the day the two achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat: independently producing pure masterpieces and conquering the mass market. Producer Toshio Suzuki, a key studio member from the start and soon assuming a full time role, he managed the studio with formidable efficiency, establishing perfect complementarity between the projects of Miyazaki and Takahata, by turns producers and directors.
The tale of the Princess Kagua (2013)
In 1988, with the simultaneous release of Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbour Totoro these outstanding creative artists achieved a double success. In 1992, Studio Ghibli was able to begin financing its own feature films with Porco Rosso. In the early years, only the two founders directed their films, but gradually young auteurs such as Goro Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi distinguished themselves and joined the Studio.
In four decades and over twenty feature films, Studio Ghibli won over its audiences with works imbued with poetry and with humanistic and environmental commitments. With Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbors the Yamadas, The Wind Rises and The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, Studio Ghibli has delivered stories that are as personal as they are universal. They have won prestigious awards, including both the Golden Bear and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away, and more recently another Oscar for The Boy and the Heron.
In Europe as in the United States, these films are among the animators’ most acclaimed work, between art for art and the commercial challenges of the industry. They are true models, as much for the quality of their writing, directing and animation as for their commitment to extensive aesthetic aspirations. In 2001, the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka opened on the outskirts of Tokyo to showcase the animators’ work and rich heritage, as well as to show short films created for the museum, thus asserting the Studio’s cultural importance. In 2022, the Ghibli Park, a hybrid park facility expressing the world of Studio Ghibli, opened in Aichi Prefecture. Goro Miyazaki, the first Director of the Ghibli Museum, was appointed the Creative Development Director to oversee the park construction.
Dir/Wri: Elise Girard | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Tsuyoshi Ihara, August Diehl | France, Drama 97′
“Writing’s all that’s left when you have nothing”
Isabelle Huppert and Tsuyoshi Ihara make an absolute dream casting in this tender tale of love, a third feature for French director and co-writer Elise Girard.
Sidonie au Japon is a wistful contemplative look at loneliness, loss and longing amidst tranquil Oriental landscapes brimming with blossoms where Huppert’s writer Sidonie has come to promote her reprinted first novel ‘L’ombre Portée’ (The Shadow Cast) inspired by her own life.
On arrival at Osaka airport the distinct foreignness of Japan and its social contrasts disarms the widowed French woman sending her dazed and confused into a state of reverie and reflection. The subtle absurdity of this culture shock also lends a delicious dash of dark humour to what is ostensibly a sober tale of mourning and transformation for Sidonie and her enigmatic Japanese publisher Kenzo Mizoguchi (Ihara), who is still married, but unhappily so. The couple embark on a series of interviews and book signings, Kenzo escorting Sidonie on an illuminating architectural tour of Kyoto with the same transcendent energy as Kogonada’s 2017 travelogue Columbus.
Japan is very much a character here: a land of haunting stillness where everything seems hushed and deferential in contrast to Europe and the West. This ambience has an increasingly profound effect on the jaded writer enveloping her slowly in the past where she reconnects with the spirit of her dead husband (Diehl) who is revealed in luminous sequences where the two reminisce and comfort one another. These are not ghostly scenes but ones where his entity offers uplifting enlightenment bringing about a gentle but cathartic shift in her state of being as she becomes romantically drawn to Kenzo who she had initially found overbearing, particularly his habit of insisting on carrying her handbag. Their courtship is tentative and driven forward by subtle body language rather than words: “in Japan we don’t talk about those things we just do them”, says Kenzo to the disconcerted Sidonie.
Elise Girard has clearly been inspired by the lighter-hearted ghosts from David Lean’s Blithe Spirit (1945) or Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) rather than the more doom-laden presence in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017) with her characterisation of August Diehl’s Antoine and he gives a charismatic performance as the sun-kissed ghost in his hand-tailored suit and brogues. But the focus here is on the living and the interplay between Sidonie and Kenzo: a couple who somehow find each against the odds. Beautifully shot by Celine Bozon the closing scene is particularly amusing in referencing the apposite maxim ‘speech is silver, but silence is golden’. @MeredithTaylor
The very simplicity of this television production works in its favour as it graphically portrays the claustrophobic environment in which Hitler spent his final days; although the depiction of him sleeping in his uniform smacks of dramatic license.
Frank Finlay’s portrayal of the Fuhrer – while as usual inadequately portraying the prematurely aged, grey-haired, shambling husk of a man he had descended to by this stage in the war – doesn’t fall into the usual trap of showing him as sympathetically as most other portrayals usually are; although there’s a lapse when Goebbels is described as “one of Hitler’s oldest friends”, since Hitler hadn’t had any close friends since he purged Ernst Rohm.
This production provides a colder-eyed look at Hitler than usual and it’s portrayal of a self-centred bully prone to temper tantrums is far nearer the mark; although David Irving would certainly take exception to Hitler personally telling a secretary that “in 1941, I personally ordered the extermination of all inferior races’.
In supporting roles Caroline Mortimer emerges both as more substantial and culpable Eva Braun than the real thing ever was, depicted yelling “Kill the Jews!”, Ed Devereaux is memorably cast as an oleaginous Martin Bormann while Myvanwy Jenn makes a brief but vivid impression as a shrill Hanna Reitsch. @RichardChatten
American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known for his ‘swagger portraits’ of wealthy Americans of the Edwardian era. The canvasses command our attention and mesmerise in the same way as Rembrandt’s although Sargent adopts a more broad brush style than the Dutch 17th century master who was known as the greatest portrait artist of his era, arguably of all time.
In his latest art biopic director and cinematographer David Bickerstaff frames his documentary through interviews with curators, contemporary fashionistas and style influencers, their input and his fluid camera showing how Sargent influenced modern art and fashion with a unique approach in capturing personalities, gender politics and social capital on the canvas. John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger brings this all together for everyone to enjoy on the big screen, the expert commentaries adding value and insight.
Sargent’s approach is testament to how clothes and outward apparel can make a powerful social statement and one that still reverberates today, albeit in different ways. Sargent’s portraits certainly capture the imagination and Bickerstaff conveys this with skill despite an over-reliance on ‘talking heads’: he should consider limiting them to a select few and re-introducing them with inter-titles whenever they appear. @MeredithTaylor
John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger IN CINEMAS 16 APRIL 2024
An ascetic life of prayer and devotion is not for everyone. But Mother Vera (birth name Olga) has chosen the path and shares her turbulent past and uncertain future in this sepia-tinted monochrome meditation that follows the ex-druggie nun through her first year in a monastery that starts in a snowbound Belarusian forest and culminates in sun-baked flatlands of the French Camargue.
After contracting HIV from her partner Oleg, Olga’s life of parties and secular pleasures came to an end and was replaced by daily prayer, devotion and animal husbandry in the remote monastery. We first meet Mother Vera prone on the stone floor of the religious establishment where she will live a life of asceticism, shoeing horses, bell ringing.
Wearing a black headdress and floor length robes,
The monastery is also home to ex convicts – in the eyes of the Lord Christians both saints and sinners are all equal – and the nuns seem to exert a certain power over the men, who regard them with respect, the fact that ‘good and evil’ coexist in the world and in each of us – is transformative, one tempering the other, and providing the film with its spiritual message that good can conquer bad and this is acutely felt during the Easter celebrations when incense is burnt to purify the air and welcome the rebirth of spring.
Vera then goes back to her family in the wooded countryside– two brothers and a mother along with a bevy of farm animals. Two donkeys and a sheep and later some horses and she has a particular affinity with horses – one amazing scene sees her riding through a snowy landscape on a white horse. They provide the healing that Vera needs along with close love of her mother as they go through the anxiety of her drug addition. And she repents our her sins in leading others into threat world. Love perseveres
Revealed through spellbinding visual language echoing the rigid discipline of monastic life, we enter the enclosed, shadowy spaces of a convent outside Minsk. Sound and silence submerge us in the rhythm of the community. After twenty years of monastic service and faced with a life-changing decision, Vera must confront her troubled past to find the freedom she desires.
NOW AT BFI LONDON FESTIVAL | VISIONS DU REEL | NYON SWITZERLAND
Dir: Sam Taylor-Johnson | Cast: Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, Jack O’Connell, Lesley Manville, Bronson Webb, Harley Bird, Juliet Cowan | UK Musical Biopic 122′
Star biopics stand or fall on the quality of their central performance. We generally resent the idea that anyone could step into the shoes of a beloved artiste, particularly one who is no longer here. “No one can be David Bowie,” we scoff, writing off films like “Stardust” before we’ve even seen them. It takes a lot to convince us otherwise.
So it should be said straight off that Marisa Abela’s performance as Amy Winehouse in Back to Blackis astonishingly, blindingly good. She’s got the look, she’s got the strut, the attitude, the toughness, the vulnerability. But what about the voice? No one sings like Amy, right? Does Abela mime, or does she try to sing and, inevitably, blow it spectacularly?
Well, actually neither. Abela does her own singing, and she has the Amy voice down. The electric current that plugs you directly into the singer’s nervous system, the riveting delivery that won’t let your attention stray one iota from the woman at the microphone.
It doesn’t feel so much like impersonation as wholesale possession (although it’s clearly the result of great craft and technique), and I frequently forgot that I wasn’t watching the real Winehouse. But what does it say about Amy’s raw authenticity that it can be recreated so completely by another gifted performer? Maybe this irony is one reason for the aggrieved noises from some uber-fans. Maybe it’s possible to pay tribute all too well.
We probably shouldn’t go to Back to Black for a deep understanding of the motives and inner life of its protagonist. After all, we watched the unravelling in real time, on TV, splashed across tabloids, in concert, so we should have a few working theories. Amy had a stellar talent, and a rage for music’s capacity to express extreme emotions. Maybe she began to create drama in her life which she could mine for songs. Maybe she developed a taste for ever-darker material. And maybe the feedback loop span out of control and she was consumed by drama that couldn’t be controlled or reconciled.
The film shows us Amy’s family (surely too loving to be blamed for her demons?), her agents and managers (but no sighting of Mark Ronson), and Blake Fielder-Civil, the great love of her life, played with lithe physicality by Jack O’Connell. Blake starts the film as a strutting jack-the-lad, diminishes into a venal, battered toy-boy husband, and ends it struggling out of drug dependency, mumbling his prison psychiatrist’s script about toxic co-dependent relationships as he makes his final break with Amy. “You should be stronger than me,” goes the refrain of one of the early songs. But Blake obviously wasn’t.
“I’m an anachronism”, she tells him at one point, and despite the film’s stated aim to rescue and celebrate Amy – just as she wanted to restore jazz to its rightful place in pop culture – it seems to agree with the sentiment. The mercurial singer is framed in a rapidly receding world of cobbled streets, Victorian railway arches, pubs where you can still smoke, and pop performers who refuse to be moulded by their handlers.
Back to Black will stand as a monument to Amy’s London. Golders Green Crematorium, Primrose Hill, Camden Town pubs The Dublin Castle and The Good Mixer, the London Zoo and Soho Square and other landmarks make appearances, all captured in fine, muted colours. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is similarly subdued, mostly ominous drones and strings playing figures in low registers, wisely avoiding any clash with the Winehouse style.
An image of a caged canary is lingered on a few times too often – yes, we get it – but Amy teetering on crazily high pink shoes at her Glastonbury performance (itself a memorable set-piece) sums up her reckless abandon as well as anything here: flirting shamelessly with the audience, over-sharing about her private life, staying upright through sheer stubborn will and a little help from the roadies, and singing as if her life depended on it – which it probably did.
The world didn’t know it needed a torch singer with punk attitude until Amy Winehouse came along, but she thought differently. And it certainly missed her after she’d gone. @IanLong
Dir/Wri: Steven Zaillian | Cast: Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, Eliot Sumner, Maurizio Lombardi | US Drama series on Netflix
Tom Ripley, the raffish cad who steals through Patricia Highsmith’s psycho-thriller page-turners, gets a striking monochrome makeover in this stylish Netflix series – based on her first novel in the series The Talented Mr Ripley – and directed by Steven Zaillian who blazes a new trail for the 1960s grifter starring Andrew Scott – who is both vulnerable and venal.
Andrew Scott‘s Tom Ripley is not the suave, likeable rogue from the Texan writer’s creation ‘Deep Water’ or ‘The Cry of the Owl’. Here in this new series for Netflix he’s seen as a seedy swindler, uncomfortable with his life in a sordid bedsit in New York’s Bowery district, and certainly less self-assured than John Malkovich’s American trickster, who famously garrotted his travelling companion in Liliana Cavani’s suberb 2002 thriller Ripley’s Game. Incidentally Malkovich gets a role here as Reeves Minot.
Scott is nevertheless immaculate in his re-imagination of the antihero. A glassy-eyed, high-performing psychopath desperate to rise to the occasion when Kenneth Lonergan’s brilliant Herbert Greenleaf, a shipping magnate, proffers an all-expenses-paid opportunity of a lifetime: a trip to Naples in its ‘dolce vita’ heyday to track down his son, Dickie (Flynn) a trust fund dilettante who has fled to southern Italy and re-styled himself as a playwright and painter (‘along the lines of Picasso’) with his laconic girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning makes a spectacular return).
But don’t expect a sun-drenched Italy basking in insouciance and graced with Alan Delon’s louche lounge lizard in Rene Clement’s Purple Noon (1960) – the light here is hard-edged as it stares down on jagged black & white echoing stairwells, stormy coves and chiaroscuro courtyards. Behind Ripley’s dark sunglasses lurks a calculating conman so out of his depth in Dickie’s milieu and so insecure of himself he could hit out, like Caravaggio, at any minute (the artist’s ‘Seven Acts of Mercy’ hangs in the local church). And Ripley even misjudges the soigne mood with Dickie – when he finally finds him at the top of a thousand steps in palatial splendour – by foolishly inviting a sinister stranger to drinks, bearing an ‘offer he can’t refuse’. Dickie couldn’t care less about money – these two are social worlds apart. But Dickie rubs Ripley up the wrong way too and they both part company under sullen skies.
Cinematic and compelling this is a watchable series both narrative wise and in artistic terms, Zaillian wrote and directed all eight episodes and it certainly makes for a worthwhile adaptation with its flinty humour and suggestive performances from Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning – Eliot Sumner striking the only slightly bum note as Freddie Miles. Miss Highsmith would be proud to know her creation is having another outing courtesy of this impressive series. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire | Cast: Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, Mark Tyson | US Thriller 120′
Black Flies feels very much like a film you might have seen before: baby-faced paramedic rookie (Sheridan) comes up against the coalface of reality joining Sean Penn and his New York trauma team in Jean-Stephane Sauvaire”s blood-drenched docudrama of life on the streets. Meanwhile Mike Tyson is the bossman making sure they sticks to the rules.
Tye Sheridan makes it all watchable working alongside his antithesis – a less convincing Sean Penn – as a hardened medic whose integrity gradually bleeds out in the cliched finale (set to Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’), Sheridan becoming the knight in shining armour. We follow the two through their ‘casualty caseload’ of drug dealers, addicts and sex workers and we don’t care about any of them. But that’s the point. A decent thriller with a predictable outcome A pale rider alongside Martin Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Claire Denis | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Isaac De Bankole, Giulia Boschi, Francois Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin | France, Drama 105′
In her intimately observed feature debut Claire Denis draws on her own experience of growing up in the twilight years of French authority in 1950s Africa exploring the social dynamics between the past and the present for men and women, black and white in pre and post colonial Africa
Isabelle Huppert is a young woman who returns to a remote outpost in West Africa where her formative years were spent in the company of Protee her family’s black ‘houseboy’ a powerful presence of dignity and intelligence played by Isaac De Bankole. The overall effect is one of resonating tranquility as we become enraptured by the daily exchanges between France and Protee as the story flows from to present that culminates in a luminous finale – that was then and this is now and we should not try to compare the two or apologise for history. @MeredithTaylor
ON 4K RESTORATION BFI BLU-RAY & DIGITAL from 29 APRIL 2024
Dir: George Walker | Cast: Wilfrid Lawson, Elizabeth Allan, Malcolm Keen | UK Drama 89’
Goebbels was almost certainly aware of the strange anomaly that the first two Technicolor features made in wartime Britain while the war was at its lowest ebb both centred upon a German hero; although Handel promptly demonstrates his patriotic principles by declaring to a detractor that “While you are not English by any act of your own, I am English by choice”.
Resembling ‘Amadeus’ in its depiction of an unorthodox talent forced to abase himself before assorted pseuds and dilettantes; while the film betrays its origins as a radio play with its emphasis on talk – and the lack of obvious marquee value helped it to fail at the box office – Lord Rank at least had the good sense to cast an actor of the calibre of Wilfred Lawson rather than just a conventional leading man in the title role. So while two-thirds into the film Handel gets down on his knees to pray it at first seems ominous, despite Roger Manvell’s curt dismissal of “the sort of thing that disgraced ‘The Great Mr Handel'” and George Perry’s description of it as “so dull it has never been revived” Lawson’s performance combined with the imaginative use of colour (veteran colour cameraman Claude Friese-Greene was presumably enlisted for his experience with Dufaycolor, while his younger collaborator was a nascent Jack Cardiff) means it works.
The film is also to be cherished for the unique opportunity it provides to see the lovely young Elizabeth Allan in Technicolor; while Hay Petrie has one his best roles as Handel’s faithful servant Phineas, who in the final half-hour makes the film a virtual two-hander. @RichardChatten
So few films in two-colour Technicolor survive in anything like decent prints that the continued existence of ‘Mamba’ after over ninety years gives us even greater cause to be thankful, especially given it’s unlikely provenance as a production of Poverty Row outfit Tiffany and the fact that it’s a preCode melodrama in the vein of Somerset Maugham rather than just another musical.
Beginning as did so many early talkies with a sweeping and elaborate tracking shot, the film is so remarkable one can only express surprise at the obscurity in which director Albert Rogell now languishes; his subsequent career career largely confined to ‘B’s before he finally disappeared into television.
The condescending attitude to Africans will probably offend modern sensibilities, but the real villain of the piece is unambiguously shown to be Jean Hersholt – described by one member of the cast as “two-legged pig – whose wealth has justifiably failed to bring him the respect he feels that he deserves from the other colonials, his brusque lack of concern for the wellbeing of the native population prompting one to opine that “This dog Bolte consistently breaks down the very thing we try to teach our natives: respect for the white man”.
Also very preCode is the way that the evident horror of Hersholt’s mail-order bride Eleanor Boardman at the prospect of him putting his clammy paws all over her is so vividly conveyed. @RichardChatten
Dir: Teddy Lussi-Modeste | Cast: Francois Civil, Toscane Duquesne, Shain Boumedine | France, Drama 97′
Films about the challenges of being a teacher in the 21st century should have their own sub-genre; in 2012 The Hunt set the trend and got an Oscar nomination for and in the same year Francois Ozen comedy mystery In the House, won the Golden Seashell at San Sebastián. School of Babel addressed the issue of immigrant integration in 2013. The stresses strains of working of coping with complaints are dealt with variously in A Proper Job (2023) The Teachers’ Lounge(2023) and About Dry Grasses (2023). And finallyThe Holdovers (2023) adds a welcome twist of comedy to a fraught scenario . This latest tale is from French director Teddy Lussi-Modeste based on his own experience.
Francois Civil, best known for his swashbuckling antics as D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers series, is once again impressive as Julien Keller, a teacher who is put through the mill when a teenage girl in his class accuses him of sexual abuse, totally out of the blue. Soon the allegations spread until the entire school is thrown into turmoil, with Julien fighting to clear his name, and safeguard his own sanity.
Calm and reasonable, Julien appears to be the ideal teacher. Early scenes see him taking trouble to help struggling pupils in his class and generally keeping discipline without appearing draconian – not easy in a chaotic multi-racial co-ed in a Paris banlieu where Julien soon faces mounting pressures from Leslie’s disordered brother, and fellow students who pitch in with individual views on a situation that exposes wider issues both at school and at home.
Lussi-Modeste and Audrey Diwan (Happening) avoid cliche in a layered approach to a narrative that could easily have opted for simplistic solutions. The Good Teacher shows how an isolated event can quickly escalate and get out of control in today’s ‘culture of blame’. @MeredithTaylor
THE GOOD TEACHER is on release in France and Belgium.
Dir: Mel Gibson | Cast: Jim Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci. | Drama 127’
Lives of the founder of Christianity had been a cinematic mainstay since the Passion Play of Oberammergau was first filmed in 1897; while during the century that followed many eminent filmmakers had expressed the desire to tackle the subject. But nobody could have dreamt that a version would be directed by Mel Gibson – whose metamorphosis from the personable young actor in films by Peter Weir to a standard bearer for the Right had been deeply dispiriting to contemplate – and displays a morbid fascination with the violence of his death rather any interest in his ideas (the sheer length of time it takes the Messiah to survive in the face of sustained torture and flagellation doubtless stemming from Gibson’s desire simply to prolong the bloodshed rather than to the indomitably of his spirt).
The version depicts Jesus of Nazareth’s final hours on the days of his crucifixion in Jerusalem based on a screenplay by the American writer Benedict Fitzgerald who is also credited as ‘translator’ on the Coen brother’s comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
The status of Pasolini’s ‘Gospel According to St Matthew’ as the definitive cinematic life of Christ continues to remain unassailable; but it was certainly a canny move by Gibson to employ subtitled dialogue in Aramaic, since lines like “It’ll never catch on” when Christ demonstrates his new invention called “a table” (he’s a carpenter, geddit?) would otherwise have had audiences in fits. @RichardChatten
Dir: Cameron Cairnes/Colin Cairnes | Cast: David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss | US Comedy Horror
Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other. Unaware he is about to unleash evil into living rooms across America.
The Cairnes write and direct this entertaining and witty possession horror comedy with Dastmalchian holding it all together in a dynamite tour-de-force as Johnny Carson.
Dir: Christopher Miles | Casr: Ian McKellen. Janet Suzman. Mabel: Ava Gardner. Tony: Jorge Rivero. Dorothy: Penelope Keith. Christopher Miles directed.
Ten years after filming D. H. Lawrence’s ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’ director Christopher Miles rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into the final years of the author himself in this pretty if garrulous combination of travelogue and period drama.
As the great man himself a relatively young Ian MacKellan resembles and occasionally sounds like a ginger Wilfrid Lawson. The supporting cast includes the inevitable John Gielgud as inquisitor-in-chief Herbert G. Muskett, while the women in his life comprise the unlikely triumvirate of Ava Gardner, Janet Suzman and Penelope Keith. @RichardChatten
A downtrodden Roman housewife turns her life around in this 1940s tale of female empowerment from first time director Paola Cortellesi who also stars in her multi-award-winning first feature.
In Neo-realist black and white Cortellesi plays a modern day Anna Magnani in a stylish domestic melodrama with a relevant political message that sees Delia (Cortellesi) living in Rome just as Italy is getting back on its feet after the Second World War. American GIs are still patrolling the streets but the winds of change are blowing through the open air markets where the long-suffering wife and mother does her daily shopping often queuing for ages to feed and care for her boorish father-in-law, three children and controlling macho husband Ivano (Valerio Mastrandrea) – who greets her with a slap in the face when she wishes him ‘good morning’ in the opening scene.
Delia tiptoes around her family always being the martyr by putting them first and ignoring her own needs while life is passing her by due to the patriarchal society of the day where women appear to carry the weight of domestic responsibilities and have no agency. Cortellesi puts this all down to the Fascist regime. And the future looks more or less the same for the next generation in the shape of Marcella, her teenage daughter ((Romana Maggiora Vergano), who is not destined for a career but a good marriage: her middle-class boyfriend Giulio (Francesco Centorame) could fit the bill. Meanwhile Delia is thankful for small mercies such as sharing a bar of American chocolate with her old flame Nino (Vinicio Marchioni) – the two of them smile to reveal stained teeth, reflecting the film’s dark slick of humour and addressing the poor state of the Italian postwar health service. Delia knows that change can only come if she puts her mind to it.
This is a stylish if slightly uneven crowd-pleaser which will go down well particularly with female audiences, and the cleverly contrived finale shows Cortellesi to be a filmmaker with panache and a rare talent for storytelling. @MeredithTaylor
NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE/BELGIUM | IN UK/IRELAND 26 APRIL 2024
Dir: Robert Bresson | Cast: François Leterrier, Charles le Clainche, François Jost | France 100’
Made when Bresson was still showing us actors’ faces and their hands rather than their backs and their feet, ‘Un condamne a Mort s’est echappe’ is proof positive than an austere drama in black & white can be as absorbing as the most action packed thriller.
French Resistance activist André Devigny is imprisoned by the Nazis and starts planning his escape from his solitary cell. On the day of his execution he is given a new cellmate who may be a Gestapo informer. Should reveal his elaborate escape scheme?
To those unfamiliar with the director’s work – notorious for his total lack of overt action and the almost parodic lack of expression of his casts of non-professionals – this will come as a pleasant surprise as you watch with your totally undivided attention the deceptively mundane details of prison life, it’s impact actually heightened by the sparing use of music (although whenever Bresson actually does allow Mozart his head he certainly makes up for lost time). @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Edouard Bergeon | Cast: Alexandra Lamy, Felix Moati, Sofian Khammes, Julie Chen, Antoine Bertrand, Adam Fitzgerald | France, Eco- thriller 120′
A French student travels to Indonesia to complete his thesis on the palm oil industry but finds himself on death row accused of drug trafficking in this scenic but schematic geopolitical thriller from Edouard Bergeon.
Best known for his TV fare and award-winning 2019 drama In the Name of the Land Bergeon may have had the seventies cult classic Midnight Express in mind when he set out to conflate themes of ecology, drug trafficking and parental perseverance in his latest look at our threatened environment. The Green Deal is certainly a worthy attempt to address another threat to the planet in the shape of deforestation. But the result is too conventional and not exciting enough to grab our interest for two whole hours. And while the vast jungles of Indonesia certainly look impressive in Eric Dumont’s sweeping cinematography what we get narrative-wise is a worthy painting-by-numbers procedural that fails to generate emotion or surprise.
An impressive opening sequence sees eco warrior Landreau voyaging along the vast river to the heart of Java. Here, he meets up with locals, an inspiring NGO Nila Jawad (Chen) and doctor Paul Lepage (Bertrand). But after filming compromising footage of palm oil farmers Landreau falls foul of the system and ends up being thrown into prison falsely accused of that ‘old chestnut’ drug trafficking which is always wheeled out as an excuse when corruption needs to be covered up by the authorities.
Meanwhile back in France Landreau’s mother Carole galvanises government and big business into action in a bid to save her son, and the planet. From then on the focus turns to the thorny legal and political machinations involved in the palm oil industry exposing the French government’s complicity in this damaging threat to the environment and our health. Despite some interesting plot twists and turns the outcome is predicable.
Bergeon’s message is certainly heartfelt and worthwhile in addressing the issues concerned and raising the profile of this damaging industry that is ripping up and destroying vast tracts of Indonesia’s threatened ecosystems. But the story itself is lacklustre and we feel strangely uninspired by the plight of Landreau (Félix Moati) and his desperate mother Carole (Alexandra Lamy) despite her commendable efforts to drill down on the culprits – big business in cahoots with the Indonesian and (surprisingly) French government whose ministers merely shrug their shoulders in dismay.
The Green Deal works best as an expose of palm oil which is linked to the petrochemical industry and is now found in almost every manmade foodstuff linked to an increased risk of heart disease and other chronic health conditions. Beyond the danger the commodity poses to mankind, deforestation has destroyed a critical habitat for many endanger species – including rhinos, elephants and tigers. @MeredithTaylor
1949 saw the release of a trio of classic British comedies that really cemented Ealing’s place in history as this country’s finest film studios: Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whiskey Galore!
75 years later, these films offer a window into the hilarious nature of British eccentricity and ingenuity, and one that shows a healthy disdain for authority coupled with a not inconsiderable dose of anarchy. Today in the world of woke these features seem as fresh, innovative and, above all, as amusing as ever.
To celebrate its 75th Anniversary Ealing’s most endearing crime caper The Lavender Hill Mob (out 29 March) gets an up-to-date restoration and a nationwide re-release. Cinemas will be offering a selection of Ealing classics, both comedy and drama, under the banner ONCE MORE WITH EALING!
Other classics to revisit include Ealing stalwart Alec Guinness and his gang of thieves undone by Katie Johnson and her parrots in gloriously restored 4k Technicolor The Ladykillers along with ground-breaking and provocative dramas such as Pool Of Londonand It Always Rains on Sunday the archetypal portmanteau horror championed by everyone from John Landis to Kenneth Branagh, Dead of Night, and that man Guinness again, facing off against big business as they try to quash his miracle invention in The Man in the White Suit.
Also joining these bigger Ealing names are some lesser-known gems: Jean Simmons is blackmailed by her no-good husband back from the dead in Cage of Gold, Tommy Trinder impresses in a rare dramatic role in Ealing’s wartime ode to the Auxiliary Fire Service and their vital work during the Blitz in The Bells Go Down, and Lease of Life, written by Eric Ambler and starring Robert Donat as a Vicar who delivers an impromptu sermon that sets tongues wagging in Ealing’s only treatise on religion.
Dir: Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd | Cast: Ben Hardy, Hannah Onslow, Madelyn Smedley, Nisha Nayar | UK Drama 119’
A unicorn is not only a mythical creature but also acts as a metaphor for strength and resilience. These are qualities at the heart of a new British film made by the director team of Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd. Their latest collaboration neatly fits into a genre of feel-good social comment comic dramas, often successes of the more modest budgeted British film industry.
Unicorns centres around an unlikely queer romance between a young white English Essex working class mechanic and an Asian Muslim drag queen. The film has a ring of truth linked to true-life source material of Asifa Lahore who was Britain’s first Muslim drag queen. Where it transcends this material is an awareness of how opposites with split divided lives in real life often attract each other as a way of breaking out of traditional thoughts and manners of behaviour. As Unicorns reveals, the journey to fulfilment is not always an easy one but there is warmth and humour along the way with moments of heartbreak which the film sensitively blends together.
The film begins with a young man’s casual and lusty sexual encounter with a woman on scrubland followed by a purely accidental, serendipitous foray into London’s legendary Club Kali for queer Asians and friends. It is here that the young man Luke (Ben Hardy) locks eyes with a beautiful drag queen dancer Ashiq/ Aysha (Jason Patel).
After this uneasy but engaging chance meeting the film charts a ‘will they or won’t they get it together’ relationship linked to pressures of Luke being a single dad of a 5-year-old son with an absent partner and the recent death of his mother, while also discovering that he may not be as entirely heterosexual as he imagines. Ashiq also has a secret life as a drag queen dancer in queer clubs and private parties which is totally hidden from the day-to-day reality of his life as a dutiful son of an Asian Muslim family. For a queer Asian man there is sometimes a choice in life of an arranged marriage or – as described at one point – jumping off a bridge.
Key scenes take place in a car at night which the film uses as a form of road journey with an enclosed private space in which both characters grow and change during the course of the film. For Luke there is the way he discovers love and sexually connecting with another man. For Aysha there are rivalries with other drag queens and pimps as well as pressure from a brother to conform and stop the double life. All the performances linked to a wide range of friends and family for both characters are astutely well observed, performed and directed by filmmakers who previously made My Brother the Devil (Best British Newcomer 2013) and The Swimmers 2022.
Unicorns reveals how Britain has embraced enlightened and progressive attitudes towards diverse mixes of ethnic and gender cultures and fits well within a tradition of social realist comic dramas such as the queer English romances of My Beautiful Launderette 1985 and Beautiful Thing 1996. Unicorns may appear slight at times and wear its heart on its sleeve in places although audiences are likely to enjoy the film’s resilience, as much as two lovers do while learning lessons in the power of love. @PeterHerbert
UNICORNS on release in UK and Irish cinemas from 5 July 2024
An alarming expose of family disfunction is at the heart of this unsettling ‘cri de coeur’ from award-winning French writer Christine Angot who bases her documentary debut, set in Strasbourg, on her 1999 novel L’Inceste.
Angot, 59, strikes a gamine figure in her stylish black jeans and white boots but her delicate features hide a lifetime of trauma. We meet her in leafy suburb of Strasbourg where her father, who died a few years ago, first started abusing her when she was only 13. His wife and children still live there. Angot knocks on the door and barges her way into their stylish family home confronting her father’s wife and insisting her cameraman joins for moral support in what turns out to be a challenging confrontation that will expose the raw feelings Christine still harbours as she demands to know what this middle class woman thinks about her deceased husband’s covert history of long term sexual abuse. Now a mother of teenager herself, Christine is clearly emotionally damaged and still haunted by what her father did back then and its legacy that marks her own family. A brave and fascinating reportage.
The French novelist, playwright and journalist was born Chateauroux. Her first novel “Vu du Ciel” was published in 1990. She rose to prominence in 1999 with “L’Inceste”. This was followed by titles including “Les Désaxés” and “Une part du Cœur”, both of which were awarded the Prix France Culture. Her most recently published work “Le Voyage dans l’Est” won the 2021 Medici Prize. She was made an Officer of Arts and Letters in 2013 and has been a member of the Goncourt Academy since 2023.
NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | BERLINALE PREMIERE and winner of Tagesspiegel Readers’ Jury Award 2024.
Dir/Wri: Alex Garland | Cast: Nick Offerman, Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Jesse Plemons, Jefferson White, Cailee Spaeny | US Drama 109′
Civil War provides UK filmmaker Alex Garland with an expanded American canvas on which to explore themes and ideas of his four earlier, more intimate, British films. This new UK/USA co-production follows the journey of a quartet of media journalists racing against time in a 4-wheel vehicle as they travel from New York through Pennsylvania onto Washington DC to record a make-or-break address to the nation by a beleaguered President of the USA. The journey itself is no joy ride as the American landscape has been ripped apart by warring communities that has paralysed the White House at the heart of American politics.
In one chilling sequence, the journalists remind a menacing ginger henchman with red glasses (played by Jesse Plemons) that ‘We’re Americans, ok?’ to which they get the reply ‘What kind of American are you?’. In another scene, Kirsten Dunst, as a world-weary war photographer journalist (named after Lee Miller the WW2 war photographer), has become the reluctant mentor for a young woman (Cailee Spaeny) who is hungry for experience without comprehending how bloody and awful is the reality of war. The older war photographer mentions she has covered the horrors of war thinking that this would be a warning to others not do so again, although she knows now that this is not the case.
In another of the most tender and telling scenes in the film, the photographer agonises over the decision to delete or retain what may be a beautiful image but also one which may exploit the death of a man she has befriended. It is in scenes like this that Garland raises moral dilemmas between what the human eye can see and the camera lens records that is at the heart of photography and the subject of Haskell Wexler’s 1968 film Medium Cool. The film also suggests the spectre of Susan Sontag’s devastating essay Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). It is within the skill of Garland’s writing that themes questioning politics, media and society can be found beneath the surface of a film fundamentally built on images linked to a physically fast flowing narrative.
Garland is added by a production team from earlier films and Rob Hardy’s use of a new small light camera (DJI Ronin 4d) is able to keep the action stable when viewed on both IMAX and smaller screens. Fast-moving action sequences benefit from off-screen input of an experienced ex-Navy Seal adding authenticity to the film’s vivid sense of physical movement with Glenn Fremantle’s soundtrack combining lush chords of stereophonic music with soundscapes. The performances are skilful and reveal the director’s sensitive understanding of women in largely maledefined environments. Kirsten Dunst brings depth to the role of the mature photographer/journalist just as much Garland centred earlier films around female characters with the sensitive performances of Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina, Natalie Portman in Annihilation, Sonoya Mizuno in Deus and Jessie Buckley in possibly his most personal and misunderstood film Men.
Civil War also fits very well alongside outsider filmmakers who have observed America at a not so cool distance and is comparable with American films made by Europeans such as Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. The film that Civil War most echoes may well be the Italian director Antonioni and his daring and ground breaking critique of America inZabriskie Point from 1969. Civil War contains similar cinema-verité images of protest between civilians /students and military police/guards suggesting that nothing much has changed since the revolution of 1968. The UK-based filmmaker also captures images of the decay of former glories of communities crystallised by beautiful images of a damaged circus clown model, neglected rural landscapes and characters who are framed or towered over by the glass and concrete of American architecture.
Just as Antonioni questioned the breakdown of society and consumerism in 1968 there is also rich and potent post COVID/ Capitol Hill riot material here for Garland in 2024 with both films involving a journey heading towards apocalyptic finales. Civil War tackles the meltdown and threat to order by the divisive behaviour of people that is accelerated by politicians and speculates on the current fear that America is drifting towards a kind of anocracy, existing somewhere between democracy and autocracy. If Garland’s earlier films derived from intimate, dystopian and out-of-body time zone experiences his latest could be viewed as the nightmare of what becomes of paradise as envisaged by the youthful ‘trippy hippy’ but now older protagonists of Garland’s breakthrough 1996 novel The Beach.
Civil War may have rough edges linked in places to the ambitious script, although it remains a remarkable contemporary outing revealing a sensitive director with the ability to harness vivid images of death and violence from acts of warfare. @PeterHerbert
Dir: Rouben Mamoulian | Cast: Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Laird Cregar, Shepperd Strudwick A | US Comedy drama 86’
Dismissed by Rouben Mamoulian as “the least important of my films”, Rings on Her Fingers was only made to work out his contract with Fox, but is nevertheless a diverting trifle in its own right.
Made in imitation of Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve it permits Gene Tierney to extend her range by casting her against type as a gum-chewing salesgirl selling girdles “born on the wrong side of the counter” taken under the wing of a pair of confidence tricksters (one of whom describe her as “ten cent baby in a million dollar business”) reunited with a personable young Henry Fonda playing a $65-a-week accountant – self-described as “wage slave #65” – who the pair naturally mistake for a millionaire; although Spring Byington warns her partner in crime “Don’t try to short change him, this one can count!”
As one of the pair it provides an always welcome opportunity to see Laird Cregar – an actor who possessed a talent as massive as his girth and died far too young – who ironically was Mamoulian’s original choice as Waldo Lydecker before being manoeuvred out of directing Laura. @RichardChatten
OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE FILMS OF GENE TIERNEY season kicks off at the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE from 26 MARCH 2024
The cinema has employed the split screen almost since the dawn of the medium, and like devices such as irises became regarded as moribund with the introduction of sound, becoming trendy again with the nouvelle vague.
Based on a story by H. G. Wells, visual antecedents to ‘The Door in the War’ are contained in the portmanteau film ‘Dead of Night’ – which also used Wells as a source – and the Technicolor scenes depicting the garden in the otherwise monochrome ‘The Secret Garden’; while Ingmar Bergman was soon to recreate the effect in ‘Wild Strawberries’ to illustrate the longing to renter the past, and a similar mood later infused the 1960 ‘Twilight Zone’ episode ‘A Stop at Willoughby’.
As for the Independent Frame itself, it grows on you as it progresses, with the use of colour on the whole quite retrained – as in the subtle verdigris hue employed to highlight the titular door – but it heightens the impact of the exotic birds, the diaphanous green of the lady in the garden and by default the black & white photographs in a family album; and as in 3D the overall distraction is amply compensated for by the visual impact of the moments when it really comes off.
The film also recalls Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ in the laconic way the changes in the framing is achieved. @RichardChatten
Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Rory Calhoun, Gene Tierney | Western Drama 97’
Jacques Tourneur arrived in Argentina to make this late addition to Hollywood’s good neighbour policy a bit too early to avail himself of CinemaScope – which would have been well suited to the vast horizontal expanse of the Argentine pampas, seen to good effect thanks to Tourneur’s elegant use of lateral tracks – while the bright red of the soldiers’ caps displays the dramatic potential of Technicolor.
Rory Calhoun – in gaucho pants that would nowadays contravene numerous health & safety regulations – and Gene Tierney in a veil aren’t obvious casting as Latinos, but Richard Boone as usual gives good value as a cavalry officer whose robust view of discipline finds expression in staking people to the ground; while its not every film in which you get to see Everett Sloane as a singing gaucho. Based on a novel by Herbert Childs, Alfred Newman as usual contributes a noisy but appropriate score. @RichardChatten
Dir: Thomas Pickering | With: Thomas Pickering, George Monbiot, Sophia Ellis, Melanie Joy, Gemma Newman, Alan Desmond, Minik Patel, Paul Youd | UK Doc 97’
There are so many reasons to go vegan according to a plausible new documentary that takes us jauntily through the long list of why eating animal protein is no longer viable according to first time feature filmmaker Thomas Pickering – who has never eaten meat.
Born in the 1980’s and raised vegetarian, before switching to a vegan diet, Tom is convinced that his way of eating it the right way for animals, his own health, and the planet. In his vehement attempts at proselytism he comes up against some reasonable claims: “vegan food is expensive”, “how d’you get your protein” and “climate change doesn’t exist” are just a few.
So Tom sets out on a quest to investigate whether veganism is justified by talking to athletes, doctors, scientists, psychologists, farmers and even chefs. He talks to a game 84-year-old taking part in his sixth ultra-marathon, and visits a factory farm where the practices are appalling to say the least in footage that is painful to watch and these scenes are to be applauded in raising animal welfare issues. Worth mentioning here is also diseases contracted from animal sources such as campobylactor and E Coli.
Whether you are convinced or not – and there’s something extremely irritating about Pickering’s bumptious way of putting across his point of view – most of us agree that there are highly plausible reasons to choose a varied diet and that occasionally eating animal protein with its rich range of vitamins is healthy despite objecting on humane grounds to animal welfare and slaughter methods, particularly with regards to halal practices – a topic Pickering sadly fails to explore – or even mention.
Directed, edited and written by Thomas and his brother James, with support from Heather Mills (ahhh!) Peter Egan and Alicia Silverstone, I Could Never Go Vegan is decently made and researched. But when somebody bangs on about their opinion for over an hour, without any counter-argument I want to run for the hills in the opposite direction, fast. But many will find this revealing and persuasive, I’m sure. @MeredithTaylor
Digital surveillance is all part of being in the internet age and we go along with it while not being entirely at ease at being spied upon against our will. It’s just one of the downsides of modern life. We share the info, others use it to their own advantage.
Kate Stonehill’s documentary explores a far more sinister form of surveillance. It focuses on our mobile ‘phone use via a new state programme nicknamed “Phantom Parrot” that allows the government to plot our whereabouts at any given moment through our active handheld devices. With the nation’s increased exposure to nefarious elements at UK ports (sea, air or rail) the police have been given enhanced search powers under the 2000 Terrorism Act, and this allows them to crack down on suspects, at will, demanding PIN codes and passwords across all their devices and the further power to confine them to three months in prison, if deemed appropriate.
In 2016, Muhammad Rabbani, a director of Cage, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of Muslims held under war-on-terror laws, came under police suspicion under Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act when he travelled back to the UK from Qatar. And he was not the only one stopped. Much the same as your luggage being randomly rifflled through when airport security staff get bored, it’s a similar situation. And nobody likes it but that’s the deal. For some unknown reason Rabbani was subject to a random check at border control and when he refused to comply with police protocol he found himself in court and threatened with prison.
Stonehill became fascinated with his case and decided to make this film with a view to ‘making the invisible world visible’. Luckily for Rabbani, Gareth Pearce, a human-rights lawyer came to his rescue. I, for one, am glad the police are patrolling our borders. That’s what they’re paid and trained to do and we rely on them to keep us safe. @MeredithTaylor
Director: Beatrice Minger | Co-directed by Christoph Schaub | Written by Beatrice Minger in collaboration with Christoph Schaub | With: Natalie Radmall-Quirke, Alex Moustache, Charles Morillon | Switzerland 2024 | French& English w/ EN subtl., 89′.
Eileen Gray was a creative genius and the first woman to conquer the territory of architecture at a time when men controlled it all. This new film reflects on Gray’s impressive career and her avant garde house on the Cote d’Azur and will appeal to cineastes and lovers of art and design alike.
Unfolding as a stylish hybrid documentary E.1027is a filmic journey into the emotional world of Eileen Gray, who was born into a large family in County Wexford, Ireland before before moving to London where her career languished in the shadow of her male colleagues in the world of architecture at a time when the profession was dominated by men.
In the 1920s women architects found themselves confined to designing interiors but Gray broke the mould by moving to France where she courted the art scene before moving south where she found a plot of land on the water’s edge in Roquebrune – Cap Martin and fulfilled her dream of having a modernist house on the Riviera. A self-confessed bi-sexual she lived with her younger lover, the editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Architecture Vivante’ Jean Badovici. The two crossed paths with fellow architect Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne but Corbusier comes off the worse for wear in Swiss filmmaker Beatrice Minger’s take of events. He is seen an arrogant rather self-regarding character who muscles into Gray’s world by decorating her house with his own murals.
Eileen Grey – the house at Roquebrune – Cap St Martin
Minger’s film takes us into Gray’s inner circle, a tightly knit coterie of designers that included Fernand Lager, Corbusier and his wife Yvonne. Early on Gray counteracts Corbusier’s theory that a house is ‘a machine for living’ considering it more spiritual than that: ‘A place you surrender to, that swallows you. A place you belong to”.
Gray and Jean Badovici discovered the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin location that sits on the Côte d’Azur between Monaco and Menton. Due to its rocky, cliff-hanging location, wheelbarrows has to be used to transport materials on site. Gray named the house: E for Eileen 10 for John Badovici but left the place two years later: “I like doing things but I don’t like possessing them”. Eileen had already bought another plot of land inland and even more remote location and she left her house to ‘Bado’.
The film then broadens its focus onto Badovici and Corbusier’s relationship, with the French architect claiming Gray’s scheme for the house was copied from his own pen design. He built his own wooden Cabanon alongside a little bistro near to E.1027. But the Second World War put an end to the rivalry when Nazis occupied the Roquebrune house riddling the walls with bullets.
In the title role Natalie Radmall-Quirke smokes her way throughout this intimate portrait of the artist who appears both victim of her emotions and drivingforce behind her lover Bado – in one scene a graceful dance is testament to their feelings for each other. After leaving the house Gray was forced to contend with Corbusier’s arrogance, although he valiantly tried to find a buyer for the Roquebrune house which eventually to a Swiss art Marie Louise Shelbert who misguidedly thought he had designed it. No one came to Bado’s funeral.
Family money and her strong work ethic clearly allowed Gray to remain financially independent all through her life although there is never any mention of commissions outside her own designs although – many of her schemes never left the drawing board until later recognition saw her furniture sell for astronomical prices althoughher famous house had a less illustrious ending. In a final interview Gray emerges as an appealingly decent woman without a shred of ego.
E.1027 also brings to life conflicting undercurrents in the Parisian art scene of the 1930s. A fascinating finale allows us to meet Eileen Gray in a brief interview. She comes across as modest and appealingly lacking in any ego. @MeredithTaylor .
E1027 – Murals by Corbusier
EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA which will celebrate its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2024 (March 13-24, 2024) in Copenhagen as part of the INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION programme.
Dir: Michael Reeves | Cast: Boris Karloff, Elizabeth Ercy, Catherine Lacey, Ian Ogilvy, Susan George | UK Horror
Among films over which the Grim Reaper casts a long shadow pride of place must surely go to Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers whose elderly star and young director died within two years of its opening and within nine days of each other (while Victor Henry suffered a fate worse than death after being paralysed in a street accident.
Reeves’ nihilistic vision paints a very bleak view of human nature (tempered with odd touches of black humour as when Ian Ogilvy takes a swig of Coca-Cola whereupon Karloff grimaces and splutters “Urggh, horrible stuff!!”); while in a reversal of older peoples’ fear of the capacity of violence on the part of youngsters here it’s the kids that are exploited by a pair of delinquent pensioners, particularly an elderly speed freak who discovers the vicarious thrill of “Intoxication with no hangover, ecstasy with no consequence!”@RichardChatten
Dir: Michael Mohan | Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Alvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli | US Horro 89’
Cecilia, a young American woman, travels to an Italian convent to pledge her life to Jesus (“what a waste!” an official sighs ruefully as he processes her through customs), joining a cadre of young nuns dedicated to helping their sick and demented elder sisters through the last phases of their journey to ‘the Lord’. Cecilia completes her vows and is welcomed into the community as its latest bride of Christ. All seems well.
Well, almost all. Sexuality is surprisingly prominent in daily life: elegantly-cut robes flatter lithe figures; one nun suggests that another’s sour demeanour is the result of “her vibrator’s batteries running down”; and, oddest of all, the building has its own well-equipped gynaecological clinic, complete with a dedicated doctor. As more warning signs accumulate, our misgivings about the convent are more than confirmed (a violent prelude has already clued us up on the extreme risks of trying to leave it).
Immaculate is the passion project of its star, Sydney Sweeney, emphasised by the prominence of her name above the film’s title. Noted for her eye-catching appearance in the video for the Rolling Stones single ‘Angry’, the actress first found fame with TV series ‘The White Lotus’ and ‘Euphoria’.
Sweeney isn’t the first actress to use the clout that comes with success to back a dark and challenging project. For instance, Olivia de Havilland was the motive force behind The Heiress (1949): selecting and securing the property, talking William Wyler into directing it, and playing a lead part at odds with her usual serene glamour.
Similarly, the narrative of Immaculate calls for Sweeney to portray a gamut of strong emotions. Cecilia begins the film cowed by the convent’s gravitas and opulence, albeit armed with a quiet, steely faith which will eventually put the institution to the test. She ends it in shrieking, blood-drenched agony, facing a poignantly fateful decision.
Immaculate is a stylish, well-made and intelligently written horror with high production values. Its vision of a malign and conspiratorial Catholicism is not new, but it manages to cast a spell (undermined at times by frequent jump-scares, heavy-handedly underlined by non-diegetic soundtrack explosions) as it builds towards a visceral climax.
The latter part of the film feels a little rushed and truncated, and some elements are under-developed: neither Cecilia’s formative near-death experience nor the existence of a sub-order of sinister, red-masked nuns are fully explored, and I’d have liked more character development for the two nuns (one supportive of Cecilia, the other stonily opposed) who gravitate to her.
But this is Sweeney’s show. The third act sees Cecilia facing her fate almost alone in the once-teeming building as she hurtles towards a starkly memorable denouement. Unlike the cold revenge enjoyed by de Havilland in The Heiress, retribution in Immaculate is served piping hot, and Sweeney throws herself into the finale with such crazed gusto that most will feel sated by her maniacal power. @IanLong @_i_a_n_l_o_n_g_
Ian Long is a writer and story consultant who teaches various aspects of screenwriting in his Deep Narrative Design workshops. ‘Stargazer’, a psychological drama feature co-written with director Christian Neuman will be released later this year, and Ian is currently developing ‘Malediction’, a supernatural feature set in southern Italy.
IMMACULATE is in UK cinemas from Friday 22 March 2024
Dir/Wri: Maryam Keshavarz, Producers: Anne Carey, Ben Howe, Luca Borghese, Peter Block, Corey Nelson) | US Drama
Vibrant energy and a dash of humour powers Maryam Keshavaraz’ crowdpleaser forward. The Persian Version sees a large Iranian-American family gathering for the patriarch’s heart transplant. The dramatic twist is a family secret that catapults the estranged mother and daughter into an exploration of the past that flips backwards and forwards between the United States and Iran as the two discover more kinship than they first imagined.
Enlivened by exuberant dance routines to a vintage American and Iranian pop score, the highlight of the show is vivacious newcomer Layla Mohammadi whose over-the-top personality is tempered by her ‘mean mummy’ parent Shireen (Niousha Noor). Occasionally erring on the tediously overtalky this is a spirited and earnest attempt to address cross-cultural identity and bring together past and present in a ‘healing’ way. @MeredithTaylor
Mainstream Hollywood cinema of the nineties offers many profound disappointments, of which two of the most poignant were the early death of John Candy, thirty years ago this month after suffering a heart attack in his sleep, and Steve Martin’s increasing dissatisfaction with simply being funny.
With a plot that owes an evident debt to ‘The Out-of-Towners’ it’s disarmingly good-natured and nice to see the erstwhile ‘Wild & Crazy Guy’ play the straight man for a change with Candy as Falstaff to his Prince Hal.
Over thirty years later ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ is as melancholy to watch as it is funny since it demonstrates the ability of the cinema to preserve such moments for posterity. @RichardChatten
The Jute industry has been the mainstay of millions of Bengalis for hundreds of years but is now in a state of decline putting their livelihoods in jeopardy.
In artfully composed shots Nishtha Jain’s documentary exposé examines the relationship between factory and labour in an industry which has come under pressure due to the switchover to plastics. The Golden Thread transports us from the peaceful riversides of West Bengal, where the green canes of jute grow in abundance, to the two largest jute factories in the Indian region around Kolkata where the plant is woven into material.
The Golden Thread could easily be set in the 18th century but this is modern day West Bengal. The camera follows hot on the heels of workers arriving by bike at the vast Naihati Jute Mills where the dried jute is being stored in bundles before it reaches the massive weaving looms. The frenzied din of spinning soon takes over and then cuts back to the peace and tranquility of a muddy riverside where a man in a large straw hat is cutting down green canes in preparation for drying.
Although the heyday is over for the jute industry, Naihati is proud to announce “we manufacture environment friendly jute… which includes food grade jute products (hydrocarbon free) and geo-textiles”. State aid has kept this sustainable alternative to plastic going but the future looks bleak despite the eco potential of jute.
The challenge to survive continues for many Bengali labourers who still rely on the factory to support themselves and their families despite poor working conditions. Accidents and jammed machines are a frequent occurrence. Grievances, hopes and fears are aired and compete with the din of the whirring spinning machines. The workers’ plight is taken up by the unions who are fighting to raise pay to a minimum wage requirement of £200 a month and improve conditions in general. It’s a familiar story of quality over production that connects to a global narrative of struggling traditional industries and communities all over the world. @MeredithTaylor
SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9 – 16 March 2024
Dir: Theodor Kotulla | Cast: Gotz George, Elisabeth Schwarz, Kai Taschner, Hans Korte | Biographical Thriller, Germany 145′
Erroneously described on YouTube as a “WW2 War Film’, this adaptation of Robert Merle’s 1952 novel ‘Death is my Trade’ actually devotes more time to the experiences of Rudolf Hoss – thinly disguised as ‘Franz Lang’ – in the First World War as an earnest young teenager serving as a sergeant on the western front before joining the NSDAP in 1922 and finally – with just over an hour more to go of a film running 145 minutes – installed as the Commandant of Auschwitz in 1941 and the period covered by The Zone of Interest; which places far greater emphasis on Hoss’s wife.
Filmed in Auschwitz-BirkenauThis disturbing study of ‘dehumanisation’ (an expression coined by The Zone of Interest’s director Jonathan Glazer) is staged in the Brechtian manner in numbered episodes in which in 1916 the Kaiser’s picture still hangs on the wall, to be replaced by Hitler in 1922, and finally by three considerably more imposing portraits of the Fuhrer when WWII finally arrives.
The scene where Himmler states to Hoss that the Fuhrer personally ordered the destruction of the Jews will doubtless enrage Holocaust deniers (just as David Irving in his book on Nuremberg showed far more indignation at the roughing up Hoss got at the hands of his captors than the content of his testimony). Hoss is depicted as a weakling rather than as a monster who lacked the courage to say ‘No’ – but was plainly not happy at his work – half-heartedly requesting a posting on the front before reluctantly knuckling down at his desk studying diagrams of the correct way to herd prisoners and diagrams of crematoria. Starring Gotz George as Lang, Elisabeth Schwarz as Elsa Lang and Hans Korte as Heinrich Himmler the feature went on to win the Outstanding Feature Film award at the German Film Awards 1978. @RichardChatten
Dir: George Schaefer | cast: George Peppard, Jean Seberg, Richard Kiley | US Noir Thriller 106′
A glossy, extremely well-acted film that marks the point of contact between two contrasting career arcs: George Peppard had already reached its apex in pictures, and he was soon to find his niche as unorthodox TV lawmen for which this served as something of a dry run with his pursuing a baby-faced killer who anticipates Scorpio in Dirty Harry.
For Jean Seberg it marked a brief return to Hollywood after several years in European exile – still sporting her distinctive gamine haircut – as Peppard’s wife (an actor she actively disliked which made their chilly scenes depicting a marriage gone sour all the more plausible).
Directed by TV veteran George Schafer much it resembles a movie made for TV, but both the themes tackled – with the then shocking sight of people dying with their eyes open – and the use of Washington as a backdrop lend it a certain distinction. @RichardChatten
Close you Eyes screened to rapt audiences at Cannes last year. It marked the Basque director’s triumphant return to the screen after an absence of thirty odd years when his Dream of Light (1992) had followed on from El Sur(1983) and his acclaimed debut The Spirit of the beehive (1973). His fourth features unites him with Ana Torrent who was only 6 when she made her screen debut in The Spirit.
Close your Eyes is a slow-burning drama that reflects discursively on memory and disillusionment through a story set in the 1990s. An actor called Julio Arenas (José Coronado) has disappeared from the set after filming the opening and closing scenes that bookend a film called The Farewell Gaze. The director Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) has subsequently abandoned the project and repaired to beachside Andalusia where he has kept himself amused with his writing until an opportunity to be interviewed for a programme about Julio’s mysterious disappearance sends his mind flooding back to the past as his friendship and working relationship with the actor resurface.
Erice uses Miguel’s experience as a way to delve into the theme of loss, identity and the mystical power of cinema and its interplay with the past and present offering both fantasy and illusion. Although Miguel has tried to obliterate certain painful memories of his past, the man he thought he was is recalled through the prism of the present. So the search for his lost friend offers an opportunity to shine light into the darker recesses of his subconscious that fills in some gaps and culminates in a startling finale. Erice explores the men’s work as artists in a subtle and layered piece of filmmaking that serves as a valedictory and highly intelligent reflection on the world of cinema. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Robert D Webb | Cast: Robert Ryan, Virginia Mayo, Jeffrey Hunter | US Western Drama
The great Akira Kurosawa was often said to be the most western of Japanese directors and personally declared ‘The Proud Ones’ to be one of his favourite films.
By the end of the 1950s Fox were finally giving Robert Ryan roles that were worthy of his talents – sadly not for long – to portray nobility and get the girl (in the comely form of Virginia Mayo) in this sombre, character-driven western in which Ryan plays a heroic role akin to Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’ that takes a surprisingly benign view of its characters, with Arthur O’Connell being his usual likeable self and even Robert Middleton not playing the usual ogre. @RichardChatten
Dir/Wri: Milena Aboyan Co-Wri: Constantin Hatz | Cast: Bayan Layla
Derya Durmaz, Nazmi Kirik, Armin Wahedi, Derya Dilber, Cansu Dogan, Beritan Balci, Slavko Popadić, Hadnet Tesfai, Homa Faghiri, Rebér Ibrahims | Drama 110′
Being a woman in a Kurdish community is all about secrecy and subterfuge according to this impressive feature debut from Armenian born writer/director Milena Aboyan who shows the ongoing societal pressure for Kurdish women and girls in modern-day Germany. Men – and particularly mothers – hold sway in this ‘multicultural’ environment where ironically the women seem to be the ones enforcing age-old traditions.
Elaha, 22, is dreading her forthcoming marriage to her overbearing Kurdish boyfriend because she will have to prove she is a virgin – and she is not. Although the film explores Elaha’s options to re-instate her ‘innocence’ what it really deals with is the tremendous pressure of conforming to traditional ideals in a tight-knit, often hypocritical, set-up.
Naturally we empathise with Elaha who is thoughtfully played by newcomer Bayan Layla. But she is by no means a straightforward character who is playing her fiancé off against her ex-boyfriend to whom she feels considerable attraction, for obvious reasons. She desperately wants to conform to her family’s wishes and doesn’t want to bring shame on her mother and father but on the other hand she feels the freedom her ex boyfriend accords her is far more appealing. The overriding impression we get in the scenes with her fiancé – who is stuck in a ‘Madonna Whore’ complex – is one of fear and oppression: not the basis for a happy relationship, let alone marriage. By the same token, Elaha does not want to be ostracised from Kurdish society or lose the love and support of those she holds dear.
Aboyan and her co-writer Constantin Hatz deal sensitively with the issues involved introducing contrasting characters, in the shape of Elaha’s teacher and counsellor, who call into question these old-fashioned values. Elaha finds their opinions persuasive, although they fly in the face of her family’s traditional stance. Her teacher points out the seemingly ludicrous situation Elaha finds herself in but Aboyan never paints her mother and father as unlikeable; they are simply victims of an outmoded way of life in the context of modern day Germany. This is a visually appealing and engaging film that raises some important questions about family and society as a whole and women’s role within it. @MeredithTaylor
Elaha will also preview on International Women’s Day (8th March) at the BFI Southbank, as part of their Woman with a Movie Camera strand | In cinemas UK & Ireland on Friday 26th April 2024
This latest foray into the life of the artist Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon (1907-54) follows Ali Ray‘s chronicle of the painter’s life seen through the prism of Mexican history.
Frida, based on her own previously unseen diaries and letters, is a much more intimate and visceral view told in her own words (voiced by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero).
In troubled life full of pain and tragedy, Kahlo managed to triumph through sheer adversity and her own brand of bloody-mindedness.“Was the virgin Mary really a virgin?” she asked a priest during mass. Clearly she was en route to be a success as a paintet when she started channelling her florid fears and morbid moods onto canvas after a life-changing contretemps with a tram left her bedridden at only 18.
In keeping with its subject matter this is an artful documentary that unfolds in colour and black and white. In an inspired touch director Carla Gutiérrez has decided to animate some of Kahlo’s work so the ‘Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair’ comes alive. This seems in keeping with Kahlo’s avant-garde and subversive take on things, along with her unusual marital arrangements with her long term much older husband and lover Diego Rivera which ended in divorce and then re-marriage based on a bizarre set of conditions including Kahlo’s refusal to ever sleep with him again (they had both been unfaithful, she with Leon Trotsky – no less).
So Gutiérrez offers up a refreshingly lyrical new take on the artist that lives to her reputation as complex, vulnerable but fearless to the last. @MeredithTaylor
Frida is in UK cinemas on 8 March and on Prime Video on 14 March.
Bergamo Film Meeting unveils its 42nd edition from March 9 – 17, 2024. One of the most important events in the Italian festival calendar the meeting draws thousands to its annual celebration of auteur and arthouse cinema in the mountainside venue just north of Milan in the Italian Dolomites.
Home to the Duomo di Bergamo, the city is also proud of its Romanesque Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the grand Cappella Colleoni, a chapel with 18th-century frescoes by Tiepolo.
Bergamasco is one of Italy’s most intriguing dialects and food-wise the town boasts a wealth of gourmet restaurants and bars where you can savour saffron-flavoured risottos and a legendary pancetta-laced pasta dish called casonelli alla bergamasca served in a rich butter sauce accompanied by the local wines – including the famous red Moscato di Scanzo. BERGAMO is also well known for its wealth of ice-cream parlours based on regional ingredients – including liguorice and zabaglione – with stracciatella a speciality.
Film-wise there’s a really exciting line-up that includes a retrospective on the work of French director and leading proponent of the Nouvelle Vague Eric Rohmer, including his seasons series: Conte de printemps, d’automne, d’hiver and d’ete,Le Rayon Vert; and Ma Nuit chez Maud to name but a few.
St Petersburg-born French actor, director and screenwriter Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) will receive a Tribute as one of the most fascinating and versatile film personalities of the 20th Century. The honour will include screenings of his 1935 director debut Bonne Chance!, Donne-moi tes yeux (1943) and La Poison (1953) amongst others.
A Tribute to Walter Matthau will highlight an American Comedy Classics strand featuring director Elaine May’s A New Leaf, Billy Wilder’s The Front Page. and Gene Saks’ 1966 outing The Odd Couple starring Matthau and Jack Lemmon.
There will also be a chance to see the latest arthouse films fresh from the festival circuit including a selection of world premieres in the Festival’s Main Competition. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Monte Hellman | Cast: Jack Nicolson, Warren Oates, Millie Perkins, Will Hitchens | US Drama 82’
A historically important film since it marked the beginning of the collaboration between Monte Hellman and Warren Oates that eventually came to full fruition with ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’.
For Jack Nicholson, who co.produced with Hellman and plays yet another in a long line of leering malcontents it represented yet another frustration before he finally arrived with ‘Easy Rider’.
Assisted by the minimal score by Richard Markowitz the predominantly horizontal visuals created by cinematographer Gregor Sandor dispenses with the usual visual attraction associated with the genre concentrating instead upon character interaction; while as the shady lady – like Nicholson wearing a striking wide-brimmed hat – the freckles on Milly Perkins’ face shows she had spent far more time exposed to the sun than poor Anne Frank had. @RichardChatten
All Shall Be Wellopens as if all is very well during a sequence in which a diverse range of family generations are observed sitting around a table laughing, chatting and eating from copious bowls of food. There is nothing here out of the ordinary in a sequence that evokes familiar Asian family gatherings seen in many films linking traditions of Asian filmmaking, including the great family-focused films of Yasujiro Ozu.
The film swiftly shifts tone after we have been introduced to the two older women, Angie and Pat, who are clearly longtime partners, creating a successful business partnership and lovingly referred to by the family as Aunties. Angie (played by Para Au) is seen talking in a carefree way to Pat (played by Lin-Lin Li) who is in another room when Angie becomes aware of an ominous silence. Director and screenwriter Ray Yeung delivers the first of a series of audacious edits with a cut-away to a funeral sequence. We then observe, in a series of sequences, how shattered and distraught Angie feels about the loss of her soul mate.
Hong Kong based filmmaker Ray Yeung has made previous films on subjects including male relationships linked to the fashion industry in Front Cover (2015) and Twilight Kiss (2019) which looks at the problems of an older couple of gay men. All Shall Be Well takes Leung a stage further with his delicate, more unsettling than it looks, new film. It is a masterly study of complex family relationships and less than forgiving and harsh laws in countries like Hong Kong with links to China that are not progressive with LGBT rights. The film explores how family connections can be unsettling when order and inheritance involving wealth and property surface with the rights of couples in LGBT relationships literally less than clear or white-washed out of legal frameworks.
Apart from remarkable ensemble performances in particular from Patra Au at the centre of the film there is impressive camerawork by Ming kai Leung which gently moves the camera along with the movement of characters or frames sequences with close-ups as the drama unfolds. Yeung centres a key element around the spiritual healing powers of water that anchor a clash between Pat and her brother-in-law.
The film’s denouement is one of the finest in recent cinema. A revelation provides the otherwise unanswered mystery which has bothered and troubled Angie as she calmly but resolutely refuses to accept the fate handed to her by family rights and laws that enshrine injustice. When Angie discovers the real truth about her partner the film ends on a triumphant note of calm acceptance as to how love can transcend whatever blows that life brings. A powerful thought-provoking ending brings resolve and resolution to Yeung’s film and it is not surprising that All Shall Be Wellwalked off with the coveted LGBT Teddy Award against considerable competition at this year’s 74th Berlin Film Festival.
A film to watch out for when it is released which is likely to find a true worldwide following along the lines of recent enlightening LGBT themed films including The Blue Caftan.
Imogen Poots is the only reason to see this faded foray into the past that seems topical merely because of the current outburst of anti-capitalist rage being expressed throughout the Western World.
In Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s character drama she plays Rose Dugdale, an aimless girl with nothing else to do but rail against a system that saw her growing up in a rural mansion in Baltimore — a village in County Cork, Ireland — where her torpid existence soon sees her drawn to the limelight – in this case the contrasting excitement of stealing her own family’s clutch of paintings, in league with the IRA.
Flashbacks show her kicking against the system from an early age in sympathising with a fox during a hunt and a Black woman in a family artwork. The heist soon gives Rose a focus and some lead in her pencil transforming her from a ‘nothing’ to a ‘something’ in her own eyes – a rebel with a cause.
Rose’s mild-mannered parents (Carrie Crowley and Simon Coury) are mystified at this transformation from ordinary teenager to political activist and dismayed when she and her boyfriend (Patrick Martins) steal from them at a fundraiser for the IRA and so its goes on as Poots steals the show with a nuanced portrait of futility and misguidedness.
With its drab visual aesthetic and lifeless characters Baltimore is a dreary trudge through Dugdale’s life and times – which eventually amounted to nothing but caused suffering to many – but for Poots’ performance it is tolerable. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Dorothy Arzner | Cast: Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Robert Young, Billie Burke | US Drama
With a title like that The Bride Wore Red is guaranteed to stand out in even the most casual perusal of Dorothy Arzner’s oeuvre; along with the fact that one of the writers and the editor were also women.
Although Ms Arzner disliked making this film and left it in high dudgeon after having a happy ending imposed by Metro, it remains a most diverting Tyrolean lark (a fact appropriately reflected in Franz Waxman’s score).
In a role originally intended for Luis Rainer the film’s biggest liability is as usual Joan Crawford (her most impressive moment being as a cake decoration behind the credits) but she certainly brings an authentically feral quality to the scene where she hunches up her shoulders and gets stuck in when offered lunch.
While of the two leading men Robert Young has the most screen time Franchot Tone has the more interesting part, while standouts in support include George Zucco before he was typecast as mad doctors, and Mary Philips is as usual a robust presence.@RichardChatten
Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’ Pepe which unspools in the Berlinale Competition and has been described by artistic director Carlo Chatrian as its least “classifiable” entry, which is high praise indeed when you look at the distinctive films that surround it in this year’s competition. Following on from this luminous film Cocote, which won the Signs Of Life Award at the 2017 Locarno film festival.
Very much a hybrid text that encompasses humanism, epic, essay and mythic folk tale; all told through the prism of a hippopotamus the humans call ‘Pepe’ and is adrift from the clutches of his owner: Pablo Escobar. We have been here before, of course, with numerous documentaries that have looked at the Columbian drug lord and his menagerie of wild animals that lived on his armed compound. This is a very different beast from those spurious basic works.
A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. The Latin word hippopotamus is derived from the Ancient Greek hippopótamos, from híppos ‘horse’ and potamós‘river’, together meaning ‘horse of the river’. Sometimes what is represented is not supposed to be taken as what it appears; the horse of the river is here to do some heavy lifting. In what some would call zoomorphism, what we are looking at is the climate crisis, the migrant crisis, imperialism, post colonialism and of the destruction of late capitalism and its toll on the global South.
The voice is droll and of the kind that has seen too much, but is comes post death following it’s escape and journey down the Magdalena River where he will come to a brutal end that is the narrative that fits many that are othered by a populace terrified of what they cannot understand. Pepe remains in death the quintessential romantic, condemned to the corporeal.
The film enjoys itself and takes its time, it glides through many philosophical concepts within a hermetically sealed universe. The journey through the Magdelena seems like an exercise through South American literature particularly ‘The Apprentice Tourist’ by the queer mixed-race “pope” of Brazilian modernism: Mário de Andrade, even though he focused on the Amazon, but the reference makes poetic sense if not empirical sense.
At various points the film wanders off from the kinesis of the river and partakes in various human life, from beauty pageants and the emotional violence of destructive relationships that very obliquely connect to our eponymous hero. But far from a dying and deadened milieu, the Magdalena and its environs is in fact brimming with life. This is emphasised with a dominant binary and linear ontology around life and death. The living and the dead are not fixed in a binary but bound together in an intimate, dynamic, circling dance. Decay and regeneration are two sides of the same coin.
The long, widening rivers of South America are very much horizontal and rhizomatic. As per Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant rhizomatic identity is unlike a root which grows vertically from one place, it grows horizontally, stretching out to meet other roots.
As the oral testament continues one thinks of the acclaimed Canadian author LM Montgomery who said, “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it”. To speak is to make sense of our reality but it also shows the impulses and the limitations of existence.
It is so invigorating to see a young filmmaker who has ambition to spare: Where a lot of his contemporaries settle for shooting rabbits, he is only interested in hunting big game and the Socratic questions that come with that territory. One can only be excited for the journey where he’ll journey to next. @d_w_mault
Dir: Gustav Moller | Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Dar Salim, Sebastian Bull | Denmark/Sweden/France. 2024. 99mins
One of the best films at Berlinale 2024 was this glacially unnerving psychological thriller from Swedsh director Gustav Moller (The Guilty). It stars Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen as a dedicated prison guard who takes pride in her ethos of pastoral and rehabilitative care but finds herself out of her depth when taking on a new role in the high security wing where she becomes obsessed with one of the inmates, a vicious psychopath, serving time for murder. It soon emerges that Mikkel (Bull) has a connection to Eva and one that sees her taking risks and behaving in an increasingly unadvisable way towards him. In these unpredictable and oppressive surroundings the power base gradually shifts putting Eva and her colleagues in grave danger.
copyright Timo Kuismin
Moller and his co-writer Emil Nygaard Albertsen once craft a sinuous study of human evil that sees the prison environment is a challenging unpredictable one: an atmosphere of calm control can abruptly erupt into hostile and dangerous violence. Eva is made aware of this by her colleague (Dar Salim) who warns her about becoming too familiar with the inmates: “Some people are just beyond rehabilitation”. But Eva has another axe to grind and ignores his advice to her detriment in this robust and frightening character drama. @MeredithTaylor
What Henry Fonda For President is most definitely not is a documentary on the level of a Blu Ray extra which is what most documentaries that look at iconic figures resemble these days and are devoid of ambition or intellect; two things that this film has in spades – written and directed by Alexander Horwath – who is a writer, curator and film historian.
Horwath has had a long career in the trenches as what Werner Herzog would describe as a ‘true soldier’ of cinema. In his career he has been the director of the Viennale (1992-97) and the Austrian Film Museum (2002-17). He also curated the documenta 12 film program (2007) and many other projects in the film and art world. His essays and books have, among other topics, addressed subjects such as Josef von Sternberg, Ruth Beckermann, Guy Debord and Austrian avant-garde cinema.
With this, his debut film which premiered in the Forum Section of the Berinale, he has stepped out from the dusty confines of academia and bravely put his head above the parapet and opened up to eventual brickbats by the deluded and most deserved acclaim for a near unique piece of cinema.
The film may be titled Henry Fonda For President, but it is as much about Fonda as it is about the American century. America is the force field of the film and is always waiting to be rediscovered. That means – of course – the cinema, the place where we can experience what Nathaniel Hawthorne once noted, American is something of “a country in the shape of a church”. That is one of the notions of the US State that Howarth returns to again and again: religion and its place in a country that has very high opinions of itself and thinks it is the exception to every rule.
A monument resembling a cathedral to the American century through the prism of a decent man, perhaps the man who when seen and experienced most would want to be. The film starts with his polar opposite and the single figure the film juxtaposes him against: Ronald Reagan. Not Reagan the actor but Reagan the politician and company man for US corporations and hyper capitalism.
The film then jumps to the 17th century and by virtue of Fonda’s particular family history: the early migration of the Fondas from Holland to America, later from the East to the Midwest, and from there to New York City and California. As well as the director’s voice-over he relies on the last interview Fonda gave to Lawrence Grobel in 1981, before he died a year later. In these interviews we come across a man being brutally honest, not so much about cinema but of the men taking America down a path that has led to Trump and the near death of American democracy: Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
The film’s formalism has a twin in Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, in the sense that they both look at contemporary space in a manner of a psychogeographer. We are taken time and again from places that appear in Fonda’s films then and now, whether Drums Along The Mohawk, Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine. Other than his own films, though, the filmmaker – as you would expect – is more interested in philosophers, whether Paine, Thoreau, Tocqueville, Emerson and Fuller.
Bertold Brecht once said,”Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes”, that is what stayed with me after over three hours sitting with this epic piece of work. Both then and more importantly the present. @d_w_mault
Dir: Meryam Joobeur | Cast Salha Nasraoui, Mohamed Hassine Grayaa, Malek Mechergui, Adam Bessa, Dea Liane
Tunisia / France / Canada 2024 | Arabic, Subtitles: English, German | 117′
Maryam Joobeur makes a visually stunning debut with this Berlinale competition title that mixes professional actors with newcomers to tell another tale about events in the ‘Monde Arabe’ this time with elements of magic realism. On the sandy shores of northern Tunisia Aïcha (Salha Nasraoui) and her goat-farmer husband Brahim (Mohamed Hassine Grayaa) live a peaceful existence in amongst the dunes where they seem content with their sons Adam (Rayen Mechergui) and Amine (Chaker Mechergui).
Theirs is a modern household although Brahim definitely wears the trousers although Aïcha soon emerges as a matriarch to be reckoned with. “Women speak in this community” announces Brahim when their long lost son Mehdi (Malek Mechergui) returns to the fold with a mysteriously mute, burka-wearing wife called Reem (Dea Liane) who has blue eyes and an advancing pregnancy. Mehdi has been fighting for ISIS in Syria and appears to have rescued Reem from a terrible fate at the hands of ISIS. The dumbstruck Reem is clearly still traumatised by events which play out in a gruesome sequence.
DP Vincent Gonneville’s close-up camera focuses intensely on the actors’ faces. This is resolutely arthouse fare and the dialogue in as sparse as the windblown vegetation in the desert location where life often drifts into surrealism amongst the whispering dunes. There is some violence here to contrast with the dreamlike status quo in this haunting and original piece of filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Brandt Andersen | with Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Omar Sy, Ziad Bakri, Constantine Markoulakis | Jordan 2024 | Arabic, English, Greek, Subtitles: English, German | 97′ | World premiere | Debut film
According to the Berlinale festival blurb it was our very own bard William Shakespeare coined the phrase ‘The Strangers’ Case’ in reference to the plight of migrants all over the world. This apparently inspired first time feature director Brandt Anderson to make a film about a tragedy of refugees.
The Strangers’ Case is a gripping if schematic film that centres on a Syrian family in Aleppo whose predicament will change the lives of five different families. In the midst of it all is Amira, an Aleppo-based paediatric surgeon and her daughter who find themselves swept into a dangerous but familiar tale when they are buried by a bomb from the civil war raging in their country.
Managing to escape the ruins of their home they secure a place on one of those un-seafareing dinghies run by a criminal trafficker/criminal (the muscular Cy ). On the same boat trip is another Syrian family who have opted to leave their place in a migrant camp in order to get to Europe. The criminal who organises their boat transfer, for a hefty fee, is also responsible for a son who he leaves behind.
The Texas born director certainly masters his material in a slick and confident debut that certainly provides compulsive viewing although the narrative tends to be simplistic with characterisations falling predictably into baddie and goodie territory and a docudrama with a predictable ending. @MeredithTaylor
Dirs: Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala | Cast: Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter | Austria / Germany 2024 | German, Subtitles: English | 121′ | Colour | World premiere
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala delve into their country’s macabre past for this painfully drawn out if atmosphere horror story that often looks like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
The Devil’s Bathfollows Goodnight Mommy as a profound and disturbing psychological true thriller, based on an unexplored historical episode in European social history that hails from Upper Austria in the 1790s, according to court records. The ‘Bath’ in question was a state of depression brought on by the rigours of everyday life, and many escaped this by committing murder and subsequently seeking a pardon from the Church which allowed them to commit suicide and receive a decent burial, rather than being cast out for eternity.
In a remote rural village, Agnes (Anja Plaschg), a poor peasant girl, finds herself imprisoned within the strictures of local expectations when she marries her husband Wolf, a man with nothing to offer but a stone hovel and a life of duty, religious dogma, a mother in law from Hell. And to make matters even worse, it turns out that Wolf is impotent in an era where child-bearing is the primary goal of marriage and womanhood. Barren women were treated with suspicion and often accused of witchery, so Agnes’s nuptial joy soon turns to misery.
Not surprisingly, she goes mad, unable to speak openly about her plight, and for two long hours we feel her mental and physical pain in a film that chills to the bone with its overcast skies, dank settings and disgusting rotting fish motifs.
The horrific death of a baby at the hands of its mother, in the film’s ominous opening scene, serves as a warning sign that The Devil’s Bath is not going to be a barrel of laughs, but neither does it descend into the realms of sensationalism as a seething sense of dread builds, albeit at a snail’s pace. Festering wounds and putrefying flesh along with every kind of human deformity are often elevated to an art form in Martin Geschlacht’s camerawork (which won him a Silver Bear); but they are disgusting nevertheless and a stark reminder of what life was really like back then. There is beauty too in the misty mornings and Autumn countryside.
Agnes takes the baby’s death to heart and gradually becomes obsessed by having her own child. One particularly evocative scene sees her praying obsessively over a wax effigy of the Baby Jesus, that she steals from the local church, with a particularly ghoulish outcome. Morose and malingering, Agnes is a tragic figure, and the final scenes of this ghastly period piece are truly shocking. @MeredithTaylor
SILVER BEAR – BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN BEAR 2024
Black Tea, Abderrahmane Sissako’s first narrative feature in a decade, feels like one of those amateurish student films assembled from a series of ideas (jotted down by Sissako and his co-writer Kessen Fatoumata Tall) that doesn’t quite come together. Formally known as The Perfumed Hill it plays out like an episode from a TV soap in scenes shot and then cobbled together without any regard for tonal integrity or even dramatic content.
Is it a female empowerment story: clearly no, judging by the storyline and absurd final reveal. The whole thing relies on the flimsy chemistry between the two unlikely central characters, who nevertheless make for a stunning duo, in the shape of Chang Han as a Chinese tea trader called Cai and Nina Melo, his latest apprentice Aya, who hails from The Ivory Coast.
In a bizarre opening scene Aya says a resounding ‘no’ to her ‘husband to be’ in one of those mass registry office weddings back in her homeland. Suddenly, and inexplicably, she finds herself in Guangzhou, China speaking fluent Mandarin and brushing up on the delicate art of tea-tasting at a shop owned by Cai who is unhappily married to Ying (Wu Ke-Xi). The two have a teenage son, Li-Ben (Michael Chang) and Cai also has a girl called Eva from a previous relationship.
When the scene shifts to the Guangzhou, Aya is already ensconced in the business, judging by her glorified position as assistant to Cai. When not working she spends the day prancing around in the local shopkeeping community. There are other African immigrants (who all speak fluent Mandarin) and who indulge in trite exchanges, touch up her hairdo and smile reverentially as her as if she’s a member of royalty. It soon emerges she has jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire relationship-wise as Cai is clearly not really available. He even asks her to sit alone in his bedroom while he entertains his entire family to dinner, including a rather traditional old grandfather who makes racist comments. There’s a suggestion of a lesbian frisson with Ying and Aya, but it stays in Ying’s fantasy world. And that’s just about it.
The film clearly takes its name from Nina Simone’s eponymous song, and is beautiful to look at with DP Aymerick Pilarski’s vibrant visuals capturing colourful hillside villages and tea plantations. There are some original elements here, but the lack of a meaningful narrative arc and no real drama to speak of makes this a vacuous follow-up to the director’s stunning third feature Timbuktu (2014). @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Johan Renck | Cast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, Isabella Rossellini | USA 2024 | English, Czech, Korean, Subtitles: English, German | 106′
Are long-distance relationships sustainable? It’s a valid question, and one that US director Johan Renck ponders in this Berlinale Special Gala outing.
Spaceman is a strange, discombobulating film that tries to meld sci-fi with romantic drama and fails, despite the poignant efforts of stars Carey Mulligan, Adam Sandler and a hairy little creature called Hanuš, who has six eyes but a heart in the right place.
Based on the absurdist novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” by the Czech writer Jaroslav Kalfar, Spaceman explores how leaving a lover alone for too long can lead to negative navel-gazing and how – with a little help from our friends – we can put things into perspective. Or at least that’s the idea here.
Swirling around the edge of the solar system astronaut Jakub (a glum Adam Sandler) is on a distant six-month space mission away from his wife Lenka (Mulligan), expecting their first child. The two talk every day – on a special live link – but Lenka feels lonely and isolated and is on brink of ending it all despite her love for Jakub – shown in frequent flashbacks as she dances Terrence Malick style through flowery fields – and some persuasiveness on the part of her mother (Olin). Jakub senses the emotional distance between them when the phone line goes dead because his messages have been put on hold by Mission Control, headed by Isabella Rossellini (in cameo).
Then a gentle alien being enters his spaceship and the two settle into a chummy co-existence (after Jakub tries to kill the beast). There is much to enjoy here if you like purple nimbus cloud formations and Carey Mulligan – although she is sadly underused in this forgettable space oddity @Meredith Taylor
Seventy years after its release this film stands testament to the brief honeymoon between Albania and the Soviet Union between the death of Stalin and Enver Hoxha’s inevitable falling out shortly afterwards out with his successors in the Kremlin.
The Soviet cinema had already been the beneficiaries of the unintended largesse of the Germans when they took possession of Agfacolor at the end of the war – which explains why colour was such a surprisingly common feature of Eastern European films of the 1950s – and when the time came to play father bountiful to little Albania the choice of subject was a no-brainer: it had to be a film depicting Albania’s greatest national hero.
To that end the Russians dispatched veteran director Sergei Yutkevich to Albania with a large consignment of colour film and evidently one of Mosfilm’s dollies, since both the frequent battles scenes as well as the interiors abound in dynamic lateral tracks and sweeping camera movements. @RichardChatten
Dir: Claire Berger | with Lilith Grasmug, Josefa Heinsius, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Jalal Altawil France / Germany / Belgium 2024 French, German, English, Subtitles: English, German. 105′
Clarie Berger’s latest: a ‘coming of age lesbian drama with a difference’ adds marital strife and political activism to the mix to concoct a heady brew that spills out in the summery corners of contemporary Europe:
Student exchanges often develop in unexpected ways, and although Claire Berger’s drama treads on familiar ground in its themes, invigorating performances from a talented cast, along with confident close-up and personal camerawork, make for an intoxicating watch (especially if you’re seated right up close to Berlinale’s main mammoth screen at the Palast).
Strasbourg and Leipzig get a welcome airing as the consecutive locations where relative newcomers Josefa Heinsius and Lilith Grasmug play the exchange students, joining their respective onscreen mothers, arthouse regulars Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni, for some head-on clashes and tender heart-to-hearts, although the drama’s final show-down doesn’t quite satisfy what has come before.
French teenager Fanny (Grasmug) gets short shift from her German pen-friend Lena (Heinsius) when she first arrives at Leipzig station: Lena and her mother (Hoss) are not getting on well after the breakdown of her parent’s marriage but these differences will soon bond the girls together in more ways than one when they partake of magic mushrooms during a party with Lena’s dorky boyfriend.
When Lena returns to Fanny’s home in Strasbourg to discover her parents – mother Antonia (Mastroianni) and father Anthar (Jalal Altawil) – are not exactly hitting it off either, the two troubled girls find more common ground and start to act out in rebellious ways claiming to be ‘anti everything’, with Fanny breaking the glass in an advertising hoarding and other acts of defiance.
Fanny, who has been bullied at school, at first seems the more vulnerable of the two but soon shows a malevolent streak with her vivid imagination causing Lena to question their friendship. But all this soon boils down to the regular ‘teenage’ stuff. Langue Etrangere is compelling nevertheless. Hoss gets an interesting part that creates an entirely new persona as she breaks away from her Christian Petzold era. Mastrianni too gets to flex her muscles in a role that contrasts with her usual romantic dramas. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Thomas Arslan | Cast: Mišel Matičević, Marie Leuenberger, Alexander Fehling, Tim Seyfi, Bilge Bingül | Germany 2024 | German, Subtitles: English | 101′
This simple but striking thriller takes us back to the film noir fare of the 1940s to show that crime doesn’t pay at the end of the day. But will our antihero still get the girl – or indeed – the booty?
Following In the Shadows, Scorched Earth is the second part of Thomas Arslan’s Trojan trilogy. It sees his career criminal – a morose Mišel Matičević – back in Berlin, and looking to finance his future with another gig. But Berlin has changed in the interim (a bit like the Berlinale itself) and his old contacts are faded and thin on the ground. And the digital world has rather taken over in place of brawn and suitcases full of cash.
Slick locations and some impressive chiaroscuro camerawork still make this gripping in an ‘old school’ way and the plot – revolving around the theft of a pricey painting – is compelling yet easy to follow and doesn’t take the easy way out. A solid little classically-styled thriller with a modern twist. @MeredithTaylor
PANORAMA AUDIENCE AWARD COMPETITION | BERLINALE 2024
The Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is back for a 22th edition running from 6 March until 28 March and celebrating the latest in Polish arthouse film and cult classics.
World-famous filmmakers: Agnieszka Holland, Małgorzata Szumowska & Michał Englert, and DK & Hugh Welchman, will join the festivities as well as renowned directors such Walerian Borowczyk and Krzysztof Kieślowski.
OPENING GALA
Kinoteka 2024 begins on 6 March at BFI Southbank with an Opening Gala screening of the critically acclaimed Green Border (Zielona granica, 2023) from director Agnieszka Holland (In Darkness, The Secret Garden) raising the profile on immigration in the form of a moving journey across Europe. After moving to the north east of Poland, psychologist Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) becomes an active part of a tragedy that takes place on the Polish-Belarusian border. This story interweaves similar events involving those trying to make their way to Europe to escape an uncertain future in their own countries.
CLOSING GALA
Heading to the BFI IMAX on 28 March, the festival’s Closing Gala for 2024 will be an exciting celebration of film and music, where the audience will be treated to Polish box office smash-hit The Peasants(Chłopi, 2023) that makes stunning use of an oil painting animation technique, The Peasants is a visually thrilling rendering of Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning tale.
NEW POLISH CINEMA
Expect to discover the very latest in Polish films hot off the international festival circuit. Małgorzata Szumowska (Never Gonna Snow Again, Mug, Body) and Michał Englert (Never Gonna Snow Again, Infinite Storm). Woman Of (Kobieta z, 2023) is set against the landscape of the Polish transformation from communism to capitalism, spanning 45 years of the life of Aniela Wesoły (Małgorzata Hajewska) and her journey to find personal liberty as a trans woman.
Communist Poland also provides the backdrop for Saint (Święty,2023), which is set during the final, turbulent days of the Polish People’s Republic and shows a nation grappling with its identity, torn between allegiance to Church and State. Mateusz Kościukiewicz (Mug, Bracia) stars as a rookie policeman investigating the theft of a priceless silver sculpture from Gniezno Cathedral in this thrilling mystery.
The multi-award winning Doppelganger (Doppelgänger. Sobowtór, 2023) from Jan Holoubek (Netflix’s The Mire, 25 Years of Innocence) is a stylish psychological thriller rooted in actual events of Cold War Poland starring Jakub Gierszał (Najlepszy), as a tale of espionage unfolds simultaneously on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Elsewhere in the programme, Klaudiusz Chrostowski’s Ultima Thule(2023) features another compelling lead performance from Jakub Gierszał as Bartek, a man struggling to make sense of his life, who leaves his family to travel to a remote Scottish island. This striking, minimalist feature debut won the Best Micro Budget Film Award at Gdynia Festival 2023.
Adapted from a novel by Jakub Małecki, Feast of Fire(Święto ognia, 2023) is a heartwarming film about happiness, ambition and secrets as two devoted sisters struggle with very different constraints imposed by their bodies.
Adrian Apanel’s Horror Story (2023) is a smart take on the often absurd rites of passage between adolescence and adulthood that expertly combines black comedy and horror tropes. Jakub Zając (Dawid i Elfy) plays a man who arrives in Warsaw ready to start his adult life in the world of finance but soon finds himself reeling from the brink of one disaster to another.
The Secret of Little Rose (Rózyczka 2, 2023) is the much anticipated sequel to Jan Kidawa-Blonski’s multi-award winning Rose(2010). Once again starring Polish acting greats Magdalena Boczarska (Ostatnia rodzina) and Robert Więckiewicz (In Darkness, Wałęsa: Man of Hope), the film tells the story of a career politician whose life is turned upside down following a terrorist attack which kills her husband.
Lastly, Paweł Maślona’s Scarborn (Kos, 2023) is an action-packed historical tale that won multiple prizes at Gdynia Film Festival 2023 including the Golden Lion, Press Award and Youth Jury Award. Based on real events, it follows the story of General Tadeusz “Kos” Kościuszko (Jacek Braciak) who returns to Poland in 1794 and plans to start an uprising against the Russian occupying forces but on his tail is a Russian cavalry captain (Robert Więckiewicz) who is determined to foil his plans.
DOCUMENTARY
The festival’s documentary strand this year consists of two eye-opening films that take viewers to war zones across the world and, through very different lenses, show how the conflicts affect those caught in the cross-fire. In the Rearview (Skąd dokąd, 2023) tells the stories of the ordinary Ukrainian people that director Maciek Hamela helped evacuate from the country following the Russian invasion.
Developed over seven years, Danger Zone(2023) is an unsettling documentary examining a dark side of tourism, where people choose to visit war zones on organised tours at great expense. Taking an observational approach, the film juxtaposes the experiences of these so-called ‘war zone tourists’ and a tour operator with the everyday lives of those who live and fight in countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria.
CINEMA CLASSICS
Three Polish auteurs are represented in the Cinema Classics strand, in a programme that spans 1940s and 1970s Polish film. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s breakthrough masterpiece Camera Buff (Amator, 1979), was written for then rising actor Jerzy Stuhr who plays a factory worker whose passion to capture the world on 8mm film, gradually takes over his life, with implications on his freedom.
The Story of Sin (Dzieje grzechu, 1975) is an intense, taboo-breaking work from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, that is based on a famous novel by Stefan Żeromski, who co-wrote the screenplay. Presented as a sumptuous melodrama, the film follows the fate of a young woman Ewa (Grażyna Długołęcka) who, after falling for the young impoverished lodger in her family home, ends up in a spiral of seduction and obsession.
And lastly from prolific filmmaker Michał Waszyński, Kinoteka is proud to screen The Great Way (Wielka droga, 1946), the first post-WW2 Polish feature film. Produced by the 2nd Polish Army Corps and shot largely at Cinecittà, it tells the story of a young soldier who is taken to a military hospital where a nurse pretends to be his fiancée, to support his recovery. Secretly reading his journal to understand his story, she learns of his experiences on the battlefield. While a fictionalised narrative, The Great Way uses documentary footage to show the real story of the Polish army led by General Anders, known for their mascot Wojtek the bear.
KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | LONDON 6-28 March 2024
Venues: BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Southbank Centre, Cine Lumiere, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Phoenix Cinema, Prince Charles Cinema, Rich Mix, Watermans
Dir: Antonella Sudasassi Furniss | Cast: Sol Carballo, Paulina Bernini, Juliana Filloy, Liliana Biamonte, Juan Luis Araya | Costa Rica / Spain 2024 | Spanish, Subtitles: English | 90′ | World premiere
Growing up in a repressive era in the Central American island of Costa Rica, when sexuality was a taboo subject, 68-year-old Ana, 69-year-old Patricia and 71-year-old Mayela developed their understanding of what it means to be a woman based on unspoken rules and implicit expectations.
In her first feature length documentary, Costa Rican filmmaker Antonella Sudasassi Furniss records the memories, secrets and longings of these three women who tell their stories off-screen. another woman of their generation (Sol Caballo) acts out these experiences on screen. Memories is a rather trite is well-meaning docudrama that nevertheless succeeds in blowing away the myth that sex is all over by the menopause.
The most important point Memories makes is that these women are now discovering the freedom to enjoy satisfying sexual encounters for the first time in their 60s and 70s after a repressed start to their love life that really didn’t set the night on fire despite offering marriage and children: A goal that fulfilled societal expectations but left them disillusioned.
Sol Caballo, 65, found herself alone for over a decade, and missing sex and companionship. Harking back to the time when her first love sent her a ‘pre-sucked lollypop’, she tells how it served as a symbol of sexual lust because kissing was then forbidden for teenagers. Feelings of desire soon overwhelmed her as she was growing up, and she felt a terrible guilt for these repressed feelings which had no outlet. Sol then reflects on the shame of puberty often going into graphic details. It was a time when the nuns at her school instilled fear rather than understanding of the opposite sex. At the same time young men also felt shy and diffident around girls, leading to embarrassment and misunderstandings – so rather than a happy time this was one full of apprehension and worry.
All this plays out in beautifully crafted dramatised sequences picturing her character as a little girl growing into an adult and then getting married to a fumbling husband who went on to beat and rape her after their child was born. Fortunately there is a happy ending for Sol’s character in the modern day.
Sudasassi Furniss offers alarming insight into the realities of a Latin American society that was clearly still very repressed in the late 1960s, 1970s and even – hardly a long time ago. While in Europe 60 is now the new 40 for women, those in Costa Rica are now experiencing a sexual re-birth according to this revealing chronicle.
Memories of a Burning Body is a startling expose which also provides a wake-up call to all those in unfulfilling relationships who think that sexual pleasure is over at 60 plus; this film is here to tell you to that the joy can go on, and even begin later in life. @MeredithTaylor.
Burning Body is Costa Rica’s nomination for the Academy Awards Foreign Language feature | BERLINALE 2024 | Panorama Audience Award winner 2024
A new docudrama raises the profile of Austrian avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) considered one of the most important artists of the 20th/early 21st century.
Radical in its approach, Lassnig’s “body awareness paintings” focused on her own life as a woman. It celebrates the female body not from the traditional male gaze of beauty, but from the female experience of being a sexual and biological force, exploring gender conflicts, pain, and even the fear of cancer. Lassnig had a special way of dealing with colour she termed “colour vision”. Unlike the often tortured images of her fellow Austrian expressionist Egon Shiele, Lassnig’s impressionistic art is on the whole rather easy on the eye with a gorgeous pastel allure despite the trauma it often depicts, highlighted with the use of red.
Modern artists are invariably depicted as tormented: van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch. Lassnig was no different according to Austrian filmmaker Anja Salomonowitz who comes to Berlinale’s Forum sidebar with her fourth film, a decade after her debut Spanien (2012). This is an impressionistic take rather than a straightforward biopic. So, although it unfolds in chronological form, interweaving acted scenes and documentary, Birgit Minichmayr (The White Rabbit) plays the central role throughout the artist’s life from a young woman until the age of 94. Lassnig emerges as a prickly, intractable but intuitive character who often feels at odds with the art world but stands by her art to the very end. Throughout Salomonowitz attempts to probe Lassnig’s core being and is keen to stress her mental state and her struggle in the male-dominated art world, which culminates in critical acclaim, the artist often seemingly rejecting her success.
From childhood, Lassnig is seen in conflict with her mother, and this troubled maternal relationship bleeds into Lassnig’s future in Vienna when she is drawn, via the capital’s Art Academy, into the local post-war art scene. Morose and strong-willed, her own body and biological state becomes a focus for her work making it highly original. Intuitively, she judges the value of her painting long before the art world makes its verdict.
Later, as an accomplished artist with her own exhibition, she is seen complaining about the hanging of her paintings (‘they are too low’)- an art in itself – and demands a rehanging, threatening to withdraw her work. The gallery assistant, claims this is the best way of to sell the paintings. But Lassnig remains faithful to her vision.
Anja Salomonowitz’s homage to the artist certainly ‘fleshes out’ the “body awareness” of Lassnig’s art but I can’t help wondering whether the film would have worked better as a straightforward documentary. Visiting Vienna for last year’s Viennale Film Festival I was captivated by Lassnig’s paintings but I left this film feeling unsettled (although not surprised) by Salomonowitz’s take on the woman herself, and her cinematic interpretation of a brave and pioneering artist whose real life was sadly tortured. Sometimes art is better left to speak for itself @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Hugo Fregonese | Cast: Edward G Robinson, Jean Parker, Peter Graves, Milburn Stone | US Crime Noir 80′
More than two decades after Little Caesar Eddie Robinson was still capable of showing absolutely no sign of mellowing – while as his moll Jean Parker is a classic floozie in the Claire Trevor tradition – in this astringent United Artists quickie which briefly begins as a home invasion drama, then becomes a prison film before concluding with a humdinger of a shoot-out.
Recalling the days when hoodlums still wore their hats indoors, the visual highlight is probably the section in the prison gothically lit by Stanley Cortez; although there plenty of other nice touches along the way such the scene early on were a bunch of journalists saunter in to watch a pair of executions in the electric chair as if attending a first night, and the shot during the final siege of a floor covered with spent cartridge cases. @RichardChatten
The Generation sidebar of the Berlinale seems perfect for filmmaker Philippe Lesage, it is a section that facilitates exchanges between audiences and filmmakers especially focusing on dialogue with younger audience members. Lesage is most well known for the two loosely linked films The Demons (2015) and Genesis (2018) which both launched the international career of Théodore Pellerin. The director has focused on the travails of Quebecois teenagers and their distant parents and with Comme Le Feuhe is back on familiar ground that unfortunately is returning an ever more diminishing recrudescence.
Teenage Jeff is invited by his friend Max to travel deep into the woods and stay at the isolated estate of acclaimed director Blake Cadieux. He has high expectations for the trip: Cadieux is an artist he greatly admires – plus Aliocha, Max’s older sister, with whom he is secretly in love, is also coming.
The film opens with a muscle memory of visual references: long following shots with a gliding camera as a car travels through the bucolic countryside accompanied by a deep drone-inflected score that indicates a pensive trip is to come. By the time the journey ends we will be at a lake where we meet a man standing by a sea plane. This is acclaimed director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter), who is meeting an old colleague: Albert (Paul Ahmarani), his son, daughter and Jeff. By the interactions from the ‘adults’ we become aware of some of the oncoming battles for Alphaness between two men who have left a lot unsaid, that will slowly unravel during a very long 161m.
The scenario is of course familiar to the classic French Country House genre, but not the farce of Feydeau or the state of the nation treatise à la Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu but something else entirely, something very Quebecois. Lesage makes claims that border on cliché, that of the hostile forest and the interior of the cabin becoming the liminal space where there is a youthful search for ideals and freedom while confronting the wounded egos of the jaded adults. There are the motifs of the country house updated, hunting (with both rifles and bow & arrows), dinner, alcohol and unspoken grievances bubble up and destroy the supposed relaxed atmosphere.
This is centred on the two best scenes in the film that are formally the same, a fixed camera at the head of the table as the two adult male protagonist poke and prod each other until they start orally fighting for control and supremacy, while this is on-going the teens sit in stony silence. These two scenes are beautiful in their emotional violence with Paul Ahmarani a clear stand out, what with his pathetic neediness and long-held grudge with his former collaborator Blake.
Other than these two scenes everything else is signposted by a broad schematic screenplay that tries to cover far too many bases. From spurned teenage love, to emerging female sexuality, to creativity in crisis and the inability to settle. By the last act the film has completely come undone with characters acting to the edicts of the screenplay rather than in an emotionally honest manner. This comes with death, dream sequences and a hurt dog.
After the potential promise we started with, we are left with a squalid melodrama that seems snatched from an even more mediocre genre film. @d_w_mault
Dir: Jean Leon | Cast: Sophie Daumier, Guy Bedos, Grégoire Aslan | Drama 100’
The title suggests a saucy Parisian sex comedy but the knowledge that Roman Polanski collaborated on the screenplay immediately puts us on notice to expect something far darker; and since Sacha Vierny had recently made ‘Last Year at Marienbad’ look so sumptuous his ugly black & white photography for this film was presumably by design.
Guy Bedos looks understandably bewildered as he’s assailed from all sides by assorted ghouls, gangsters and members of a weird cannabalistic sect employing machine guns, blow pipes and samurai swords. Edwige Feuillere brings her usual dignity and grace to the proceedings (although even she reveals a more perverse side savouring a sadomasochistic cabaret); while Ward Swingle’s score is sometimes stridently awful but is just as likely to work beautifully. @RichardChatten
One of the first changes to the Berlnale that artistic director Carlo Chatrian made when he unveiled his first edition of the festival in 2019 was a new section entitled Encounters which was very much in the vein of the programming choices at his previous job: the head of Locarno. It is in Encounters that Arcadia premieres during the 2024 edition of the Berlinale.
Arcadiais the sophomore title from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Zois whose debut Interruption premiered at Venice in 2015. Following on from that film he is continuing to look at existence through the prism of the heritage of Greek myth and Odyssian Circular journey of love, loss, sex and death.
Formally more experimental and with a tone harbouring discombobulation that feels akin to slowly sinking through quicksand, it brings to mind Churchill’s maxim of the Soviet Union: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
We open on an educated middle class couple driving through the Greek countryside in the evening and discover they are married doctors, and that the husband Yannis (Vangelis Mourikis) is en route to identify a woman’s body in the aftermath to a car crash. His wife Katerina (Angeliki Papoulia), is along for the ride – it seems.
After doing their duty at the hospital they head to a holiday home to sleep. At this point when Yannis falls asleep the film starts to slowly uncover its true self. Katerina can’t sleep and discovers a youth in one of the bedrooms in a sequence that cryptically tries to explain the couple’s reality and why they can’t take their shoes off (which becomes a motif with a delightful payoff at the close). From here we are surrounded by the essence of sex in all its disguises. Sex, in fact, will become both an aid to memory, remembering and the subject of which most people tell lies.
The youth, acting like Beatrice guiding Dante through the forest in canto 2 of ‘The Inferno’, takes Katerina to the Arcadia: a bar come garage full of naked Rubenesque bodies fucking à la Carlos Reygadas. It becomes clear we are in some sort of limbo for the dead, or what in Greek myth was the in-between state called the ‘Fields of Asphodel’ before the journey to either Elysium/Heaven or Tartarus/Hell. The denizens of Arcadia have nothing to do but strive to remember, fuck, sing and drink.
When in a place of unreality, whether that be dream space or somewhere metaphysical, there is the danger of becoming nothing more than a series of non-sequiturs. But to seek explanation in a film like this defeats the object of what it is and how it exists and creates its world. There is of course a temporal vacuum that shows how a film is joined to reality: it reaches all the way out to it, but delimits the thinkable and thereby the unthinkable.
Through Katerina’s journey we encounter guilt, dead children, relationships destroyed by selfishness and carnal greed/erotic vagrancy. She is the one that needs to be released by the living: Yannis. As Emily Dickinson put it: Parting is all we know of heaven/And all we need of hell. We are then left with the perpetual contemplation of an elusive being that teaches us the art of loving the intangible. @d_w_mault
Dir: Myriam El Hajj | with Joumana Haddad, Perla Joe Maalouli, Georges Moufarrej | Lebanon / France / Qatar / Saudi Arabia 2024 | Arabic, Subtitles: English | 110′ | Colour | World premiere | Documentary form
Lebanon’s ongoing conflict is complex. Over the years many filmmakers have documented various aspects of the nation’s continuing strife that seems to stem from internal struggles as well as external forces; not least the current issues with Israel. All very confusing for the rest of the world: War and Lebanon have almost become synonymous in our collective consciousness.
Three people share their input in this new documentary from Myriam El Hajj, founder member of Rawiyat – Sisters in Film, a collective of women filmmakers from the Arab world. Diaries from Lebanon is her second documentary and takes us back to 2018 and brings together three voices. The first is a feminist writer, poet and activist named Joumana who stands for election to the Lebanese parliament, defying a political system that has been suffocating her country for 40 years. The film shows how Joumana is voted in, only to be fraudulently ousted the very next day, leaving her supporters furious and leading to more unrest and violent demonstrations in the streets of Beirut.
Another feisty woman, Perla Joe, soon becomes a symbol of this uprising, capturing the imagination of young people who feel increasingly marginalised in a place where war has become the only unifying force in their collective experience.
Meanwhile the past rears its head in the shape of Georges, a vociferous veteran of the Lebanese Civil War which lasted from 1975 to 1990. One of the original fighters, he lost a leg in the conflict but still believes in ‘the glory’ of war, rather than ‘the pity’ as Great War poet and soldier Wilfred Owen famously cited in 1917/18. Glory seems to be thin on the ground in this Middle Eastern nation, but the dream of peace and a worthwhile future is now the ultimate battle. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Aliyar Rasti | Cast: Mohammad Aghebati, Amirhossein Hosseini, Saber Abar, Mahin Sadri, Mehrdad Ziaie Iran 2024 Farsi, Subtitles: English 93′ Colour World premiere | Debut film | Debut film
The motto “It’s always better to journey than to arrive” is possibly the best way to describe this engaging debut feature from Iranian filmmaker Aliyar Rasti who has made it into the Berlinale Encounters sidebar after critical acclaim with his award-winning short In Between.
Dark and deadpan humour is one of the main attractions of his offbeat road movie that sees two unlikely blokes thrown together on a difficult mission in the style of Martin Brest’s Midnight Run (1988). Although the outcome may leave some viewers perplexed, the darkly deadpan humour and gripping storyline with its valid humaninsight carries a low-key political message of the kind the Iranians do well. And this makes The Great Yawncompelling from the start. Visually too it’s a winner with an extraordinary, atmospheric sense of place captured creatively in Soroush Alizadeh’s inventive camerawork. Quite why this isn’t in the main competition line-up is as much of a mystery as the film itself. Perhaps the selection committee were as challenged as I was with the finale.
After dreaming of a cave full of gold coins, Beitollah, a religious man, (Aghebati) sets up a series interviews to recruit a paid companion – preferably a loner with no religious scruples – to collect the ‘forbidden’ treasure from the cave, and so claim his half of the booty. Shoja (Hosseini), an un-prepossessing bearded type who claims ‘not to believe in anything’, is selected for the job. Absolutely skint, an amusing sequence sees him begging for a toothbrush, no one obliges.
So the two set off the next day as planned, Shoja with absolutely nothing but the clothes he stands in. The odyssey – that mirrors life and all its challenges – will take them to the farthest corners and central deserts of Iran on a arduous journey where they will sometimes come to understand one another, sometimes not, in their search for the right cave (aka ‘the universal truth’). They are continually dogged by a poor young boy on a motorbike who calls himself ‘the bastard’ but doesn’t understand how he got the name.
Shoja puts his absolute faith in Beitollah, who aids and abets him all the way in their joint mission. To get a bit of money they stay with a farmer and work in her paddy field. She tries to persuade Shoja to stay (everyone has left to work in the city), but he declines, committed to the task at hand. After various encounters they come across a Caravanserai where they stay the night. The inn’s owner decides to follow them on their search for ‘the great yawn’ aka Jacob’s cave, purportedly the location of their ‘holy grail’. Will they find the meaning of life – that’s for you to decide. Rasta’s film is all about trust, truth and human faith. It’s also highly enjoyable. @MeredithTaylor
SPECIAL JURY AWARD EX AEQUO | ENCOUNTERS 2024 | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2024
Faruk, a man in his 90s, is fighting fit. Turkish filmmaker Asli Ozge artfully captured this snapshot of life for her elderly father in Istanbul, a modern capital in a Western nation, with all the benefits and ills that now entails. Faruk highlights the plight of the elderly – not only in Istanbul but everywhere.
Faruk, straddling two centuries, struggles to make sense of today’s world: A venal place where robbery is commonplace; not just in the street but in the privacy of your own home. Asli shows how a perfect storm of events slowly destabilises her father’s equilibrium as an ageing man with considerable agency, still managing his own life. The film also explores a complex father daughter/relationship that leaves us puzzled, and even dismayed.
In response to the effects of so-called climate change, the council is planning earthquake protection affecting the building where Faruk has continued to live, since the death of his wife, in a pleasant part of Istanbul.
Change comes when it emerges his home is up for demolition, despite a recent refurbishment; one that Faruk has already paid for. The other residents are keen to proceed, so after various meetings, Faruk agrees. But he is disappointed when reviewing the plans: The refurb switches everything round so the ‘French’ balconies are even smaller than before and the safety escape leads down from the master bedroom. More disruption in view for Faruk. Upheaval and life-altering events become more difficult to manage once we get older.
The film paints a dismal picture of modern life in the Turkish capital: like everywhere nowadays petty theft and social incivility seems to be on the increase. During a residents’ meeting his neighbour is called away to be told her husband has died on the metro. And to make matters worse, he was robbed of his wallet and spent the day riding round before anyone raised the alarm. Faruk may be old but he is still capable, although his daughter offers to help him with a ‘power of attorney’. He assures her by agreeing to a medical test. Making his way unassisted, by bus and on foot, he goes to the doctor. In scenes that see him directly facing the camera, he answers the questions correctly. We really feel for Faruk, who is later pictured celebrating the New Year all alone with only champagne for companionship. He does a traditional Turkish dance while a mock-up video shows him dreaming of following a nude dancing girl into his kitchen.
Faruk looks on the bright side even in the face of disillusionment. We see him acquiescing to change, and reflecting on it philosophically. The new flat is drab and pokey, and he argues with his daughter’s cleaner who tries to throw away papers and family treasures in preparation for the move. Then snow arrives and an earthquake near the Aegean. His mobile ‘phone, a vital link to his daughter, then disappears, possibly stolen by door-to-door hawkers asking for charity donations, which he gladly offers. He leaves a ‘phone message to the thieves: his simple plea is heart-breaking; a pitiful reflection on humanity. This is the final straw for Faruk who decides to take a short holiday while his daughter is abroad trying to finance the film.
We later see him back in Istanbul, visiting the new building with a positive mindset for change. His heart sinks when he discovers the reality of his new life. The filmmaker portrays her father as a decent, likeable old-school gentleman but the finale leaves us as confused as Faruk himself. Was Faruk mistaken or did he just have a selective memory of the past? A moving and captivating tribute to a life. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Birgitte Stærmose | with Gëzim Kelmendi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Shpresim Azemi, Besnik Hyseni, Luan Jaha Denmark / Kosovo / Sweden / Finland 2024 Albanian, Subtitles: English 85′ Colour World premiere | Documentary form
This feature debut from Birgitte Stærmose takes us back to Bosnia for a raw reverie of an Eastern European conflict that still reverberates in the memories of those affected back in 1999.Fifteen years in the making and created in a close artistic collaboration with the cast who stare directly at the camera their faces still childlike, even though adulthood has now hardened them. They share bitter experiences of selling ‘phone cards and cigarettes in a struggle that still goes on decades later.
Pristina, war-torn Kosovo, is a grim city emerging slowly out of the festering fog of its slushy snowbound setting. In the dingy dawn of another day, car headlights glow, a red-eyed testament to the poverty and squalor that still dogs the capital. The documentary alternates between social realism, staged performance and an existential meditation on the long-term repercussions of war. Snapshots of shattered lives show that war may be over but a different war has now begun: that of survival. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: André Téchiné | with Isabelle Huppert, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Hafsia Herzi, Romane Meunier
| France 2024 | French, Subtitles: English | 85′ | Colour | World premiere
Andre Techine was last in Berlnale with L’adieu à la nuit was screened out of competition in 2019. At that time gay sexual-awakening stories were still quite thin on the ground and his film, co-written Regis de Martin-Donos and Celine Sciamma, felt fresh and innovative.
His latest, screening in Berlinale’s Panoramasidebar, although decent rather unremarkable as it goes over old ground although the subject matter – political activism – is still big thing in France (think ‘Gilets Jaunes’ etc). This politically-charged drama is carried by Isabelle Huppert, as Lucie, a widowed forensics detective who finds herself on the horns of a moral and ethical dilemma when a new family moves in next door.
The dramatic backdrop of the Eastern Pyrenees is once again the setting for a lowkey, human story that shows how political leanings weigh more heavily than ever before on our day-to-day relationships, threatening to disrupt even the closest of friendships. And this personal strife lies at the heart of the film.
This time around the veteran director is with his regular co-writer de Martin-Donos in a story that unfolds in the small village of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, near Perpignan, where Lucie’s growing friendship with the woman next door (Hafsia Herzi) is put under pressure when it emerges her troubled husband Yann (Pérez Biscayart) has a hefty criminal record in police anti-activism with an ongoing involvement in violent ant-capitalist demonstrations in Toulouse and Montpellier. Naturally Lucie finds herself at odds with Yann exposing potential divided loyalties with his wife.
Huppert once again channels all the angst of a rather lonely soul who is forced to be even-handed towards her neighbours while at the same time standing by her private beliefs and professional credentials. Political activism is now becoming more widespread all over Europe and this makes the film thematically relevant despite its rather underwhelming presentation. @MeredithTaylor
PANORAMA AUDIENCE AWARD COMPETITION | BERLINALE 2024
Dir: Pham Ngoc Lan | Cast: Minh Châu, Hà Phương, Xuân An, Hoàng Hà, Cao Sang Vietnam / Singapore / France / Philippines / Norway 2024 Vietnamese, Subtitles: English
This lyrical black & white drama from Vietnam explores the nation’s past and present from the intergenerational perspective of a young woman and her widowed aunt who has just returned home after living in Germany. In her luggage Auntie Cu li carries a Pygmy Slow Loris, an indigenous primate from the Vietnamese rainforest, inherited from her dead husband. One strangely touching scene sees Cu Li dancing in a bar with a waiter and the Pygmy loris, the tiny animal seems to embody the essence of this proud nation, fiercely defending itself while remaining graceful to the end.
Cu Li’s young niece, who lives with her, is preparing for her wedding. The two argue bitterly about the usual intergenerational conflicts. Meanwhile her kids and the monkey look on, a picture of guileless vulnerability. Another contrast between the strength and vulnerability of an oriental nation that has born the brunt of many conflicts.
“The present keeps bringing us back to the past” opines Cu li.She quotes the 1960s communist president Ho Chi Min (1945-69) known as ‘uncle’ who said of the Black River (that runs from China to North Western Vietnam): “We must transform the water from foe into ally – our final purpose is to tame the river”. At this point Cu li is pictured scattering her husband’s ashes into the raging waters.
While the young couple anxiously ponders their uncertain future together (Cu Li’s niece is already pregnant with another child), Cu li invites the waiter to be her partner at the wedding, offering him money. The waiter is concerned about being seen as her toy boy, and the Pygmy Loris once again appears to echo all this anxiety – a tiny but potent little animal capable of killing with the toxin that spurts from its elbows when in danger, while outwardly exuding grace and innocence.
A brief running time plays to the film’s advantage along with a simple soundscape of exotic birdsong and imaginative outdoor locations captured in DoP magical monochrome camerawork. In his enchanting feature debut Pham Ngoc Lan expresses the hopes, fears and regrets of his homeland in an often surreal, understated and tender gem. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Margherita Vicario | Cast: Galatéa Bellugi, Carlotta Gamba, Veronica Lucchesi, Maria Vittoria Dallasta, Sara Mafodda
Italy / Switzerland 2024 | Italian, Subtitles: English, German
106′ | Colour | World premiere | Debut film
The inmates of a Venetian girls’ musical orpanage in the Napoleonic era find their lives disrupted by the arrival of a splendid pianoforte – a newly-minted instrument which opens up a range of creative and lifestyle possibilities.
This well-made and visually appealing film begins in a seemingly sober and realistic vein but quickly escalates into the fantastical as it heads towards a giddy climax.
The musical rivalry between the convent’s star pupil and a ‘mute’, untutored outsider provides much of the story’s narrative thrust when the ingénue begins to compose music which sounds, at turns, suspiciously like jazz, minimalism and contemporary pop-rock –at one point even taking on a sheen of techno.
Her originality thrills the other girls, but throws the upcoming concert they are about to give for the Pope into jeopardy. Meanwhile, the convent’s elderly, untalented musical director tries to deal with his lust for a foppish, money-hungry young aristocrat.
It’s all very anachronistic and ultimately quite silly, but some will enjoy the girl-power uprising of the convent’s students against their patriarchal tutor, and there are moments of laugh-out-loud humour courtesy of a ravaged-looking Paolo Rossi, whose flights of shrieking fury are up there with those of Klaus Kinski. @IanLong
Dir: Michael Fetter Nathansky | Cast: Aenne Schwarz, Carlo Ljubek, Youness Aabbaz, Sara Fazilat, Naila Schuberth | Germany / Spain 2024 | German, Subtitles: English | 108′ | Colour | World premiere
An industrial coal mining zone of Cologne provides a heavy-duty backcloth to this thematically ambitious, atmospheric slice of social realism from German filmmaker Michael Fetter Nathansky who follows the gradual implosion of a relationship through the eyes of a woman called Nadine (Schwarz).
Relationship breakdown is a heart-sinking subject but it also makes for quizzical viewing in Alle die Du Bist that sees Nadine’s partner in different guises. The opening scenes, set in some sort of institution, are confusing at first as Nadine’s partner is revealed as a bull, a small child (played by Schrein); and an adolescent (Aabbaz)?. It subsequently emerges that Paul embodies all these identities by turns, – at least in Nadine’s gaze – and we gradually learn to accommodate this unique idea. The single mother has left her home in Brandenburg at the age of 24 and met the mercurial Paul while working in an open-cast mining installation. A proud father, he is also undoubtedly a man of many faces whose male charisma has clearly set her heart on fire.
But life moves on and Nadine falls on harder times largely due to structural changes in the industry. Nathansky’s idea of casting several actors to embody one character is a brave and fanciful one, and certainly pays tribute to one woman’s efforts to make do and mend and reinvigorate her long-term emotional relationship. At the same time Nathansky’s follow up to his director debut You Tell Me (2019) requires a large leap of faith on the part of the audience. Committed performances all round. @MeredithTaylor
BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | PANORAMA AUDIENCE COMPETITION | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2024
Dir: Lisandro Alonso | Cast: Chiara Mastroianni, Viggo Mortensen, Rafi Pitts, Viilbjork Malling Agger | Fantasy drama, Argentina147′
Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni star in this striking that sees a man in search of his daughter journeying into the unknown.
Everyone loves a good story but storytelling is not like it used to be in the Golden Era of Hollywood and or European arthouse traditions. That said, Argentinian auteur Lisandro Alonso always manages to intoxicate us with his mesmerising fantasy drama such as Jauja that seem to hark back to a strange and exotic past celebrating the weird and wonderful. Eureka opens as a striking classically styled western.
More an art-installation than a straightforward narrative film Eurekais an off-beat, slow-burning addition to his oeuvre that starts off in gleaming back and white. Mortensen fetches up in a silent backwater in the Old West – no hint of Sergio Leone – but his gunslinging skills are a match for Clint Eastwood when told by a local innkeeper to ‘f*** off’.
Shifting to the present, in full colour, the focus is then a Native American police officer who is working through a gruelling casebook of local petty criminal offences. This sequence morphs in turn to a surreal scenario as the officer drinks a potion that transforms into a bird that flies back to the Brazilian jungle where another bizarre occurrence unfolds. Alonso quails aware from form or narrative in a seductive sensory concoction that beguiles and mesmerises, possibly getting its name from the place where gold was first discovered. A transformative experience on the big screen. Give it a go. @MeredithTaylor
Dir/Wri: Dag Johan Haugerud | Comedy Drama, Norway 125′
“Once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten”. Anita Brookner, Look at Me
Compelling, absurd and offbeat this chilled-out Norwegian dark comedy reveals the complex dynamics of human desire in a simple parable that centres on the lives of two happily married chimney-sweeps, who just happen to be dyslexic.
Best known for his award-winning 2019 drama Barn – Dag Johan Haugerud’s latest – the first film in a trilogy to be followed by Dreams and Love – unfolds in a summery suburb of Oslo where the two heterosexual men are casually chatting over their canteen lunch. Their conversation is banal enough at first but what is soon revealed in this casual tete a tete between Feier (Jan Gunnar Roise) and Avdelingsleder (Thorbjorn Harr) will have far-reaching implications on their family relationships.
Feier admits to having had casual sex with a male stranger but Avdelingsleder’s response is revealing in its insight into modern attitudes in Norway: “Admitting you’ve had sex with a man is easier than admitting you’re Christian”.
Avdelingsleder – who reads Hannah Arendt in bed – then describes a dream where he is a woman who has sex with David Bowie. This leaves him confused and questioning how much his personality is shaped by how he appears to others. His wife (Brigitte Larsen) later points out: “homosexuality is not just an identity it’s an activity“.
Predictably, Feir’s wife (Siri Forberg) is not impressed when her partner shares his one-off sexual encounter, and his revelation will reverberate the fallout intruding into their daily lives. She wants a full and frank discussion about what exactly happened and this opens up a thorny debate between the two about physical and emotional experiences and how we all define marriage, relationships and coupledom in general. These conversations are surprisingly affecting and go to show just how fuzzy the borders are in desire and sexual attraction in a film that probes and challenges pre-conceived views on sexuality and gender roles, both for the characters and us, the audience.
Writer/Director Dag Johan Haugerud offers up an upbeat and enjoyable look at how as humans we pride ourselves on our unique ability to love and communicate verbally, although our enhanced brains also make our structured lives more complex: at the end of the day we are basically all animals, albeit human ones, but once we start to analyse our feelings that’s where our lives become complicated forcing open that universal ‘can of worms’ about infidelity and the purported differences between the male and female brains in a debate that ripples out into religious and moral norms in modern Norway.
Although the pace slackens as the film unfolds Sex is an upbeat and often moving affair that comes to a satisfying conclusion despite the couples’ differences and recriminations. At the end of day this is a candid film full of hope that offers a relaxed and positive view of coupledom: “Think of love as a choice. I’ve chosen you and you’ve chosen me”. @MeredithTaylor
BERLINALE | ENCOUNTERS – BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD 2024
Dir: Kazik Radwanski | Cast: Deragh Campbell, Matt Johnson, Mounir Al Shami, Emma Healey, Avery Layman | Canada, Drama 80′
Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson star as college friends reconnecting in this captivating Canadian comedy drama from Kazik Radwanski exploring the enduring power of attraction.
Mara, a creative writing professor, has a baby girl with her guitarist husband but their marriage is in trouble when she unexpectedly bumps into Matt on her university campus. The two immediately spark off each other with their literary talents that ignite past memories: Matt, now a published author, is charismatic and likeable and the two soon become close again but their undeniable chemistry is challenged by the pre-existing status quo and the ties that already bind Mara to her current partner and child. The film show how easy it is for desire to build in a vacuum until the pressures of real life intervene.
Matt and Mara unites Radwanski with his Campbell who also starred in his 2019 feature Anne at 13,000 ft in this amusingly light and refreshing snapshot of modern relationships showing how the past can come back to bite us in unexpected ways.
NOW IN CINEMAS | BERLINALE ENCOUNTERS COMPETITION 2024
Dir: Clive Donner | Writer: Frederic Raphael | Cast: Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrew’s, Millicent Martin | UK Drama 99’
A full six decades ago it was already becoming evident that filmmakers with serious aspirations had tired of black & white kitchen sink dramas; demonstrated here by the approving depiction of the amoral ascent from austerity to affluence of estate agent Jimmy Brewster (played by Alan Bates in what the Allans’ described as “perhaps the finest British comedy performances of the decade”) compared with just five years earlier when that of Joe Lampton in ‘Room at the Top’ had been viewed with prim Calvinist distaste.
Although now grievously neglected Clive Donner’s film remains of lasting importance as the British cinema’s major contribution to the satire boom of the early sixties (with a debt to the French New Wave apparent from the liberal use of iris outs and horizontal wipes, while the presence of Millicent Martin, Bernard Levin and William Rushton remind you that this was the era of ‘That Was the Week That Was’).
In larger supporting roles Denholm Elliot sends up the louche entitlement of the sort of fellow he played straight ten years earlier something rotten; while Pauline Delaney plays the landlady every man wishes he’d had as a youngster. @RichardChatten
Dir: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding || Cast: Jean Arthur, Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Maurice Chevalier | US Musical 102’
Paramount on Parade displays little of the imagination of Universal’s The King of Jazz and certainly lacks the star quality of Metro’s The Show of Shows and is amateurishly staged as if on a proscenium and played to the camera throughout; but the masters of ceremonies Jack Oakie and Skeets Gallagher sauntering through the proceedings cheerfully breeching the fourth wall seem to be having as much fun as the audience.
The sets are pretty basic with the idiosyncratic exception of the tinted spoof murder mystery and the various Technicolor sequences which ironically lack a soundtrack (although perhaps that’s a blessing in the case of Harry Green as a Jewish matador). Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper are rather wasted – particularly as the points when they get to sing are both now silent – and you have to look hard to spot Frederic March.
With the fleeting exception of Kay Francis in Technicolor as Carmen Maurice Chevalier is easily seen to the best effect (in sequences evidently the work of Ernst Lubitsch), especially performing an Apache Dance with Evelyn Brent; but Mitzi Green, Nancy Carroll and Clara Bow also get to make their mark.
Apart from the scenes with Chevalier it’s hard to know who actually directed what, but the presence of Ludwig Berger – addressed as ‘Dr. Berger’ – in the Technicolor episode The Gallows Song identifies him as the man responsible for the colour composition that so impressed Alexander Korda that he later invited him to work for him at Denham on The Thief of Baghdad. @RichardChatten
Rei is a kanji character that can represent a variety of meanings. The genderless name is therefore a really good title for this complex but rather overlong (at over three hours) feature debut from Toshihiko Tanaka which won the Tiger prize at this year’s 53rd Rotterdam Film Festival.
Rei is about Matsushita Hikari, a self-contained thirty-something woman whose comparatively uncomplicated life in the corporate world contrasts with the trials and tribulations of her friends in a series of interconnecting dramas that highlight – albeit reductively – Japanese attitudes towards disability and, in particular, those with special needs and heightened sensibility. On a deeper level Tanaka also explores human connectedness along the lines of that well-worn phrase: “No man is an island”: It’s only through knowing each other that we really come to understand ourselves.
We first meet Hikari (Takara Suzuki) and her deaf landscape photographer friend Masato (played by Tanaka himself) in the wintery countryside surrounding Tokyo. Hikari’s life lacks a certain excitement and she seeks this out in creative scenarios. Hikari is also drawn to an actor called Mitsuru (Keita Katsumata) who she meets through her love of theatre and through a flyer where she has discovered Masato’s work. Finding his artistry compelling she asks him to take her portrait in the snowy setting. Another friend of hers Asami (Maeko Oyama) has a three-year-old daughter with special needs. Asami is dealing with the additional pressures of a husband who is having an affair with a nurse (who also cared for Masato’s mother).
Hikari is fascinated by Masato and the two share exchanges on SMS and email to get over the communication barrier. Asami is so impressed by Masato’s portraits of Hikari she commissions him to photograph her own family and these extraordinary pictures capture something that words can never do about the state of her relationship with her husband. But despite his unique and arcane talents Masato is sadly seen as a flawed character due to his hearing issues in this dense narrative in a drama that marks Toshihiko Tanaka out as a rising star in the film firmament. @MeredithTaylor
Dir: Cristobal Leon, Joaquin Cocina | Drama, Chile 64′
Bergamo Film Meeting unveils its 42nd edition from March 9 – 17, 2024. One of the most important events in the Italian festival calendar the meeting draws thousands to its annual celebration of auteur and arthouse cinema in the mountainside venue just north of Milan in the Italian Dolomites.
