Erik Poppe – Filmmaker – A Thousand Times Goodnight

Matthew Turner met director, producer and cinematographer: Erik Poppe (Hawaii Oslo), to talk about his latest film A Thousand Times Good Night, which he also co-wrote:

Matthew Turner (MJT): How did the project come about, first of all?

Erik Poppe (EP): Basically, it came about because I was working as a photographer, in a lot of conflict zones in war areas in the 1980s. And I did that until the late 80s and then went into film and studied film in Stockholm. So I left that way of thinking and telling stories in order to be a filmmaker. In between, every time I released a feature movie, some of my old colleagues from that time have been asking me, over and over again, ‘Well, when are you going to tell some of those stories?’ And I’d sort of been not keen or interested in doing that yet, because I hadn’t been able to find the right angle. I’d seen a lot of movies made about journalists and photographers being out there, and I’ve always believed, ‘Well, they are entertaining, but they are really not telling the story as I see it’ – I think they’ve been romanticising or making the journalist a hero. But as I was experiencing in the 80s – and as I’ve been starting to experience again now, because for the last six or seven years, in between my features, I’ve been starting going out [to war zones] again, to the Congo, to Somalia, to Afghanistan, to north-west Pakistan – but now with a film camera and doing small stories. And now with kids and my wife, suddenly I’ve found the angle, because the right angle, the honest angle, for me, is to tell the domestic part of being in this position, it’s not to be out there and dramaticising (sic) it. Of course, it’s exciting for people to see, but my only real vision about the film was to tell an honest portrait of how I feel it and how a lot of my friends and colleagues feel it. The hard thing is not to be able to survive being out there – in most of the areas, it’s not a hard thing to survive. The hardest thing is to come back home and survive the mundane daily life, where you realise that people don’t seem to care about what’s going on out there. And also just being out there in situations which are quite close to life and death for the people you are out there for, the victims, you are their only voice. And then coming back home and you have to attend a meeting at the school, parents discussing something about the football field or whatever and they are so passionate about what’s going on and then you have to sit there and count to ten and swallow and swallow and think, ‘I can’t explode, I can’t, I must just behave and sit there, respect them for what they’re doing and try to survive that, without exploding’.

MJT: Given that these are your stories, or based on your own experience, where did the decision to make the protagonist female come from?

EP: Well, basically, from my point of view, the theme or the topic is how you fight with your passion. I wanted to portray passion, but then also the price for that, for you and the people around you, or for me and the people around me. And it’s sort of the price to pay. And for somebody to go out there and do this job, when I’m doing it, as a man, people don’t seem to question it so much, even if I have my wife and two daughters back home. As soon as I switched myself into a woman, a mother with two kids, suddenly, everyone reacted right away and said, ‘Are you crazy? I mean, how many females are out there with small kids?’ And they see that that’s still a very complicated situation. And that’s why, because we are still there, that we don’t accept mothers doing that, but we accept men doing that every day. So that’s basically the reason, as well as most of the story being almost autobiographical, it is taken from all the discussions that have happened within our small family. And I also wanted to nail that situation down in details, so the thing was just to switch the sexes and then also going in to look at some of the female war photographers out there, as I know some of them, and look into their lives and I saw it exactly as it is.

MJT: I was going to say, did you interview any female war photographers in particular? What did you take away from that, that you perhaps weren’t expecting?

EP: Well, basically, that sort of confirmed [what I already had] rather than gave me new material. They confirmed it and of course confirmed the dilemma they feel, that the dilemma is stronger than within men and how I experienced it, because they are mothers going out there, like Lynsey Addario and others. But also, talking to women being out there, I also realised – as I’d been realising for many, many years now – they really do such an important job, because if they were not there, we wouldn’t get those stories back home, because it’s only women who can talk to and get contact with the women in the Muslim areas today. I’m not able to approach them. And even though they’re mothers with small kids, it’s important because with that angle, you see stories that you otherwise wouldn’t see that easily. So I wanted to emphasise the importance of that, actually, that there are women like Rebecca out there, that we need it. Their victims need it. And I was quite convinced that that needed to be the angle.

MJT: How did Juliette Binoche get involved?

EP: I contacted her, her best friend is a friend of mine, a French-Danish female producer in Paris. And she happened to have seen some of my movies and she was curious when she heard about the subject. So I sent her the script, as it was developing and I met her and presented the project. So we sort of found each other in the project, because I insisted that we needed to choose each other, we’re going to do this film together, it’s not like a one man show, it’s something you really need to do. And I wanted, strangely enough, to push her even further, I wanted to make this film as proof of her enormous talent and as an artist, an actor, I wanted to see, can I push her in one direction that I haven’t seen [in other films she’s done] and is there something here she could figure out as an actor. So I wanted this to be one of her strongest performances and it’s for others to judge whether or not we’ve been able to do that, but for Juliette herself, as a person, it was a stunning seven or eight months and at the end, we had no words left when we did it, because it really was a matter of giving what you had. But to be able to work with an actor such as Juliette is a gift.

MJT: She seems to be somebody who throws herself into projects quite passionately, like, I think with other directors, she quite often originates the project and brings the project to them. So did you sense that kind of commitment and passion from her on this?

EP: I feel that she is really investing her time in the directors. She is known for pushing a lot of them, even if they are recognised and have their own body of work, she needs to push and she needs to be pushed back. And she needs to have the answers. She’s not the type who will figure out the answers when they’re not in the script – she needs to have the answers, so if the script’s not there, she’ll push you to nail it and to get it done, because she needs to have that material. She doesn’t like if it’s two answers from a director, she doesn’t like it if a director says, ‘Well, I don’t know, what do you think?’ But that means that when she asks me for direction, I need to give her the direction. But first of all, she likes that we work with a project, we work with everything, we nail it down and then when we are standing there on the set, she wants to show me, before I start talking her down. She’s extremely – I know that there’s a lot [of people] who find her difficult, but I love that way of working, it’s the way I love to work as well. And I love that resistance in the process. I love to allow it to hurt while you’re working.

MJT: If, as you say, she wants the answers to all be in the script, does that mean that she’s happy to stick to the script when you’re shooting, or do you allow her to improvise?

EP: She wants it too look like it’s not a script, like it is going on at that moment, this generic situation going on. But that’s sort of her quality. And it’s a matter, of course, of always allowing things to happen while you’re doing it. If you’re not, then you’re not able to deal with the fact that film is a medium, is an art form where it should happen. But she is sort of taking that responsibility and she shares the responsibility with me and with the rest of the actors and she is really making people good. I can tell you that when I’m taking the shot of the other characters and she’s giving her performance [off camera, but standing opposite her co-stars], it’s similar, exactly similar. It’s still so hard for her, she’s really going all the way in, even if you don’t see her. You should. I don’t use two-camera techniques, I use one, because I feel that’s better. But she gives everything and I can tell you, it helps the other actors. When I did the take in the car with the daughter, when she picks up the camera, that scene took me almost five or six hours, even with a simple set-up, because after every scene, Juliette was totally blown [meaning ‘exhausted’] and she needed fifteen or twenty minutes to reset. And that’s remarkable, And that’s because I can push her and she can push me and we can push each other, because I wanted that. Let’s have a few takes, but really dig in. For every actor to go by themselves and dig and see what you find and then get in position and do it. And I love that, because I think that’s – that’s what I find so interesting about working with actors, whether it’s in a play or in a film, when they want to do that, when they want to have that resistance in their work and do it proper [sic].

MJT: What was the hardest thing to get right in the whole process?

EP: The hardest thing was to shoot in Kabul and shoot in a refugee camp in Kenya, on the border of South Sudan and Uganda. Of course, technically, because of security. For the rest, everything is really hard [laughs], but also, I love it, because getting that resistance, you come up, you flow, it’s like those people out there on wings, you know, you need that to be able to fly out there. And that’s the resistance, that’s the hard thing, everything is hard. And when I asked for everything that Juliette had while we were preparing, I said, ‘We’ll have to skip getting to know each other, we’ll have to start working the first hour by believing that we’ve known each other for 20 years. You can say everything to me and I can say everything to you. We have to be honest and just go straight into the script and the story’. And of course, there’s a moment there where you think to yourself and a glass or a cup of coffee is thrown at you and it’s because she’s so angry! And then, as you look down and you look up and she’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ and you realise, that’s the battle, that’s where you need to go. Some of those moments when I’m leading rehearsals late into the night, I think, ‘Is it worth it?’, because you are totally gone [meaning exhausted], but, no, the hardest thing, of course, is to do something as technically challenging as filming in Kabul, or in those areas in Kenya.

MJT: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

EP: I want to say the hardest scene, to be the hardest scene. I wanted to sort of show a story about Rebecca and her family. I wanted to avoid that it was a love story between Rebecca and her husband. That was never my intention. And I hope people see that, I would expect them to see that it’s a story about Rebecca and her family. And the family is represented most of all by her daughter, who has the biggest fragility. So there are some of those scenes, but maybe the scene with the camera, but also the scene I love is the scene where she actually leaves her kid in Kenya. Although, it’s sort of – you want to push your protagonist away, you want to throw something at her [reaches for dictaphone]…

MJT: Don’t throw that!

EP: I wanted to achieve that. At that moment you really kind of almost hate your protagonist and I want that complexity in the film. And I like the fact that I was able to work with Nikolaj [Coster-Waldau], who is a muscle guy – everything he does is very hard, tough, rough and macho – and to make him so fragile, like a small, small man. I was working with him a lot, because he came straight from the set of Game of Thrones and I was going up to Dublin to rehearse with him in between, but I realised it was hard, because he was in that world. And then when I got him over, we had just like a small week, a week and a half before we started shooting, two weeks and I just had to push, push, push him right away. But I’m really happy, because I feel – and I know that Nikolaj is really surprised, as well as his agents in the US – they love it a lot, that they saw that person in Nikolaj. Because I saw him on stage, many, many years ago and I saw that potential in that actor, so I want to push him to do more serious stuff. I mean, that type of stuff as well. And then also, it was being able to find Lauryn Canny, the young girl playing the oldest daughter, and being able to work with her and shape her and introduce her to audiences. She’s been in small TV stuff in Ireland before. I’m not proud – she should be proud of her performance, not me – but I’m proud of being able to find her.

MJT: How did Nikolaj get involved in the film?

EP: Just by actually asking him. We met before, some years ago and he expressed that he wanted to be in one of my projects if there was time and if it was the right part. So I knew, from before. So I just had to figure out if this could be the part. And I saw that couple, Juliette and Nikolaj and I thought it was quite interesting. And a believable couple, actually.

MJT: You have a small part for Larry Mullen Jr, the drummer from U2. How did he end up in the film?

EP: Well, realising I had to shoot in Ireland, I didn’t know so much about Ireland, but I knew Beckett, I knew various novels and I thought, ‘Well, what else is Ireland?’, well, it us U2. So I was actually having a bit of fun with the process as well, but to be honest, what could I do to try something quite different, but to try something quite different, but find something that [on the surface] really is not right for the film. And I’ve done that before as well. And I know he’d done one film that he wasn’t happy with – nobody was happy with it – so I know that he’s been doing movies and I felt he was interesting and I just wanted to ask him if he would try and it would help the film’s line-up of actors, people would say, ‘What are you doing?’ And he was really nervous, but he was really happy to be asked and he actually said yes, as long as it’s not too big, as long as it’s like it is. And he really wanted to support the film, because he read the whole script and he didn’t know me, but then he saw the movies and he said, ‘I really want to support this film, so if I can do it in between, as we are preparing the record now, I will’. And he was fun. And such a great guy to have on the set, because he really included everyone. He was going to the second light assistant, whatever, he was playing with everyone. He is so nice. And the funny thing is that Juliette didn’t know this guy. She was like, ‘U2?’ ‘It’s a band, it’s a rock and roll band!’ She didn’t know about it!

MJT: What’s your next project?

EP: I’m trying something quite different, but I want to do it as honestly as I’ve been doing my other movies. I’m doing a really epic piece, it’s a true story about the King of Norway and the hours before the Germans attack Norway in World War II. It’s three days and it’s extremely dramatic.

Indie Lisboa Lisbon 24 April – 4 May 2014

INDIE LISBOA is Portugal’s largest film festival showcasing the best in Portuguese indie World film and raising the profile of new and even experimental cinema in the Emerging Cinema strand.

The festival revisits some familiar names: Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel’s O Novo Testamento de Jesus Cristo Segundo João, a documentary staring one of the big names in Portuguese theatre, Luís Miguel Cintra. Director Sérgio Tréfaut establishes with Alentejo, Alentejo, the reigning force of the “cante alentejano” (Portuguese traditional folk music from Alentejo) – also a celebration of Portuguese culture. Cláudia Alves will present Tales on Blindness, a documentary that unveils the Portuguese occupation in India. In the strand Director’s Cut, there will be films by Luís Alves de Matos, Refúgio e Evasão, a documentary that tracks the cinematographic vision of Alberto Seixas Santos and the short films, Head, Tail, Rail, by Hugo Olim and Walk in the Flesh by Filipe Afonso. Sebastien Lifschitz’s Teddy Award (LGBT) winner Bambi, the extraordinary story of a little Algerian boy who grows up to be a respected female professor and entertainer in Paris. From Italy comes Bertolucci on Bertolucci: Walter Fasano and Luca Guadagnano’s expansive documentary on the legendary director.

Established directors feature in two Portuguese productions, specially made for the Capital Europeia da Cultura – Guimarães 2012 program: 3x3D, by Peter Greenaway, Edgar Pêra and Jean-Luc Godard and the long-awaited Centro Histórico by Pedro Costa, Manoel de Oliveira, Víctor Erice and Aki Kaurismäki. In Costa da Morte Lois Patino (who won Best Emerging Director at Locarno last year) takes to us to Spanish region of Galicia, with a documentary that explores the traditions of this wild region infamous for its legendary shipwrecks and dramatic coastline. Meanwhile, Vitaly Mansky’s documentary Pipeline gives fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary country-dwellers in the vast expanses of contemporary Russia.

In this year’s edition, the director chosen as “Independent Hero” is Claire Simon, and her latest feature film Gare du Nord will screen on the opening night. This section will display six films by the filmmaker:Gare du Nord, Géographiehumaine, Ça brûle, Mimi, Sinon, oui and Côute que coûte. Claire Simon will join the audience of IndieLisboa as she will visit our festival on the 29th to introduce and discuss her poetry, her films.

The Filmballad of Mamadada, by Cassandra and Lilly Benson is an ode to the extraordinary Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, dadaist that agitated the city of New York and an agent provocateur of her time. In Naomi Campbel, like the protagonist Yermén, the filmmaker Nicolas Videla and Camila Donoso dwell in two universes, the fictional and real one. Yermén, a transexual that survives as a spiritual telephone guide, while on a waiting room, meets a lady that pursuits the perfect body, the body of Naomi Campbell. The leading man in Jeremy Saulnier’s US indie thriller: Blue Ruin is a serial killer, almost by mistake, a lost, misguided soul with a need for revenge, somehow emerges as a sympathetic character. The young filmmaker Jordi Morató has brought to life outstanding images of Tarzan of Argelaguer – a man that built a labyrinth-city with his own hands and tells his story in The Creator of the Jungle. The lead in Suzanne, a film by Kate Quillévéré, is at the centre of a family falling apart, an complex soul who evokes everyone’s compassion. Mi Nina, mi vida tells the story of a father’s pain at the absence of his daughter and is one of the section’s highlights marking the comeback of Yan Giroux to IndieLisboa.

And finally as a special tribute to Austrian documentary-maker Michael Glawogger, who has died aged 54, there will be a screening of his 2011 film Whores’ Glory, the third and final part of his globalisation documentaries (Megacities (1998), Workingman’s Death (2005)). MT

INDIELISBOA RUNS FROM 24 APRIL TO 4 MAY 2014

Lifelong (2013) Hayatboyu CROSSINGEUROPE FESTIVAL

LIFELONG (HAYATBOYU) 2013

Director/Writer: Aslı Özge

Cast: Defne Halman, Hakan Çimenser, Gizem Akman, Onur Dikmen

Turkey/Germany/Netherlands Drama 102min

Istanbul-born Aslı Özge follows her award-winning debut feature MEN ON THE BRIDGE (2009) with a visually chilly treatment of one marital crisis. The film premiered at the 2013 Berlinale and won the Best Director prize at last year’s Istanbul International Film Festival. Its subject matter and symbolic edge will no doubt draw (unfavourable) comparisons to Joanna Hogg’s recently released EXHIBITION; both films received their Austrian premieres during this year’s Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz.

Opening in the middle of a sex scene between a woman and her husband, LIFELONG (HAYATBOYU) might suggest on first appearance that its central relationship is a healthy and functional one. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the fizz has gone from this marriage: but for one other brief moment of lust, Özge’s second feature unfolds in an emotionally constipated register while accruing evidence of its principal couple’s gradual and inexplicable estrangement from one another.

Middle-aged artist Ela (Defne Halman) is preparing for a new exhibition; her husband Can (Hakan Çimenser) is an architect. Their plush Istanbul home, with its immaculate glass panes and idiosyncratic geometry, speaks of a hard-earned social status. Like the house itself, though, the emphasis is very much upon the surface: left alone after daughter Tan moved away to study in Ankara, a discontentment has bubbled beneath. Clues of such tension are dropped early. Can’s phone vibrates when he’s out the room, and we see in Ela’s response to it a half-concealed acknowledgement of a secret she’s reluctant to confront.

Said secret is that Can is likely having an affair. And since she hasn’t been given the luxury of a close confidante, Ela’s suspicions and reasons for not challenging her husband are left to suggestion – though there are strong implications that her silence stems from an approaching menopausal insecurity and a rapidly declining self-worth. Framed – in its first half at least – through Ela’s perspective, Özge’s film is subsequently as restrained as its female protagonist. It’s to the writer-director’s credit that things open out in the second half in order to humanise Can – who, it must be said, is for too much of the film so unchangingly neglectful a partner that one is never really convinced of him as having been ‘marriage material’ to begin with.

Indeed, one comes to cringe in advance whenever Ela and Can are together, the former suffering one putdown after another. An early example is when Ela returns home one evening and comes to bed, only for Can to announce he’s going out to meet colleagues from Antalya. Another example is when Can quietly berates Ela following a double-date with friends – in which an innocuous comment concerning an e-mail from Can reveals Ela was not its intended recipient. Such scenes mount; the drama wears thin. It would surely have been more of a challenge – for filmmaker and audience alike – to write the husband character as something more nuanced than an overwhelmingly sloppy, one-dimensional loser. An awkward scene in a restaurant concerning a messed-up mixed grill feels merely clichéd.

Things change when an earthquake occurs – one with allegorical import no less. Though its epicentre is some distance away (Ela and Can sleep through it), the quake’s ripple effects come to determine Ela’s course of action – and, perhaps, Can’s awakening-cum-redemption. In the second half of the film, Özge demonstrates a clear penchant for symbolism as well as for patient and quiet revelations – though the dramatic cut-to-black that punctuates the ambiguous final scene betrays a more routine aesthetic approach than might otherwise have been the case. In forcing its characters to re-evaluate their situation, the earthquake is at once a subtle and obvious deus ex machina: subtle because its emotional ramifications aren’t felt immediately, and obvious because tectonic collisions have felt forced ever since Altman’s Short Cuts (1993). At least it wasn’t a car crash. MICHAEL PATTISON.

Rendezvous with French Cinema 2014

RENDEZVOUS is a chance to catch up on all the latest releases from France and this edition looks rather good. Running from the 23 of April, it has VIOLETTE, **** Martin Provost’s sumptuous and involving postwar portrait of writer Violette Leduc, starring Emmanuelle Devos in the title role and Sandrine Kimberlain as Simon de Beauvoir.

The long-awaited VENUS IN FUR**** is Roman Polanski’s film adaptation of the stage version of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s play “La Venus a la Fourrure”. Unfolding as a tempestuous two-hander, it follows the slow seduction of Mathieu Amalric’s theatre director Thomas by the vampish primadonna Vanda, played by his foxy wife Emmanuelle Seigner, in explosive form. Two tributes to the late and great Alain Resnais are showing during the Rendezvous: his stunning debut feature HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR**** and swan song feature AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER (Life of Riley)*** hot from the Berlinale, where it won the FIPRESCI prize. Very much an acquired taste, it’s another film adaptation, this time of the play by Alan Ayckbourn. Featuring animated footage and collage-style sets, it is graced graced with theatrical performances from his late wife Sabine Azema, Hippolyte Girardot and Sandrine Kimberlain. Tahir Rahim and Lea Seydoux play tortured lovers in Rebecca Zlotowski’s sinister drama of friendship and divided loyalties in a French nuclear power plant: GRAND CENTRAL***.

On a lighter but less successful note, are the festival’s child-based features : JE M’APPELLE HMMM**… fashion designer Agnes B’s first foray into film that follows a runaway child on a coming of age journey with an older truck driver. Contrived and flatly directed, it does have an appealing performance from newcomer Lou-Leila Demerliac as the little girl, Celine. Nicolas Vanier’s screen adaptation of Cecile Aubry’s wartime story of a boy who foils the Nazis with the help of his dog BELLE ET SEBASTIEN** unfortunately fails to leave the page with the original’s vim and verve, largely due to poor direction. But Bertrand Tavernier’s political comedy QUAI D’ORSAY**** offers a witty and stylish look behind the facade of the French Foreign Office with some great talent too in the shape of Niels Arestrup (Our Children), Raphael Personnaz (Marius) and Thierry Lhermitte (Le Diner de Cons).

RENDEZVOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA RUNS FROM 23-30 APRIL 2014 in CENTRAL LONDON

Traffic Department (2013) Drogowka Kinoteka 2014

TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT (DROGóWKA)

Dir.: Wojiech Smarzowski

Cast: Bartlomiej Topa, Julia Kijowska, Izabel Kuna, Marcin Dorocinski

Poland 2013, 118 min..

Wojiech Smarzowski (The Dark House) is arguably the most sought after director in contemporary Poland. TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT feels like a Polish version of ‘The Wire’, surging forward at a breathless tempo. Bartlomiej Topa plays Ryszard Krol, one of seven friends who serve as traffic cops in Warsaw’s police force. They take bribes, have sex whenever possible and never seem to sleep. Krol is having a steamy affair with his colleague Madecka (Julia Kijowska), but when he finds out by accidence, that his wife is having her own extramarital affair with his friend and colleague Lisowski (Marcin Dorocinski), he goes berserk. After a drunken bender, he ends up in a brothel where he looses consciousness. He wakes up the next morning beaten-up in his car, Lisowski has been murdered during the night and traces of his blood are found in Krol’s car by the police, during routine inquiries.

Krol and his corrupt officer friends race through the action, even before Krol is forced on the run, the narrative feels frenzied and venal. This is a hard-edged thriller and we are not spared gruesome details of traffic accidents; visits to sordid, but expensive brothels, in contrast to the squalid flats occupied by the officers and their families – not an excuse, but perhaps a reason for their immoral earnings. In spite of the serious tone – contemporary Poland is shown as an ugly cess pit – the director always finds a way for subversive, dark humour: when officer Petrycki, who is always getting freebees from whores, is getting a blow-job in the back of a car driven by Krol, the latter has to brake sharply to avoid running over a group of nuns on a zebra crossing, causing the prostitute to take a mighty bite out of Petrycki’s organ, landing him in the nearest A&E.

Whilst the camera excels in the dominating action sequences, we are drip-fed with little details, that explain the motives of main characters. The light is diffuse at daytime, but most of the film is shot at dusk and dawn, giving the film a noirish element. Editing leaves us with very few calm moments, only when interacting with his football mad son, Krol seems to take a breather. Traffic Department is a butch thriller with muscular, spontaneous performances from all concerned; even the women. It does look like Smarzowski used mostly first takes, adding an authentic feel. Whilst not re-inventing the “wrong man” scenario, Smarzowksi has shown enough bravado to put his own stamp on the genre. AS

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SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA 2014 AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON 25 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY 2014

Ilo Ilo (2013)

Director: Anthony Chen

99min Singapore Drama

An effecting debut drama from this Singaporean filmmaker, sees a couple struggling to make ends meet during the economic crisis of the late nineties. Their troublesome ten-year-old son Jiale (Koh Jia Ler) is a handful and the Filipina nanny hired to take care of him makes matters worse. Chen cleverly crafts his characters making them believable and authentic but not always appealing: Jiale and his mother (Hwee Leng) are strong-willed but Chen makes no attempt gloss over their defects, whilst allowing us to see their humanity. Moments of warm humour and compassion peep through the stresses and strains of normal family life in a story with universal appeal. MT

REVIEWED DURING DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT AT CANNES 2013- ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 MAY 2014

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Curzon Free Film Festival 2 May – 8 May 2014

To celebrate the opening of CURZON VICTORIA, the arthouse venue in London is offering a week of FREE screenings, cultural events and Q&As from FRIDAY 2 May until 8th May 2014. So indulge yourselves with the finest wines known to humanity, local beers and spirits in their luxurious lounge bars before enjoying five state-of-the-art screens with Sony 4K projection and 3D. Amongst the selection:

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR

IL DIVO

IDA

ALL HAPPENING AT CURZON VICTORIA, 62 BUCKINGHAM GATE, LONDON SW1E 6AJ www.curzoncinemas.com

A Thousand Times Goodnight (2013)

Director: Erik Poppe Writer: Harald Rosenlow Cinematographer: John Christian Rosenlund

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Maria Doyle, Larry Mullen, Lauren Canny

117min Drama

Juliette Binoche plays a war photographer whose relationship unravels when she escapes death in Afghanistan. Norwegian director Erik Poppe (Hawaii, Oslo) sets this absorbing story in a glorious seascape near Dublin and vibrant locations in the Middle East, cleverly casting Binoche in the lead role of a strong but feminine Rebecca. Clearly the main bread-winner, she’s married to Marcus (Danish actor, Coster-Waldnau) a teacher who looks after their two girls during her frequent trips to the war zones. Rebecca freely admits “I don’t do normal”, finding it hard to engage with the local mums in provincial life back in Dublin. But after returning home to nurse her physical and emotional wounds inflicted during a female suicide bomb blast in Kabul, she starts to reassess her life.

Erik Poppe’s work in the eighties as a war photographer makes this intense drama emotionally more resonant, and particularly because his protagonist is female – it’s fascinating how the tables are turned when a woman has the dangerous job. Vilified by her Marcus and her kids for ‘torturing’ them emotionally, Isabelle remains steadfast in her commitment to her chosen vocation despite constantly risking her life to bring worthy causes to the public domain: and there’s nothing more evocative than pictures in telling a moving story. There would be no question about a man working in a dangerous field, so why should a woman evoke a different response?. Binoche is so masterfully convincing here that we totally buy into her dilemma in a role that she handles without resorting to sentimentality; retaining her female qualities of compassion and affection. Her relationship with Marcus is less convincing from his point of view: Coster-Walnau switches a little too abruptly from coldness to acceptance and back to resentment in his portrayal of the aggrieved partner. But this is very much Binoche’s film; she radiates calm capability outshining the support cast, ably assisted by Lauren Canny who makes a promising debut as her daughter.

READ OUR INTERVIEW

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After the Night (2013)

Director/Writer: Basil da Cunha

Cinematographer: Patrick Tresch

99min Crime drama

Basil da Cunha spent his early years in Switzerland, later moving to Lisbon where he has written and directed this drama about an ex-con Sombra (Pedro Ferreira) and his battle to escape the debtors.

Casting largely non-professional actors, the action takes place in the seedy backstreets of the capital where vibrant cinematography evokes a strong sense of place, using the hours of darkness to great effect with chiaroscuro contrast. Sombra emerges a venal figure in gangland Lisbon, but there is nothing to differentiate his story from that of any other European crim. Da Cunha could have created something really special with his tentative use of magic realism, instead the narrative sticks to well-trodden paths, preferring to re-hash his past work rather than embrace the new and ground-breaking. MT

AFTER THE NIGHT IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS and ON VOD FROM 25 APRIL 2014

I Declare War (2014)

Director.: Jason Lapeyre, Robert Wilson

Cast: Siam Yu, Gage Monroe, Michael Friend, Mackenzie Munro

Canada 2012, 90 min.

Two groups of twelve year olds play “Capture the Flag” in a wood. One group is led by the enigmatic PK, the other one by the bully Quinn. When Quinn captures Kwon, PK’s best friend, a rather nasty element is introduced: Quinn starts to torture Kwon for real, and only Quinn’s stupidity and arrogance allows Kwon to escape. Surprisingly, PK insists on Kwan’s return to their HQ up in a tree, that Kwan returns voluntarily to Quinn, giving himself up, so that PK can execute his master plan. Whilst PK succeeds in humiliating Quinn, he looses Kwon’s friendship.

The main concern one has with the film, is that the weapons used by the children change often from make-shift to real, sticks to machine guns, balloons filled with red paint into grenades. Sure, the real weapons don’t kill, but the effect is very unsettling. Even though the child actors improvise their dialogue, everything seems stilted, unreal. The narrative is unstructured, and the actions seem accidental. There is no overriding concept, just endless fighting and very little real communication. Further more, the only female character, Jess, who is in love with one of the boys, seems to be totally displaced among the boys. One can’t always expect classics like Jeux interdits or La guerre des Boutons, but I DECLARE WAR not only fails in this respect, but opens itself up to some serious concerns regarding its use of weapons, and showing, more often than not, the rather dark side of its youthful protagonists.

The camera is as hectic as the action, the setting very unimaginative, leaving the child actors as the only positive element of this production. A film about children, seen through the eyes of adults, who seem to have forgotten any joy of childhood. Somehow, one understands why this film has been left on the shelf for two years. AS

Father and Son on a Journey (2013) Ojciec i syn w podrozy Kinoteka 2014

Dir.: Marcel Lozinski

Cast: Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski; Poland 2013, 75 min.

This journey of a father and his son – both documentary filmmakers – from Warsaw to Paris is a trip into the past and a search for identities. Father Marcel was born in Paris in 1940, his mother was in the French Resistance, and he lived in different children homes, always frightened to lose his mother, even (or particularly) when she was visiting him. His son Pawel was born 25 years later in Warsaw. We see footage from Marcel’s Super 8 camera, showing the young Pawel growing up at home with his parents. But when Pawel was 17, his father left his mother Tamara for another woman, Ania: this trauma is still unresolved for Pawel, and during the journey he tries stubbornly to make his father own up to some moral responsibility for the divorce, particularly since he accuses him of having made him buy the wedding rings for the new couple – an accusation the father strongly denies.

The two travel in a camper van, stopping at camping sites along the route via the Czech Republic (which Marcel still calls Czechoslovakia) and Austria (“they still love order and organisation”), before arriving in Paris, where Marcel had buried the ashes of his mother in a public park in 1964. Two generations clash: Marcel still trying to find his identity, finally settling for Jewish, with Polish and French being relegated to the ranks. He too is still a believer in causes (which he needs, like most of his generation), whilst his son is happy just to care for his family, he accuses his father of being enthralled by the communist system, which turned out to be inhuman, even though “you thought it was fantastic”. Pawel further accuses his father of being a control freak, who has an opinion on everything and interferes with everyone. But, contradicting himself, he admits that his education of his daughters is much more conventional and hierarchic, than his father’s: Marcel treated little Pawel like an equal, not like a son – a fact, which Pawel turns against him “You wanted a little mini-me”.

Somehow a pattern develops: father and son wanted for their children an upbringing neither ending up having. Marcel grew up with parents who were looking very much for stability in their life, “happy not having to live in hiding any more”, whilst Marcel saw his son more as an object of an experiment – who himself in turn, wanted for his family nothing more than ‘normality’. In the end, in spite of unresolved issues, we get a sort of happy-end: father and son cuddling in the grass, the same way they did in Pawel’s childhood.

FATHER AND SON ON A JOURNEY is a very intimate document, the two of them living in a very cramped space, holding the camera alternatively. They stop mostly in the countryside, where they seem to feel free to express their feelings. But the dominant feature is their dialogue and their struggle for dominance: more than once, one of them leaves the scene sulking. Somehow we end up with the feeling that Marcel’s concept of having a “partner, not a son” has been successful, the two behave very much like a couple – though it would be interesting to see Pawel’s take of this journey: his version (a mere 54 min), edited from the same material as his father’s film is called “Father and Son”. AS

KINOTEKA 2014 RUNS FROM 25 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY

Il Divo (2008) Bfi player

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino | Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci | 110min Italian with subtitles Drama

After successes with the small but perfectly formed Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, Il Divo bursts on to the screen in a baptism of fire that marks Paolo Sorrentino as a filmmaker of considerable talent in winning collaboration with much loved actor Toni Servillo. He plays Giulio Andreotti, the enigmatic leader of the Italian Christian Democrats who haunted the face of Italian politics like an enigmatic smile for nearly forty years and was seven times prime minister.

Mesmerising filmmaking takes over the first twenty minutes as the camera cuts and thrusts from every angle and Sorrentino’s signature soundtracks punctuate the action often to comical and contradictory effect. The story focuses on Andreotti’s last term in office and manages in nearly two hours to fast forward through complex political intrigue interweaving the mafia, corruption and the Catholic Church in a vast tapestry of Italian affairs at the end of the last century while creating an intimate portrait of a rather inaccessible and self-contained man.

Understanding such an ambitious and complex subject is quite a challenge for any audience and there’s a danger of being submerged by the complexity, and bowled over by the visual treatment of this fascinating story and, to some extent, this is where the film falls down. That said, Sorrentino’s lively and accomplished film reflects the tenaciousness of a significant statesman and Toni Servillo is magnificent as Andreotti in one of the best performances of his career so far. A masterful tribute to one of Italy’s most signicant historical moments. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Lasting (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director: Jacek Borcuch

Cinematography: Michal Englert (The Congress, Elles, In the Name of)

93mins Drama Polish with English subtitles

With its sun-drenched images, palpable sense of heat and lissome lovers with tousled blonde hair, JACEK BORCUCH’S drama LASTING will appeal to art house audiences, capturing the aching lustfulness of first love seen through eyes of two young Polish college graduates (Michal and Karina) who take off for a summer in Spain. LASTING is a dreamy memory of carefree love on the cusp of adulthood and challenged by fate.

Michal and Karina’s relationship is put to the test when a Michal’s chance meeting with a local man in the riverside farm where they are staying with his family, ends in tragedy sending a chill breeze through their sunny idyll and threatening to tear them apart.

Michal Englert uses the same bleached-out aesthetic, slowmo sequences and hazy camerawork that he does so effectively in In the Name of ; to create a timeless picture of Summer heat that is soon intensified by an undercurrent of anxiety, leaving us as bewildered as the protagonists themselves. Borcuch’s effective use of silence, minimal dialogue and a subtle instrumental score ramps up the tension as the camera observes the fallout of the tragedy and its psychological effect on the young lovers. Once they get back home, it transpires that Karina is harbouring a secret of her own and this additional element starts to have a wearing effect on both their relationship and the pacing of the film. There’s nothing particularly original about Borcuch’s narrative, but the strong, performances and sizzling chemistry of the leads powerful sense of place make it a romantic drama worth watching. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS UNTIL 30 MAY 2014 AT VARIOUS VENUES IN LONDON

Mia Wasikowska – TRACKS

Take the Australian outback, three wild camels, a black labrador and a woman with a mission and you’ve got John Curran’s drama inspired by the true life of Robyn Davidson, who walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean in 1977. During this breathtaking travelogue of painful and sweaty trials and tribulations, she makes some interesting discoveries about survival and herself: mainly that she ‘wants to be alone’. Mia Wasikowska gives an exultant performance as Robyn, not the most easy of characters, but certainly dogged and single-minded in her pursuit of a dream. It also stars Roly Mintuma as her Aboriginal guide and Adam Driver as the photographer who fails to win her heart. Despite looking for solitude in the magnificent landscape of the Outback, Robyn feels her deep loneliness at every step of the way, remaining a fascinating but private individual. Matthew Turner met her to try and find out more.

Matthew Turner (MJT): What attracted you to the part and how did you get involved?

Mia Wasikowska (MW): I liked Tracks because I just really understood the character and liked her and I read the book that it was based on and really liked her character and just connected to that.

MJT: What kind of research did you do?

MW: I mainly just read the book and I felt like I understood her well enough to [play her]. I also met Robyn [Davidson], who it was based on and it was nice just to meet her and talk to her.

MJT: How important do you think it was that the film never really tries to explain Robyn or why she decides to undertake this journey? Was that important for you, that you didn’t try to put that across for the character?

MW: Yeah, I think so. Like, I always liked that she had this attitude where she didn’t feel like she owed anybody an explanation and she was just doing something for the sake of – it meant something to her and I don’t think she quite understood why she was doing it at that stage either, it was just something she was really drawn to. And I liked that, I felt like I understood it and what I understood of it was that she kind of wanted to simplify her existence and a good way of doing that is taking it back to the very basics of survival, like putting one foot in front of the other and attending to just your needs in each moment, like feeding yourself or drinking, setting up camp, you know, it just makes it a very simple reality.

MJT: You knew [shooting in the desert] was going to be physically and mentally challenging, but were there any really unexpected challenges that came up that you hadn’t planned for?

MW: I was expecting it to be like, kind of hard. I think the main thing that came up was just the – it’s really nice to be in those locations when you’re on your own time, but when you’re abiding by a set schedule of a film, which is always very regimented and just being outside, like all the time, in the glare and that was probably the harder thing, like even more than just it being hot, it’s more just like the intensity of it on your eyes, of it being so bright all the time. But yeah, other than that it was alright, like it was really enjoyable being in clothes that weren’t precious or anything, so it was nice.

MJT: And I guess being back in Australia as well?

MW: Yeah, it was great.

MJT: Did you feel like you learned anything about yourself? I mean, it’s quite a journey of self-discovery for her and with the connection with Australia and coming back, did you feel – I mean, obviously, it’s a film and it’s a job, but did you learn anything about yourself over the course of the film?

MW: I think it was like an interesting process, the whole making of the film. Most films and scripts usually are kind of in flux as you get closer to production, but this one more so than anything, so the most challenging thing was it changing a lot and having to voice your opinions more if something didn’t work for me in like a new draft or something, more like feeling like it was okay to express that, whereas I’ve always been sort of more submissive or not felt so part of something, to the point of where I could have an opinion or something, so more just like learning to voice an opinion or something.

MJT: Did you spend an extended amount of time in the desert on your own, just to get a feeling of what it was like for Robyn?

MW: Not really. I mean, in my own childhood, we would camp in this one particular spot in Australia, which wasn’t in the desert, it was like in the bush, that was always a greatly formative experience for me, because every summer we would have like at the least three weeks at the one place and there were no showers or bathrooms or anything like that. There was a town like twenty minutes away or something. So that was always really great and that was probably the main thing that it felt like, or, you know, that I could imagine what it was like for her and the kind of freedom that you get from throwing away the kind of more normal parts of society.

MJT: What was John [Curran] like as a director?

MW: He was the complete opposite [of Richard Ayoade, her director on The Double]. He wanted to discover things on the day and didn’t really want to do rehearsals or anything. We had very different opinions about everything, so we were always coming up against differences of opinion and that was like a new thing. But yeah, it was good, it was just like different things.

MJT: John said at the London Film Festival that he wanted to let you discover the character for yourself and he was very welcoming of you having a difference of opinion with him. Did you enjoy working like that?

MW: Yeah, I mean it’s good when you can express something without someone else cutting it off. It’s great when someone is open to that. So I did like that, for sure, yes.

MJT: Did you butt heads at all because you were working from the book? Were there parts of the book that you loved that didn’t make it in?

MW: Yeah, but it was like a different process. So there was an original script, which I loved and then he did a rewrite and I would be like, ‘Well, I hate this bit and I hate this bit and I hate this bit!’ And he would be like, ‘Well, I hate that bit and I hate that bit and I hate that bit!’ And so it was always this continually having to find the middle ground between our two different tastes. I’ve never experienced that before, so that was, like, unusual.

MJT: Do you think benefited from having the two viewpoints?

MW: I don’t know! I think it’s been the best case scenario for the film, because it’s come together quite well, but there were moments where I had no idea what we were making, really. I’d just never really experienced that extremity of differences in opinions. But I mean films, so some extent, are always changing, so it’s kind of the nature of it, anyway.

MJT: What was Robyn’s take on the final film?

MW: She had such a good perspective on it, like I was very scared or tentative about meeting her, because the Robyn in the book would have punched anybody who wanted to play her in a film. And so I was so aware of her probably thinking it was completely ridiculous, but they kept convincing me to meet her and I did and it was a real relief, actually, because she had a really good perspective on it, being just like an abstraction of something that was already an abstraction of the journey. So that was a relief, to be freed from it being her being there, like, waving her finger at us. And yeah, she was just really lovely as well. And anybody can say anything now, about the movie, like, she’s happy with it, so I’m like, I don’t mind if it’s trashed! She liked it and gave it her tick of approval, so it’s fine. That’s the biggest relief.

MJT: What was Adam Driver like as a co-star?

MW: Oh, great. Adam is so spontaneous and really brilliant at coming into a situation and not feeling self-conscious, or not appearing self-conscious or nervous or anything but just going with it and ad-libbing and pretending and I completely admired that.

MJT: How about the camels?

MW: They were great! They’re like the most, like the best film animals ever, which is a shame, because they will be needed like once every decade or something. They were just super-easy, like the dog was really quite hard to work with in comparison to the camels and I thought it might be the other way around, but the camels just like follow you and walk and we had one camel that was just like the most brilliant actor ever, it would just like growl any time it had to growl and, yeah, it was brilliant.

MJT: They didn’t have a special growling camel and a walking camel

MW: Well, that one became the growling camel. The one at the back became the go-to growling camel, because it would growl at everything! It was really great.

MJT: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

MW: I like the bit where Adam’s character, Rick turns up and he’s talking about his routine where he eats an orange before a flight and after a flight, but he didn’t get an orange because the shops were – it was so brilliant and he was just ad-libbing, it was so funny.

MJT: I gather you’re directing yourself – you’ve done a segment of [portmanteau film] The Turning. Have you finished it? What was that like? And did you take anything from the directors you’ve worked with?

MW: Yeah, I finished it. It came out in Australia. I loved it. We were given complete creative control, so every filmmaker was given a short story and then you had to adapt it. So we shot it over four days and it was really fun, it was really great. But the main thing that I’ve learned from the different directors that I’ve worked with is just that there’s no one way to make a film, there’s no one formula that makes a good film, everyone has their own way of making a film and you have to find your own process or something. So it was really fun and I’d love to do it again.

MJT: How do you pick your projects, usually? Is the script the most important thing or the director or does it vary from project to project?

MW: Usually the director, because I am like a film fan firstly, so if I can work with a great director – and if I’m not sure about the script, at least I can trust that they will have some interesting take on it or they would be open to collaborating or something, so I usually would work with a great director. But also, whatever, if it’s a great script and someone who’s unknown, I would do that as well. So it’s like character and script and director, one of the three.

MJT: It seems like since Alice in Wonderland you’ve taken a slightly less obvious route than people might have expected. Is that something you’ve done deliberately, to choose more interesting projects rather than blockbusters?

MW: Yes, definitely. I mean, I’m in a lucky position, after a movie like that, to be able to be slightly more selective, so I’ve just done films that I like or worked with directors that I really like, so yeah, it’s a good position to be in.

MJT: Do you feel, as a woman, there are a lot of those, because most of the characters that you’ve played are interesting or unusual or they have that [element]. Is it hard to find those roles still, or do you feel like the landscape has changed a bit?

MW: I think I’m lucky in that sense, because I can choose that stuff, but I think that there can always be more. And I would definitely love to see more female directors, like, I think I’ve only worked with one female director on a feature film. But I would love there to be more females working in films. But I’ve been pretty lucky in terms of good female characters, so I can’t complain.

MJT: You mentioned you were a film fan. Did you watch any particular films in preparation for Tracks? I was thinking, maybe Walkabout?

MW: Yeah, I mean Walkabout and Wake In Fright were two films that were [relevant to this]. So I watched those.

MJT: And as a final question, I was wondering if you could please tell us the correct pronunciation of your surname?

MW: Oh! Vash-ee-kov-ska.

MJT: Thank you! Do you correct people if they say it wrong?

MW: I don’t, really. I mean, I always say it the right way, but I wouldn’t enforce it on other people.

MJT: Thanks Mia.

Blue Ruin (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, David W Thompson

90min US Thriller

Blue Ruin is a slow-burning feral beast of a thriller that holds you in tight claws ’til the final bloody finale. Awarded at Cannes, it’s the second feature of Jeremy Saulnier who cut his teeth as a cinematographer on low budget horror outings before he wrote and directed this stylish indie revenge piece, which despite a low budget makes clever use of the atmospheric Virginia countryside, stunning visuals and a hunting original soundtrack with shades of the Coen Brothers in the storytelling.

Macon Blair plays Dwight, a mysterious and homeless loner gets by scavenging until he learns of the release from prison of Wade Cleland, who murdered his father in revenge for a long-standing feud with his family. This forces him to return to his former home and his estranged sister’s to reconcile with her and protect her from further acts of retaliation from the Clelands. Clearly disturbed and very much an outsider, Dwight is no murderer, but the depth of feeling he had for his dad, mingled with fear and anger forces him to fight back with a vehemence he never knew he had. Tracking Dwight down he murders him in a surprisingly brutal act of defence which cannot go unpunished. The consequences take him down an unpredictable journey from which there is no logical or possible return. An old school pal, Ben Gaffney (Devin Ratray ) provides unexpected support as they

Although Blue Ruin opens in a straightforward vein, it reveals its narrative very gingerly so as to keep up on tenterhooks as the true awfulness slowly emerges. This unsettling treatment of leaving out so much information is intensified by minimal use of dialogue and long stretches of silence allowing the imagination to run wild and feeding on the subconscious to powerful effect. Saulnier’s skilful use of pacing is probably the most powerful tool in his arsenal of mean tricks, making him an exciting talent in the making. MT

BLUE RUIN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2 MAY 2014 and previews at SUNDANCE UK 25-27 April 2014

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Suzanne (2013) Now on DVD

Dir.: Katell Quilléveré;

Cast: Sarah Forestier, Adèle Haenel, François Damiens

France/Belgium 2013, 94 min Drama

After the death of their mother, sisters Suzanne (Sarah Forestier) and Maria (Adèle Haenel) grow up with their father Nicholas, a truck driver (Francois Damiens). Suzanne is impetuous from the beginning, living in a dream world, whilst her sister is less self-centred, helping her sister adjust to life’s problems. At seventeen, Suzanne gets pregnant, an absent father means that Maria has to help out. But soon she is the sole provider for little Charlie, since Suzanne has fallen for Julien, who goes from robbery to drug smuggling during the course of the film. Suzanne, helping him in the first stage of his criminal career, acquires a criminal record. But the death of her sister catapults Suzanne (finally) into adulthood, and for the first time she takes responsibility – not only for herself.

Katell Quilléveré (Love Like Poison) crams a quarter century of the life of Suzanne into just over 90 minutes of her second feature film: When we see her at first, Suzanne is playing innocently with her little sister near the grave of her mother. When we leave her with Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name, we either love or hate her – and the same goes for the film. Quillevéré does nothing to make her heroine sympathetic, on the contrary, Maria and (sometimes) her father carry the emotional load Suzanne leaves them with. But still, we fall for her all or nothing approach to life. Somebody once said, there must be more than everything to life, and this is exactly Suzanne’s motto. She lives purely for the day, emotionally driven: she is a wild child-woman. And absolutely oblivious to reality or duty, she races through life on self-centred emotional roller-coaster, often at the expense of others.

Sarah Forestier as Suzanne carries the film, which could have easily been an awkward mixture of TV drama and sentimental story-telling. But her Suzanne is real, and so are the settings: the ugly hotel rooms, the father, who is king of the road but lacks emotional understanding, and the dullness of prison life. The camera is lively, bordering on hectic, showing a realism, which sometimes reminds us of the Dardenne brothers. Nothing is artificial, we get what we see. It is Suzanne trying to transcendent an ugly life by sheer emotional force. There are obviously gaps in the narrative, but such is real life and Suzanne is such an emotional tornado, that we soon forget the missing parts. The second film is the most difficult, but Quillevéré storms, like her heroine, through all obstacles with an overpowering emotional and aesthetic force. AS

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SUZANNE IS NOW OUT ON DVD

You and Me Forever (2013)

Dir.: Kaspar Munk Writers: Kaspar Munk, Jannik Tai Mosholt

Cast: Julie Andersen, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Emilie Kruse, Benjamin Wandschenider

Denmark 2012, 82 min. Drama

Kaspar Munk’s coming-of-age drama looks at teenage friendship. Laura and Christine have been friends forever, but when you are only sixteen everything suddenly changes. When Laura meets Maria she’s awestruck by this new sophisticated girl who puts her down: ‘You are boring, but have nice eyes” and has lived in New York. Hesitantly she follows her into the world of parties, drugs and drinking. But when it comes to sex, she is diffident about Maria’s experience with boys, especially Jonas, who lives in a condemned building and seems suicidal. But when Maria pays a boy to sleep with Laura for 500 kroner, she is forced to evaluate not only her new friendship but also her own sexuality.

Munk revolutionises the genre with his subtle approach in this well-paced drama with its stand-out performance from Julie Andersen as the melancholic Laura, who seems unable to make up her mind about anything, particularly when it comes to her own life. A dreamer, she’s held back by doting parents who panic at the slightest threat of their daughter becoming independent. Laura dreams her way through life and she is drawn to Maria (Frederikke Dahl Hansen) as the polar opposite to her. Maria plays the adult, it’s an strong and alluring performance – but when it comes to the crunch, she’s very much a teenager: promising a couple of boys a blow job if they pay for a taxi, but running away with the overwhelmed Laura in tow and the money – then missing the last train. Laura puts herself out for Maria – whose response to boys is always “don’t touch me”. Maria makes the mistake of using money to soften-up Laura.

A “Sturm und Drang” feel dominates permeates this dark and downbeat piece with lightning, storms and heavy rain predominating. The murky interiors are never fully lit, going in tandem with Laura’s dreamy demeanour. The strongest scenes are close-ups between the three girls: Christine pleading in vain, Laura evasive at the beginning, than alienating her childhood friend; whilst Maria stays in the background, pretending to be the adult. Laura captures the imagination of the viewer because she is living in slow-motion, dragged forward by Maria, but never loosing her subdued hesitancy. Andersen’s Laura is moody, evoking insecurity and self-doubt, yet carrying the film with consummate ease. AS

YOU AND ME FOREVER is on general release in selected cinemas from 25 April 2014

Little Accidents (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: Sara Colangelo

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny

US Drama 105min Slow-burning mining drama really feels like the pits.

Grim reality bites for three people thrown together in the aftermath to tragedy in a depressed mining town. Sara Colangelo’s bleak drama tackles themes of class, comradeship and guilt affecting a community when ten families lose their loved-ones and potentially their livelihoods.

Boyd Holbrook plays Amos, a coal miner who is the only survivor of the accident. He’s faced with the invidious task of giving evidence on behalf of his co-workers to secure a large cash settlement from the management or keeping quiet in case the mine is shut down, risking the futures of those unaffected. Another victim is teenager Owen (Jacob Lofland from Mud) whose father was killed and whose mother (Chloe Sevigny) wants to use her settlement to spoil her bereaved sons incurring the envy of his schoolmates, one of whom, JT, is the son of the manager (Bill Doyle) implicated in the accident, caused by professional negligence. During a scuffle in the woods, Owen witnesses JT’s death in a fall and is forced to remain silent whilst his mother (Elizabeth Banks) waits in agony for news. The fallout to all this is intriguing and immersive as Colangelo explores the different relationships and dynamics, feeling her way intuitively with a slow-burning visual narrative, assisted by Rachel Morrison’s softly focused camerawork that makes good use of the dourly atmospheric West coast landscapes.

SUNDANCE UK RUNS FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

An Episode in the Life of an Ironpicker (2012) Bergamo Film Meeting 2022

Dir/wri; Denis Tanovic | Cast: Senada Mujic, Nazif Mujic, Semsa Mujic, Sandra Mujic | Drama, Bosnia Herzegovina, 75min

A piece of social realism that offers slim pickings in the way of entertainment or standout performances, despite the non-pro lead winning Best Actor in Berlin. That said, this is a genuine and passionate story that raises the plight of Roma gypsies in Europe today. Traditionally they have wandered all over Eastern Europe pursuing their own moral and social code, living in enclaves without engagement with the mainstream.

Tanovic takes a poor couple who live with their two little girls a Roma gypsy camp in Bosnia Herzegovina. Nazif Mujic is an ironpicker, or scrap metal man, to you and me. He scavanges for metal and gets ready cash in return from a local dealer while his wife (on and off screen) Senada runs the home. One day she feels unwell and has a miscarriage, without medical insurance so are left to illegally ‘borrow’ a cousin’s medical card and receive treatment just in the nick of time.

Denis Tanovic’s trick of using non-professional actors lends authenticity to this simple story with its largely improvised dialogue. Senada Mujic appears totally at ease and philosophical about her plight showing not a shred of fear of worry and trusting in her husband to provide for her and the kids. There’s something to be said for the closeness of their community and the genuine love and respect they demonstrate in the community: borrowing, bartering and lending rather than engaging in consumerism. They have nothing to envy or covet and seem genuinely content in their lives drawing, comfort from each other in their close-knit families.

Denis Tanovic makes a strong evolutionary point: the Roma have inadvertantly discovered sustainability by running their own show in a political regime where many feel marginalised, uncared-for and ultimately disenfranchised in the organised mainstream. On the other hand, they needed access to emergency medical care through the state system and couldn’t provide it within their own resources. A simple tale offers stimulating food for thought. A much better film and more appealing view of the Roma is to be had in The Forest is Like the Mountains (2014). MT

BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2022 | EUROPE NOW – DENIS TANOVIC SPOTLIGHT

Bastards (2013)

Dir.: Claire Denis | Cast: Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Creton | France 2013, 100 min. Drama

Bastards is a much darker re-working of Claire Denis’s 2008 family drama 35 Shots of Rum. It stars Vincent Lindon as Marco, captain of an oil tanker, who abandons ship and returns to Paris to help his sister Julie (Bataille) after her husband Jacques commits suicide. Meanwhile, their daughter Justine (Creton) is roaming the streets of Paris naked, high on drugs and alcohol. Marco moves into an apartment building where he meets Raphaelle (Mastroianni), who just happens to be the ex-mistress of Edouard Laporte, a business tycoon who has lent Julie and Jacques huge sums of money. Laporte still visits Raphaelle, who lives with their son, Joseph. Soon Marco and Raphaelle become lovers, Marco is at first unaware of the connections between his sister and the tycoon – let alone the reasons for Justine’s depraved life style.

The neo-noir element of the film is underlined by Agnes Godard’s photography working with digital for the first time: shadows intrude even in the daylight hours, and the night scenes are truly claustrophobic. Even their love-making seems brutal and often sadistic. Marco, who starts the film as an innocent, is soon dragged into the circle of deceit, exploitation and power games. Neglecting his own children, who live with his estranged wife, he soon forgets he came to help his sister, and abandons himself in his pursuit of Raphaelle. When the sad truth of the relationship between Justine, her parents and Laporte dawns on him, Marco becomes vengeful, and when he confronts Laporte violently, he leaves Raphaelle with his revolver, having to make a choice

Few films are so unremittingly negative, even nihilistic. Money is the major motivation; parents neglect their children – or worse – pimp them, evil lurks at every corner behind a bourgeois set-up. Paris comes off as a cold and hostile place, a dystopia bereft of moral values, the female characters Raphaelle, Julie and Justine, submitting to the desires of men. AS

BASTARDS IN now on BFI subscription from 22 August 2022

Memphis (2014) Sundance UK 2014

This dreamy cinema verité piece from writer-director Tim Sutton makes for an inventive sortie into the life of a struggling blues musician played by Willis Earl Beal. Sutton’s meditative camera follows Willis (whom he claims has God-given talent) and he wanders in a daze through downtown Memphis; where sultry, mysterious visuals enrapture and entrance, telling the story through mood rather than classic narrative format. Boys ride bikes, his grandfather follows on crutches and there is more than a hint of romance. Occasionally Beal breaks into song with snatches of bluesy, jazz music suggesting the beginnings of new compositions or are they just musical memories.? A frustrating film that somehow leaves us wanting to know and hear more. MT

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MEMPHIS IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE SUNDANCE UK FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

Hits (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director/Writer: David Cross

Cast: James Adomian, Lorenzo Beronilla, Joseph Bevilaqua, Matty Blake

96min Comedy Drama US

Known for Arrested Development, David Cross’s dark comedy debut explores the cult of celebrity in the YouTube generation and the unrealistic expectations it engenders. Set in Liberty, a small town in upstate New York, a series of deluded and embittered characters struggle to make a living. Dave Stuben (Matt Walsh) spends his days haranguing the local council over his civil rights. His daughter Katelyn (Meredith Hagner) is desperate for fame as a singer and will do anything to appear on ‘The Voice’, an X-Factor-style programme. When Dave’s angry outbursts appear on YouTube, a local friend and drug peddler (an older-looking Michael Cera) decides to show them to his client Donovan (James Adomian) who mashes them up on a video that goes viral. The fallout is predictably hilarious, but it’s the comedy performances and well-formed characterisations that make this piece consistently enjoyable, much in the same way as John Morton’s BBC outings 2012 and W1A. Cross slightly loses control of his material in a feature that often feels chaotic and overwrought. A tighter rein on the bitter outbursts would work in its favour; that said, HITS conveys its message cleverly as a worthwhile piece of 21st century satire. MT

SUNDANCE FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

The One I Love (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director: Charlie McDowell

Writer: Justin Lader

Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson

Drama 91min US

Flailing marrieds Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass), visit a relationship counsellor (Ted Danson) who recommends some R&R in a tranquil villa deep in lush California countryside. When they arrive, the visitors’ book bears testament to the healing power of the place but surreal events take over, forcing them to reconnect in this inventive take on navel-gazing and couple dynamics. It’s impossible to reveal more without giving the whole plot away, but suffice to say that Charlie McDowell’s romantic comedy turned psychodrama is well-acted, intriguing and carries an unexpected sting in the tale. MT

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THE ONE I LOVE IS SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE UK 2014 FROM 25-27 APRIL 2014

They Came Together (2014) Sundance UK 2014

Director: David Wain Writers: David Wain and Michael Showalter

Cast: Cobie Smulders, Paul Rudd, Christopher Roland, Michael Shannon

83min RomCom US

Following in the vein of Matt Damon’s Promised Land – this clichéd rom-com meets corporate demon versus local entrepreneur flick is one truckle of cheesiness.

Molly (Amy Poehler) is small sweet-shop who faces serious competition from Joel’s big chain megastore that opens in the road opposite – and, 0f course, despite the competition, they fall in love. Told through flashback during a cosy dinner between Molly, Joel and their friends; their love story is hilariously revealed with all the usual side-dishes of getting together, splitting up, re-uniting, meeting the parents (and the grandparents) and so forth, with some laugh-out-loud moments and uneven patches where the jokes are re-worked until rather threadbare. That said, the performances are entertaining throughout especially from the leads and Ed Helms, Cobie Smulders and Max Greenfield who work hard to bring it all together. A mixed bag of sweeties, then, but enjoyable in the end. MT

THEY CAME TOGETHER IS SCREENING DURING THE SUNDANCE LONDON WEEKEND FROM 25 APRIL 2014 at 02, NORTH GREENWICH LONDON

Afternoon Delight (2013) DVD

Director: Jill Soloway

Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor, Jane Lynch

USA 99min Comedy Drama

Very much prescribed viewing for any affluent and intelligent women who give up work to focus on kids, Jill Soloway’s whip-smart feature debut is fearless and refreshingly frank in its expose of what can happen to those that hunger for interest outside the normal routine of family life.

This is Silverlake, an upmarket suburb of LA where creative and vivacious Rachel (Hahn) and successful husband Jeff (Josh Radnor) live in modernist, low-key charm. Very much part of the local Jewish community of fund-raising wives and workaholic partners, Rachel confesses to her unprofessional analyst (Jane Lynch) “I know I shouldn’t complain, there are women going to fetch water in Darfour and getting raped”. She’s witty, urbane and full of compassion with a loveable tot called Logan.

And it’s very much Kathryn Hahn’s film and her first real chance to dip her toe in a full dramatic lead which she handles with considerable complexity bringing humour and likeability to a woman who, on the face of it, is spoit and bored. Faced with Jeff’s disinterest in their sex life and a dwindling libido, she decides to spice things up with a visit to the local lap-dancing club on the advice of her close friend Stephanie (Jessica St Clair) who claims it works wonders for her own relationship with husband Bo (Keegan Michael Kee).

Here she bonds with McKenna (Juno Temple), a local sex worker who manages a appealing mix of honesty and coquettish charm, very similar to that of her previous roles. Juno’s vulnerability brings out the protective side in Rachel and she invites her to be their live-in childminder. Josh Radnor as Jeff, accepts grudgingly, settling for his stock boho Jewish guy with with tousled sex appeal, much like those of Liberal Arts and How I Met Your Mother.

The dialogue is so engaging and spot on you hardly notice a gradual shift in tone from comedy to serious drama as the social dynamic gradually turns dark during an evening with friends. with coruscating consequences all round. But all is not lost. AFTERNOON DELIGHT may have its detractors but for those who buy into its inventive and edgy appeal and Hahn’s authentic portrayal of female disillusionment, the rewards are plenty. MT

ON DVD MAY 4th 2014

Visitors (2013)

As a meditative contemplation of life, Godfrey Reggio’s film in black and white film will polarise audiences. Opening with another Philip Glass’s electronic mind-numbing soundtrack, the tone is one of menace and portending gloom. Gradually the face of an ape looms into view, followed by a spacecraft. Is this going to be a mystery from outer space, a documentary on UFOs or astronauts?

Soon we discover there is no traditional narrative or dialogue just sound and vision. We are left to contemplate, for what seems like an eternity, a series of faces as inquiring of the audience as it is about them. Time lapse sequences follow endless views of buildings, tree stumps and hands – all painstakingly portrayed by Reggio’s unrelenting lens. A filmmaker of outstanding originality and vision, who has given us KOYAANISQATSI (1982), POWAQQATSI (1988); ANIMA MUNDI (1992) and NAQOYQATSI (2002) has made a powerful contribution to the film world. Yet VISITORS feels cold, uninviting and difficult to engage with. You will either embrace his approach as filmic Nirvana or turn and walk away. MT

KOYAANISQATSI is now on BFI PLAYER

The Double (2013) DVD LFF 2014

Set in a back-to-the-future dystopia, this doom-filled drama, based on Dostoyesky’s short story, is suffused with all kinds of influences from Kafta to Orwell to Polanski.’s The Tenant.

Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to Submarine, features a similar cast but the main reason to see it is Jesse Eisenburg’s double-act as a troubled young man (Simon) struggling with his identity. Tortured by a mindless existence pushing paper in a faceless organisation and further traumatised by a suicide in the building; he’s then thwarted by a supercilious doppelgänger (James) who appears on the payroll, stealing his professional limelight, threatening to win the heart of his crush and female colleague Hannah (Mia Wasikowska).

The tone throughout is brooding and unsettling. Suspicion, doubt and fearfulness are constant themes that fuel its edgy narrative. In the same vein as Polanski’s Trelkovsky; Simon’s neurosis morphs into full blown psychosis as he loses control of reality or, at least, of what reality is imagined to be in this warped and sinister storyscape.

Despite touches of brilliance, largely due to Eisenburg (whose angst-ridden persona was pre-honed to perfection in Night Moves 2013), and a suberb cameo from Paddy Considine; The Double feels as cold and uninhabited as a Edward Hopper painting – intriguing to look at but emotionally unable to involve.

THE DOUBLE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4 APRIL 2014

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Wrinkles (2011)

Director: Ignacio Ferreras

Writers: Angel de la Cruz, Paco Roca, Ignacio Ferreras, Rosanna Cecchini

Voices of Matthew Modine, Martin Sheen, George Coe

89min Animated drama

One day, we will all have empathy for Ignacio Ferreras’ characters shuffling towards death in his brilliantly-bleak animated feature set in a retirement home. Based on a comic by Paco Roca, the tragic inmates compete to survive against the odds: bereft of dignity, bewildered and beset by Alzheimer’s, incontinence, drug regimes and each other. As they regress into a childlike state of helplessness, an ill-judged bid for freedom results in a comic tragedy. WRINKLES is a film that bravely says “Do not go gentle into that dark night!”

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ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH APRIL NATIONWIDE AND ON DVD AND BLU-RAY FROM 28TH APRIL 2014

Sundance London 25 – 27 April 2014

SUNDANCE LONDON is a great way to catch up on the latest US indie titles hot off the runway from Sundance Utah and brought to you by the lovely Robert Redford. Conveniently, it all takes place under one roof at the O2 Centre which is just a hop away on the Jubilee Line from the centre of town. Plenty of cafes and bars nearby if you fancy a bite to eat and there are music events too, so it’s not just a paradise for cinephiles. We covered SUNDANCE UTAH in detail but here’s a round-up of the films we particularly recommend amongst the 20 titles offered. Booking opens on 28th March, so get your skates on!

BLUE RUIN — A mysterious outsider’s quiet life turns upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. In a US version of LEON, he fights back at the men who have ruined his life. Director and Writer Jeremy Saulnier hasn’t quite got the caché of Luc Besson but you can’t have everything and this indie thriller is every bit as stylish and moody. Cast: Macon Blair, Amy Hargreaves, Sidné Anderson, Devin Ratray, Kevin Kolack.

THE CASE AGAINST 8 : Shot over five years, this newsworthy documentary picks up on the same-sex marriage theme, exploring the case to overturn California’s ban, it follows a motley crew of campaigners in their fight for justice. Sundance US Documentary Winner for Directing.

FINDING FELA : the indefatigable, award-winning Alex Gibney (Silence in the House of God) is at it again with this musical documentary about Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life, music, and political importance. In conjunction with the film, there’s a free performance from Dele Sosimi, one of the original members of Fela Kuti’s bank, with an Afrobeat orchestra on Sunday, 27 April.

THE TRIP TO ITALY: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head off to the continent for a fun-filled epicurean outing to search out the finest wines known to humanity and delicious food too. Not to be confused with the BBC2 series that starts on April 4th.

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER: (Director: David Zellner, Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner) — The dark humour of this Coen Brothers-style drama has a strange appeal it also stars one of the writers Nathan Zellner as a decent guy who helps a doltish Japanese woman, convinced that a satchel of money buried in a fictional film is, in fact, real. Leaving her structured life in Tokyo for the frozen Minnesota wilderness, she comes across people even weirder than herself, in her quest for the pot of gold. Cast: Rinko Kikuchi. Winner of a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. UK Premiere

LITTLE ACCIDENTS (Director and screenwriter: Sara Colangelo) — In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets. Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Chloë Sevigny, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas. International Premiere

FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE. SUNDANCE LONDON 25 -27 APRIL 2014

Like Father, Like Son (2013) DVD

The theme of paternity and nature versus nurture has captured the imagination of directors and filmgoers of late: Place Beyond the Pines, It’s All So Quiet and While I Lay Dying are some recent outings. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films tend to focus on family life and Like Father, Like Son is no exception, looking at the question of whether paternity is a genetic issue or one connected to the ties that build up gradually between parents and their offspring as mutual affection bonds them over time.

Here Japanese TV and Music star Masaharu Fukuyama brings a touch of glamour and a great of insight to the role of Ryota, an emotionally distant but sophisticated architect and father who seems to have the perfect life with submissive wife Midori (Michoko Ono) and adorable little boy Keita. Perfect, of course, until we discover that due to a grave error, his son is actually not related to him at all. On the other side of town, his real boy is being raised by Yudai (Frank Lily), a warm-hearted shopkeeper who has completely different priorities about parenting from Ryota; prioritising shared experiences with his family and three kids.

Naturally, when the hospital admits the error, a switch at birth, the parents’ lives are blown apart in ways that seem entirely plausible. As the predictable issues gradually surface, it becomes increasingly apparent that there can be no satisfactory outcome for anyone concerned in this gentle, almost wistful story with its soft and sympathetic visuals, atmospheric classical score and moments of idiosyncratic humour that lift the unleavened tone of sadness as the tragic fallout send ripples through their lives.

There are some lovely naturalistic performances here from the children and despite a rather schematic storyline this is a sweetly moving and deeply heartfelt drama that will resonate with fathers everywhere. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD

Reaching for the Moon (2013)

Dir.: Bruno Barreto

Cast: Miranda Otto, Gloria Peres, Tracy Middendorf

Brazil 2013, 118 min.

In 1951, the poet Elisabeth Bishop (1911-1979), suffering from writer’s block, travels from New York to Rio de Janiero, on the advice of fellow poet Robert Lowell. There she visits her college friend Mary, who lives with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares (1910-1967) in an idyllic retreat in the countryside. Soares, an imposing, strong willed woman, clashes immediately with the fragile, introvert and shy Bishop, who wants to leave but food poisoning intervenes and she stays – for another 14 years.

Barreto (Four Days in September) tries successfully to avoid a melodrama and succeeds in a character study of the three leads. Bishop, not surprisingly extremely neurotic after the loss of her father before her first birthday and the institutionalising of her mother when she was five, uses alcohol to dampen her fear of losing people close to her again. She says to Soares “I am not drinking only because things go wrong, I am drinking when I am happy too, because I am afraid to lose you”.

Winning the Pulitzer creates even more fear for Bishop, because the expectations are raised. Paris-born Soares, on the other hand. acts when challenged. Self-confident, she survives in a world ruled by men – no mean feat, considering the balance of power between the sexes – particularly in South America during the fifties and sixties. She rules both Bishop and Mary, lovingly, but with a strong hand. Mary is by far the more socially responsible, compared with the self-obsessed Bishop, more attractive too – but Soares wants what she can’t get: the opposite of herself. In the end, her unsuccessful quest destroys her.

Gloria Peres is a brilliant Soares, vibrant and full of life’s optimism, whilst Otto is just right as the simpering, but sly Bishop. Middendorf’s Mary copes well with being “pig in the middle” in this tug of love and war. Camera work is lush and sumptuous, full of original angles and tracking shots. The music is staying well in the background, helping to bring a clearer understanding for the viewer, instead of drowning out all the nuances. But the greatest success for Barreto is that REACHING FOR THE MOON is neither a case celebre or a lesbian drama. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 18 APRIL (ICA LONDON + BRIGHTON

DVD ON DEMAND FROM 28 APRIL 2014 WITH INTERVIEW AND FEATURETTE

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We Are the Best (2013) Venice 2013

Director: Lukas Moodysson

Writer: Lukas and Coco Moodysson

Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne, Johan Liljemark, Matthias Wiberg

102min Sweden Drama

Lukas Moodysson moves away from his more serious fare with this upbeat celebration of teenage girlhood set in eighties Stockholm and based on a graphic novel by his wife, Coco. Refusing to believe that punk is dead; rebellious, rank outsiders Bobo (Mira Barkhammer) and Klara (Mira Grosin) get together to form a girl-band. The only trouble is, they can’t play any instruments. Enter the unlikely figure of Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), a committed Christian and classical guitar player, who is persuaded to join the fun and frolics and, voilà, the band is born. The tone turns more serious when the girls join forces with a boy band and competitiveness enters the arena but their strong friendship conquers all in the end. The music may be outdated but it’s their natural performances as actors that really win the day as they embark on unexpected stardom in a confident and fun-filled way. Brim-full of irreverence and teenage angst as well as exuberant charm, We Are The Best, has appeal for all age-groups with its superb sense of place and infectious joie de vivre that captures the era and guarantees some out loud moments. MT

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ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 APRIL 2014 NATIONWIDE

Willow and Wind (2000) Beed-o Baad The Cinema of Childhood Season

Dir.: Mohammad-Ali Talebi Writer: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Hadi Alipour, Amir Janfada, Majid Alipour

Iran/Japan 1999, 81 min.

WILLOW AND WIND headlines a touring film season exploring and celebrating rare film classics about children “Cinema of Childhood”. The season launches this week with Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film that poetically mirrors the political unrest in Iran at the beginning of this century and, in particular, the concerns surrounding artistic censorship.

A young schoolboy in a primary school in the Iranian mountains is threatened by his teacher with immediate expulsion, if he does not repair a broken window, which he smashed whilst playing football days ago. The boy’s father has no time or inclination to help him, and so he has to turn to his new friend, who has recently joined the class. Together they somehow manage to get the funds, but the glass merchant lives miles away from the school. Our hero stumbles with the big plate of glass through the wild landscape, but arrives with the window plane intact at his destination. Just when he seems to be successful against all odds, the gathering storm finally brings his odyssey to an unfortunate end.

Based on a script by Abbas Kiarostami, director Mohammad-Ali Talebi (Bag of Rice, 1998) has painted more than filmed this poem about loneliness in childhood. Ozu and Bresson immediately spring to mind, their fragile child characters in a world of insensitive adults are very much related to all the children in this film. But, surprisingly too, there are also echoes of early Hitchcock films, where children are the victims of the adult world. Talebi starts his discourse in poetic realism right at the beginning of the film, when the newcomer to the class, coming from an Iranian region where it hardly rains, is naturally more fascinated by the rain than the lesson. The weather plays a central role in the film, nearly always having a negative influence on the hero’s struggle. Adults are shown as remote: even when they want to help, they are unable and sometimes unwilling to engage with the childrens’ problems. Modes of transport are archaic and unreliable, not helping the quest of the boy, which is thwarted at every turn. Talebi’s narrative, fraught with incidents, is always second to his lyricism; dialogue is minimal and feels redundant, since the tortured look of the main character tells the story on his own. The howling wind and wild landscape is integrated beautifully, always playing a main role in the proceedings.

The camera is very mobile: panning and tracking vigorously, panoramic shots of the mountains are breathtaking. The young boys Razam and Kuchakpourso give convincing performances as they form a bond of friendship, their vigour contrasted (rightfully) with the adults, who seem either subdued or pedantic. Merhad Jenabi’s intense original score underlines the enfolding drama without intruding. Willow and Wind successful creates a world of childhood, full of passionate dreams and, at the same time, rejection by an adult world – the boy’s imagination – which drives him on, so much superior to the dreary world of the adults. In this atmospheric mood piece, Talebi shows us, that in the process of growing up, we loose often much more than we gain. AS

HEADLINING the SEASON ‘THE CINEMA OF CHILDHOOD‘ AT THE FILMHOUSE EDINBURGH

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) East of Eden (1955) Giant (1956) An Icon Restored

Director: Nicholas Ray Writer: Stewart Stern Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran 111min

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE gets a sparkling makeover as a tribute to the actor James Dean’s major films. It features his definitive role and goes down in history as one of the iconic movies of the 1950s. As Jim Stark, the archetypal troubled teenager from a dysfunctional family, arriving in a new town and falling in with the wrong crowd and Natalie Wood’s fresh-faced girl next door, it captured the zeitgeist of the powerful cultural changes of the era and immortalised Dean as the all American hero, earning him a posthumous Oscar nomination for this mesmerising portrait.

EAST OF EDEN***

Director: Elia Kazan, Writers: Paul Osborn Cast: James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julia Harris, Richard Davalos 115min

Another dysfunctional family drama this time set in the lush landscape of California where Dean stars in his debut as Cal Trask, a man in turmoil competing with his brother, Abra (Richard Davalos) for the attention of his parents and the shared affections of their sweetheart in the shape of Julie Harris. Elia Kazan’s epic adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel (Cain and Abel) benefits from the atmospheric score of Leonard Rosenman and was the only film of the three to be released before Dean’s death. The exchanges between Dean and Raymond Massey as his father Adam add a vibrancy to the otherwise slow-burning potboiler: it is said James Dean deliberately provoked Massey off-set to get him into character.

GIANT ***

Director: George Stevens, Writer Edna Ferber, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers 201mins

Set to Dimitri Tiomkin’s rousing score, another love triangle this time based in the wide open spaces of a cattle ranch in Texas where James Dean plays Jett Rink, an embittered oil prospector set on destroying the family who has never welcomed him. Despite the dynamite leads (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor became lifetime friends after starring as, Leslie Benedict and Jordan), the film feels stolid and self-important. Nevertheless, GIANT was the highest grossing film in Warner Bros. history until the release of SUPERMAN (1978).

AN ICON RESTORED – JAMES DEAN’S MAJOR FILMS ARE SHOWING AT THE BFI AND NATIONWIDE FROM 18 APRIL 2014

Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) NOW ON DVD/BLU

Dir: Abdellatif Kechiche | Writers: Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche Cast: Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Jérémie Laheurte | 179’ France Drama

On her way to meet her would-be boyfriend Thomas, Adèle passes a girl with bright blue hair. The world seems to slow around her: Adèle is transfixed. In class she discusses a such fleeting glances, to love at first sight. Could this be what Adèle is experiencing? It certainly seems like it. It’s one of the weaker moments in Abdellatif Kechiche’s heart-breaking romantic drama, but it’s also a defining moment for Adèle.

During lunch with Thomas, Adèle will question whether it’s better to study books in class, or read them alone for pleasure. She likes to read, Thomas doesn’t. But later, when Adèle reconnects with the blue-haired girl – Emma – in a gay bar, we learn that her knowledge doesn’t extend to art. In fact, the only artist she knows is Picasso, in sharp contrast to Emma’s expansive knowledge as a Fine Art student. Their meeting in the bar seems, perhaps, a little too coincidental – but Emma doesn’t believe in chance, and maybe we shouldn’t either.

As a relationship begins to form between the two women, Adèle becomes uncomfortable around Emma’s friends, feeling she is not their equal culturally. Adèle might know literature, but not art or philosophy, and Emma’s knowledge in the latter area allows the girls a cover story: to Adèle’s parents, Emma is a friend who is helping her learn philosophy. There is truth in this alibi. Emma is broadening Adèle’s horizons: sexually, culturally and socially. Emma’s values, and her sense of freedom (both as a lesbian and as an artist), come from Sartre, who has taught her that humans are defined by their actions.

Sartre’s ideas, then, become the philosophical underpinning of a tale about the journey into womanhood, sexual awakening and the construction of human identities. Adèle’s reaction to Emma’s cultured friends mirrors her earlier conversations with Thomas, but with the tables turned. Culture and society form a part of who we are, who we become. As Adèle grows, becoming a woman, the film’s protracted duration allows Kechiche to leisurely build a detailed portrait, both of her personal development and her relationship with Emma – which Kechiche portrays with warmth, humour, drama and sex.

Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, has condemned the explicit nature of the sex scenes, labelling them ridiculous and unconvincing – and there’s certainly no denying that they are graphic and prolonged (their duration often seems excessive). At times, too, the camera lingers or pans over bodies in a gratuitous manner. When Emma teaches Adèle to enjoy the taste of shellfish, one can’t help but wonder if it’s all a cheap, sleazy metaphor.

But, the sex scenes aside, the film is a convincing and moving exploration of romance. Kechiche’s camera catches much of the action in close up and, if the visuals themselves at times seem rather unexceptional, the sterling work of lead actors Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adèle) and Léa Seydoux (Emma) more than makes up for it. The film’s original French title translates literally as Life of Adele: Chapters 1 + 2, and the thought of seeing further parts would be extremely tantalising, were it not for the reports of the ‘horrible’ experiences that Kechiche put his actors through on set. In response, Kechiche has even said the film shouldn’t be released, that it’s ‘too sullied’ – but that’s too far. The shoot may have been gruelling, but the results speak for themselves. Blue Is The Warmest Colour, now ten years old, is a film that deserves to be seen. Alex Barrett

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Nebraska (2013) Mubi DVD

Dir.: Alexander Payne; | Cast: Bruce Dern, Bill Forte, June Squibb, Stacey Keach | USA 2013, 115 min. Drama/Comedy

Bruce Dern won Best Actor at Cannes for his portrayal of Woody Grant in Alexander Payne’s sixteenth outing NEBRASKA. In common with all his features this is a dry comedy, and a road movie. But this time there is nothing to explore, nothing to find. Anyone with ageing parents will appreciate the banal humour that can be found in simple exchanges between close members of a family who have grown up together and found their roles evolving from son to parent, lover to carer. Bob Nelson’s spare screenplay captures the caring, sympathy of David Grant (Will Forte) for his father’s predicament and the occasionally snarling ridicule that Bruce Dern’s Woody has for his youngest son.

The vastness of the countryside and the broken emptiness of the towns during the journey from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska are captured meticulously in the black and white landscapes: this not a journey into any future, but a glum portrait of the past and, in some ways, America’s past glory now reflected in the desolate urban spaces. But also a lack of hope for the future, both socially and economically, as seen through the younger generation’s lack of real substance. And, like the main protagonist, the ageing alcoholic Woody Grant, this America is dying. The vastness of the abandoned land and the dilapidated streets and ramshackle buildings of small town America are dying a slow death. NEBRASKA is close to The last Picture Show, only even more moribund.

Woody is married to Kate, and their marriage is full of nagging (from her side) and blatant egoism from his. As Kate, June Squibb is hilarious without intending to be so and captivates with her strength of personality and self-belief. They live a small flat that looks like a night shelter. Sons David and Ross, are decent and kind men, the latter being more adjusted to modern life than his brother, who is in a dead-end job, can’t commit to his girlfriend and living in a bed sit that makes his parents’ place look grandiose.

Woody, like most men in his late eighties has reverted to a kind of childhood: hearing and memory are selective – he stumbles around on the foothills of dementia – with a yen for booze. One day he gets hold of a flyer telling him that he has won a million dollars – he only needs to collect it with a company in Lincoln, Nebraska. Whilst Kate is dead against the idea; David, out of empathy and partly selfish reasons – agrees to take his father – hoping (in vain) for increased bonding and a chance to get away from his own depressing life . On the way there they meet Woody’s family and friends in Woody’s hometown Hawthorne, Neb. Here David learns about his father’s youth, his trauma in the Korean War, and also about the greed of his so-called friends, lead by Ed Pegram (Keach), who suddenly remember vast amounts of money Woody’s them in the light of his prospective fortune. The money is a scam but the trip offers catharsis; laying bare all the hidden hopes, aspirations and desires between father and son.

NEBRASKA is never sentimental, the bleakness is unrestrained. It’s a world where parents have now proved more successful than their children in every way and despite a positive ending we know how short-lived that will be. The narrative is driven forward by sublime camerawork, intense images staying with us longer than the simple but rewarding plot. Acting veteran Bruce Dern as Woody is tough yet vulnerable and Will Forte’s David has just enough naivety to make himself believable and appealing. But the star is the camera. When panning over the presidents at the monument of Mount Rushmore, (looks unfinished – says Woody) we see a desperate yearning for a past long lost and a people interested only in religion, guns and cars. MT

NEBRASKA IS NOW ON MUBI

Ignacio Ferraras – filmmaker

Matthew Turner spoke to Ignacio Ferreras, director of Tokyo Onlypic (2008), How to Cope with Death (2002) about WRINKLES (Arrugas) his latest film:

MJT: I saw the film in San Sebastian in 2011 and absolutely adored it. How did the project come about, first of all? Were you a big fan of Paco Roca’s comic book?

IF: Thanks. I probably should not mention this, but the film was finished right before that first showing at San Sebastian, practically without an hour to spare. It was a very crazy time leading up to that festival, I hope I never have to go through something like that again. I remember the last day of the festival, rolling up my trousers and wading into the sea behind the festival complex to get a moment of peace and quiet and adjust to the fact that after two years of non-stop work the film was finally done.

About Paco’s comic-book, I had not read it when the producer of the film, Manuel Cristobal, approached me with the idea of directing the adaptation. His proposal was in fact a brown envelope with the comic book and a note which said, “Are you interested?” or something like that. And of course I was very interested. So I was very fortunate, the project just came to me out of the blue, it was Manuel that brought us together.

MJT: How closely was Paco Roca involved with the film?

IF: Quite closely, although for the most part we were working in different countries, which is probably why we are still friends. Paco took care of all character design and was also involved in the writing. He gave me lots of additional material that he had accumulated while he was researching the comic-book but which he had not been able to use, and some of that material found its place in the film.

MJT: The film is very much like watching the comic book come to life. What are the main challenges involved in adapting a comic book into a film? Did you feel pressure to stick closely to the original artwork? How did you set about doing that?

IF: Was there pressure? That’s hard to say. I’d say not; there weren’t any situations where I wanted to introduce changes and I was overruled. For the most part I was left to do whatever I thought was necessary for the film, although of course I was always aware that I needed to remain reasonably close to the original work. It’s a difficult balancing act, on the one hand there’s a danger to just follow the inertia of the comic book and forget you are making a film. And on the other hand there’s the danger to start changing things for the sake of it, just to assert your authority over the film. I think something that was very helpful was the fact that I was working on the animatic in Edinburgh with my wife Rosanna Cecchini and we made a point that she would not read the comic-book but take my work as her starting point, so she could treat it not as an adaptation but as an original work from the start. And we had more or less a year to work on this in relative isolation, although of course we were sending groups of sequences to Paco and Manuel for feedback, but we had that space to develop the film as a film without having to justify why we were changing this or that. It is interesting that you say the film is like watching the comic book come to life because if you watch the film with the book in hand you’ll see that they are actually quite different, even if the film covers the main events in the book. But I think it is true to say that the film feels very close to the book, because it respects the intention and the characters of the book, even if some of the events do change. All too often adaptations completely change the intention and characters of the original work, like for example in Blade Runner; it’s a good film, but I wouldn’t call it an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? because it turns the intention of the novel on its head, and I don’t think that’s fair on the original work. So I like Blade Runner as a film but not as an adaptation.

MJT: Were there any particular influences on the film? Did you watch any other films or read any books in preparation?

IF: I’d say that I’m very influenced by the work of Isao Takahata, and although I was not specifically thinking about films like Grave of the Fireflies or Only Yesterday when I was working on Wrinkles, there’s no doubt that Isao Takahata’s work has shaped the way I think about animated films. So I think it is fair to say that Isao Takahata’s work was by far the greatest influence on Wrinkles.

MJT: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

IF: Not a particular individual scene. I think I was more concerned with the overall flow of the film and I can’t really think of scenes as separate from each other. To me the film is one big unit, I can’t say that I like one scene more than another… it’s a bit like saying what’s your favourite ingredient in a dish; you either like the dish or you don’t, but it’s hard to say what the best ingredient is, is it the steak or the salt that makes it tasty? It’s easier to say what you don’t like, when something has gone wrong and did not turn out the way you imagined, but I find it impossible to pick a favourite scene.

MJT: What was the hardest thing to get right?

IF: I think it was to get the right balance between being critical and being realistic about the budget and schedule. Animation films can be very dangerous in that way, you can easily become obsessive about the quality but of course the meter is ticking and the budget can evaporate very quickly, so you have to have a very clear idea of what standard of animation you can afford and then be consistent from beginning to end. It’s a question of making the most of what you’ve got. I imagine it is different when you are working with big budgets, but my experience working in European films, which always have a relatively small budget, is that you either have to sacrifice some of the visuals or some of the storytelling. If you spend too much on the visuals you’ll run out of money and you’ll have to start compromising on the storytelling. I decided to compromise on the visuals from the start, in order to not have to compromise on the storytelling later on. I think that was the right thing to do for this kind of story. Quite a few people have said to me that five minutes into the film they forget they are watching animation and they are just engrossed in the story, and that is, for me, the best compliment.

MJT: Did you cut anything out that you were sorry to see go?

IF: No, I didn’t cut anything because of lack of money or time or for any other external pressure, so anything that was cut was cut for the good of the film – I hope. If we had had more money, the film would still have had the same shots; they would have been finished to a better standard and they would been more beautiful to look at, but there wouldn’t be any extra shots or scenes. I cut lots of scenes that I really liked as individual scenes, but somehow they did not feel right in the flow of the film. I think this is perhaps the most important thing for a director: to be absolutely ruthless in your editing. “Kill your darlings” is one of those often repeated clichés, but I think it is right. Of course, when I look at the film now, nearly three years after finishing it, there are some things I would probably change, but that’s different.

How did you approach the casting for the English dub?

IF: I didn’t. The English dub was handled by the distributors and, although I think they have done a very good job, I did not have anything to do with it. I don’t think this is unusual, directors are not normally involved in the dubbing of their films to a foreign language. Of course in this case it so happens that I live in the UK and I speak English but that is just a coincidence. They would not have asked for my opinion if they had dubbed the film into Japanese (which by the way they didn’t, they used subtitles in Japan) so it is not surprising that I wasn’t approached when they dubbed Wrinkles into English. Now that this English language version is coming out I’m getting asked this question a lot, I think this is because dubbing a film into English is quite a rare thing and people are not really aware of how it works, but by the time Wrinkles was dubbed into English my work on the film had finished a long time ago. Generally speaking I don’t like dubbed films, but I think the dub of Wrinkles is much better than usual and the choice of Martin Sheen and George Coe for the main characters was very fortunate.

MJT: Are there any other animators you admire? Do you have any favourite animated films?

IF: As I mentioned before Isao Takahata is my favourite director, not just my favourite director of animated films but my favourite director-period. I also admire very much the work of Hayao Miyazaki. A list of my favourite animated films is really a list of their films; just look up their filmographies and you will have a complete list of my favourite animated films. And then there’s also the “French New Wave” of animated features, of which Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville is still my favourite exponent and which I think represents the beginning of genuinely distinctive European commercial feature animation – I’m also very interested in these films.

To this, I’d have to add that I’m as influenced by live-action cinema as I am by animation, by the films of Kubrick, Kurosawa, Ozu and many many others. Although if I had to pick just one favourite film I think it would be Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday (Omohide Poro Poro).

MJT: What’s your next project?

IF: At the moment I’m working on an animated feature about the life of Danish writer and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, which is still in the early stages of script development. Yet again, it’s a story which might not seem like an obvious choice for an animated feature, but Kierkegaard was a really fascinating character and I think there’s an amazing film to be made about him – an amazing animated film.

WRINKLES IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18 April 2014

Max Kennedy and the American Dream (2011) VOD release

Dir.: Vikram Zutshi

Documentary with Max Kennedy; USA 2011, 59 min.

Max Kennedy is a ‘Minuteman’, part of a small group of white, middle-aged vigilantes, who’ve patrolled the USA/Mexican border since 2005, chasing illegal immigrants. They work in close contact with the official Boarder guards and are proud of the voluntary work they do for their country. They give themselves names like ‘Li’l Dog; or ‘Gadget’ and are friends with the ranchers on the American side of the border. Their motto is “Stop the cockroaches from coming over the wall”.

Max, who joined the Minuteman in 2007, comes from Brooklyn and proudly shows of a photo of himself as a hippie with a guitar. The interviewer is baffled, but Max opines that immigrant workers took his job and were responsible for the break up of his family. His wife had to have an abortion and that was the end of our marriage. “You know, they have to have control over their own bodies, these women”, he sniggers, showing that misogyny goes hand in glove with racism. Blaming the American public for his plight, he claims they are ‘gullible beyond belief’.

On the other side of fence, literally and figuratively, are the Mexican migrants, unrelenting in their pursuit of entering the United States. Sometimes there are shouting matches with loudhailers at the border: right wing politicians and Mexicans shout abuse at each other: one side wanting to keep their country white, the other one asking the Whites to go back to Europe, where they came from. In Mexico City, the film crew visits a “Rehabilitation centre for the Deported”. Some Mexicans have lived in the US for 30 years and are having to leave their families behind. Not surprisingly, they are hell bent on returning.

After 15 month of “service”, Max has enough and goes to Las Vegas, to work as a security guard. But an accident lands him in a wheelchair with a broken ankle. He is broke and returns to the Californian border with Mexico. “I am not a quitter”, he declares proud from his camper van, being back in service. The end credits show, that he is not a man of his word: since 2009 he has been living in California with his sister.

The greatest strength of the film is the Zutschi’s non-judgemental stance: the viewer does not really dislike Max, even though, we hear him make the most radical statements. Deep down he is not an evil person, but a drifter without a home – much like the migrants he persecutes. He can be witty at times, calling Las Vegas “A Disneyland for adults”. Sure, he kids himself, stating “that he has helped more Mexicans than he hurt”, but his actions are more the result of his utter helplessness. In a weapon shop, he behaves like a child in a toy shop, even though he has no money, he lets the sales assistant explain to him the all deadly merchandise – not really aware of the consequences the use of these weapons could have. He is a regressed child, dangerous on an infantile level, he has never grown out of.

The mostly handheld camera catches the emotions in close-ups, and shows the barbaric fences, which even manage to ruin the beaches. But like the tenor of the whole film, there is always enough distance in the images; to make us aware that there is no solution to this conflict. One cannot pick a side: this is a fundamental battle of two dispossessed groups. AS

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WATCH MAX KENNEDY ON AMAZON PRIME, FANDOR (US) OR JOURNEYMAN FILMS STREAMING VIDEO PORTAL (US) WWW.JOURNEYMAN.TV AND IS SOON TO COME TO iTUNES, NETFLIX.

Life Feels Good (2013) Kinoteka 2014

Director/Writer: Maciej Pieprzyca

Dawid Ogrodnik, Doroto Kolak, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Helena Sujecka, Mikolaj Roznerski

107min Poland Disability Drama

Based on a true story, LIFE IS GOOD is a touchingly unsentimental portrait of life with cerebral palsy, as experienced by a young Polish man, trying his best to communicate intelligently with his family. On diagnosis, his mother is made brutally aware of his condition with no attempts to soften the blow. But despite the awkwardness and distorted bodily movements of its central character, there is a serene and almost poetic quality to this quietly observed art house piece, enhanced by soft visuals and a pleasant original soundtrack combining classical piano with soft whistling tunes. Through interior monologues we learn how normal his feelings actually are despite his flailing limbs and incoherent utterings. Masterfully played by non-impaired actors, the film manages to evoke the frustration, bewilderment and isolation of disability from all perspectives.

Mateuz (Kamil Tkacz) enjoys an emotionally stable and almost happy childhood surrounded by his traditional family of loving mother (Dorota Kolak) and inspiring father (Arkadiusz Jakubik). The girl next door (Anna Karcmarczyk) briefly enters his life as he develops into manhood (then played by Dawid Ogrodnik), but a sexual relationship sadly eludes him. Life gets tougher in the asylum where he moves, when his mother is unable to care for him on the death of his father. There are echoes of MY LEFT FOOT and THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY and even ABUSE OF WEAKNESS here. Romance enters his life for the second time in shape of nurse Magda, and matters start to look up but it is clear that there is also a downside to this interest that is not entirely positive, but adds well-judged, authentic texture to this disability drama with its unexpected elements and upbeat ending. Cleverly evoking the shifting sands between the real person inside and our perception of them through their outward physical being, LIFE FEELS GOOD is a worthwhile and immersive addition to the sub-genre and won the GRAND PRIX at Montreal Film Festival. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF KINOTEKA 2014 WHICH RUNS FROM 24 APRIL UNTIL 30 MAY 2014.

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A Brutal Game (1983) Un Jeu Brutal DVD

Director/Writer: Jean-Claude Brisseau

Cast: Bruno Cremer, Emmanuelle Debever, Albert Pigot, Liza Heredia

89min Drama/thriller France

Jean-Claude Brisseau’s brooding psychological drama works both as a Chabrol-style thriller and a strangely-sensitive coming of age drama. Bruno Cremer plays Tessier, a mentally disturbed sadistic father who brutalises his rebellious crippled daughter, Isabelle, while moonlighting as a serial killer. Both are unsympathetic characters, but Brisseau evokes our pity for both Isabelle and Tessier, who is as much a victim as the perpetrator of his crimes, brought on through depression and dissatisfaction with his life. Emmanuelle Debever is suburb as Isabelle, a bitter and disillusioned romantic spirit. Magnificently set in the scorching heat of the Midi countryside, this disturbing character study is spiked with poetic and surreal flourishes; its sinister undercurrents heightened by Jean-Louis Valero’s atmospheric soundtrack. MT

A BRUTAL IS NOW ON DVD FOR THE FIRST TIME COURTESY OF AXIOM FILMS

Easy Money II Hard to Kill (2014) DVD/Blu

Director: Babak Najafi

Writer: Maria Karlsson From the novel by Jens Lapidus

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Fares Fares, Madeleine Martin, Dejan Cukic, Joel Spira

99min Sweden Crime Thriller

The first part of Daniel Espinosa’s catchily titled Snabba Cash (Easy Money) throbs with brutal energy from its impressive opening sequence to the bitter end. The Swedish-based crime thriller (from the book by Jens Lapidus), put him on the map and launched the big screen career of Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman. Some of the original cast join helmer Babak Najafi’s sequel that elaborates the story, cuts the running time, but loses some of the original’s stylish edgy velocity.

In EASY MONEY I, business student turned coke smuggler, JW, (Kinnaman) was heading for jail after a drug conviction. Three years later he’s institutionalised with the crippled Mrado, (shot in the closing moments) whose relationship with his little girl seems increasingly dreamlike. During the time inside, the two crims have buried the hatchet and formed a strong bond. In a bid to return to an honest living, Joel has developed trading software, attracting potential investors. Mahmoud (Fares Fares) is in debt to Serbian gang leader Radovan (Dejan Cukic), while Jorge (Matias Varela), also involved with Radovan, is working another potentially lucrative drugs deal worth 10 million. The love interest this time around switches from JW’s posh Swedish blond, Sophie (Lisa Henni) who’s given him the boot, to Jorge’s budding crush with one of Radovan’s prostitutes Nadja (Madeleine Martin). And when JW discovers that his well-healed ex-colleague and poker partner Nippe (Joel Spira) has stolen his software idea, a recidivist life with Mrado seems to be the only thing now on the cards.

In the hands on Babak Nataji, this thickly-plotted second part (there’s a third coming up) is less believable and more given over to happenstance and stylised melodrama (a car crash that traps the booty in the boot, conspiring crims fetching up in adjacent locations); but also highly immersive in its exploration of Stockholm’s inter-racial underworld.

Nataji keeps the balls in the air and us on our toes reading the English subtitles and following the blood-soaked turmoil as it twists and turns towards tragedy. Joel Kinnaman makes a convincing felon, retaining a scintilla of class in his steel-blue eyes, but Mrdo’s switch to back to psychopath-mode (in the closing moments) feels rather too facile. The rest of the cast are suitably vicious and Madeleine Martin’s turn as Nadja is fearlessly feisty. Ultimately this is a study in one man’s final descent into Hell after crossing a landscape of petty criminality. In Part II, JW goes from being a decent guy on the margins of society to fully-fledged bad boy in a treacherous snake-pit of venality. Will he redeem himself in the final part of the trilogy? From the look of his eyes in the showdown with Sophie, all bets are on. MT

EASY MONEY: HARD TO KILL IS NOW ON DVD/BLU-RAY and iTunes

EASY MONEY III: LIFE DELUXE is coming soon.

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Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears

On a cold, wet afternoon last October, Alex Barrett sat down with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani to discuss The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, on the day of its UK premiere at the London Film Festival.

AB: I was hoping we could begin with you describing The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears in your own words.

BF: For us, it’s like a cinematic experience. We have written the script so that each time you see the movie, you discover new things. There are different layers. We were very influenced in the writing by Satoshi Kon, the Japanese director who made The Perfect Blue. He has [also] inspired blockbusters in America like Inception. You know, it’s a dreamlike narrative. So the film is, for the first or second viewing, a cinematic experience, like a rollercoaster of images and sound, something very visceral. And after the screening maybe there are some things in your head which you begin to construct and begin to link. And that’s how you see it for the second, the third, or fourth time, each time seeing different things. And at the end maybe you will find all the keys. It’s a bit like David Lynch movies, you know? The first time you see them, you are fascinated by them, you don’t get it all but you have seen strong visions, strong visuals and sounds, and after maybe three or four viewings it becomes clear.

AB: In The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, and also in your first film Amer, there seems to be a real focus on eyes and on ears. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about what those organs symbolise for you?

BF: Ah, you have seen the ears? Most people see the eyes but not the ears.

HC: They are the organs of perception, and in the movie you are in the perception of the character.

BF: Amer and Strange Colour are not linear storytelling, but circular storytelling. There are lots of circular elements. It’s all about point of view, because we want a lot of ambiguity. An image can say something more than the first look at it [tells you]. It’s all the philosophy of giallo, in fact, and of Blowup, of Antonioni. It’s all about eyes and point of view. We work a lot on close ups and we are very intimate. We try to enter in the intimacy of the character, so we have a lot of the eyes and ears so…

HC: But not only eyes or ears…

BF: Chins!

HC: Everything. But the eye has a lot of meanings, because it can be voyeurism, it can tell about intrusion, the other life…

BF: Desire.

HC: Yes. Each time you give it another meaning.

AB: It’s interesting that you say people pick up on the eyes but not the ears, because I think that your films are very auditory. They have a lot going on with the soundtrack, as well as with the visuals. I felt – and maybe this is what you were getting at – that by showing us these eyes and ears you were trying to say to the viewer ‘you need to look and you need to listen’. And by using the close ups, you fracture the screen space, meaning that the viewer has to work harder to piece things together. Would you agree with that?

BF: Yes.

AB: Would you like to comment further?

BF: Personally, I love the close ups because it breaks the space. And you can introduce that dreamlike atmosphere because the space is totally exploded. And you explore the body as architecture. When you are in close up it’s like the body is very giant and it’s like the gigantism of the houses we shoot in.

HC: Yeah, with the close ups, we want the audience to feel the madness of the character. The close ups erase the space around him.

BF: You don’t have anything to hold onto. And as the film is about loss, about someone who is losing his mind, we want the audience to be lost. So the close up approach is a good one I think.

AB: I think that the use of giallo aesthetic has been discussed a lot within your work, but I’ve read that for your very first short film, it was Bruno who brought in the giallo aesthetic, and that Hélène came in with the aesthetic of Chris Marker. I was hoping you could talk about this a little bit, and I’m particularly interested to hear you talk about the influence of Chris Marker on your work.

HC: When we began to make short movies we had no money, but we wanted the texture of 35mm grain. So we shot in still frames, like La jetée. It inspired us to have narration and to have a special effect with no money.

BF: And with that element of the photography, we talk about the body as an object of desire. It permits us to refine the body, to make it an object.

AB: I think the pixilation reminded me more of Jan Svankmajer, and I was wondering what kind of influence surrealism has had on your work? There’s an image towards the end of Amer, a close up of Marie Bos’ eyes and the sweat on her face, which reminded me of a Man Ray photograph. So I was interested in whether surrealism, and people like Jan Svankmajer – and actually, also the avant-garde and people like Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren – whether these people are influences, or whether these are just things I’m reading into your work which isn’t intentional?

BF: We try to work a lot with our subconscious, so the surrealism comes easier. In Belgium there is a big tradition of surrealism. You have Magritte, and we have some early twenties movies, early surrealists. And we try to go back to this culture, which has a little bit disappeared because the Belgium cinema is very realistic. For Amer, there was some stuff from Buñuel, not the eye but the hands that come out from the belly. We love it when you don’t know if it’s a dream or reality. And, it was on purpose to take the surreal approach. Kenneth Anger is more [an influence] on the style and the aesthetic, the form. And the fetishistic approach to certain stuff, like in the detective’s little story about the button [in Strange Colour], you have all the texture of the dress, which reminds me of one of Anger’s shorts [Puce Moment], which focused on the texture of the dress of a Hollywood actress. For Maya Deren, it’s more the dreamlike universe, like in Meshes of the Afternoon which is like a dream. Someone in a loop, you know?

AB: Which reminded me very much of the loop sequence in The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears.

HC: Yes.

AB: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the way your directing relationship works? Often people who work in duos say that one works with the visuals and one works with the actors. But I was wondering about how you two do it?

HC: When we are writing it’s just like tennis. I make a version, he corrects it and gives me another version, which I correct. Then, when we are preparing the movie, we are discussing and fighting a lot, trying to agree on everything. Because it’s the time to get on the same wavelength. So then, when we are on the set, normally we are okay. We don’t lose time and we don’t fight in front of the crew. The more difficult part is the preparation and the writing.

BF: And the end of the movie, when we have to finalise the sound and the editing, because it’s very subjective, it’s very sensual. And we are very different. It’s like colours. Maybe she prefers blue and I prefer red. And we have to find a balance between our two subjectivities to do something very subjective.

HC: But on the set we are making everything together.

AB: I read that for Amer you filmed everything first on a digital camera, with you two playing all the parts. Did you do the same for The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears?

HC: Yes.

AB: So could you maybe talk to me a little about that process? Do you edit that material? Are you making the whole film in digital? How does that process work for you two?

BF: In fact, for this one we didn’t have the time to do it all. There are two storyboards. The first one is before we have seen the real locations, so we do an abstract storyboard in our head. And for some sequences it’s easy because it’s on a bed or something like that, so it’s no problem. And after, when we discover the locations and we choose which house we’re going to shoot in, we redo all the storyboards. Because we have seven houses to make one house we do all the editing to see if it all fits, if all the different locations fit together. So we have all the editing ready. And after [the shoot], when we arrive at the editing we review that map, if you want. So the biggest parts [of the edit] are to choose the good shots of the actors, and the rhythm.

AB: I’ve always wondered if shooting a digital test version first takes the fun out of the shoot, because you’ve thought it through so much in advance. Have you found this? I mean, when you come to the set are you just repeating what you’ve already done, or is it still an organic process?

HC: It’s impossible to repeat the same thing, because it’s really a rough draft. It’s only the two of us. It’s ridiculous. Totally. [Laughs]. But when you do that you’re more prepared if there is something which happens. And you can improve the shot, because you know what you want. Maybe you can have another idea with the light, with the actor, and you’re not stressed – it’s okay, because you know what you want really precisely.

BF: We shoot a lot. But we use it all in the editing. And as we have a lot of shots, we have to be very prepared because we do more shots than the normal film. We have been for The Strange Colour… in houses, or in various locations, which are very labyrinthine. They are so big that you can’t know in a minute what you are going to shoot, because it’s so intense. So we spend three days in the location watching all the points of view and thinking what would be the best for the storytelling for the movie, and how we are going to shoot? We won’t have the time to do that on the set because we have to be very fast.

HC: Yeah, to shoot in that kind of location, it’s not sensible to come in and improvise.

BF: It’s expensive to shoot in houses like that, so you have to… you have eight hours and you have to do 45 shots, so you have to be like an army [laughs].

AB: Before you made Amer, you trained by making a number of shorts. I read on the DVD of Amer that in 2004 you went off to Madagascar to make a very different type of film, which then fell apart for reasons beyond your control. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about that project, and speculate on whether, if that film had been finished, the films you’ve made since might have been very different?

BF: Well, we went to Madagascar and it was just after our…We had made four shorts in a universe like Amer and Colour, and we wanted to do something different: more sensual, more about time. We love Abbas Kiarostami, and [we wanted to do] something totally different. In Madagascar there was a special… the time was very special. It was very long and not like when you live in the city, where you are really stressed. The people who work are waiting a lot and it was about a driver, about a guy who was working as a chauffeur, who was always waiting waiting waiting. It was shot on the still frame, black and white. And we began the two day shoot, and there had been like a storm or something like that

HC: There was a cyclone…

BF: A cyclone which sucked away all the location we were supposed to shoot, so it was like carnage, chaos. And the guy who was acting in it left, and we never saw him again. And so maybe it could have been a turn in what we have done now. But yes, it was something totally different. But just after that we made a short film, called Santos Palace, and it was more in that [giallo] mood.

AB: And do you think your next film will be giallo, or something different?

BF: We have a third part for Amer and Colour, but we don’t think we’re going to do that now. We have to wait, take a breath, because it was eleven years that film, so it’s been a big part of our lives, so we have to take a breath. And at the end our collaboration was like Possession, you know, Zulawski? [Laughs] So we have to reconnect artistically on something that doesn’t come from us, and after we’ll go back to that giallo universe.

AB: Thank you very much.

BF: You’re welcome.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2014

Erik Skjoldbjærg Writer/Director

Erik Skjoldbjærg is best known for his films INSOMNIA and PROZAC NATION. Here he talks to Matthew Turner about the making of the film, which co-wrote and directed:

MT: How did the project come about, first of all? Obviously, it’s based on a true story…

ES: It’s based on true events, but the story, the way we put it together, I would say it’s fictional, the characters are invented, but inspired by the real people. The producer and two screenwriters had this idea whilst they were attending film school in Norway. The producer came to me in 2007 with an idea – it didn’t exist as a script at that point, it was just an idea of making a film about the point when we secured our oil resources and what it required, in terms of human expenses. So that was 2007, I was working on a different film at the time – I think I was doing a TV series and then a feature, so I didn’t start really working on this until 2011. Before that we were working on financing and there was script work to be done, but I worked on it since 2011, quite intensively.

MT: What kind of research did you do?

ES: We went and talked to some of these divers. Quite a few. We talked to the physiologists and a professor of modern oil history and then we started looking through archive material. When we got to that point it got a bit more tricky, because the oil companies, they were sceptical about giving us access. But a lot of this is publicly accessible anyway. And I like doing research – the last film I did was based entirely on research – it was a heist movie called Nokas. It was very popular in Norway, but for some reason didn’t travel that much. And that really gave me an appetite for doing research and I gained a lot from it, in many ways. So we started going into all these materials and it turns out that 99 divers died in the North Sea during the 70s, in various accidents. And quite a few of these accidents, the conclusion, if any, no-one really believes in. So I started looking into that. It’s such a big, complex amount of material that we had to sort of try and make it into a storyline and a coherent character journey, where we sort of blended various real people together into a character. But I’d say a lot of the situations you see are for real, like the experiment at the very start, it took place and they did hallucinate and they did see a bird and they did change the gas, all these things. And also just technically, to fully understand what is beyond actually just mechanically going down there at that level, why is it so dangerous and why is it something no-one’s done before. You know, we’ve had a man on the moon, why can’t we send someone four hundred metres down?

MT: You very deliberately have that echo of the moon landings, there’s that line about one small step for man. How did you approach the underwater sequences?

ES: In talking to all these divers, they told me this is weather dependent, because of currents and all sorts of stuff, but sometimes you could see, way, way away, far, far, far away and up towards, you could see the light of the boat, like a little dot. The light is really clear – and you’ve got to remember how dark it is, they told me. So at that point I was looking through all these underwater films and I found them not satisfactory, in the sense that they didn’t have any dynamics, they didn’t have proper depth of field, because the waters had turned muddy, which is what happens if you go diving nearly anywhere. So the production went on a quest, to try and find a place to shoot where you could guarantee clear water or infinite visibility. We did sort of think, well, could we do dry-for-wet sort of techniques and stuff, but they’re more Hollywood-based – my feeling was we wouldn’t have the proper resources to do it, so we would get somewhere in the middle and we’d run out of money and it wouldn’t look organic. So we kept pursuing this idea of where we could find clear water.

MT: So you shot them in a real location? You didn’t use a water tank?

ES: No, we went to Iceland and shot all the wide shots in an underwater crevice. It was glacier water, which has been filtered by lava sand for fifteen miles and then it sort of enters this crevice, but it has a current and it’s crystal clear and it’s ice cold. And because of that, we had to have professional divers to stand in some of the wide shots, because the equipment which we had established – the Pioneer diving equipment – we couldn’t use any warm elements or whatever. So it was a Finnish team who sort of experimented on how long you could be in two degrees Celsius water without freezing to death or something or something close to that. And they presented us with the idea we could shoot forty-five minutes twice a night, because we had to shoot at nights with the darkness and all that. So it meant we had to try and do six set-ups in one go, before they came up – I had to plan with the camera and everything, meticulously, what to do before they went down.

MT: So were you underwater for those sequences too?

ES: I experimented with going underwater to get the sense of it, but I didn’t go underwater while we were shooting, because it made no sense – it was better to be looking at the monitor and directing. Well, I’m not comfortable with water anyway, so I mean not for myself, but I like to think that it made more sense, to me, to stand up on top. It was freezing cold there as well and when you see the divers come up and they’re a sort of ash colour and they’re shaking uncontrollably, I didn’t realise that what I would be going through up on top, there’s a whole other level to what it means to freeze, you know?

MT: How did you approach the casting? Obviously you have both Norwegian actors and American actors, but you also have Stephanie Sigman, from Miss Bala. How did she get involved?

ES: I introduced this idea of a Mexican woman [as a character] – I was sort of inspired by the fact that these divers travelled the world and they were sort of quite ahead of their time. There was an odd community in Mexico, but I guess it’s also a metaphor for what Norway’s kind of gone on to do, when we started moving out in the world. So there was a Mexican character there, but the problem was we couldn’t afford to go to a Mexican casting agency, so I was looking at YouTube and I was looking at Mexican telenovelas [Mexican soap operas] and that was my method of casting, until I came across Miss Bala. There were five short sequences that were put out for promotion and I looked at one of them and I immediately thought there’s a whole different level to her performance. So that’s where I saw her for the first time and then I saw the movie and we got in touch with her.

MT: And the American cast, Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang?

ES: Through an American casting agency, but they did tell us you had to be really calm about this, because no American actors with a name, you know, or within the film community is going to go for a supporting part in a small, small-ish in their term, Scandinavian movie before three weeks in advance, because if there’s a lead that comes up, they don’t want to be tied. So we started looking when there was like a month before shooting and I think Wes Bentley showed a genuine interest early on – I never really talked to him about it, but my impression was that he’d seen some of my earlier work, probably Insomnia or something, so he got on board two or three weeks beforehand. Stephen Lang was probably just like a week before [shooting] and even tighter with Jonathan LaPaglia. So it was nerve-wracking from our point of view – it took all our energy in the last three weeks before shooting.

MT: You were talking about American actors not necessarily wanting to play supporting roles, but also the lead is quite unconventional-looking for a heroic lead-type. I mean, I know Aksel Hennie is a well-known actor, but was that a deliberate decision?

ES: Yeah. I was insistent – have you seen HEADHUNTERS? I was insistent that he was going to use his own hair, because this is a wet element, you know, so I asked Aksel to grow into his 70s look, which we had a lot of documentary material for. And Aksel, like most really professional, good actors, whatever it takes for the character, they call this the physicality of how you approach the character, it’s very important, I think, for how you mentally grow into your part. But I was talking to Aksel a couple of years before shooting – there was no other candidate.

MT: Did you have to cut anything out that maybe had to go, but that you were sorry to lose?

ES: I tend to forget these things, because film-making is so intense. But we did – there were some sequences that we changed, yeah. For economic reasons and for practical reasons. I don’t think the impact of the story – I find it hard to tell, I must say, because it’s like this process you need to go through and you make your decision and you filter it and eventually you come out with a movie and it feels like, well, that’s the way it had to be made, to become what it is. So there were definitely things I would have wanted to do, but once you put them behind you, I just suppress them from my mind.

MT: What was the hardest thing to get right, overall?

ES: I think probably the most difficult – there were two things: one is, in terms of this vast amount of material and the point in Norwegian history, probably the most important modern historical point, it’s what we base our current wealth on, so to dig into the history and then try and mould a genre piece out of that, the combination of that was a challenge which we were dealing with for quite a while. And then in terms of shooting, it’s the underwater stuff and figuring out how to – I believe in the sense that a film should physically carry you somewhere and preferably somewhere you’ve never been. And for this film it was obvious where I really wanted it to go, but the question was how to achieve it within a Scandinavian version, which wasn’t obvious at all, so that was a push.

MT: I wanted tell you, I’ve had a hearing imbalance in my head for the last week or so, where it feels like my head is half underwater. So Pioneer was pretty much the perfect film to see in that state, because the people on screen were experiencing pretty much what’s been going on in my head for the last ten days. So it seemed quite appropriate.

ES: On that note, I’d like to compliment the sound designer, who was a French guy. He was experimenting, he tried to push – in reality, the voices go much more squeaky and they’re unintelligible, there’s no way you can understand what they’re saying. But we didn’t want it to become like a Disney feel, you know? But they really did, the French sound designer and mixer, they were pushing this sound design, to try and convey that sort of sense of the mental strain and how it influences you. The divers were saying – that was one thing I came away with with doing all the research, I realised to what extent their whole existence was these really tiny, claustrophobic spaces they were sitting in for weeks and then they run into this sort of infinite ocean feel and to try and get that right was part of the challenge.

MT: Do you know what your next project is?

ES: I’m currently working on a TV series, which is based on an idea by the crime author Jo Nesbo, who wrote Headhunters. It’s called OCCUPIED and I’m set to do that.

PIONEER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2014 IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

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The Short Films of Walerian Borowczyk Kinoteka 2014

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was born in Poland, where he studied painting. His film career started with a series of posters and black and white animated shorts films in collaboration with Jan Lenica. After emigrating to France in 1959 he worked with Chris Marker on LES ASTRONAUTS. In RENAISSANCE (1963), he uses a reverse motion technique to create innovative often violent images: an owl, a trumpet, a desk are pictured breaking into a musical march, and then blown to smithereens.

L’ENCYCLOPEDIE DE GRANDMA EN 13 VOLUMES (1963) is a race involving veteran cars in spectacular collisions on an aqueduct, before encountering a balloon, which comes face to face with a zeppelin. A visual persiflage that is always surprising and different.

LES JEUX DES ANGES (1964) is homage to the victims of Auschwitz. Cut out graphics show a slow train journey where enigmatic forms emerge: a woman is cut in half, a bird comes out of a grave, covered in grass. Other undefinable objects turn into birds. The forms are distorted, the darkness prevails. Haunting and enigmatic, silence prevails.

LE DICTIONNAIRE DE JOACHIM is much lighter. Joachim is a simply drawn figure of a man trying in vain to find contact with the outside world. Whenever he meets a female figure, he blushes. When he finally meets a real woman, he proposes, then finally commits suicide, only to later emerge from his grave, green grass in his hair. He turns into a bird to the sound of the Marseillaise.

In GAVOTTE (1967) a dwarf sits on a small easy chair. A huge man takes his chair, and the dwarf sits on bigger chair and finally settles with a pillow on a big chest of drawers; but another dwarf, dressed as a servant, removes him. The two get into a fight, then the servant lands in the chest of drawers, so our hero can rest again on his pillow. All this hectic action is acted out to the peaceful sound of a gavotte.

THEATRE DE MONSIEUR & MADAM KABUL/LE CONCERT (1962) is a battle of the sexes. Madame Kabul is tall and has a hook like a bird. She plays the piano, her arm suddenly becomes elongated. For a second she changes into a beautiful woman cutting her husband into parts and stuffing them into the piano. But he escapes and is put together again, acquiring many more legs in the process. An eccentric contemplation on music and marriage.

DIPTYQUE (1967) is a reflection in two parts. In the first half, a silent b/w film, we see an old man ploughing his field. A dog follows him faithfully. Then the man drives home to his village in a vintage car. Documentary in form with no flourishes apart from a sentimental score, the second part sees the action reversed: a vase with flowers, a sweet kitten playing with a ball of string. An analytic juxtaposition of opposites, both contents-wise and aesthetically.

ROSALIE (1966) is based on Guy de Maupassant’s short story of the same name. Rosalie, a servant girl, has killed her twin babies and buries them in a garden. She can’t afford to bring them up on her meagre salary. During the court hearing it transpires that a male member of her family is responsible for the kids, but hotly denies his paternity, and the girl is released. Borowczyk’s wife, the actress Ligia Branice (who would later star in his feature films), lends her face and voice to this heart-breaking story. Apart from her face we see objects from a shop, with price tags, showing how little chance Rosalie stood of raising her children. Simple, but very moving. AS

AVAILABLE COURTESY OF ARROWFILMS.COM AMAZON.CO.UK

Teenage (2013) DVD

Dir: Matt Wolf, Cast: Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Alden Ehrenreich

USA 2013, 78 min. DOC

What did we call teenagers before the term was invented in the years after the Second World War in the USA? Matt Wolf’s informative history of the young and rebellious (based on Jon Savage’s book) answers this and many more questions. With exhaustive documentary material and some clever docu-drama, Wolf tells the story of teenagers in England, the USA and Germany from the beginning of the 20^th century. There was the abolition of child labour, but also the culling of millions who died in the trench-slaughter of the Great War. The years between the wars was filled with rebellion against the old, who had sent the young to die. Music always played an all important role in the youth movement, flappers and swingers of the 30s being the best known examples. And there was Brenda Dean Paul in the UK, who was a first for glamour, drugs and self destruction.

Particularly interesting are the German segments of the film. Melita Maschmann is a BDM (Association of German Girls) member in Hitler’s Germany (NOT the Hitler Jugend, the male arm of the movement, as the film claims, since the Fascists kept the genders well apart). First Melita likes the travelling and campfires, than she “has” to loose her Jewish friends to be part of her peer group. And then comes the trauma of the War, at the end of it the loss of her identity. But there were also young rebels against Hitler, like Tommy Scheel; who organised a Jazz club in the late 30s knowing very well that this sort of “Nigger music” was forbidden by the Nazis. He could escape to the USA, but many of his friends were caught be the Gestapo and hanged.

Interweaving rare archive footage with vibrant colour images, Wolf touches also on the problem of racism in USA itself. A young black soldier says in an interview after the war, “in the war we are equals, but now were are the enemy”. And again it is the music, in this case hip-hop and jazz, which is the manifestation of youth rebellion – black and white.

TEENAGE is thorough, well-researched, witty and always as energetic as its subject-matter. Andre Simonoviescz

TEENAGE IS NOW ON DVD

Orca – The Killer Whale (1977) DVD

Director: Michael Anderson Writer: Luciano Vincenzoni Producer: Dino Di Laurentis

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Richard Harris, Bo Derek, Will Sampson, Keenan Wynn

88min US Adventure Thriller Soundtrack: Ennio Morricone

The phenomenal success of seventies ‘natural horror’ hit JAWS led to a proliferation of visceral monster movies and one of the most popular was Dino Di Laurentis’s 1977 outing ORCA, based on the book by Arthur Herzog.

Packed with goodies such as Charlotte Rampling, Richard Harris and Bo Derek, there’s even an edgy soundtrack from Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly).

In a lecture theatre, a smouldering and commanding Charlotte Rampling tells us how a killer whale’s brain is possibly more complex than a human’s: it also shares a penchant for revenge. With these frightening facts in mind, Richard Harris (as Captain Nolan) sets off in his rickety boat to do battle with the mighty beast whose pregnant mate he has earlier butchered for fun. Today, animals rights activists would be up in arms but anyone who likes animals will cringe and shudder in pain as Harris literally hoses the dead whale fetus off his decks, amid ferocious squealing – and that’s just from fresh-faced boat-mate Bo Derek, who injures a leg in the incident. Despite a stiff warning from American Indian, Umlak (Will Sampson/Poltergeist) Richard Harris and his team (including la Rampling) is forced to pursue the revenge story to a bitter, tragic and totally ludicrous end. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD FROM 14 APRIL 2014

Honour (2014)

Cast: Aisha Hart, Paddy Considine, Harvey Virdi, Faraz Ayub, Shubham Saraf, Nikesh Patel

UK 2014, 104 min.

HONOUR is one of those rare things – a meaningful thriller: whilst all the classic elements of the genre are aptly fulfilled, director/writer Khan never looses the moral thread of the story. Mona, a young Pakistani Muslim woman, is working as an estate agent in London. She falls in love with Tanvir, a young Punjabi man, who is working for a rival company. Mona was promised in marriage to a man in Pakistan at the age of three, and her family is desperate that she should stay a virgin. Encouraged by their two-faced mother, Kasim strangles Mona, just as Adel (who betrays the trust of his sister) in arriving home. But she miraculously survives and goes into hiding. Her family then hires a British contract killer (Considine), himself a racist, to track her down and kill her. But instead of killing her, he turns against her family. Kasim uses his powers a policeman to track them down, and corner them on a rooftop for a shoot out.

Khan’s male characters are all accurately portrayed and believable: Kasim is a British Muslim hypocrite, who uses his role as a policeman in a western country to hunt down his sister in the name of a religion, who’s rules he does not follow himself. His younger brother Adel is not much better, he too enjoys the benefits of western youth culture, but is quick to scarify his sister, when his brother puts pressure on him. The contract killer (without a name), has been abandoned by his mother, his tattoos shows racial hatred, but he is taken in by Mona’s fragility and when he learns that she is also pregnant, his own personal issues surrounding abandonment kick in, and he encourages her to keep the baby. Of the two women, the mother is most straightforward in her hatred of her own gender, her belief in male superiority and her pride that singles out one son (her eldest) but denigrates her others children; whereas Mona is a classical victim turned survivor model. Whilst being unrelenting on the religious fanatics that exist in British society, Khan also shows racial prejudice by the certain factions of the white population. But overall his attack on the perpetrators of honour killings is the driving force behind his film.

The film’s narrative is not linear, the flashbacks increase the suspense, and none of the characters is allowed to maintain a stable relationship with each other: alliances are shifting permanently, and Khan makes it clear that everyone has a choice in the end, whatever their past, beliefs or prejudice may be. The acting is convincing, and the classical film score helps to propel the narrative forward. Unusually, it is the cinematography which lets the piece down, shot mainly in the Glasgow rain: Whilst an action film obviously requires a certain tempo, the camera overdoes the hectic panning; there are few moments of calm where we might learn more about the protagonists. In falling victim to its own pace, the images of this film are often too fleeting to be impressive. But overall, HONOUR is a unique, ambitious achievement. AS

HONOUR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2014

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Continental (2013) BFI Flare 2014

Dir.: Malcolm Ingram

Cast: Steve Ostrow; Documentary

USA/Canada/Australia 2013, 94 min.

Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar) tells the story of the legendary “Continental”, a New York bathhouse for the gay community. Founded by the maverick Steve Ostrow in 1968, it was situated on the site of the Ansonia Hotel on 74^th Street. The 400 rooms were used by 20 000 patrons a week; when Ostrow closed the “Continental” in 1974 six million visitors has seen its transfiguration from a hedonistic pleasure pool to an artistic centre. Ostrow borrowed the money for his enterprise from his father-in-law and had to live with corrupt cops as well as Mafiosi, who all took their share from the profits (the entrance fee was 15 Dollar).

Ostrow, a professional opera singer, comes over larger than life. He now lives in Australia, where he cares for the older members of the gay communities. And it is in Sidney, where he realised his greatest dream: singing the title role in Verdi’s “Othello”. His musical education helped him to transform the “Continental” from a pure pleasure heaven into an artistic centre. Patti Labelle, Peter Allen started their career here, as did Bette Midler, accompanied at the piano by Barry Manilow. But it was this new cultural identity, which was the main reason for the closure of the bathhouse in 1974. Sure, rival companies had sprung up, but Ostrow said, that the gay community felt, that they were looked at like animals in a zoo, by the ever growing number of straight people who came to visit. It was true, the “Continental” had changed from being a refuge for gay people, to being a meeting point of the cultural elite. Even Alfred Hitchcock was spotted there, dressed only in a towel.

It was difficult to avoid doing this as a ‘Talking Heads” documentary, and the stills from the old place are mixed with contemporary shots of the same neighbourhood today. The rare footage of the entertainers in the heydays of the Continental are refreshing and raise many questions, in particular it begs to know why Bette Midler did not want to participate. Ingram avoids nostalgic reminiscing about a “golden age for the gay community before AIDS”, but delivers instead a well structured documentary lesson about gay history. AS

THE CONTINENTAL SCREENED AS PART OF THE BFI FLARE 2014 FESTIVAL

The Last Match (2014) BFI Flare 2014

THE LAST MATCH (LA PARTIDA)

Dir.: Antonio Hens

Cast: Milton Garcia, Reinier Diaz, Louis Alberto Garcia, Mirta Ibarra

Cuba/Spain 2013, 94 min.

In a contemporary Havana (even though the film was actually shot in Puerto Rico), two young men are fighting in their very different ways for economic survival and sexual identity: Yosvani is working for his future father-in-law, a loan shark and black marketer, as an enforcer. He does not seem to be much in love with his future bride, even kissing her seems to be an effort. On a rundown football pitch he meets Reinier, a star player, who supports his mother, wife and baby as a rent boy, mainly for wealthy Spanish men, who visit the city as sex tourists. At the beginning, it seems clear that Reinier is heterosexual, he tells one of his clients angrily that he is not a ‘faggot’. Yosvani on the other hand is certainly dreaming of boys, seeing the way he looks at them, but he is too uncertain of his budding homosexual awakening. But somehow Yosvani finds the courage to declare his love for Reinier, but leaving ‘the closet’ has dramatic effects for him: He steals money from his employer, originally for Reinier to pay his debts to the loan shark, but than Yosvani goes a step further – he wants to elope with Reinier, who has just started training with the national youth team.

THE LAST MATCH works well before the young men get together. The narrative is often hilarious, like in one scene, when Reinier’s mother is playing up to the clients of her son, in the hope to make a good impression, so he gets more work. Equally, the relationship between Yosvani and his girl friend is full of little details of mutual misunderstanding, which make one smile. But after the young men fall in love, the film deteriorates into a mixture of thriller and bad melodrama. As long as the social aspects are the driving force of the narrative, we can believe in the characters, but unfortunately it does not work as a tragic love story. Everything becomes contrived and the original ideas, which carried the film for so long, are replaced by stilted clichés, making the end torrid and simply unbelievable.

The main actors are by far the strongest aspect of this production, they are lively and their enthusiasm makes them carry the film, until the script lets them down. The camera is not so much adventurous, it is driving the point of the narrative (poverty and alienation) home in a very didactic way, creating an unsubtle world of opposites without being convincing (like the luxury hotel for the Spanish tourists and the beach front, where the young boys ply their sex trade). Less overtness would have been more in this case. But whilst the film suffers from its horrendous ending, one should not forget the original inspiring ideas, which carried it for so long. AS

THE LAST MATCH SCREENED AS PART OF THE BFI FLARE 2014

Test (2014) BFI Flare Festival 2014

Dir.: Chris Mason Johnson

Cast: Scott Marlow, Matthew Risch, Kristoffer Cusack, Katherine Wells

USA 2013, 89 min.

San Francisco 1985: Frankie, a dancer in his early twenties, young and insecure on all levels, is caught up in the Aids trauma. Where ever he goes, he can’t escape the epidemic: graffiti on walls denounces the gay community, people are openly discussing the placing of gays into quarantine and Rock Hudson’s death makes the front cover of ‘Times’.

His dark, brooding friend and co-dancer, Todd, makes fun of it all – and also of Frankie, who is also told by the ballet master (C.M. Johnson) “to dance like a fucking man”. When an Aids test is offered, Frankie takes the plunge: two weeks of nerve racking fear follows, particular since one of his casual sex partners, Walt, phones him to tell him that his test was positive.

TEST is a study in paranoia. Frankie is caught like a rabbit in the headlights of a car: everything frightens him, even the use of condoms is an enigma: joking can’t hide the fact that he is not convinced of their usefulness. And even the rehearsals of the ballet group are not safe any more: Molly (Catherine Wells) challenges Todd to clean himself of his sweat since she is afraid that Aids can be transmitted through pores. Frankie fights for emancipation on all levels: as a dancer, as a homosexual and a man.

Frankie is looking more like a sad little boy than an adult, lost on all levels: he is only an understudy in the dance company, waiting seemingly forever for take advantage of the unavailability of a fellow dancer. His friends are both older and much more mature; not to mention their assured masculinity – however much of a put-on this may be. The two weeks between test and result seem to push him over the edge, he hallucinates a “positive” result and his landlord is giving him notice. Permanently searching his body for signs of sarcomas, Frankie flees into the world of music, his new Walkman helps him to escape into another world echoed in eighties vibes: Lawrie Anderson, The Cocteau Twins, Romeo Void and, significantly “Small Town Boy” by Bronski Beat.

TEST’s style is very much eighties: we see a great deal of San Francisco in panoramic shots. The music dominates and Frankie is allowed a naivety, which is both charming and irritating. The dance rehearsals are also a reminder of “The Living Theatre”. Colours are appropriately all primary: transmitting an innocence of which Frankie is the standard bearer. Sometimes Johnson overdoes it: the fluffy clouds are really not necessary. Mostly filmed indoors or on quiet streets, TEST feels like a picture from a ghetto: the living dead in their dream world, with Frankie as an Alice whose understanding of reality is tested permanently. AS

Philomena (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Stephen Frears Writers: Stephen Frears Screenplay: Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope

Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Ruth McCabe, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sophie Kennedy Clark

UK//France 98min Drama

Stephen Frears’s latest outing, Philomena, was greeted with great enthusiasm at Venice Film Festival last month and is set to be one of the highlights of the London Film Festival where it plays next week. Starring Judi Dench in an unexpectedly moving performance as a mother searching for her long-lost son, it tells how he was taken away at birth by nuns in the convent she was forced to live in. Steve Coogan plays the journalist who helps her in a search for the truth, injecting much-needed humour in a performance of integrity and emotional intelligence showing his considerable flair in a wide range of fields from acting to producing.

As former political journalist, Martin Sixsmith, he suddenly finds himself on the market and decides (sneeringly) to try his hand at a ‘lifestyle’ piece on adoption for a national newspaper, based on his 2009 book ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee’. Striking up an appealing ‘mother-son’ chemistry with Dench, the two head off to America in search of clues on her missing offspring, now in his early fifties, who was purportedly given away by the nuns to an American couple.

Philomena is a touching drama of considerable heart and soul as Judi Dench goes into full comedy ‘mother’ mode while also pulling off a touching sensitivity as a calm but resolute Philomena Lee. Sixsmith also starts to learn a thing or two he didn’t know about himself as he launches forth in a new direction. Whether Philomena will make it to the Oscars is still in the balance, but it’s the sort of tear-jerking, crowd-pleaser that stands every chance of being a winner at the box office. MT

The Borderlands (2014) Interview with Gordon Kennedy

Scottish actor Gordon Kennedy’s appearances have been somewhat few and far between in cinema, his latest endeavour on the silver screen has been something of a critical hit amongst the horror community, with a starring role in Elliot Goldner’s The Borderlands. Kennedy discusses the differences in working in film compared to television, while also letting us in on the fresh challenges that come with the found footage genre. He also explains why his comedic background was beneficial to this piece, and whether or not he believes in the supernatural himself…

Q:So what attracted you to the project?

Well they offered me the job, is my stock reply to that. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before and I liked the idea of staring in a film, I don’t get offers for big Hollywood movies! I’m not a massive slasher horror fan, but films like The Evil Dead, funny, disgusting horror films, I love that. The humourless stuff that followed that wasn’t of much interest to me. The story in this is interesting, that whole thing of doing a horror film but about the people who are rubbishing, you’re starting from quite a cynical standpoint. I liked that idea.

Q:Your cynical character almost represents the viewer in that regard…

Completely. What I liked about him, and what we pushed quite a lot, was this idea of him losing his faith. The tortured holy man who is beginning to question what he’s sacrificed his life for, which is why he’s very open to the idea of miracles. We talked about that a lot during the film of it.

Q:You mentioned before your joy in doing a film, as most of your previous work has been on television. These days the line between the two mediums is so blurred – did this feel different though, like a movie?

Yeah it felt very different, especially in the bank balance! First of all it was a genuinely low-budget, independent British film, and those tend to be populated by very young, very enthusiastic, incredibly talented people, which is fantastic. I’d never seen that. The world of television tends to be populated by those who have done it for a long time. These guys are girls are coming out of film school. It was a real learning experience to see how these people work. They’ve only grown up in the digital age, they’re wondering around with SD cards all the time, that’s it. It’s an obvious thing, but it belies a huge difference in approach, but incredibly knowledgable about film and characters. They’re big fans of filmmaking right the way through, they can pick out their favourites from any genre and any age – and that’s just really interesting.

Q:So despite being in the industry a lot longer than Elliot – you still learnt a lot from him as a director?

Completely, I learnt a lot. But not just from Elliot, but all the crew. The D.O.P. Eben Bolter too, who is a really clever guy. Obviously with a found footage film, when one of the cameras is on your ear you get a fairly intimate relationship with the cameraman. I felt like I’d almost been unfaithful by the end of some days. I felt dirty, I had to go and have a shower. As did Eben. Again, that was learning for me because I hadn’t done found footage. I’m not sure if Elliot or Eben had either, but they’d really worked out how they were going to do it. It just brilliant and so interesting to work in that way.

Q:Did shooting a found footage movie bring about some new challenges you hadn’t faced before as an actor?

It’s a completely different environment. You have these head cams so it becomes really important to look at each other, if you look up or down you won’t see anyone. Things like that, there’s a lot more collaboration between camera crews, and lighting and props and actors and director than there might be otherwise. All these practical things are really interesting, but honestly it’s quite liberating. You don’t have to relight, you don’t stop and move the set around – you just film it and keep going, and you can try lots of different things. That was great fun, you really felt like you were part of the process, whereas there’s a danger in bigger films where you feel more like a mannequin. Ewan McGregor was very funny when he did Star Wars, he was so disappointed with the process. He said, ‘I spent six months staring at a green screen, I have no idea what my enemies look like. You’ll know before me’. Whereas this isn’t like that at all. It’s all real, and you’re constantly working with the whole team, and I really like that. I’ve stared in comedy and stuff like that, it’s a team game, not individual.

Q:Found footage films encourage a more naturalistic approach to acting, and provoke improvisation. Did that serve you well as an actor?

Yeah it really did. First of all, Rob [Hill] and I just got on, right from the off. It was one of those weird things, we just had a laugh, we trusted each other. It meant that we could push things, he really could say outrageous stuff and know I would come back, and that helped with us getting to know the characters, as well as each other, and it helped the film. The first 20 minutes could be dull exposition, but we worked on making the characters believable, and you like them and like being around them. Rob will be saying something stupid or I’ll be being grumpy and it works. It also means that when the characters go into jeopardy, the audience are taken along on an emotional level as well. That’s always good. The reaction at screenings is fantastic, I love it, because people are genuinely going ‘oh no!’ and that’s good, because you don’t do that in Saw. You just go ‘oh he’s got his leg cut off, fuck it, I don’t know him, I don’t care’.

Q:Improvisation serves the horror and comedy genres best I think, and this strikes a nice balance between the two. You’ve got a background in comedy, so I imagine that was pretty beneficial?

Yes it was. Rob is the funny man, but that’s good, I knew I could relax and I knew when to come in, when to shut up and let him get the laughs. Also, horror is very similar to comedy, in a sense that you have an audience reaction. It’s really black and white, and very simply whether you’ve got it right or wrong. In comedy the audience laugh, in horror they scream, and if they don’t scream at that moment you want them to, you’ve done something wrong, it’s not their fault. Same if people don’t get a joke, you’ve written it wrong or delivered it wrong. Those things are very similar, the timing of how you do things. With horror you’ve got the benefit of sound. We don’t have massive CGI, special effects budgets, so sound is so important.

Q:As someone who knows the project inside out, are you still able to get immersed in the film when watching it back? Do you feel tense?

You do, but it’s more from feeling it around the audience. When I’m watching something I’m in, it’s much more to do with the atmosphere, you can feel when the audience are absolutely there, and obviously you get the physical response, when the audience jump up in their seats. But I don’t get completely immersed in it, because I can’t see The Borderlands without seeing me in it. Most of the time I just sit there thinking, ‘Jesus, why did you do that?’ so I tend to concentrate more on the audience – that’s the important thing.

Q:Do you ever get used to seeing yourself on the big screen? Do you scrutinise over it a lot?

Yeah you tend to look at stuff, but I’m terrible. My wife constantly shouts at me when we’re watching something on television, and I’m being cynical. That’s the devil’s pay you have when involved in the business, you can’t look at something as a punter. That’s the sign of a good show – when I watch something completely as a punter. Like Line of Duty recently, I absolutely loved that, it’s fantastic. But with myself, yeah I’m not very good at watching, ‘who’s that handsome hunk in the background?’ is not what I do. I’m not sure many actors do, contrary to popular opinion – I think most hide their head in their hands.

Q:So do you think this film has an appeal to films fans in general, outside of horror aficionados?

Yeah completely. When this first went out on the festival circuit, for the horror reviewers, the opening lines to so many of their reviews were, ‘this is a found footage film, but…’. We argued about this when making the film, I think it’s a genre, I think there’s enough examples of it being used, and it’s a way to tell a story, that’s all. Perhaps it’s more a style than a genre, it’s a way of telling stories, like shooting a film in black and white. So a lot of people were a bit tired of it because of the success of things like Paranormal Activity, you get Paranormal Activity Four and pay just think, I’ve had enough of this. But in this instance it really works, it’s embedded in the story and there’s a really good plot reason why we’re doing it, so you don’t worry about it. As soon as you’ve done that, and set it up properly, nobody worries about it and it’s fine. That was important, and a good example of how to do something like this. If there’s a good, competent reason why you’re doing it in a certain way, the audience relax

Q: So you think it’s important the audience go in without any preconceptions of this genre?

Yeah absolutely. It’s a horror film and it’s low-budget, but it’s really nicely scripted and there’s some good themes, leading, inevitably, to a really scary end. You’re on a real journey. People who don’t like horror films, well they’ve been ambushed a bit, so they think they’re watching Final Destination or something. This is different, this obeys the laws of film, gives you characters, you like them, and you go on a journey with them.

Was it a challenge for you to find a strand of realism in the role and story, when dressed up in such supernatural surroundings?

No, because the crux of his doubt and his anguish, is whether you’re prepared to take this leap of faith or not, so it’s about that. Which is great, because I could have that inner turmoil, externally. That added a bit to the character, that’s why it’s interesting.

Q:Do you believe in the supernatural yourself?

No. No. I don’t. I was talking to someone the other day, and there was one time we were filming in a haunted house and the camera went from colour to black and white in this haunted room, and everybody was convinced that was a ghost.

Q: You were filming in derelict churches at the dead of night – it must have been quite eerie at times to shoot?

Yeah, and that really helped. Definitely, there were a couple of times when I go back to church a couple of times on my own and when we’re filming that, because it’s wide shots, supposedly the CCTV cameras from the church, nobody could be in there, so it’s 2am, it’s dark, it’s a derelict church and I’m in there on my own, so you can use whatever you can to make the realism a bit more real, and it certainly was a little spooky in there. It definitely helped.

Q: So are a big fan of horror as a genre? What state do you think it’s in at present?

What’s really interesting, is that British independent films and the horror genre, and inextricably linked, because there’s a massive tradition of British horror films, from pre-Hammer to now, with people like Ben Wheatley. It’s great going round to these festivals like FrightFest, where a lot of British filmmakers are cutting their teeth by making a movie in the horror genre, because they know they’re going to get a lot of exposure and it’s good fun. If done well, it can really show your skills off as a filmmaker. So I think it’s pretty good, and every now and again people reinvent the wheel. Like Paranormal Activity just moved found footage to a different level, deliberately setting it in the one place where you think you’re most secure – a bedroom. A sensational thing to pull off, and to pull off like they did. Cloverfield too, that took found footage into a massive, special effects movie and that was really interesting. All of that stuff is great because it broadens the field.

Q:Not to take anything away from The Borderlands, but have you been surprised at the level of acclaim it’s been receiving so far? Across the world.

Yes, yes I have. It’s been a real positive surprise to me. Partly it’s because it’s an entirely new field so I have no critical compass here. Obviously I’m in it and I want it to be really good and I know how hard everyone worked – so I’m the worst person in the world to look at it in perspective because obviously I’m going to say it’s great. But it’s been really interesting how people, and not particularly horror fans, have loved it. That means there’s something in the script, in the acting and in the characters is obviously working, otherwise that wouldn’t have happened. People my generation are not necessarily horror fans, but they seem to like it and that’s been a heartening process to go through, and it makes me very proud of it and of all the people who worked so hard to make it as good as it is. That’s been fantastic. It’s also really interesting, because there’s a huge amount of positivity in this area I never expected. Because you generally see film critics slagging off Hollywood blockbusters, you feel there’s a spikiness about film criticism and the film world. But what’s been interesting is watching the warmth of other filmmakers and critics to this film, who are saying, ‘this is a low budget film that you should see.’ Empire magazine put it in their top 20 films you should have seen but probably didn’t watch in 2013, and that’s been a real shock to me, but a brilliant one. It shows there’s a proud tradition of filmmaking in this country, and people in charge of bringing that, like you, the critics, are very mindful of the idea that British film is very important, so when you see something worthy of merit, you are looking at something and saying, ‘this is very good’. Not, ‘it hasn’t got Ewan McGregor in it, so fuck off’. Stefan Pape

THE BORDERLANDS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 MARCH 2014

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Copenhagen Architecture x Film Festival 27 – 30 March 2014

Some of the the World’s finest filmmakers are Danish: Carl Theodor Dreyer; Lars von Trier; Thomas Vinterberg; Nicolas Winding Refn and Susanne Bier. The Danes also excel in architecture, design and the spatial arts. With this in mind, COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL will open its doors for the first year of what aims to become an annual event. Offering 80 films and events. including first-run as well as older releases showcasing architectural space as only cinema can. Copenhagen Architecture Festival x FILM is built around 6 strands: Cinematic and Architectural Space; Landscape and Film; Personal Spaces; Architectural Processes; Ritual, and Modernism.

The inaugural festival presents the world premiere of Heinz Emigholz’ entire trilogy of DECAMPMENT OF MODERNISM, the 21st part of his monumental series PHOTOGRAPHY AND BEYOND. All three films will be shown including the final part: THE AIRSTRIP, hot from Berlinale 2014, with an an introduction by the filmmaker himself.

Wim Wenders’ 3D project CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE (2014) also comes fresh from its Berlinale 2014 World premiere and there are other treats in store: KOOLHAAS – HOUSELIFE that takes a looks at the designs of legendary architect Rem Koolhaas and MICROTOPIA, Jesper Wachtmeister’s documentary study about a group of designers whose work focuses on the use of recycled and industrial products in order to minimise waste and human footprint. Dieter Reifarth’s HAUS TUGENDHAT (2013) explores the fascinating history of Mies van der Rohe’s functionalist villa from private ownership in the thirties to official functions under the Germans and Russians to its current status as a stylish backdrop to films such as Hannibal Rising.

THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM, Oeke Hoogendijk’s prize-winning documentary is a massive undertaking that charts the controversial renovation of one of the World’s oldest and best known museums. Angel Borrego Cubero’s documentary masterpiece THE COMPETITION (2013) explores the working relationship of star-architects Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault and Zaha Hadid’s through the tense process of tendering for the design of a new Arts Museum in Andorra.

There will be a chance to revisit the past with DOG STAR MAN, Stan Brakhage’s experimental sixties piece that prioritises the visual to create the concept of an ‘optical mind’, and Werner Herzog’s acclaimed sci-fi documentary FATA MORGANA (1971), that imagines the world’s most remote corners as another planet. Critic Sophie Engberg Sonne looks at Wong Ka Wai’s films in the context of his greatest muse: Hong Kong: this artist-city double-act will be illustrated with excerpts from his oeuvre including HAPPY TOGETHER and THE CROWD, King Vidor’s psychogeographical 1928 silent epic, based in New York; and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s haunting and sinister documentary ABENDLAND, that takes a voyeuristic look at the vast continent of Europe from the night skies.

COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE X FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27-30 MARCH 2014

The Borderlands (2014)

Director/Writer: Elliot Goldner

Cast: Gordon Kennedy, Robin Hill, Patrick Godfrey

90min UK Horror/Thriller

Making a funny horror movie is quite a feat but Elliot Goldner has pulled it off in his debut Britflic, The Borderlands. After The Blair Witch Project, found footage films are always going to raise an eyebrow of contempt, but here the crackling chemistry of the leads and the well-paced sparky narrative never take the ghoulish theme too seriously, until the horrific finale eventually bites back with a nasty sting in the tail.

Made on a shoestring budget, but none the worse for it, The Borderlands stars TV regular Gordon Kennedy and Robin Hill (of Ben Wheatley fame) as spirited sparring partners: a Vatican investigator and a recording technician, who fetch up in a remote West Country village to explore the truth behind suspected paranormal activity in the medieval Parish Church, as reported by the disturbed and deeply sinister vicar Father Crellick (Luke Neil). Combining a strong sense of place in the lush English countryside with some genuinely spooky happenings, this is a film that cleverly keeps us sceptical yet on the edge of our seats right up to its devastating denouement. MT

THE BORDERLANDS IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 MARCH 2014.

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Klown (2010) Prime

Dir: Mikkel Nørgaard | Cast: Frank Hvam, Casper Christiansen, Mia Lyhne, Iben Hjelje, Marcus Jess Petersen| Denmark, 89min Comedy

Dont’ listen to the po-faced critics who tell you this is ‘crass, unfunny or outrageous’ – it’s a bit of adult fun, even Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian’s trusty critic, was seen laughing out loud. You might think this Danish road comedy is going to be dire, then you’ll start to enjoy the ludicrous humour that touches on The Hangover – but much more ridiculous and real: A trip into strictly grown-up territory – so don’t take the kids – for once they can stay at home!

Frank (Frank Hyam) makes a geeky and unfanciable boyfriend for Mia (Mia Lyhne), prancing around in his y-fronts and a baseball cap. But when she discovers she’s pregnant, the time has come to settle down. Before making the final commitment, Frank plans a boys’ weekend of fun with his womanising married friend Caspar (Caspar Christiansen): A spot of canoeing and then canoodling with the local talent at a music festival and, to round off the trip, a visit to a friend’s upmarket brothel located in a fairytale castle. The only problem is that Frank has been left in charge of Bo, Mia’s 12-year-old nephew. This may be a chance to prove his fatherhood potential, or it could be a complete disaster. No prizes for guessing which one it turns out to be.

Apart from the totally inane humour, Klown is imaginatively set in the idyllic Danish summer countryside and there are some gloriously cinematic moments as they navigate the waterways of this beautiful part of Scandinavia. The brothel setting is like something out of Festen – location-wise, promising an evening of upmarket naughtiness and nastiness too. It’s watchable and convincing, written by Hyam and Christiansen: two of Denmark’s most popular stand-up comedians.

So off they go with one mishap leading to another. There’s not much of a storyline but instead you get a good hour of politically incorrect shenanigans and arch ribaldry on the river. With themes of male-bonding and female-bonding, the only bonding that doesn’t feature is bondage itself but there is a little scene that really hits the spot – you’ll either love it or hate it – but see it before the Hollywood re-make! MT

KLOWN IS OUT on PRIME VIDEO

20 Feet From Stardom (2014) Oscar for Best Documentary 2014

Director: Morgan Neville

91min US Documentary

Having defied the odds and beaten the clear favourite The Act of Killing to the Best Documentary accolade at this year’s Academy Awards, it’s clear to see why Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom was triumphant, as a compelling, heartwarming and unaffected exploration into the fascinating world of backing singers.

From the contentiously salacious vocals on Ray Charles What’d I Say, to the graceful arrangement of Lean on Me by Bill Withers, backing vocals are an integral part to our enjoyment of music across the decades. Having spent years in the shadows of some of the finest, most prominent recording artists of all time, now the likes of Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer and Darlene Love are given the platform to shine, and showcase their unique, and somewhat breathtaking abilities.

There is something so unmistakeably emotional about this production, as we candidly delve into a world behind the scenes, where broken dreams and empty promises remain a prevalent theme. Nostalgia is equally as important to this picture, and scenes such as Clayton returning to the recording studio where she provided vocals on The Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter is enough to bring a tear to your eye. Neville masterfully intertwines personal anecdotes from the likes of Clayton herself to Mick Jagger, as we learn of how she came to be involved – dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, heavily pregnant, and with curlers still attached to her hair. An intimacy of sorts, and a human element is brought to these songs, as we are taken behind the track and explore the mechanics of how it came to be, and the personalities involved.

Jagger is one of many fine talking head appearances, with Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen also featuring, amongst others, to pay homage to the hard work and incredible talent of these gifted musicians. Neville seamlessly drifts between the various different singers, succinctly and efficiently, as we’re given a flavour for each of their personalities and their own unique situations, ranging from those who rose to prominence in the 60s, to current singers such as Judith Hill. This works as a catalyst for a series of other themes to be explored, as race and inequality are covered, dressed up in a rich socio-political context, while the more intimate, human themes such as the lust for fame are equally imperative.

That said, Neville can be accused of merely brushing the edges of a few issues, not truly offering enough depth – however it’s a small blemish on an otherwise accomplished piece of filmmaking. It’s just intriguing to see the faces behind the voices we’ve heard a million times over, voices that define and complete some of the most renowned records ever created. You’ll forever listen to these songs in a different way from hereon, and believe me, that’s by no means a bad thing. Stefan Pape.

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ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 MARCH 2014

Gerontophilia (2013) BFI FLare 2014

Director: Bruce LaBruce

Writer: Bruce La Bruce, Daniel Allen Cox

Cast: Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Walter Borden, Katie Boland, Yardly Kavanagh

82min Comedy Romance Canada

A young lifeguard gets a hard-on while giving mouth-to-mouth to an elderly male swimmer, forcing him to re-assess his romantic intentions to his girlfriend, in Canadian arthouse director Bruce LaBruce’s tame trans-generational romance that dabbles in attitudes towards ageism.

Lake and his girlfriend Desirée (Kate Boland) seem a well-matched, happy couple, but Lake decides to explore his emerging fetish for older men by taking a job in the local care home, where he meets Melvin Peabody, an elegant and sophisticated man in his eighties. Shocked at the ageist attitudes towards its inmates, Lake’s growing affection for Melvin makes him determined to help him pursue his dream of visiting the Pacific Ocean.

Once on the road, Melvin emerges a flirty, vivacious character, while Lake morphs into his implausibly jealous boyfriend. Gerontophilia is tonally uncertain from start to finish, swinging from candid openness (in scenes with Desirée) to lukewarm humour and performances that feel equally ‘warmed through’. It toys with the subject of ageism but comes down firmly as a tale of misogyny with both the female leads appearing weak and directionless, and totally reliant on men for their kicks (“Woman is the Nigger of the World”).

As Lake, LaJoie is a bland boy threatened by his strangely mannish mother (Marie-Helene Thibault) who is rapidly heading off the rails. He plays hunky himbo to Katie Boland’s sparky Desirée, but when Ralph Borden’s Mr Peobody comes on the scene, he disappears completely behind the coquettish ‘queen of the road’ in a pairing which totally lacks sexual chemistry or intellectual spice. Clearly, Melvin Peobody is the father figure he never had because, if there is sex, it doesn’t happen here. LaBruce is so uncertain about these ‘non-happening’ pairings that he uses footage of stirring skylines and simmering sunsets attractively shot and accompanied by Ramachandra Borcar’s tuneful original sounds, in an effort to inject romance to the flagging storyline. It’s clear that Lake has some serious emotional issues, but GERONTOPHILIA is neither a meaningful gay romance or a particularly funny straight comedy. MT

SCREENING DURING THE BFI FLARE LGBT FILM FESTIVAL

Our Nixon (2013)

Dir: Penny Lane 85min US Doc Biopic

This fly on-the-wall portrait the Nixon administration is based on the archive Super-8 footage recorded by three top White House aides: HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chaplin. Gripping, well-researched and entertaining from start to finish, Penny Lane knows how to handle her material and present a documentary that is both informative and engagingly watchable.

Offering the fascinating real version of what the public was offered by way of news and media reports, it comes across as a straightforward, well-intentioned and insightful version of everyday events and was seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, and then forgotten for nearly 40 years.

Recreating the real story behind the perceived view it comes across as an engaging and often intimate expose – with voyeuristic footage often taken during State Visits following behind the President and his wife not only during the day but also in their ‘down time’; this is intensely personal and grippingly insightful stuff. MT

Svengali (2014)

Director: John Hardwick

Writer: Jonny Owen

Cast: Martin Freeman, Vicky McClure, Michael Socha, Maxine Peake, Matt Berry, Morwena Banks

93min Comedy UK

The premise whereby impassioned, eternally optimistic rockers attempt to spread the sweet sound of music to the unsuspecting public, has been covered in British cinema this past year in the likes of Good Vibrations and Vinyl. Though there are shades of the intrinsic charm of the former, John Hardwick’s Svengali is regrettably more in tune with the latter, in what is ultimately an unfulfilling comedy picture.

Our eternal optimist, in this instance, is Dixie, played by Jonny Owen – who also penned the screenplay. Bored in his monotonous livelihood in a small town in Wales, he sets off for London with his girlfriend Shell (Vicky McClure) by his side, and plastic bag in tow, hoping to become the manager of an unsigned band he heard online. Though triumphant in his quest, and attracting interest from the likes of renowned record label owner Alan McGee (playing himself), it seems he may eventually have to choose between the band, or his girlfriend; as the two aren’t quite as compatible as he had initially envisaged.

The overstated narrative can be somewhat frustrating, and though inevitable (this is cinema, after all), it can prove difficult to believe in the band’s increasing popularity. It doesn’t help that we don’t ever hear them play, but that issue is key to how absurd and fantastical is all turns out to be: as even for an industry that is notoriously impulsive, this band are ‘the next big thing’ before anyone has even heard them play. That said, Hardwick does a fine job in capturing the essence and anarchic spirit of a fresh new indie band in the early stages of their career, with a nod to the likes of The Libertines, and the movement that followed them at the turn of the Millennium.

Talking of spirit, Dixie is a wonderful creation, with an infectious optimism and outlook in life. His happy-go-lucky persona and ability to find the good in everyone is an endearing quality, and the audience wish him all the best as a result. It also means that when he’s upset about something, or annoyed with somebody, we completely adhere to it given it’s such a rarity. He has a great image too, reminiscent of Irish comedian Michael Redmond, always with his trusty plastic bag in hand. He collects things as a child would, and it’s this blissfully naïve quality we like about him. Meanwhile, he shares a great chemistry with McClure – hardly surprising as they’re an item in real life – though the actress is better than this film. There are some great cameos to be noted too, such as Martin Freeman and Maxine Peake, though conversely, you can see why Alan McGee didn’t ever pursue a career in acting.

Svengali suffers most in the flat comedy, as a film that succeeds more when it’s heartfelt and poignant with a well-handled romantic narrative. It begs the question why the film can’t drop the pointless gags that pollute the production and detract from the one key thing that makes this film a worthwhile endeavour – its sincerity. Stefan Pape.

SVENGALI IS OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 21 MARCH 2014

Petri Luukkainen – documentary filmmaker MY STUFF (Tavarataivas)

FILMUFORIA spoke to Finnish filmmaker Petri Luukkainen just before the UK Premiere of his documentary debut MY STUFF at the 2nd NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL on December 3rd 2013.

Q. Petri what inspired you to make this film – it’s a documentary but feels very personal ?

PL: Well two months before I started, in October 2010, I was sitting in my home thinking I should do something about my life as I was unhappy with it and I started thinking I should transport some of my stuff (possessions) somewhere as I felt it was all weighing down – I was also doing this creative writing project so I decided to put my ideas down on paper so I could communicate them. Now when I look back I realise how unhappy I was and I think this ‘stuff’ was somehow connected to my unhappiness.

Q. Had you really split up with your girlfriend?

PL. Yes its’ll real – it wasn’t something I really thought about but it just started to come out and I wrote it down and showed it to my friend and we just started filming the next day with the scene I go to see the storage. Within a week my DoP started getting involved and it wasn’t scripted at all – it was an adventure.

Q: So nothing was planned?

PL No – everything just happened – I was lonely at the time and think I was projecting my bad feelings on to my staff and had been buying things to fill up some space in my soul – thinking that they would make me happy. So filming gradually took place over the space of a year. At the time, I didn’t even have a picture on Facebook and had never been in front of the camera. We were not bound by financing so the project just starting naturally so I could stop the film at any time if I felt bad about it or anybody else did. It became a story about my self and my staff.

Q You mention your staff – do you have a production company?

PL: Yes (www.unikino.fi) – it’s our own production company: the sound guy is my brother and my friend from school is the DoP so we didn’t have to present the idea as such – we basically had the cameras and the audio gear so it just went ahead – as an expression of my own feelings.

Q: How did you get into film?

Q I went to technical school when I was 15 – you study cameras and editing software and then I went into a company where I just started editing commercials and, by a weird coincidence, did my first commercial when I was 17 and stayed directing and editing commercials for many years. I never went to film school or anything like that – I did apply but kept getting rejected and then bought a camera. At around 2002, people started uploading films on youtube – so I started to do a lot of small productions and ended up doing editing a documentary series and so on.

Q: What sort of camera did you use to shoot MY STUFF

PL: Well I’ve been using these DSLR cameras which have interesting lenses and the 60D which has a really nice quality – I used to use a Sony EX1 – documentary camera – when I made a video diary in about 2004 and I’ve used some of that footage put into MY STUFF– I found this diary lying around at home just three months before we locked the edit and the images worked perfectly in the film – the diary scene at the beginning for example. People thought I’d faked these because I had long hair but it was real but now when I look back on this it’s not something I feel proud of – I feel it’s been quite a selfish experience and quite sad really…

Q: So you felt embarrassed by these feelings?

PL: Well I’m naked in the poster but actually it was quite liberating now I look back – I don’t actually think about it too much nowadays – it’s easier to talk because I’ve gone through it but sometimes I felt embarrassed..the film is really a love story in the end…but if I’d been honest with myself back then I wouldn’t have made the film..but it’s made more conscious of what I don’t need in my life and about our impact on the environment with possessions.

Q: Tell me about the humour in the film, because the Finnish sense of humour is quite special- how are you seen by the other Nordic countries?

PL: I think it’s the way we communicate because we understand the humour ourselves – it based on irony and it’s built on sadness but also it comes from the size of the country and the distances – Finlands’s very rural and when people came back from the War (WWII) nobody spoke so there was a culture of silence and I think it comes out of that culture of silence. Finland has been through quite a lot…like other countries

Q: The humour is quite different from Swedish humour and from Danish humour…

PL: Most Finns feel that Swedes are so happy and so outgoing and the same goes for the Norwegians..

Q: And the Danes?

PL (laughing) they just talk funny! Nobody can understand what they’re talking about! There’s a language with our language..that we all understand

Q: Which directors have influenced you the most?

PL: I watch a lot of films and if I nail down a the films that have influenced this particular film i think it’s John Webster – he made this recipe for disaster – Supersize Me – which kind of relates to this film. When I was a teenager I watched Fight Club – I’ve seen it 200 times or something – when I look at it again over the years, it still intrigues me. I like Darren Aronovsky, I like stories about metamorphosis or identity.

Q: Any ideas about making a feature?

PL: I don’t feel I’m there yet – I think MY STUFF saw me growing as a human being and a creator and learning how to express my ideas. At the moment I don’t feel I’ve got something to give actors or the audience as a storyteller though or film-wise. I feel documentaries and features are just a different way of organising and expressing your creativity – I don’t separate them so much..

Q: What’s next?

PL: This whole process has been quite heavy emotionally and the editing process over the last couple of years has been demanding of me as the doc went into cinemas in Finland immediately. Now I feel ready to start a new creative process and I’ve started work on another documentary – I’m not in it this time but I can’t talk about it yet but it’s a totally different approach – it’s not this a ‘fly on the wall’ approach’, this time I’m not inviting the audience into my life or being a protagonist/director – now I want to explore how the protagonist communicates with the audience in documentary film – what does it all mean? Really I’m still learning and trying to understand from the experiences of making MY STUFF, and why I chose that style of directing, as the protagonist.

Q: What’s it like working with professional actors as apposed to non-actors or protagonists – as in documentaries?.

PL: Well with actors you’re co-creating and you can be more demanding – but with protagonists in documentaries, they’re feeding you material and you can’t demand of them in the same way as with professional actors although you’re still co-creating. With the actors you can share more and collaborate, but you can also be blunt. It’s difficult to do this with a protagonist (in a documentary) – you have to be more responsible because you’re essentially intruding into their life and reflecting their input so you can’t make them look like an idiot. you have to respect their views and point of view because you’re dealing with reality and they have some sense already of their own life, which you have to be careful with.

Q: Thank you Petri, so when do you have to fly back to Helsinki?

PL: Well I’m going back by train in a effort to cut down on air pollution!

Q: Well done! MY STUFF has obviously made a big impact on your life and good luck with the film

PL: Many thanks

Diana (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Writers: Stephen Jeffreys and Kate Snell

Cast: Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Juliet Stevenson, Cas Anvar

103min Drama

So DIANA is now on DVD and the full horror of this sad ‘tribute’ can be viewed from the privacy of one’s own boudoir. Well, pour yourself a glass of late harvested Riesling and settle down with the girls for a couple of hours of noble rot. Purporting to represent the real face of the Princess behind the pages of ‘Hello’, it focuses on her relationship with heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). And what a travesty, in more ways than one. Portraying Diana as a simpering, eyelash fluttering heiress (a nineties ‘Made in Chelsea’ one at that), Naomi Watts completely fails to convey the allure of a woman whose innate style and bearing conquered the hearts and minds of millions all over the World. Dressed in ASOS meets Country Casuals, she scuttles around giggling and blushing, like a skittish teenage ingénue, completely in awe of her surroundings during hospital visits and awkward in public appearances when posing on the international stage.

With his dark, sultry magnetism, Naveen Andrews looks the part but has nothing to work with but a stilted script full of trite clichés (“if I marry you I marry the whole World”). Their sexual chemistry is as tantric as tea with the Vicar, yet this man is supposed to be her sexual nirvana after years in the sack of jug-eared clumsiness (“I love it when you put your hand there”). Sofa suppers in front of ‘Casualty’ (as if!) and cosy trips in his Ford Mondeo to the seaside (at least give him a Saab): feel like excerpts in the life of Kevin and Janice from Staines not a recherché couple with grace and breeding. Geraldine James and Juliet Stevenson are believable and well-cast as her kindly therapists, but the episode in Pakistan just feels implausible. When things fall apart, Diana comes across as irritated and defensive rather than emotionally devastated although Andrews manages some tear-jerking ‘can’t live with you, can’t live without you’ pathos. As Diana walks away from love and rebounds into the swarthy arms of Dodi, she creeps back into her Cancerian shell only to emerge a hard-edged, manipulator of men and the media, on his yacht. Shame that one so talented as Oliver Hirshbiegel (Downfall) should put his name to this clunky cable TV crud. MT

DIANA IS OUT ON DVD FROM 24 MARCH 2014

Le Mani sulla Citta (1963) Hands Over the City

HANDS OVER THE CITY (Le Mani sulla citta)

Dir. Francesco Rosi; Cast: Rod Steiger, Salvo Randole, Guido Alberti, Carlo Fermarielli

Italy 1963, 105 min.

In one of the finest political dramas ever made, Francesco Rosi exposes the unscrupulous culture of civic corruption in post-war Naples, still endemic and universal today within the corridors of power.

After a panoramic view of Naples, we see Eduardo Nottola (Rod Steiger), a land speculator and owner of a big building company in Naples, explaining to Maglione, mayor of the city, the benefits of a new development at the outskirts of the city. Nottola holds up his hands and tells Maglione the profit margins, which he will share with him and the Christian Democrats, for whom he sits as a councillor on the city council. The next hands stretched up belong to the councillors of the CD, who are defending Nottola against a few communist councillors, who accuse him of responsibility for the death of two people, after one of the old buildings, which stands next to one of his new projects, collapses because of the pneumatic drills used for the foundations of the adjacent site. The Liberals, under the leadership of Professor De Angelis, join the communist, but it turns out that it was only a manoeuvre for the forthcoming election: the Liberals are the strongest party, but need the CD, so a bargain is struck: Nottola, who has joined the Liberals, will become the new Commissioner responsible for all building works in the city, after De Angelis promises Maglione, who had fallen out with Nottola for personal reasons, a share in the forthcoming profits of the new city development. The film ends with another panoramic overview of the city: it can sleep peacefully under the protecting hands of its leading citizens.

HANDS OVER THE CITY is not a film about Mafiosi, but about people who only have their own interests at heart. The politicians including de Vita, the leader of the communists, are only concerned with winning elections – the rest is talk. All parties are part of the system. And they need a powerful figure like Nottola, to make things happen. He is rightfully not shown as evil, but as part of a pseudo-democratic system, which excludes the majority of citizens. The new buildings Nottola is so proud of, are not for the inhabitants of the slum buildings he is demolishing – they are being ferried out on lorries to just another slum further away from the city centre. And the two victims of the accident are just footnotes, whilst the little boy, who has lost his legs in the accident, is being groomed as a beneficiary of the public health system, which otherwise is as underfunded as the rest of the public services – whilst Maglione is showing off his sumptuous art treasures to a friend.

Rod Steiger dominates the film, not only physically but emotionally. Whilst being critical, Rosi shows him as a tiger among hyenas. He paces the rooms, uses the telephone like a weapon as he barks orders and is not afraid to scarify his own son, who was in charge of the site where the accident occured. The politicians are greedy and self-seeking, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty. Camera work and music have all the elements of a thriller: the politicians are shown as conspirators, who hide in dark corners, afraid of Nottola and their own shadows. The music underlines the noir atmosphere, always threatening and dissonant. AS

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LE MANI SULLA CITTA IS NOW ON DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY AND DVD) AS PART OF AWARD-WINNING MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES ON EUREKA FROM 31 MARCH 2014

The Machine (2014)

THE MACHINE is one of those stylish sci-fi thrillers worth searching out even if you ‘hate’ sci-fi. When you see Toby Stevens and Denis Lawson amongst the cast, you know things are going to be alright. With a hidden heart (albeit one of steel) and set against a plausibly futuristic cold war scenario with China, a human story plays out where intelligent robots are being secretly developed to fight the good fight not just the antagonistic, violent one.

Working with a palette of subdued metallic greys and chilling backlighting, director Caradog James compliments his foray into the imagined unknown with an electronic score that crystallise this ‘retro’ brave New World, evoking a dazzlingly sinister ambience despite a low budget. The script is also rather clever in that it leaves a great deal to our imagination almost leading us to believe that the future can be bright, even though it’s a cold-eyed brightness.

In this second feature from British writer and director Caradog James, Toby Stevens plays Dr Vincent McCarthy, a rather soigné engineer who designs brain implants for injured soldiers at the Ministry of Defence. Behind his noble facade there lurks a nagging sadness over his daughter’s deteriorating mental illness, and he’s secretly hoping to find her a cure, utilising the funds of the MoD. There are concerns regarding the ethical aspect of his work for the Government but he’s prepared to turn a blind eye to all this in the public interests until a rather appealing new scientist joins the team in the shape of Caity Lotz who manages to be both appealing and restrained as Ava. An engineer and designer in her own right, she has developed a clever AI robot that beats as it sweeps: building knowledge from its human interactions. She’s also an attractive blonde and with Dr McCarthy, the chemistry crackles, and we’re not just talking about neurones. Her expertise compliments Dr McCarthy’s ability to create lifelike bodies endowed with bionic strength so seemingly they’re home and dry with a solution. The problem is we’re only halfway into the action. And matters take a sinister turn when Ava is fatally injured. Wracked with anguish, Dr McCarthy’s morals take a nose dive as he decides to use her brain power to flesh-out his artificial bodies and create an android clone aka ‘The Machine’. But there’s a twist in the tale and it involves his draconian boss Thomson – enter Denis Lawson. MT

THE MACHINE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM from 21 March with a Blu-Ray and DVD release from 31 March 2014

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Peter Gabriel Back to Front (2014)

Director: Hamish Hamilton 97min Concert Film UK

BAFTA winner Hamish Hamilton’s concert film opens with an intimate confession from the Genesis frontman: behind the flamboyant mask, there lurks a timid soul. On stage Gabriel emits a calm magnetism, singing his songs with the ease of a true professional. At 63, he doesn’t particularly ‘wear it well’, by his own admission. Scuttling around like a stout beetle in battledress, he claims to have perfected the art of ‘dad dancing’ even before fatherhood although in the London’s massive 02 Arena, gone are the daredevil stunts of jumping into the crowd. But how can a man with so much musical talent, move with so little rhythm? Is this all part of his unique brand of idiosyncratic charm as a performer; a way of reaching out to his fans, most of whom are middle-aged (in ‘country casuals’) and have stuck with him from his early days in the art rock band which he left in 1975 to embark on a successful career as an inventive singer-songwriter, visual presenter and humanitarian human being.

His breakthrough album was SO (1986) and spearheaded a future in visual presenting, digital recording and distribution. Strong visuals are the centrepiece to this BACK TO FRONT World Tour. Hamilton’s pin-sharp high tech resolution at 4k contrasts with some very low tech filming and a slow pull that takes the image from being out of focus, slowly towards deeper and deeper degrees of resolution and focus.

Joined by a talented selection of session musicians (also in black): drummer Manu Katché; bassist Tony Levin; guitarist David Rhodes and multi-instrumentalist David Sancious. Jenni Abrahamson is the voice of Kate Bush without her lithe, pre-raffaelite lissomeness and there are some giant camera cranes writhing like giant octopuses. In this monochrome affair the only colour comes from guitars gleaming like drops of blood on the stage, backlit by panels of lights; red-bathed for RED RAIN and vibrant primaries for SLEDGEHAMMER and NO SELF CONTROL. The band run through the entire SO album and include some of Gabriel’s latest numbers (Digging in the Dirt, The Tower that Ate People). Somehow it all seems so slick and commercial in comparison to the uneasy poetic edginess of the early days. With his fatherly stolidness, the music feels safe and dumbed-down rather than fresh and innovative and the vastness of the O2 drains intimacy from songs such as DON’T GIVE UP, In YOUR EYES and MERCY STREET. Peter Gabriel is an artist and musician who has repackaged himself for the digital age and the 21st century: he knows where his bread is buttered. MT

FILMED LIVE AT THE 02, LONDON ON 21 7 22 OCTOBER 2013 – PETER GABRIEL BACK TO FRONT will be screening at Cineworld, Odeon, Vue, Showcase and other indie cinemas nationwide on 20 March 2014 with further screenings from Sunday 23 March 2014 at selected locations.

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War (2002) Voyna Alexsei Balabanov Series

Director/Writer: Aleksei Balabanov

Cast: Sergei Chadov, Ian Kelly, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Sergei Bodrov, Giorgi Gurgalia, Evklid Kyurdzidis

120min Russian with English subtitles Drama

There is an upbeat cynicism to Aleksei Balabanov’s tale of Chechen gangsters that feels bracingly authentic and unashamedly pragmatic. Tightly-plotted yet unpredictable, the story unfolds from the interrogation cell of Ivan Yermakov (Sergei Chadov), a Russian soldier who has returned from a mission to release English and Russian hostages taken by Chechen rebels in the aftermath of the fall of Grozny in 2000.

Amongst the captives is John Boyle (Ian Kelly), an effete, almost comical, whingeing British actor (think a ginger John Cleese), who has been touring with a Shakespeare play and his girlfriend Margaret (a fabulously stoical Ingeborga Dapkunallit); Russian, Captain Medvedev (Sergei Bodrov) and a Jewish businessman.

After the ritual decapitation of an unnamed Russian soldier (to cries of “Allah Akhbar” and actual audio footage from a internet video), the hostages are finally taken away and holed up in a remote mountain enclave. But the gangster leader, Aslan Gugayev (a fiercely convincing Giorgi Gurgulia), wants money from the West and so releases John, sending him off to London to raise the ransom of £2 million. Failure will result in Margaret’s death although once in Whitehall, John predictably draws a blank with the ‘powers that be’, both Russian and British. Then an executive from Channel 4 offers to put up £200K in return for John’s video footage of the mission. A further £400k comes from John’s own coffers.

Sergei Chadov’s debut is a quietly stunning portrayal of Sergeant Ivan: canny, sardonic and impeccably organised with a cigarette rarely out of his mouth, he leaves a grim postwar future in his home town of Tobolsk, but his decision to accompany John back to Chechnya is swayed more by a sense of national duty to Captain Ruslan and his family than the prospect of being compensated for his efforts by a slice of John’s cash. And although John appears weak and ineffectual, when the chips are down he makes a wise choice in hiring the honest and reliable Ivan, who emerges a figure worthy of national pride and heroism. Through shrewd decision-making and gung-ho aplomb, the pair make their way back via Vladikavkaz (for equipment), later enlisting the help of Chechen shepherd Ruslan (Evklid Kyurdzidis), a rival of Aslan’s tribe, who is kept under the cosh by Ivan but whose knowledge of Chechen mores proves invaluable on their final leg of the journey back to the Chechen camp to do business with the gangster rebels.

Dark humour seeps through the stark realism of this satisfying story; well-told, brilliantly put together and easy to follow in its straightforward narrative structure. The only sadness is that Aleksei Balabanov won’t be telling anymore stories from the rich and eventful history of his native Russia. MT

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WAR IS PART OF THE ALEKSEI BALABANOV SERIES AT THE SLOVO FESTIVAL, WHICH RUNS COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA DURING FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2014. FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME VISIT the Website

Yves Saint Laurent (2014) Netflix

Dir: Jalil Lespert | Wri: Laurence Benaiim, Jacques Fieschi, Marie-Pierre Huster, Jalil Lespert | Cast: Pierre Niney, Guillaume Gallienne, Charlotte Le Bon, Laura Smet, Marie de Villepin, Nikolai Kinski, Marianne Basler | France, Biopic drama 104′

The legendary designer and couturier, Yves Saint Laurent, had two biopics dedicated to him in 2014. The first is this one from actor turned director Jalil Lespert, the second is Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent.which won the Palme Dog at Cannes for Best Doggy Death scene played by pooch Moujik.

For fifty years YSL was the creative force that shaped the International fashion scene with designs celebrating haute couture and paving the way for prêt-à-porter to gain respectability for those with more dash than cash.

Lespert takes the first (and most significant) part of YSL’s career, which deals with his rise to fame; his significant relationship with his business partner, Pierre Bergé, and his emotional decline. This biopic is meticulously-crafted in conveying the importance of style and correct dressing, epitomising French style through wearable elegance. The film features his immaculate designs and particularly his appreciation of the female body in celebrating voluptuous curves and waists (his sister and mother modelled for him in the early days) unlike Chanel whose boxy designs focused on a more gamine look, highlighted by Audrey Hepburn.

After a childhood in Algeria, then a French colony, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent moved to Paris to study fashion design. The film opens in 1953, as Christian Dior appoints him in-house designer. After a dalliance with one of the favourite in-house models (Charlotte Le Bon), he falls for Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne), who is to become his business partner and the love of his life.

On Dior’s sudden death, he is drafted into the army but escapes conscription in Algeria, on emotional grounds. The House of Dior then sacks him and YSL takes them to court, and wins. Lespert’s film works best in these early years when it deals with YSL’s perfectionist nature and his appreciation of the impeccable professionalism surrounding French design standards, and the seriousness with which the French treat the industry.

Lespert is also at pains to flesh-out his struggle with homosexuality in fifties France, and illustrates how Pierre Bergé was such a vital partner, providing a business brain and an emotional anchor due to their strong chemistry; showing how this was a compatible love match not just a sexual exploit, and also how the two strayed from their relationship, eventually making it stronger.

After they form their own fashion house, YSL moves with the times developing a groundbreaking prét-a-porter collection that responded to a new generation with sportier and more sexy, shape-flattering clothes for women such as the ‘Le Smoking’, thigh boots, tight trousers and swaggeringly sophisticated trouser suits.

Stylish to look at, the film follows the couture shows on the catwalk, charting how the collections developed creatively demonstrating the importance of business acumen in the face of growing competition from the likes of Courrèges in the late sixties. As the brand grows in profile, the couple consort with the Jet Set, moving between Paris and Marrakech where the drama loosens up as an exotic twist tracks Saint-Laurent’s louche descent into drugs and alcohol – a reaction to his stiff upbringing and Bergen’s controlling influence. This segment also deals with Yves’ friendships with Loulou de la Falaise and Nicole Dorier and also his pioneering fascination with non-white models and ethnic designs, and this is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack of hits from the era. The narrative then wanders into more predictable ’sex, drugs and rock-roll’ territory rather than exploring Saint Laurent’s more personal love life.

Guillaume Gallienne is spectacular as Pierre Bergé, evoking not only his acute business and PR skill and in-depth understanding of Saint-Laurent, but also his aching desire to be seen as more than just a business man; and this shows through in Marrakech when his stiff style is at odds with the other relaxed creatives hanging out there. Pierre Niney physically inhabits the role of Yves-Saint-Laurent. Not only does he look like the designer but he also embodies his volatility to perfection: his acute shyness in myriad expressions of painful anguish, mercurial anger and also his dignified restraint.

The film ends abruptly but perhaps at best the possible juncture for Saint Laurent as the later years of his life were less ground-breaking than his rise to fame. On reflection, a more in-depth examination of the earlier years would have made more fascinating viewing from a fashion point of view, with less of the repetitive drug-fuelled years which reveal nothing out of the ordinary, but create dramatic heft. Lespert’s film is at its best when charting the fashion scene of the fifties and early sixties and his family influences. Watching Pierre Niney, though, you cannot help but feel you’re in the presence of the great designer himself. MT

YVES SAINT LAURENT IS ON DVD and NETFLIX

Salvo (2013) Semaine de la Critique 2013

SALVO wastes no time in getting down to the gritty business of assassination. Hit man Saleh Bakri (Salvo) kills his rival, Renato, in the stunning opening of this action thriller which then rams on the breaks and becomes a slow-burning story of redemption (five years in the making). The scorching Sicilian heat permeates every frame of Grassadonia and Piazza’s intense debut that turns its attention to the dead man’s visually-challenged sister, Rita (Sara Serraiocco), who is quietly awaiting his return at home.

Daniele Cipri (It Was the Son) is behind the lens of an exquisitely-executed long-take, ratcheting up the tension as it watches Rita going about her duties inside the darkened house as Salvo breaks in and tracks her down. Holding her hostage in a disused lock-up, he transforms her life into a bewildering nightmare of vaguely moving shapes. Has the trauma caused to her to regain sight or did she simply have extremely poor vision?: this is sadly unclear but Salvo becomes obsessed with his helpless captive gradually mending his former ways, as if out of respect for suffering. In a quirky twist, he also becomes the focus of an eccentric couple (Giuditta Perriera and Luigi Lo Cascio) who give him board and lodging in a seedy side of town, injecting texture and offbeat humour.

With a judicious use of silence and limited dialogue, SALVO has some clever ideas and a brilliant starting point, but the narrative flatlines in the second half and never really peaks again despite some interesting twists and turns. Bakri is superb as Salvo, a criminal with a fascinating modus operandi, and Daniele Cipri’s cinematography is a joy to behold. MT

SALVO IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 21 MARCH 2014 THROUGH PECCADILLO PICTURES.

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Meteora (2012) Now on DVD

METEORA is a densely mountainous region in central Greece. Steeped in ancient history, it’s best known for its medieval Orthodox monasteries that cling miraculously to the peaks. In one such holy setting, filmmaker Spiros Stathoulopoulos’s part-animated drama imagines a love affair between a young lustful monk and his courtship with a nun in the convent on the opposite mountain-side. Making a perilous journey each day from their precarious perches they embark on an affair made all the more exciting by its illicit and dangerous nature.

Spiros Stathoulopoulos uses delicately rendered animations of icons and religious motifs to illustrate his narrative conveying guilt, desire and inner conflict: the struggle of man against the strictures imposed by his pious maker serve to heighten the eroticism of their clandestine meetings which take place in sun-baked fields nearby, over a well-lubricated ‘dejeuner sur l’herbe’.

A million miles away from the Greek New Wave, hovering between the sacred and profane (in tone as well as concept), METEORA feels like a legend from an illuminated manuscript that bursts into life in the arid heat of its heady summer setting, as the lovers finally unite. Fraught with images of desire and damnation, it references classical mythology and biblical events that are cleverly interwoven into the narrative (The Minotaur and Theseus, Christ’s crucifixion). Theodor (Theo Alexander/True Blood) and Urania (Tamila Kulieva) radiate strong sexual chemistry as they stray from cloistered celibacy to unbridled fornication in scenes reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils or Dominic Moll’s The Monk. Ultimately the message is a simple one: we’re all sinners in the eyes of God and this makes carnal love all the more appealing. Despite some tonal shifts, the overall vibe is serene, slow-burning and sultry and suitably scored by music from the Middle Ages, including Perotin’s ‘Viderunt Omnes’. MT

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METEORA IS RELEASED ON DVD ON 23 MARCH 2014

BFI Flare LGBT 20-30 March 2014

FLARE is the new name for the London LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER Film Festival which takes place from 20 – 30 March 2014 at the Southbank Centre; what ever your sexuality this year has some stunning titles to enjoy, whatever your sexuality may be.

The festival is also available across the UK on the BFI VOD platform and a monthly screening programme at the Southbank.

Fresh from Sundance, this years’ opening night film is Hong Khaou’s LILTING. Ben Whishaw is compelling as a gay man living through the tragic aftermath of his lover’s death. Cheng Pei-Pei (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Peter Bowles also star in this cross-cultural drama that explores loss, miscommunication and denial, in the same vein as Xavier Doulan’s TOM ON THE FARM.

The Festival closes with Sophie Hyde’s 52 TUESDAYS which won a Best Director Award at Sundance and also screened as part of the official selection at the Berlin Film Festival where it was awarded a Crystal Bear. Shot on 52 consecutive Tuesdays over the course of a year, the film follows a teenager’s struggle to come to terms with her mother’s transition from female to male and the subsequent effect of her own emerging sexuality.

The Accenture Gala is THE LAST MATCH, a powerful and compelling story of two young men set in Havana, Cuba, who grapple with life and love, in a tale of economic desperation and sexual awakening.

Under a series of themed groupings, the programme includes 50 films from all over the World:

H E A R T S – films about love, romance and friendship

This section showcases a rich crop of dramatic features including upbeat American high school comedy, G.B.F. which explores the comic implications of the outing of a male student who becomes the darling of the reigning prom queens but loses sight of who his real friends are, and features a great cameo by Megan Mullally as an over-supportive pro-gay mother. C.O.G. is the first film adaptation of a work by David Sedaris, and this road movie meets student journey of self-discovery will not disappoint his many fans. Returning festival favourite Marco Berger brings HAWAII a beautiful and subtle film of two childhood friends who unexpectedly become re-acquainted as adults. Dappled sun-light and dreamy nostalgia feature strongly in LAST SUMMER a film about two teenage friends facing up to losing each other as one is about to head off to college. Memories of the 1980s and a great period soundtrack feature strongly in TEST, an account of the trials of a young male dancer learning big lessons about love and life in San Francisco in 1985 before mobile phones.

DUAL is a charming story of an encounter between a lost tourist and a female bus driver late one night on the way from the airport. REACHING FOR THE MOON is a powerful account of a famous novelist and her architect lover in Rio de Janeiro whose lives encompass dramatic highs and lows, both professionally and personally.

Twenty years on from his death we feature a screening of a never-before-seen experimental work by Derek Jarman, WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME? filmed as a test for Ron Peck’s EMPIRE STATE. Derek roams around Benjy’s nightclub in 1984 among an invited group of club patrons which includes actor Philip Williamson and a cast of regulars.

Recent events in India will not prevent us celebrating some of the queerest things in Indian culture with rare big screen outings for PAKEEZAH(1972) and MUGHAL-E-AZAM (1960) while Dr Rajinder Dudrah gives a talk on Bollywood -LGBT Style: Queer Readings of Popular Hindi Cinema and Club Kali hosts a big themed party too.

B O D I E S – stories of sex, identity and transformation

Exec produced by Rose Troche and directed by Stacie Passion, CONCUSSION is a bold drama about a well-heeled lesbian wife and parent who discovers a new way to deal with suburban ennui. WHO’S AFRAID OF VAGINA WOLF? is a genuinely hilarious, new comedy from Anna Margarita Albelo starring Guinevere Turner and the director herself plays a 40 year old bohemian lesbian who is forced to make a film in order to follow through on a dating stratagem.

Bruce LaBruce remains a deliciously subversive filmmaker, his latest GERONTOPHILIA world premiered at Venice and charmed audiences with an account of a young man working at a care home with a passion for much older men, cocking a snook at the youth cult of contemporary life. THE PASSION OF MICHAELANGELO is a fascinating re-imagining of a true story of an alleged teenage prophet whose visions of the Virgin galvanised the Chilean masses, but the inside story reveals sex, politics and deceit on a grand scale. I ALWAYS SAID YES: THE MANY LIVES OF WAKEFIELD POOLE is a documentary about a pioneering pornographer (Boys in the Sand) whose fascinating life took in performing with the Ballets Russe, Broadway, pop art, and much more.

AGE OF CONSENT was inspired by a screening at last year’s festival. This access-all-areas documentary by Charles Lum and Todd Verow features the inside story of The Hoist, London’s only permanent fixture leather bar, what goes on there, its patrons and how its story reflects on the wider gay culture. Some scenes of a sexual nature.

Programmer Michael Blyth dissects the fascinating homo-erotics of gay horror films with a talk Queer Eye for the Dead Guy: A brief history of LGBT horror plus four of the best on the big screen: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART II: FREDDY’S REVENGE, THE LOST BOYS, FRIGHT NIGHT and BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER.

M I N D S – reflections on art, politics and community

Highlights include a very strong range of documentaries: THE ABOMINABLE CRIME covers the lives of a lesbian survivor of a murder attempt and a male gay activist under threat in Jamaica, while BORN THIS WAY (presented in association with the Human Rights Watch Film Festival) is an exploration of brave initiatives in campaigning for gay rights in the Cameroon. The Abominable Laws is a discussion event which will focus on the appalling legal situation for many LGBT people around the globe. BIG JOY: THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES BROUGHTON is an insightful portrait of a poet and experimental film-maker whose art and life culminated in 25 years of love with a younger partner. BRIDEGROOM is a poignant celebration of the life that two young gay men had before a sudden death, when the survivor was brutually snubbed by his boyfriend’s family. CONTINENTAL is a great documentary about a former early 1970s, New York landmark, gay bath-house which launched the careers of Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, Frankie Knuckles and more. VALENTINE ROAD is a heart-breaking study of the murder of young gay high school student. MY PRAIRE HOME is a celebration of the life and music of the much-loved genderqueer Rae Spoon, while KATE BORNSTEIN IS A QUEER AND PLEASANT DANGER is an inspiring look at another gender outlaw.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Film-maker Allyson Mitchell will have a lesbian-feminist art installation at BFI Southbank for the duration of the festival: Killjoy’s Kastle is a haunted house style encounter with the horrors of political division and community politics. Allyson will also give a talk about her work as a film-maker and artist.

Archivist and DJ Jeffrey Hinton opens up his personal archive to explore the history of clubland drag in Life’s a Drag (a celebration) followed by a rare screening of THE ALTERNATIVE MISS WORLD (1980) (Andrew Logan hopes to attend). Stephen Beresford talks PRIDE in an on-stage interview with the writer of one of the most eagerly awaited films of 2014, a major new film called PRIDE, a drama which uncovers the remarkable true story of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners movement in 1984.

BFI FLARE RUNS FROM 20 MARCH UNTIL 30 MARCH 2014

The Zero Theorum (2013) Venice 2013

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Matt Damon, Lucas Hodges

107min Fantasy Drama UK

Terry Gilliam is back with a psychedelic mish-mash of mysogyny and male musings: THE ZERO THEORUM is a mathematical formula that seeks to determine whether life has meaning, as seen through the eyes of Christophe Waltz’s middle-aged geek in a dystopian town of the future. Waltz is both perplexed and benign in the role as he’s badgered to settle down and marry by Melanie Thierry’s blonde piece of fluff who taunts him to commit in various states of undress (a typical male fantasy from the warped mind of a commitment-phobe). Gilliam’s fantasy drama explores the nightmare of online, corporate Hell so just hope that we never get there. Despite some creative flourishes in the Art department THE ZERO THEORUM is puerile, repetitive and overlong. An acquired taste that will divide audiences: I’d give it a miss unless you love his films. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 MARCH 2014

Palaces of Pity (2011) Palacios de Pena AV Festival Postcolonial Cinema Weekend 7-9 March 2014

Directors: Gabriel Abrantes / Daniel Schmidt Writers: Gabriel Abrantes / Daniel Schmidt

Cast: Alcina Abrantes, Andreia Martina, Catarina Gaspar

Portugal Surreal Fantasy 59min

The theme for this year’s AV Festival, which runs in the Northeast throughout March, is ‘extraction’. Drawing upon its host region’s rich industrial history, the biennial festival of art, music and film concentrated its focus during Postcolonial Cinema Weekend (March 7-9) to showcase varying artistic approaches to colonialism and its lasting legacies.

Following its directors’ award-winning short A HISTORY OF MUTUAL RESPECT (2010), mid-lengther PALACES OF PITY (PALÁCIOS DE PENA) continues Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s preference for the distinctively ironic. As with their earlier work, the directors operate by means of cultural – and specifically cinematic – appropriation, in order to ruffle feathers, telling the tale of two spoilt cousins in present-day Lisbon who party their seventh grade away on the eve of their grandmother’s death.

Just before she dies, the old woman recounts – in fantastical and eroticised flashback – a story to the two girls, in which two gay Moorish priests are tried and executed by knights who nevertheless admire the lovers. Upon waking up, the girls discover their grandmother has died. Following an intergenerational lesbian encounter with her notary, one of the girls is able to seize full inheritance of her grandmother’s will at the expense of her cousin. Absolute wealth corrupts absolutely.

Opening on a gorgeously and gradually illuminated football stadium, PALACES OF PITY unfolds against a series of breathtaking locations. Following the first scene, the two young protagonists visit a dam and are dwarfed by it entirely as they take their grandmother’s goats to graze, while the flashback scene takes place in an actual Moorish Castle dating back to 700 AD. Natxo Checa and Eberhard Schedl’s cinematography belies the film’s apparently slim budget, while Abrantes and Schmidt demonstrate much tact in disguising their lack of resources, largely through well-timed cut-aways and well-chosen remote settings.

Strong images, however, can only go so far. PALACES has a forced surrealism to it, employing a kind of Lynchian, associational incongruity rather than concrete historical storytelling. No bad thing, perhaps, but the persistent artificiality rapidly wears thin. The deliberately wooden acting; the belaboured longueurs between lines of dialogue; the sudden dissolve from images of adolescent girls in high heels to a slow-motion sequence cut to a distorted adagio version of Alphaville’s “Forever Young”… Such reappropriation and exaggeration of mainstream conventions has in the past been a legitimate political practice, but caught so knowingly between the appreciable (and insufferable) strains of INLAND EMPIRE and the jejune kitsch of SPRING BREAKERS, Abrantes and Schmidt seem to be sniggering at the thought of upsetting the status quo rather than making a wholehearted commitment to doing so.

Irksome dialogue is revealing of these limitations more than anything. In the opening scene, the grandmother – who sits in the stands as the girls stretch on the pitch for a soccer match – remarks, “The country has changed but we are the same.” Such on-the-nose symbolism is embarrassing. In the flashback, just before one of our seventh-graders cops a lustful kiss from her inheritance solicitor, the two Moorish priests masturbate one another while two Lisboan knights look on in awe of their intelligence and sensitivity.

More droll dialogue provokes us. Watching the Moorish priests masturbate one another (in such a stylised, symmetrically framed manner that its provocation is removed from any kind of historical context), one of the knights says, “show me your little piglet… Give me shelter, little puppy.” Upon being rejected, the knight remarks: “Those soft little faces are going to pay.”

To suggest systematised political oppression stems primarily from psychological shortcomings – that is, from the oppressors’ feelings of horror towards their own ‘forbidden desires’ – is surely a limited (if not entirely refutable) outlook. Sadly, then, while the political agency of surrealism stems from its legitimate emphasis upon those basic human desires that in class society are suppressed and driven underground (or within), the provocateurs seem on this occasion to be late to the party. Michael Pattison

AV FESTIVAL RUNS THROUGHOUT THE NORTHEAST OF ENGLAND DURING MARCH 2014

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The Invisible War (2013)

Director: Kirby Dick

93min US Documentary

In this well-constructed and fascinating documentary, Kirby Dick exposes rape in the US Military: and not just rape of women but men as well. Rape is not a one-off occurrence but a regular part of army life for most recruits: it’s part of the territory: an occupational hazard.

An endless deluge of tearful soldiers talk about their experiences on camera. They are living testament to a system that knows no shame; young people who dreamt of serving their country only to fall victim to a military hierarchy who considers it their right to receive sexual favours from subordinates whose lives and relationships end in ruin due to their callousness. It’s a fact that sexual predators migrate towards ‘the safety’ of army service, knowing their proclivities will be well-catered for in a system that operates outside the normal judiciary framework: In the Military, the first line of contact is with the Officer in command and this officer is, for the most part, the perpetrator of the crime. There is no way out, in short.

There’s nothing worthy about Kate Dick’s well-paced treatment of her subject-matter – but the sobering facts are that one in five serving female officers has been sexually assaulted (500,000 since records began). The male victim rate is unclear but nevertheless significant. Women are made aware that any complaint will be met by a humiliating and futile procedure that knows no positive conclusion. To add insult to injury, a poster campaign aimed at Army men: “Ask Her When She’s Sober” is the only measure in place to tackle the issue.

A chilling documentary that offers grim viewing, but is worth a watch for its sheer incredibility. MT

THE INVISIBLE WAR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 MARCH 2014

Boys on Film 11 – We Are Animals Now on DVD VOD

BOYS ON FILM is an ongoing DVD series offering a selection of daring and diverse LGBT drama shorts from all over the World. These pithy and poignant peeks attempt to challenge and explore sexuality from differing points of view. The eleventh bumper edition is particularly interesting on trans-generational relationships. THREE SUMMERS: a daring and unlikely love story emerges when a divorced woman gets to know a teenage boy developing over the course of three years (Denmark, 28min); the groundbreaking issue of physical disability is tackled in FOR DORIAN: that deals sensitively with the nascent sexuality of a Down’s Syndrome boy, seen from the perspective of his father (Canada, 16min) and LITTLE MAN; a physiological drama that centres on 30 year-old Elliot and his track record of emotional avoidance and uneasy relationships with his older brother and the strange man next door (by award-winning Israeli director Eldar Rapaport (AUGUST).

OUT ON DVD FROM 10 MARCH 2014

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Rome, Open City (1946) NEW 4k restoration

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Script: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini
Producers: Guiseppe Amato, Ferrucio De Martino, Rod E Geiger, Roberto Rossellini
Cast: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcelo Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico, Nando Bruno, Harry Feist, Giovanna Galletti

103mins War film Italian with subtitles

In 1944 Italy there was, understandably, no film industry or indeed any money. Despite this, Roberto Rossellini had persuaded a wealthy woman to finance a documentary about a priest who had helped with the resistance. She was also interested in telling another story of the children who fought for the resistance.

Rossellini approached Fellini with the ambition of casting Fabrizi for the role of the priest, but Fellini came up with the idea of combining these two documentary strands into one fictional movie and they set about writing the piece with Amidei, just two months after the Germans vacated Italy.

Based on factual events of 1944 and filmed in Rome directly after the war, Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece stands as one of the greatest war films ever made. Handheld camera, shot almost entirely on location: Rome, Open City is another superb offering from the Italian Neo-Realist stable. The hatred of the Germans and the freshness of the atrocities is palpable in all of the non-professional actors serving justice to this story; where one is never in any doubt about the authenticity of the mise en scene. Presumably a cathartic experience for all involved.

As the Nazi net closes in, more by luck than judgement, resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is forced into hiding, entirely dependent on the kindness and assistance of friends and colleagues. However, the stresses and strains on the whole community inevitably begin to show, where what normally might be seen as easy neighbourliness, during wartime becomes a matter of life and death.

One of the things that is remarkable here is Rossellini’s ability to find sublime humour in the darkest of moments. And there’s nothing quite like a war movie, with Nazis as the baddies exerting unbearable pressure, to extract the most extreme jeopardy and distress. The human condition is under the microscope and with this kind of duress, everyone’s character and resolve is forced to the fore; the subjugator as much as the subjugated.

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Anna Magnani has a quite wonderful role as the feisty pregnant Pina, who lives life with a passionate vibrancy that seems to epitomise Italy. But it’s interesting to note that both she and Fabrizi, the only professionals in the film, were, up to that time, well known only for their comedy, this being their first foray into serious drama.

Rossellini was a trailblazer in a great many ways, not only in the casting, but also in the manner in which he ignored the script that the financiers had agreed to and simply went out and shot the film he wanted to make. Rossellini had had terrible trouble financing it; the money he already had from his initial investor wasn’t sufficient to cover the whole budget, but other potential investors shied away from a film with scenes of torture, wondering who in their right minds would go and see it, so it was shot on the hoof very much out of necessity than design.

Upon its completion, Paris lauded the film, but the premier in Italy was a catastrophe, audiences perhaps understandably wanting more escapism than the grim realities of what they had just been through. US soldier Rod Geiger then took it to the US, where the film made a fortune for the distributor and also opened American doors to Italian Neo-Realist films. It was only by gaining a reputation abroad, winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, that Rome, Open City gained more acceptance at home.

A massive achievement and a landmark film, that, like so many recognised classics, gained its reputation in the years long after a less than stellar launch. But even if you disregard its significance as a piece of cinematic history, or the innovations on filmmaking, just see this film as a truly amazing and passionate piece of storytelling. It’s got all you could wish for: Nazis, suave resistance fighters, beautiful women, plucky kids, homemade bombs, espionage, religion and Rome. You cannot fail to be moved. Andrew Rajan.

THE 4K RESTORATION OF ROME, OPEN CITY OPENS ON 7 MARCH 2014 AT THE BFI, CURZON MAYFAIR, IFI DUBLIN AND SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE.

Interior. Leather Bar (2013)

Directors: James Franco/Travis Mathews Writer: Travis Mathews

Cast: Val Lauren, Christian Patrick, Brenden Gregory, Brad Roberge

60mins US Docu-fiction

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INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR was inspired by William Friedkin’s original drama CRUISING (1980) that saw Al Pacino’s rookie policeman ‘going underground’ in search of a gay serial killer in New York. In order to pacify the censors, Friedkin cut 40 minutes of salacious footage from CRUISING and this has never been seen in a public screening. So this experimental collaboration between Franco and Mathews attempts to re-imagine the missing footage with a look at how male gay sexuality is portrayed in film. The resulting docu-fiction outing mixes reality with fantasy in contemporary LA. The piece has a loose and laid-back vibe to it as Franco tries to coax his lead and friend (the very heterosexual) Val Lauren, into a gay bar to help him in his mission to scope out the full spectrum of gay behaviour from cruising to sex within a committed relationship. His reactions to overt gay males all butched-up to the nines in leather bondage gear are revealing as he states after the first day’s filming “I’m not the same guy as I was this morning”.

Naturally Val Lauren is rather back-footed by the whole project and this comes across in spades, as is intended by Franco. The two engage in endless banter and displacement chat about his role as a straight man entering such a premises in the 1980s. He seems uneasy about it all and chats to his girlfriend on the mobile, for re-assurance. Allegedly this dialogue is scripted but it has such an authentic feel to it that one can’t help thinking that most of it was ‘ad lib’. The essentially waffly dialogue is intercut with stylishly ‘re-created’ scenes of how Franco imagines the lost 40 minutes of original film footage may have played out back then and offers a provocative and erotically-charged twist to the proceedings with some ‘no-holds-barred encounters between cruisers and a couple who are in committed relationship.

At just 60 minutes this latest Franco outing is not long enough to merit a full theatrical release but nevertheless merits a watch if it comes to a film festival or one-off screening near you. MT

SHOWING AT HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE AND GREENWICH PICTUREHOUSE ON 9TH DECEMBER AND ICA ON 15TH DECEMBER 2013

DVD ON SALE 9TH DECEMBER WITH EXTRAS: FEAST OF STEPHEN – A SHORT FILM BY JAMES FRANCO

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Derek Jarman Retrospective at the BFI February – March 2014

DEREK JARMAN

Two events are celebrating Derek Jarman in London in 2014. “Pandemonium” Exhibition at Somerset House, WC2 and a Retrospective at the BFI 5.2. – 31.3.)

Derek Jarman died twenty years ago at the age of 52 but was undoubtedly the most innovative director of the British cinema in the second half of the 20^th century and arguably the greatest visionary since Michael Powell. His films are always the opposite of the traditional English ‘masterpieces’ featuring the heroes of the past – he turned the glorious history into a macabre sideshow. And he was obsessed with death, from the very beginning. And death never comes easy to Jarman’s heroes: SEBASTIANE, the title hero of his first feature (co-directed by Paul Humfress in 1976), dies a slow, agonising death, bound to face the penetrating arrows of his torturers. Needless to say, that for Jarman, Sebastiane was not a Christian martyr, but a gay anti-hero. Ten years later it is the turn of another title hero, the painter CARAVAGGIO to die a horrible fever death in black and blue. The youthful hero in THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1987) dies a small, dirty little death. And death rules the WAR REQUIEM (1988), this time in glowing pink. Laurence Olivier in a wheelchair, as a war hero in his last film role. And in between shots of bombing raids by Jarman’s pilot-father, which he took with his camera in WWII.

In EDWARD II (1991) the title hero perishes with a red hot poker in his rectum – in the arms of his tender murderer, whilst Annie Lennox sings Cole Porter’s “Every time we say goodbye, we die a little”. Jarman always re-mastered the originals of the classics into something demonic, obscene and really evil: He transformed the magic island from Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1979) into an labyrinth of terror, and the Sonnets of the Bard into a witch’s Sabbath in THE ANGELIC CONVERSATIONS (1985). And he shows contemporary England – JUBILEE (1977 and the aptly titled THE LAST OF ENGLAND – as an island out of hell – just the opposite of what Margaret Thatcher, with her ideas of a strong, back-to-the-Empire orientated country, had in mind. And Jarman’s own death, foretold with BLUE a year before he died, blind from the medications which did not cure Aids, but a peaceful BLUE nevertheless: a final work without pictures, just words. It is the viewer, who projects his pictures on this film – not uncommon for Jarman’s work, since he was always more interested in the creative process than the result: “The end-product is not important, it is only the witness of a creative process”.

Jarman studied painting at the Slade School in London, but his interest in stage design made him collaborate with the Royal Ballet and the ENO. His first work for the cinema was the Production Design for Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1970). Then he wandered around London with his ‘Super 8” camera – home movies, but also first documents of the gay community. The difference between fiction and documentation did not exist for Jarman. “Life is Art”, the title of a documentary about Jarman by Andy Klimpton (they met first in the early 80s) is by far the best description of Jarman’s life and work. His garden and wooden cottage near Dungeness was his last refuge, much more than a hobby. Four years after being diagnosed with aids in 1986 THE GARDEN shows a gay couple, being seemingly senseless tortured and murdered, whilst a Madonna (Tilda Swinton) is harassed by paparazzis, Jesus looks on painfully and Judas’ death is exploited as an advertisement for credit cards.

THE LAST OF ENGLAND is perhaps the best example of Jarman’s work, because it is as personal as it is political. The ‘home movie’ fragments, which his father and grandfather shot, show the small world from which Derek was going to escape. We see innocence, but it is only superficial – the “Kodak” family always smiles. But behind the smiles is the soldier father, who repressed his children. When we see little Derek playing ball, the innocence is undercut by the security fences, and we also hear the noise of the war planes in background. Cut to the scenes in Brixton, where police and demonstrators show a new meaning of war: the total civil war. It is a dark portrait of a nation rotting away. If one thinks of an equivalent in literature, one would choose Baudrillard’s “Kool killer”. The apocalypse is already here, it is happening before our very eyes. The present as future, Science Fiction as the new reality. As proven in JUBILEE, where Elizabeth I asks her court magician to show her the future of her domain, 400 years on, during the reign of Elizabeth II.

In DEREK (2008) a homage to Jarman, by Isaac Julien and Bernhard Rose, Jarman’s muse, the actress Tilda Swinton (‘Caravaggio’, The last of England’, War Requiem’, ‘The Garden’, Edward II’ and ‘Blue’) reads her ‘letter’ to Jarman ‘in the sky’. She misses his contra-poison to the disco-light of a culture where everything is for sale. And: “Derek, this is what made you a real artist – you worked from your ‘soup kitchen’, which was your life” And in this ‘soup kitchen’ the private, the intimate and the public life touched each other, present and history. Jarman never wanted to build borders between these spheres. Like the painter Caravaggio, who painted a Madonna like a prostitute, and holy men as rent boys.

Derek Jarman was not only a leading figure of the independent British film but also of the gay movement. He fought energetically against Thatcher’s anti-gay policies, like the Paragraph 28, which forbade any information in schools about homosexuality. He was a creative figure, a dreamer, an eccentric and a militant poet with his brush and his Super 8 camera. He was a minimalist too, his WITTGENSTEIN (1993) was shot against a black background. And it is no accident, that the philosopher Wittgenstein, one of Jarman’s heroes, said “that philosophy ought to be written as if it was poetry.” Derek Jarman’s films were always poems, close to the heart. AS

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DEREK JARMAN RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK, LONDON SE1 UNTIL MARCH 31, 2014

Still Alice (2014)

Directors/Writers: Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland From a novel by Lisa Genova

Cast: Julianne Moore, Alex Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish

99min US Drama

In an extraordinary year for films about dread diseases, we’ve seen some superb performances so far: Agyness Deyn plays an epilepsy sufferer in ELECTRICITY, and Eddie Redmayne is heading for an Oscar with his portrait of Motor Neurone Disease in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Now along come Julianne Moore, with another winning performance to add to her growing list of best actress gongs.

As a fifty-year-old university professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in STILL ALICE, Moore is superb. Cleverly, the film incorporates a generalised and gnawing sense of dread throughout the rest of the cast when we learn that isn’t just early onset, it’s a rare genetic type with a 50/50 chance it will be passed to her children. With a daughter undergoing fertility treatment, which successfully leads to twins, Alice’s affliction leads to a wider sense of dread as the narrative unspools; pulling each member of the family into its web of fear and anxiety. Ironically, Alice and her husband, Dr John Howland (Alex Baldwin), are neuroscientists who specialise in the study of memory. So Alice has the added insight into her condition as it slowly develops.

Alzheimer’s is a condition that everyone fears and part of that fear lies in the loss of control it entails. From being responsible and free individuals we are gradually forced to rely more heavily on our families and, for many of us, this is an added aspect for concern in this world of family dysfunction. STILL ALICE ramps up these fears in quite a sinister way by also exploring how Alzheimer’s is worse when it effects the intellectual mind. These are facts that make the film much more depressing than it needs to be but strangely it fails to be move in the same way as THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, and for most of the time, it comes across as a film that been made for the Alzheimer’s Society or some Government body.

Undoubtedly, we feel for Alice – it would be inhuman not too, and Julianne Moore depicts her decline in a sensitive and gentle way: where she could have been more angry and bitter, she comes across as appealingly vulnerable. Yet the other characters feels vapid and rather formulaic and the film’s straightforward linear narrative fails to contrast its central story with other engaging narrative strands, making it ultimately feel one dimensional. Alex Baldwin, as her husband is simply terrible. Not only is he weirdly wooden, but it also feels like he’s actually acting in another film (Sleeping With the Enemy) as a break-out psychopath control freak. As her youngest daughter (Lydia) Kristen Stewart is cold-eyed and awkward throughout – and totally lacking in the empathy that you would expect from her character’s role as a budding actress. Kate Bosworth, her eldest daughter, feels flat and uninteresting. Unlike her intellectual parents she behaves like a woman who spends most of her days shopping and reading magazines and this feels totally unauthentic, in the circumstances. So Moore is left to carry the film entirely on her own shoulders, surrounded by a support cast who are, at best, vapid cyphers, and at worst, unappealing. STILL ALICE fills you with a sense of unremittingly gloom throughout; totally unleavened by humour or even pathos.

Alzheimer’s disease currently effects around a million people in the UK. Little is still known about its aetiology and care facilities are poor and underdeveloped. When it strikes, it gradually obliterates our personalities and woe betide those who lack a significant other to look after them as they become increasingly difficult to handle: and they will be. Here we see a woman who has had a successful life and is surrounded by a loving and supportive family. But it totally lacks any humour or, indeed, drama, concentrating on the romantic cheesiness of Alice and her husband and the worthiness of her ‘close’ family., none of which feels particularly believable. As an American film, it may well be that care is fare superior in the States than in Britain. But here the standard of treatment and care is currently pitiful. Where STILL ALICE succeeds is in showing how the individual can cope with the slow decline by taking some early precautions. Alice writes notes to herself on her computer desk top – to be opened when things eventually get worse. It also offers the idea of memory tests: we see Alice performing these exercises daily; keeping her cognitive impairment from going downhill too rapidly. Expounding the benefits of diet and exercise which can nourish the brain.

So, apart from Julianne Moore’s breakout performance, which won her the Best Actress at the 87th Academy Awards, and bringing the plight of sufferers to the international stage, STILL ALICE is otherwise a lacklustre drama which fails to convince, largely down to the unconvincing performances of the support cast. Alzheimer’s is one of the most devastating afflictions of our times and it would churlish to deprecate a film that aims sensitively to raise awareness of its the tragic effects it wreaks on the individual and those that care for them. Nonetheless this is a film that feels worthy and earnest and fails to deliver any great dramatic punch. But it’s nt a film to go and watch when you’re feeling low or lonely or in need of entertainment. It will bring you down, so be warned. MT

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE

Gravity (2013) Oscar for Best Director ON DVD/BLU

DIRECTOR: ALFONSO CUARON WRITERS; ALFONSO AND JONAS CUARON

Cast: George Clooney, Sandra Bullock

USA 90min Thriller

2014 OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTING; FILM EDITING; ORIGINAL SCORE; SOUND MIXING; SOUND-EDITING; VISUAL EFFECTS

Seven years after Children of Men, Mexican Director Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY 3D swirled silently into Venice with a distant murmur of astronauts talking via satellite in space. George Clooney (Matt Kowalksy) gradually floats into view, as sauve in a space-suit as he is in Gucci tailoring. With his co-pilot Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), he injects much-needed humour into this claustrophobic but technically brilliant sci-fi drama that follows a stricken space-ship as it floats towards the Earth’s orbit with its surviving astronauts. The pair float helplessly amid a welter of emotionally-charged memories of the World they left behind. A pithy script and Emmanuel Lubezki’s ethereal visuals make this a worthwhile experience for the art house crowd and well as blockbuster fans and Sandra Bullock is surprisingly moving as a co-pilot who has nothing left to live for but every reason to survive.. MT

GRAVITY IS ON DVD/BLU FROM 4 MARCH 2014

Dangerous Liaisons (2012) Pan-Asia Film Festival 2014

Dangerous Liaisons (2012) Jin-Ho Hur

Do we really need another adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s 18^th Century French novel? Yes we do when it stars Ziyi Zhang in a ravishingly romantic Chinese-Korean version filmed in 1930s Shanghai, at its glamorous heyday. Much celebrated as an alluring film location for dramas such as Lust, Caution and The White Countess and Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, Shanghai adds a touch of piquant charm to a story that has over the centuries enjoyed universal appeal. The Oriental twist works particularly well with the sumptuous fashions of the era, echoing Shanghai’s exotic wartime alias “Paris of the East”. Jin-Ho Hur’s luxurious imagining is a visually alluring affair (at times a little too dazzling and overdone) boasting possibly the most attractive ensemble cast in the history of film. Several film versions of the epistolary novel also exist, possibly the most successful is the 1988 outing by Stephen Frears, but this is a worthwhile addition.

A lothario and his machiavellian ex-lover indulge in naughty power play intending to taint the innocence of young members of their coterie. Here, Jang Dong-gun plays a suave heartbreaker in the role of Xie Yifan and Cecilia Cheung is delicately coquettish as his sparring partner, Mo Jieyu. Ziyi Zhang brings integrity to the role of the coy young widow who they inveigle into their vengeful trap. The performances here are light and dainty rather than dark and dastardly and the tone is very much soap opera rather than serious drama. Nevertheless, it’s highly entertaining and watchable and at just under two hours, only slightly overstays its polite but increasingly anodyne welcome: the repetition of the name BeiBei. although well-played by Candy Wang, starts to grate eventually. Very much a case of ‘all that glisters is not gold’ but a decent gem, all the same.

SCREENING DURING THE PAN-ASIA FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON 26 FEBRUARY TO 9 MARCH 2014

CINEMA made in Italy 5-9 March 2014

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is at the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington from 5 – 9 March, giving Londoners an opportunity to see the latest Italian films that may not go on general release. Screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with directors and actors. The five day annual event is organised by Istituto Luce – Cinecittà’s promotional department in Rome (Filmitalia), and the Italian Cultural Institute in London. This year’s line-up includes eleven feature films and one documentary. We recommend:

VIVA LA LIBERTÀ by Roberto Andò

THOSE HAPPY YEARS (Anni Felici) by Daniele Luchetti

HOW STRANGE TO BE CALLED FEDERICO! (Che Strano Chiamarsi Federico!) by Ettore Scola

THE REFEREE (L’Arbitro) by Paolo Zucca

BORDER by Alessio Cremonini

ZORAN, MY NEPHEW THE IDIOT (Zoran, Il Mio Nipote Scemo) by Matteo Oleotto

THE FIFTH WHEEL (L’Ultima Ruota del Carro) by Giovanni Veronesi

THE THIRD HALF (Il Terzo Tempo) by Enrico Maria Artale

THE HUMAN FACTOR (La Variabile Umana) by Bruno Oliviero

FIRST SNOWFALL (La Prima Neve) by Andrea Segre

OFF ROAD (Fuoristrada) by Elisa Amoruso

Full Programme details

Pan-Asia Film Festival 26 February – 9 March 2014

The Pan-Asian Film Festival is a unique event showcasing the beauty, variety and dynamism of Asian cinema from IRAN, THAILAND, TAIWAN, JAPAN, CHINA AND INDIA. Taking place in London cinemas and a selection regional cities nationwide, it offers a chance to see premieres of the latest dramas and documentaries from established British Asian directors and introduces some fresh filming talent to audiences, for the first time. Q&As will offer the possibility to meet and engage with home-grown actors and directors as well as talent from across the globe.

Kicking off on the 26th February with a star-studded gala performance of UNFORGIVEN, Sang-il Lee’s adaptation of the Clint Eastwood western, followed by premieres of a sparkling array of dramas such as HONOUR, Shan Khan’s gritty Glasgow-set urban thriller, the festival culminates with a premier of BHOPAL: A PRAYER FOR RAIN on 9th March. The Pan-Asian Best Film Award will be selected from a short-list of six titles.

THE MISSING PICTURE

HONOUR

DANGEROUS LIAISONS

MARY IS HAPPY, MARY IS HAPPY

KAMIL’S PARTY

BHOPAL: A PRAYER FOR RAIN

THE FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 26 FEBRUARY TO 9 MARCH 2014

for more details visit www.asiahouse.org

Oscar Winners | 86th Academy Awards 2014 | Foreign Language

So, LA GRANDE BELLEZZA wins the Oscar placing Paolo Sorrentino firmly on the international map. The Oscars are not all about the big studios and the blockbusters: The archaically-named “Foreign-Language Section” was full of fascinating dramas from all corners of the Globe from Hungary to Cambodia. After disappointment for WADJDA and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR, who didn’t make the list – let’s look back at the films that competing in the year’s race to the Red Carpet.

Hong Kong director: Wong Ka Wai will present The Grandmaster, a dazzling drama of noirish shadows and precision camerawork by Philippe Le Sourd. It tells the story of two Kung Fu masters – Ip Man (the man) from China’s south and Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) is his adversary) from the north. Their paths cross in Foshan on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1936. Gong Er’s father is travelling to Foshan to visit the legendary brothel, The Golden Pavilion, where the country’s best martial artists come together for his retirement ceremony. This tale of betrayal, honour and love plays out against a war-torn backdrop as is Wong Ka Wai’s most commercial outing so far.

Paolo Sorrentino first came to fame with his 2004 outing Consequences of Love: a mafia thriller and love story set in Northern Italy. It featured a magnificent central performance from Toni Servillo who also stars in Italy’s nomination The Great Beauty, possibly his best film so far. Capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle classes with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first described in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Servillo here plays Jep Gambardella, a writer, raconteur and party-animnal who embarks on a Proustian trip down memory lane in the rich Autumn of his life. Ageing but suave, he exudes Mediterranean masculinity and confidence until he is suddenly jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery that throws him off-balance and into action before all is finally lost in old age. The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet for the senses, epitomising the cultural essence of Italy and particularly of Rome.

Belgian’s entry is a musical love-story based on a true-life band. Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen and set in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle and Heldenbergh and Baetens’ attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band. As the narrative develops though, the storytelling becomes more erratic despite strong and heartfelt performances from the leads and particularly Veerle Baetens’ who is one of Belgian’s most popular actresses.

The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier) is János Szász’s magnificent screen adaptation of Agota Kristof”s French-language: ‘The Notebook’ (hence the title) – a lesson in history and Hungary’s nomination to the 86th Academy Awards. Christian Berger’s sumptuous visual treatment almost blunts the harrowing nature of this Second World War tale of twin boys who are taken by their mother Gyöngyver Bognar, (Opium) to live in near-starvation with their tyrannical peasant grandmother (who villagers call “the witch”) deep in the countryside.

Their experiences are recorded in a notebook, providing illustrative testament to this important slice of Hungarian history and serve as an intriguing psychological texture to the ongoing World War narrative.Despite its harsh subject-matter, Le Grand Cahier is a beautiful film to experience accompanied by its atmospheric score. János Szász has provided a rich and important account of the impact of the war on the Hungarian countryside.

Omar was one of the hits at Cannes last year and Hany Abu-Assad’s tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories in the Palestinian nomination. Adam Bakri leads as Omar, a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl Nadja (Leem Lubany). By night, he’s either a freedom fighter or a terrorist-you decide-ready to risk his life to strike at the Israeli military with his childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat). Arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into an admission of guilt by association, he agrees to work as an informant. So begins a dangerous game-is he playing his Israeli handler (Waleed F. Zuaiter) or will he really betray his cause? And who can he trust on either side? Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) dynamic, action-packed drama also engages with the universal themes of moral dilemmas and tough choices that face those on the frontlines of all international conflict.

Denis Tanovic made a big impression at Berlin this year with Incident in the Life of an Ironpicker (Bosnia Herzegovina), a piece of social realism that offers slim pickings in the way of entertainment or standout performances (despite the non-actor lead winning Best Actor in Berlin) but nevertheless raises the important debate on the plight of Roma gypsies in contemporary Europe. Traditionally they have wandered all over the place pursuing their own moral and social cod, living in encampments and opting out of social costs. Tanovic takes a poor couple who live with their two little girls a Roma gypsy camp in Bosnia Herzegovina. Denis Tanovic’s trick of using non-professional actors lends authenticity to this simple story with largely improvised dialogue which draws on the international debate of small communities all over the world and he makes a strong evolutionary point with this film. May be these people have inadvertantly discovered the ultimate answer to sustainability by running their own show in a political regime where many people feel marginalised, unheard, unloved, uncared-for and ultimately disenfranchised in the organised mainstream. But then the Romas weren’t running their own show; they needed medical care and they couldn’t provide it within their own community. A simple tale then that offers stimulating food for thought and a universal message.

The British entry for the Oscars is another tale of the disenfranchised and comes from Sean Ellis, a British director who shot his tense thriller, Metro Manila while on location in the Philippines. First shown at Sundance Film Festival in January, Ellis’ quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers, but he eventually succeeded. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Poetic in feel and sumptuously filmed, Metro Manila is a immersive thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philippino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

The Danish submission The Hunt, comes from Thomas Vinterburg and actually premiered at Berlin in 2012. It’s a mischievous psychological study of child abuse in a traditional contemporary village community in the heart of the Danish countryside.

The action revolves around Mads Mikkelsen who is pitch-perfect as Lucas, a metrosexual man relocating to the place of his childhood after a difficult divorce and custody battle for his son. And although Mads has been a baddie for much of his career, as Lucas, we’re rooting for him all the way as he fights his corner. The performance won him best actor and Cannes this year and, for my money, The Hunt was one of the best films showing at the festival, along with Heneke’s Amour which won the Palme D’Or. It also stars Thomas Bo Larsen and Alexandra Rapaport.

And finally, Rithy Pahn’s The Missing Picture reflects his experiences with genocide on a large scale and serves as a heartfelt memoir of the invasion of Cambodia in the seventies. Making his documentary has helped him come to terms with the terrible losses he suffered during the time of his adolescence, when over 2 million people died during the regime.

Using a collage of bleached-out black and white footage and finely-rendered clay figurines (symbolising stultifying control) set to a weirdly sinister score. What emerges is a a non-confrontational animated record of the hostilities; as individuals became a collective of meaningless numbers imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge to become Democratic Kampuchea. In a regime (similar Nazism and Stalinism) characterised by hunger, torture and emotional cruelty and lack of respect or compassion for the individual, Panh tells how his father was denied a decent burial. Schools became detention centres reflecting a ‘perfect society’ where Marxist ideology reigned as revolutionary winds wafted through the paddy fields heralding ideals of creating an agrarian socialist economy which failed incontrovertibly leading to the deaths (from hunger) of millions of its inhabitants. The mantra – “Whoever apposes, is a corpse” indeed became a reality.

Completing the list is Germany’s official entry for best foreign language film is Two Lives, an historical drama from director Georg Maas starring Juliane Kohler and Liv Ullmann. Based on the true story of Kathrine Evensen (Kohler), a German woman brought up in East Germany and living in Norway, is the child of a Norwegian woman (Liv Ullmann) and a German Second World War solider. Her secret past gradually emerges during the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

THE 86TH ACADEMY AWARDS TAKE PLACE ON 2 MARCH 2014 IN HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES.

USE THE SEARCH ENGINE TO READ REVIEWS OF THE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE NOMINATIONS.

Non-Stop (2014)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver

Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’O Gwen, Anson Mount, Linus Roche, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stoll

106min Action/Thriller US

Based on a story by John W Richardson and Chris Roach.

Probably not a film to see before a flight or evening during one, NON-STOP is one of those ‘what happens when’ films that, if nothing else, takes you through the paces of an emergency crash landing from 40,000 feet. You have been warned. Fans of Liam Neeson’s particular brand of gentle giant physicality will see him turning cold-blooded killer in this claustrophobic whodunit from Jaume Collet-Serra and Joel Silver (of Matrix and House of Wax fame). He plays Bill Marks, a whisky-swilling, bleary-eyed air marshall, tortured by an unhappy personal life and an uncertain future. Travelling ‘undercover’ on a plane to London from New York, he’s faced with the unenviable task of dealing with a series of menacing and mysterious text messages effectively blackmailing him to organise, with the airline, a transfer of USD150 million into a bank account or risk having a passenger killed, every twenty minutes.

Not a bad premise thus far, although the cliche’d dialogue hardly sets the night-flight on fire: “I hate flying; the lines; the crowds; the delays”: Does anyone actually find these exciting? But some appealing characters and witty repartee could still make this a journey with some thrills. No chance there either. After a cheesy bit of bonding with a little girl on her maiden solo flight, Bill finally settles down with a neurotic passenger Jen (Julianne Moore). She plays one of those irritating people who desperately wants the window seat and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, making you wish you could upgrade to club class. A few rows down sits a deeply unlikeable NYPD Officer (Corey Stoll); a devout Muslim doctor complete with skullcap (Omar Metwally), and a mousy stewardess (Michelle Dockery) who’s pale and shaky from a vegetable fast. Great. In lieu of some edgy interrogations with potential suspects, the dialogue is driven forward by text messages between Neeson and the mystery ‘perp’ on a special intranet. None of this throws up any tangible clues and soon everyone on the plane is a potential culprit, and Neeson gets heavy with his uncooperative colleague, Hammond (Anson Mount) in the loo, breaking his neck in a surprisingly violent altercation. Push follows shove, none of it very edifying although there are plenty of bland, red herrings in the inflight catering, and a pilot who pops his clogs mysteriously (Linus Roche).

Jaume Collet-Serra, who also made the impressive Orphan, House Of Wax and the awful Unknown, tries to keep his vehicle buoyant with frequent fisticuffs and eventually stages a dramatic CGI-enhanced landing sequence, which is more fascinating than frightening (oxygen masks DO fall down as promised, and people DO faithfully adopt the brace position). But this is a flight that even Julianne Moore can’t save, and Liam Neeson’s closing moments (where he tries to inject a scintilla of romance into the equation) will have you rushing for the sick bag. MT

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NON-STOP IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28 February 2014

Directors – Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor

Directing duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor came to prominence under the moniker of the ‘desperate optimists’, with their Civic Life series of short films, made between 2003-2010. In 2008 they struck out to feature film territory with their acclaimed debut Helen. Now, five years later, they return with their follow-up, Mister John, which tells the story of Gerry (Aidan Gillen), who travels to Singapore after the untimely death of his brother John, only to find himself slipping a little too comfortably into John’s old life…

Ahead of the release of the film, Alex Barrett sat down with Christine and Joe to talk to them about the ideas and methodology behind Mister John.

AB: I wanted to start by asking you about one of the key ideas behind Mister John, that of ‘trying on a life that isn’t yours’. It seems to me that this idea can be related back to Helen, and I was wondering how conscious you were of that? Do you see the two films as companion pieces, or is it more a case that this idea interests you, and just happens to be in both works?

JL: No, we don’t see them as companion pieces, but it may well be that they get forced to be such. So, it would be much more of a case that we are really interested in that idea as a premise. We were very conscious of that [idea] as we were embarking on the development ofMister John. It wasn’t that we were thinking about Helen, we are intuitively drawn to framing devices where somebody tries to get out of a wormhole in their life and enter into some other kind of world. I suppose the question of why that interests us…I have no idea why we’re drawn to that. I guess at its root it’s really an interest in, without sounding too literary, moments where the human condition is up against a wall and under great pressure. In that moment, one thing that may well happen is that you become somebody else, or lose a sense of who you are, or some opportunity might present itself. And that’s always a very interesting thing. It may be that it’s a desire, an interest in other films where people are hanging on to their sanity – which is ultimately the greatest sense of losing oneself. And I guess that may be to do with our own family history, where that’s been very much a reality. So if I was on your couch, I might say that it is a childhood thing, that it’s been there ever-present in our lives. But as a theatrical or cinematic device, we’re drawn to that for some reason.

CM: And there might be another counter-point to that, which is probably much more banal. We left Ireland in our twenties, and that idea of being an outsider coming into a new environment and that chance to start again has always been something that intrigued us and informed the theatre work that we made when we were in college, and when we subsequently left college. We’re interested in places and worlds where people are afforded that opportunity. The seeds for the idea of Mister John came out of the experience of going to visit Joe’s brother, who had remade his life in Phuket in Thailand where he runs a bar, and being interested in the kind of people who are drawn to a place like Phuket – what kind of man in particular. A lot of them have really complicated stories, and they come to Phuket and it’s almost like they’ve been given a clean sheet of paper, and they can reinvent themselves. Whatever troubles and baggage they have, they’ve left them behind. And they kind of step into another world, because a lot of them have girlfriends, you know? And they pick up the threads of that relationship, and it’s not even a relationship and everybody knows that it isn’t. But they behave and act out as if it is. And I guess those kind of elements do really interest us. That’s the more banal side of it, and then maybe the more psychiatrist couch end…

JL: I was just thinking of one guy, actually, who’s now in jail. He was doing some sort of social welfare claim, he had nine pseudonyms going in Ireland, and he would spend half the year in Thailand. So he had nine identities in Ireland and I think Thailand was the only one where he was living this great life. Anyway, he was eventually caught. But I think that is true. It’s also true that when you go away to another place, I don’t know if it’s the case for everybody, but when you’re alone, I think Simone de Beauvoir has this comment, you become very alive, and when you’re travelling alone in particular. And maybe in those moments people begin to realise things about themselves – things they like and things that they don’t like. Which again, is to do with Mister John: this idea he’s travelled. But maybe in the travelling, in the very nature of travelling, alone and being alone, that sense of loathing about himself might be replaced by wanting to be something that he’s happier with. I think that’s very much present.

AB: Something else I wanted to ask you is related to what we’ve just been talking about: I don’t know if you’d agree with this, but it seems to me that the idea of ‘trying on a life that isn’t yours’ can also be applied to the filmmaking process. Quite obviously with actors, but also with writers and directors, because when you write or direct you have to put yourself into the mind-set of the characters. So I was wondering if you saw any connection between the themes of your work, and the actual creation of your work? Do you and your characters have that in common? You spoke about potentially autobiographical elements, but is there something in you personally that…

JL: Well, I think it’s in all of us. In the lift on the way up here we were talking about our daughter and her cousin, and the various role playing games that they act out. You know, mad ones. And so they play out different kinds of characters, with different accents. As you get older that’s kind of knocked out of you in a way, people become less imaginative about who they are and who they might be. Kids can try out different fashions and different styles, then as you get older you come to be identified with one particular kind of way of being or way of looking, which is not necessarily your nature. You might have suppressed certain things. So consequently, yes it’s true, I do think by writing characters, you can really keep that alive. Actors, obviously, can keep that very much alive, but writers more, I think, than directors, actually. I think writing and acting can keep that sense of transference. If you really wanted to do that, and you wanted to play out certain kind of roles, I think writing and acting would be the way to do it. Directing is probably less a way of applying that. When you’re in the act of directing, in a sense, the moment to really act that out or inhabit someone else’s skin is in the moment of writing rather than the moment of directing, from our experience.

CM: Yeah, but directing is a more concentrated job. It’s an interesting thought. You might define yourself as a director, and we don’t necessarily. It’s one of the jobs we do. But it’s the one you do the least of. I mean, we shot Helen in 2007, and then we shot Mister John in 2012, and we made one short film in the intervening years. And so, to call yourself a director when you do it so rarely…I mean, Helen was shot in 14 days, Mister John was shot in 22 days. So you’re not doing much. You have to almost take on a role, and then imagine yourself into it, because it’s not something that you do very often. I remember when we were in college doing theatre degrees, one lecturer who did performance always encouraged us to fake it. If you’re not sure, just fake it. And I think it’s probably a very useful lesson to keep in the back of your mind, that you can fake it by stepping into a role. When we performed ourselves, one of the things that we did in our approach to performance was to almost have on/off buttons, so the idea of stepping into a role and building up a character was never really present. It was ways to switch things on and off, so if you needed a real heightened moment of performance, you just switch that button on and then switch it off. So it was something that you can step into and then step out of very quickly.

JL: To go back to the directing. I remember reading, I don’t know how true it is, that footballers, in an average game, actually have the ball at their feet for something like six seconds. That’s it. So they’re 90 minutes on the pitch, but literally with the ball, it’s only a few seconds. That’s all it ever is. And you’re just hanging around the rest of the time, man marking, getting into position, not getting the ball. But you’re always in the game, aren’t you? You’re always writing, you’re dreaming, you’re fantasising, you’re projecting, you’re fictionalising. It’s really about the mental process, ultimately. How you come to this set or the floor or the scene. Why you’re so clear is because you’ve actually written through this whole process. Now what it would be like if you weren’t the writer of that material, that would be a difficult job, I think. To just step into that. That’s something I wouldn’t do. I can’t imagine that, unless you went through a very intimate journey with the script.

AB: One of the things I really like about your work is that it feels like the product of a distinct vision. Your films, and I means this as a compliment, have a designed look to them. How do you work with the camera? Are you designing it all with pen and paper before the shoot? What’s your process?

JL: No, we don’t storyboard, although I think perhaps there’s a good argument for that in the future [laughs]. Helen was much more distinctive in a way, much more wilful. Each day we just did four shots. I think all the camera crew were just completely bewildered. But it was mad, actually, for them, and Ole [Birkeland, cinematographer on Helen and Mister John] was brilliant because he had never worked like this before either. We pretty much knew how we wanted every shot to go, to function. Mainly, for us, it’s really choosing the right location and hanging out in the location. And imagining the scene in that actual space. We try not to imagine a location. We like to find the locations. Sometimes, in the case of Helen, the writing came after the location. We found a lot of locations, and wrote a story about the locations. And I think the reasons we choose forests a lot is we just love forests, and they’re usually very easy to photograph, and they photography very well with 35mm. So we think about the shots very much as the experience for the audience, and what the scene requires. But we don’t storyboard. I think the locations are really really central to the overall experience.

CM: It’s trying to create a believable world to preserve the ideas in the film, I think. It’s really central to the way we approach making films. So I guess we’re thinking less about the machinations of plot and narrative, and more about trying to create a world. So obviously the role of the camera and how it’s filmed and framed, and how things operate within the frame, are really central. But yeah, we don’t [storyboard]. We did do this really silly thing in Singapore which drove me mad in the end, where we tried…it was almost like a halfway house to storyboarding, but to me it was a really difficult exercise, because it’s a lot easier to work things out when you’re actually in the location – although there is certain things, certain problems you can pre-empt and work yourself out of, I think, if you’ve maybe used pen and paper a little in advance. But mostly we like to work on location.

JL: If you’re working with design, and somebody had to come up with these designs and not something that we can literally find in a room, or if you’re looking for the right kind of hotel…This was a bit of a problem for us in Singapore. We looked at eighteen or nineteen hotels, minimum, and we never really…The one we got in the end was okay, but we did see one that was better than that, but they didn’t want anyone [to film there]. It was a bit of a dodgy hotel. In those moments, when you can’t find the right kind of hotel, then I suppose you do need something purpose built, and then it’s more difficult to imagine what the shot is, because you can’t actually be in the right location until that design is made. But I think the locations tend to inform the kind of shot that should take place in there, and the kind of words also. Now that we’re in this bedroom, and now that we can see the light the way it is, and we don’t like to use that many lights, it seems to be that this mood would require…you know, we’d say to Aidan, ‘we’ve spent the last few years writing the script, and these are the words for the scene, maybe we don’t need them now, or maybe we only need half of them’. It was the scaffolding to get you to that particular point, because now you’re in this room with these actors, you really need to be alert to what’s required now. You have to be careful about not deviating too much from the script, which we didn’t at all, but you can’t be so compelled by everything that you’ve written, and what the actors say doesn’t have to necessarily happen exactly verbatim right here, right now. But you have to be a bit open to that possibility as well.

AB: I thought the score was really powerful in Mister John. Could you talk about the use of music in the film, and how you worked with your composer, Stephen McKeon?

JL: It’s a big thing for us. I thought the score for Helen was very strong. But you’re taking a risk, you know? You work very closely with the composer, because it’s the one thing which could really make an emotional mess of things. We had to work with Irish composers because of taxation reasons, and that’s fine – there are lots of great Irish composers. We had this shortlist, and we met a few of them. This particular guy, Stephen, talked about the film in the right way and had one or two things in his catalogue which were sort of heading in the right direction. We just wanted a sense of theatricality about it. We use this word far too liberally, I think, at times, but we do like a sense of theatrically, that it feels real, but ultimately we don’t believe that’s it real real. It’s theatrically real. And we like that. I mean, we like the work of, I don’t know, Miklós Jancsó, for example – it’s got a theatricality to it, which we find quite powerful. And we’re not looking for it to be socially realistic, in that sense, but realistic and effective on other levels. And so we wanted the music, when it happened, to not be one of those plinky-plonky things. We wanted it to be more Hitchockian. Big. It won’t happen that often, but when it would come in, it would be quite strident and it would announce itself quite clearly and it was telling you: this is the music and we’re not trying to seduce you unbeknownst, we’re not trying to manipulate you. It’s very upfront and honest in that level. But we wanted something pretty scored, something quite large and classical. We had a lot of temp tracks from Greig, actually. We listened to a lot of Greig throughout the editing process, and there was a great piece of music that we could never afford. In the end I was glad, and Stephen was thrilled because he wanted just his music in the film, but it was by Carl Orff and it was part of his Schulwerk series, and it was a beautiful little folk ballad, amazing. But it didn’t quite work.

CM: Yeah, it would have been all wrong.

JL: It was like twenty-five grand, or something like that, just for that song. You’re just thinking, get out of here.

CM: But we also wanted to work with somebody who we could have a conversation with, and really collaborate with. It was a really great part of the working process, our dialogue with Stephen. [We wanted] somebody who was up for that, and Stephen was really really up for a dialogue. We got into a lot of detail about how the score was working. Stephen really wanted to see that there was money in the budget to have the music performed live, that we could bring that feel and interpretation to the music. We ended up having the music performed, which I think really worked and was incredibly effective. On some level I think the music kind of charts aspects of Gerry’s journey into his brother’s world, and yes it’s a rupturing, or a real kind of counterpoint to the environment that he’s in, because it’s classical. So it’s kind of at odds.

JL: Yeah, it’s not Asian music. We wanted something Northern European, very much of the European sensibility, and not of the South East Asian one. We’re not musicians, but we do approach things in something of a musical sensibility. So we can talk music to him, about certain phrases and quotes, and ‘could that just go into this, segue into this bit rather than this bit’. So we can get into that level of detail. But I think it was really important that if the composer was just one of those people that said, well look, I will compose something and that will be it, I don’t know if we would…then it would be like ‘well, what if we didn’t like it?’. And so the idea is to have a dialogue, so you would head that off at the pass, so of course you’re going to like it, because any good composer would be listening to the music that we’ve been listening to and would pick up on that. We were fortunate that he’s really great with his job, but he did respond very well and we were very pleased with that music. Alex Barrett.

MISTER JOHN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 27TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT CURZON RENOIR

Lamb of God: As the Palaces Burn (2014)

Director Don Argott | Cast: “Lamb of God”: Randy Blythe, Mark Morton, Willie Adler, John Campbell, Chris Adler | USA 2013, 120 min. (Incl. 30 min Q&A session)

Heavy Metal Group “Lamb of God” from Virginia has been around since 1995 and is now well-known – if their underground status allows such a description. This documentary shows them perform in the United States, Columbia, Venezuela, Israel and India. But it is in Prague where the music is overtaken by real life events, threatening to derail the group, and in particular their lead singer Randy Blythe.

In June 2012 “Lamb of God” was performing in the capital of the Czech Republic, when Blythe got arrested for murder, and spent 38 days in prison. Said murder was supposed to have had happened during a concert the band gave there back in 2010, when a young Czech stormed the stage and was supposedly thrown back by Blythe into the audience, hitting his head and dying subsequently from his injuries. Eventually Blythe was allowed to go home, but the trial in Prague was set for February 2013. The singer returned to Prague, even though he faced a possible long prison sentence. In a moving statement before the court, Blythe confesses to being still shocked by the victim’s death, but denies all guilt.

What could have been a more or less routine music documentary turns into a portrait of a man who had faced his demons for much too long: Randy Blythe has battled alcohol and drug dependency for more than two decades. Before his arrest in Prague he had somehow found an inner peace, which had eluded him before. His band manager recalls that “Randy was in the last year my main man when I wanted something to get done”. The band was anxious that Randy might slip back into old, troubled self. But the opposite happened: Before the trial the singer muses about his past, him growing up in a small “redneck” town, where only the music saved him from suicide. He can now distance himself from his past, and does not need to run away from the future – or the trial. He is sorry for the death of the young man, but equally convinced of his own innocence, supported by some amateur videos taken at the fateful night in 2010. And it is not only Randy who grows up before our very eyes: the rest of the band starts to behave like the forty year olds they are – and not the immature, angry men they had been when they started to perform.

The performances are not shot in a particularly inventive way but as a portrait of Randy this is sensitive and highly poetic and moving. Like the band, the director made the chance meeting with the justice system in Prague into something special – and all of them deserve their happy-end. AS

NOW ON QUELLA CONCERTS with prime video.

Mister John (2013) Now on DVD

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Cast: Aidan Gillen, Claire Keelan, Zoe Tay, Michael Thomas

95 mins English UK Drama

In their acclaimed debut Helen (2008), writer-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy probed into the mind of a passive protagonist whose desire to reinvent her life slowly manifested itself as she took part in a police re-enactment of the last known movements of Joy, a college classmate gone missing. In their follow up, Mister John, another passive protagonist (Gerry, played by Aidan Gillen) travels to Singapore after the death of his brother (the eponymous John). Upon landing, Gerry finds that his luggage has been lost, and John’s widow later lends him one of John’s shirts to wear – and, much like Joy’s distinctive yellow jacket does for Helen, John’s shirt seems to offer Gerry the first step towards a possible reinvention of the self. However, despite the many similarities between the two projects, Mister John never feels like a repetition: a continuation, perhaps, or a development (both of style and of themes), but never a repeat. If anything, the similarities could be offered as proof of the distinct, singular vision of the directing duo.

With its lush images, languid pacing and heavy, brooding soundtrack, Mister John is a film thick on atmosphere, and relatively thin on plot. At times, its dialogue feels clipped and overly minimal, and there are occasional slips into cliché – Gerry sitting on his bed, rubbing his face in his hands; a frustrated woman cutting up her lover’s clothes – but none of this detracts from the alluring, beguiling success of the film. In fact, it all feels like a part of the overall design, a deliberate play with convention on the part of the filmmakers. The film is, after all, a kind of anti-thriller (in this there is, perhaps, an obvious comparison to be made to The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic identity-swap anti-thriller – but the similarities feel superficial. The tone, the mood and the ideas all seem different here, even if the filmmakers have publicly acknowledged Antonioni’s influence).

Another element of Mister John which shouldn’t go overlooked is the rich vein of humour which runs throughout. That the film’s scariest moment leads to one of its funniest, shows again the mastery of Lawlor and Molloy’s control of the medium. If Helen was, as many claimed, an outstanding debut, Mister John is most certainly a worthy follow-up. ALEX BARRETT

MISTER JOHN IS OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 24 2014 COURTESY OF CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE

Cracks in Concrete (2014) Risse Im Beton Berlinale 2014

Director: Umut Dag Writers: Petra Ladinigg/Umut Dag

Cast: Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Mehmet Ali Salman, Margarete Tiese

101min Turkish/German with subtitles Thriller/Drama

Best known for his work on 2007 Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters, Umut Dag’s drama explores the under world of a close-knit Turkish community in Vienna. Running along the usual lines of crims going against the grain of their previous misdemeanours to make good, it follows two men on a quest for acceptance and respect. Ertan (Murathan Muslu) has served time for murder and is now on parole, Mikail is a teenage drug-runner for Yilmaz (Mehmet Ali Salman), and is hoping for a better life as a rapper. But what makes this thriller really stand out from the crowd is the dynamic performances of the two leads Muslu and Tagaev.

CRACKS hits the floor running with a devastating opening scene where a middle-aged white woman is repeatedly slapping a heavy-set young man. Later we discover this was Ertan in an attempt to gain forgiveness from the mother (Margarete Tiesel/Paradise:Love) of his victim. Having fallen from grace with his father, brother and girlfriend, Ertan strikes a macho yet vulnerable figure in the ‘hood, and matters don’t seem to improve. Meanwhile, Mikail is, in many ways, a younger version of Ertan and Dag’s narrative soon reveals that the ties run much deeper that initial appearances might suggest. But when Ertan gets a job in Mikail’s recording studio, there is no doubt about their hidden connection, although at this stage Mikail is oblivious to the truth.

As a crestfallen antihero, Muslu is superb in a believable performance reflecting Ertan’s gradual descent into social hell, exquisitely etched in his myriad expressions of pain and dejection, as he reins back from violence and recidivism. The young Tagaev lacks Muslu’s acting finesse but projects a strong image of a broken teenager, gentle and fearful behind his ‘no-fear’ persona.

Shot through with its cool blue aesthetic, Georg Geutebruck’s agile ‘chiaroscuro’ camerawork skilfully captures both light and dark in a visually stylish thriller that races forward in the filmic ambience of a seedy concrete underworld, throbbing with sinuous energy and nightclubs throbbing with exotic totty and macho males. There’s a stunning sequence towards the end where Ertan is walking along the street, that makes you forgive Dag his slightly formulaic narrative in a feature that literally pulsates with the rhythm of life. MT

CRACKS IN CONCRETE SCREENED AT THE BERLINALE 2014

A Map for Love (2012) DVD

Director: Fernandez Constanza

Cast: Andrea Moro, Francisca Bernardi, Francisco Pizarro, Mariana Prat

81min Drama Chile

A subtle and sophisticated story of emerging lesbian love and generational conflict that navigates choppy waters, exploring the relationship of three woman: a mother, her daughter and girlfriend, embarking on a sailing trip on the Chilean coast.

Using water and the shifting weather patterns as a barometer for the myriad emotions that emerge during the trip is a clever metaphor for confusion, calm and conciliation in this immersive debut feature from writer and director Fernandez Constanza.

Roberta (Andrea Moro) wants to develop her relationship with her actress girlfriend Javiera (Francisca Bernardi) but is concerned about her conservative mother Ana’s (Mariana Prat) approval. As the three get to know each other more deeply during the holiday, initial awkwardness gives way to a raw intensity as intimacy develops and sins of the past emerge to complicate matters. Set against a backdrop of stunning seascapes and scenery in Santiago de Chile, the trio are gradually divested of artifice; personalities and thoughts laid bare to the elements.

Rich and full of interesting insight and dramatic punch, this is a film worthy of its subject-matter and should appeal to both LGBT audiences and the art house crowd. MT

A MAY FOR LOVE IS AVAILABLE ON DVD from 10 FEBRUARY 2014 RRP £14.99

Butter on the Latch (2012) Berlinale 2014

Dir.: Josephine Decker

Cast: Sarah Small, Isolde Chae-Lawrence, Charlie Hewson

USA 2012, 73 min. Drama -Fantasy – Horror

In Josephine Deckers debut feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH, we first meet the central character Sarah, when she stumbles around dreamily in Brooklyn and sleeps with a man she picked up in a nightclub. Suddenly, she appears again at a summer festival of Balkan folk music in some woods near Mendecino, California. There she seems at first to settle down with girlfriend Isolde, but then the two get lost in a wood and nearly set it on fire. Exchanging intimacies and secrets, the two become become increasingly closer, but something is worryingly wrong with Sarah. We might connect her otherworldliness with the Balkan stories of people beings possessed by dangerous animals, like dragons (clearly shades of Tourneur’s Cat People). But before we are able to guess further, Sarah suddenly turns to the young Steph, but their relationship culminates into a dramatic and violent end near a lake.

This is truly an enigmatic film, characters are only sketched, images are often blurry, jump cuts interrupt dramatically and the narrative seems to be propelled forwards by the director/writer with a near manic force – but then, this is a portrait of a psychotic woman. Sarah stumbles through life, not knowing her motives, second-guessing herself and never knowing what is important or not. She picks people up at random, not knowing anything about them. She takes a chance on life, but is obsessed by some deadly impulse, which drives her on.

The aesthetic style is uneven, the camera, hectic most of the times, suddenly gives us respite, with nature and inventive singing images. The music is as oblique as the whole film and its title, and Sarah Small as the unfortunate young woman is quiet impressive.It would be wrong to call this film impressive, but for sheer guts to try something different – even if it not always comes off, Decker deserves some praise. AS

BUTTER ON THE LATCH SCREENED DURING BERLINALE 2014

The Patience Stone (2012) BFI Player DVD/VOD

Director: Atiq Rahimi Writer: Jean-Claude Carriere and Ariq Rahimi | Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Hamid Djavadan, Hassina Burgan, Massi Mrowat | 102min Drama

This poetic follow-up to Earth and Ashes is Atiq Rahimi’s second feature and based on his book which won the French literary equivalent to the Booker Prize.

Essentially a chamber piece filmed in a dusty house (putatively during the Afghan conflict), a woman is tending to her wounded older husband who has been shot. Golshifteh Farahani gives a delicate portrait of vulnerability and desperation in the central role pouring out her memories and feelings to her comotose husband in an extended monologue that serves as a quiet backlash to their unsatisfactory time together. The couple met when she was only 17.

The ambient sound is of war: the only visits from men: the Mullah who comes to pray for her husband, aggressive incursions from soldiers – one of whom rapes her then pays her to have sex (providing valuable income for the household).

The Patience Stone is a drama very similar in form to Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain. As ‘the woman’ talks she remains focused on the medical needs of her husband, and he represents a “Patience Stone” (from Persian folklore), an absorbing ‘oracle’ that is reputed to shatter when it can take no more of the unburdening.

The woman is strengthened by this therapeutic, low-key, rant about his lack of lovemaking skills and her fear of doing the wrong thing. She expresses and shares her new experiences of sexual awakening with her soldier pupil, who she’s ashamed of enjoying. Her worldly and more sophisticated aunt (Hassina Burghan) also provides comfort although we only meet her once. More of Hassina Burghan’s input would had added texture and cinematic contrast to the narrative. She is evidence that more urbane women do exist in this closed society.

With its muted visuals and themes that focus on womens’ issues in a society of religious and social repression and bigotry this is a brave and controversial drama. Golshifteh Farahani now lives in Paris and is one of the most important and well known actresses working in Iranian cinema. Her subtle sensual role shows how this repressed woman comes full circle from the submissive teenage virgin to a finale of sexual realisation where she gains control of her life, all within her husband’s earshot.

Golshifteh has previously given strong performances in Chicken With Plums, Asghar Farhadi‘s About Elly and Ridley Scott‘s 2008 Body of Lies.

THE PATIENCE STONE IS NOW ON BFI PLAYER

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Berlinale Daily Bites 6-16 February 2014

D A Y O N E

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER *** The surreal collides with the banal in Nathan and David Kellner’s genre-blurring black comedy drama, in which David Kellner also stars. Kumiko, a doltishly passive Japanese woman, abandons her dull life in Tokyo to travel to snowbound Minnesota on the strength of an imagined treasure trove she sees buried in a film, aided and abetted by the kindness of narrow-minded strangers who help her on her mission. If you can suspend your disbelief and tune into the weird humour, this is a work of inspired genius and well-planned eccentricity: Alexander Payne put his money into it and the Kellner Brothers’ drama has shades of Joel and Ethan Coen about it. MT 105min FORUM

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL **** SILVER BEAR, GRAND JURY PRIZE

Ralph Fiennes is pure magic as Gustav H, a legendary lothario and eloquent hotel manager in this witty, whimsical and very European tale within a fairytale, inspired by the Gorlitzer Warenhaus on the Polish/Czech border (which is currently being renovated) in a fictional Republic of Zubrowka. Written and directed by Texan Wes Anderson, it’s probably his finest film to date: perfectly scripted, beautifully acted by an assembled cast of Tilda Swinton, (who must be the most elegant and ethereal woman on the planet) Lea Seydoux, Jude Law, Matthieu Almaric, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Tony Revolori (as the young Zero M); it’s also gorgeous to watch with its candy-coloured aesthetic and fairytale sets. Appealing to all ages, despite moments of scary violence, it tells the story of how the hotel came to be handed down to Zero Mustafa via a rich and riotous history. MT World Premiere IN COMPETITION 100mins

In Josephine Decker’s debut feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH, we first meet the central character Sarah, when she stumbles around dreamily in Brooklyn and sleeps with a man she picked up in a nightclub. Suddenly, she appears again at a summer festival of Balkan folk music in some woods near Mendecino, California. There she seems at first to settle down with girlfriend Isolde, but then the two get lost in a wood and nearly set it on fire. Exchanging intimacies and secrets, the two become become increasingly closer, but something is worryingly wrong with Sarah. We might connect her otherworldliness with the Balkan stories of people beings possessed by dangerous animals, like dragons (clearly shades of Tourneur’s Cat People). But before we are able to guess further, Sarah suddenly turns to the young Steph, but their relationship culminates into a dramatic and violent end near a lake in this inventive, dreamy, fantasy horror. See full review

D A Y T W O

JACK **** A leafy Berlin is the setting for Edvard Berger’s touching drama underpinned by newcomer Ivo Pietzcker’s performance of tear-swelling poignancy as Jack, a little boy left in charge of his half-brother, when their feckless mother abandons them. Sensitive and filmic, it’s an old-fashioned portrait of childhood anxiety that echoes The Kid With A Bike; and shows that kids are sometimes far more intelligent than we give them credit for but also that responsibility and self-reliance can be the making of them. MT. 104 MIN GERMANY. IN COMPETITION

’71 **** TV director Yann Demange (Top Boy) has chosen the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland as the subject of his feature debut ’71, setting his tightly-plotted narrative from the perspective of a young British soldier (Jack O’Connell) left behind by his unit following a street riot. The memory of the terrible internecine warring is brought back with visual clarity and some of the best street combat scenes ever committed to film. Demange has masterful control of his subject-matter and delivers an utterly gripping thriller with a strong central performance from Jack Connell (This is England) and a superb all-British cast including Sean Harris, Sam Hazeldine and Paul Anderson MT 99min UK IN COMPETITION.

TWO MEN IN TOWN **

Rachid Bouchareb’s is an award-winning filmmaker known for LONDON RIVER, picking up a Silver Bear Award at Berlinale 2009. Here he casts Brenda Blethyn as a lil’ ol’ Kansas probation officer who sets out to assist Forest Whitaker’s reformed convict, Garnett, in a small community near the Mexican Border. Recently converted to Islam, Garnett does his best to make a go off things but Harvey Keitel is determined to put a spanner in the works, as the local sheriff, so we know the outcome of this story before the get-go. Despite some filmic moments and an experienced cast, it feels about as plausible as Jesus coming down from the cross. MT 120mins IN COMPETITION.

D A Y T H R E E

AMMA & APPPA (2014) ***

Franziska Schonenberger’s debut documentary is a part-animated story of twenty-somethings who meet at University and fall in love. Across the cultural divide of his strict Tamil parents, who envisaged an arranged marriage, and her homespun Bavarian background; a touching and immersive story emerges which is really a doc-style Meet the Parents, with some equally hilarious moments. MT 89 min Panorama Germany

FREE RANGE- Ballad on Approving of the World ** (2013)

Fred is a chain-smoking pseudo-intellectual with a high opinion of himself. After losing his job as a deliberately abusive film journalist and mindful of looming fatherhood, he turns his hand to working in a timber factory with equally disastrious results. Veiko Ounpuu’s bleached- out, grainy visuals evoke the lemon n lime beauty of the Estonian spring to great effect in this sardonic drama which is accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack of hits from ‘The Smiths’ among others, but it’s difficult to care what happens to Ounpuu’s unappealing characters who never really feel authentic or to engage with his facile narrative. MT 104min. Estonia. Forum Expanded

STO SPITI (2014) At Home (2013) ***

The stunning coastal location and elegant summery visuals of Athanasios Karanicolas’s serene feature debut bely the melancholic nature of his narrative that follows a wealthy Greek family who are finding ends increasingly difficult to meet in the financial crisis. When their long- term Georgian housekeeper falls sicks it’s clear that life will have to change but also rather predictable in the way it does. So no surprises here but certainly some applause for this well-crafted and promising film. Maria Kallimani gives a performance of great subtlety in the central role. MT. 103min Greece/Georgia. Forum Expanded

THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) ***

George Clooney has made a brave and well-intentioned bid to shine a light on one of the most important episodes of Art history – the looting of art treasures by the Nazis during their retreat during the Second World War. The result, in which he also stars as art historian Frank Stokes, (a fictionalised version of George Stout) along with a fine cast of Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, and High Bonneville, is rather too worthy for its own good. This is his 5th big screen outing and sees him and his colleagues setting out to France in 1944 where they discover the Russians are also hot on the trail, and intend to keep to uncovered treasure as spoils. Cate Blanchett is remarkable as a bluestocking curator under the Nazis, who at first is unwilling to cooperate but finally falls for Damon’s charms. The search goes underground and there is much ranting and raving in rhetoric about the supreme value of Art, as if Clooney underestimates his audience, although naturally he has the best orating. Production values are slick and strong and Alexandre Desplat’s score is well-pitched and moving, but ultimately this is a rather artless drama that sacrifices suspense for altruism. MT, 120mins US IN COMPETITION

D A Y F O U R

BLIND DATES (2014) ***

Levan Koguashvili’s follow-up to STREET DAYS (2010) is another tale of contemporary Georgian folk with particular emphasis on womens’ issues in this male-dominated culture. Unexpectedly funny and feisty, it explores young hopes versus old ways in the crumbling splendour of Tbilisi through a tentative romance between 40 year old bachelor Sandro and a woman whose husband has just been released from prison. MT 95 mins. Georgia. Forum

HISTORY OF FEAR (2014) **

Random acts of violence, criminal activity and hostility between neighbours punctuate a hot summer in down-town Buenos Aires. Benjamin Naishtat’s first full-length drama strings together a series of interconnecting events in an attempt to evoke a climate of uncertainty and paranoia but leaves the audience bewildered and disengaged in the process. Ultimately he offers no reason for us to feel anything for his characters despite their plight and his narrative drifts aimlessly without a really immersive plot-line in the chaos. MT Argentina. 79mins IN COMPETITION

NYMPHOMANIAC 1 *****- Director’s Cut

The entire, director’s cut version of Lars von Trier’s culminating segment of his ‘Melancholy’ trio that began with ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA leaves in some minor footage and artistic flourishes but fails to add anything to the plot, ultimately rather than gilding the lily it actually detracts from the piquancy of his brilliantly enigmatic narrative. 145mins See our review

THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY (2013) *****

With a narrative based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, this long-awaited debut feature from DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini is a lavish affair set in sixties Greece. And what could go wrong with such a fabulous cast, magical sets, gorgeous tailoring and a romantic original score by? The answer is nothing! One of the most gripping and sophisticated thrillers for some time, THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst as an American married couple, the MacFarlands, and Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davis) as their tour guide, Rydal. After meeting up in by chance in Athens, a tragic accident forces the trio to flee to the islands whence they embark on a dangerously eventful journey that ends in tragedy for all concerned. 96min UK USA France

D A Y F I V E

IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (2014) ***

Bruno ganz and Stellan Skarsgard star in Hans Petter Moland’s dark comedy follow-up to A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (2010) has some of the best snowscapes that you’ll probably see this year and also possibly the most unapologetically un-politically incorrect script. Skarsgard plays, Nils, a Swedish man living in Norway who drives a snow plow and has just been award ‘Best Citizen’. But when his son dies in a drug overdose, Nils turns vigilante to find out who is responsible. That said, the tone is light-hearted: Moland wanted s narrative reflecting what happens when society’s attributes of decency get mixed up with the baser instincts that kick in when we are threatened: “Norway has a history of being generous to people in need but now this is being challenged” he said at the press conference. The comedic style was the best way to deal with this theme positively. “Violence lurks within us and occasionally erupts in normal, well-adjusted people like Stellan’s character.” What ensues is a brutally violent chase to track down the two rival gangs of traffickers: one Serbian (lead by Ganz as Papa), one local (lead by Pal Sverre at Greven). There are some great gags that arise out of ‘ad-libbing’ rather than sticking rigidly to Kim Fupaz Aakeson script and give this piece a fresh and authentic feel, although 115mins is a tad long for this simple crime caper. MT 100min Norway/Denmark IN COMPETITION

CALVARY (2014) *** ECUMENICAL PRIZE

A priest’s struggle when his life is threatened during a confession:”I first tasted a man’s semen when I was 7 years old”, is a metaphor for the continuing challenge The Church faces to retain a place of respect and succour in today’s society. Traditionally the bedrock of Irish communities, it gets a really rough ride in this black comedy that examines the role of the local priest amongst a group of characters in a small Sligo village, who have lost their way. Gloriously set in this verdant Southern Irish county, Brendan Gleeson leads with a performance of rare dignity and integrity as the Father concerned , in this follow-up to THE GUARD. Less comedic and that the former, CALVARY’s soul is a more brooding and desperate one, leavened by moments of gentle often caustic humour. Pointing its finger at paedophilia amongst Church leaders, it follows the tone of the recent PHILOMENA echoing documentaries such as Alex Gibney’s MEA MAXIMA CULPA. For John Michael McDonagh it is a triumph and a far better drama than the recent and glib, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. A superb all-Irish support cast of Kelly Reilly, Chris O’Dowd, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran and Isaac De Bankole make this thoughtful and trenchant second feature a rare pleasure that stays in the memory long afterwards. MT 100min UK/Ireland Panorama Special.

AIMER, BOIRE, CHANTER – THE LIFE OF RILEY (2014) ALFRED BAUER PRIZE

For his 50th film, Alain Resnais adapts the work of Alan Ayckbourn in this stagey farce with garish theatrical sets and occasional glimpses of the leafy countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. Starring his wife Sabine Azema, Sandrine Kiberlain (Bird) Andre Dussollier and Hyppolyte Girardot, it’s just the sort of thing that older French audiences lap up but do we really need another stage adaptation (his third) of YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET?. This turns out to have additional flourishes with drawings by French artist Blutch and puppetry to boot! You know the story here – middle-aged, middle-class couples whose close friend is diagnosed with cancer. Or is he? Mannered performances all round will appeal to his devotees. MT 107min France IN COMPETITION

HUBA, PARASITE (2014)

The work of Polish filmmakers, Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal (IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE) focuses on simple lives of working people in the Polish countryside; their latest film is no different. A tender portrait of family closeness centres on an old factory worker and his daughter and her baby, who come to live with him. Intimate in scale, daily rituals are viewed at close quarters with a ‘warts and all’ approach that provides an immersive and worthwhile testament to the continuing narrative of rural lives under threat in remote locations. MT. 66min Poland Panorama

D A Y S I X

PRAIA DO FUTURO (2014)

With some of the most captivating photography of Brazilian and Berlin skylines, Karim Ainouz’s filmic and leisurely-paced drama is sadly let down by poorly fleshed-out characterisation of its protagonists, who we hardly get to know at all. Appearances can be deceptive and we soon find out that Praia do Futuro is one of the most beautiful but deadly beaches in Brazil. It also has the saltiest water, making it a hostile environment for living in. When his friend is drowned, a Brazilian lifeguard follows his lover back to Berlin to discover a new life that’s both liberating and bewildering. Ainouz creates a palpable sense of place and identity but sadly the narrative floats untethered in a sea of plotholes with not enough momentum or feeling for his characters or their lives to carry it through to a meaningful conclusion. MT 106mins. Brazil/Germany In COMPETITION

SOUVENIR (2014)

German photographer Alfred Diebold disappeared during an Arctic cruise in 2009 leaving a massive collection of videos archiving his peripatetic life as an attention-seeking traveller, husband and politically engaged also-ran. André Siegers doc looks back at his footage (407 videos in all) but despite some moving moments from Alfred’s intimate family life, it’s difficult to work out why he considered this film worthy of the public domain (let alone financing) as it is neither involving, visually inventive nor particularly interesting from a historical point of view. Maybe a German audience would feel more empathy with the subject-matter. MT 81mins Russia/Germany Forum

TO MIKRI PSARI – STRATOS (2014)

Although not particularly intended as such, Yannis Economides’ drama serves as a metaphor for the parlous state of moral and physical decline that Greece has suffered over the past several decades. In STRATOS communities are breaking down, buildings have fallen into disrepair and parks are overrun with weeds. Even felons are at each others throats, overworked by the burden of debt-fuelled crime in their neighbourhoods. Economides’ narrative steadily builds into a caustically angry thriller involving local low-lives and their families. Tightly-plotted: the story is told through a series of one to one to conversations between the fellow criminal fraternity that grow in vehemence, and focus on the gang-leader in jail. The story is told from the point of view of Stratos, (well-played by Vangelis Mourikis), a wealthy local crim who is called upon to finance the release of the gang-leader and in so doing is drawn further into a web of lies, deceit and paedophilia. Cracking performances from the support cast and Babis Papadopoulos’ edgy score help create a feeling or menace and desperation throughout. MT 136 min GREECE IN COMPETITION

D A Y S E V E N

THE THIRD SIDE OF THE RIVER ***

‘Another Us and Them’ drama from Argentina. This time Celina Murga delivers a soft-focus, slow-burner about an affluent family in Buenos Aires, seen through the increasingly critical eyes of the eldest son. This disapproval of his father’s dominating ways gradually leads to a startling epiphany in this melancholic tale of a boy who is forced into responsibility at a young age. Not sure why Martin Scorsese gave this his ‘seal of approval’? Wait a minute – was his money involved? : yes Siree!. Nonetheless, this is a decent story, well-told and well-acted but hardly anything to write home about as a competition headliner. Spain. 104mins In COMPETITION

GUIDELINES: Le Marche a Suivre *

Jean-Francois Caissy fails to flag up any changes in the way kids are and always will behave in the classroom and out of it. His tame documentary kicks off, for some reason, rather promisingly with a car trying to cross a ford with difficulty. Are we in for an exciting adventure? No, this is a predictable affair that focuses on a group of kids in the Canadian province of Quebec. Nicolas Canniccioni’s bland camera-work explores how they interact with each other with close-up one to one interviews intercut with images of the playground and ‘environs’ in and out of the school (i.e. the lens zoom in on a lock, and then a group of kids playing ball, there are frequent ‘black screen moments’). Visually uninventive, and for the most part repetitive: it nevertheless provides a living testament for the parents involved and those interested in the subtleties of paediatric psychology. MT 76min. French Forum

ALOFT ***

Stunningly shot on the widescreen, this dreamily poetic Canadian drama from 2009 Golden Bear winner Claudia Llosa (from Peru) ‘boasts’ Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy and Melanie Laurent in its star line-up. Told in fractured narrative style, it follows the central character Ivan (Murphy) as a child and as an adult as he sets out to find his mother who left after a family tragedy to develop her skills as a healer in the Arctic Circle. Llosa’s highly creative camerawork evokes the enigmatic feel of this drama which is intimate in style yet deep and immersive in its scope and subject matter. There are sensitive performances from Murphy and Connelly as they portray a close son and mother relationship. 112min Spain Canada France. In competition 114min Canada, IN COMPETITION

BLACK COAL, THIN ICE *** GOLDEN BEAR WINNER, SILVER BEAR – BEST ACTOR

Chinese director, Yi’nan Diao offers an inventive drama set in a snowbound industrial landscape where body parts appear regularly on asphalt trucks heading off to furnish the country’s burgeoning building boom. A former policeman turns vigilante in a bid to trace the perpetrator and falls in love with a mysterious woman who seems to be connected to the crimes. MT 106min World Premiere China/Mandarin

D A Y E I G H T

NO MANS LAND Wu Ren Qu (2013) ***

Ning Hao’s follow up to is a slick parable about a society that has completely lost its moral compass in a struggle for wealth and prosperity in the modern world. In a cheap Chinese car, a cocky lawyer sets off across a rugged Taklamakan desert populated by weird and dangerous wayfarers on his journey to a trial. Visually and technically superb Ning Hao has excised the heart from his action drama, where men are macho and women are still looking for a hero to rescue them. There aint any here, but then its really just abit of fun and a homage to Sergio Leone’s epic desert westerns minus the great performances the the killer soundtrack. That said, there are brilliant moments in this desert. of MT 119min Republic of China Mandarin COMPETITION

BOYHOOD (2014) ***** SILVER BEAR, BEST DIRECTOR

Richard Linklater is popular in Berlin. Last year he collected an Honorary Bear and here’s back this year with Sundance break-out hit: BOYHOOD. Following the life of Mason from five until eighteen it stars Ellar Coltrane in the leading role with Linklater’s regular collaborator on the series Ethan Hawke, it authentically captures these years of growing up into an immersive and moving drama that runs for nearly 3 hours. Although this will make it a headache for cinemas, it is elegantly paced, engagingly scripted and performed with seamless authenticity by Mason and his extended family and friends, amongst whom by Patricia Arquette as his mother and Tamara Jolaine, as his sister, particularly shine . Ethan Hawke brings to his performance the same laid-back charm that he works so well in the Midnight Trilogy. In order to achieve the subtle changes in the characters, Linklater began the project in 2002, with the crew getting together annually to film the developing story. This isn’t the perfect childhood, but it’s warm, witty and deeply-felt and stands as a record of turn of the century interpersonal relationships and family life in the Western World. This is drama that will be the talk of filmlovers for quite some time. MT 166min US Drama COMPETITION

THE FOREST IS LIKE THE MOUNTAINS (2014) ****

This quietly observed and beautifully filmed documentary was one of the standouts of this year’s Berlinale. Debut Directors Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain spent some time in the enchanting mountain setting of Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania, with a community of Roma people. Living a self-regulated existence and avoiding interaction with the Establishment except when their annual potato harvest is sold to the local council, they follow the Seventh Adventist Faith, trusting in the spirit of a supportive and intuitive community and Christian prayer for guidance. Aron Lingurar is the self-appointed head of the village, commanding respect as the ‘governor’ he is a man of integrity who runs the show and instills a sense of respect amongst his people. Christiane Schmidt’s sublime cinematography and clever eye for colour and framing make this a joy to watch and with a total absence of sound, apart from natural dialogue, it is serene experience to behold. It would seem we have much to learn from these people. MT 101min Romania/France/Germany Drama Forum

D A Y N I N E

TRYPTYCH ****Canadian filmmakers have brought some great films to the Berlinale this year and this avantgarde piece from Pedro Pires and Robert Lepage is one of the best. Well-known for his theatrical work, Robert Lepage excels here with a transgenre drama that follows the lives of three interconnecting characters, sisters Marie and Michelle and Thomas, Marie’s soon to be partner. In an snowy timeless Quebec, Michelle, a book specialist, is recovering from depression. Michelle arrives to announce her marriage to Thomas, a brain surgeon. Dreamlike sepia-tinged visuals, unsettling characterisation and an eclectic score of jazz and classical music combine with Lepage’s unique approach make this an experience not to be missed. Sombre in tone, TRYPTYCH alludes to the deep melancholy of ageing, loss and illness. Lepage evokes a strong sense of the Quebec and Montreal but it is timeless in feel. MT 94min. Canada French/English

LA BELLE ET LA BETTE (2014) ****

Jean Cocteau’s gothic horror original was an pioneering piece of magic made when he turned his hand to filmmaking during WWII. With very limited resources, the result was enchanting and eerie. Even with a large budget (and filmed in Babelsberg where Metropolis and The Blue Angel were shot) this doesnt engender the same mystique but is a lavishly-imagined if over-the-top frolic from Christophe Gans that spans both Renaissance and Napoleonic eras. It has Lea Seydoux as a gentle Belle and Vincent Cassel as her fiercely masculine Beau yet elegantly pathetic Beast – essentially an asshole who turns into a nice guy. Andre Dessollier is strong as the kindly father. Because all the leads were versed in mime and method acting the piece really benefits from their acting chops and makes it a success, if you can overlook the overzealous CGI. Narrative-wise Gans has developed Cocteau’s original here, with co-writer Sandra Vo-Anh adhering faithfully to Madame de Villeneuve’s book to explore the origins of the Prince’s curse and its connections with the forces of nature. The result is more a chilldrens’ fairytale than Cocteau’s enchanting and subversive outing but there are some dark moments too. MT. 111min. In COMPETITION (out of competition)

THE LITTLE HOUSE *** SILVER BEAR, BEST ACTRESS

There’s something very sweet and old-fashioned about this Japanese domestic drama set in Wartime Tokyo. Taki (Haru Kuroki, who won Best Actress) looks back on her life as a maid in a well-to-do household (the red-roofed little house) echoing the previous Tokyo Family in tone. Now as an old woman, she tells her grandson in flashback what was really happening at home while the fighting was going on in the cities. There’s a genteel ‘soap-like’ quality to the drama and also shades of Hayao Miyazaki’s recent THE WIND RISES to the storyline. But forget WWII, this really concerns the emotional yearnings of women in a society where men have the upper hand and the State dictates how society should conduct itself. Based on a novel by Kyoko Nakajima, THE LITTLE HOUSE quite literally explores the discrete charm of the bourgeoisie. Taki nurses the infant son through polio while also serves as a companion to the beautiful wife, Tokiko. The narrative shifts backwards and forwards from 1936 to the present, eventually engaging our attention as we witness the Tokiko’s affair with her husband’s colleague, a young and timid architect who doesn’t exactly set the night of fire, but buys into to her endless drivel. Engaging and demure, it may appeal to more traditional art house audiences for its quaint performances but lacks the romantic thrust or erotic charge to garner mainstream indie fans. MT 136min Japanese COMPETITION

A N D T H E W I N N E R S A R E:

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM

Bai Ri Yan Huo Black Coal, Thin Ice by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE

The Grand Budapest Hotel The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson

SILVER BEAR ALFRED BAUER PRIZE for a feature film that opens new perspectives

Aimer, boire et chanter Life of Riley
by Alain Resnais

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR Richard Linklater for

Boyhood (Boyhood)

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTRESS

Haru Kuroki in
Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House) by Yoji Yamada

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST ACTOR

Liao Fan in Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) by Diao Yinan

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCRIPT

Dietrich Brüggemann, Anna Brüggemann for Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) by Dietrich Brüggemann

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION

in the categories camera, editing, music score, costume or set design

Zeng Jian for the camera in
Tui Na (Blind Massage) by Lou Ye

BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD

Güeros
Güeros
by Alonso Ruizpalacios

FOR MORE COVERAGE ON THE BERLINALE 2014 . FOR MORE IMAGES AND VIDEOS VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Director/Writer: Jim Jarmusch | Cast: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska

Jim Jarmusch adds another dimension to the vampire genre with this quirky tale of centuries-old lovers Adam (Hiddleston) and Eve (Swinton). Still blissfully inseparable despite living in different corners of the globe; Eve is in exoticly bohemian Tangiers, Adam in rain-washed mo-town Detroit. Their long lives and artistic leanings have allowed them acquaintances from Pythagoras to Bryon and Shelley and they share an intimate command of literature, science and music while taking pleasure in daintily imbibing the purest blood (sourced through medical contacts) from cut-crystal glasses.

There is nothing sinister or threatening about Jarmusch’s light-hearted luvvies in this droll comedy of social mores with its langorous pacing: These are elegant, uber-vampires of considerable finesse whose own artistic endeavours have been the inspiration for Schubert and Shakespeare: Eve is still on personal terms with Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) who lives nearby. Despite their rather ridiculous names they are coltish, cool and extremely cultured. While visiting Detroit (on a first-class night flight from Tangiers, naturally) Eve dreams of her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) who then blows from LA to disturb their loved- up twilight reverie with her intrusive irritating chatter. After threatening to empty their coffers of precious supplies of pristine blood, she queers the pitch with Adam’s assistant ‘zombie’ (Anton Yelchin).

Eventually, the runs out of steam. Jarmusch attempts to inject a serious twist to proceedings as it bleeds to death but by this stage our exhausted protagonists are finding (as we are) the going rather hard: the two-hour running time feels far longer. The lovers offer a fascinating perspective on the last thousand year captured in widescreen cityscapes, an atmospheric soundtrack of electronic and Renaissance lute music and the captivating performances of the gently-spoken leads. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Che Strano chiamarsi Federico (2013) Cinema Made in Italy 5-9 March 2014

HOW STRANGE TO BE CALLED FEDERICO

Dir.: Ettore Scola; Cast:Tomaso Lazotti, Vittorio Viviani, Sergio Pierattini, Antonella Attili; Italy 2013, 93 min.

This celebration of the life of Fellini (1920-1993) is put together in an atmospheric collage by his best friend, the director Ettore Scola. The two not only shared a passion for life and film, but also a friendship and regular collaboration with the actor Marcello Mastroiani, who joined them in their nightly excursions of Rome – Fellini being an extreme insomniac. It is no accident that the only feature film Fellini starred in was Scola’s aptly titled WE ALL LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH (1974), the story of a friendship, mainly shot on the road. Fellini also acted in Rossellini’s short The Miracle opposite Anna Magnani.

Frederico Fellini came to Rome from his hometown of Rimini in 1939, promising to attend university to please his parents – but no record of attendance has ever been found. Instead the future director earned his living with sketches and short texts for the theatre, before joining the satirical magazine “Marc’ Aurelio” in the early forties, when the magazine was controlled by the Fascist censors. Scola, still at High School, would join Fellini there a decade later. In Scola’s film much fun is made about life under Mussolini, but for the outspoken Fellini it could not have been easy despite his political disinterest After the liberation he started script writing for Rosselini (ROME, OPEN CITY/1945 and PAISAN/1946) as well as other established directors like Alberto Lattuada (FLESH WILL SURRENDER/1947) and Pietro Germi (THE PAST OF HOPE/1950). In the same year he directed his feature debut LIGHTS OF VARIETY (1950), followed by THE WHITE SHEIKH (1952) and his first masterpiece I VITELLONI 1953). Whilst one could easily call these films neo-realistic, Fellini already tries his own take on reality: away from social realism to a more personal approach of the oppressed. LA STRADA (1954) starring his wife Giulietta Masina (who acted in seven of his films), was a kind of summing up of his first five years as a director, it won him the first of five “Oscars”. LA DOLCE VITA (1960) which made Mastroiani into a star, was the turning point: even though the city of Rome was the real star of the film, Fellini achieved his artistic dream of life as theatre captured on film. Or as he put it “Life is a party”. From FELLINI SATYRICON (1969), via CASANOVA (1976) to the LA CITTA DELLE DONNE (1980) he celebrated this maxim, “never becoming a good little boy” as Scola remarked.

HOW STRANGE TO BE CALLED FEDERICO is centred around the car rides of the trio (both Fellini and Scola hated any physical exercise) in Rome, picking up painters and prostitutes alike, always on the outlook for ideas for their films. In one scene, Mastroiani’s mother complains bitterly to Scola “you always show the ugly side of my son in your films, but Fellini only shows his beauty”. And there is always Fellini, in his coat and long scarf, getting away from reality into his dream world – even after his funeral, eluding the soldiers who stood at the side of his coffin, running through the streets of his beloved Rome, sitting down in a car on a carousel, where extracts of his films close this beautiful homage of a friend and fellow artist for the man who called himself “a born liar”, but who only used lies to make reality colourful and exciting with playfulness and passion. AS

SCREENING AS PART OF CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WHICH RUNS FROM 5-9 MARCH AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

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The Monuments Men (2014) Berlinale 2014

THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014) ***

Director: George Clooney Writer: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Robert M Edsel

Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Dimitri Leonidas

Original score: Alexandre Desplat 118min US Drama based on the novel by Bret Witter

George Clooney has made a brave and enterprising bid to shine a light on one of the most important episodes of Art history – the looting of paintings and artworks by the Nazis during their retreat in the Second World War. The resulting historical drama, in which he also stars as art historian Frank Stokes, (a fictionalised version of George Stout) along with a fine cast of Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, and High Bonneville, is rather too worthy for its own good. This is Clooney’s 5th big screen outing and sees him and his colleagues setting out to France in 1944 where they discover the Russians are also hot on the trail and intend to keep to uncovered treasure as spoils. Cate Blanchett is magnificent as a bluestocking curator under the Nazis, who at first is unwilling to cooperate but finally falls for Damon’s charms and gives access to the archives. The search goes underground and there is much ranting and raving in rhetoric about the supreme value of Art, driving home the salient points with vehemence, as if Clooney underestimates the intelligence of his audience, although naturally he has the best orating. Production values are slick and strong and Alexandre Desplat’s score is well-pitched and surprisingly moving, but ultimately this is a rather artless drama that sacrifices suspense for altruism. Possibly a documentary would have been a better way to raise the profile of this injustice. MT, 120mins US IN COMPETITION

THE MONUMENTS MEN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14TH FEBRUARY 2014 NATIONWIDE.

George Clooney Lost the Bet

George Clooney Lost the Bet

With the release of THE MONUMENTS MEN, Alex Barrett looks back at the Directing career of George Clooney

The story, such as it is, goes something like this: George Clooney never wanted to become a director. The script that was to become his debut feature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), was due to be directed by, variously, Curtis Hanson, P. J. Hogan, David Fincher, Brian De Palma and Bryan Singer, with Clooney attached to act in a supporting role. When Singer departed, and the film collapsed once more, Clooney stepped up: the script, he said, was simply too great to be left languishing in development hell. So Clooney got to work, called in some favours, made the film, and bet Chuck Barris (on whose memoir Confessions is based) $10,000 that he wouldn’t make another film in the next five years – it really was, Clooney said, only the great script that made him want to direct the film.

But the truth, perhaps, is a little more complicated. Charlie Kaufman, the writer of that ‘great script’, has publicly denounced the finished film, stating that Clooney ‘took’ the project from him and made something that little resembled the original screenplay.

Such stories are not unique to Kaufman and Confessions – five years later, Clooney would resign from the “Writers Guild of America” after the Guild refused to allow him a writing credit on his screwball sports comedy Leatherheads (2008), for which he claimed to have so significantly reworked the original screenplay that only two scenes remained intact. Also significantly changed was Beau Willimon’s Farragut North, which Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov brought to the screen as The Ides of March (2011) – though this time seemingly with the writer’s full collaboration and endorsement (Willimon shares the screenplay credit with Clooney and Heslov on the final film).

If Clooney’s reworking of scripts is far from the only constant that runs across his directorial work, it may well be a contributing factor to the other consistencies. The protagonists of his first four features, and his television series Unscripted (2005), are all driven individuals who wish to succeed at any cost, most of whom are seeking love, fame and fortune of some kind, and who have a reluctance to play by the rules. There is also a recurrence of characters who work in the media, television and journalism – often allowing for themes of integrity and honesty to emerge. If it’s possible to reduce this to biography (Clooney’s father, Nick Clooney, was a journalist, game show host and news reader), it’s also possible to see it as a tribute to the cinema of the past – for, lest we forget, it was ex-newspapermen like Ben Hecht and Herman J. Mankiewicz who wrote the films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, often placing reporters at the centre of their stories. Indeed, Clooney’s films exhibit a surprisingly level of cine-literacy, and in his audio commentaries he often talks openly about his references, and about ‘stealing’ ideas from other filmmakers.

To put all this another way: for someone who ‘never wanted to direct’, Clooney’s films display a surprising degree of consistency, despite their seemingly disparate genres and styles – and, in this, one can’t help but be reminded of Steven Soderbergh. One of Hollywood’s greatest polymaths and an acknowledged influence on Clooney’s direction, Soderbergh is, of course, also a close friend and frequent collaborator of both Clooney-the-actor and Clooney-the-director (Soderbergh served as Executive Producer on Confessions, Unscripted and Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)). But if Soderbergh’s influence is often felt in Clooney-the-director’s work, it’s far from the only discernible impression left by those that have worked with Clooney-the-actor. The tone of Leatherheads, for instance, owes something to the work of the Coen Brothers, and it’s interesting to note that Clooney was working on the film’s script during the making of Intolerable Cruelty (2003), and was shooting the pickups while starring in Burn After Reading (2008). If nothing else, such impressions of influence remind us that Clooney has worked with, and learnt from, the best.

Although a notorious prankster, those who have worked with Clooney-the-director have commented on his focus and intelligence, and he is known for meticulously planning and storyboarding his films in advance. As a debut, Confessions was startlingly accomplished, already displaying an excellent grasp of four fundamental tenets of filmmaking: camera, story, sound and performance. An anarchic play with the conventions and tropes of biopics, the film finds a fascinating form for exploring an ambiguous mind. If that makes it sound like Clooney-the-director sprung fully formed from Clooney-the-actor, the looseness of Confessions nevertheless makes it feel like a film made by a director still finding his feet – which didn’t take long. With his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck., Clooney-the-director truly came into his own.

A riveting, claustrophobic account of broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow’s outspoken reportage of Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, the film almost plays like an inverse of Confessions: where Confessions told of a globe-trotting anti-communist agent, Good Night is almost entirely confined to the studio in which Murrow railed against those combating the ‘red threat’; where Confessions was about a figure considered to be responsible for the decline of American television, Good Night is about a bastion of quality television. As if in recognition of his more serious, sombre subject, Clooney replaces the showy style of his debut with a calmer, more lyrical beauty (roaming, long-lens, shallow-depth photography may be a cliché of modern cinema, but rarely – if ever – has it been used so well). If it’s true that the film is undoubtedly in thrall to its subject, and no less editorialised than Murrow’s own work, it seems Clooney is taking a leaf from Murrow’s book, following his dictum that not every story has two sides: sometimes we must choose. McCarthy is left to defend himself in his own words, now as he did then, and the choice to use only real footage of McCarthy, rather than have an actor portray him, lends the film the authentic air of reportage. But there is real drama here too, and the film remains Clooney’s masterpiece. Simply put, it is in a different league from Confessions, and from the film that Clooney made next: Leatherheads.

But Leatherheads itself is no slouch, and certainly much better than its lacklustre reception suggests. Though it’s true that the speed and charm of its one liners never reaches screwball at its best, and that the film is occasionally derailed by moments of outright silliness, there are also moments of real beauty, and it’s never less than amusing and heartfelt. Clooney shot the film with no handheld camerawork, no steadicams, and nothing else that he considered stylistically ‘contemporary’. It’s an unashamed throwback, and one that is surprisingly dense and endearing.

For his forth film, The Ides of March, Clooney returned to the more serious, political register of Good Night. A tale of loyalty and betrayal set against the backdrop of a (fictional) Democratic primary election, the film takes its title from the day that Julius Caesar was murdered – and in doing so invokes Shakespeare. If the invocation feels like a stretch, it’s far from unwarranted: there’s no denying the power of Clooney’s terse and tense examination of political skulduggery. Moreover, Clooney should be commended both for once again daring to make a small-scale drama, and for once again showing how thrilling they can be (dramas, filmmakers are constantly told, don’t sell). So far, Clooney has alternated his dramas with comedies (his films neatly follow a comedy – serious – comedy – serious pattern, as if aping the classic ‘one for me, one for them’ formula), and this looks set to continue with the forthcoming release of his new comedy-drama The Monuments Men (2014).

Comedy was also a big part of his seemingly little seen and underappreciated HBO series Unscripted (Clooney directed five episodes of the ten-part series, the other five being helmed by Grant Heslov). Less broad than his other forays into comedy, the series fuses fact and fiction to present a quick-moving, naturalistic tapestry of the lives of three actors – Bryan Greenberg, Krista Allen and Jennifer Hall – who all play versions of themselves. Thrown into the mix is a superb Frank Langella as acting teacher Goddard Fulton – a pretentious, sleazy sage, if ever there was one. Shot in a low-fi, mumblecore-esque aesthetic, the series boasts cameos from a whole host of celebrities playing themselves, including Noah Wyle, Akiva Goldsman, Doug Liman, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Hank Azaria, Sam Mendes, Francis Lawrence, Shia LaBeouf, Danny Trejo, Brittany Murphy, Sam Rockwell, Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman, amongst others. As this roll-call perhaps suggests, there’s an impish mischievousness to the proceedings, and the end result is both a hilarious satire on the entrainment industry, and an engaging and addictive portrayal of the lives of actors, both struggling and successful. In fact, the show’s lack of wider recognition may be the biggest mystery of Clooney’s career, and while his continued interest in directing may have lost him his bet with Barris, it certainly feels like the world of modern Hollywood filmmaking is all the richer for it. ALEX BARRETT

THE MONUMENTS MEN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14TH FEBRUARY 2014 NATIONWIDE

Viva La Liberta (2013)

Director: Roberto Ando

Cast: Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Michela Cescon, Anna Bonaiuto

93min Political comedy Italian with subtitles

Even if politics leaves you cold you will warm to Roberto Ando’s imagined political comedy Viva la Liberta (Long Live Freedom) with its dynamite performance from Toni Servillo who recently starred in La Grande Bellezza). No stranger to Italian political roles, he gave an exultant portrayal of Giulio Andreotti in IL DIVO and here he plays Enrico Oliveri, a fictional leader of the shadow cabinet.

Truth is stranger than fiction and Italian politics is certainly stranger than most with its colourful characters such as Berlusconi, and this opens up glittering possibilities for Roberto Ando’s provocative premise. Anyone with any knowledge of Italy’s state of affairs will appreciate the gently comedic take here: In Ando’s imaginary world, Oliveri’s opposition party has seriously lost its way so it’s not really surprising when its leader decides to go AWOL in exasperation. But it doesn’t end there. After disappearing, Oliveri is replaced by his identical twin, Giovanni Emani, who seems to have completely lost his mind, much in the sam vein as Nanni Moretti’s recent Habemus Papam.

Here Servillo plays both roles. As Oliveri he is staid, serious and controlled.. He’s even distant with his understanding wife Anna (Michela Cescon). Naturally excuses wear thin after a couple of days and his chief secretary, Andrea Bottini (Valerio Mastandrea), is forced to come up with some sort of cohesive reason for his absence. After conferring with his wife, he discovers that Oliveri’s twin, Giovanni Emani (freshly out of a mental home) should take his place in the cabinet, to keep up appearances. But he warms to the role: and Servillo flips with ease into the smug-faced, uber-confident leader glibly inspiring his colleagues, promising voters a shedload of reforms and generally galvanising the opposition into action. As Oliveri, meanwhile, he takes refuge in the home of his ex Danielle (a calmly seductive Valeria Bruni Tedschi) who is now a wife, mother and script-superviser.

But it’s as Emani that Servillo really shines and although Ando’s film lacks the vibrant audacity of Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, Viva La Liberta is a seriously grown-up, beautifully-crafted affair that stands up to scrutiny of politically engaged audiences and also looks superb thanks to Maurizio Calvesi’s sleek visuals. Servillo manages the dual roles perfectly mastering the slick, glibness of Emani and the quiet dignity of Oliveri with aplomb.

SCREENING AT CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WITH RUNS FROM 5-9 MARCH 2014 CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

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Le Week-End (2013) Netflix UK

Dir: Roger Michell Wri: Hanif Kureishi | Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum, Olly Alexander, Brice Beaugier | UK Comedy Drama 93min

Hanif Kureishi and Roger Michell were regular collaborators on the subject of mature adult love (Venus, The Mother). LE WEEK-END sees a teaching couple from Birmingham in their sixties (well-known British thesps: Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent), embark on a second honeymoon to Paris in a bid to spice up their tired marriage. Predictable premise: yes, but don’t let this put you off. The city of love is always a welcome setting for any romantic drama and Paris doesn’t disappoint as we hurtle down open boulevards and swing by Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. But time doesn’t stand still and Meg and Nick discover the hotel of their honeymoon has rather gone downhill. In a moment of pure madness, they head for the Georges V and find themselves in the Presidential Suite.

Hanif Kureishi reflects their well-worn resentments, hopes and idiosyncracies in his sharp and well-judged script that sails close to the wind with bittersweet and laugh-out-loud authenticity appealing to art house and mature sensibilities.

As Nick, Broadbent’s keen attempts on the physical front are met will derision from Meg who feels sexual but not sexy despite her Laboutin stilettos and black lacy dress. They resurrect the vamp in her and excite Nick’s dormant libido; still alive but flailing desperately in search of encouragement.

Both nurse secret agendas as they chomp their way through gastronomic blow-outs: Nick has bad news on the work front and Meg feels restless and unchallenged by her job, fearing the future. There’s a feistiness to this relationship that, despite its bickering, feels so much more upbeat than the tawdry sniping of Before Midnight. We actually feel for them both and want things to work out.

A chance meeting with an ex-student of Nick’s (Jeff Goldblum) throws up an invitation to a soirée the next day. Full of false bonhomie and pretentiousness, it’s an evening of self-gratification for a group of minor intellectuals but brings Nick’s sincerity and openness into sharp-relief amid a barage of boastful toadying. Here Broadbent is unexpectedly moving in a performance that breathes honesty from every pore. Lindsay Duncan too is surprisingly touching and believable in one of her best turns so far. There’s a gung-ho attitude to these two that feels both appealing and genuine and very much buys into the theory that you only live once and life is not a rehearsal. Refreshing, fun and everything that Blue Jasmine was cracked up to be and wasn’t. MT

LE WEEK-END IS ON NETFLIX UK

For Those In Peril (2013)

Director/Writer: Paul Wright

Michael Smiley, George MacKay, Kate Dickie, Brian McCardie, Nichola Burley

92mins UK Thriller

This low budget britflic has a brilliant central performance from George MacKay who plays Aaron, a bereaved brother and the lone survivor of a fishing trip in Scotland. Part ghost-story, part psychological thriller, its atmospheric visuals and pervading sense of sadness and loss mark it out as a stunning feature debut for writer director Paul Wright.

Aaron is caught in a fog of amnesia surrounding the fishing expedition which has blighted the small Scottish community of which he is part. Haunted by guilt and caught with the notion that he may have somehow been responsible, he heads out to sea, searching aimlessly in a makeshift raft in the hope of jolting his memory or communing with his fellow crew and brother who may have survived the cruel waves against the odds.

Moral is low in the village and Aaron feels keenly that his life has angered some of the locals who have lost their loved ones while he remains a tragic reminder of their loss. Cathy (Kate Dickie) has lost her partner in the accident and provides an emotional shelter for Aaron, although their friendship is viewed with suspicion by the others, further exacerbating his pain.

Paul Wright’s drama is shot through with Scottish folklore and the traditional culture of seafaring. His Super-8 camerawork has a grainy indie feel to it, saturated in a palette of marine blue and washed-out turquoise and teal.

Watching Mackay’s anguish and bitter despair, it’s impossible not to be affected by the strength of this heart-rending performance. And while he appears to be a lost and lonely presence, the sheer force of his acting carries the narrative forward offering an immersive and haunting experience that remains in the memory. MT

FOR THOSE IN PERIL IS ON DVD and there will be a screening followed by live broadcast Q&A on February 13th 2014 with Danny Leigh at the BFI

Berlinale 2014 Retrospectives

BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014: RETROSPECTIVE

“AESTHETICS OF SHADOW, LIGHTNING STYLES 1915-1950”

The films of the German Expressionism of the twenties DAS KABINETT DES DR. CALIGARI, 1920), the more classical lightning of the Hollywood productions FLESH OF THE DEVIL, 1926) and the Japanese films, whose camerawork like JUJIRO, 1928, centred around an architectural approach, which later developed into an Japan specific expressionism, have all cross fertilized each other to a high degree. But whilst we might know the directors of these masterpieces, the names of the cameramen who are equally responsible for the cinematographic developments are more or less unknown to a wider public.

In Japan the works of Murnau SUNRISE, and Von Sternberg THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK were very much admired, and in the early twenties, Henry Kotani, a Japanese cameraman living and working in New York was invited home by the Shochiku film studio, to push forward the development of lightning effects and reflections, which had replaced the traditional method of working with natural sunlight in glass house studios, where lightning was absolute even, without any contrasts or shadows.

We now can see the results of the collaboration of styles: the films with Douglas Fairbanks MARK OF ZORRO, THE DAWN PATROL, THE IRON MASK were very much admired in Japan, whilst Kazuo Hasegawa (aka Chojiro Hayashi) was the star of the Japanese action-movies like YUKINOJOS (Verwandlung, 1935). One reason for Hasegawa’s stardom was the way his face was light, showing every emotion in very different contrasts. Unfortunately, during WWII, both sides replaced a greater realism at the expense of expressionism in propaganda films like THE WAR AT SEA FROM HAWAII TO MALAYA (Hawaii mare oki Kaisen, Japan 1942) and AIR FORCE (USA 1943).

RASHOMON was the winner of the 1951 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It was the first Japanese film shown commercially in the West. Akira Kurosawa, the director, became world famous, but nobody mentioned his cameraman Kazuo Miyagawa (1908-1999). The film’s most striking element was the lively black and white photograpphy and the sweeping shots. Miyagawa ran several cameras simultaneously to do the plot justice, showing various perspectives. He used a mirror in the dark forest to show the bright light. Miyagawa also shot “Kagemusha” (1980) and “Yojimbo” (1961) for Kurosawa. In his autobiography, Kurosawa, self-centred like most directors, hardly mentions his cameraman, only grudgingly giving some sparing praise.

But Miyagawa’s best known work is UGETSU MONOGATARI, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi in 1953. Based on an 18^th century ghost story, it is full of lyrical, haunting images, particularly featuring water shots, where super natural beings emerge from the mist, showing dreamy images, which were very much related to the French school of poetic realism before and after the Second World War.

LE QUAI DES BRUMES (Marcel Carne, 1938) and Jean Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BETE (1946) were shot by two of the greatest cameramen in history: Eugen Schüfftan (1893-1977) and Henri Alekan (1909-2001). Schufftan had, like many others from the film industry, emigrated from Germany in 1933 after the Nazis took power. He went first to France, where he collaborated with Carne on the 1937 classic „Drole de Drame“. Later he worked in Hollywood, where he shot among others „The Hustler“ (1961) and „Lilith“ (1964) for Robert Rossen. LE QUAI DE BRUME is set in a dreamy Le Havre, where a deserter (Jean Gabin), on his way to Venzuela, falls in love with a young girl (and a dog). Schufftan’s photography is without any transition from his work at he UFA in Berlin. Henry Alekan who would later shoot so diverse films like “Roman Holiday” (William Whyler, 1953) and Wim Wenders “Wings of Desire” (1987), was imprisoned by the Germans after they invaded France in 1940, but he escaped and formed his own resistance group, whilst working – for the German controlled film industry – at same the time. LA BELLE ET LA BETE is a modern retelling of the classic story, the images in the castle are not only poetic realism, but, thanks to Cocteau – who also was a painter, and therefore open to painting not only with brushes, but with the camera, a credo of the expressionist films – go a step further into magic realism, using trick shots to illustrate the fable with surrealistic elements.

THE BERLINALE RUNS 6-16 FEBRUARY 2014

The Human Factor (2013) La Variabile Umana

(La Variabile Umana)

Director Bruno Oliviero

Cast: Silvio Orlando, Giuseppe Battiston, Alice Raffaelli, Sandra Ceccarelli

83min Crime Drama Italian with English subtitles

Bruno Oliviero’s moody crime drama focuses on a police inspector whose life goes off the rails after the death of his wife. Refusing to return to the cutting edge of life on the streets, dealing with criminals and engaging with ‘joe public’, he opts for a desk job to lick his wounds and contemplate his next move. But his when his only daughter is implicated in the murder of a rich industrialist, he’s dragged back into the criminal underbelly of Milan to conduct his own investigation. Following a straightforward narrative structure, The Human Factor is fairly standard fare, although well-crafted and watchable thanks to an atmospheric original score by Michael Stevens (Mystic River/Grand Torino). Father and daughter share a troubled relationship and Silvio Orlando and newcomer Alice Raffaelli give committed performances in the lead roles. If you’re looking for a good-looking thriller then this certainly fits the bill .

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY 5-9 MARCH 2014

Alexei Balabanov Retrospective February – May 2014

Alexei Balabanov Retrospective:

Brother / Брат

In celebration of late and great Alexei Balabanov, Russky London KinoKlub are running through the major works of one of Russia’s most incredible and uncompromising cult directors Between 1 February and 25 May, this retrospective will chart the director’s work, from the darkly comic to the shockingly caustic –BROTHER , BROTHER 2, OF FREAKS AND MEN, WAR, MORPHINE, IT DOESN’T HURT ME, CARGO 2000, STOKER and ME TOO.

Brother (1997) Brat Aleksei Balabanov Retrospective at the Kino Klub

Director/Writer: Aleksei Balabanov

Cast: Sergei Bodrov Jr, Viktor Suhorukov, Svetlana Pismichenko, Mariya Zhukova, Yuri Kuznetsov, Slava Butusov

93min Crime Drama Russian with subtitles

Balabanov’s light-hearted but caustically realistic BROTHER portrays gangster-ridden post communist St Petersburg where young soldier Danila has returned home to his mother’s poverty-ridden hovel.

Played by fresh-faced James Dean lookalike, Sergei Bodrov Jr, Danila is then dispatched to his elder brother, the chillingly venal Viktor (Viktor Suhorukov), a freelance hit-man in the local mafia, called ‘The Tatar’ by his rivals. Beaten-down and derelict, St Petersburg is years away from architectural makeover for its tercentenary. It appears the poor relation of Moscow; a provincial backwater with vast open boulevards echoing skeletons of past glory, its down-at heel-denizens peddling their black-market goods at gun-point from mafiosi attempting to extort their own cut of the paltry earnings as protection money.

In return for temporary board and lodgings, Danila is tasked with taking out the local Chechyen warlord who roams the farmers’ market (and there’s nothing twee about this market) competing with the ethnic Russians and proving, at the end of the day, that everyone’s a racist when the chips are down. But there’s a cheerful brassiness to this hard-boiled portrait of poverty and power-play. Very much champion of the people, Danila’s her0-worship of his older brother is sadly misguided and despite being a killer crim of the deadliest type, he enjoys petty acts of local heroism, such as forcing money at gunpoint out of some cripples who refuse to pay their bus fare home. He moves in briefly with a trailer-trash love-interest Sveta (Mariya Zhukova) who will do anything for money while her husband is doing time and also hooks up with Kat, who peddles drugs and hangs out in MacDonalds.

With it’s late eighties soundtrack and bronze-tinged cinematography, it all feels very dated but in a way that make this thoroughly enjoyable and authentic-feeling outing a cult classic in its own right. Despite his soft features, Danila emerges a real cynical operator in the style of Scorsese’s Goodfellas, cutting a swathe through the local crime community like a knife through butter and soon St Petersburg is severely cramping his style and he’s flexing his muscles for a move to Moscow. MT.

BROTHER IS THE FIRST IN THE KINO KLUB’S BALABANOV RETROSPECTIVE THAT TAKES PLACE IN THE MAYFAIR HOTEL FROM FEBRUARY THROUGH TO 25 MAY 2014, COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA.

The Patrol (2013)

Dir.: Tom Petch; Cast: Owain Arthur, Nav Sidhu, Ben Righton, Daniel Fraser, Nicholas Beveney

UK 2013, 85 min. Drama

Afghanistan, Helmand Provence, 2006: A patrol of seven British soldiers are fighting an unseen enemy. The two officers in charge are out of their depth, equipment and supply are not up to scratch. As a result of a faulty body armour, one of the soldiers is wounded and later dies in hospital. Finally the men revolt and the lieutenant, who has just become a father, sides with the soldiers. The mission, set originally for three days, but lasting well over ten days, is finally abandoned. The soldiers have no clear objectives: they can’t protect the civilian population, who sees them as intruders, and they know that the Taliban will return when they are gone. The events shown are a microcosmos of the British involvement in this war.

TOM PETCH served for eight years in the British army and his view of the fighting conditions the soldiers find themselves in is highly critical. The camera shows unrelenting spaces of sand in which the soldiers are viewed as ants, trying to find an enemy which hides, and will take their positions, the moment they have gone. They are supposed to support the community of poor dwellers in their primitive houses, but all they do is endanger them, when they mistake a football for a grenade. Petch shows the boredom, the repetitions and the resignation of the man, and the useless hurrah-patriotism of the Captain. Everything is as real as possible, but herein lays the main problem of this film. Anybody having watched countless hours of TV news is able to imagine the dreadful, monotonous slug of this war, with all the shortcomings the soldiers are suffering from. What the film shows is honest, non-judgemental, unquestioning of the doubtless bravery of the soldiers involved, but all these facts are known to a huge majority. But a simple reconstruction of the fighting conditions is (as shown here) is not enough to create strong emotional or intellectual reactions in the viewer. What we would have liked to have known is what sort of people sign up to the army, in which physical and psychological condition do they leave the army – if they leave alive at all. Three Prime Ministers have sanctioned this futile war, calling the same people who fought the Russian Army in the 80s insurgents, but the public reaction is muted to say the least. And however heartfelt this film may be, it does not help to stir up any badly needed outcry against this war. AS

THE PATROL IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7 FEBRUARY 2014

Berlinale 2014 preview

The 64^th Berlin International Film Festival is ready to roll with 20 of the 23 films in the Competition programme vying for the GOLDEN and SILVER BEARS. The following countries are participating: Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Uruguay and the USA. The Competition programme includes 18 world premieres and three feature debuts.The Award Ceremony will take place at the Berlinale Palast on Saturday, February 15, 2014.

Of the festival big-hitters, Wes Andersen’s UK dramady THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is the star-studded, opening gala showcasing the experiences of an inter-war concierge and one Zero Moustafa; NO MAN’S LAND from China is an adventure drama set in the Gobi desert and George Clooney’s wartime drama THE MONUMENTS MEN, in which he also stars alongside Matt Damon and Bill Murray, are the titles that will attract the glitzy crowds.

Hot of the runway at Sundance is Richard Linklater’s highly-regarded BOYHOOD. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as his parents, it follows a small boy from six to eighteen through emotional development and introduces Ellar Coltrane as Mason. John Michael McDonagh’s latest tale from Ireland, CALVARY is a dark morality tale that broods on Catholism, good and evil in the modern world and stars his long-term collaborator Brenden Gleeson. The full, unexpiated version of Lars Von Trier’s NYMPHOMANIAC (Part One) is also headlining the festival, although quite why this features so prominently when both parts have already been released in Europe, is beyond comprehension. THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY is the long-awaited directorial debut from Hossein Amini, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, it stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. The Korean break-out hit SNOWPIERCER will finally screen in Berlin. It imagines a world where the rich and the poor are divided on a train after an ice-age apocalypse sends humanity into meltdown. And best of all, it stars Tilda Swinton.

But in the lesser-known section of the festival, there are undoubtedly some hidden gems. Of the French films, I’m looking forward to Sophie Fillieres’ comedy IF YOU DON’T, I WILL (Panorama) which stars Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Davos. I’m also intrigued to see how Christophe Gans will re-work LA BELLE ET LA BETE (Competition, out of Competition) with his stellar cast of Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux. Jalil Lespert’s biopic drama about the fashion designer SAINT LAURENT and his life with partner Pierre Berge also looks a glossy art house treat, despite its distinctly un-starry cast.

Norway leads the Nordic contribution this year with Hans Petter Moland’s Competition entry IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE. It has Stellan Skarsgard and Bruno Ganz and promises to be great fun, judging by his quietly humorous previous hit, A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (from 2010). From Norway also comes BLIND (Panorama). Written and directed by Eskil Vogt (Oslo, August 31st), it bravely attempts to probe the subconscious of a newly sightless woman. Documentary-wise Norway also brings architectural portmanteau piece CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE, which boasts a fine pedigree of directors including Wim Wenders, Robert Redford and Michael Madsen.

The Greek New Wave has been the source of much excitement in recent years and we can look forward to Yannis Economides’ competition entry TO MIKRO PSARI, a crime drama that follows in the footsteps of his previous successful outings MATCHBOX and SOUL KICKING. Athanasios Karanikolas will be in Berlin to present STO SPITI (Forum), a family drama. Yorgos Servetas’ STANDING ASIDE, WATCHING, is another bracing New Wave piece that uses deserted streets and industrial sites to express the lethargy that has descended on a small community after the troubles.

Also on the documentary front, anyone who enjoys Canadian Denis Cote’s work – BESTIAIRE, CURLING AND VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR, will be glad to see his latest film, JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING (Forum), an absurdist piece that ponders the working connection between man and machine. German doc VULVA looks like an intriguing examination of the timely issues of circumcision, anatomical myths and intimacy surrounding the most sensitive part of the female body. Another provocative-looking and very welcome documentary is FUCKING DIFFERENT XXY in which initiator Kristian Petersen bravely attempts to break down classic gender identities in order to overturn stereotypes of ‘what’s normal’. Other gay-themed outings at the festival are TEST, US director Chris Mason Johnson’s eighties drama set during the AIDS crisis and UNFRIEND, a Filippino drama which explores and expresses the repressed emotions unleashed from a gay teenage break-up.

And where would Berlinale be without the tradition of the homage and retrospectives strands. This year’s glittering classics in the Retrospectives this year range from Howard Hawks’ AIR FORCE; to Jean Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BETE; Orson Wells’ CITIZEN KANE; Murnau’s FAUST; Clarence Brown’s FLESH AND THE DEVIL; Satyajit Ray’s NAYAK; and Marcel Carne’s QUAI DES BRUMES; not to mention Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON; Josef von Sternberg’s SHANGHAI EXPRESS. But lovers of Derek Jarman will be pleased that his own retrospective will be taking place at the BFI during February and March.

Here’s the C O M P E T I T I O N section in full:

Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) WORLD PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China

By Yinan Diao (Night Train, Uniform)

With Fan Liao, Lun Mei Gwei, Xuebing Wang

Boyhood – INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

USA

By Richard Linklater (Before Midnight, Me & Orson Welles)

With Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater

Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House) INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

Japan – IMAGE TO FOLLOW

By Yoji Yamada (Tokyo Family, About Her Brother)

With Takako Matsu, Haru Kuroki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Chieko Baisho

Historia del miedo (History of Fear) WORLD PREMIERE

Argentina / Uruguay / Germany / France

By Benjamin Naishtat – feature debut

With Jonathan Da Rosa, Claudia Cantero, Mirella Pascual, Cesar Bordon, Tatiana Gimenez

Jack – WORLD PREMIERE

Germany – IMAGE TO FOLLOW

By Edward Berger

With Ivo Pietzcker, Georg Arms, Luise Heyer, Vincent Redetzki, Jacob Matschenz, Nele Mueller-Stöfen

Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance) WORLD PREMIERE

Norway / Sweden / Denmark

By Hans Petter Moland (A Somewhat Gentle Man, The Beautiful Country)

With Stellan Skarsgård, Bruno Ganz, Pål Sverre Hagen, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Jakob Oftebro, Anders Baasmo Christiansen

Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) WORLD PREMIERE

Germany

By Dietrich Brüggemann (Move; Renn, wenn du kannst)

With Lea van Acken, Franziska Weisz, Florian Stetter

La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) INTERNATIONAL PREM

France / Germany

By Christophe Gans (Silent Hill, Brotherhood of the Wolf)

With Vincent Cassel, Léa Seydoux, André Dussollier

Out of competition

La tercera orilla (The Third Side of the River) WORLD PREMIERE

Argentina / Germany / Netherlands

By Celina Murga (A Week Alone, Ana and the Others, Normal School)

With Alian Devetac, Daniel Veronese, Gaby Ferrero, Irina Wetzel, Dylan Agostini van del Boch

La voie de l‘ennemi (Two Men in Town) WORLD PREMIERE

France / Algeria / USA / Belgium

By Rachid Bouchareb (London River, Little Senegal)

With Forest Whitaker, Harvey Keitel, Brenda Blethyn, Luis Guzmán, Dolores Heredia

Macondo WORLD PREMIERE

Austria

By Sudabeh Mortezai – feature debut

With Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva

Praia do Futuro WORLD PREMIERE

Brazil / Germany

By Karim Aïnouz (Suely in the Sky, Madame Satã)

With Wagner Moura, Clemens Schick, Jesuita Barbosa

Tui Na (Blind Massage) WORLD PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China / France

By Ye Lou (Mistery, Suzhou River)

With Hao Qin, Xiaodong Guo, Lei Zhang

Wu Ren Qu (No Man’s Land) INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

People’s Republic of China

By Hao Ning (Crazy Stone, Mongolian Ping Pong)

With Zheng Xu, Nan Yu, Bo Huang, Bujie Duo

Zwischen Welten (Inbetween Worlds) WORLD PREMIERE

Germany

By Feo Aladag (When We Leave)

With Ronald Zehrfeld

THESE ARE THE COMPETITION TITLES. FORUM AND PANORAMA TITLES WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY. BERLINALE RUNS FROM 6 UNTIL 15 FEBRUARY 2014

P A N O R A M A

Panorama fictional features – IMAGES TO FOLLOW SHORTLY

Asabani Nistam! (I’m Not Angry!) – Iran

by Reza Dormishian

With Baran Kosari, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Reza Behboudi, Misagh Zare, Bahram Afshari

Blind – Norway / Netherlands

by Eskil Vogt

With Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt

Difret – Ethopia

by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari

With Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere

Fieber (Fever) – Luxembourg / Austria

By Elfi Mikesch

With Eva Mattes, Martin Wuttke, Carolina Cardoso, Nicole Max, Sascha Ley

Güeros – Mexico

By Alonso Ruízpalacios

With Ilse Salas

Highway – India

By Imtiaz Ali

With Randeep Hooda, Alia Bhatt

Ieji (Homeland) – Japan

By Nao Kubota

With Kenichi Matsuyama, Yuko Tanaka, Sakura Ando, Takashi Yamanaka, Seiyo Uchino

In Grazia di Dio – Italy

By Edoardo Winspeare

With Celeste Casciaro, Laura Licchetta, Barbara De Matteis, Anna Boccadamo, Gustavo Caputo

Love Is Strange – USA

By Ira Sachs

With John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson

Mo Jing (That Demon Within) – Hong Kong, China

By Dante Lam

With Daniel Wu, Nick Cheung

Na kathese ke na kitas (Standing Aside, Watching) – Greece EP

By Yorgos Servetas

With Marina Symeou, Marianthi Pantelopoulou, Yorgos Kafetzopoulos, Nikos Georgaki

Night Flight – Republic of Korea WP

By LeeSong Hee-il

With Lee Jae-jun, Kwak Shi-yang

Nước (2030) – Vietnam WP

By Nghiêm-Minh Nguyễn-Võ

With Quỳnh Hoa, Quý Bình, Thạch Kim Long, Hoàng Trần Minh Đức, Hoàng Phi

Patardzlebi (Brides) – Georgia / France WP

By Tinatin Kajrishvili

With Mari Kitia, Giorgi MaskharashvilI

Risse im Beton (Cracks in Concrete) – Austria WP

By Umut Dağ

With Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Mehmet Ali Salman, Erdem Turkoglu, Ivan Kriznjak

The Midnight After – Hong Kong, China WP

By Fruit Chan

With Wong You-nam, Simon Yam, Kara Hui, Janice Man, Suet La

Viharsarok (Land of Storms) – Hungary WP

By Adam Császi

With Andras Sütő, Ádám Varga, Sebastian Urzendowsky

YE (The Night) – People’s Republic of China WP

By Hao Zhou

With Zhou Hao, Liu Xiao Xiao, Li Jin Kang, Zhou Feng Qi

Arrête ou je continue (If You Don’t, I Will) by Sophie Fillières, France (WP)

Bai Mi Zha Dan Ke (The Rice Bomber) by Cho Li, Taiwan (WP)

Bing Du (Ice Poison) by Midi Z, Taiwan / Myanmar (WP)

Calvary by John Michael McDonagh, Ireland / United Kingdom (EP)

Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (The Way He Looks) by Daniel Ribeiro, Brazil (WP)

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? by Michel Gondry, France (EP)

O Homem das Multidões (The Man of the Crowd) by Marcelo Gomes, Cao Guimarães, Brazil (IP)

Papilio Buddha by Jayan Cherian, India / USA (EP)

Quick Change by Eduardo Roy Jr., Philippines (IP)

Stereo by Maximilian Erlenwein, Germany (WP)

Test by Chris Mason Johnson, USA (EP)

The Better Angels by A. J Edwards, USA (IP)

Kuzu (The Lamb) by Kutluğ Ataman, Germany / Turkey (WP)

Things People Do by Saar Klein, USA (WP)

Triptyque (Triptych) by Robert Lepage, Pedro Pires, Canada (EP)

Über-Ich und Du (Superegos) by Benjamin Heisenberg, Germany / Switzerland / Austria (WP)

Unfriend by Joselito Altarejos, Philippines (WP)

Xi You (Journey to the West) by Tsai Ming-liang, France / Taiwan (WP)

Yves Saint Laurent by Jalil Lespert, France (IP)

(WP= World Premiere, IP= International Premiere, EP = European Premiere)

THE BERLINALE RUNS FROM 6 UNTIL 16 FEBRUARY 2014

The Stoker (2010) Kochegar Aleksei Balabanov series

Director: Aleksei Balabanov

Script: Aleksei Balabanov
Producer: Sergey Selyanov
Cast: Mikhail Skryabin, Yuriy Matveev, Aleksandr Mosin, Aida Tumutova, Anna Korotayeva, Varvara Belokurova, Roman Burenkov

Russia 87mins 2010 Black Comedy

Balabanov follows up his successful period piece Morphia with something more in line with Cargo 200. The Stoker is a scathing attack on the nascent mob culture in Russia and with Pop composer Valeriy Didyulya providing the music that is the only thing that lends this film the comedy element to its tone. Otherwise, it is a pretty dark, stark depiction of life in the 1990s in the ‘burbs of a harsh, wintery St Petersburg.

Known more as a theatre actor, the recently deceased Skryabin is superb in the titular role. Skryabin is a Major, retired due to injury during the Afghan War and now the eponymous stoker, tending the furnaces of an industrial complex, owned by Russian mobsters.

Life here is cheap. You may not even be aware that you have transgressed, only to find yourself food for the fire. Skryabin turns a blind eye to the bodies fed into his coal box by erstwhile army colleague Misha (Alexandr Mosin), content to spend what little time he gets with his daughter and write a long-gestating book about the persecuted North East Siberian ‘Yakut’ people on an ancient typewriter set up by his bed in the boiler room adjacent to the voracious incinerators.

First time actress Aida Tumotova is perfect as Sasha, the stoker’s daughter, now set up in business in the fashionable fur trade and in love with Misha’s taciturn hired gun, ‘Bison’ (Matveev). Indeed, the cast are terrific throughout.

Balabanov has extracted all of the sexiness out of killing, counter to the current American fashion. Here, it has become a sanitised occupation, a clinical undertaking, exercised with the practiced functionality of a fruit-picker or glassmaker and is all the more powerful for it. Likewise, nudity is treated with the same total lack of self-consciousness.

The only downside to this sparse, economically shot, finely executed and highly stylised drama is the pop music, which although making its comedic point quite obviously, finally grates in the use of the same pop song over and over; although this is of course is presumably also an artistic choice.

An eloquent, if somewhat light tragicomedy; in the end, it’s an exploration of the venality of life, where moral bankruptcy slips down through generations with ease, with even less compunction even than the generation coming before. At what point do you take a stand? AR

THE STOKER WILL SCREEN AS PART OF THE ALEXEI BALABANOV RETROSPECTIVE AT KINO KLUB, THE MAYFAIR HOTEL FROM 1 FEBRUARY UNTIL 25 MAY 2014 COURTESY OF ACADEMIA ROSSICA

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) Blu-ray

Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise came hot on the heels of his early horror film Sisters. De Palma planned both films at the same time but the complex production design and sets forced Phantom into second place due to budgetary constraints. For those who foundSisters to be too much of a Hitchcock rip-off Phantom of the Paradise is a very different film and finds De Palma working with his most wicked sense of humour in this gothic masterpiece.

Phantom’s devoted fans not only claim this to be De Palma’s best film but also far superior to the Rocky Horror Picture Show for cult musical madness. Phantom of the Paradise also claims many celebrity fans including Edgar Wright, Guillermo del Toro and Quentin Tarantino.

Synopsis

Brian De Palma’s inspired rock ’n’ roll fusion of Faust, The Phantom of the Opera and The Picture of Dorian Gray boasts an Oscar-nominated score by Paul Williams, who also stars as an evil record producer who not only steals the work of composer/performer Winslow Leach (William Finley) but gets him locked up in Sing Sing – and that’s not the worst that happens to him along the way.

Few revenge scenarios have ever been so amply justified, but the film is also constantly aware of the satirical possibilities offered by the 1970s music industry, exemplified by Gerrit Graham’s hilariously camp glam-rock star. Jessica Harper (Suspiria) appears in her first major role as the naïve but ambitious singer, on whom Winslow secretly dotes.

Prodigiously inventive both musically and visually, this is one of De Palma’s most entertaining romps, not least because it was so clearly a labour of love.

The super-deluxe package, which is available both as a standard Blu-ray and as a limited edition Blu-ray SteelBook, is full of special features and bonus material.

MyFrenchFilmFestival online January 17 – February 17

So how about a film festival you can watch from home? Entirely online and perfect for those sofa suppers with your loved-one or just the dog, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline is the antidote to going out in this bleak and blustery winter weather.

Now in its fourth year, MyFrenchFilmFestivalonline will runs from January 17 until February 17 this year. For a whole month, cinema lovers all over the world over will be able to access the festival on 20 partner platforms, including iTunes in 80 countries.- Shortlisted films will be screened in more than 1,000 venues around the world. Films will be available for free on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com and on partner platforms in Latin America, China, Poland, Russia and Turkey.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (restored version) will be available for free viewing on January 17, the first day of the festival.

The full feature programme #MYFFF – here’s a flavour of what’s on offer:

IN A RUSH, by Louis Do de Lencquesaing

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AUGUSTINE, by Alice Winocou

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MADDENED BY HIS ABSENCE, by Sandrine Bonnaire

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THE VIRGINS, THE COPTS AND ME, by Namir Abdel Messeeh

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THE DAY OF THE CROWS, by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

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WELCOME TO ARGENTINA, by Edouard Deluc

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PAULINE DETECTIVE, by Marc Fitoussi

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MyFrenchFilmFestival.com will be available on 20 partner platforms including iTunes in 80 countries. MT

Ealing Music & Film Valentine Festival 12-16 February

By popular demand, Ealing Music & Film Valentine Festival returns in 2014 to light up February’s dark days with a programme to celebrate the rich and varied music, film and dance heritage of one of London’s most culturally enriched boroughs.

The excellent film slate follows this years dance theme with one of the BFI’s top ten British films of all time, the Oscar winning THE RED SHOES from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and Tony Palmer’s MARGOT. There will also be a screening in association with the Ealing Classic Cinema Club of the Ealing Studios-made satirical comedy THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT starring Alec Guinness. Ealing Studios will once again be throwing open its doors to the public for tours.

Full Programme

Sundance 2014 WINNERS ANNOUNCED 16 -26 January 2014

SUNDANCE is the top American festival for independent film. The brainchild of Robert Redford, it takes place each year in the snowy city of Park Town, Utah, often selecting films that go on to become strong contenders in Hollywood’s annual awards race. Previous selections include 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, which won two Oscars and 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was nominated for four Oscars.

This year’s 30th Festival offers the latest indie docs and features taking a look at the lives of extraordinary people. From 118 films (97 World premieres) the competition strand will showcase 17 feature films and 11 documentaries from upcoming directors together with those of more seasoned critical acclaim. No less than 11 documentaries will be shown in the premieres section, reflecting the increased popularity of this form of filmmaking. Robert Redford describes this as ‘a cultural exchange’.

Highlights this year will include 20,000 Days on Earth, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s biopic of the notorious musician Nick Cave; In Mitt. Greg Whiteley follows former governor Mitt Romney on his failed 2012 US presidential campaign. Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney returns with Finding Fela, showcasing the life of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, while To Be Takei by Jennifer Kroot explores the career of Star Trek actor George Takei.

In the dramatic section, Mike Cahill’s I Origins, is a drama about a pair of scientists who make a breakthrough altering the future of mankind; Dutch director Anton Corbijn presents his adaptation of John le Carre’s best-selling thriller novel A Most Wanted Man, featuring a starry cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe. British actress Keira Knightley stars as a young woman with emotional development issues in Lynn Shelton’s Laggies alongside Sam Rockwell and Chloe Grace Moretz. Frank is Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s follow-up to What Richard Did (2012).

The theme of genre-defying films continues within the premieres category. Oscar-nominated actor William H Macy makes his directorial debut with Ruddersless, a story of a bereft father who forms a rock and roll band to keep the memory of his lost son’s songs alive. Starring Billy Crudup and Anton Yelchin it will be the closing film this year. Arrested Development star David Cross also makes his directorial debut with black comedy Hits, which examines the culture of fame in today’s YouTube generation.

Comedy-wise, British director Michael Winterbottom returns to Sundance with his latest comedy: ‘The Trip to Italy, a follow-up to 2010’s The Trip, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s good food travelogue of the best restaurants in Britain. Comedian Nick Offerman’s directorial debut is American Ham, a live stand-up show with topics as diverse and sex and woodworking. Other strands this year are ‘In the Spotlight’, ‘Park City at Midnight’ and ‘New Frontier’.

Rather than cherry-picking from the selection – here’s this year’s full run-down to give you a full flavour oF what’s to come:

PREMIERES

Calvary / Ireland, UK (Dir/writer: John Michael McDonagh) For those who enjoyed The Guard, Calvary sees McDonagh back on familiar territory with this black comedic drama about a priest tormented by his community. Father James is a good man intent on making the world a better place. When his life is threatened one day during confession, he finds he has to battle the dark forces closing in around him.Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Marie-Josée Croze.

Frank / Ireland, UK (Director: Lenny Abrahamson, Screenwriters: Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan) — Frank is an offbeat comedy about a wannabe musician who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant garde rock band led by the enigmatic Frank—a musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy.

Hits / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Cross) — A small town in upstate New York is populated by people who wallow in unrealistic expectations. There, fame, delusion, earnestness, and recklessness meet, shake hands, and disrupt the lives around them. Cast: Meredith Hagner, Matt Walsh, James Adomian, Jake Cherry Derek Waters, Wyatt Cenac.

I Origins / U.S.A. (Dir/Writer: Mike Cahill) — A molecular biologist and his lab partner uncover startling evidence that could fundamentally change society as we know it and cause them to question their once-certain beliefs in science and spirituality. Cast: Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun, Archie Panjabi.

Laggies/ U.S.A. (Dir: Lynn Shelton, writer: Andrea Seigel) Laggies is a coming of age story about a 28-year-old woman stuck in permanent adolescence. Unable to find her career calling, still hanging out with the same friends, and living with her high school boyfriend, Megan must finally navigate her own future when an unexpected marriage proposal sends her into a panic. Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin, Mark Webber.

Little Accidents / U.S.A. (Dir/writer: Sara Colangelo) — In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets. Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Chloë Sevigny, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas.

Love is Strange / U.S.A. (Director: Ira Sachs, Screenwriters: Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias) — After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot, but George loses his job as a result, and the newlyweds must sell their New York apartment and live apart, relying on friends and family to make ends meet. Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson.

A Most Wanted Man / Germany, U.S.A. (Director: Anton Corbijn, Screenwriter: Andrew Bovell) — Based on John le Carré’s bestselling book, Anton Corbijn directs this modern-day thriller with Academy Award–winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, and two-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe headlining an ensemble cast.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright.

Nick Offerman: American Ham / U.S.A. (Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Screenwriter: Nick Offerman) — WARNING: MINOR NUDITY AND NOT SUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS. This live taping of Nick Offerman’s hilarious one-man show at New York’s historic Town Hall theater features a collection of anecdotes, songs, and woodworking/oral sex techniques. The routine includes Offerman’s 10 tips for living a more prosperous life, so hearken well. Cast: Nick Offerman.

The One I Love / U.S.A. (Director: Charlie McDowell, Screenwriter: Justin Lader) — Struggling with a marriage on the brink of falling apart, a couple escapes for the weekend in pursuit of their better selves, only to discover an unusual dilemma waiting for them. Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson.

The Raid 2 / Indonesia (Director and screenwriter: Gareth Evans) — Picking up where the first film left off, The Raid 2 follows Rama as he goes undercover and infiltrates the ranks of a ruthless Jakarta crime syndicate in order to protect his family and expose the corruption in his own police force. Cast: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad.

Rudderless / U.S.A. (Director: William H. Macy, Screenwriters: Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison, William H. Macy) — When a grieving father in a downward spiral stumbles upon a box of his deceased son’s original music, he forms a rock ‘n’ roll band, which changes his life.Cast: Billy Crudup, Anton Yelchin, Felicity Huffman, Selena Gomez, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

They Came Together / U.S.A. (Director: David Wain, Screenwriters: Michael Showalter, David Wain) — This subversion/spoof/deconstruction of the romantic comedy genre has a vaguely, but not overtly, Jewish leading man, a klutzy, but adorable, leading lady, and New York City itself as another character in the story. Cast: Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Ed Helms, Cobie Smulders, Max Greenfield, Christopher Meloni.

The Trip to Italy / United Kingdom (Director: Michael Winterbottom, Screenwriters: Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, Michael Winterbottom) Michael Winterbottom reunites Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for more delectable food, some sharp-elbowed rivalry, and plenty of laughs. Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon.

The Voices / U.S.A., Germany (Director: Marjane Satrapi, Screenwriter: Michael R. Perry) — This genre-bending tale centers around Jerry Hickfang, a lovable but disturbed factory worker who yearns for attention from a woman in accounting. When their relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn, Jerry’s evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog lead him down a fantastical path where he ultimately finds salvation. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver.

White Bird in a Blizzard / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Gregg Araki) — Based on the acclaimed novel by Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard tells the story of Kat Connors, a young woman whose life is turned upside down by the sudden disappearance of her beautiful, enigmatic mother. Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Shiloh Fernandez, Gabourey Sidibe, Thomas Jane.

Young Ones / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jake Paltrow) — Set in a future where water is hard to find, a teenage boy sets out to protect his family and survive. Cast: Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee.

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES

Renowned filmmakers and films about far-reaching subjects comprise this section highlighting our ongoing commitment to documentaries. Each film is a world premiere.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball / U.S.A. (Directors: Chapman Way, Maclain Way) — Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.

Finding Fela / U.S.A. (Director: Alex Gibney) — Fela Anikulapo Kuti created the musical movement Afrobeat and used it as a political forum to oppose the Nigerian dictatorship and advocate for the rights of oppressed people. This is the story of his life, music, and political importance.

Freedom Summer / U.S.A. (Director: Stanley Nelson) — In the summer of 1964, more than 700 students descended on violent, segregated Mississippi. Defying authorities, they registered voters, created freedom schools, and established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Fifty years later, eyewitness accounts and never-before-seen archival material tell their story. Not all of them would make it through.

Happy Valley / U.S.A. (Director: Amir Bar-Lev) — The children of “Happy Valley” were victimized for years, by a key member of the legendary Penn State college football program. But were Jerry Sandusky’s crimes an open secret? With rare access, director Amir Bar-Lev delves beneath the headlines to tell a modern American parable of guilt, redemption, and identity.

Last Days in Vietnam / U.S.A. (Director: Rory Kennedy) — During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.

Life Itself / U.S.A. (Director: Steve James) — Life Itself recounts the surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert. The film details his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

Mitt / U.S.A. (Director: Greg Whiteley) — A filmmaker is granted unprecedented access to a political candidate and his family as he runs for President.

This May Be the Last Time / U.S.A. (Director: Sterlin Harjo) — Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s Grandfather disappeared mysteriously in 1962. The community searching for him sang songs of encouragement that were passed down for generations. Harjo explores the origins of these songs as well as the violent history of his people.

To Be Takei / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Kroot) — Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.

We Are The Giant / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Greg Barker) — We Are The Giant tells the stories of ordinary individuals who are transformed by the moral and personal challenges they encounter when standing up for what they believe is right. Powerful and tragic, yet inspirational, their struggles for freedom echo across history and offer hope against seemingly impossible odds.

WHITEY: United States of America v. James J. Bulger / U.S.A. (Director: Joe Berlinger) — Infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s relationship with the FBI and Department of Justice allowed him to reign over a criminal empire in Boston for decades. Joe Berlinger’s documentary chronicles Bulger’s recent sensational trial, using it as a springboard to explore allegations of corruption within the highest levels of law enforcement.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.

Camp X-Ray / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Peter Sattler) — A young woman is stationed as a guard in Guantanamo Bay, where she forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, J.J. Soria, John Carroll Lynch.

Cold in July / U.S.A. (Director: Jim Mickle, Screenwriters: Jim Mickle, Nick Damici) — After killing a home intruder, a small town Texas man’s life unravels into a dark underworld of corruption and violence. Cast: Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, Sam Shepard, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici, Wyatt Russell.

Dear White People/ U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Justin Simien) — Four black students attend an Ivy League college where a riot breaks out over an “African American” themed party thrown by white students. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film explores racial identity in postracial America while weaving a story about forging one’s unique path in the world. Cast: Tyler Williams, Tessa Thompson, Teyonah Parris, Brandon Bell.

Fishing Without Nets / U.S.A., Somalia, Kenya (Director: Cutter Hodierne, Screenwriters: Cutter Hodierne, John Hibey, David Burkman) — A story of pirates in Somalia told from the perspective of a struggling, young Somali fisherman. Cast: Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb, Idil Ibrahim.

God’s Pocket/ U.S.A. (Director: John Slattery, Screenwriters: John Slattery, Alex Metcalf) — When Mickey’s stepson Leon is killed in a construction “accident,” Mickey tries to bury the bad news with the body. But when the boy’s mother demands the truth, Mickey finds himself stuck between a body he can’t bury, a wife he can’t please, and a debt he can’t pay.Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks, John Turturro.

Happy Christmas / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Joe Swanberg) — After a breakup with her boyfriend, a young woman moves in with her older brother, his wife, and their 2-year-old son. Cast: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg.

Hellion / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kat Candler) — When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob’s delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home. Cast: Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Jonny Mars, Walt Roberts.

Infinitely Polar Bear / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Maya Forbes) — A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don’t make the overwhelming task any easier. Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Imogene Wolodarsky, Ashley Aufderheide.

Jamie Marks is Dead / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Carter Smith) — No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead. Cast: Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver, Morgan Saylor, Judy Greer, Madisen Beaty, Liv Tyler.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter/ U.S.A. (Director: David Zellner, Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner) — A lonely Japanese woman becomes convinced that a satchel of money buried in a fictional film is, in fact, real. Abandoning her structured life in Tokyo for the frozen Minnesota wilderness, she embarks on an impulsive quest to search for her lost mythical fortune. Cast: Rinko Kikuchi.

Life After Beth / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jeff Baena) — Zach is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend, Beth. When she mysteriously returns, he gets a second chance at love. Soon his whole world turns upside down… Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser.

Low Down / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Preiss, Screenwriters: Amy Albany, Topper Lilien) — Based on Amy Jo Albany’s memoir, Low Down explores her heart-wrenching journey to adulthood while being raised by her father, bebop pianist Joe Albany, as he teeters between incarceration and addiction in the urban decay and waning bohemia of Hollywood in the 1970s. Cast: John Hawkes, Elle Fanning, Glenn Close, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Flea.

The Skeleton Twins / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Johnson, Screenwriters: Craig Johnson, Mark Heyman) — When estranged twins Maggie and Milo feel that they’re at the end of their ropes, an unexpected reunion forces them to confront why their lives went so wrong. As the twins reconnect, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship. Cast: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell, Boyd Holbrook, Joanna Gleason.

The Sleepwalker / U.S.A., Norway (Director: Mona Fastvold, Screenwriters: Mona Fastvold, Brady Corbet) — A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia´s secluded family estate. Their lives are violently interrupted when unexpected guests arrive. The Sleepwalker chronicles the unraveling of the lives of four disparate characters as it transcends genre conventions and narrative contrivance to reveal something much more disturbing. Cast: Gitte Witt, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, Stephanie Ellis.

Song One / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kate Barker-Froyland) — Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring musician, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn, Mary Steenburgen, Ben Rosenfield.

Whiplash / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Damien Chazelle) — Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity. Cast: Miles Teller, JK Simmons. DAY ONE FILM

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory / U.S.A. (Director: Michael Rossato-Bennett) — Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

All the Beautiful Things / U.S.A. (Director: John Harkrider) — John and Barron are lifelong friends whose friendship is tested when Barron’s girlfriend says Barron put a knife to her throat and raped her. Not knowing she has lied, John tells her to go to the police. Years later, John and Barron meet in a bar to resolve the betrayal.

CAPTIVATED The Trials of Pamela Smart / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director: Jeremiah Zagar) — In an extraordinary and tragic American story, a small town murder becomes one of the highest profile cases of all time. From its historic role as the first televised trial to the many books and movies made about it, the film looks at the media’s enduring impact on the case.

The Case Against 8 / U.S.A. (Directors: Ben Cotner, Ryan White) — A behind-the-scenes look inside the case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Shot over five years, the film follows the unlikely team that took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cesar’s Last Fast / U.S.A. (Directors: Richard Ray Perez, Lorena Parlee) — Inspired by Catholic social teaching, Cesar Chavez risked his life fighting for America’s poorest workers. The film illuminates the intensity of one man’s devotion and personal sacrifice, the birth of an economic justice movement, and tells an untold chapter in the story of civil rights in America.

Dinosaur 13 / U.S.A. (Director: Todd Miller) — The true tale behind one of the greatest discoveries in history. DAY ONE FILM

E-TEAM / U.S.A. (Directors: Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman) — E-TEAM is driven by the high-stakes investigative work of four intrepid human rights workers, offering a rare look at their lives at home and their dramatic work in the field.

Fed Up / U.S.A. (Director: Stephanie Soechtig) — Fed Up blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and weight loss, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz / U.S.A. (Director: Brian Knappenberger) — Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.

Ivory Tower / U.S.A. (Director: Andrew Rossi) — As tuition spirals upward and student debt passes a trillion dollars, students and parents ask, “Is college worth it?” From the halls of Harvard to public and private colleges in financial crisis to education startups in Silicon Valley, an urgent portrait emerges of a great American institution at the breaking point.

Marmato / U.S.A. (Director: Mark Grieco) — Colombia is the center of a new global gold rush, and Marmato, a historic mining town, is the new frontier. Filmed over the course of nearly six years, Marmato chronicles how townspeople confront a Canadian mining company that wants the $20 billion in gold beneath their homes.

No No: A Dockumentary / U.S.A. (Director: Jeffrey Radice) — Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then worked for decades counseling drug abusers. Dock’s soulful style defined 1970s baseball as he kept hitters honest and embarrassed the establishment. An ensemble cast of teammates, friends, and family investigate his life on the field, in the media, and out of the spotlight.

The Overnighters / U.S.A. (Director: Jesse Moss) — Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor’s decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

Private Violence / U.S.A. (Director: Cynthia Hill) — One in four women experience violence in their homes. Have you ever asked, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” Private Violence shatters the brutality of our logic and intimately reveals the stories of two women: Deanna Walters, who transforms from victim to survivor, and Kit Gruelle, who advocates for justice.

Rich Hill / U.S.A. (Directors: Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos) — In a rural, American town, kids face heartbreaking choices, find comfort in the most fragile of family bonds, and dream of a future of possibility.

Watchers of the Sky / U.S.A. (Director: Edet Belzberg) — Five interwoven stories of remarkable courage from Nuremberg to Rwanda, from Darfur to Syria, and from apathy to action.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.

52 Tuesdays / Australia (Director: Sophie Hyde, Screenplay and story by: Matthew Cormack, Story by: Sophie Hyde) — Sixteen-year-old Billie’s reluctant path to independence is accelerated when her mother reveals plans for gender transition, and their time together becomes limited to Tuesdays. This emotionally charged story of desire, responsibility, and transformation was filmed over the course of a year—once a week, every week, only on Tuesdays. Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Imogen Archer, Mario Späte, Beau Williams, Sam Althuizen. International Premiere

Blind / Norway, Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Eskil Vogt) — Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. But Ingrid’s real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over. Cast: Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt. World Premiere

Difret / Ethiopia (Director and screenwriter: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari) — Meaza Ashenafi is a young lawyer who operates under the government’s radar helping women and children until one young girl’s legal case exposes everything, threatening not only her career but her survival. Cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere. World Premiere

The Disobedient/ Serbia (Director and screenwriter: Mina Djukic) — Leni anxiously waits for her childhood friend Lazar, who is coming back to their hometown after years of studying abroad. After they reunite, they embark on a random bicycle trip around their childhood haunts, which will either exhaust or reinvent their relationship. Cast: Hana Selimovic, Mladen Sovilj, Minja Subota, Danijel Sike, Ivan Djordjevic. World Premiere

God Help the Girl / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stuart Murdoch) — This musical from Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian is about some messed up boys and girls and the music they made. Cast: Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray, Pierre Boulanger, Cora Bissett. World Premiere

Liar’s Dice / India (Director and screenwriter: Geetu Mohandas) — Kamala, a young woman from the village of Chitkul, leaves her native land with her daughter to search for her missing husband. Along the journey, they encounter Nawazudin, a free-spirited army deserter with his own selfish motives who helps them reach their destination. Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Geetanjali Thapa, Manya Gupta. International Premiere

Lilting / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Hong Khaou) — The world of a Chinese mother mourning the untimely death of her son is suddenly disrupted by the presence of a stranger who doesn’t speak her language. Lilting is a touching and intimate film about finding the things that bring us together. Cast: Ben Whishaw, Pei-Pei Cheng, Andrew Leung, Peter Bowles, Naomi Christie, Morven Christie. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Lock Charmer (El cerrajero)/ Argentina (Director and screenwriter: Natalia Smirnoff) — Upon learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, 33-year-old locksmith Sebastian begins to have strange visions about his clients. With the help of an unlikely assistant, he sets out to use his newfound talent for his own good. Cast: Esteban Lamothe, Erica Rivas, Yosiria Huaripata. World Premiere

To Kill a Man / Chile, France (Director and screenwriter: Alejandro Fernández Almendras) — When Jorge, a hardworking family man who’s barely making ends meet, gets mugged by Kalule, a neighborhood delinquent, Jorge’s son decides to confront the attacker, only to get himself shot. Even though Jorge’s son nearly dies, Kalule’s sentence is minimal, heightening the friction. Cast: Daniel Candia, Daniel Antivilo, Alejandra Yañez, Ariel Mateluna. World Premiere

Viktoria / Bulgaria, Romania (Director and screenwriter: Maya Vitkova) — Although determined not to have a child in Communist Bulgaria, Boryana gives birth to Viktoria, who despite being born with no umbilical cord, is proclaimed to be the baby of the decade. But political collapse and the hardships of the new time bind mother and daughter together.Cast: Irmena Chichikova, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Mariana Krumova, Dimo Dimov, Georgi Spassov. World Premiere

Wetlands / Germany (Director: David Wnendt, Screenwriters: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt, based on the novel by Charlotte Roche) — Meet Helen Memel. She likes to experiment with vegetables while masturbating and thinks that bodily hygiene is greatly overrated. She shocks those around her by speaking her mind in a most unladylike manner on topics that many people would not even dare consider. Cast: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Marlen Kruse, Edgar Selge. North American Premiere

White Shadow / Italy, Germany, Tanzania (Director: Noaz Deshe, Screenwriters: Noaz Deshe, James Masson) — Alias is a young albino boy on the run. His mother has sent him away to find refuge in the city after witnessing his father’s murder. Over time, the city becomes no different than the bush: wherever Alias travels, the same rules of survival apply. Cast: Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Glory Mbayuwayu, Salum Abdallah. International Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.

20,000 Days On Earth / United Kingdom (Directors: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard) — Drama and reality combine in a fictitious 24 hours in the life of musician and international culture icon Nick Cave. With startlingly frank insights and an intimate portrayal of the artistic process, this film examines what makes us who we are and celebrates the transformative power of the creative spirit. World Premiere

Concerning Violence / Sweden, U.S.A., Denmark, Finland (Director: Göran Hugo Olsson) —Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. World Premiere

The Green Prince / Germany, Israel, United Kingdom (Director: Nadav Schirman ) — This real-life thriller tells the story of one of Israel’s prized intelligence sources, recruited to spy on his own people for more than a decade. Focusing on the complex relationship with his handler,The Green Prince is a gripping account of terror, betrayal, and unthinkable choices, along with a friendship that defies all boundaries. World Premiere. DAY ONE FILM

Happiness / France, Finland (Director: Thomas Balmès) — Peyangki is a dreamy and solitary eight-year-old monk living in Laya, a Bhutanese village perched high in the Himalayas. Soon the world will come to him: the village is about to be connected to electricity, and the first television will flicker on before Peyangki’s eyes. North American Premiere

Love Child / South Korea, U.S.A. (Director: Valerie Veatch) — In Seoul in the Republic of Korea, a young couple stands accused of neglect when “Internet addiction” in an online fantasy game costs the life of their infant daughter. Love Child documents the 2010 trial and subsequent ruling that set a global precedent in a world where virtual is the new reality.World Premiere

Mr leos caraX / France (Director: Tessa Louise-Salomé) — Mr leos caraX plunges us into the poetic and visionary world of a mysterious, solitary filmmaker who was already a cult figure from his very first film. Punctuated by interviews and previously unseen footage, this documentary is most of all a fine-tuned exploration of the poetic and visionary world of Leos Carax, alias Mr. X. World Premiere

My Prairie Home / Canada (Director: Chelsea McMullan) — A poetic journey through landscapes both real and emotional, Chelsea McMullan’s documentary/musical offers an intimate portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon, framed by stunning images of the Canadian prairies. McMullan’s imaginative visual interpretations of Spoon’s songs make this an unforgettable look at a unique Canadian artist. International Premiere

The Notorious Mr. Bout / U.S.A., Russia (Directors: Tony Gerber, Maxim Pozdorovkin ) — Viktor Bout was a war profiteer, an entrepreneur, an aviation tycoon, an arms dealer, and—strangest of all—a documentary filmmaker. The Notorious Mr. Bout is the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir, documented by the last man you’d expect to be holding the camera. World Premiere

Return to Homs / Syria, Germany (Director: Talal Derki) — Basset Sarout, the 19-year-old national football team goalkeeper, becomes a demonstration leader and singer, and then a fighter. Ossama, a 24-year-old renowned citizen cameraman, is critical, a pacifist, and ironic until he is detained by the regime’s security forces. North American Premiere

SEPIDEH – Reaching for the Stars / Denmark (Director: Berit Madsen) — Sepideh wants to become an astronaut. As a young Iranian woman, she knows it’s dangerous to challenge traditions and expectations. Still, Sepideh holds on to her dream. She knows a tough battle is ahead, a battle that only seems possible to win once she seeks help from an unexpected someone. North American Premiere

We Come as Friends / France, Austria (Director: Hubert Sauper) — We Come as Friends is a modern odyssey, a science fiction–like journey in a tiny homemade flying machine into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, Africa’s biggest country, is being divided into two nations, a “civilizing” pathology transcends the headlines—colonialism, imperialism, and yet-another holy war over resources. World Premiere

Web Junkie / Israel (Directors: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia) — China is the first country to label “Internet addiction” a clinical disorder. With extraordinary intimacy, Web Junkieinvestigates a Beijing rehab center where Chinese teenagers are deprogrammed, focusing on three teens, their parents and the health professionals determined to help them kick their habit. World Premiere

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE IN PARK CITY, UTAH FROM 9 UNTIL 26 JANUARY 2014.

THE WINNERS OF THE 2014 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

US GRAND JURY PRIZE; DRAMATIC – WHIPLASH

US GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RICH HILL

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE: DRAMATIC – TO KILL A MAN

WORLD CINEMA GRAND JURY PRIZE: DOCUMENTARY – RETURN TO HOMS

AUDIENCE AWARD US DRAMATIC – WHIPLASH

AUDIENCE AWARD US DOCUMENTARY – ALIVE INSIDE : A STORY OF MUSIC & MEMORY

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA; DRAMATIC – DIFRET

AUDIENCE AWARD: WORLD CINEMA: DOCUMENTARY – THE GREEN PRINCE

AUDIENCE AWARD: BEST OF NEXT – IMPERIAL DREAMS

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)

Dir: Jacques Demy, Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castalnuevo, Roland Cassard, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel

France 1964, 89 min. Drama French with English subtitles SPARKLING NEW REMASTERING

LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG, a musical which won the Palme D’Or’ in Cannes 1964, is the middle part of a loosely connected fantasy trilogy by Jacques Demy (1931-1990); bookended by Lola (1961) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). The latter two starred the young Catherine Deneuve, who Demy made into a star. LES PARAPLUIES is set in Nantes, Demy’s hometown. It relies very much on architecture and interiors, Demy even had part of the town repainted, so it would fit in with his colour scheme. The narrative is simple: The young Genevieve Emery (Deneuve) is madly in love with Guy (Nino Castalnuevo), an auto mechanic. Her mother (Anne Vernon) is vey much against this match, since she has long ‘decided’ that her daughter should marry the well off jeweller Roland Cassard (Marc Michel). Fate takes a hand when Guy is called up to serve in the Algerian war. Just before he leaves, the couple consummate their relationship, pledging eternal love. But the one night stand is enough to make Genevieve pregnant, and her mother successfully intercepts and destroys all letters Guy sends from the front. In the end, Madame Emery gets her way: Genevieve, pregnant, gets married to Monsieur Cassard. And when she meets Guy by chance three years later, there is only embarrassed silence.

LES PARAPLUIES was seen as the French answer to ‘Mary Poppins’ – obviously we get a love instead of a kiddies classic . But the aesthetics are similar: a sort of pre-pop escapism, with a colour scheme to match. Everything is over the top, the singing and design scream loudly of a world widely removed from any reality. Together with Legrand’s magical music score Demy delivers the viewer into a fairy-land – but no happy Hollywood ending. Bittersweet and with radical changing emotions, PARAPLUIES is a very French escapade.

Jacques Demy was a contemporary of all the Nouvelle Vague crew, and he started his career at about the same time. But unlike them, he did not wanted to break with tradition, his films are in the tradition of the pre-war films of Prevert, Max Ophuls and Renoir. Demy wanted to relieve the viewer of the pressure of reality, not confront them with it like Jean-Luc Godard. Most of his films are set in Nantes, he relies heavily on this background. But it is anything but realistic, Demy re-creates a contained fantasy world. Playful and always relying very much on the central performances as in PARAPLUIES, he created an alternative universe, in which reality goes under in waves of colour, music and melodramatic emotion. AS

LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG CELEBRATES 50 YEARS WITH A BLU-RAY RELEASE COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL OUT ON 10 FEBRUARY 2014

La Prima Neve (2013) Venezia 70

Director: Andrea Segre

Cinematographer: Luca Bigazzi

Cast: Giuseppe Battiston, Anita Caprioli, Roberto Citran, Jean-Christophe Folly, Matteo Marchel, Peter Mitterutzner

103min Italian with subtitles Drama

Andrea Segre’s poignantly-observed but non-judgemental ‘New Wave’ mood piece is an immigration story set in the Italian Alpine region of Trentino Alto Adige. Segre stumbles at first but gradually finds his feet in telling the story of Dani, a grieving refugee from Togo, who has lost his family and fetches up in a remote community that has also experienced the tragedy of loss. Peter Mitterrutzner plays a woodcutter and his daughter Elisa (a brilliant Anita Caprioli) who are bringing up Michele (Matteo Marchel), a young boy who has been emotionally scarred by the loss of his father.

The local woods provide therapy for the pair as they work out their frustrations and disappointments on the land and although Dani feels very much at odds with his new environment, Michele leads the way, being familiar with the local countryside. Newcomer Matteo Marchel is particularly good in a believable performance that combines childish anger with an ability to manipulate his elders.

Well-known for his documentaries, Andrea Segre uses his considerable talents in capturing the quiet beauty of the mountain landscape with the help of lenser Luca Bigazzi (La Grande Bellezza, This Must Be the Place). Very much a character in its own right, the isolated mountain region provides an effective backdrop to this compelling narrative with its themes of nature, childhood and loss. Immersive and visually stunning, La Prima Neve is a promising feature debut. MT

SCREENING DURING CINEMA MADE IN ITALY WHICH RUNS FROM 5-9 MARCH 2014 AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

Journal de France (2013)

Dir.: Claudine Nougaret & Raymond Depardon

Documentary; France 2012, 100 min

The title of this informative and innovative documentary is a little misleading: whilst we see and witness Raymond Depardon travelling through provincial France with his old-fashioned view camera, filming buildings which look right out of the fifties. We also see his work as a documentary filmmaker, shooting conflicts worldwide. Depardon and Nougaret have lived and worked together for over 25 years, and this is also a homage to their work. We first meet Depardon in Nevers where he is taking a photo of a tobacconist shop, unchanged for over fifty years. Depardon”s explanation for his journey through France is that he needs “silence after having listened to others for such a long time”.In 1962 Depardon, who grew up on a farm, went to Paris to become a photographer. The following year he was sent to Venezuela to photograph the civil war – completing the coverage single-handedly after the director and sound recorder quit. A year later he was in the Belgian Congo, Brazzaville, where a new president was being sworn in –none other than Bokassa, the infamous dictator, who then came across as rather a civilised, well-intentioned human being.

In 1967 Depardon founded with others the agency “Gamma”, in his own words “not for money, but to make us free”. He then set off to Biafra to witness the slaughter of the civil war – and also to the ones who caused it: the French mercenaries, who were self-satisfied and proclaimed that “there will be also well-paid work for us”. A year later he visited Prague, after the suicide of Jan Pallach, as a reaction to the Soviet invasion. Depardon was put in prison for three days before being expelled.

All this is fascinating background detail is skilfully intercut with footage of the tranquil French countryside, Depardon explains “I am in an orbit, my camper van is my capsule”. In 1974 he filmed the presidential election campaign of Giscard, the then finance minister of France. In a meeting before the decisive second round of voting (Giscard would beat Mitterand by 0.8%), the future president proclaims proudly, that they would need not to do anything, since “Le Pen’s National Front followers will vote for us”. When in office, Giscard blocked the release of the film. This is followed by a heart-breaking interview with the kidnapped French ethnologist Françoise Claustre in Chad.

Depardon lived two years with the rebels, and was instrumental in her release, after three years captivity. That same year he shot a depressing film about mental patients in Italy, who lived under scandalous conditions; an anti-psychiatric movement was founded, and conditions changed.Depardon raison d’etre was to make documentaries about people in confrontation with the authorities. His films about the Justice System in France or his observations in an ambulance (1982) when the driver innocently “wished that he also could find a hanging case, like his friend had the other day”. In 1993 Nougaret developed a direct sound system for “Paris”, where the filmmaker couple shot people in the Paris streets.

One highlight of his long career is doubtless an interview with Nelson Mandela just after the release from prison in 1993.So much more is showed and mentioned in this remarkable doc – JOURNAL DE FRANCE is a kaleidoscope of the bloody and the ordinary struggles of men, in France and worldwide – shot by a couple who stayed together, in spite “of constant bickering” on one of their first joint adventures in “Captive of the Desert” (1990), when they got completely lost. AS

JOURNAL DE FRANCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 31 JANUARY 2014

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Snowpiercer (2013) Coming soon….

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Producer Park Chan-wook

Song Kang-ho, Ko Asung, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton and comic author Jean-Marc Rochette

South Korea

When Bong Joon Ho first opened Jean-Marc Rochette’s comic “Snowpiercer” in a Seoul bookshop, he supposedly devoured all three volumes on the spot. Eight years later, the French comic has been made into the most lavish Korean film of all time. Seolguk-yeolcha (Snowpiercer) describes an impending ice age caused by human hand, whose last survivors are left circling the earth in a non-stop express train. The rich are in the front carriages and the poor ¬– from whose perspective the story is told – at the back.

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Last Passenger (2013) DVD

Director: Omid Nooshin

Cast: Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg, David Schofield, Lindsay Duncan, Joshua Kaynama

90 mins Thriller UK

This Britflic is part drama, part thriller with a touch of horror thrown in. It’s also the debut feature of shorts director Omid Nooshin and a technically ambitious one that he surprisingly pulls off with some success.

Set in the confines of a commuter train from Victoria, it ambles along uneventfully for the first 40 minutes where we meet a crew of cut-out characters who fail to engage our interest further than an average trip on the Gatwick Express. A jowly, knackered Dougray Scott is believable as the stressed Dr Lewis Skolar heading to an A&E emergency with his cute little boy (not unlike Danny from The Shining). Flirting with Kara Tointon’s chirpily flirty events manager; he locks horns with a taciturn accountant played by Brian Schofield in his usual sinister style, but here with no real depth. Then there is a caricature Polish LT worker (Iddo Goldberg) who turns nasty and threatens the guard (as if: Poles are disciplined and respectful of authority?). Meanwhile, Lindsay Duncan plays the ‘token’ older woman sitting winsomely with her knitting, the epitome of the smug grandma.

But the real baddie appears to be the mysterious driver who seems to be sealed into his carriage; never to appear. And as the train gathers breakneck momentum, the passengers are unable to work out what’s going on. LAST PASSENGER is a well-meaning thriller that lives up to its tagline: One Train. Six Passengers. No Chance. It tantalises us with some scary moments and the promise of exciting things to come, but then fails to deliver its goods. Ultimately this vehicle that has momentum but never really takes off. British Rail: eat your heart out. MT

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LAST PASSENGER IS ON DVD FROM 27 January 2014

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013) DVD

Director: David Lowery

Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Keith Caradine, Nate Parker

105min US Drama

What separates David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints from other contemporary tales of romance, is that when we are first introduced to our protagonists, we see them bickering, setting the precedent for the rest of this memorable Texan drama. Though hopelessly romanticised in its approach this is by no means a ‘Disney’ fairytale. Beneath the surface lies a pragmatic and bittersweet drama of a husband and wife desperately hoping to be reunited.

When Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) lands himself a lengthy prison sentence, having taken the fall for his wife Ruth’s (Rooney Mara) impetuous shooting of a police officer, he manages to break out of jail, eagerly hoping to be reunited with his wife and the daughter she gave birth to during his incarceration. However in the meantime, Ruth has struck up a strong relationship with the officer himself, Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster), who is blissfully unaware that it was she who pulled the trigger, as both nervously await the impending return of the feared outlaw.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is not your conventional love story, as the only time we truly see Bob and Ruth together they seem somewhat uneasy in each other’s company. Considering the entire film is built around these romantic notions and the foundations of their marriage, it’s a brave move to depict it so truthfully. To an extent, such an honest portrayal actually allows for the viewer to invest even more into their relationship, as we genuinely believe in it. However, Lowery can be accused of not presenting enough back story for our leads, as the jailbreak occurs too swiftly into proceedings, and because of this we don’t really get a sense for either of their personalities beforehand, which makes it difficult to then root for their cause as a result.

Meanwhile the crime itself is understated somewhat, which, considering the entire film hinges on this very moment, appears a strange move to have made for the filmmaker. But despite the lack of context provided, Lowery is evidently attempting to portray how life changing moments such as this can occur in the most unexpected of ways, and take us by surprise. Whilst appreciating the realism, the scene itself doesn’t feel like it is given quite enough substance or detail to help settle us into the story.

There is a gentle atmosphere prevalent in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, enhanced by the A Cappella score, where mere clapping makes up much of the film’s soundtrack. However the clapping can also create a tense, foreboding ambience on occasion, as it speeds up dramatically to suit the nature of the scene at hand. Meditative and slow-burning in its approach, there is a pensive tone to this production, and though telling a simplistic tale, you never once question the significance or conviction of the narrative, despite so little actually happening for the most part. Unfortunately – and this is the case with many films of this type – Lowery can’t avoid unwanted bouts of tedium, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. STEFAN PAPE

OUT ON DVD FROM FEBRUARY 10TH 2014

Leon (1994) 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Steelbook

Director: Luc Besson

Cast: Jean Reno, Nathalie Portman, Gary Oldman

111/113min Crime Thriller English

Leon is Luc Besson’s controversial and unforgettable story of an unlikely friendship within the brutal world of New York. Starring tough guy Jean Reno as a deadly assassin who gives refuge to a little girl whose dysfunctional family has been slaughtered by the Police; it launched the career of Natalie Portman. She is remarkable as the savvy Mathilda in contrast to Reno’s silent but deadly assassin and Gary Oldman psychotic, drug-dealing policeman. Garnering critical acclaim for its ground-breakingly stylised depiction of violence, it pathed the way for the 90s hitmen movies of Tarantino, Michael Mann et al.

A one-disc Blu-ray featuring both the Director’s and Theatrical cut. Extras include:

Interviews with Jean Reno and Eric Serra

OUT ON FEBRUARY 3RD 2014 COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL

The General (1927)

Dir.:Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman

Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender

Silent; USA 1926, 89 min.

Based on a true incident in 1862 during the American Civil War, THE GENERAL stars Keaton as Johnny Gray, a train driver who tries to enlist in the Confederate Army, mainly to impress his sweetheart Annabelle Lee, whose father and brother enlist immediately. But Gray is more useful to the Southern cause as a train driver than a soldier, and he is rejected in spite of many (comical) efforts. Annabelle, a proud Southern woman is enraged: She will only talk to him again when he is uniform. Soon the dastardly Yankees kidnap the two things Gray loves most: Annabelle and his locomotive ‘ The General’. He swiftly steals another steam engine and pursues the enemy, eventually freeing Annabelle and his locomotive.

THE GENERAL is not a comedy, it is an adventure film with comical features, which might explain its lack of success at the box office since the audience expected a traditional Keaton comedy. Another reason for the classic’s poor box office on its original release may be the fact that the film shows the Southern cause favourably, which will have alienated audiences in the North and East of the USA. But it is Keaton’s work as his own stuntman that’s the most admirable feature of the outing. Whilst wearing his famous poker face bereft of any emotions, he jumps onto driving locomotives, crawls over the roofs of carriages and lumbers wood from carriages into the furnace, whilst the train drives at top speed. He does all this not in a very heroic manner, on the contrary, all his actions teeter always on the brink of failure. Sometimes they even go wrong, for reasons of oversight or clumsiness. Most of the film was shot outdoors in Oregon because the narrow-gauge railroad tacks that were able to accommodate antique locomotives were still in use at the time. It is a miracle that the Keaton/Gray venture succeeds in the end – against all odds of the situations and his own capabilities. He is ‘everyman’s’ hero, triumphing mainly because he expects even worse obstacles on the way ahead.

THE GENERAL was a turning point for Keaton, because it lost him much creative control over his career due to the film’s financial failure and resulting in him having to move to MGM. During filming costs kept rocketing. One scene alone (when the Yankee train drives over a burning bridge, which collapses, sinking the train in the water below) cost 42, 000 dollars at the time of production – we can easily add two zeros at today’s cost. The train was actually left in the water, becoming a tourist attraction.

Adapted from William Pittenger’s book “Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railroad Adventure” and subsequent memoirs, THE GENERAL has a narrative that keeps the audience engaged all the time and there is always something happening in a tempo that is relentless, even by today’s standard: ‘Action packed’ is not an overstatement. The camera is very mobile, integrating the landscape at all times, and showing Keaton as a small but resilient character, turning the role of prey into hunter. In spite of context of war, the directors never glamourise the army, but make fun of its structures and hierarchies. A visually stunning achievement, with a magnificent musical score by Carl Davis, that remains entertaining nearly 90 years after its creation. AS

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Restored by The Cohen Film Collection, THE GENERAL is back in cinemas from 24 January 2014, opening at BFI Southbank, as part of a larger Keaton retrospective, and selected cinemas nationwide.

Free Fall (2013) | DVD

Director: Stephan Lacant

Writers: Stephan Lacant, Karsten Dahlem

Cast: Hanno Koffler, Max Riemelt, Attila Borlan, Katherina Schuttler, Stephanie Schonfeld, Maren Kroymann, Luis Lamprecht

100min Gay-themed Drama German with English subtitles

In Stephen Lacant’s gay-themed drama Free Fall, the Police Academy is a hotbed of young, fit trainees all preparing to serve their country. One of them is Marc (Hanno Koffler) who is blessed with a great sex life, a girlfriend Bettina (Katharina Schuttler) with a baby on the way and the support of his parents, who understand the rigours of Police life. Into this seemingly perfect state of affairs, drops Kay (Max Riemelt) a fellow recruit who has heart set on Marc and pursues him hotly despite Marc’s hostile protests to the contrary. Why then does Marc fall for the temptations of a gay fling with a fellow recruit, who also has a girlfriend?

Writers Stephan Lacant and Karsten Dahlem tackle this intricate story with skill and aplomb, creating a stylish and thoughtful drama set in the lush forests of Southern Germany. Free Fall is a tense and tight-lipped affair that sees Marc’s burgeoning homosexuality slowly take light like a smouldering bonfire. It gives the impression (quite convincingly) that if it weren’t for social conditioning, any one of us is open to any sexual persuasion, given the right opportunity and chemistry. Kay offers such a persuasive possibility and such an exciting contrast to Marc’s staid and quotidian lifestyle with Bettina, that this whole premise becomes entirely plausible. But without this opportunity, would Marc have discovered his nascent desire for same sex satisfaction?

Stephan Lacant presents his case with alarming simplicity but is never judgemental. As Marc becomes increasingly inventive in his love-making with Bettina, his boring stereotype of a dull marriage rears its ugly head. And as his homosexuality develops Marc emerges as the more interesting character, where Bettina becomes clingy, oppressive and needy. His parents are predictably one-dimensional and disappointed once Marc’s secret emerges and even his work colleagues are suspicious and mean-spirited in the middle class area of Baden-Wurttemberg. Free Fall, is a metaphor for straight-laced lives and uniformity in a society where the only rewards come out of sticking to the mainstream, toeing the line and keeping up with the Jones’s. Instead of trying to understand Marc’s complex response to his sexual unconformity, Bettina is hostile and unyielding: “Are you gay? – then if not, what are you Marc?” As Marc, Hanno Koffler’s performance is disarmingly moving and exultant by turns.

Free Fall has the feel of Flying Skyscrapers, shot through with the same resonating sensibility and aqua-tinted aesthetic. Visually it may lack the inventive creativeness of Skyscrapers but evokes a far greater sense of loss, delusion and shame, particular through the characterisation of Marc. Stefan Lacant has made a film that tackles some important issues and does so with engaging insight, making even mainstream audiences prick up their ears. MT

FREE FALL IS OUT ON DVD FROM 27 JANUARY 2014. AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER THROUGH AMAZON.CO.UK

Crystal Fairy (2013)

Director/Writer: Sebastián Silva

Cast: Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andres Silva, Agustin Silva, Sebastian Silva

98min Adventure/Comedy Spanish with subtitles

You can’t be blamed for feeling distinctly apprehensive towards a film called Crystal Fairy, which stars US indie-chic sensation Michael Cera. It’s only natural to anticipate a forcefully quirky production, and one that has a contrived whimsicality running right through the middle of it. However any such trepidation is extinguished almost instantaneously, as Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva’s first English language film handles dialogue in a more naturalistic, compelling way than many of those in their native tongue would manage.

Cera plays Jamie, a narrow-minded, inherently naïve tourist, travelling in Chile, and staying at Champa’s (Juan Andrés Silva) apartment, a receptive and equable twenty-something. The pair – along with the latter’s brothers Pilo (Agustín Silva) and Lel (José Miguel Silva) – decide to take a trip to the coast, on a quest to get their hands on a fabled hallucinogenic derived from cooking a rare cactus plant. However, whilst high on cocaine at a party the evening before the trip, Jamie invites the eccentric, offbeat bohemian Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann) along for the ride – an invitation he certainly lives to regret, as the adventure takes something of a wild turn when she arrives the following morning.

Silva has created a world that seems entirely naturalistic, and yet he offers an almost heightened take on reality. Life seems exaggerated and overstated for comic purposes, yet nothing is actually too far out of the ordinary, as he plays on the quirks and spontaneity of everyday life. Crystal epitomises this notion, appearing as a caricature of the archetypal hippie, cliched and comedic – and yet there are people like this, they genuinely exist. In fact, they’re probably backpacking their way across Chile right now as we speak. In spite of the humorous elements to this film, some scenes are uncomfortable, as an awkward social dynamic is explored, particularly so when Jamie responds with vitriol towards Crystal to make a point that he’s not happy that she took him up on his invitation.

Cera turns in one of his most mature performances to date, but he is blessed with a well fleshed out character, portraying somebody we all have the displeasure of knowing in real life. Though certainly flawed, Cera uses the vulnerability and naivety for which he has become so renowned to ensure we stay on his side. He has a physical fragility as well, and an awkward demeanour that puts him on the back foot somewhat, reminiscent of Woody Allen, and in many regards it enhances the immaturity of the character at hand. Meanwhile the three Chilean brothers – who are genuine siblings off camera – are our entries into this somewhat absurd world. Usually you’d take the perspective of the tourist in this situation, peering into a society and culture somewhat unknown, and yet we relate more to the pragmatic, placid nature of the brothers, causing us to feel rather embarrassed for the Americans and their cliched, almost patronising take towards this foreign land.

Silva portrays his homeland with a beautiful serenity, creating a picturesque film that truly takes you to the heart of the environment. However, despite all of the positives that exist, the unfulfilling finale does leave a sour taste in the mouth, with a ‘revelation’ that seems out of place, taking you away from the story at the very point you’re most engaged. Nonetheless, expectations have been suitably raised as we approach Silva’s next project, which also happens to be set in Chile and also features Michael Cera in a leading role. An idea that now seems somewhat more inviting. Stefan Pape.

CRYSTAL FAIRY IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2014

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Kelly + Victor (2012) DVD Blu-Ray

Director/writer: Kieran Evans

Cast: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Julian Morris, Stephen Walters

90mins UK-Ireland *** Drama

Kelly and Victor meet on the dance floor and the attraction is instant. Both are struggling to make their way in contemporary Liverpool where their close friends are all involved in drug dealing and prostitution. Kelly has learnt a few tricks from a dominatrix friend leading to some sparky chemistry between the sheets but she also has a few dark secrets from the past up her sleeve. Best known for FINISTERRE, his music biopic that featured in the recent URBAN WANDERING FESTIVAL, Kieran Evans’s second feature is based on the eponymous novel by Niall Griffiths and has strong and convincing performances from leads Antonia Campbell Hughes as Kelly and Julian Morris as Victor. Liverpool is very much a character in the film: Evans’s well-crafted direction shows us the city as an attractive and vibrant cultural centre surrounded by verdant countryside; not just as a large shipping port as seen in so many film treatments. Kelly + Victor also confirms Kieran Evans as an exciting and talented filmmaker with this first outing into fiction. MT

Kelly + Victor is out on DVD and Blu-Ray from January 13 2014

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton Screenplay: James Agee

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chaplin, Sally Jane Bruce, Evelyn Varden, Don Beddoe, James Gleeson

Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez

93min US Film Noir/Southern Gothic from the novel by Davis Grubb

Back in the fifties, Charles Laughton’s reputation as a flamboyant actor on stage and screen totally eclipsed THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, his only outing as a director. This magical piece of ‘Southern Gothic’ was America’s answer to German Expressionism. Dark themes of religious fervour, sexual tension and fear strike terror into the subconscious. Coalescing with dreamlike set pieces rendered exquisitely in black and white, this masterpiece of chiaroscuro lighting has the ability to shock and enthral. The image of Willa’s corpse in her white winceyette nightie, languishing underwater in the Bayou, is one of the creepiest sequences in Gothic cinema.

However, the film was not a commercial or critical success at the time. James Agee, scripter of The African Queen, was the brains behind the screenplay, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. He offered up the idea to Laughton providing the Britsh thesp with a ideal framework on which to unleash his creative genius on the silver screen.

The setting is the Christian bedrock of West Virginia during the Depression years, a time of hardship and male chauvinism in the Deep South where Shelley Winter’s ‘Willa’ is left widowed after her husband, Ben Harper, receives the ultimate punishment of execution, having left the secret of the stolen loot with their two young children. Posing as a man of God, Robert Mitchum plays psychopath Harry Powell who prays upon such widows, marrying them and stealing their money, he tracks Willa down through the criminal network. She is persuaded by the local matron, Evelyn Varden, that in their God-fearing community a widow is more respectable if she re-marries, particularly to a respectable man of the cloth. So Willa marries Harry, who only really worships himself. On their wedding night, he makes it clear that sex in not on the agenda and he has no desire for progeny and so Willa’s dreams are shattered and her sexual energies are subverted into religious fervour. Joining Harry on a mission to prosceletize through fire and brimstone sermons, the piece is chockfull of religious motifs and sensationalism with its well-crafted Gothic art and set direction, redolent of the Silent Era.

Shelley Winter plays a similar role to that of Alice Tripp in A Place in the Sun (1951): a gullible, disillusioned romantic, down on her luck and disappointed with life. Cowering under the dominating figure of Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden) she brings a subversive quality to the role of a young and vulnerable mother who eventually becomes a victim.

After the children evade Powell in a rowing-boat, the film takes on a fairytale feel as the fast-moving Mississippi carries them on a nightmarish journey through starlit countryside: Stanley Cortez’s magical cinematography zooms in on all manner of local flora and fauna: a white owl swooping down on a baby rabbit is a metaphor for Powell threatening his step-children: “It’s a hard World for little ones”.

As Powell, Robert Mitchum gives one of his most innovative performances: menacing, cruel and demonic, as his black figure rides on horseback silhouetted against the sunset, whistling religious hymns. Well-known for his langorous looks and lazy drawl in Noir classics such as Out of the Past (1947) and His Kind of Woman (1951), here he plays a more sinister role as a magnetic charmer who is a figure of fear to children but one of sexual allure to women, with his tattooed fingers and rakish respectability. Purportedly, it was his favourite role in a film.

Lillian Gish gives an exultant turn as a winsome carer with attitude. Taking in the Harper children, she styles herself as a soft earth mother who is later to produce a rifle and to actually use it. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is one of the most mesmerisingly horrific arthouse films of all time. Worthy of its re-mastering and ripe for a re-viewing. MT

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER completes GOTHIC: THE DARK HEART OF FILM series at the BFI, Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide from 17th January 2014

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The Life and Works of Richard Wagner (1913)

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF RICHARD WAGNER

Dir.: Carl Froelich, William Wauer; Cast: Giuseppe Becce, Olga Engl, Manny Ziener, Ernst Reicher, Miriam Horowitz: Germany 1913, 96 min.

Whilst this newly restored version of the silent film was accompanied at the piano with a new score by the composer Jean Hasse, the original production had no music by Wagner at all: Cosima Wagner, still alive in 1913, wanted the princely sum of half a million Reichsmark if she allowed her husband’s music to be played. But the directors got lucky: the main actor, Giuseppe Becce, who bore an astonishing resemblance to the real Wagner, happened also to be a gifted composer. The narrative shows Wagner as the victim of circumstance, mainly his debtors and other, jealous composers, like the Jew, Giacomo Meyerbeer, who is shown as dubious and without any real influence. Wagner’s womanising is romanticised, everything is motivated by his art. There is an involuntary funny appearance of the Russian anarchist Bakunin, who looks more like Rasputin than a revolutionary. The film relies mainly on excerpts of Wagner’s work, which is not very surprising, since film was at the time before WW1 mainly filmed theatre. The production design (by Wauer) is highly imaginative and the camera tries to be as mobile as possible. Performances are over-dramatic and histrionic, but again totally in harmony with the practice of the era. Overall, this very sanitized version of Wagner’s life is often monotonous, showing no ambivalence, reducing the film to a hero’s portrait.

Richard Wagner will always be a controversial figure – not so much because of his music, which is after all a matter of taste, but because of his virulent anti-Semitism, making Adolf Hitler (“You can’t understand National Socialism without understanding Wagner”) his number one admirer. When Hitler saw Wagner’s first opera “Rienzi” (which ends with the total distraction of the hero’s world) he exclaimed “Exactly, how it should be, never give in, better to die than to survive”, expressing his fatal ‘all or nothing’ attitude, which saw any compromise as weakness.

It is ironic that one of the directors, Carl Froehlich, (WAGNER being his debut), ended up as the leader of the “Reichsfilmkammer”, where he controlled the German film industry between 1939 and 1945, not only being the chief censor, but deciding who could work and who not. His co-director of 1913, William Wauer, fell into the latter category: he was forbidden to work. Froehlich was later imprisoned by the Allies, and was second only to the infamous Veit Harlan in the numbers of films the directed or produced which could not be shown during the first years after the war (with West Germany being ‘needed’ to fight communism, ‘cleaned up’ versions of these “Verbotsfilme” were shown later to full houses). Froehlich was also the producer of “The Choral von Leuthen”, a pro-German propaganda film, which was produced in 1932, but had his celebrated premiere in 1933, attended by Hitler, after he became Chancellor. But Froehlich also produced “Mädchen in Uniform” (1931), a very progressive film. Equally strange, his “It was a gay ball night” was premiered in the USA in November 1939, two years into the war. AS

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF RICHARD WAGNER IS AT THE BARBICAN DURING A SEASON OF MUSIC-THEMED FILM EVENTS DURING JANUARY 2014

Les Coquillettes (2012) LOCO London comedy festival

Dir.: Sophie Letourneur

Cast: Camille Genaud, Sophie Letourneur, Carole Le Page, Luis Garrel, Julien Gester

France 2012, 75 min. French with English subtitles

Filmed during the Locarno Film Festival of 2011, this is an inside job: we learn everything we want to know how the participants of a film festival (mis)behave. Letourneur cast three young women on the hunt for male company, while neglecting the cinematic feast on offer. Sophie tries to score with the actor Louis Garrel, whom she has only met once, Camille has chosen the rather enigmatic “Liberation” film critic Julien Gester, whilst Carole is rather undecided and only wants cuddles, but finds the ex-Cahiers writer Eugenio Rizzi, an Italian hunk. Girltalk about sex, often more interesting than the real thing, ensues, and twitter and Facebook activities dominate the rest of this mixed bag. It is certainly more watchable than many movies of this genre dominated by males, but the occasional laugh does not make up for a rather superficial proceeding. Shot on HD, the acting is lively, camera work is rather mediocre, and the directress tries (not always successfully) to find a style for the cinema, whilst clearly being influenced too much by TV. The film never touches on any subject for long enough to make it worthwhile, there is no real centre and it is at it best when reporting on the festival. AS

LOCO RUNS FROM 23-26 JANUARY 2014 in various London venues

Loco London Comedy Film Festival 23-26 January 2014

The LOCO London Comedy Film Festival returns this January for the third year with its biggest ever line-up over a long weekend (23 – 26 January) at venues across the capital (BFI Southbank, Hackney Picturehouse, Ritzy Picturehouse, Greenwich Picturehouse, Institut Français, the Lexi Cinema and more), in an attempt to inject humour in London in the most miserable week of the year.

Jamie Adams’ independent British comedy Benny & Jolene headlines the festivities on 24 January, BFI Southbank. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Jamie Adams, producer Jon Rennie and lead actress, Charlotte Ritchie. Venice breakout hit and the second film of the night is Lukas Moodyson’s We Are The Best, sees three Swedish teenagers form a punk band.

LOCO proves that sometimes language is no barrier to laughter as in Les Coquillettes (23 January), that contrasts three friends’ accounts of their romantic adventures at the Locarno Film Festival, with flashbacks to what actually happens when Sophie pursues her film star crush. Writer/director/star Sophie Letourneur, who is being hailed as the French Lena Dunham for her funny, refreshingly frank comedy, will make her first appearance in the UK at the festival. Another UK premiere is Matterhorn (26 January), which won the Audience Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Audience Award and Best Film at the Moscow Film Festival, a deliciously deadpan Dutch tragi-comedy that follows two men and a dream to climb the Matterhorn.

SATIRE

This year LOCO will be celebrating satirical comedy, with Satire Day, a full day of discussions, screenings and live performances (Saturday 25 January, BFI Southbank) and a 50^th Anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (25 January, BFI Southbank) with special guests including Kubrick’s friend and producer Jan Harlan. Other satirical screenings include: Trafic (26 January, Institut Français), the classic 1971 Jacques Tati French-Italian comedy; Doomsdays (23 January, BFI Southbank), a Kickstarter-funded pre-apocalyptical comedy that has been described as “Michael Haneke meets Wes Anderson”; Life of Brian (23 January, The Lexi Cinema); and The Infidel introduced by its writer, David Baddiel (26 January, Hackney Picturehouse).

LOCO RUNS FROM 23-26 JANUARY 2014

Frankenstein (2004) DVD

Director: Kevin Connor Writer: Mark Kruger

Cast: Donald Sutherland, Alec Newman, Julie Delpy, William Hurt, Luke Goss

204 minutes/Discs 1 and 2 Horror US (Hallmark)

There have been endless re-workings of Mary Shelley’s saturnine Gothic tale. The good thing about this made for TV 10th Anniversary Edition, is that it stars Donald Sutherland, Julie Delpy and William Hurt. It also has pop star Luke Goss in the role of the monster fashioned from human corpses. The film opens as Victor Frankenstein (Alec Newman) fetches up on the deck of an icebound trawler in Arctic waters having being hotly pursued across the ice, in sinister circumstances. Captained by one Robert Walton, who is exploring the North Pole in the hope that the icy winds will blow away a serious case of writer’s block, the ship provides refuge as Frankenstein recounts his life story, growing up in a wealthy Swiss family at the end of the 18th Century. The rest is history. What follows here is a bland but respectable costume drama that lacks drama or terror, for that matter, but clings faithfully to the original storyline. An excellent assembled cast make a decent go of the pedestrian script and lacklustre direction. That said, the tone is more redolent of anguish than Gothic horror. A perfect backdrop to those snoozy Sunday afternoons. MT

The miniseries originally aired on Hallmark cable channel in 2005 is now available on DVD.

Two Lives (2012) Zwei Lieben

Director: Georg Maas

Writers: Georg Maas, Christoph Toele, Stale Stein Berg and Judith Kaufmann

Cast: Liv Ullmann, Julianne Koelher, Sven Nodin, Ken Duken

Psychological Wartime thriller 97mins Germany/Norway subtitled

Georg Maas’s Two Lives is Germany’s foreign-language submission to the 2014 Oscars. Loosely based on the novel by Hannelore Hippe, this well-crafted and sombre tale is set ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but brings to light an important episode in German Second World War history for a Norwegian family.

Liv Ullmann and Julianne Koehler play Norwegian mother Ase and her German national daughter Katrine, fathered by a German soldier serving in German-occupied Norway during the War. The family’s whole identity is blown apart by revelations that emerge after the fall of the Berlin Wall directly relating to events that happened during the War and forming of the Stasi Police in the new East Germany. As a young girl, Katrine was transferred to Germany and raised in a children’s’ home, finally to be united with her mother in Norway after a gruelling escape as the War comes to an end. After marrying a Norwegian Navy Captain Bjarte (Sven Nordin), she then has a daughter of her own (Julia Bache-Wiig) and also becomes a grandmother.

The film’s narrative structure reveals Katrine’s motivations as a decent woman with a double life, going from blond to brunette (as ‘Vera’) and travelling back and forth to Germany purportedly to see friends – although we know otherwise. And although this serves as interesting insight into her difficulties (and Koehler’s admirable acting talents), it has the effect of robbing the story of much of its dramatic punch, as we are ‘in the know’. However, Bjarte believes she’s having an affair and is naturally aggrieved and suspicious, being ‘in the dark’. But when a human rights lawyer working on reparations gets involved, the situation becomes painfully complex for all concerned, as the real facts start to emerge.

The final denouement redresses the balance slightly as the full shocking psychological effects ripple through the family, shown in grainy flashback footage on a handheld camera. With its strong performances and richly stunning cinematography of the Norwegian coastline and rural locations in Westphalia, Bonn and Hamburg, Two Lives is a classic War-related story and a sobering tribute to an important part of Norwegian/German history. Tightly-plotted and immersive throughout, it is accompanied by a suitably rousing score. MT

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THE OSCARS CEREMONY TAKES PLACE ON 16 JANUARY 2014

The Act of Killing (2012) DVD Open City Docs Fest 2013

Director Joshua Oppenheimer

Uncut version 159min

Docu-Drama Indonesian with subtitles

Joshua Oppenheimer is gentle and unassuming as he presents the uncut version of his bold and provocative documentary, on stage at the Open City Docs Fest in London. It brings to light one of the most cruel episodes of state-sponsored genocide that took place in Indonesia in 1965 following an abortive coup, presenting the narrative as a recreation of the killings from the viewpoint of the killers, in a subversion of Augusto Boal’s ‘theatre of the oppressor’.

Garish in both style and content with its rich reds, earthy browns and vibrantly incandescent Sumatran setting, the film focuses on these perpetrators of violence like a chamber of tropical horrors. These ‘gangsters’ are former death-squad bosses who ‘re-enact’ their crimes before our eyes, in the vain hope that they may regret their actions during a cathartic process. Clever idea but does it actually succeed? In a process that took seven years from start to finish, Oppenheimer began by interviewing victims of the massacre. Not surprisingly, many did not want to revisit the horrors of the past so he turns his camera on those responsible befriending them and getting them on board for a gore-fest in which nobody actually gets killed.

The murderers emerge as vain and ego-driven men who are buoyed up by their reputations as tough guys, still feared in the local community and enjoying continued government protection. Anwar Congo, a particularly unpleasant piece of work, has no qualms about the past and still thinks himself attractive to the opposite sex, having his teeth whitened in a beauty parlour before demonstrating his garotting techniques. Blithely, he recounts how he perfected them to avoid having to deal with all the bloodshed caused by the ‘machete method’. In a bizarre twist, he also attempts to garner sympathy with a tearful episode on returning to the scene of the crimes. Sensibly Oppenheimer plays this down.

The Act of Killing is not an easy film to watch or to listen to not least because of its subject matter. Indonesian is a highly fricative and percussive language and the English subtitles, often set on a pale background, are often difficult to read. At over two hours, the middle section rambles and becomes laboriously repetitive and without a clear editorial voice or clearer historical context, it’s easy to disconnect. That said, it’s still a mind-blowing piece of filmmaking that revisits a regrettable period of Cold War history. However, there’s no real closure here apart from mild regret from Anwar Congo, who is still at liberty, and one wonders whether the whole chapter would have been better left in the dark. MT

THE ACT OF KILLING is NOW ON DVD/BLU

Kiss the Water (2013)

Director: Eric Steel

Documentary/Animation 80min US

American filmmaker Eric Steel describes his documentary Kiss the Water as an ‘invitation to a fairytale’. And it certainly is. Set in Scotland, it tells the story of Megan Boyd, an artist based deep in the Highlands, who was enchanted by the brightly coloured and intricate pictures she found in a book about fly-fishing when she was a little girl. A lonely outsider, she taught herself to make these delicate objects using the finest feathers known to humanity. Their vibrant colours and delicate shapes are certainly the stuff of dreams and carry names redolent of the rich and regal heritage of the British Isles.

Even if you have no interest in fishing or Scotland, this beautifully-crafted film will enchant you with its cleverly-animated sequences featuring impressionist-style paintings of swirling underwater wildlife that conjure up a world of mystery and intrigue, perfected pained with dreamy photography of the glorious Highland countryside. Even though Megan Boyd never married and appeared to be an outsider, working away devotedly in her workshop, it is clear that she possessed a richly emotional and romantic soul that is cleverly evoked by Eric Steel’s imaginative rendering in animated mixed media. Working exclusively during daylight hours and eventually losing her sight, Megan perfected her skills and worked on into her eighties.

Despite the ultimate (rather crass) revelation that one of her flys actually fetched thousands of pounds, it is fair to mention that Boyd was a humble creature who never intended to capitalise over her skill and never actually charged more than a few pounds for her wares. Naturally, among her customers was Prince Charles, who grew so fond of her that he actually invited her down to London to collect her OBE award. Such was her modesty that she declined the invitation and the Prince duly delivered the award personally to her Scottish abode. MT

KISS THE WATER IS ON RELEASE FROM 10 JANUARY 2014

Rush (2013)

Director: Ron Howard

Writer: Peter Morgan

Main Actors: Daniel Brühl, Chris Hemsworth, Olivia Wilde

123mins English USA, Germany, UK Biopic, Drama, Sport

There’s a moment near the beginning of Rush, Ron Howard and Peter Morgan’s new biopic of racing drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, when the owner of Hunt’s Formula Three racing team proclaims: ‘Men love women, but even more than that, they love cars’. Coming, as it does, after a loud opening sequence featuring extreme close ups of engines, tyres and grass being torn in two by the speed of racing cars, and a scene in which Hunt swiftly seduces a nurse, it would seem that the filmmakers also revel in these same objects of desire. Thankfully for those who want for more than female nudity and fast cars from films, their interests don’t end there.

As the Rush progresses, it builds a detailed and engrossing portrait of two men connected by an obsessional, almost self-destructive need to drive (and, one could say, to perform – and, in this, the film traces a cinematic vein harking back to Raging Bull and The Red Shoes). As the film charts the parallel rise of Hunt and Lauda to the Formula One big-time, it often seems at pains to point out the connections between the two men (not least the fact that their parents each wanted more ‘respectable’ careers for them). But the film also delights in highlighting their differences: where Hunt is an impulsive hot-head, Lauda is a cool, methodological thinker. This may be the story of a so-bitter-its-a-friendship rivalry between two sporting legends, but it’s also an exploration of the dual nature of being, of the Apollonian and the Dionysian tendencies that dwell within us all. And, in fact, the associations that notion brings with it resonate further through the film: at times, Rush almost feels like a myth of fearless heroes who face death in pursuit of the higher glories of fame and fortune.

It’s something of a shame, then, that Lauda is never really made to be likeable. We’re constantly reminded that other drivers, even his own teammates, think he’s an arsehole. At one point, he’s even shown looking like the devil incarnate – as reflected flames lick up and down his body he complains: ‘Happiness is the enemy. It weakens you…Suddenly you have something to lose’. While Lauda ultimately becomes a sympathetic figure, one can’t help but feel that a more nuanced characterisation throughout might have been beneficial. In a sense, the story is Lauda’s tragedy, but it is presented as Hunt’s victory. The filmmakers, it would seem, favour the Dionysian – even if the factual coda perhaps shows fate leans otherwise. This isn’t the film’s only misstep (there’s a questionable use of voiceover, and a final scene which feels the need to spell out the film’s subtext in case the audience missed it), but ultimately it feels a little churlish to dwell on the negative. Taken as a whole, Rush succeeds in being an intelligent, entertaining and exciting ride. Alex Barrett.

RUSH IS ON DVD from 27 January 2014 COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL.

Ten Favourite Films of 2013

TEN: Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (dir: Denis Côté)

By turns humorous and horrifying, Côté’s brutal tale of two ex-con lovers relocating to the Quebec countryside is an utterly gripping play with genre and audience expectations. Perfectly paced, the storytelling is elliptical and cryptic – a tactic which is bound to frustrate some, but which left me on the edge of my seat, genuinely excited to find out what would come next.

NINE: The Last of the Unjust (dir: Claude Lanzmann)

Comprising of an extended interview with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last surviving ‘Jewish Elder’ of the ghetto camp at Theresienstadt, Lanzmann’s probing and penetrating technique proves that sometimes a simple approach is the most effective. This is oral testimony, but one that raises philosophical questions relating to Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil – not only in its discussion of Arendt and Eichmann, but also through its presentation of Murmelstein himself.

EIGHT: From Tehran to London (dir: Mania Akbari)

From Tehran to London is an incomplete portrait of a disintegrating marriage complicated by extramarital (bi)sexual relationships: fearing arrest, Akbari fled Iran halfway through filming, later editing the footage in London – a fact which can’t help but give the film (which is dedicated to ‘all filmmakers in Iran who have served a prison sentence and to all those who are still in prison’) an extra sense of poignancy. But beyond this, the film is also a rich tapestry of details and symbolism, all enhanced by excellent blocking and photography.

SEVEN; Behind the Candelabra (dir: Steven Soderbergh)

Soderbergh’s tender and terrifying biopic of Liberace may probe themes of power, ego and image, but never to the extent that they overshadow its simple portrait of complex human relations. Exuberantly directed and superbly acted, Behind the Candelabra may have been originally made for television, but it deserves every bit of the big-screen success it seems to have enjoyed.

SIX: Under the Skin (dir: Jonathan Glazer)

The long over-due follow up to Glazer’s stupendous Birth (2004), the opening sequence of Under the Skin would seem to confirm the British director as the heir apparent to Stanley Kubrick. If the later improvised scenes filmed with hidden cameras perhaps fail to live up to this promise, Glazer undoubtedly achieves his aim of studying the world through an alien lens: Under the Skin is not only a uniquely haunting experience, it is also the work of a truly visionary director.

FIVE: Historic Centre (dir: Pedro Costa, Manoel de Oliveira, Víctor Erice, Aki Kaurismaki

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Historic Centre is the rarest of things: a portmanteau film that actually works. Here, two light comic tales (by Kaurismäki and de Oliveira) surround two much richer, deeper works (by Costa, and Erice), rendering the whole with a surprising level of coherent contrast. Though Erice’s section, comprised of interviews with former workers of a now-defunct textile factory, has both an emotional and a philosophical weight to it, it’s Costa’s dense exploration of the legacy of the 1974 Portuguese revolution that steals the show. Tantalisingly, it’s said to be a section from a longer work Costa is currently working on.

FOUR: Museum Hours (dir: Jem Cohen)

Museum Hours may be this year’s most magical cinematic meditation. Set in and around Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Art Museum, the film ponders the relationship between the museum’s artworks and the lives that live on around them. Heightened by Cohen’s breezy and unhurried experimental style, Museum Hours is simply a delight to behold.

THREE: 36 (dir: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit)

36 takes its name from the number of scenes in the film. As these 36 single-shot scenes progress, a melancholy mood unfolds amongst a transcendent study of memory and history in the digital age. 36 is, significantly, the number of frames found on a roll of 35mm film, and the 36 moments captured here, which detail a location scout’s struggle to restore a year’s worth of digital photographs from a crashed hard drive, build a tender, thoughtful and beautiful study of loss and looking.

TWO: Before Midnight (dir: Richard Linklater)

Though it may lack some of the magic of its predecessors (Before Sunrise and Before Sunset), watching Before Midnight still feels like spending time with much-missed old friends. It’s testament to the enduring charm of Celine and Jesse, as inhabited by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, that a 14-minute scene in which the characters do nothing but talk as they drive through the Greek countryside remains one of the most enjoyable cinematic scenes of the year.

ONE: Ida (dir: Paweł Pawlikowski)

Stunningly shot in glorious full-frame black and white, Ida is this year’s best looking film. But more than that, Pawlikowski’s return to his native Poland is also a searing examination into life, death, religion and history (both personal and political). It’s the type of profoundly artistic work too rarely seen since the passing of Bergman, Bresson, and their generation – and it is, without a doubt, an unbridled masterpiece.

CHOSEN BY ALEX BARRETT

Computer Chess (2013) MUBI DVD/BLU-

Dir: Andrew Bujalski, Cast: Patrick Riester, Wiley Wiggins, Myles Paige, Robin Schwartz | USA 2013, 92 min. Comedy

Andrew Bujalski’s latest film COMPUTER CHESS defies any genre classification: sounding a death knell for human discourse as we know it, this is simply on its own. Set in a sleazy, low class hotel in Texas at the beginning of the 80s, it features two group of humans (the computer chess group of the title and a New-Age cult meeting) and an overwhelming horde of Persian cats who seem to take over the hotel; at least at night. Whilst all the humans are awkward and geeky, the cats are full of themselves marauding the place in a quest for domination.

The fuzzy black and white of the 4:3 format (shot with a Sony video camera from the 1960s, but not in a gimmicky way, gives the film its sci-fi element: pioneers from another world, creating a an almost surreal otherworldly atmosphere in which all three tribes vy for supremacy is both absurd and unsettling. The unintended ludicrousness of the situation engenders an atmosphere of alienation, the participants existing in their own bubbles, where words are lost as a means of communication, and emotions have yet to be invented.

The annual chess meeting has a long tradition and the winner wears a glittering crown at the end and takes on the chess Grand Master Paul Henderson, who has met a bet that he will successfully beat all computers until 1984. The players – in their thirties – are humourless and emotionally inhibited (the only female competitor, Shelly, is no different), the term ‘nerd’ could have been invented for them. The youngest of them Peter (Riester), is oblivious of Shelly, even though she gives him tame encouragement. Peter wanders into the next emotional trap when he visits an older couple in their room: they want to seduce him into a ménage-a-trois, but he literally runs away, like the frightened boy he is.

One of the programmers, Papageorge (Paige) roams the hotel at night, trying to find a room to sleep in. He is brazen in his attempts, but everyone is too polite to point this out to him. The New Age group members are very accommodating to start with (putting their fingers in freshly baked loaves of bread and “replaying” their birth to re-engage with their inner beings), but when the chess congress overruns into Monday, they insist on sharing the meeting room with them, in spite of Henderson’s loud protests: he senses their intrusion may disrupt his concentration. A unique, enigmatic, unique and innovative masterpiece. AS

COMPUTER CHESS IS on DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY ON 20 courtesy of www.eurekavideo.co.uk | and also on MUBI

Walesa. Man of Hope (2013) DVD

Dir: Andrzej Wajda; Cast: Robert Wieckiewicz, Agnieszka Grouchowska

Poland 2013, 127 min. Drama

One of the Polish ‘greats’, Andrzej Wajda ends his trilogy of Man of Iron with his latest film Walesa, Man of Hope. Like the first two films, Walesa is set as an epic, Wajda being perhaps the last European director capable of this form. Whilst the politics of the film are obvious; being a staunch anti-Stalinist, he has avoided showing Walesa as a hero: actually in this film he is not a particularly likeable person at all. He succeeds in spite of his personal faults (womanising, a short temper, egoistical tantrums and narcissism).

The film covers the years between the mid 70s and 1989, leaving out Walesa’s years as president of Poland and his loss of power. Wajda uses the city of Gdansk as a vibrant background, the camera always mobile in his signature style, tries to show (sometimes) too much of everything. Shot through with a palette of ashen-grey, it never gets really light, even in moments of triumph for the Solidarnosc movement. The mass scenes are directed masterfully, and the emotions are always overwhelming. What is ironic, is that the film’s aesthetics are very much like soviet films, with the camera following the hero at the top of a movement who directs the masses; who follow him faithful.

The private scenes between Walesa (Robert Wieckiewicz bears a remarkable resemblance) and his wife Danuta (Agnieszka Grouchowska) are the weak points of the film. Whilst Wajda shows the male chauvinism of the main protagonist, he never really explores the personality of the woman, leaving her clearly in the shadow of her husband, an appendix. The same could be said for the portrayal of the children who are only shown as a troublesome group, functionless and anonym. Somehow the private and political never meet to become a unit.

In spite of these reservations WALESA. MAN OF HOPE a major achievement of a veteran film maker, who shows on a purely technical level that he can still teach the younger generation of film makers a great deal.

Andre Simonoviescz

WALESA. MAN OF HOPE is OUT ON DVD 24FEBRUARY 2014

This Must Be the Place (2013)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino | Writers: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello | Cast: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Harry Dean Stanton, David Byrne (as himself) Judd Hirsch, Dorothy Shore, Eve Hewson | English Cert 15 113mins Comedy Drama

Retired rock star Chayenne (Sean Penn) swaggers around his Irish mansion like a soulful red-lipped raven in doc martens. Bored since retirement from the music world he plays the stock market and pilote in an empty swimming pool and loves his wife Jane.(Frances McDormand). But something’s not right. And then his father dies.

Paolo Sorrentino’s latest feature starts in seaside Dublin then relocates to rural New York where a weird and wacky road movie begins. His mission to revenge his father’s humiliation by a Nazi war commander ends up as a fascinating journey into himself.

Sorrentino’s style is playful and visually exciting as he whips through middle America with an energetic slide show of holiday-style snap shots punctuated by the music of David Byrne who performs the title song live. Chayenne is a gentle and intuitive soul refusing to be phased by the intense characters he meets along the way on his quest to find clues: relative Mordechai Midler (Judd Hirsch); Harry Dean Stanton as Utah Business man Robert Plath and his childhood history mistress (Joyce Van Patten). He offers up inconsequential aphorisms to an imaginary audience: “Have you noticed how nobody works anymore but everyone does something artistic?”

But the holocaust and retribution are just red herrings; what’s really going on here is an eccentric insight into the value of family and the price of success. With subtly-nuanced performances from Sean Penn and Frances McDormand and delicious turns from Harry Dean Stanton and Judd Hirsch, this thought-provoking muse on midlife will amuse and entertain. “We go from an age when we say “that will be my life” to an age when we say “that’s life.” Paolo Sorrentino keeps on getting better. Meredith Taylor©

William Nicholson on the making of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

William Nicholson knows Nelson Mandela’s life inside out. Starting work in 1997 on the script the the film that eventually became MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, two years before director Justin Chadwick even came on board, he’s looked at the story from every possible angle – even at one point locating it in the Palace of Versailles, even toying with TV and a two-parter film version eventually coming up with an appealing, filmic journey. Working every single day on a script, from linear narrative to fractured narrative – he’s tried every angle to bring us a way to understand the life of this great South African Statesman, Politician and human being , who, significantly chose to leave this World during the UK Premiere, never actually seeing the finished product – MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, 33 drafts later- ‘a story version of the truth’ has emerged – a film the creators thought would never happen.

Naturally over the last sixteen years events have unfolded and developed – nearly every well-known black actor has been considered for the part and moved on, due to other work commitments. South African actors also came and went. But when Idris Elba arrived on the scene, he made an indelible impression with his appealing humanity that stems in part to his father being a trade union organiser. The emotional link is stronger than the ‘Africanness’ in him, although Elba’s origins are in Ghana.

Now it seems he’s set for international stardom, after magnetic roles in TV (Luther, The Wire) and this standout performance. The young Mandela was a fitness freak and a boxer, so Idris Elba’s strong physicality was ideal for the part, which he embraced wholeheartedly; running tapes of Mandela’s voice over and over again. Says Nicholson of Elba “He’s not an intellectual and doesn’t spend all day ‘in character’ like some actors. He internalises the part and reverts in and out of Hackney, completely naturally”. Naomi Harris also fits the persona and stance of Winnie Mandela, even – this film has been ‘made’ by this serendipitous casting.

The film has been extremely successful in South Africa and will most likely be used as an educational tool in schools: successfully encapsulating the key idea that Mandela made the White population fear the Black, encouraging them to work for a solution to harmony. This is particularly felt in the scene where Mandela refuses to let P W de Clerk offer him a state funeral, on principal. He reasserts his power through moral emotion.

William Nicholson believes that the ANC will split and form an opposition. And he does bring some heritage to the story. Born to a Catholic mother and Jewish businessman father, whose parents were South African, the scripting job was a natural fit. But although he has studied the history in depth, William Nicholson describes how important it is not to let research engulf the project: “Know it, don’t let it overwhelm you”. Producer Anand Singh was also adamant he didn’t want a South African screenwriter for the feature but someone who could tell a story for the whole World to appreciate and understand. For his part, William Nicholson considered it his duty to get across the moral quality in Mandela – a quality that’s the key to making his enemies embrace him. So MANDELA becomes a universal story. As in SHADOWLANDS and GLADIATOR, Moralism is the most important element of all in MANDELA – ‘Everything I write is driven by moral emotion”.

MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM comes out on 6th January 2014

The Great Beauty (2013) La Grande Bellezza

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino Writers: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Carlo Buccirosso

137mins ***** Italian with English subtitles Drama

Paolo Sorrentino’s sensual overload of all things Italian transports you to Rome for a paean to pleasure and pain, gaiety and melancholy seen through the eyes of writer and roué, Jep Gambardella. Played exultantly here by Sorrentino’s regular collaborator, Toni Servillo (The Consequences of Love, Il Divo), this is possibly Sorrentino’s best film so far, capturing the essence of Italy’s rich, beautiful and cultured middle class with an appealing and bittersweet languor that was first experienced in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, here seen in the context of 21st century ennui.

But Jep Gambardella has only written one book having spent most of his nights as a party animal and bon viveur. At 65, well-preserved and suave, he exudes a Mediterranean masculinity with his finely-tailored jackets and well-made shoes. In this rich Autumn of life, jolted from his benign state of bachelorhood by an unexpected discovery, he is thrown off-balance and onto a Proustian trip down memory lane. But as he looks back with friends and paramours, he sees complexity and spirituality beyond all the glamour and profanity.

The Great Beauty is an opulent banquet of tone and texture, captured here by Luca Bigazzi’s dizzying cinematography, evoking all that’s stylish and beautiful as well as hypocritical and shallow about the Italian way of life. See it, enjoy it, savour it; because one day its passion and glory may be gone forever and only memories will remain. MT

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THE GREAT BEAUTY IS OUT ON DVD and BLU-RAY ON 13 January 2014 COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE.

THE FILM HAS ALSO BE SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE SECTION OF THE OSCARS IN MARCH 2014

7 Memorable Opening Sequences

THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE (2004) (Dir) Paolo Sorrentino

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THE SHINING (1980) (Dir) Stanley Kubrick

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THE BANISHMENT (2007) Andrey Zvyagintsev

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THE MAN FROM LONDON (Part 2) (2007) Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky

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LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD (1959) by Louis Malle, Miles Davis (original score)

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POST TENEBRAS LUX (2012) Carlos Reygados

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THE GRANDMASTER (2013) Wong Ka Wai

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Our favourite in 2013 is from Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN. The film releases next year so, for the time being, here’s a taster with the official trailer.

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Dir.: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Kathryn Hahn, Shirley MacLaine, Sean Penn, Adam Scott

USA 2013, 114 min. Comedy Drama

First thought: Do we really need a remake of Norman Z. MacLeod’s classic from 1947, with Danny Kaye as the superhero of his own dreams? Thirty minutes into Ben Stiller’s remake (in which he also stars) we probably think: not really. In Stiller’s version, Walter is a photographic archivist at ‘Life’, which will close down in a few weeks after a takeover and go exclusively online.

Down in his basement office, Walter is meticulously preserving all the negatives, particularly those sent in in by Sean O’Connell, an elusive war and wild life photographer (Sean Penn) who embodies Walter’s romantic dream of an action hero (and also happens to be Stiller’s ideal actor for the part). But the cover photo for the last edition of the magazine is missing – and Walter is to blame. Cue cringeworthy company liquidator played by Adam Scott in a performance epitomising glibness and corporate sleaze.

The only problem is that Walter – true to his legend – can only imagine his ideal life in “zoning out” experiences, where he becomes the romantic superhero, make his bland life bearable. During these episodes he saves humans and animals from great peril, and even getting the girl of his dreams, co-worker Sheryl Melhoff (Wiig), a single mum whom he is unsuccessfully trying to dating ‘in reality’ and on the e-harmony website. At this point the film, having shown off his big budget in special effects, changes gear.His desire to capture Sheryl’s heart is the kicker that spurs him on to realise his full potential.

Embarking on a quirky and action-packed mission to find O’Connell (and the photo), all the way through Iceland, Greenland up to the Himalayas. his dream is tethered now to reality and this is where the narrative becomes both engaging and plausible despite the hysterical shenanigans that ensure. Walter embodies you and I – his ‘Superman’ is a disorientated character, buffeted by external forces, running for his life in a hostile land/seascape, forced on by his obsession for Cheryl – Walter becomes a metaphor for ‘everyman’. He is really a blob on the landscape. And how magnificent is this landscape: huge panoramic shots of great beauty, but not in the way of a postcard idyll, but retaining all the rough edges, which threaten Walter’s pursuit of his goal. Not to mention the humans he encounters: a drunken helicopter pilot in Iceland, who drops him into the sea instead onto a vessel, where he narrowly misses being a shark’s breakfast. And the perils of the English language, when Walter has to be saved from a volcano eruption in Iceland – he interprets the warning, Freudian slip-wise, as ‘erection’.

In his least cynical film (his own words) Stiller directs himself not as the slap-stick hero he normally portrays, but as (at least in the second half) the lonely, shy man Walter really is. Having been traumatised as a teenager by the death of his father (and supporting his family), he is still in the clutches of his mother Edna (MacLaine) and sister (Kathryn Hahn/Afternoon Delight). Cheryl is as many light years away from him as his fantasies, and he only makes contact with her via her son and a common love of skateboarding. In sympathy with many guys, Walter is not good at communication with women of his age; he feels a longing, but can’t articulate those urges in a coherent way. He’s much more able to react angrily to men, like the corporate baddy (Adam Scott). But he is not yet fine-tuned for a real partnership, because he has to embrace the Jungian concept of finding an adult version of himself, away from the stifling closeness of his mother and the hero-worshipping for O’Connell.

Stiller has presents a well-crafted film – the dissolves are stunning and he matches the narrative with a suitably emblematic score, always finding the right song for a particular moment, like the ‘fantasy’ Cheryl who morphs into his muse, singing “Major Tom” in a pub in Iceland, encouraging his to follow his ‘star’. The message overall is humanistic and anti-corporate – not without good reason, because the online version of ‘Life’ closed down for real in 2012, having lasted a fraction of the time of the newspaper. Stiller’s MITTY takes its time to find his human feet, but it deserves our attention like Walter his happy-end. AS

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 DECEMBER 2013.

Notions of Reality in Cinema

If easily digestible stories are really what the audience wants from cinema, and if reality doesn’t offer this to us, then why have films ‘based on’ a true story at all? says Alex Barrett..

In 1944, while still a freshmen at Columbia University, a young Allen Ginsberg became friends with his dashing and rambunctious classmate, Lucien Carr. They met during an introductory tour of the library, in which Carr danced on tables while reading the forbidden texts of Henry Miller. Later, Carr introduced Ginsberg to William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and David Kammerer – a creepy older man with a heavy infatuation for Carr. When this infatuation escalated, Carr murdered Kammerer. After the murder, Carr visited Kerouac, and then Burroughs. Subsequently, Ginsberg was expelled from Colombia after refusing to withdraw a risqué piece of coursework.

At least, that’s the way John Krokidas’ feature debut KILL YOUR DARLINGS tells it. Spend a few minutes online, however, and you’ll find out that: Ginsberg met Carr by knocking on his dormitory door to find out who was playing a Brahms trio; Ginsberg actually really liked Kammerer and went on record to say he was ‘not a creep!’; Carr (rather importantly) visited Burroughs and then Kerouac after the murder; Ginsberg actually got expelled from Colombia after a college dean found Kerouac in Ginsberg’s room one early morning, both men wearing nothing but their underwear. Amongst a multitude of further inaccuracies and distortions, Kill Your Darlings also paints Kerouac’s lively and wild girlfriend Edie as tame and mild, and fails to mention the important fact that Lucien had a long-term girlfriend at the time. In all, it’s enough to make you wonder what kind of research the filmmakers were doing during the ten years they spent in development.

Of course, in reality, such ‘inaccuracies and distortions’ are unlikely to be down to lack of research, with deliberate creative decisions being a more likely cause. Recently David Cox wrote about a similarly loose use of history in SAVING MR BANKS (2013), arguing that such falsifications are actually a necessity, needed to make a dramatically palatable story out of a ‘messy, shapeless and ethically ambiguous’ reality. But if easily digestible stories are really what the audience wants from cinema, and if reality doesn’t offer this to us, then why have films ‘based on’ a true story at all? For Cox, having a factual basis ‘performs a vital function’, helping to reassure us ‘that the narratives that comfort us are actually true’. In other words, it’s a symptom of the trend novelist Douglas Coupland has written about so eloquently: the need to turn our lives into a story, and to know that our own lives will ultimately conform to a conventional three-act structure.

However, moving beyond this idea of ‘narration’ in life – and the inherent psychological dangers that subscribing to such a notion can bring – a darker undercurrent of the trend for ‘inaccuracies and distortions’ emerges. Even Cox admits that: ‘Because they have been made so palatable, they are eagerly swallowed. The big-screen lie becomes the world’s definitive truth’. To put this another way: an unsuspecting audience, believing they are witnessing factual history, is actually being fed historical untruths. When a falsification unfolds onscreen, it bleeds into the ether, destined to emerge as fact or confusion in the public consciousness. This is not a case of a gullible public who believe everything they see, but a testament to the power of cinema upon the collective unconscious. Filmmakers working from reality, then, surely need to acknowledge the moral responsibility that the words ‘Based on a True Story’ bring with them.

For Cox, filmmakers who ignore story in favour of cleaving to the truth produce nothing but ‘arthouse fare for audiences numbered in dozens’. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept this questionable notion as true, the work of Gus Van Sant, which has oscillated between the commercial and the arthouse, seems to offer another alternative.

Leaving aside questions of veracity in his crowd-pleasing, Oscar winning biopic of the politician Harvey Milk (MILK, 2008), more pertinent points are posed by his so-called ‘Death Trilogy’: GERRY (2002), ELEPHANT (2003) and LAST DAYS (2005). Each of these films was inspired by a real-life death, but portrayed as fiction. Take, for instance, Blake, the introspective rock star at the centre of LAST DAYS: even from the film’s poster, he is heavily signalled as being the deceased Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain – and yet he isn’t. He is Blake, a fictional creation – and thus the moral dilemma is neatly sidestepped, because reality has been wholly subsumed in fiction.

While it’s true that LAST DAYS ultimately eschews conventional narrative storytelling, there’s no reason why Van Sant’s ‘fictionalising’ couldn’t be fused to a more conventional approach. Would Kill Your Darlings have been any less interesting as a cinematic experience if the names had been changed and it had been presented as a work of fiction? If we’re approaching the film as a piece of narrative storytelling, then the answer must be no, because the story itself would remain unchanged. The only thing that would change is our perception of the film: we would no longer be able to see the film as a way of finding out the true story behind the murder of David Kammerer. It would lose the ‘I didn’t know that’ aspect of its appeal. But, as we’ve seen, if the truth of the presented history has been creatively reworked, then this aspect becomes irrelevant – perhaps even dangerous.

In documentary, truth is seen as tantamount: but there too it remains a slippery term. When one learns, for instance, of Michael Moore’s heavy manipulation of footage – and therefore of reality – in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (2002), one begins to feel used and abused as a viewer (and, once again, Van Sant’s approach appears preferable – cf. his treatment of the Columbine massacre in Elephant). People expect, and hope for, a certain level of truth in investigative journalism, but should they not expect the same from a fiction film which bears the words ‘Based on a True Story’? Is not the same authenticity required? Or, on the flipside, is it actually permissible for documentaries to bend the truth if it shapes the material into a more consoling ‘story’? Surely not.

In some senses, the key to the filmmaker’s moral dilemma – and responsibility – lies in perception. While Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) may have been criticised from some quarters for making light of the true horrors of the Second World War, I suspect there were few who worried seriously that it would rewrite the public consciousness of Hitler’s history – partly because the film in no way presents itself as factual. In saying this, then, the moral emphasis can be shifted away from a need for strict historical fidelity, and towards a need for openness about the distortions, falsifications and alterations made within a given text. It’s therefore possible, perhaps, to identify the source of the problem in the very words ‘Based on a True Story’ (in the case of KILL YOUR DARLINGS, perhaps ‘Loosely Inspired by Real Events’ may have been a more fitting tagline than ‘A True Story of Obsession and Murder’).

History may be written by the victors, and historians may be led by their own biases – but in academia, the moral issue is more widely acknowledged (as it also is in journalism). Similarly, issues of morality, reality and fidelity in film are complex issues – and when public knowledge is at stake, it cannot be so readily subordinated to the importance of (commercial) storytelling. Surely it isn’t good enough to simply say, as Cox does, that we can pillage and slander the legacy of history so we can reassure ourselves with comforting stories? Film is a powerful medium, and as Uncle Ben famously said to a young Peter Parker: with great power comes great responsibility. Alex Barrett

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS IS NOW ON NETFLIX

The Missing Picture (2013)

Rithy Panh and Christophe Bataille

96min French with English Subtitles Documentary Animation

The serene and gentle voice of award-winning director Rithy Panh narrates this tragic and heartfelt memoir of the invasion of Cambodia on April 17th, which has helped him come to terms with the terrible losses he suffered during the time of his adolescence, when over 2 million people died during the regime.

Pol Pot strides confidently through the crowds amid idolatrous applause proceeded by pictures of tortured dissidents and those that kicked against the crushing power of communism. In a regime (similar Nazism and Stalinism) characterised by hunger, torture and emotional cruelty and lack of respect or compassion for the individual, Panh tells how his father was denied a decent burial. Schools became detention centres reflecting a ‘perfect society’ where Marxist ideology reigned as revolutionary winds wafted through the paddy fields heralding ideals of creating an agrarian socialist economy which failed incontrovertibly leading to the deaths (from hunger) of millions of its inhabitants. The mantra – “Whoever apposes, is a corpse” indeed became a reality.

Footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing provides a contemporary counterpoint reflecting advancement and freedom in the US as Cambodia’s people drown in the mud. While he lost his entire family during his teenage years from 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge was destroying everything outside their central control; forbidding fishing and any kind of attempt to grow private foodstuffs and demolishing hospitals, while simultaneously rejecting offers of outside humanitarian aide.

Panh was inspired to channel his energies and creative impulses into filmmaking during this time of loss, working quietly in an agrarian cooperative work camp, lit by neon at night. His serene depiction of pure evil is made all the more effective by its peaceful approach and intricately delicate treatment. MT

“UN CERTAIN REGARD” WINNER AT CANNES 2013 and HAS BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE ACADEMY AWARDS FOREIGN LANGUAGE SECTION IN 2014.

THE MISSING PICTURE IS SHOWING FROM FRIDAY, 3 JANUARY 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

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Kiss of the Damned (2012)

Director: Xan Cassavetes, Writer: Xan Cassavetes

Cast: Josephine de la Baume, Milo Ventimeglia, Anna Mouglalis, Michael Rappaport, Roxanne Mesquida

97mins Horror US

Meeting in a bookshop, Djuna (Josephine de la Baume/One Day) and Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia/Rocky Balboa) become sexually drawn to one another although each time they kiss Djuna rejects his advances. Asking for an explanation to her prick-teasing behaviour, Djuna admits that she’s allergic to sunlight and drinks the blood of animals: but Paolo still doesn’t get the message. Chained to her bed, Djuna morphs into a fully-fledged vampire but Paolo still wants to make love and this time there’s no going back.

With its mesmerising soundtrack (sometimes soundly strangely like the theme-tune to Adam Adamant – and The Thomas Crown Affair and others using classics Chopin or percussively throbbing disco music, this is a darkly stylish, decadently erotic and scary affair whose narrative thrust is slightly tongue-in-cheek and based on what it feels like to become and live as a vampire and dealing with relationships both in and out of vampiredom, which is considered the exclusive territory of their own kind. Mimi (Roxanne Mesquida), Djuna’s less neurotic but more outlandish sister, provides a provocative counterpoint to the couple’s romantic relationship and there is a delicious role for Anna Mouglalis/Chanel (as Xenia) which she inhabits with consummate allure, showcased during a vampire party.

Camerawork is lush and noirish, often spotlighting the main characters against a dark background, occasionally plunging them into semi-darkness and there is minimal use of special effects, favouring dream-like slow-mo sequences and colour washes to ramp up the tension and evoke the strange demi-monde of the blood-suckers.

Kissed of the Damned is Xan Cassavetes impressive feature debut. Both a writer and director, she is the daughter of Paul Cassavetes (Husbands). MT

Kiss of the Damned is on DVD and BLU-RAY from 27 January 2014 courtesy of Masters of Cinema RRP £12.99

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Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013)

Director: Arnaud des Pallieres

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Bruno Ganz, Sergi Lopez, Denis Lavant, Roxane Duran, Melusine Mayance, Delphine Chuillot

122min Drama French/German with English subtitles

Heinrich von Kleist’s 1811 novella has been adapted a number of times for the Big Screen and TV capturing the imagination of various filmmakers with its rich cultural background. In 1937, Max Haufler (The Trail) took this tale of a 16th Century horse-trader and produced a black and white version. More recently Volker Schlondorff cast David Warner and Michael Gothard (The Devils) in the leads in Michael Kohlhaas: Der Rebell. The only reason to see this slim and overlong version is for the magnificent locations and magnetic central presence of Mads Mikkelsen in the title role. That said, it’s possibly not his most resounding performance to date although it captivated the jury at the Brussels film festival this year, where the film won the top award.

Themes of justice and revenge are tossed around in the windswept widescreen wilderness untethered by any real historical or political reference to the social upheaval of the Peasant’s Revolt and the Protestant Catholic conflict – massive elements of political change with rocked the 16th century Europe and made the original work so resonant. And despite judicious castings of Denis Lavant (as the theologist), Bruno Ganz (as the Governor) and Sergi Lopez all lending their heavyweight support, it all feels rather hollow and underwritten. To confuse matters, des Pallieres has transposed the drama from Germany to France, for some unknown reason, leaving Mikkelsen with the task of having to speak French and master horse-husbandry. That said he does his best, giving a haughty and charismatic thrust to his portrayal of a loving family man eaking out an existence on the land.

But when the landowner, the arrogant Baron (Swann Arlaud) thwarts and humiliates him by suddenly introduces a tollgate on Kohlhaas’s regular route to sell his lovingly-reared steers events take a sinister turn made worse by the discovery that his prized horses are being brutalised by the Baron’s henchmen. To top it all, his wife Judith (Delphine Chuillot) is tragically murdered on her way to gain support from a timid Princesse d’Angouleme (Roxane Duran). Kohlhaas strikes out for justice, raising a rebel army of supporters (among whom are a one-armed Sergi Lopez and a typically subversive Denis Lavant) who rather wish they had stayed at home quietly by the fire when push comes to shove. At this point, they try to persuade Kohlhaas to trust the outcome of his brave stand for the common man, to God’s Will.

So Arnaud des Pallieres offers us a magnificent visual spectacle of Mad’s cinematically-chiselled features set against the lichen-covered wilds of the Rhone and Languedoc locations taking in the Chartreuse Pierre-Chatet (Ain), the Chateau du Cheylard, (Gard) and dominated by Martin Wheeler’s resounding original soundtrack. MT

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Unit One: Series Three DVD

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Charlotte Fich, Lars Mikkelsen, Trine Pallesen, Soren Malling, Lars Brygmann

UNIT ONE is possibly the most hard-hitting of the Scandi-Noir TV series based on real-life crimes that have ravaged Denmark. Series Three is out on DVD as a box-set that could make the January blues more bearable. So pull up an Arne Jacobson chair, pour yourself a nice Aquavit chaser and settle in for the evening…

Featuring some of Denmark’s well-known actors Trine Pallesen (as foxy blond, Gaby Levin) and Soren Malling (A Hijacking), Charlotte Fich (Headhunter) plays Ingrid Dahl, the first female homicide boss who is on the warpath against sexism as well as a string of rather nasty murders not to mention comforting her female staff through miscarriage. Mads Mikkelsen stars as Allan Fischer, a detective with a fine line in black leather and womanising but plausibly gritty in this contemporary series that’s intimate in feel but gets out and about in Denmark’s windy landscapes, historic centres (Kalundborg) and modernist architectural homes to giving it a uniquely Danish flavour. Dahl could be Sarah Lund’s sister, she also has a listless marriage and a nerdy son.

Like a Volvo, Unit One has that calm, assured handling occasionally breaking out into a fast-moving thriller but always well-paced and underpinned with believable characterisations of the trusty ‘Elite Force’ as well as the psychopathic perps they pursue. So if you like your crime dramas classy and watchable in the same mould as Wallander, Borgen and The Bridge then Unit One will appeal. It’s not as slick as The Wire or Luther but this Emmy-Winner has class and breeding (it first came out in 2000) and that goes along way. MT

UNIT ONE: SERIES THREE IS OUT ON DVD from 6 January 2014

What Maisie Knew (2012) DVD

Dir.: Scott McGehee, David Siegel

Cast: Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgard, Joanna Vanderham, Onata Aprile

USA 2012, 99 min. DRAMA

In this cliché-ridden but timely drama from Scott McGree (Suture) (taken from a Henry James novel) every move of the narrative is telegraphed long before it happens. 6 year-old Maisie (well-played by Onata Aprile) is caught up in a custody battle between her parents who shower her with gifts. Mum Susanna (Moore) is a highly strung singer, often on drugs and/or alcohol, whilst her Dad, Beale (Coogan) is a businessman, always between deals in New York and the rest of the world. Enter two young ‘replacements’: new hubby Lincoln (Skarsgard), a bartender, is soon been shouted at by Susanna, and Beale treats his young wife Margo (Vanderham) to the same permanent absence like his ex-wife. Maisie becomes the football between her bitter parents, who soon use their new spouses as surrogates to fight their war. Life for Maisie doesn’t improve with these new parents. Despite competent performances, especially from Julianne Moore and decent camera-work, this modern adaptation of a novel written over a 100 years ago fails to bring anything new to the modern-day parenting story.

OUT ON DVD 6 JANUARY 2014

Muscle Schoals (2013) Coming to DVD

Director: Greg “Freddy” Camalier

108min Music Documentary US

Muscle Shoals is a town in Alabama where a particularly magical alchemy is at play. In the ambience, the soil and the river there’s an magic ingredient that allows for some of America’s most creative and defiant music to be made and recorded in the internationally acclaimed ‘Fame’ recording studio.

Greg “Freddy” Camalier’s passionate documentary charts the success of the studios and the artists who have recorded there seen through a tale of one man, Rick Hall. His determination and sheer dogged perserverance in the face of his tragic family background, got the whole phenomenon off the ground. Despite setbacks, he placed the studio squarely in the firmament of stars of popular musical history as a haven for Black and White musicians to come together and make original music, backed by The Swampers, a caucasian band with a Black sound (“There was a misnomer that they were all Black, but they weren’t”). This helped to sooth racial hostilities in a time where working together was considered unthinkable with ‘Blacks and Whites’ being segregated in the community.

Rick Hall started as a musician who was rejected by his band for being an “all work and no play” type of guy. So he set up FAME in the late 1950s and hit the jackpot over night with the success of breakout hit “You Better Move On”. As a music producer, he’s the equivalent of Stanley Kubrick: his thoroughness, inscrutable attention to detail and meticulous editing skills are at the heart of his success but occasionally make working with him a difficult process: “I thrived on rejection”, “I know that if they put the phone down unimpressed, they would never take another call from me.”

Combining startling original footage, intercut with candid commentary from the likes of the ubiquitous Bono, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, a particularly engaging Keith Richards, Candi Staton and Steve Winwood and legendary producer Jerry Wexler. This is a thoroughly enjoyable music documentary and Anthony Arendt’s photography conjures up a real feeling for the natural beauty of the place set quietly on the Alabama River, Tennessee. Called the “Singing River” by Native Americans and it’s easy to imagine how this soothing setting can induce a positive effect on all who visit. He is also responsible for the visuals in Avatar, Larry Crowne and music vids for Lenny Kravitz and Elton John.

Camalier has never attended film school so Muscle Schoals is born from is own instinct and visual sensibilities as well as from an appreciation for the art form.

So enthused is he with his theme (he spent four years on this project) that he occasionally gets over-excited and introduces inappropriate forays into Hall’s ersonal life which, while adding insight, feel rather maudlin and incongruous with the otherwise upbeat tone of the piece. The last half hour or is a tad repetitive as he literally runs through a litany of artists who’ve recorded there.

That said, this debut doc is so brimful with effervescence and charm it seems churlish to to criticise Camalier’s endeavour which brings storytelling and music together in a cogent and informative piece of filmmaking that charts iconic sounds of R&B, Pop and Rock from the fifties right up to the present day with classic hits such as “Brown Sugar”, “Mainstreet” and “When A Man Loves A Woman”. MT

MUSCLE SHOALS IS ON DVD from 10 February 2014

Last Vegas (2013)

Director: Jon Turteltaub Writer: Dan Fogelman

Cast: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Bre Blair

105min US Comedy

A stellar cast of real pros makes this trip to Las Vegas a worthwhile bet. When Robert de Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline head off on a ‘boys’ weekend’, it’s bound to be gold-plated especially when the destination is Vegas and they are clearly out to have fun. Schematic and corny it may sound but this certainly hits the jackpot comedy-wise, offering moving moments and valuable insight into mature dating and life-long friendship.

A glitzy get-together is the clearly the order of the day before Billy, 69, finally decides to tie the knot with a girl who could be his grand-daughter (Bre Blair). And where better than the Nevada gambling haven?. Michael Douglas is a natural charmer as Billy, the oldest swinger in town, with his biscuit tan and ‘stay-pressed ‘slacks. His bitter love-rival Paddy (De Niro) is still mourning his beloved wife who Billy once dated (seen in flashback to their youth). Sam (Kevin Kline) is hoping for a late leg-over too (with his wife’s blessing) and 76 year-old Archie (Morgan Freeman) is desperate to escape house arrest at his son’s, after suffering a stroke.

Dan Fogelman’s sparky script ensures cut and thrust with events taking an unexpected turn for Billy when he bonds with a sophisticated cabaret singer Diana, (Mary Steenburgen) on arrival. In Vegas to revitalise her career and not afraid to push the love boat out, Diana proves a mellow counterpoint to his young and brittle fiance, Lisa (Bre Blair) who never really convinces but certainly looks the part. In a strange twist, Sam gets embroiled with a drag queen (Roger Bart) who takes the wind out of his sails, while Archie hits the jackpot and is upgraded to the hotel’s presidential suite, providing the venue for an impromptu knees-up and attracting the resort’s most alluring eye candy, allowing him to kick back from his more worthy roles of late.

Naturally, these actors are at the top of their game when dealing with the ups and downs that predictably ensue as the veterans are let lose to explore their interpersonal dynamics (both social and erotic). The sparkling results feel plausible, farcical and charismatic. De Niro is on form as the grizzled old love victim. Kevin Kline, the youngest and most insecure as Sam, also gets the roughest deal and the leanest character arc – but with his comic genius makes of it what he can. He really needs another film like The Ice Storm to give this brilliance another chance.

Mary Steenburgen’s musical role is the icing on the cake and one delivered with charm and mature assurance that makes her delightful to listen and popular with the flirty foursome. The bets are off on who finally wins her hand. MT

LAST VEGAS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 3RD JANUARY 2013.

SEE OUR MOVIE GUIDE TO LAS VEGAS

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director/Writer: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cast: Marco Leonardi, Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Isa Danieli

171mins Italian with English subtitles Drama

This cute cult classic from memory lane was garlanded with awards including an Oscar back in 1990. Now celebrating its 25th Anniversary with a sparkling re-master and back on our screens for more cinematic indulgence. Nostalgia and sentimentality aside, we see Salvatore (Marco Leonardi), now a famous auteur, transported to his childhood Sicily when he hears of the death of his cinema mentor, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the village projectionist. As a young ‘Toto’, (Salvatore Cascio), he had been inspired to follow his star thanks to Alfredo’s fatherly inspiration. Now the world has changed and there’s no going back. That said, the drama made Marco Leonardi an international star. A romantic tribute to the love of film and the love of life. MT

CINEMA PARADISO (RE-MASTERED) IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 13 DECEMBER 2013

Christmas Film for kids

THE MAGIC REINDEER reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir.: Kari Juusonan, Jorgen Lerdam; Animation; Finland 2012, 74 min

Nico the reindeer has a father who was in the flying forces to help Santa. Nico could fly, because he had some of his father’s genes. They were going at Santa speed, and the father said “if you want to go at Santa speed, you have to have a big heart, open eyes and look up”. Nico’s mum had met another man after her divorce, and this man had another son, with a different woman, so now Nico discovers a half brother. He doesn’t like the fact that his mum met somebody else, particularly he did not like his new half-brother. After Nico slept, his best friend, a flying squirrel, said that the little brother was cute. Nico goes with the little boy into the woods to play hide and seek. They hid, but an eagle took the little boy and Nico chased after them, but he lost them. He tried to find them and he bumped into another reindeer. They walked together to the eagles domain, where they found the little boy. Then they met the white wolf, the leader of the eagles, she wanted to take revenge, killing his brother, and they run away. They went back home, and the stepdad was talking to Nico’s dad. The eagles broke into Santa factory and placed a booby trap. But Nico trapped the wolf in a box, and they run away. Santa flew away delivering presents.

It was brilliant animation, the story was perfect and I would like to see a sequel being made. DP

THE MAGIC REINDEER IS OUT ON DVD MRP £5.99

THE GREAT SANTA RESCUE – reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir: Dustin Rikert;

Cast: Caitlin Carmichael, Benjamin Stockham, Kevin Pollack; USA 2013, 87 min.

First a boy, Zach wakes up and sees Santa. Then Santa disappears. Then Zach and his sister Miley are watching TV and find out that an evil politician, Schmucker, is banning Santa robbing him of his magic powers. The two kids go to school. In the lessons the girl was drawing a Santa, but the teacher came over and said: “What are you drawing?” She said: “I am drawing a picture of Santa, because nobody believes in him.” The teacher whispers to her “I believe in Santa”. After that Schmucker comes and says: “Don’t talk about Santa, because we are banning him”. Then it was playtime, the girl went outside and she saw a Santa’s coat hanging on the wall, and a man ripped it off and threw it on the floor.

When Miley and Zach get home, the girl saw a gleaming light in the barn, and they went into the barn and saw Santa. But when they opened the door, there was nothing there. Then their mother gets ill. But the two children pretended to be ill too, because they want to save Santa, who was dying, because nobody believed in him. The mother came home from the hospital and told them she had cancer. The children made their own YouTube video about Santa, and send it to all websites. Everybody saw the video. The evil politician sees the video and he and the children have a debate about Santa on TV. Later the politician meets Santa, and he says to him ,” all you needed was love, but you didn’t get it, because your parents thought giving you toys made you happier than their love”. Santa’s magic powers come back and on Xmas night Santa uses his magic to save the Mum.

The acting was good but not great, the camera was alright, but it is the the design I liked best, particularly the house, it was real. The story was very sad, but it had a happy ending.

THE GREAT SANTA RESCUE IS AVAILABLE ON DVD

JOURNEY TO THE CHRISTMAS STAR, reviewed by Daniel Pyszora, 11

Dir.: Nils Graup; Cast: Vilde Zeiner, Anders Baasmo-Christiansen, Agnes Kittelsen; Norway 2012, 77 min.

The story is about a little princess, who was looking for the Christmas star, and then an evil witch made the her disappear, putting a curse on her. Her father, the King, was really distressed and her mother died from grief. The King had to find the Christmas Star in ten years, to get his daughter back. He looked for nine years, but no hope of finding her. Sonja, a young girl, was working for a woman who was really horrible to her, and who had other people who stole for her jewellery and food. One day they nicked lots of jewellery, but Sonja walked trough the door and ran away to the city. When she was in the city, she saw a horse carrying people, and she saw a white cloth, and hid under it, whilst the thieves working for the bad lady were chasing her. The horse caravan entered the castle and Sonja went into a big hall in the castle, and there she hid behind a curtained door, and she observed a meeting with the King; they were talking about the Christmas Star. The King took her into his room, where they talked about the Christmas Star and how to find it, and she said she would find the Christmas Star. Then she went off into the woods, but the evil witch was after her, but a little boy shrunk her and invited her into his tree house, so they could get away from the witch’s helper. Then she mentioned to the boy the Christmas Star, and the boy knew a bear who could help her to get see the Christmas Star. Then Sonja met a flying cloud, which flew her to the North Pole, where Santa Claus lived. There she met Santa Claus, and asked him where the Christmas Star was, and he said “it is in your heart”. She travelled back to the castle, and the King asked her “where is the Christmas Star”, and she said it is in my heart, and a shining Christmas Star came out of her body and it shone up to the sky and everybody could see the Christmas Star. And than there was a happy-end for everybody.

The acting was good, the girl who played Sonja was the best. Lovely sets, and the story made you interested in the film, it draws you in. The camera’s views were brilliant, they were showing everything important. It looked very realistic. It should be an “U” certificate, for younger children. But there was no comedy, which I like most, therefore it gets only four stars. DP

JOURNEY TO THE CHRISTMAS STAR IS AVAILABLE ON DVD MRP £5.99

Interview: Sean Ellis and Jake Macapagal (Metro Manila)

Whilst on holiday in the Philippines in 2007, British filmmaker Sean Ellis witnessed the two drivers of an armoured truck having an argument. As Ellis explains: ‘They had M16s and guns, and looked like they were going to shoot each other. It ended with one of them kicking the truck, getting in and driving off. And I started to think that it could be a scene from a movie’. Developing the idea from there, Ellis’ imaginary movie became his third feature film, Metro Manila, a ‘slowburn thriller’ about the events that transpire after Oscar (Jake Macapagal) moves to Metro Manila from the provinces, in search of a better life.

Alex Barrett spoke to Ellis and Macapagal about the making of the film.

AB: Sean, what was it like for you working in the Philippines? I don’t necessarily mean practically, but as someone that’s effectively an outsider coming in – what was that experience like, and how did that effect the way you directed the film?

SE: There was some weird ‘reverse racism’, as they call it. And it is weird. Some people won’t work with you because you’re white, and they expect to be paid American fees, and it was like ‘well, this film is in Tagalog, it’s not an American film’. So [it was hard] just to get people to take me as one of their own, and pretend that I was Filipino. And the heat was pretty difficult. Very oppressive.

JM: Humid.

SE: Trying to work – carrying cameras all day – it’s kind of tough.

JM: I think the challenge is also the bureaucracy. You have to know a lot of people in the government and the community, so you can pay them off and get licences. And if you don’t get the licence, you can just shoot guerrilla style. So those are the challenges, but at the same time, it’s pretty exciting because, you know, everyone was excited to shoot with Sean.

AB: And what was that like for you, having someone who is an outsider come in?

JM: It didn’t… I’ve worked here in the UK, I’ve worked in international productions. Sean just happened to be British. I got on with him since the first time we met each other. I really respected his vision and his love of cinema. And you can tell, because he gives you that space to…[turns to Sean] I’m talking like you’re not here [laughs]. He gave me the space to just discuss things and develop the character, and just try to deal with the journey. The first question he asked me after he offered me the role was ‘are you willing to take the journey with me?’ Which was pretty exciting.

AB: Sean, you’ve spoken elsewhere about your desire to bring authenticity to the project, and I’m wondering how you went about trying to get that. Did you do research? Did you spend a lot of time there? And Jake, were you able help Sean bring that authenticity to the project?

SE: It was definitely an organic process, and being immersed into the culture you can’t help but take everything that you’re seeing and try and use it in some respect. And I think what’s interesting about a Westerner going to the Philippines is that they would see things that Filipinos just take for granted and see every day. I was very open to seeing these things for the very first time and using them.

JM: We were discussing that a lot of times. The thing with Sean is that he’s like a curious kid, you know? The way they think, the way they go in this direction and that direction…that’s what we did.

AB: The real-life story of Reginald Chua is integrated into the narrative of the film. How did you come across that story, and what did that blend of fact and fiction mean for the project?

SE: Well, in the first two weeks I was there I was doing the preproduction for the film, and I was immersing myself into the Filipino culture. I was doing a lot of research, and meeting a lot of people, talking about their lives and how it all related to the script, trying by osmosis to bring that authenticity into the project, and I met with a director called Quark Henares, who’s actually become a friend of mine. Quark said ‘it’s a similar situation to this Reginald Chua’, so I said ‘who’s that?’, and he said ‘oh, you know, this desperate guy, caught in a bad place, who ended up robbing a plane, taking everyone’s money and jumping off using a parachute from his father’s silk factory’…

JM: A homemade parachute.

SE: I found this article online and I read it and the last paragraph of it said ‘Reginald was found four days later buried up to his waist in mud surrounded by money, with the silk parachute of his father’s factory bellowing in the wind behind him’. I was so struck by that image that I couldn’t help but put that in the film. It felt like a bookend to me, so I bookended the film with this image, and used it as a parallel fable to explain some of Oscar’s backstory, and also as a way of sort of tying up his climax in the third act. You know, the fact that Oscar has learnt quite a lot from Reginald, or as we call him Alfred Santos. Alfred was in a similar situation but hadn’t thought it all the way through to the end, whereas I think Oscar learnt from that and thought it out through to the end.

AB: Jake, how did the incorporation of factual elements help you with the development of your character, and the way you approached building that role?

JM: Most of my characterisation was just really based on… I just imagined myself in that situation. And I think it’s something that most Filipinos experience. I know how it is to have no money. And as an actor as well, you wait on jobs. But I sort of just put myself in the situation. I mean, I don’t have to look very far. It’s in my neighbourhood, it’s out there in the streets. You know, people wake up and the only thing they think about is what they’re going eat that day. This is – and I’m not blind to that – part of our Metro Manila, of our society. So I just took it all in. When we went to the slums, my first reaction was ‘how can anyone survive that?’, but then eventually you get used to it and you think ‘oh yeah, this is the way they live’. You don’t have to do method for that.

SE: I was quite struck by actually how big hearted the people of the slums were and how generous they were, and actually, weirdly, weirdly, how happy they were.

JM: Yeah, it’s really odd.

SE: I’m not saying that’s the secret to life, but what I’m saying is that, when you have nothing, life is very simple, you know? Like Jake said, your needs are ‘find food for that day’, you’re not worrying about updating your fucking Facebook account, or who said this or this promotion, or whatever.

JM: Living for the moment, they just live for the moment.

SE: It’s just very simple. They live very much in the moment. There’s an honesty to that, and it’s actually a very beautiful thing when you meet people that live very much in the moment. So it was a very joyful time to actually spend with those people. They were excited, weren’t they?

JM: All the kids were following you around, right? I mean, it made us comfortable, gave us a comfortable atmosphere.

AB: Sean, I wanted to ask you: one of the things I thought was quite extraordinary about the film is the lyricism that it has – it’s almost meditative. But when you actually look at it, it’s very quickly cut and the shots are very short. So I was interested in how you were able to strike upon that kind of pacing, where it’s very quickly cut, but also very lyrical. And I was wondering if it was planned, or if it was found in the edit room?

SE: You have to remember that this is a film that’s been designed as a subtitled film. It’s not a foreign film that then has subtitles slapped on it after the edit is finished. So it was very much part of the process of being able to cut the film, knowing that people would be reading what you put up on the screen as a subtitle, which then meant that once it disappears their eyes go back to the image. And once their eyes go back to the image, that’s when you give them the information or the detail that they need to see. And then when the character starts speaking again, then they’re drawn away from what’s happening on the screen to reread the subtitles. So we were very conscious that we were making a film where you would be reading subtitles, and that did affect the structure and the approach to the edit. It is a pretty furious edit. I mean, there is a lot of detail in it, there’s a lot of quick cuts away to detailed stuff. And we did a lot of coverage on this, as opposed to some of my other films which were very stagnated and still. But I think what happens when you have quite a fast edit, when you suddenly don’t cut, the audience notices it. When they’re actually on one shot for quite a long time, it becomes elongated time, in some respects, you’re sort of like…It’s like a dance, you’re going quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. And I guess that gives it that lyricism that you’re seeing.

AB: I think the lyricism also comes from the cinematography. We don’t have much time left, but could you maybe talk quickly about the way you approached the cinematography, and the lighting especially?

SE: We didn’t have a great resource of equipment. We didn’t have much time. So my approach was documentary style filmmaking. And the two reasons being: first of all, it’s very quick, and you can move very fast, and you can get a lot of coverage that way. And secondly, it gives you the code of documentary filmmaking – so it added a realism to the fiction, because you’re used to seeing documentarians finding their focus and being handheld, and this gave the family [in Metro Manila] a sense of realism, I believe. You felt you were actually following a documentary of a family migrating from the provinces to the city. So it’s sort of a two-fold, two-pronged attack.

AB: Jake, could you talk about how it was for you to act within this documentary approach? Do you think it helped your performance?

JM: Yeah, because you feel like you’re not conscious of the camera. I mean, it’s just following us on the journey. And the more you spend time with that, with Sean, you can just get used to that. As an actor, your job is to get to the objective and understand what the director is trying to get you to do, to move from A to B. So as an actor, I just concentrate on what it is he wants, which is great when it’s someone following you around with the camera. You can trust that.

SE: It also meant a lot less stopping and starting.

JM: Yeah.

SE: There’s a lot of waiting around on film sets normally, but we were pretty furious with what we were doing, so Jake didn’t have much time to sit around and get pedicures. [Laughs].

JM: Yeah, no time for that. I suppose as well it’s like the rote memory way, when you just keep on doing it. I don’t know if Sean was doing that consciously, but the way he does it, you don’t think anymore, until you get the right balance, and he says ‘okay that’s right’.

SE: I have a bad habit, actually, of talking while they’re acting.

JM: But it’s kind of good, in a way, because you know that you’re doing ok. You don’t … Because the camera will pick up if there’s a doubt in your eyes. ‘Am I doing this right?’ – the camera will pick it up. But if one hears ‘okay, that’s good, can I get one more’, it gives you a guide that’s useful to follow.

SE: You know, it’s all ‘just go back two words’, ‘say those two words again’, ‘just do it again’, ‘go back three words’.

JM: Yeah, yeah.

SE: I think it just drums out any notion of, like, ‘now act’, because you’re redoing redoing it, redoing redoing it. Breaking it down, you know?

JM: And maybe because you get tired, all of a sudden you’re just less conscious, and then [claps hands] that’s what he wants.

AB: Unfortunately it looks like we’re out of time, but thank you very much.

JM: Thanks.

SE: Thank you.

METRO MANILA won BEST FILM at the BEST INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS, SEAN ELLIS WON BEST DIRECTOR AND THE FILM IS BRITAIN’S SUBMISSION TO THE ACADEMY AWARDS 2014

Fill the Void (2012)

Dir. Rama Burshtein, Israel 2012, in Hebrew with Engl. subtitles, Dur. 90 mins.

Cast: Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Irit Shele

Giving an insight to a different world that still exists in contemporary society, Fill the Void is set in the orthodox Hassidic community in Tel Aviv. This very religious sect has its own rules which its members stick to rigorously without complaining.

This is director Rama Burstein’s first feature film – which she has also written – and she has direct experience of this world, living as she does, within the ultra-orthodox community. This appealing film has a good story, told without any great histrionics. Through the eyes of young Shira we begin to understand something of the pull between the religious rites and needs of the family and doing right by both as opposed to the tug of the young woman’s heart which moves her towards romance and the lure of marriage to a young man.

Feminists might well balk at the idea that marriages are arranged and that women have no right to choose who they marry, but Burstein tries to show that adherence to a family’s moral compass is also worth a great deal and perhaps family comes before personal choice. She tells how 18 year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) has been promised in marriage to a young man her own age, who, although virtually unknown to her, nevertheless meets with her approval. She looks forward to her wedding once details of the marriage contract have been finalised. Suddenly her beloved older sister Esther (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth and the whole family is overcome with grief. Shira’s match is put on hold while the family mourns their loss. Then they learn that Yochay (Yiftach Kelin), Esther’s husband, has been approached to marry a Belgian widow. He believes he needs a wife to care for his new baby son. Shira’s mother, Rivka (Irit Sheleg) however, is desperate for the baby to remain in Israel and proposes that Shira marries Yochay, although he is a lot older. Shira must now choose her future

The acting throughout is delicate and evoking real passion between husband and wife Yochay and Esther and later some smoldering emotion between Yochay and Shira. Humour comes out in the opening scene where Shira and her mother walk around a supermarket trying to identify the young man who is lined up for Shira. The film is well photographed with good use made of the lighting to view the characters, often through gauze, and the all the scenes take place within the home except a couple of short ones inside a synagogue and on the street. CARLIE NEWMAN

FILL THE VOID won Best Actress for Hadas Yaron Venice 2012 and was hown recently at the UK Jewish Film festival. It is on release from 13 December nationwide

2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013 Now in Glasgow

Fans of Nordic cinema will be excited to hear that the festival returns this winter with a vibrant array of films from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Opening in London and taking the film highlights further afield: a music strand will also feature in this year’s celebrations in the shape of the seminal Icelandic band Sigur Ros.

The programme includes various strands: ‘New Nordic Features’, ‘Other Side of the Docs’ and ‘Arctic’ and focuses on Nicholas Winding Refn with a new film NWR by French doc helmer Laurent Duroche, which looks at the life of the director and his regular collaborators Ryan Gosling and Mads Mikkelsen with another chance to see Winding Refn’s 1999 Cult Classic BLEEDER, a love story set in Copenhagen.

The festival kicks off on 25 November with the UK premiere screening of short noir animation series ODBOY & ERORDOG SUITE (Marcus Fjellström, Sweden/Germany 2013) with live soundtrack performed by Swedish quartet, The Pearls Before Swine Experience. This 22-minute piece, screened/performed earlier this year at International Film Festival Rotterdam, presents the eerie twilight escapades of a boy and his dog: inspired by nightmares, retro computer games and a pet dog.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur has been prominent in the London film scene this summer with his docudrama THE DEEP and crime caper 2 GUNS. The festival offers a chance to see his debut feature 101 REYKJAVIK, a romcom starring Spanish actress Victoria Abril.
Finnish films are always quirky and fascinating CONCRETE NIGHT is no different. It’s the latest outing from Finnish maverick director: Pirjo Honkasalo. Set in the backstreets of Helsinki, it follows two brothers in the 24 hours before the eldest goes into prison.

In the doc strand, another Finnish director Petri Luukkainen will be in town to talk about MY STUFF, a documentary comedy that examines our attachment to possessions and asks the question: what do we really need in life?. Also on the documentary front, Mia Engberg’s BELLEVILLE BABY, a meta-textual memoir that examines the director’s relationship with her ex through visuals, photos and feelings evoked by their past conversations heard in voice-over.

Mika Ronkainen’s is attending to talk about his road-doc: FINNISH BLOOD, SWEDISH HEART that looks at the unresolved issues of a Finnish father and son forced to grow up in Sweden, before returning to their homeland.

From Norway, NORTH OF THE SUN and THE DEVIL’S BALLROOM looks at the harsh beauty of life in the magnetic North.

The festival closes with the premiere of Kaspar Munk’s YOU & ME FOREVER, a drama focusing on teenage angst from a female perspective exploring sensitive issues of nascent sexuality, vulnerability and idolisation at this very formative stage in a girl’s life. MT

THE PROGRAMME IN DETAIL

London: 25 November - 4 December 2013

25 Nov	6.45pm	Opening Gala: Odboy & Erordog Suite + live soundtrack performance + opening gala party	Republic of Fritz HansenTM
29 Nov	6.30pm	101 Reykjavik	Riverside Studios
29 Nov	8.45pm	Chasing the Wind	Riverside Studios
30 Nov	6pm	NWR	Ciné Lumière
30 Nov	9pm	Concrete Night	ICA
1 Dec	1pm	The Hidden Child	ICA
	3.30pm	Bleeder	Riverside Studios
	6pm	Kidd Life	Riverside Studios
	8.30pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart + Q&A	Riverside Studios
2 Dec	6.45pm 8.45pm	Sigur Rós double bill: Inni Valtari Mystery Film Experiment	Riverside Studios
2 Dec	7pm	Directors’ Talk: Finnish Docs	Republic of Fritz HansenTM
3 Dec	6.45pm	North of the Sun + The Devil’s Ballroom	Riverside Studios
3 Dec	8.30pm	My Stuff + Q&A	Riverside Studios
4 Dec	8.20pm	Closing Gala: You & Me Forever + Q&A	Ciné Lumière

Edinburgh: 6 – 11 December 2013

6 Dec	6.15pm	Chasing the Wind	Edinburgh Filmhouse
7 Dec	6.15pm	My Stuff	Edinburgh Filmhouse
8 Dec	6.15pm	Kidd Life	Edinburgh Filmhouse
9 Dec	6.15pm	NWR	Edinburgh Filmhouse
10 Dec	6.15pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart	Edinburgh Filmhouse
11 Dec	6.15pm	You & Me Forever	Edinburgh Filmhouse

Glasgow: 8 December 2013 – 2 January 2014

8 Dec	5.30pm	Chasing the Wind	Glasgow Film Theatre
10 Dec	6.45pm	Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart	Glasgow Film Theatre
15 Dec	6.50pm	You & Me Forever	Glasgow Film Theatre
17 Dec	9.00pm	NWR	Glasgow Film Theatre
22 Dec	6.40pm	Kidd Life	Glasgow Film Theatre
29 Dec	6.30pm	My Stuff	Glasgow Film Theatre
2 Jan	6.30pm	Belleville Baby	Glasgow Film Theatre

Big Bad Wolves (2013)

Director/Writers: Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado

110min Comedy Crime Thriller Israel. Hebrew with subtitles

Cast: Guy Adler, Dvir Benedek, Lior Ashkenazi, Tzahi Grad, Doval’e Glickman, Rotem Keinan; Israel 2013, 110 min.

Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s violent thriller courts controversy with nearly all the characters involved, and one wonders if this was not the main raison-d’etre behind this film in the first place. The torture scenes are technically well-crafted and graphic, and would fit in with any horror/slasher movie. But even worse is the manipulation of the filmmakers: trying to make the viewer side with Dror against his vigilante captors, having created the narrative this way.

When a group of police officers are brutally interrogating a suspected serial child killer, they are filmed undercover. Miki, the leading officer is suspended. He starts trailing the suspect Dror, a teacher of religious education, who seems to be awkward, but harmless. Miki wants to capture Dror and ‘continue the interrogation’, but Gidi, the father of the last victim, captures Dror first and takes him into a remote hut. Miki is also captured by the grieving father, but the policeman agrees to help Gidi, to make Dror confess, and tell them, where he has hidden the heads of the girls he has killed.

Is there still a place for self-justice or torture, are the filmmakers overstepping the boundaries of moral responsibilities, in making this feature?Decide for yourselves. As a pure shocker the film may be excusable, but the moral implications are not. Child killers will always excite vigilante action, but in a civilised state such actions should be condemned outright. Perhaps the permanent war situation in Israel has blurred the reaction to violence as a whole: A reason more to listen to the Peace movement inside the country. AS

BIG BAD WOLVES IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 DECMEBER 2013

Leviathan (2012) DVD

Directors: Lucien Castaing Taylor and Verena Paravel

87min Documentary

Visceral and frightening: Watching LEVIATHAN feels like witnessing some kind of public execution – for fish. Bleak but also beautiful in parts, this debut documentary from Canadian helmets Lucien Castaing Taylor and Verena Paravel evokes the vast and terrifying world of the deep-sea commercial fishing industry, from the perspective of the victims – fish. Submerged in darkness with a clanging, mechanical score and the distant sound of voices, gradually in the gloom the camera pans over the deck on board a gigantic trawler where shoals of fish are sucked into their deaths in a gigantic steel slaughterhouse of the trawlers and spat out again into their watery graves by some anonymous force, if they’re not suitable for the the insatiable mouths of a mammoth human predator.

Face to face with floundering fish, molluscs and the watery blood of slaughter, their camera takes no prisoners or feels no pity for the fate of these poor creatures. Exhilterating and horrifying in equal measure, the fear of execution becomes palpable (although thankfully not to us as we are swept along mercilessly in this cruel sea of shameless killing spree. Fast-moving and fickle, we watch helpless as fish are gored and gutted and spewed out in a hellish brew of blooded scales and staring eyes.

The diurnal battle rages but by the end even the fishermen are exhausted by their fresh-air and ozone overload, gently nodding off in the warmth of the hold, preparing for the next onslaught. This is a job, like any other for them. But for the animals, from whose perspective the camera fight in an unfair war MT

LEVIATHAN was shot in North Atlantic. The doc is on general release from 29 November 2013 nationwide.

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Floating Skyscrapers (2013)

Director/Writer: Tomas Wasilewski | Cast: Mateusz Banasiuk, Katarzyna Herman, Marta Nieradkiewicz, Bartosz Gelner | Poland 93’

Hailed as ‘Poland’s first LGBT film’, Tomasz Wasilewski’s striking drama follows a champion swimmer whose gay relationship causes ripples.

It forms part of an erotically-charged series of films from a new wave of Polish filmmakers and follows on from the director’s affecting debut In A Bedroom, once again starring In A Bedroom’s Katarzyna Herman.

The central character in Floating Skyscrapers has a dilemma: is he heterosexual, gay or just a highly-sexed bi? Played with emotional and physical gusto by Mateusz Banasiuk, Kuba is a professional swimmer whose honed physique and competitive-edge belies his shaky sexual identity.

Living with his mother, Ewa (Katarzyna Herman) and girlfriend Sylwia (Marta Nieradkiewicz), makes matters worse as the two women compete for his attention when he is not poolside. It’s clear that his sporting prowess does little to curb his sexual appetite which is further stimulated by the athletic bodies of his fellow swimmers until he’s drawn to the charismatic Michal (Bartosz Gelner) who he meets one evening with Ewa. The men’s attraction becomes palpable during unspoken gestures and eye-contact during dinner and Ewa picks up on this. Ewa is dismayed the two have met not least because her sexual relationship with Kuba is adversely affected as the unresolved tension in Kuba slowly becomes apparent.

Gelner and Banasiuk give utterly convincing performances as they gradually become closer, beautifully filmed by cinematographer Kuba Kijowski in neutral tones of silvery beige and acqua echoing the water motif. A judicious use of silence accentuates the tension throughout. Michal is an interesting thoughtful character, appearing more urbane and sensitive as a counterpoint to Kuba’s tough macho quality that gradually melts away as the narrative unfolds. Katarzyna Herman’s turn as Ewa evokes a subtle and deep-understanding of her son. Thomas Wasilewski is a promising filmmaker and storyteller with an excellent vision for both creative widescreen visuals and for detailed camerawork marking him out as an exciting talent in recent Polish cinema who has since directed United States of Love and Fools. MT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | READ ALEX BARRETT’S INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR.

Tomasz Wasilewski – Filmmaker

As the opening credits of Floating Skyscrapers begin to unfold, the sound of water seeps onto the soundtrack, placing us audibly within the enclosed world of an indoor swimming pool. But embedded within the sounds of the waves, another noise becomes discernible: someone is, it would seem, undergoing an act of sexual pleasure. The credits make way, and the sounds continue over a symmetrical widescreen image of the swimming pools’ changing room doors, all closed. Whatever is happening, whatever we are hearing, is taking place inside these doors. But this is not for us to see. Instead, we go to our protagonist, Kuba, as he jogs along, the camera following in a fit of motion. Later, he will go to a party with his girlfriend Sylwia, and there he will meet a young man, Michal, with whom he will develop a love affair. It’s a striking set up for what has been dubbed Poland’s first LGBT film.

Prior to the film’s release, Alex Barrett spoke to director Tomasz Wasilewski.

Could you please describe Floating Skyscrapers in your own words?

It’s a film about love, about finding one’s place in modern reality, about looking for one’s own self and fighting for it, which is never easy.

Can you say something about how the idea for the film originated?

The first stimulus to write the story was a bus station in Warsaw. This place interested me and inspired [me] greatly as a filmmaker, and this is why most of the story took place there. Initially, it was a story about a fifty-year-old woman who worked at the station. The plot focused on her relationship with her daughter and the relationship between the daughter and another girl. I worked on the script for a long time and so it changed a lot. Each new version brought new characters and new solutions and finally, Floating Skyscrapers became a film about a guy, a swimmer who falls in love with another man.

The characters in the film come across as being very nuanced. How much of this was written into the script, and how much came from the performances?

It was already written into the script. This is how I construct my characters. Of course, a script is just a story on paper and actors are necessary to make it real. On the set I lead them in such a way that, so to speak, they play it inwards. I like it when actors are very emotional but hide their emotions and feelings all the time. They’re torn apart by them. Thanks to this, they are dramatic characters and such characters interest me most in the cinema. Playing with nuances, this is it!

Could you talk a little more about your approach to working with the actors, and how you direct them?

Rehearsals for the movie lasted five months. It was very important to me that the actors understand their characters very thoroughly. I wanted them to know their soul and their emotions. For me, human truth is most important in a movie, the truth of the character. When it’s present, the viewer can identify with the characters even when they’re very different to him. I always ask actors not to play their characters but to become them.

The relationship between Kuba and Sylwia is very messy, and I don’t think we see that kind of reality in cinema very often. Were you deliberately trying to show something not seen in other films, or just doing what felt right for the story?

I always search for truth in movies. This is what’s most important to me. I never reflect on making a film in a specific way that is supposed to elicit a specific reaction. You can’t make auteur films like this. Characters are made of their emotions, of what they feel inside. This is what directs them and it is this internal state of being broken that is responsible for their decisions. There are no easy and simple situations in life, so there shouldn’t be any in a film either. All in all, a film is life.

During the first ten minutes of Floating Skyscrapers, Michal talks about films and Kuba watches one. Was Floating Skyscrapers intended as a comment on cinema in any way?

When Kuba and Michał meet for the first time, Michał is talking about The Kid with a Bike, a film by the Dardenne brothers. Personally, I love this movie. When I was constructing this scene, I had just watched it. Of course, the film made a huge impression on me. I like films by the Dardenne brothers in general. It’s my way of paying tribute to them.

Who else were you influenced by when making the film?

I love the movies of Urlich Seidl, Michael Haneke, Darren Aronofsky and Steve McQueen. There are many directors whose work I respect – Sophia Coppola, David Fincher, Andrey Zvyagintsev. I watch a lot of movies and often go to the theatre, but I can’t determine how much the works of others influence my own works. I think there aren’t any direct inspirations. I make films my own way, intuitively.

There’s a lot of motion in the film: driving, running, swimming. It seems almost like the characters want to escape – and yet they never really do. Could you talk about what these passages of motion symbolised for you?

This is exactly what it’s like with us – people. Very often we find ourselves in situations from which we want to escape but we don’t do this. A film needs to be as close to life as possible and characters in it similar to real people. Internally, we’re very complex, often broken and full of contradictions. And it’s the same in the case of the characters in Floating Skyscrapers. Does this carry any symbolic meaning? I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. I work intuitively. I assume that if something moves me it will also move the viewers. I’m fascinated by characters who are lost, internally broken, who’ve reached a turning point in life. For me as a filmmaker, they’re most important, and such characters are full of contradictions. On the one hand, they want to escape and on the other, stay. Isn’t this what’s most beautiful in human nature?

The film is beautifully shot. Can you talk about how you construct your images?

I worked on it together with the cameraman, Kuba Kijowski. I asked him to use as many master shots and flat frame shots and as much fluorescent light as possible. These are the things I like in the film language. Besides, I chose places that were mostly built of concrete. During colour grading, Kuba was looking for an appropriate colour for the film and he decided that everything should be in silver. I think it was a brilliant idea. In addition to this, many images are in the colour of water, which is the natural environment for the protagonist. I attach a lot of weight to images in a film. They can’t be random and neither can be the places in which they’re shot.

Floating Skyscrapers has been called the first Polish LGBT film. Why do you think it has taken this long for it to happen, and why now? What’s changed?

It was difficult, even very difficult, to find money for the film. The producers found a great number of private persons who started functioning as co-producers. It changed slightly after the world premiere at Tribeca IFF in NYC and also when we won East of the West Competition in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival – then we found additional funding. In Floating Skyscrapers, the way in which the homosexual character is portrayed is new. Until now this was quite foreign to the Polish or even post-communist countries cinematography. Homosexual characters were usually in the background and depicted in a mocking way. Floating Skyscrapers portrays [the character] Kuba most of all as a human being; ok, he’s homosexual but it’s not what’s most important about him. Kuba is a son and a swimmer, he has his own dreams and he’s got a girlfriend. His homosexuality is not the most important thing, although it pushes him towards some decisions and sometimes determines his life.

FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH DECEMBER 2013 NATIONWIDE

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s (2013)

Dir: Matthew Miele;

Cast: Linda Fargo, Betty Halbreich, David Hoey, Rachel Joe, Candice Bergen;

Narrator: William Fichtner. USA 2013, 93 min.

Documentaries about institutions of all kind – and the upmarket department store Bergdorf Goodman in New York is certainly that – tend usually to be sycophantic. But Matthew Miele’s SCATTER MY ASHES has stepped over the demarcation line between document and commercial – clearly landing on the side of fawning admiration where any reality outside the store is ignored.

Senior staff are treated like gods; the filmmaker demurely listens to all the small talk and gossip about how fantastic life at B&G is, endlessly extolling its virtues without a scintilla of criticism to add texture is this picture-perfect paean to the department store where a pair of shoes costing a cool six thousand Dollars (the only price mentioned during the whole film.), is held up as a paragon of bare-faced profiteering. Oscar Wilde would turn in his grave uttering his well-worn dictum: “the price of everything a the value of nothing”.

History resolves around the store – not the other way around. With great sadness we are told that Jackie Kennedy bought a certain hat here, which she later wore to greet the masses on that fateful Dallas day in November 1963 (mercifully we are spared the shooting during this segment of archive footage recounting the event.). And that’s the way history is made: Bergdorf Goodman placing itself right in the centre of the assassination drama, an example of product placement at its most ghoulish and opportunistic.

Needless to say, there is no downside to this story apart from the tragically amusing fact that, during the 2008 crash, even the clientele of this great shop were unable to afford its prices. So profits fell during the crisis, but then so did Walmart’s, because people could hardly afford a pint of milk: the doc would be hard-pressed to come up with a more insensitive social commentary on the World financial meltdown. But luckily for B&G, we learn that today’s profits have exceeded the pre-2008 level – “quiet an achievement”. Really?!

We also discover in this glitzy advert for the store, that shop window dressing is called ‘installation’ at B&G. David Hoey, who is in charge of the Christmas decorations in 2011, behaves like Cecil B de Mille the second. Yes, it looks nice, but please, the only reason is that you want to sell the over-priced stuff. But no, B&G is actually doing us all a favour, being so monumentally wonderful: it’s the public, the 95% who can only do “installation” shopping and the five percent who own the World and can afford to pay the inflated prices inside the store, who have to be grateful.

Joan Rivers nails it in one statement: “People who take fashion serious are idiots” – but it goes under in an endless display of vanity and pomp – the grimacing faces of most of the participants of this hideous carnival are testament to the ugliness of capitalism showcased here at its most rampant. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6 DECEMBER 2013

Aroused (2013)

Director: Deborah Anderson

Cinematography: Christopher Gallo

With: Lisa Ann, Belladonna, Lexi Belle, Allie Haze, Ash Hollywood, Jesse Jane, Katsuni, Kayden Kross, Francesca Le, Brooklyn Lee, Asphyxia Noir, April O’Neil, Teagan Pressley, Misty Stone, Tanya Tate, Alexis Texas.

Documentary: 66 mins

“This is not a story about pornography. This is a story about women”. Deborah Anderson

‘Renowned celebrity photographer and multimedia artist’ Deborah Anderson’s debut doc about trying to find the ‘you’ behind the porn star’ is visually alluring and elegantly shot in black and white, like her coffee-table book of same name. Taking 16 of the world’s most successful adult film stars, Anderson talks to them about their real feelings behind the sexy role they play on screen.

Getting ready for the shoot, these gorgeous and savvy women are so desperate to download their experiences, at first this feels like a manic competitive story-sharing outing rather than a measured, reflective insight. To make matters worse, the guitar-strumming score is out of place and intrusive. Audiences need episodes of calm to absorb quietly and reflect on the narrative that’s unfolding. Here we are bombarded by the sheer pace of the narration, music and talking making it unreachable and difficult to engage with at first. Luckily things improve as the film gets underway and the nude modelling shoot is unveiled, as the girls drape themselves languorously on beds.

All from completely different backgrounds, what emerges predominantly is these women adore attention and are mostly rebellious or keen to seduce. They have drifted into the business without a really being aware of their end-game. That said, it’s an extremely lucrative career move and one that offers financial freedom. There’s no real psychological insight gained from their discussions, making this sad charade evocative of sympathy rather than a feeling of empowerment or self-realisation on their part. Rather like “Miss World” contenders, they speak but make no real impression – all we focus on is their pouting lips, blow-dried hair, plump derrieres and erect nipples. The images are ‘female friendly’ and provocative but not overtly sexual. If Anderson wanted to gain some real insight, why not talk to these women fully-clothed in the comfort of their own homes not sprawled naked in a boudoir setting? Well the reasons are clear: Disengenuously dressing this up as a worthy outing, when it really feels more like an attempt to pass off some soft porn images as a seriously-intentioned doc.

Intercut with wise quotations from the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Erica Jong and Joan of Arc, Anderson hopes to add gravitas to her premise. There is a really only one valid interview with a woman (she tellingly gets no headline) – it’s Fran Amidor, an agent who offers incisive comment and real insight into the ‘adult’ film industry: “Men want to jerk-off while looking at women of 18-25, not women who look like their wives, even if their wives are beautiful”. So, a film intended to serve women – but actually dressed-up for men.

AROUSED is a great idea but a missed opportunity to explore in depth an important subject. MT

AROUSED IN OUT ON VOD FROM 13TH DECEMBER 2013

A Long Way From Home (2013)

Sharing a dp (Ed Rutherford) with Joanna Hogg doesn’t guarantee the end result will produce her subtle brand of middle-class English drama. That said, this sun-filled story of elderly Brits in the South of France is not without merit, although dark clouds do occasionally appear. Watchable and appealing, it successfully evokes the heady summer atmosphere of Languedoc-Roussillon with stunning visuals.

It also has the suave acting talents of James Fox as Joseph, a debonair gent in his early seventies who’s enjoying a leisurely but aimless retirement in Nîmes with his motherly Irish wife (Brenda Fricker) scrabbling about on the foothills of senility. At dinner one night they meet a young couple on holiday – Suzanne (Nathalie Dormer/The Tudors) and Mark (Paul Nicholls/Life Just Is). The pretty blond makes a palpable impression on Joseph, with her perfectly blow-dried hair and delightful smile.

At first this feels like an upmarket version of Bergerac, with equally inane dialogue, but then a tragic accident proves Brenda to be worth her weight in gold and the narrative gains momentum. The following day Joseph meets the couple again and they head off to the vineyards in Joseph’s car – cue idle banter about their respective relationships. Nathalie Dormer manages to be sexy and sensitive as Suzanne but Paul Nicholls is slightly miscast: he does his best to play a slightly vulnerable geezer but this role would have been perfect for someone like Jack Davenport who was wasted recently in the (dreadful) Mother’s Milk. Joseph and Suzanne grow closer while Mark proves to be a bit of a lad, chumming up with a local wine-maker Robert, on a business venture.

Virginia Gilbert’s well-paced and convincing drama offers an insight into male sexuality and feels authentic and heartfelt (with echoes of the more robust Le Weekend). James Fox gives a poignant performance as Joseph; clearly smitten by a “late-life crisis” – his dormant libido flickering at Suzanne’s frisky sexuality but his bittersweet voyeuristic moments (when he sees the couple later in the village) feeling sad and rueful rather than raunchy. Ultimately, this is a story about revisiting the past with regret, about the quiet desperation of old age for those whose pleasure is not tethered to their family but to their cherished and much enjoyed sexuality. A la recherche du temps perdu. MT

A LONG WAY FROM HOME RELEASES ON THE 6TH DECEMBER 2013

Domestic (2013) 10th Romanian Film Festival in London 2013

Director/Writer: Adrian Sitaru

Cast: Adrian Titieni, Gheorghe Ilfrim, Ioana Flore, Clara Voda, Sergiu Costache, Dan Hurdu

85mins Comedy drama, Romanian with English subtitles

Surviving every day couped up in close proximity naturally brings out the worst in this group of ordinary Romanians living in an apartment block, Adrian Sitaru’s third feature offers another Romanian New Wave meta cinema outing; a black comedy that draws its humour from inane conversations and small talk between families and neighbours, seen from a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective. Dialogue-driven, it takes a simple linear narrative style.

Nothing really happens but they moan about everything from failing technology, pets fouling the common parts to immigration and these banal conversations take on a surreal aspect reflected, ‘fly in the wall style’ in long static takes from Adrian Silisteanu’s voyeuristic camera, which occasionally wanders out into the open air to capture cats, rabbits and other local fauna.

Mainly known for his TV work, Sitaru’s previous award-winning dramas Hooked and Best Intentions followed various characters and their relationship crisis. When the subtitles in one long kitchen scene are almost impossible to read (as they are white on a very pale background); this highlights just how much these meta dramas are rely on their dialogue, which is essential in driving them forward. MT

DOMESTIC IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE 10TH ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON

Kill Your Darlings (2013) | BFI FLARE 20-30 March 2015

Dir: John Krokidas; Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane de Haan, Ben Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh

USA 2013, 104 min. Drama

The first feature film of scriptwriter John Krokidas (Being John Malkovich) takes Daniel Radcliffe in the role of young Allen Ginsberg to Columbia University in the autumn of 1943. There he meets future stars of the literary anti-establishment like Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), Lucien Carr (Dane de Haan) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster). Ginsberg, the shy Jewish boy, suffering from the breakup of his parent’s marriage, falls madly in love with Carr, who is still seeing his ex-lover David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), who a year ago saved his life in Chicago when Carr tried to commit suicide.

The fading College running back Kerouac (who could now imagine him playing American football!) is also part of the group, though he seems the only heterosexual in the posse of rebels. The lads get up to pranks, some more serious than others, but a certain bookish tranquility holds sway until Carr kills Kammerer sadisticly, without an apparent motive. Thanks to Ginsberg, who finds an escape route for him in an old law book (if attacked by an homosexual, the straight man can claim self-defence), Carr gets off with 18 month in prison, but rejects Ginsberg, who is heart broken.

Krokadis film is uneven, too often episodically, and its straight linear narrative and mostly conventional aesthetics make the end product much less than it could have been. Radclliffe excels in the frank sex scenes and it is the ensemble acting, which saves the film in the end. Dane de Haan’s Carr is particularly menacing, the boy-man with the face of an angel, who can’t stand any rejection, and plays off all his lovers against each other. Like a little vampire, he sucks all the good out of people; his golden looks masking his exploitative nature. Surprisingly, the real Carr stayed with one publishing house until his death in 2005: twice married with two children.

In spite of its shortcomings, KILL YOUR DARLINGS delivers some fascinating background about the cradle of the Un-American dream. AS

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KILL YOUR DARLINGS IS screening during BFI FLARE 20-30 March 2015

Gilles Bourdos – Film Director

Andrew Rajan met Gilles Bourdos in London recently to talk about his latest film RENOIR, which is now out on DVD.

AT Obviously, the first question has to be – what inspired you to make this film? You were in a museum?

GB Every time I finish a movie, I love to go to a museum, to walk, to clear my head, without any agenda, just to find peace. They make me feel peaceful. So, I was in NY and I was walking in the Met and was in the French area- Renoir and Cezanne; it was striking for me because right then, I really felt I belonged to this cultural history.
So, maybe I have been making movies now 15-20 years, but this was the first time I had a feeling that I wanted to be a French director of this movie. It was very strange sensation and I started to read around Cezanne, Renoir and I found this specific story of when Andree Heuschling first arrived at Renoir’s house and I found it very fascinating, as we don’t know very much about this moment.
So she was the Perfect link to tell the story, not something intellectual, but something real, with flesh and blood, you know, the relationship between a father and a son, the relationship between cinema and a painting.
So, it was a ‘narrow’ situation, you know, with just a house, with a garden paradise around it and a big wall around that, so I found it to be a perfect set up situation for this film.

AT That being the case, the story is of course about two extraordinarily famous people. Were you at all worried about making a film about two ‘Sacred Cows’?

GB Sacred Cows! [laughs] Yes, yes, you know, that is the reason also I wanted the specific sequence when Andree is breaking the plates and she is saying ‘I am really fed up with the Renoirs’, you know, sometimes I felt the same way too, I needed those plates.. making this movie, it provided me with alot of pleasure to make this sequence too, you know?! [laughs]. So you know, in the beginning when you think about it, at the beginning of starting work, it could be an impressive (intimidating) thing, but after a while you (understand you) are simply working on a story about a father and a son and a girl and a young boy, so for example with (actor) Vincent Rottiers, I would say ‘don’t think so much about Jean Renoir, because then, you act with all of it on your shoulders’. You are back from the War, just try to keep it simple. It could be anyone; you work on a character, but it could just be a worker in a factory. They are birth(right) and race free in cinema.

AT I am interested to know about you; where you were born and your influences…

GB Well, I was born in Nice (1963)..

AT Ah..

GB Yes, so it makes alot of sense.. I came from a working class background… and when I grew up with paintings everywhere, when I was a kid.. because it is a city -an area- where the (notion) of painting is very important; there was Renoir, Picasso… Cezanne.. Bonnard so many painters from there and around… so you have almost a museum of painting on every corner.

AT So, even as a working class boy…

GB Yes, it’s cool, there were pictures, posters and postcards everywhere, it wasn’t just separate, you know. The idea of the painting, it was everywhere, so it was just normal to have a picture of a Matisse somewhere. So I think it was huge influence on me.

AT Then, going through school, you didn’t decide you were going to become a painter…

GB I don’t know why (I chose what I did).. I didn’t go to (film school) I was looking at photography to begin with, more so than painting. But then I do love cinema too, so it started like that… and then I started to write and I always felt that I could learn what I needed to learn from watching cinema too, learn..

AT …Enough.

GB Enough, exactly –enough to Start something. And make Alot of mistakes. And afterwards, you are learning because you are making mistakes. I just had to make my first 16mm movies.. and make alot of mistakes and… you learn, step by step, you know.

AT Your first films, you just made with friends, or…?

GB Yep. I was in Paris- I moved from Nice to Paris, because unfortunately, if you live in France, you cannot see films anywhere really, unless you live in Paris.

AT So you realised when you were in Nice you needed to move to Paris if you were going to be a filmmaker. And how old were you..?

GB Yes.. I was 24.. 23.

AT Ok, so you go to Paris…

GB …I go Paris and I was with a friend who is a filmmaker too now, a good one and a screenwriter too and we were writing together… actually, we didn’t go to Paris to become filmmakers, to be exact, we didn’t know then.. we went because -it was before the DVD (existed)- we were not able to see enough movies. We wanted to see all the Tarkovski movies, all the Ingmar Bergman movies… and on the Big screen. And the only place to do that was in Paris! We spent maybe two or three years, just going to see films. Paris is the best city to see films. There are so many cinemas there. Every year you have a festival showing All the Bergman films, so that was the most important time in my life for me as a director, you know, but maybe even then, I didn’t know I wanted to be a film director…

AT Even then..

GB Even then, I didn’t know! I was just driven by this desire to see cinema.

AT Who would you say is an influence- you mentioned Bergman, Tarkovski..

GB Different moments of my life I would say different directors, but… Italian directors, really.

AT Such as…

GB Bertolucci. The way that Bertolucci worked with colours, for example. That is something I found myself drawn to, because you see, born in Nice, growing up there we are just so close to the Italian border, you know? I am French but…

AT Very close to the Italian sensibility..

GB Yes, yes, we are very close there to the Italian sensibility. We share the same coast, the water… And I did love Visconti, Fellini, Bertolucci… all those.

AT More than the French..?

GB More than the French, yes, definitely. More than the French.

AT Interesting. So you made a few short films. How did your first feature film get off the ground.. Disparus? (Disappeared).

GB Disparus, yes, (sighs) it was a big fight, because it was set in the Thirties, a kind of political love story.. it was a very ambitious film. Period films are very difficult to do anyway, as you always need more money; it was a kind of thriller. It was based on a true story too. There, the Surrealists and the Trotskyists were very close to each other in Paris before the war (1938), so there was political intrigue and infiltration. It was a big movie, which I also produced.

AT ..The story came from a news article?

GB A book. A novel..

AT Going back to Renoir- you live in New York too, I believe?

GB Yes..

AT When you go to a museum, is it the art that attracts you, or the space?

GB I going for the walk inside… actually, you know what? I think I am going to a museum, as others go to a church. So… it’s the whole thing…

AT A combination..

GB A combination of the place, the art… because what I have found in a museum is that it is a holy place for the ‘genius of humanity’, you know? So I need to talk with the dead. It is a way to talk to the dead artist, you know, it’s a way to say ok, I am the one -following the chain…

AT The thread.

GB The thread. You know that is something very important for me now. Because I am not trying to break everything (that has gone before, in order) to do something new.. Not that. When you are young, it seems like you can do that, you can break every rule and do something Totally new. Now, I love the idea that I belong to a long chain of history..

AT …Continuity.

GB A continuity, of course.

AT So, what’s next for you now?

GB Yes, I am working on a different possibility in France. It will be a European movie, an 18th Century movie..

AT Ok, a Period piece in France… because I know before, you worked with the Americans and did an American film (Afterwards 2008).. how was that?

GB I like the American landscape. I like the people. The idea of America, it is nice because it is a melting pot; New York, Paris, London, Berlin, they have this and I like it. But I find New York to be more similar to London than it is to Atlanta. Living in a big city, there is a similarity.. Also different (life) experiences.
The Americans are very efficient at working.. and that is good, but there is no flexibility! That is my main problem with them. Because I am working with a Taiwanese DoP (Ping Bin Lee) and this is very different. But he works only with me in the West.. he works in Japan, in China, in Korea. But we work in a very similar way. We try to stay flexible. We work with a small crew; I am extremely precise the details, hair, costume, makeup, everything coming into my frame needs to be checked precisely, but I don’t use storyboards.
Whether I use track and what kind of shot, I decide at the last minute.

AT You like to see what the actors are going to do first..

GB Because you don’t know how an actress is going to move from here to there, so how can you decide months before how you are going to shoot it?! And maybe it is going to be sunny, or cloudy, raining, so how do you know where you are going to position things until you get there? I love to stay flexible.
As a filmmaker I am working with living elements; Weather, human beings. We are not puppets. So I don’t want to be too strict or lock it all down with papers and storyboards. That’s the problems with the Americans!

AT So, over there, the producers are wanting everything just so..
GB Not just the producers, everyone! Even the actors! Everyone in America hates improvisation.. they hate it!

AT The actors? I thought maybe with John Malkovich…

GB Ah, Malkovich, no, he was very good. He is great, he is great.. he understood, but then, he has worked in France alot and lived in France for a while. They don’t like it. They like rules, you know, they need everything to be nailed down. But then, they are very effective, you know, they are very good at what they do. They really need to organise it. They really believe in the system. This is why they made the computer, because they are very good at needing everything organised… with them there is only black and white.

AT There’s no greys…

GB Yes, exactly.

AT Well…. I think we are done.

GB Ok, great!

AT Thank you very much indeed. I didn’t wish to pry too much, but I was interested and you were a total mystery, there is nothing of you online so…

GB No, but it is ok, I am a very private person, you know. But I understand. It is all about the movies, so that is ok.

RENOIR IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Chasing the Wind (2013) Jag etter Vind 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Director and Writer: Rune Denstad Langlo

Cast: Marie Blokhus, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Frederik Meldal Norgaard, Sven Bertil Taube, Tobias Santelmann

91min NORWAY Drama

CHASING THE WIND is an intimate family drama, small in scale yet far-reaching in its themes of human communication and the difficulties of family ties. Set in an idyllic part of Norway on the Western archipelago of Afjord, this melancholy piece of filmmaking is rendered even more so by the poignantly delicate occasional score composed by Ola Kvernberg, The gentle seascapes and verdant summer landscapes are imaginatively lensed by cinematographer Phillip Ogaard’s on the widescreen and in gorgeously framed close-ups, shot through with muted shades of aqua, taupe and blond reflecting its marine location.

Anna hasn’t seen her family for almost ten years. When her grandmother dies, she returns home to face her grandfather (Sven-Bertil Taube) and the ones she left behind. In the week leading up to the funeral, as numerous setbacks confound proceedings, Anna is forced to reconsider how she lives her life. The narrative is driven forward purely by the simple often troubled conversations between Anna, her grandfather and her ex-boyfriend Lundgren (Anders Baasmo Christiansen). Occasional chats with locals help to add texture and context, reflecting the insular prejudice of communities all over the world.

Chasing the Wind is a lightly bittersweet love story that shows how communicating with family is the most difficult engagement of all. The film’ s humour emerges from the frustration and anger felt by the characters when they can neither reach or comprehend each other. The melancholy is connected to their realization that the longer they wait to tell the truth to more it hurts all concerned. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 2ND NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

Fourth UK Portuguese Film Festival (2013)

THE FOURTH UK PORTUGUESE FILM FESTIVAL offers a cross-colonial cocktail of exotic narratives from Angola, Guinea Bissau, Portugal and Brazil, at various venues across London from 27 November to 8 December.

From Angola, Zeze Gamboa’s THE GREAT KILAPY (2011) follows a charismatic conman who becomes a national liberation hero at the expence of the Portuguese colonial administration in the run-up to Angolan Independence in the seventies.

THEY’LL BE BACK (2012) is debut helmer Marcelo Lordello’s award-winning coming-of-age drama that follows a privileged and rebellious Brazilian teenager on a journey of discovery in the streets of Brazil.

Based on interviews and visual memories of a soldier, mercenary and hit-man, Salome Lamas’s documentary NO MAN’S LAND (2012) offers a poignant and personal insight into Portugal’s colonial history from the sixties to the recent past.

A slice of reality is served up in HOUSEMAIDS (2013): an experimental documentary that looks at the trials and tribulations of Brazil’s cleaners. Shot by their employers’ kids, with the help of filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro, it offers a unique perspective on everyday domestic life in Brazil’s wealthy and no so wealthy homes.

THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (2012) is a mournful, noirish paean to this exotic Portuguese colony, now a glitzy mecca for gambling, here seen through the eyes of a man who travels back to his homeland to help a friend in need.

A landmark of Portuguese New Wave cinema – THE CIRCLE (1970) is Portugal’s answer to MAD MEN. Marta looks for personal and financial freedom in the male-dominated world of sixties advertising.

In A GIFT OF TEARS (2012) – A princess and a hunter meet on a fantastical and symbolic journey through Portuguese history.

They’ll be a chance to talk to the filmmakers in the Q&A sessions following each screening. MT

THE FOURTH UK PORTUGUESE FILM FESTIVAL takes place at the ICA, Cine Lumiere, Genesis Cinema and Barbican.utopiafestival_programme

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013) 10th Romanian Film Festival in London 2013

CAND SE LASA SEARA PESTE BUCARESTI SAU METABOLISM

Director/writer: Corneliu Porumboiu

Diana Avramut, Mihaela Sirbu, Alexandru Papadopol

89min Romanian with English subtitles Drama

Do directors always cast women they fancy in their films?. Of course they do, and preferably those they can impress with their finely -tuned intellect. But they try not to get too involved until the end of the shot.

Here director Paul (Bogdan Dumitrache – Child’s Pose) is so taken and obsessed with his lead that delays proceedings film-wise (feigning illness – an ulcer) in order to clinch a romantic deal with Alina (Diana Avramut). So, a simple love story gains banal intricacy as is dissected to within an inch of its life as every single subtle nuance of the script is analysed in minute detail between the two: dinner, differing World cuisines, language and finally her body come under the same scrutiny of approach so he can spends as much time with Alina as possible, during the lengthy filming project – even forcing her (albeit fully-clothed) to act out shower scenes in excruciating detail, over-intellectualising every element of life in the country, through cinema. This is meta cinema but the approach feels stifling, ponderous; constricting any freedom of movement and Paul’s haunched figure chain smokes through the entire feature – so clearly evolution has moved a long way. And what has Alina learnt in drama school having neither heard of Antonioni or Monica Vitti. Evidently, these are sophisticated times in Bucharest.

Tudor Circea confines his camera to long-take static shots through small openings; doorways; car interiors or dinner tables always centring on the characters and their lengthy dialogues. Very similar in style to his previous feature, Police, Adjective this metaphysical style piece won’t appeal to all audiences but nevertheless masterfully explores the connection between truth in (male/female) relationships and reality in Romanian cinema. Keats or even Karl Popper would have a field day but possibly they’d be happier in a field. MT

WHEN NIGHT FALLS ON BUCHAREST OR METABOLISM SCREENS DURING THE 10TH ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON AT THE CURZON SOHO. TICKETS HERE

Jeune et Jolie (2013)

Director: Francois Ozon

Cast: Marina Vacth, Geraldine Paihas, Frederic Pierrot, Fantin Ravat

95min French with English subtitles Drama

Student prostitution has come under the spotlight recently with dazzling insight from Emmanuelle Bercot’s edgy Parisian drama Student Services (2012) to Malgorzata Szumovska’s intimate look at female grads on the game, Elles (2011). Here the prolific and provocative French auteur, Francois Ozon, offers up his sultry and mischievous story of Isabelle.

Once again the setting is Paris but JEUNE ET JOLIE (YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL) is a coming-of-age drama with a twist. Avoiding winsome innocence, it focuses on a very confident, hard-edged 17-year-old from an educated background, played vampishly by French model Marine Vacth.

As the title suggests, Isabelle is a good-looking young woman who’s comfortable with her nascent sexuality and the power it enables her to wield, not least in flirtations with her mother’s partner who shares their Parisian home. Unmoved by her first sexual encounter Isabelle realises how to turn this disaffection to her advantage in financing her studies. Nothing new there. But Ozon cleverly keep us guessing about the power that women hold in the sexual arena. And although it appears that Isabelle is fearless and calculating, he shrouds her emotions in mystery leaving us to wonder whether this girl is really in control of her life and her relationships as much as she would have us believe. Sexually available and canny she may be, but she is still immature emotionally and this comes across in Vacth’s subtle performance.

Ozon provocatively portrays the upmarket setting with its glossy visuals as being quite normal but then he blows apart this facade slowly teasing us with glimpses of reality as the drama unfolds. Isabelle’s dynamic with her mother (Isabelle Paihas) is a fascinating one. Initially the daughter appears to have the power but eventually emerges as the weaker of the pair, accurately reflecting the inner turmoil of adolescence but also examining the fading power of female sexuality as we saw before with in Juliette Binoche’s clever performance as Anne in ELLES.

Well-crafted and competent, this is a challenging film that asks questions, leaving the viewer open to doubt about the normality of a situation that on the surface feels straightforward but on reflection starts to raise complex questions about the nature of adolescence, innocence and female desire. MT

10th Romanian Film Festival in London 28 November – 2 December 2013

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Only God Forgives (2013)

Dir: Nicolas Winding Refyn | Cast: Kristen Scott Thomas, Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke | 90mins Denmark/France

For sheer cinematic brilliance and artistic style, Nicolas Winding Refyn’s Bangkok-set revenge tale really set the night on fire at its Cannes premiere back in 2013, dividing critics and polarising opinion. Some derided it for its cold brutality and lack of emotion but Heli was equally violent, gratuitously so, and won an award.

Only God Forgives is all about controlled emotion, seething under the surface of Refyn’s glittering jewel-box of visual tricks: brooding resentment, latent anger, moody scorn and dysfunctional lust also join the party in a thriller seething with a pervasive sense of dread, heightened by a dynamite score.

The performances are stylised, mannered and supremely elegant: Ryan Gosling, who runs a Thai boxing club, very much serves the film rather than stars in it, wearing a sharp suit and the expression of a frightened rabbit as the submissively loyal son of Kristen Scott Thomas’s vampish mother and drug baroness, Crystal. She’s a woman at the top of her game, her two sons are trophies she toys with dispassionately.

We first see her arriving in Bangkok to demand retribution for the murder of her ‘first son’ Billy (Tom Burke) on the grounds of his raping and killing a local teenager. “I’m sure he had his reasons” she claims, very much her own woman. It’s a superbly entertaining performance and one which should have won her Best Actress. Sporting a long blond wig and killer heals, she is every bit as sexy, poised and alluring as any actress half her age, or less.

Against advice, she hires a hit man to take out Chang (Pansringarm), the local police chief responsible for the killing of her son Billy. But the plan backfires and Chang turns the tables on Crystal and her agent (Gordon Brown) who is tortured and killed in possibly one of the most inventive and exquisitely painful deaths in cinema history, all playing against a glimmering back-drop of the lacquered night club interior. Glamorous hostesses look on motionless and expressionless in compliance with their oriental culture of self control.

Only God Forgives glides gracefully along, each frame an expertly composed, perfectly balanced, a shimming masterpiece. Punctuated by brusque episodes of savage violence, it epitomises a world of clandestine doings and shady characters suggested but not fully fleshed-out, adding an exotic mystique to the piece rather than detracting from it, leaving room for the imagination to wander, to speculate and to dream. It’s a world where evil meets evil and no one is up to any good.

Nicolas Winding Refyn’s points out “We must not forget that the second enemy of creativity, after having ‘good taste’ is being safe”. This is not a safe film, it’s a daring, exciting and malevolent. MT

NOW ON MUBI | OUT ON DVD

Day of the Flowers (2013)

Director: John Roberts Writer: Eirene Houston

99mins Rom com UK

Cuba-set and gorgeous to look at, this tender chick-flick comedy opens with a pair of bickering Glaswegian sisters attending their father’s funeral in the grim Scots town. Rosa (Eva Birthistle) is a revolutionary spirit unlike Allie (Charity Wakefield), who’s a self-confessed, fashionable ‘girlie’. But when they discover their stepmother (Phyllis Logan) intends to turn dad’s ashes into a golf trophy, they steal the urn and head for a sun-filled trip to Havana in homage to their father, who once dabbled in the revolution during the seventies.

With Rosa’s best friend Conway (Bryan Dick) in tow, they arrive in the Caribbean Island where their taxi breaks down and the ashes are confiscated by dodgy Police. But it’s not all bad. Once the rumba rhythms kick in, they let their hair down with two locals: the slightly leery Ernesto (Christopher Simpson) and decent dance instructor Tomas (Carlos Acosta).

Light-hearted and sun-drenched this may be, but as Eirene Houston’s debut script works overtime to spice up the search for the ashes with local politics and the complications of romance between rich girlies from Europe and poor local dudes, implausible elements surface and the affair becomes too complicated.

Performances are mixed with Acosta coming across well in his debut screen role. As a relaxed and convincing love interest, he gives the film international appeal, although his dance turns are minimal. The girls are less engaging possibly because their characters lack real dynamism in the first place. Conway doesn’t really get much to work with. DAY OF THE FLOWERS is best seen as a musical trip through the softly alluring island of Cuba, sumptuously lensed by Vernon Leyton to Stephen Warbeck’s catchy rumba rhythms. MT

DAY OF THE FLOWERS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM NOVEMBER 29, 2013

Concrete Night (2013) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Pirjo Honkasalo; Cast: Johannes Brotherus, Jari Virman, Annelie Karpinnen

Finland 2013, 92 min.

Teenager Simo lives with his much older brother Ilkka and his alcoholic mother in a cramped high rise block flat in the outskirts of Helsinki. The film starts with a dream: he sits in a train, driving over a bridge which collapses, leaving him drowning in his bed. Simo has an ambivalent relationship with both: on the one hand he admires his tough brother (who is going to prison for a drug offence), on the other hand Simo fears that he will end up like him. His love for his mother is offset by her neglect and near permanent drunkenness. Simo is slim, and his movements are effeminate; he is well aware of this and fears he will be mistaken for a homosexual.

In the opposite block lives a man who the brothers call ‘poof’, even though they have nothing but their prejudice to determine his sexual orientation. Illka has a bad influence on his younger brother, telling him “that women liked to be hit”. Later we see Illka abusing and degrading his girl friend Vera. Their mother is afraid (seemingly without reason), that Illka might commit suicide – but it turns out that it is Simo who needed her help. When he is visiting the neighbour they called a homosexual. Simo’s fear of being mistaken for one leads to violence, his dream becoming reality.

This is the first feature for fifteen years of 66-year-old Pirjo Honkasalo, who is well known in her homeland for her documentaries. The film is based on a novel by Pirko Saisio, who also wrote the script for Honkasalo’s last feature. CONCRETE NIGHT is shot in black and white and is stunning to look at. F W Murnau would be proud to have directed it, had he still been alive. The characters live in shadows, the only light trying to get in is artificial and deflected. Even when the brothers make the trip into central Helsinki, it never gets properly light. The acting is sparse, reminding us of the early films of British realism of the 60s.

The landscape surrounding the estate is gloomy, reassembling some giant tip where everything has been dumped and discarded, including the people. The weather is harsh and unforgiving like everything else this film. Honkasalo’s use of restrictive dialogue strongly evokes the characters mistrust of feelings; their fear is couched in latent violence. In spite of this, there are moments when he camera shows Simo in a poetic, even lyrical way. Although these moments are short, they give us an idea of what could have been. A small masterpiece, but utterly depressing. AS

Killing Oswald (2013)

Dir.: Shane O’Sullivan

Documentary

USA 2013, 102 min.

It is not so much the premise of this film – namely that Harvey Lee Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy, but was merely the executioner in a conspiracy – but the material surrounding the life of Oswald, that makes this documentary well worth watching, although a tightening up of the edit would have been welcome.

Told collage-style with archive interviews, intercut original photos, helmer O’Sullivan names George De Mohrenschildt and David Atlee-Phillips as two of Oswald’s CIA handlers. But the most damming statement is Oswald’s own admission in a radio interview, when he talks about his time in the USSR, stating “that he was under the protection of the US government” before correcting himself. Equally revealing is a remark by Bannister, a CIA operator in Dallas, who when asked, on which side Oswald was fighting in the battle of the Castro/Anti-Castro movements, answered that “Oswald is one of us”.

Actors play the Oswald part and some other participants, which makes it slightly more difficult to follow the already enough protracted narrative, but with the help of excellent documentary footage one just gains enough insight into the life of a man, who ironically was diagnosed as a juvenile of having “a vivid fantasy life”.

Born in 1939 in New Orleans, he never knew his father, though it is of interest to know, that he had strong connections with the mob. When he entered the Marine Corps in 1956, he had visited 12 different schools with out gaining a high school diploma. In the Marines he worked as a radar operator; at the height of the U2 Spy missions, when the US planes flew over the USSR. Here Oswald’s story becomes curiously interesting because in 1959 he was discharged from active service, but was travelling to Russia a month later, a trip planned well ahead. We really have to ask the question why the US security agencies would have allowed a member of the army, who was connected with security operations like U2, to leave for the USSR at the height of Cold War paranoia.

Oswald denounced his US citizenship and was sent to Minsk to work at an Electronic factory. In March 1961, Oswald married Marina Prusakova, a 19 year old student. But in letters home Oswald wrote that he was bored in Russia and wanted to return to the USA, which he did in June 1962, settling in Dallas/Fort Worth. Again one must ask the question, why he was allowed home without any questions – surely the FBI/CIA would have had a say in this?. In March 1963 Oswald was photographed holding a rifle and some Trotskyist newspapers. A month later he ‘attempted to kill’ the retired US Major General Walker, a well known right wing agitator, who was in a feud with the Kennedy brothers, in his home. Oswald missed from 30 m out, shooting through the window. The police found no suspects. Oswald returned to New Orleans in the same month, posing alternatively as a Castro supporter for ‘Fair Play for Cuba’ and a member of the anti-Castro organisation ‘Crusade to Free Cuba Committee’. He continued this charade until September, when he arrived in Mexico City, to ask for a visa to Cuba and the USSR – claiming that he again had changed his mind and wanted to live in the USSR. Unfortunately for Oswald CIA handlers, Oswald never made it to the embassy, and the CIA had to sent another agent, who did not resemble Oswald to the embassy – a fact which FBI director Hoover had to admit to President Johnson after the Kennedy assassination. In October Oswald returned to Dallas, working for the Texas School Book Depository, from its sixth floor the shots killing Kennedy were supposedly fired.

Oswald’s CIA file was flushed down the toilet in Dallas by the agency.

Hannah Arendt (2013) Now on DVD

Director: Margarethe von Trotta Writers: Pam Katz and Margarethe von Trotta

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Axel Milberg, Janet McTeer

103 mins Germany Drama German/English

Hannah Arendt, the eponymous real-life subject of this well-meaning biopic, was a political theorist who studied under a series a great twentieth century philosophers, including Jaspers, Husserl and Heidegger. Born in Germany in 1906, the Jewish Arendt fled her home country amidst the rise of pre-war anti-Semitism, finally settling in America. Among the many important works Arendt would go on to produce were The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the Nazi HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel” \o “Schutzstaffel” SS who oversaw the deportation of Jews from Germany. It is Arendt writing the latter work which forms the basis of Hannah Arendt.

After persuading The New Yorker to send her to Jerusalem to cover Eichmann’s trial, Arendt is overcome by Eichmann’s sheer ‘mediocrity’, and unable to reconcile this with the ‘greatness’ of his crimes – thus leading her to develop her concept of ‘the banality of evil’. Expressing the concept in her New Yorker piece, alongside some ambiguous comments about the conduct of Jewish leaders during the war, Arendt unwittingly unleashed a tidal wave of controversy. As her friend Hans Jonas says in the film, Arendt turned the trial into a philosophy lesson, using it to raise important questions about the nature of evil. In reliving the story and controversy behind Arendt’s piece, Hannah Arendt shares these preoccupations, transferring Arendt’s ideas from the page to the screen.

The film’s key themes are neatly summarised by the darkness of the film’s opening, which shows Eichmann’s capture followed by a scene of Arendt smoking and thinking, lying alone in darkness – an apt visual metaphor for what’s to follow. And in perusing Arendt’s thoughts, the film seems to posit that her attempts to understand Eichmann were at least in part also an attempt to understand how Heidegger, her former mentor and lover, could have likewise become a member of the Nazi party.

It’s a very human motivation for a woman who was criticised for being ‘all arrogance and no feeling’, as one character says here. In attempting to try and show us Arendt’s mind at work, it could be argued that Hannah Arendt likewise fails to truly engage feelings. There are attempts: quickly sketched friendships and romantic exchanges, and yet when health troubles strike for both her husband and an old friend, neither moment carries the necessary dramatic impact. We’re constantly told how great Arendt is (students fawn over her, the editor of the New Yorker claims ‘she wrote one of the most important books of the twentieth century’) – and yet, as portrayed in the film, her humble, human side never feels truly exposed. Though we see her criticised and hounded, it feels like the film presupposes our sympathy, assuming Arendt’s likeability without the need to actually show it to us.

Thankfully, the power of the story, and the ideas ultimately win out, the film becoming powerful, gripping and thought-provoking. But it’s a shame that the film never engages emotions quite as successfully as it does the intellect. Alex Barrett.

HANNAH ARENDT IS SHOW AT THE EVERYMAN HAMPSTEAD, TRICYCLE KILBURN. WATERMANS ART CENTRE BRENTFORD, CURZON RENOIR and IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Aftermath (2012) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s holocaust-themed outing is inspired by Jan Gross’ book ‘Neighbours’ about the massacre during the Second World War of a Polish village’s Jewish inhabitants. This Polish ‘secret history’ is filmed in a contemporary timeframe (2000) and has the advantage of legendary cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s sumptuous visual treatment and an atmospheric and aptly-composed score by Jan Duszynski to keep the spooky storyline on a knife’s edge, thrumming with unexplained events and hostile characters. That said, it sometimes feels like Pasikowski has bitten off more than he can chew with this tale of two brothers, Franciszek and Jozef Kalina, who come face to face with rampant anti-semitism when they discover old Jewish gravestones put to use as road-pavings in their childhood village. The drama caused an uproar in Poland on its release due to its controversial storyline. And this is certainly one of the most important recent films concerning Jewish Polish history.

We first meet Franciszek Kalina (Ireneusz Czop) returning to the family farm after 20 years working in Chicago. His homecoming is spoilt when he finds the mood in the parochial village is distinctly unfriendly. The locals are still angry about him leaving of nearest and dearest in the lurch. But his brother Jozef (Stuhr), makes no effort to explain or make amends. As the brothers set to work removing the Jewish tombstones and replacing them in their own field, the villagers rise up in scenes of outrage and hostility, threatening to beat them, even savagely killing their pet dog. When the pair start to dig deeper into local history archives, they discover that there is more to this grave desecration than first meets the eye.

With Pawel Pawlikowski’s recent drama IDA winning Best Film at the London Film Festival 2013; interest in the holocaust shows no sign of abating and Pasikowski has chosen another good story for this screen adaptation. The problem is that Franciszek and Josef are fairly unappealing, one-dimensional characters and the brothers are difficult to engage with, despite their heroic campaign. This coupled with a total absence of any meaningful females leads (how can a village have no prominent women in Poland) apart from am occasional appearance of the local doctor and a brief vignette from a hospitalised old Jewish lady, makes this a very dry, male-orientated story. As such, it feels rather worthy and preachy rather than involving as an emotive drama; the only sympathy and contrast coming from the Catholic priest (Jerzy Radziwilowicz). As the action builds to an hysterical climax, there is also a shift in tone from straight drama to histrionic melodrama as almost implausible skeletons gradually tumble out a cupboard heaving with anti-semitic overtones. MT

AFTERMATH SCREENS AT THE TRICYLE ON 13TH NOVEMBER 2013 AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013

When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010) DVD

Director: Dirk Simon Director/Writers: Dirk Simon and Kirsten Riordan

With Youdon Aukatsang, Bhusang, Tenzin Choeying, The Dalai Lama

115min Documentary

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Dirk Simon’s worthy and colourful documentary on the Chinese occupation of Tibet has been several years in the making and excites visually with its exultant time-lapse sequences and aerial photographer of this magnificent part of the World. Simon offers up an impressive array of interviews with political activists, community leaders and luminaries such as the Dalai Lama to create an intelligent and thought-provoking piece of filmmaking and one that takes a pluralist view on the crisis with archive footage from both sides of the fence not just that of the Tibetan people, who appear engaging, inspiring and well-informed.

However, as is often the case with this type of documentary, Simon keeps re-enforcing the salient points of the debate, overstimulating the viewer with a plethora of facts accompanied by Philip Glass’s pounding and ubiquitous musical score (although well-composed) which ramps up and intensifies the emotional content leaving us with little space to process and consider the importance of his message.

In the hands of a documentary-maker such as Richard E Grant, there would have been time out for contemplation in silence. A more measured approach here and some judicious editing (at nearly two hours it’s overlong) would have made for a more engaging and effective experience. That said, there are interludes, such as the audience with the Buddhist oracle and listening to the Dalai Lama’s pearls of wisdom, that offer truly riveting viewing. MT

WHEN THE DRAGON FOLLOWED THE SUN IS OUT ON DVD FROM THE 9TH DECEMBER 2013

Cinema Paradiso – coming soon….

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Mirrors (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Marina Migunova; Cast: Viktoria Isakova, Roman Polyanskiy, Victor Dobronravov

Russia 2013, 130 min. Biopic Russian with English subtitles

Some brave Russian dramas will never reach mainstream audiences in their homeland such as WINTER JOURNEY. MIRRORS is one that probably should have stayed at home.

A biopic of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), MIRRORS is carried alone by Viktoria Isakova in the title role. With her strong performance she saves this overlong, often confusing and in the end not very truthful feature. Tsvetaeva was born into an upper-class Russian family. Her very strict mother died when she was 14, which was a liberation for Marina. At the age of 16 she studied at the Sorbonne, before returning to Russia, where she met Sergej Efron, a cadet, at a Black Sea town. She was 19 when they married. Her two first children Irina and Alya were born before the Russian Revolution. Whilst Efron was fighting at the front, and later for the White Army, Tsvetaeva suffered from near starvation in Moscow. She wrote poems glorifying the White Army and later emigrated via Berlin and Prague (where she had an affair with Konstantin Rodzevitch, a soldier and friend of her husband) to Paris. She suffered from Tuberculosis from 1925 onwards, bcause her life in the Russian émigré society in Paris was materially very unrewarding. Efron became homesick for Russia in Paris, and joined the NKDW (forerunner of the KGB), killing a man near Lausanne. In 1939 Marina followed Efron and her daughter Alya to Russia, where she killed herself in August 1941, after being notified by the authorities of the death of her husband.

It is always difficult to show the written work of a genius in a feature film, and Migunova, like many before her, fails the task. We hear voice-overs of Tsvetaeva’s poems, but mainly we see a rather affected woman, craving for affection and making scenes about banalities. Her husband is portrayed as a weakling, who suffers for his love for his wife and his sudden conversion to communism remains totally unexplained. These rather one-dimensional characters act in a rather well set up design of diverse stages of poverty, but they cannot compensate for the episodic nature of the narrative. Camera work is very conventional, mainly relaying on close-ups.

But the worst aspect of the film is its lack of truthfulness. To begin with, we never learn that Tsvetaeva gave her daughters Irina and Alya to an orphanage in Russia, in the misguided hope that they would be fed better there. Irina died, leaving the poet with a life-long trauma. And whilst we are shown the ménage-a-trois between Marina, Sergej and Konstantin in Prague at length (even though it lasted not much more than a year), Migunova leaves out totally more important personal encounters of the poet, all of which fond their way into her most celebrated work. Soon after her marriage she had an affair with Osip Mandelstam, and between1912 and 1917 she was the lover of Sofia Parnock, both of them poets. And in 1917 Tsvetaeva met the actress Sofia Holliday, writing countless poems and a novella about their relationship, which lasted until 1917. Do we have to understand that the ideology of the leadership of the Russian Federation regarding homosexuality is being followed by its artists to the letter? AS

MIRRORS screens during the 7th Russian Film Festival 2013 on Friday, 15th November at The Mayfair Hotel London.

Pawel Edelman – Cinematographer

PE: Well I was born in Lodz (Poland), this is the famous city where the film school was founded and all the time when I was a young boy I was remembering that very special place in the city where all the great directors were learning how to make beautiful films so from the very first moment I was thinking about movies. And then, and this was by accident, my brother gave me a camera and I didn’t think about making stills or even movies at that time, let alone cinematography, but it was such a great pleasure that I decided to go to the film school (which was then funded by the Government) and it all started like that. It you’ve even seen The Promised Land by Wajda, it was filmed in the city of Lodz. It was industrial, full of red brick, dull buildings but the only place that was shining was the film school and that’s why everybody wanted to go there.

Q: Lódz is not only know for the film school but it’s the only city that has a festival aimed at cinematography, the famous Camerimage Festival that takes place each November. Was it natural that you were always going to study there, rather than some other place? Was it because you wanted to follow in the footsteps of Wajda and Polanski?

PE: Well of course, I never imagined that I would go somewhere else, from the very first moment I knew that this was where a young Polish filmmaker should go.

Q: Tell us about the training there and how you ended up working towards cinematography?

PE: Well Lódz was a very special film school. Right from the beginning, we started making a black and white film on 35mm and all the films during my training there were only made on 35mm which was very rare because all the other schools during my training were using 16mm, a smaller camera, so that was the first difference about Lodz. The second was that we had a professional crew; we had gaffers, camera assistants and grips, so from the first year we had to co-operate with those people which was a great training because later on when we started working on professional productions we already had some tricks and knew how to handle the crew, which is one of the most important elements if you’re going to be a good DoP, so we had some great teachers and we made some fantastic friends. So just after film school I started to shoot features with my colleague directors, which was fantastic.

Q So let’s move on now to one of the major collaborators of your career, (Roman Polanski), and it’s somebody who I want to come back to later because this was your international breakthrough.

But first, let’s show a clip of the film you made with Andrzej Wajda, that was the starting point to Hollywood:

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ED: Yes, and that’s why I wanted to show you this Pan Tadeusz clip (of the Last Foray in Lithuania (1999)) because it was about the 10th film I did in Poland and probably the one that attracted the attention of Roman Polanski, because after that he called me and asked me to join him in The Pianist (2002) so that was the link between my Polish period of my career and the international one.

Q Before we look at The Pianist I want to find out how exactly you defined your role in the making of all these films. Where you someone who involved yourself very early on with the script-reading with the director and the actors? How did you start to get a vision for the film?

ED: That was the good thing about Lodz film school, we were working most of the time with the directors. After finishing film school I started working with my friend Wladyslaw Pasikowski, I think we’ve made 8 movies together, and the films we made together were like a stylistic breakthrough in Poland and they were very popular. Wladyslaw was like a star. We were working on the script, talking about the locations, scouting together, collaborating on the writing and that tradition is something very special at that school. Together we made Kroll (1991); Pigs (1992); Psy 2: Ostatnia crew (1994); Bitter-Sweet (1999); Demony wojny wed ug Goi (1998); Operacja Samum (1999); Reich (2001); Poklosie (2012).

Q: And does this make things much easier for you when working on the film?

ED: Of course it does: it’s interesting to be involved as early as possible, to know the main subject and the themes to be a part of the whole machinery of the movie-making process, which makes you (as a DoP) more involved and in the centre of the process.

Q: So we come to The Pianist, which won you a César and also the Eagle Polish Film Award 2003 for best cinematography and numerous nominations leading to your becoming Hollywood Cinematographer of the Year in 2005. What were the initial meetings with Polanski like?

ED: Roman is a director who knows exactly what he wants. We didn’t have a long conversation at the beginning, we just met very briefly in Berlin, because that’s where the movie was to be shot, in Berlin and the second part in Warsaw. We were briefly talking about the style of the film and the only thing was said was that it should be as natural and as documentary (in style) as possible and everyday when I went on set I kept in mind that it should be as simple as possible. Because if I can make it like that it will be believable.

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Q: I mentioned my interest about the relationship between the DoP, the director and the film editor and then tensions between them all. How much did you and Roman Polanski speak about the way you were going to shoot this scene in terms of how it was going to eventually appear with the close screen shots of the actor in the room and then the camera going outside to the streets below?

PE Roman’s way of working is always the same. We don’t know too much about the scenes before we meet with the actors. Every morning there’s a meeting with the DoP, the directors and the actors, we start from scratch with the actors reading the script and he’s (Roman) placing them in the room, in that case. They rehearse the scene over and over again and then after the rehearsals, when everybody knows what they’re doing, we look at the scene created by them and we discuss how to film it. We don’t know what will happen later ’til after the rehearsals and I just love that type of work because everything goes naturally from the script and from the actors.

Q: And is that the way it worked even from the “documentary-type” style you tried to follow in The Pianist?

PE: Yes, nothing is pre-planned, everything seems to be absolutely natural.

Q: So The Pianist led you into Hollywood and how would say that changed things from the point of view of working style? Did you find it more enjoyable, or did you find yourself (being) more of a cog in a large wheel?

PE: Definitely there’s a huge difference between making films in Europe and making them in America. Making films in America you become part of the ‘film industry’, making films in Europe is working with friends, and my friend directors. And this is a totally different type of activity. In the US, you’re part of the big machinery, in Europe you’re working in a creative process with your friends. And that’s always going to be more fun, working with friends.

Q: It’s great that we’ve got two examples of American Film clips to show you and, in a way, you couldn’t get a more different visual style. We’re going to start with All The King’s Men (2006) by Steven Zaillian and the second is Ray (2004) which you made with Taylor Hackford.

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Q: Ray uses a very soft palette of rich colours, embued with the warm South and reflecting the mellow feel of jazz music but with All The King’s Men you’ve used a very cool steely palate with interesting use of shadow and harsh. Could you talk about how you and Steven Zaillian created the look of this film?

PE: I think the idea was ‘German Expressionist‘ because we all had this picture in our minds on those beautiful black and white films and that’s why we wanted to go with this feel of going away from colour, being de-saturated, not strong and we wanted to use a harder light intentionally to show the hardness and cruelty of that type of politics. Things are a little different now and times have changed and I think the audience likes this type of commercial films rather than the artistic, ambitious type of film.

Q: Just taking that point further, do you think that there’s still a very strong visual culture in Poland? In the UK, I think because we come out of a culture of theatre and writing, there’s a more literary culture but I don’t think there’s ever been a strong visual style here compared to Poland. Is the visual aesthetic still there in contemporary Polish film?

PE: Obviously there’s a huge tradition of classical cinema in Poland and this is Wajda and friends. I was lucky to meet Andrzej and have been with him on many films and he is one of the directors who’s thinking more about the visual side and how the movie will look but I can’t say that this tradition is existing in every single section in Poland. It’s sad but it’s gone. I think that the story has to visible, that’s the most important thing. I wouldn’t like to be remembered as a guy who did good pictures on bad films, I would rather be remembered for good films with bad pictures and I’m being serious (laughs). I’m not fighting for something that’s mine, I’m fighting for the characters, I’m fighting for the scenes, that’s why the composition is good because of something, because of the accent you should put on somebody or some element that should be there and very visible in the film.

Q: So to sum up, looking back over your career so far do you think you have a specific visual style or do you feel your imput is ABSOLUTELY dictated by the material you’re working on?

PE: Yes, as I’m getting older I believe that the script gives all the answers: you just take the script and feel script and smell it…that’s how I think of it. The script dictates the solutions.

Q: Moving on, let’s talk about Roman Polanski and about the very strong story of your second collaboration with him in 2005, Oliver Twist.

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PE: Yes this production had effects that had to be larger than life. We were 90 days shooting this movie in Prague. The costumes were highly exaggerated and we used more make-up on the actors. To create that special look we made use of candle-light, and locally placed lanterns. There were loads of people dragging hundreds of lanterns and different lights around the set just to give the correct feel to the lighting, it was very intense and special.

Q: And moving on to The Ghost Writer (2010) tell us about the way you created the visual look for that film?

PE: There was clouds, and we were waiting for clouds all the time and there was no sunlight or hard light and my goal was to build a contrast, sometimes quite high levels of contrast using only the soft light and also a de-saturated palette of colours.

Q You go from a very short depth of field to a very wide lens in the scene of Ewan McGregor and Olivier Williams when they’re walking along the beach:

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PE: Well this is a different subject: choice of lenses. Roman is using only two lenses, no more. Not everybody know this. For each film we were just picking two lenses and just shooting everything with them. This is very rare.

Q: Why does he do that?

PE: Because he feels that if he switches from long lenses to short lenses for the shot, there will be no consistency for the shot, for the look he’s going for, so in The Pianist we were only using 25 and 32. In Oliver Twist, because of the larger that life idea we were using little lenses like 21 to 25 then for The Ghost Writer we came back to 25 and 32. And nobody else is like that. I’ve never worked with another director who’s so strict, who picks such a small variety of optics.

Q: Let’s look at another clip of The Ghost Writer – one where Ewan McGregor is involved in a car chase.

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Q: This is an action sequence. Do you find it pleasurable, upping the ante and working with more dynamic action scenes?

PE: Roman is very precise. Everything grows from the rehearsals, tons of rehearsals, and there’s a little story about this, not about that film but about The Pianist. There is a scene there when 2000 extras are leaving the ghetto and the Germans are putting them into carriages. We had only two days in the schedule to prepare and shoot that scene and it was a complex and very complicated and yet we wanted it to appear very natural. And it was costing tons of money each days with these 2000 extras and on the first day Roman was just rehearsing again and again the producers were going crazy because by the end of the day we hadn’t shot even one metre of film. So on the second day we shot the whole scene very quickly because, after the tons of rehearsals, we know exactly what we wanted. And everything is like that with Roman. Things that appear terrible complex and difficult just seem to be suddenly be so easy and natural and that’s his way of doing complex scenes.

He likes it when the situation is limiting him and when people are difficult and when there’s no time left. At the moment we are shooting Venus In Fur, which is about limitations and only has only two people in real time in the theatre, which is limiting and this is what excites him.

Q: What sort of equipment do you like using?

PE: I think all the cameras are different. I was just used to using Panavision, but for the last 3 or 4 films I was using Arricam which are better and lighter and wellmade and for lens I use Cooks 4. In Carnage we used 25 and 32.

Q: And how do you capture the feel of a film in the opening scene?

PE: When I’m reading the script for the first time, I try to get a feeling: I’d say I literally smell it – for example no sun, only clouds, black and white, handheld, It’s the basic imagery that comes out from the lines in the script. And as soon as I’ve caught it I start the film and I’m not doing the film until I’ve captured the feel or style of the script because otherwise i don’t know what to do.

Q Have you ever had to compromise your vision to make a film?

PE: My point of view is that the images shouldn’t be beautiful per se. The images have to capture the film, they have to serve the film and it’s not a sacrifice it’s just understanding my work. I don’t think beautiful pics are the best picture, the pics have to serve the general idea and style: handsome or not.

Q Give us an example of where you felt extremely happy with what you’d achieved on a film?

PE: It’s not like that. But there are always mistakes things i’d now in a different way.

Q: Do you prefer working on location or in a studio.

PE: Well on location it’s sometimes easier; you’re there in the surrounding and don’t have to work so hard to imagine the style but and it’s less boring because you’re moving around but on the other hand, the studio gives you the opportunity to control the film and you’re not waiting around for the weather. When I’m sitting around waiting for sun or clouds it’s hopeless and I want to be independent from the weather but then in the studio you always want to be in the other place!

Q: How do you feel about your relationship with editors? It is sometimes difficult?.

PE: I have to say that sometimes I have arguments with editors, especially nowadays (general laughter). Recently I’ve had experiences where they are making decisions about which takes to use; because nowadays everything is transferred on to tape including the take you dont want to use. The editor can choose bad takes that are out of focus or not the ones we chose at the time of shooting. So the editors decisions are technically wrong and I try to explain to them why they’re wrong but they are still going ahead and use the wrong material and it makes me furious. But I’m sure there are still good editors out there (laughs).

Q: Film or digital, which do you prefer?

PE: Yes, all the films so far have been on 35mm. I’ve shot one film on digital and that’s the last Polanski movie, Venus in Fur. Every time, for the last 7 years, before we start the movie we run the tests and all the time the winner was 35mm. And this time we ran the tests and the result came out that new digital Sony F65 was best. Roman and I agreed that this was the one to use for the first time. So we haven’t finished the movie yet and I still have to go through post production. But we’ll see if we’ve made the right decision when I see the final result. Or I’ll be crying (laughs).

Q: Do you find that using digital has effected your performance during the filmmaking process?

Digital is different, I must admit. Looking through the eyepiece used to be the best way to see the filming process but the digital cameras don’t have good eyepieces so you have to look at the shooting process and see the scene is on the monitor which is different, so you don’t operate the camera from the eyepiece anymore. The monitor shows you details, colours, contrast etc so it best to look at that.

Q: Tell us about your relationship with Andrzej Wajda?

PE: We have in Poland since the Second World War, two major film directors: one is Roman Polanski and the other is Andrzej Wajda and I’ve had the luck and the fortune to work with both of them and they’re both completely different, I must say but they are both great Masters: Andrzej is more intuitive and all about the visual side of the film, and his vision because before he was a painter, may be that’s why. Roman is an actor so he knows how to connect with and direct the actors in a very precise way and is very connected to the acting and re-hearsing process. And there is a difference because Andrjez is trying to solve political and social problems but Roman is more interested in telling stories that interest him. But they are both wonderful filmmakers coming from different perspectives.

Q: Do you find your relationship with Andrzej in more intuitive when you’re working with him. Over the last few decades of collaboration, do you find you know what he wants immediately when you start work.

PE: No. With Andrzej every day is an improvisation and completely different. Some days we are working on changes with the script. Others we are implementing these changes with the actors. I never know how it’s going to develop. With Roman, everything is very precise, close to the last detail which I also find very fun and very interesting. I have great pleasure in working with both of them.

Q: We are going to close with a clip from Katyn. Tell us why you want to close with this film.

PE: We wanted to show the mechanism of the crime. There was a great deal of improvision with actors and with the stunts and it was all shot very quickly and shows the cruelty of the situation, filmed with a handheld camera.

Q:Thanks very much Pawel Edelman for talking to us tonight.

PE: Thank you very much.

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PAWEL EDELMAN WAS SPEAKING AT THE BFI ON 14TH MARCH 2013.

Winter Journey (2013) London Lion Winner – 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Directors/Writers: Sergei Taramev, Liubov Lvova

Cast: Aleksei Frandetti, Evgeny Tkachuk, Vladimir Mishukov, Dmitry Mukhamadev, Andrei Tsymbalov

90min Drama Russian with English subtitles

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Winter Journey takes its title from Schubert ‘s “Winterreise” song cycle. The central character is Eric (Aleksei Frandetti), a young, gay classical singer, who is preparing for audition at the Moscow State Conservatory when he meets his nemesis, Lyokha (Evgeny Tkachuk).

One of the standouts at this year’s Russian Film Festival, the feature is unlikely to be widely screened in Russia due to issues surrounding Putin’s new law criminalising ‘gay propaganda’. But apart from a snatched kiss between Eric and the psychotic criminal he becomes involved with – there is very little to offend mainstream audiences but a great deal to entertain them in this quirky and visually engaging snapshot of Moscow’s contemporary bohemian scene.

In a snowbound Moscow, thawing round the edges – the voyeuristic camera offers insight into Moscow’s hard-bitten underworld: Cabaret venues, urban backwaters and waterways as well as the more traditional majestic architectural facades and panoramas of the capital. Reflecting the polarity that still exists in modern Russia, Lvokha’s disenfranchised world collides with Eric’s artistic one when their paths entwine during an altercation on a bus. Each leaves the scene with an item of the other’s property.

The story then follows them both: Lyokha gives an unflinching and raw performance full of anger and despair as he embarks on a brutally-violent crime-fuelled mission to survive on his wits from mugging young Russian yuppies to shedding tears of self-pity on hearing Eric’s rich singing voice.

Erik is more enigmatic as a member of Moscow’s romantic professional elite. Frandetti manages successfully to convey his ego-driven artistic sensibilities and his damaged psyche with considerable allure. Prone to bouts of drinking and smoking, he too appears to be on a journey of self-destruction; although a more ‘Romantic’ one. Caught up in a submissive relationship with a gay doctor; he hangs out with a crowd of cultured professionals- the most interesting of whom is Slava, who lives in an antique-strewn house and owns jewels purportedly inherited from the ‘Royal Family’.

Tkachuk won best actor for his role as the mercurial and ultra-violent psychopath who somehow pushes the buttons to ignite Eric’s passion. They scamper deliriously through the snow in the the film’s coruscatingly bleak dénouement, sumptuously evoked by Michael Krichman’s inventive visuals and enhanced by occasional bouts of the classical score highlighting the intense melancholia of the piece.

Directors Lvova and Taramasev are professional actors from a background of TV and film and this shows through in this directorial debut which aptly reflects the sentiments of Franz Schubert’s elegant yet mournful songs to piano composed when he was dying of syphilis. Perhaps the one entitled “Frozen Tears” best expresses the drama: “Frozen tears fall from his cheeks as he walks away, but the breast from which they arise is so burning hot with feelings that they should melt the winter ice completely”. MT

SCREENING AS PART OF THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON 2013

Parkland (2013) 70th Venice Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Peter Landesman; Cast: Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti, Colin Hanks, Mark Duplass, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, USA 2013, 93 min.

The only thing PARKLAND gets right is its timing: the 50^th anniversary year of JFK’s assassination. But it is nearly impossible to imagine such a dull realisation of one of history’s most dramatic moments. To start with, the acting is wooden, with everyone is hamming it up, like they think it should have looked on November 22^nd 1963. So we see Jackie clutching skull and brain parts of her husband, eyes wild. The trauma surgeon hammering away on JFK’s chest like a drummer; the nurse fetching a cross from the cupboard with all the solemnity of a papal ceremony; the CIA man dragging the coffin with the corpse through the plane door with the violence associated with American football players, just to underline their unwillingness for an autopsy.

But worst of all is the total lack of standpoint – Landesman declared in the press conference, that he just wanted to show the emotional impact of the tragedy on the main participants but not touch on the question of who shot the president. How anybody can be so wilfully naïve is hard to understand. To make a point, the filmmaker mentions none of 18 material witnesses of the shooting who died: six were shot, 3 died in car accidents, 2 committed suicide, 3 died of heart-attacks, just two from natural causes. Did the shooting not impact emotionally on their lives and those of their loved ones? And how can we judge the impact on Harvey Oswald, when Landesman leaves it open as to if he was the assassin or not – even though the Abraham Zapruder film (which is used in PARKLAND) shows clearly that JFK was shot from the grass hill and not from the fourth floor of the library, where Oswald was supposed to be.

PARKLAND’s film aesthetics top the list of conventional boredom and its supposedly naïve a-political message is disingenuous. Paul Giamatti convinces as Zapruder in a fine performance. Otherwise, this is one of the few films that can compete with any propaganda film – just by leaving out the truth. Make up your own mind. If you’re looking for more on the Lee Harvey Oswald story, KILLING OSWALD makes the intellectual argument and works an interesting companion piece to this dumbed-down Hollywood pap. ANDRE SIMONOWEICZ.

PARKLAND IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 22 NOVEMBER 22 NOVEMBER 2013

0 stars

In The Shadow (2012) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: David Ondricek; Cast: Ivan Trojan, Sebastian Koch, Sona Norisova, Jeri Stepnicka;

Czech Republic 2012, 106 min.

This Czech Republic Oscar entry 2013 is a film noir that takes us back to Prague 1953: Detective Hakl (Ivan Trojan) is working on a case of robbery where jewellery has been stolen, and a safe cracked open in a very unprofessional way. Kirsch, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, living in the Jewish Centre of Prague, seems to be the main suspect, but Hakl soon finds out, that he is only the fall guy in a conspiracy which leads to the top of the Prague Police. Hakl’s boss, soon to be promoted, has ‘arranged’ not only this crime, but also a robbery on a post office, where a huge amount is stolen, and witnesses, including a police officer, are killed.

All this is set up to prosecute members of the Jewish community as ‘Zionist agents, who rob the state to buy weapons for the Zionist state as part of a worldwide American conspiracy’. Hakl meets Zenke (Sebastian Koch), an Ex-SS man, who has returned from a Siberian prison, to help the Czech police with this case. Zenke, who can’t speak the native language, is shown as a piano-playing, cultured man, who flirts with Hakl’s wife Jilka and plays football with his son Thomas. Hakl confronts Zenke, but he can’t stop the show trial of the ‘Zionist conspirators’, and Zenke returns to Germany in a swap for a German spy.

This film has two sides: the brilliant aesthetics of the camera work; the sets (the film was shot in Lodz, Poland); the haunting music that echoes the sinister mood and the restrained but subtly-convincing acting. The bleak city; the grey buildings with the bullet marks of the Second World War; the lack of food and the dreariness of everyday life is wonderfully re-created. The camera follows Hakl, from hunter to being hunted though the labyrinths of a decaying city, where it is never really light. This is a true film noir, which catches the joyless atmosphere of Stalinism perfectly.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers have, in their justified grievance against the Stalinist state, made the plot rather unbelievable, by introducing a SS man, fresh out of a Siberian prison as the main helper of the Czech police. What help can the man give, when he can’t even speak the language of the country? Where did he get the information, since he came straight from Siberia? Why would the German’s swap him for a spy, since he has no value for them. There a no excuses for the excesses of Stalinist policies, their crimes against humanity are well documented. But the filmmakers don’t help their cause in making them looking worse, by introducing a SS man as their willing tool. Because we should not forget either, that the war criminals of the SS were sheltered by the West German state, helping them to avoid prosecution. And Anti-Semitism was as rife in Germany as well as in the rest of Europe, which is proven by the help of the police in all the countries occupied by Germany, helping the occupiers to organise the journeys of Jews to the extermination camps. A shame that such a visual feast depicting an important part of Czech and Jewish history is spoiled by an absurd plot. AS

Frances Ha (2012) Greta Gerwig Season

Dir/Wri : Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig | Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Esper, Adam Driver | 85’ US Drama

A kooky and charming twenty-something New York tale that could have been penned by Hal Hartley or even Woody Allen, Frances Ha is Noah Baumbach’s second collaboration with Gretwig who also stars in a comedy about an awkward girl and her complex passions. It was a critical smash hit for its star and her director.

Typically indie in feel and freshly shot in crisp black and white – with a large dose of chutzpah – it tells the story of a slightly jejune sofa-surfing dancer who is vulnerable yet determined to have fun in her quest for happiness. As Frances, Greta Gerwig gives a suberb performance that shows she’s much more clever than her friends give her credit for. It’s a stylish film and well worth a watch for its sharp script, authentic characterisation and sparky performances. MT

Greta Gerwig Season at the BFI

Watch Here

Kidd Life (2012) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

KIDD LIFE

Dir.: Andreas Johnsen, Cast: Nicholas Westwood aka Kidd;

Denmark 2012, 97 min. Music Documentary

Denmark, a country of reason and rationality, seems an unlikely place for a music phenomenon like Kidd (alias Nicholas Westwood), whose 2011 Hip-Hop song on the internet became an overnight sensation and paved the way for a short but meteoric career for him and his group. Born 1989 in Dundee, Scotland, to an alcohol-loving father (with whom Kidd still has issues), Westwood struggles to make the transition from boy to adult – his anarchic life style has no place for responsibility – a girlfriend complains that he made her pregnant against her will, but this message does not reach him, like everything else in his life – he can only take himself seriously.

After March 2011, when ‘Kysset med Jamel’ went viral on the internet, the group was invited to many festivals, including the prestigious Roskilde festival. Their (only) LP “Greatest Hits” reached No. 10 in the Danish charts. On New Years Eve 2011, after having performed at the Danish Music awards, Kidd announced that he was finished with music. True to his word, only one more single -‘Fetterlein’- followed in February 2012, reaching No. 15 in the Danish charts.

After one LP and four singles Kidd and his group fell back into total obscurity and Johnsen shows why: in diary-like scenes, we see the inability to connect with anybody: this permanent play-acting becomes a stylised life form, which becomes a substitute for the interactions of real life. We watch bewildered that Kidd can take himself so seriously, that he believes that all his comments really matter – even though he forgets them immediately, together with his outspoken provocation that leaders of the right-wing “Danish People’s Party”, according to him, deserve to be killed.

The film is shot mostly with a hand-held camera producing a particularly suitable mode of aesthetics, since the waving and sometimes out-of-focus images represent Kidd and his chaotic life style. Often we are reminded of the b/w slapsticks of the early cinema: Kidd lurches through space like one of the early silent stars on the run from their enemies. Hectic and without any sort of continuity, the film tries to catch the essence of Kidd, but he is always racing to another event, into another mood, needing another drug to speed up his life even further. The music of the group is secondary, but this is only right, since it is near accidental. The question of an identity for the rapper can’t be answered: this is a life in transit, fuelled by immaturity and self-centred monomania, which makes him more of a child than the adult he should be. He is not so much a shooting star, but a falling star. AS

KIDD LIFE SCREENS AT THE RIVERSIDE STUDIOS LONDON ON 1ST DECEMBER 2013. FOR FULL DETAILS SEE OUR PREVIEW

Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart (2012) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart (Laulu koti-ikävästä)

Director: Mika Ronkainen

Script: Mika Ronkainen

Producer: Ulla Simonen

Cast: Kai Latvalehto, Tauno Latvalehto, Oiva Latvalehto

Sweden Finland 90mins 2012 Doc

Musician Kai appears to have it all: A loving wife, success in ‘Aknestik’ a well-known Finnish rock band and son called Oiva. But as a Finn forced to grow up in Sweden, before moving back to Finland as a teenager, he retains a deep seated unhappiness; a sense of not belonging that runs through a great many Finns forced to do the same journey for work reasons.

Some 600,000 Finns emigrated to Sweden in the 60’s and 70’s and found their new life in a foreign country with a strange language and a less than welcoming reception. All hard going.

Now in his forties, Kai asks his father Tauno, the architect of his forced exile to take him back to Sweden to retrace the steps and rake over memories in the hope perhaps of expunging the ghosts. Suffusing this road doc is performed music, created by the same disenfranchised generation that explores what it means to be the perpetual outsider, whether in Finland or Sweden.

It’s thus a personal story between father and son, mirroring countless millions across the planet through the Ages, of being taken out of a homeland, creating a new life and then uprooting again and the inherent sense of split loyalties and identities.

The unfortunate aspect to the film is really the fact that it is So Nordic, that even with a familiarity to the country and customs, Finnish Blood remains quite hard to penetrate even if it is emotive and I strongly suspect that it will struggle to find a life beyond Nordic/Scandinavian borders despite winning the coveted Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary at the recent Gothenburg International Film Festival. AT

Easy Money (2010) Snabba Cash | Netflix

Dir: Daniel Espinosa | Original novel: Jens Lapidus | Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Lisa Henni,
Mahmut Suvakci | 124min Crime Drama

Joel Kinnaman found fame in the US version of The Killing. Here, as JW, he plays a hard-edged working-class economics student and drug-dealer, living a double life amongst the elite of Swedish society who hang out in parties like the one in Festen.

Originally called Snabba Cash, this is actually a screen adaptation of the best-selling ‘Stockholm Noir Trilogy’ by a Swedish novelist, Jens Lapidus. For some reason, the film has taken a while to come to the mainstream but you may have caught it at the London Film Festival back in 2012, in the aptly named “Thrill” section.

To fund his lifestyle JW finds a way to earn ‘easy money’ through a cocaine ring headed up by the nefarious hitman Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic, a real-life crim). His fate is inextricably linked with Jorge, a drug dealer who we meet escaping from prison in the exhilarating opening sequence.

Stylish and gripping with a dynamite score, Easy Money successfully blends edgy Nordic Noir with upmarket glamour. JW is persuasive and slick as a Swedish sociopath slipping easily between romantic dates with his chic blond girlfriend and the gritty millieu of Serbian and Spanish low-life in a thriller that blends tension, brutal violence and sympathetic characterisation to produce a winning combination that makes compelling viewing. If you only see one film this weekend, make it Easy Money. MT

EASY MONEY IS ON Prime Video | Netflix

The Hidden Child (2013) 2nd Nordic Film Festival 2013

Director: Per Hanefjord Writer: Maria Karlsson

Claudia Galli Concha, Inga Landgré, Jan Malmsjö and Jakob Oftebro.

The Nordic thriller is turning out to be one of Sweden’s finest exports and THE HIDDEN CHILD is no exception. Based on a true story adapted from Camilla Läckberg’s Fjällbacka novels, this is Swedish helmer Per Hanefjord’s second feature finely shot in the bleak seascape of Västra Götelands Iän. Marek Wieser’s atmospheric widescreen visuals and strong performances from leads Claudia Galli Concha (Erica) and Jan Malmsjo (Axel) will appeal to fans of ‘Borgen’ and ‘Wallander’.

It opens with a cosy family scene where young writer Erica Falck has just given birth to her first child surrounded by her policer officer husband Patrick and loving parents. Minutes later they are killed in a tragic car crash leaving the couple free to move into their Ikea-furnished home with its attractive seaside setting. But not everything in this garden is rosy: a middle-aged man named Göran turns up claiming to be her brother. Erica later discovers a Nazi medallion in the attic, along with wartime newspaper cuttings prompting her to investigate her mother’s mysterious past and a group of wartime friends who may have also been enemies.

Per Hanefjord’s good-looking but sombre thriller moves along as speedily as a SAAB; almost losing control of its pacing but confidently handling a fractured narrative told from various viewpoints with well-crafted wartime flashbacks punctuated by Magnus Jarlbo’s suspenseful, original score.

Enfused with popular themes of Nazism and the Holocaust, THE HIDDEN CHILD is a gripping and immersive insight into Swedish and Norwegian wartime history and the concentration camps of Grini and Sachsenhausen, set against the life of a modern couple in current-day Sweden. MT

THE HIDDEN CHILD IS SCREENING DURING THE 2ND NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL

Bite the Dust (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Director: Taisia Igumentseva; Cast: Sergej Abroskin, Maksim Vitorgan, Irina Denisova, Anna Rud, Ela Sanko, Luris Lautsinsh, Alina Sergeeva; Russian Federation 2013, 105 min.

With her light-hearted and sumptuously-shot debut feature, BITE THE DUST, Taisia Igumentseva has succeeding in breaking away from the grim, dark view of classic Soviet cinema she feels her country is best known for abroad. Cleverly though, the themes of ‘old Russia’ still peep through in the vibrant characterisation of this quirky ‘apocalyptic’ comedy.

When the eight inhabitants of a remote village in Russia learn that the world will come to an end in 24 hours, they react first with panic, then with an outpouring of emotions, upsetting the given order of the relationships – at least for the time being. Senia, a not particularly successful thief, is married to the beautiful Nastya, who spends her days reading, housekeeping being not one of her strengths. But Senia forgives her, his profession allows him to bribe his wife to stay with him, because he knows that his neighbour Mikkail (married to Olga with two sons), more than admirers Nastya. The zany inventor Vanya finds countless ways of nearly electrocuting himself, whilst the cinephile Nina mourns for her dead husband by finding refuge in showing the villagers arthouse films. The Lenin enthusiast Zina and the drunken Vassilych, who roams the village with his cow Candy, make up the villagers, whose reaction to the apocalypse is very much in keeping alive the Russian soul; never mind the political system.

In preparation for the meltdown everybody cooks, a table is laid out, and all the alcohol reserves of the village are put on the table. Then Nastya and Mikkail declare their love for each other in a temporary madness brought on by the threat of death. Senia tries to shack up with Olga and the kids, but he only receives a couple of towels, since it has started to rain incessantly. Nina ends her mourning, whilst the precious films are destroyed in the floods. (A metaphor that only love beats the cinema). Whilst rain and snow pour down (“it takes a long time to kill us”), and everyone cuddles together in one room.

BITE THE DUST is a gentle comedy, full of warmth for all protagonists, who are less than perfect, but are shown to be deeply human despite their faults. The camera work is outstanding: the desolation is shown in sweeping shots, the close-ups dwarf the characters even more in comparison with the force of nature. Even though the space of the action is very limited and confined to a rural riverside village, there is always something new to enjoy if it’s only the devastation caused by rain and snow in endless variations. Much imagination has gone into the sets with a good eye for the smallest details echoing Russian rural life. The acting is convincing, even Vassilych’s cow and Zina’s dog are well integrated and endearing. Far away from the modern world, the villagers represent the victory of the human spirit over the elements, emotions triumph over material considerations, their simple solidarity is more powerful than any –isms of yesterday and today. AS

BITE THE DUST IS SCREENING DURING THE 7TH RUSSIAN FESTIVAL ON MONDAY 11 NOVEMBER 18.00 AT EMPIRE LEICESTER SQUARE.

Love Tomorrow 2012

Director/Writer: Christopher Payne Prod: Stephanie Moon

Choreographers: Michael Nunn, Billy Trevitt

Starring: Cindy Jourdain, Arionel Vargas, Max Brown

Romantic comedy

Love Tomorrow is purportedly a love story between two dancers, Evie and Oriel, whose eyes meet in the underground and who spend the ensuing time criss-crossing London’s landmarks getting to know each other. Eva (Cindy Jourdain) is evidently hurt and upset and it’s down to Oriel (Arionel Vargas) to tease her story out of her as the film unspools.

Unfortunately, Love Tomorrow fails comprehensively and on several levels. Something like this storyline may have had legs back in the late eighties, but it feels extraordinarily toothless now. The direction is truly unimaginative, leaden, lacks grammar and, considering 8-months was spent working with the dancers, presumably on their acting, there is precious little to show for it. The script is slow and very basic; much of the dialogue is stilted, magnified by the leads not being natural actors. They do however come alive, with some relief, in the brief moments when they dance. But there are also elementary plot holes that test the viewers patience even further; she sleeps away from home and some random girl’s clothes and trainers fit her perfectly, so she wears them, leaving all her own clothes behind. They then hop on bicycles, which also get forgotten and left somewhere, as they later travel on by cab.

The long-awaited main plot point hangs on a key performance by a qualified actor, Max Brown, but he singularly fails to deliver, for one reason or another, denying the already thin plot any remaining depth or gravitas at all.

The cinematography is dull and flat, although I’m not going to blame the cinematographer, whom I can only imagine was clamouring for some lights, any lights, to help, but the budget didn’t allow. There are also listed two editors and indeed an additional editing consultant, but the pace was excruciatingly slow and I again assume no editor was actually allowed to ‘edit’.

All in all, it very much comes across as a student effort; the sort where one experiments enthusiastically, only to realise in hindsight why one does indeed need proper actors, comprehensive professional lighting, an editor who is listened to and, most importantly, a damn good script, before it is worth going to all the trouble of actually making a film and asking an audience to sit through it.

There was without doubt a huge amount of trust and goodwill afforded this project, which makes it all the more sad that it is so poor. Considering this is the writer director’s second feature and having advertised some sort of pedigree and a huge amount of varied and illustrious support, I am all the more disappointed. You never go through all the effort of going to the cinema in the hope that a film is bad. Andrew Rajan.

LOVE TOMORROW is on general release from 8 November 2013

Utopia (2013)

Dir.: John Pilger, John Lowery; UK 2013, 110 min.

Eighteen years after Lieutenant James Cook had claimed Australia for the Crown in 1870, the British government started to colonise the fifth continent. Since then, Australia has been named the ‘lucky’ country, even though it was first used as a penal colony for misfits from the United Kingdom. But their plight is nothing compared with the fate of the indigenous population, the Aboriginals, of which around one million lived in their own country at the time of the British invasion.

Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who has worked since 1962 in the UK, has returned to his homeland to see the current plight of the earth loving Aboriginals, who are the victims of an ongoing genocide. UTOPIA takes its name from an aboriginal village of the same name in the Northern Territories, where Pilger’s peripatetic journey begins combining widescreen visuals with close-up interviews of locals and archive footage. We see shacks and other provisional housing, and the house of the government rep, which has no less than 18 ventilators, keeping the heat at bay. These living (?) conditions for Aboriginals are repeated throughout the film: the lack of functioning toilets and other sanitary installations, overcrowding, water pumps outside the buildings, asbestos poisoning, lack of basic health care – the list is endless. No wonder that most of the children suffer from deafness and blindness – they are permanently dehydrated, loosing 30% of their body fluid. A third of the aboriginals die before they reach the age of 45.

The abuse of the Aboriginals by countless governments seems endless and provides a startling contrast to the plush lives of ordinary citizens pictured: Prime Minister Barton stated in 1901 that the equality act would only include the white and British citizen. Sterilisation was another way to reduce the indigenous population, since the white population believed “that they themselves were civilised –but they are not”. In the 60s TV programs proclaimed “that they have to show that they want to be one of us”, and talking about the poverty of the Aboriginals the announcer’s voice proclaimed “That’s what they want”. (‘They’ having replaced the original names of the victims). Thousands of children were literally stolen from parents, and given to white families for ‘integration’. And today’s prisons are overcrowded with victims of the race injustice, the perpetrators speak freely of “stacking and racking” and “warehousing”.

Death in police custody is not a rarity, the case of Eddie Murray, who died in prison in 1987 of a broken sternum is only an exception in so far that he was the son of Arthur Murray, who led a strike of Aboriginal workers in the early 60s, when the conditions were not unlike slave labour. He is rightly convinced that the death of his son was a revenge act. In 2006 the TV show “Lateline” interviewed a “frightened” youth worker (his face blacked out), who claimed that Aboriginals were using their children as sex slaves. Police action was swift, but it turned out that the “whistleblower” was Greg Andrews, working for the Minister of Indigenous Affairs. This case is particularly ironic, since white men have sexually abused Aboriginal women and children for a century without prosecution.

Perhaps symbolic for the continuous plight of the Aboriginals is Rottnest: a former concentration camp (minus gas chambers) it is today a luxury Spa, costing 240 Australian Dollar per night. The roads are build over the mass graves of the Aboriginal prisoners. Pilger visits Rottness with one of the survivors, who shows us that 51 prisoners lived in the space of one hotel room. The prisoners had to build the gallows for their own people.

Aboriginals are “Refugees in their own country”, and as long as the Australian Government is unwilling to pay any compensation and better their living conditions, it should be treated like the Apartheid regime of South Africa: with economic sanctions.

The “lucky” country? More likely the “lying one”. This well-paced and immersive documentary is well worth watching both from an historical viewpoint and a cinematic one. AS

UTOPIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE ACROSS THE UK FROM FRIDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER 2013

Alpha Papa (2013) Now on DVD/BlU

Director: Declan Lowney

Cast: Steve Coogan, Colm Meamey, Sean Pertwee, Anna Maxwell Martin, Felicity Montagu, Jason Tresswell

Writers: Armando Iannucci, Peter Baynham, Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons

90mins Comedy UK

Steve Coogan’s famous local radio DJ and talk show host Alan Partridge is one of the UK’s favourite comedy characters and has now arrived on the big screen in this Summer’s unmissable British comedy ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA.

There are plenty of laughs to be had in this close-up and personal film debut of the saddo presenter at North Norfolk Radio. Awash with ‘too much information’ (he loses his trousers, quite literally!), it records every crack and crevice of Alan’s cringeworthy physique and shamelessly pursues a politically incorrect agenda of witty one-liners skilfully crafted by co-writers Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci (“Forget about Jesus, as far as I’m concerned, Neil Diamond is the real King of the Jews!.) and helmed by the safe hands of ‘Father Ted’ creator Declan Lowney.

Featuring the usual team of co-presenter Simon (Tim Key), Radio Norwich pal Dave Clifton (Phil Cornwell), long-suffering PA, Lynn (Felicity Montagu), ageing DJ, Pat Farrell (Colm Meamey) and his Geordie friend Michael (Simon Greenhall) now a security guard, this outing is sadly missing a love interest for Alan, more’s the pity!.

After the unfortunate turn of events on his BBC show ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ where a guest accidentally gets shot, Alan’s fighting for his career for the second time around when a multimedia conglomerate “Shape” takes over the station threatening a round of redundancies and putting his slot ‘Mid-Morning Matters’ into jeopardy. The first head to roll is that of fellow presenter and ‘has-been’ Pat Farrell. But Pat’s having none of it and returns with a gun, fully-loaded and firing on all cylinders to plunge the station into full siege mode, forcing Michael into a cupboard (‘Like a Geordie version of Ann Frank’) and Alan into the limelight acting as a mediator between Pat and the Police.

Naturally Alan relishes this chance to take centre stage in a media circus of heightened melodrama, but the emphasis here shifts onto fast-paced action and slapstick sequences descending into banality at times, and away from the element we’ve all been waiting for: the next chapter of Alan’s life as a delusional porn-obsessed loser whose children no longer speak to him, whose PA’s preoccupation with him is unwanted and unwholesome and whose ‘mildly cretinous’ Ukrainian girlfriend ‘Sonja’ has him firmly by the short and curlies.

That said, this big screen debut offers great entertainment value, preserving the integrity of the ‘Alan Partridge brand’ where so many others such as League of Gentlemen, Borat and Brüno are a shadow of their TV and radio versions. Alan may have lost his trousers but Alpha Papa definitely has us wanting more. MT

DVD / Blu-ray / Steelbook Extras:

Hectic Danger Days: The Making of Alpha Papa

Deleted Scenes

Bloopers

Audio Commentary with Steve Coogan and Writers Rob & Neil Gibbons

ASDA 2-Disc Bonus Extras:

Exclusive Interviews with Steve Coogan / Rob & Neil Gibbons / Declan Lowney

Exclusive Q&A with Armando Iannucci

Premiere Day Sizzle Reel

Irish Screening Introduction

Trailers – Teaser and Full

TV Spots

Seduced and Abandoned (2013)

Writer/director: James Toback. With Alec Baldwin

98min Doc US

The title says it all: James Toback’s doc filmed during 2012 in Cannes, tantalises us with talk of cinema, art, death and the glamour of it all. In reality it offers little insight into the nuts and bolts of film financing despite Baldwin’s flirty poolside badinage with film financiers as he prepares to fund a ‘soft porn film’ featuring himself and Neave Campbell.

But as a peek inside the psyches of the powers that be it’s highly entertaining stuff; chock-full with witty interviews and footage of luminaries such as Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, James Caan and Francis Ford Coppola who talk candidly and amusingly about the bad times and the good times on their road to success as they reach the twilight zone. Voyeuristic, funny and fascinating – a must-see for all film fanatics MT

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8TH NOVEMBER 2013

Vitaly Mansky – Film Director UK Russian Film Festival 7-17 Nov

Vitaly Mansky needs no introduction among followers of the London Russian Film Festival. For several years, Mansky has been an integral part of the Festival, curating its ever prominent documentary programme
and enriching its programme with his own work.

Born in 1963 in Lvov, Ukraine, Mansky made his first foray into the world of film in 1989, and has since gone on to direct over 30 films. His reputation as one of the world’s leading documentary filmmakers is clear from the litany of awards he has received over his career from festivals all over the world. Mansky’s devotion
to his medium is not just confined to filmmaking, with the director founding ArtDokFest, the premiere Russian documentary film festival, as well as editing online magazine VERTOV.RU . In recognition of Vitaly Mansky’s enduring contribution to the London Russian Film Festival and documentary filmmaking, the Festival is delighted to be showing a retrospective of Mansky’s dazzling and extensive oeuvre.

PriVate cHrOnicles. MOnOlOgue / ЧАСТНЫЕ ХРОНИКИ. МОНОЛОГ Russia, 1999, Documentary, 86 min
Drawn from over 5000 hours of film material and 20,000 still photos, Private Chronicles is an incredible experiment in biographical film. Woven together from footage of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, the film is a fictional yet somehow true portrait of Gagarin’s generation, encompassing collective life and individual experience.

BROADWAY. THE BLACK SEA / БРОДВЕЙ. ЧЕРНОЕ МОРЕ Russia, 2002, Documentary, 72 min
Community. Carnival. These are the themes of Mansky’s Broadway as it follows the fleeting life of a makeshift holiday camp on the shores of a beach in the Caucasus. Those too poor to go on holiday flock to this place every year, singing, dancing, laughing and crying. Broadway follows the carnival as it burns, fades and dies, leaving only a shabby heap on the shore.

VIRGINITY / ДЕВСТВЕННОСТЬ Russia, 2008, Documentary, 86 min
What is virginity? Why should I save it for marriage? Such questions were asked by young ladies 20 years ago. What is virginity? For how much can I sell it? Such questions are asked by modern girls.

PATRIA O MUERTE / РОДИНА ИЛИ СМЕРТЬ Russia, 2011, Documentary, 99 min
What does a person imagine when they hear about Cuba? More importantly, what is Cuba? It is hard to find any other country where the discrepancy between image and reality is as great as it is in Cuba. This Film is about people who were born before the revolution and now are coming closer to the end of their lives and realise that ‘Motherland’ equals Death.

FROM THE RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL ARCHIVE. THE UK RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE FROM 7 UNTIL 17 NOVEMBER 2013

How to Survive a Plague (2013)

Director: David France Writers: David France, T Woody Richman, Tyler Walk

110min US Documentary

You may be wondering why a documentary on AIDS should suddenly be newsworthy. The reason is that AIDS campaigner and debut director, David France’s moving HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE has the benefit of hindsight reflecting, as it does, on thirties years of suffering since the crisis originally hit the international headlines with the news that AIDS posed a potential death sentence on every sufferer.

At that time there was scant medical research on the disease and hardly any treatments available. Furthermore, no US Government prevention scheme was in place to protect the public. Then gradually a groundswell of those affected harnessed their resentment and rose up to form Act-Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). They retaliated against the system with specialised ad campaigns lambasting public figures from the New York Mayor (Koch) to religious leaders such as the Catholic head of Church, Cardinal O’Connor.

David France’s film makes grim viewing not only because of its subject matter but also due to an almost exclusive use of grainy archive footage showing how the New York gay community formed Act-Up and charting how it campaigned against the indifference and negativity of the powers that be, and, in particularly, the hostile administration of Ronald Reagan. But as a documentary it is informative and well-put-together, wielding considerable clout in conveying the message largely through its use of the belligerent army of sufferers themselves who speak with anger and conviction (that is more convincing and heartfelt than any potential actor), and who were eventually able to change government policy regarding medical research so that by the mid nineties remedial care finally started to make an impact on this terrible epidemic. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE is a worthwhile and immersive guide to the history of AIDS activism. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 NOVEMBER 2013

7th Russian Film Festival 2013

S E V E N T H R U S S I A N F I L M F E S T I V A L 2 0 1 3

This November sees the London Russian Film Festival return for its seventh incarnation. Celebrating modern achievements in Russian filmmaking, the festival brings an eclectic mixture of critically revered documentaries and feature films to the capital – many of which are UK premiers fresh from the Kinotavr, the largest national film festival in Russia (also known as Sochi Open Russian Film Festival). Iconoclastic filmmaking and Ostalgie have converged to fashion a new primary language in Russian filmmaking, with Academia Rossica’s annual festival providing a platform for these fresh, exciting voices to be heard. Many of these films engage in re-writing definitions of community and national identity in Russia, reconstructing history and the ideological foundations of post-Soviet society; bequeathing UK audiences with a fresh and invigorating cinematic experience.

Relocated from the faded neon grandeur of London’s Apollo cinema to the iconic Empire in Leicester Square, this year’s event exhibits a period of transformation for the festival – including the addition of a new competition strand. Previous line-ups have included a wealth of contemporary Russian cinematic talents such as; Andrei Zvyagintsev’s ELENA, Aleksei Balabanov’s Me Too and Pavel Lungin’s The Island as well as less well-known, yet more culturally specific oddities such as last year’s 207-minute sprawling epic Chapiteau Show – a brazenly charismatic film comprised of four interwoven narratives bookended with musical vignettes that acted as a beguilingly surreal examination of changing values to sex, love and friendship in contemporary Russia.

This year’s inaugural LONDON LION Award will be contested by 10 films, each hoping to be crowned ‘Best Film of the Russian Film Festival’. The festival’s opening gala film, Otdat Kontsy’s Bite The Dust, is one of the favourites for this year’s award. An apocalyptic comedy about an ominous astronomical phenomenon that threatens to wipe out humanity, Kontsy’s latest endeavour purportedly plays out in a typically sardonic Eastern European fashion. A riff on the playful question of “what would you do if you had 24 hours to live?” Bite the Dust celebrates the simple pleasures of everyday life whilst taking a caustic swipe at capitalism. The juxtaposition of the bombastic narrative framework of Hollywood blockbusters and the distinctively whimsical comedy of Russian cinema acts to show the disparity between materialism in Eastern and Western culture – albeit in a blithe and capricious manner.

Another highlight in this year’s competition strand includes Aleksandr Veledinsky’s The Geographer Drank His Globe Away. Based on Alexei Ivanov’s novel of the same name, Veledinsky’s third feature recently won the main prize at this year’s Kinotavr and is a curious romantic drama about a hopeless biologist who takes a job as a geography teacher in a provincial town before finding love under peculiar circumstances. Other promising additions to the program include Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov’s Intimate Parts, a no-holds-barred exploration of class secrets and attitudes to sex told through a series of interwoven narrative strands and Marina Migunova’s Mirrors, a dramatized biopic about Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and her tragic trajectory through a life comprised of despair, loss and betrayal.

Three film’s competing for the festival’s LONDON LION Award have already benefited from screenings at UK Film Festivals. Kirill Serebrennikov’s clinically sterile and ironically passionless thriller about obsession and revenge Betrayal, premiered in the competition strand at the Venice Film Festival before arriving at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year. Whilst Serebrennikov’s opaque drama may be one of the better known inclusions in this year’s program, it’s also one of the most inaccessible. Yusup Razykov’s Shame (Styd) received its UK premier at this year’s London Film Festival yet sadly went largely unnoticed: not by us. A maritime tragedy that echoes the contentious Kursk submarine catastrophe through the lives of the women left behind, Razykov’s Shame works to expose the anomalous assumptions of womankind in patriarchal Russia. Another London Film Festival premier that deserves to be seen by a larger audience is Vital Mansky’s Pipeline, a powerful exploration of the wealth divide in Russia. An ethnological observation of social cultures across the route of the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod pipeline which runs through Russia (from Western Siberia all the way to Koln, Germany) like an infected vein of capitalist greed.

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Judging by the festival’s retrospective of his work, Mansky could be seen as the Russian Alex Gibney; a master documentary filmmaker whose work has been presented across the globe. His charismatically aloof persona is thankfully not reflected in his probing examination into the inchoate stage of post-Soviet Russia. Mansky is the president of Artdokfest (the Moscow Documentary Film Festival) and his works speaks passionately and intelligently about modern-day issues inside and outside of Russia. Alongside Mansky’s better known work, such as his documentary about the Dalai Lama, Dawn/Sunset, the festival will also be screening Private Chronicles; Monolog, Patria O Muerte and Broadway; The Black Sea. Mansky will also be in attendance at this year’s festival, having curated this year’s documentary strand – with Evgenia Montana Ibanes’ topical account of opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov imprisonment and hunger strike. March, March With Your Left! a noticeable highlight in an always enlightening strand. PATRICK GAMBLE

More information, including full details of the festival’s program and how to book tickets can be found on the Academia Rossica website

Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1921) DVD/Blu

Dir.: Fritz Lang; Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Alfred Abel, Aud Egede Nissen, Gertrude Welcker, Bernhard Goetzke, Robert Forster-Larrinaga, Paul Richter;

Deutschland 1921/2, 270 min (2 Parts)

Scripted by Lang and his wife Thea van Harbou together with the author of the original novel Norbert Jacques, this is the first of Lang’s trilogy of Mabuse films. In 1932 he filmed Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, which was banned a year later by the Nazis, whilst Die tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960) was Lang’s last feature, produced in Germany after his return from the USA.

Looked at superficially, DR MABUSE DER SPIELER is a sensationalist movie: Dr. Mabuse is is a man with many faces (literally), he slips easily into different identities, he can be an expert of the stock market, lectures about psychoanalysis and is equally at home as an scientist. But all he wants is power and money, and he uses his girl friend, the dancer Cara Carozza, to get to the moneyed Hull, whom he puts under hypnosis and robs him of millions at an illegal gaming club. Later he puts Count Todd under hypnosis, to make him cheat in the same club, than he kidnaps his wife. In the second part of the film, Dr. Mabuse is a psychoanalyst, hounding his rich clients into suicide. In the end, he acts as a magician on stage, and tries to lure Wenk, his arch enemy and public prosecutor, onto the stage, to hypnotise him too.

Dr. Mabuse is not so much interested in wealth or status, but we wants to denounce the state and all it stands for. He sees himself as a creator, even though his actions are destructive. He is an evil romantic, trying to become the “Übermensch”. He is the star of his own great play, but not interested in power itself, but only in permanent destruction. This way he has to prove himself over and over again, continually finding new ways to show his superiority. He is fascinated by himself, by his status as a super star, inventing permanently a new stage for dramatic appearances. He does not really wear masks, he is one.

Aesthetically DR MABUSE DER SPIELER is somewhere between ‘Dr, Caligari’ and ‘M’, meaning that the expressionism of certain shots is reigned in by an overall feel for realism. The trap doors and theatrical tricks are very much make-believe, but the reality of the Weimar Republic, the fear of total chaos, the poverty and the political rivalry are very much real. It is interesting in this context, that Lang’s wife Thea von Harbou was an early Nazi sympathizer (she would work actively in Nazi Germany, whilst Lang emigrated to the USA), the director himself being somewhat on the left.

The film if often seen as an allegory on the early days of fascism, seeing the Mabuse character as an early incarnation of Hitler, but knowing about the different political leanings of the film’s creators, one wonders how much of this is true. Nevertheless, DR MABUSE THE SPIELER is a monumental work, which entertains and surprises the viewer at every turn – like the enigmatic Mabuse himself, the film is never quite what we think it is. AS

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Available to pre-order from:

Amazon (SteelBook Blu-ray) http://amzn.to/16CPmGh (Blu-ray) http://amzn.to/19PbNEh

The Hut (SteelBook Blu-ray) http://tidd.ly/4c81fee3 (Blu-ray) http://tidd.ly/d84bd855

MovieMail (SteelBook Blu-ray) http://bit.ly/1bVvOxL (Blu-ray) http://bit.ly/16CPqWi

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, officially licensed transfer from restored HD materials

• New and improved optional English subtitles with original intertitles

• Exclusive feature-length audio commentary by film-scholar and Lang expert David Kalat

• Three video pieces: an interview with the composer of the restoration score, a discussion of Norbert Jacques, creator of Dr. Mabuse, and an examination of the film’s motifs in the context of German silent cinema

• 32-PAGE BOOKLET featuring vintage reprints of writing by Lang

The Nun (2013) La Religieuse

Based on the novel by French writer, philosopher, art critc Denis Diderot (1713-1784).

The Nun has had a tough time. Conceived by Denis Didérot in the eighteenth century, the nature of the work was open to controversy as a purportedly salacious account of innappropriate goings-on in a French nunnery. Jacques Rivette’s film version in 1966, was banned by French censors at the time of its release due to its negative representation of the Catholic Church. Now, nearly 50 years later, here is Guillaume Nicloux’s adaptation with a fine cast of Isabelle Huppert, Martina Gedeck, Agathe Bonitzer and Marc Barbé.

The Nun follows the story of a young woman, Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Étienne) who is confined to a religious order of sisters, under the auspices of Madame de Moni, due to her parents’ inability to fund her dowry. Once enconsed in the convent, Suzanne is put under pressure to take her vows, against her wishes, and subsequently also discovers she is illegitimate and has been locked away to assuage her mother’s guilt and make her peace with God.

This could be a brilliant opportunity for a discretely naughty insight or even a ‘no holds barred’ exposé surrounding the confessional memoirs of the provocative Sister Suzanne Simonin. But Guillaume Nicloux’s goes to the other end of the spectrum offering a visually exquisite and stylishly sleek, part candlelit part naturalistic, masterpiece concentrating only on the ascetic aspects of Suzanne’s confinement. He highlights her disappointment with her mother’s deceit, the physical and emotional discomfort of being in spartan confines without affection, physical comfort or close friends but there is no attempt to delve further into her psyche.

Nicloux paints Suzanne as a picture of perfect introversion and blind innocence but also of passive resignation living under sensory deprivation. Although Pauline Etienne plays her part admirably, this bone dry and formal treatment lacks the necessary element of drama, tension or even empathy required to make the piece engaging in a way that Bruno Dumont achieves with Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915, which has a set of circumstances.

Isabelle Huppert lights up the screen when she finally arrives as the more motherly Mother Superior. She is captivated by Suzanne’s pale beauty and serenity, for reasons that will become evident, and gives a delicious turn with wry, comedic appeal tinged with bittersweet sadness, as only she knows how.

The Nun is a technically accomplished film with a beautiful visual aesthetic and some strong performances but lacks dramatic edge to offer really appealing insight and plods along so slowly that it requires the patient of a saint, at times, to endure. MT

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THE NUN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Director: Michael Roemer

Writers: Michael Roemer and Robert Young

Cast: Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Yaphet Kotto, Julius Harris.

95mins US Drama ***

First released in 1964, Nothing But A Man appears to have suffered the fate shared by so many low-budget independent films: festival success and critical acclaim, followed by a small release and a sink into relative obscurity. However, in 1993 the Library of Congress declared the film ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ and selected the film for preservation, leading to a successful re-release in the US. Now, 20 years later, comes the film’s first-ever UK cinema release, courtesy of the BFI.

The film depicts life among the black community in a small town in 1960s Alabama, focusing upon the burgeoning romance between section hand Duff (Ivan Dixon) and local schoolteacher and preacher’s daughter Josie (Abbey Lincoln). If the romance itself follows a somewhat predictable narrative arc, the film makes up for it with its searing examination of the town’s racism, and the myriad of relationships surrounding the protagonists. In its detailed exploration of the life of Duff and Josie, and the various prejudices and troubles they face, the film questions not only the relationships between blacks and whites, but also between men and women, parents and children, friends and co-workers, and middle-class and working-class citizens. The fact that the film is able to fluidly and cohesively incorporate such a large canvas, and do so with so much wit, style and compassion, is testament to the deft hand of (white Jewish) director Michael Roemer (there’s only one sequence, towards the end of the film, which seems to ring false).

Roemer, alongside his unusually hyphenated cowriter–cinematographer Robert Young, frames the action in stark black and white images, punctuating the drama by filming the characters’ frank exchanges in powerful close ups. The film is permeated with a sense of neorealistic naturalism, its nuances and textures coalescing into a vivid portrait of 1960s Alabamian life. For all its scope, the film is tied together by Dixon’s transfixing charisma, which imbues the film with a level of charm which could easily have been absent with a lesser presence playing the protagonist. Dixon’s wry smile lends an air of charm to the proceedings, and grounds the film in a gentle, engrossing humanism. Add to this the film’s interestingly open ending and its scrupulous examination of social mores, and it’s easy to understand why the film was dubbed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. ALEX BARRETT

It is No Dream-The Life of Theodor Herzl (2012) UK Jewish Film Fest 2013

Dir.: Richard Trank; narrated by Ben Kingsley, USA 2012, 106 min.

Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, this documentary about the “father” of the Jewish state, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) sheds some light on the intellectual fight for a Jewish homeland and comes up with some surprises regarding Herzl’s personality and ideas, his friends and enemies in the Jewish movement. To start with – Herzl, born in Budapest, his family later moved to Vienna – was a typical assimilated Jewish intellectual, who cared mostly for his journalistic work and his plays – he hardly went to a synagogue before the late 1880s. Herzl had studied law, but had success as a playwright and journalist for the “Neue Freie Presse” in Vienna. All changed when he was send as a foreign correspondent for the newspaper to Paris, where the Dreyfuss scandal erupted in 1895. He sensed that the growing anti-Semitism in Europe would end in a catastrophe for the Jews – a prophecy unfortunately fulfilled. He appealed to Baron von Rothschild to support the foundation of a Jewish state, whose language should be German (because of its closeness to Jiddish) and its constitution would be strictly secular. Rothchild, like all moneyed Jews, ignored or even fought Herzl for the rest of his life. In 1896 Herzl published ‘Der Judenstaat’ (The Jewish state), calling assimilation ‘not very praiseworthy’ and seeing the future state in Palestine as “magnified by our greatness”. But he still had to appease the religious establishment “Judaism has nothing to fear from the Jewish state” – a quote which seems incredulous in the context of the modern Israel.

Herzl went on to meet Europe’s rulers, like Kaiser Wilhelm II in Palestine, the ministers of the Czar in St. Petersburg and members of the Foreign Office in London, to ask for help in setting up a Jewish State. The British came up with a solution: they offered Uganda, an idea, which – against Herzl’s will – was more or less rejected by the 6^thZionist Conference in 1903. In his last literal statement “Altneuland” (Oldnewland) he wrote in 1902 “that Jews and Arabs would help each other in the new country” and hoped for a “third way between capitalism and socialism”.

Whilst Herzl’s fear of the Shoah became reality, and his daughter Margarethe (1893-1943) was murdered in Theresienstadt, his dreams about a peaceful, cooperative Israel stay unfilled: the contemporary version of Sparta in the desert is far removed from anything Herzl and the founding fathers had in mind.

A very in-depth research with documentary footage and stills, the film portrays Herzl as visionary, who had to fight Jews as much as Gentiles, and who died much too early exhausted and disconsolate not to have seen the fulfilment of his dream. As a dreamer, he did not contemplate that reality would make Israel into a nation state like all others: hungry for land belonging to others. AS

SCREENING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON WEDNESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 18.30 AT THE TRICYCLE LONDON. tickets here

A Magnificent Haunting (2013) Now on DVD/BLU

Director: Ferzan Ozpetek Writers: Ozpetek/Federica Pontremoli

Cast: Margherita Buy, Elio Germano, Vittoria Puccini, Beppe Fiorello

104min Italian with English subtitles Fantasy drama

Ferzan Ozpetek takes a spirited ghost story, adds a delicious Fellini-esque twist and offers up a quirkily humorous tale of wannabe actor Pietro (Elio Germano) and his uninvited house-guests. Sharing his newly-rented apartment with a troupe of 1940s ‘luvvies’ could be fun; the only catch is – they don’t realise they’re dead.

A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING is a departure Ozpetek’s edgier indie fare. It has the delightful (and much under-rated) Margherita Buy, best known for his drama Le Fate Ignoranti, and exultant here leading the kindly ghosts and giving Pietro acting advice and impromptu entertainment.

Colourful and upbeat, it certainly plays out as an appealing drama with s touch of fantasy and only a few wrong notes: an attempt to inject seriousness by delving into Fascist history misfires: better to have stuck with the light-hearted elements given the overall tone of the piece. That said, A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING has a slick, commercial feel that will likely help Ozpetek engage with a more mainstream audience. Good luck to him with this well-crafted, cheerful endeavour. MT

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A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 OCTOBER 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

Pipeline (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival in London

Director: Vitaly Mansky

121min Russia/Czech Republic/Germany Documentary

Dont’ be put off by the unappealing title of this amazing film about Russia today. Vitaly Mansky has based his evocative doc around the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, built in 1983, that connected gas supplies from Siberia with consumers in the Czech Republic and Germany.

Like a silver cord running through this vast continent, it strings together a series of charming portraits of Russian life. His camera is objective, unflinching and inquisitive and some of the results are daunting: if you’d rather not see inside a working cremation oven, this is advanced warning to look away. But some vignettes are surprisingly funny: a little farm dog who lives inside a front-loader, and awe-inspiring: men fishing in a frozen Siberian river. Some endearing: a couple airing their views about Russian teenagers from their gaudily-decorated living room and a Church mass taking place inside a disused railway carriage.

With his magnificent widescreen compositions of majestic Soviet architecture and panoramic vistas of the frozen countryside, Mansky handles his doc with a lively dash of wit, showing us wealth and poverty in all its glory, and treating every living creature with respect. That life for real people in the provinces is still the same as it every was, is his message. His Russians are just like any other Europeans. A real eye-opener. MT

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PIPELINE IS SHOWING AS PART OF THE COMPETITION STRAND AT THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON FROM 7 UNTIL 17 NOVEMBER 2013

Gloria (2012)

Dir: Sebastian Lelio | Cast: Paulina Garcia, Sergio Hernandez | 110min Drama Chile/Spain

Paulina Garcia won Best Actress at Berlin for her sunny portrayal of a mid-lifer who hasn’t reached old age but is contemplating the future and starting to see the long shadows of her mortality slowly edging into sight.

Sebastian Lelio’s third feature opens with a palm-fringed panorama of Santiago de Chile, the sophisticated capital of his thrusting South American homeland. Gloria, in her fifties, is a positive and happy divorcee looking love.

Lelio’s crisp, clear direction and a wealth of glossy locations and interiors, make this a mature and insightful drama for a director in his late thirties. Gloria offers gives plenty of positive food for thought without a touch negativity or self-doubt: a refreshing look at second-time love for the older generation. Gloria examines her hopes and reassesses her life through the encounters she experiences. Sebastian Lelio shows us the positives of his Latin culture without being judgemental or maudlin: strong family links, dancing, music and laughter, Chilean wine and socialising are the keynotes. There’s a touchingly romantic vignette of a man and woman singing a Brazilian love song round the piano. The dating scene throws up rich pickings most of which are rotten and a graduall realisation that life is good and there is future for Gloria and for Chile set against a background of political uncertainty and forty years of strife and unrest. MT

GLORIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 1 NOVEMBER 2013 IN SELECTED CINEMAS

Child’s Pose (2012) Pozitia copilului Golden Bear Winner Berlinale 2013

Director: Calin Peter Netzer

Writers: Calin Peter Netzer/Razvan Radulescu

Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Natasa Raab, Florin Zamifirescu, Ilinca Goia

112mins Drama Romanian with subtitles

Child’s Pose is a portrait of female power and Luminita Gheorghiu’s multi-layered performance as Cornelia, a wealthy, overprotective mother whose unconditional love for her hot-housed, despondent son Barbu (Bogdan Dumistrache) knows no limits.

An age-old theme, then, but one that Netzer tackles here with brilliance and insight: this is not a film about love but about control and manipulation and ultimately about dominance. And Barbu is simply a tool in his mother’s trick box enabling her to endorse her privileged place in local society, ‘Romanian-style’.

Calin Peter Netzer is a filmmaker of undoubtable talent. His previous films of note: Medal of Honour and Maria are certainly worth watching for their fascinating stories of Romania and its customs and character, often seen with black humour. Ably assisted here by the writing talents of Razvan Radulescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) Child’s Pose is a weightier and more demanding beast that may not appeal to everyone with its jerky hand-held camera technique and emotional overkill.

Naturally there’s a girlfriend involved (Carmen, played by Ilinca Goia) and naturally she is to blame for Barbu’s distant attitude towards his mother. But when Barbu has a car accident killing a child, Cornelia swings back into favour, springing into action on her mobile phone, dominating the criminal procedure, pulling strings in the local community with the great and the good and shining like a beacon of salvation for her desperate son, as if this was the moment she’d been waiting for all her life and his too.

Once again the theme of Romania’s intricate and unwieldy red tape is called in to question. We’ve seen this all before in Medal of Honour, Aurora and The Death of Mr Lazarescu. But here the camera tracks the action with intrusive immediacy; transmitting expressions of anguish and a palpable and claustrophobic sense of fear and tragedy: the effect is almost nauseating. Cornelia is a woman to dread. You certainly wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her. Having riden roughshod over her husband, Luminita Gheorghiu’s Cornelia is a frustrated, scheming demon; all dressed up with nowhere to go but the corridors of corruption (which are filled with Bucharest’s society elite) and nothing left to live for but her sad, emasculated son. MT

CHILD’S POSE WON THE GOLDEN BEAR AT BERLINALE 2013

London Korean Film Festival 2013 7-15 November 2013

South Korean films have achieved international recognition since Lee Chang-Dong won best director at Venice Film Festival in 2002 for his film OASIS. Going from strength and now in its 8th successful year the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) 7-22 November, is a nationwide celebration of contemporary and classic Korean cinema, with a selection of highlights also showing in Oxford, Bradford and St Andrews between 16-22 November.

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Huh Jung will be in London this year to present his successful debut, a low-budget home invasion thriller HIDE AND SEEK at a special gala premiere at Cineworld Haymarket on 6 November 2013.

SOL Kung-gu will also be in town to present a special preview of LEE Joon-ik’s latest film WISH, a drama that cronicles a true-life tragic crime that shook Korea

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Director KIM Sung-su will be presenting his latest film, THE FLU, a disaster thriller on the scale of CONTAGION that charts the spread of a dangerous epidemic that threatens the Korean Peninsular.

JANG Cheol-soo’s comedy spy drama SECRETLY, GREATLY is the story of three undercover North Korean spies living in the South who are forced to undertake a mission ‘impossible’. Also worth a watch is JEONG Keun-seob’s kidnap thriller MONTAGE.

There’s is a chance to catch up on the recent standouts: YIM Soon-rye’s family comedy SOUTH BOUND, actor turned award-winning director YOO Ji-tae’s MAI RATIMA, which won the Jury Prize at the Deauville Asian Film Festival and FATAL, LEE Don-ku’s a drama that played this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Also from Berlin 2013 comes E J-yong’s BEHIND THE CAMERA, An experimental mockumentary about remote filmmaking that blurs the line between fiction and reality, BEHIND THE CAMERA sees the director cast himself as a filmmaker attempting to make a film via Skype in Los Angeles. Without the director’s physical presence on set, will the production spiral into chaos? The film explores the production process and elements of reality shows.

Best know for his chaotic action movie THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD, KIM Jee-woon is a talented filmmaker whose distinctive and skilful storytelling style is told using an original visual language. He will be in London to present a special programme of his favourite short films showcasing his unique visual style, including a Q&A where he will talk about his latest short project ONE PERFECT DAY (2013).

DAY TRIP, Park Chan-kyong’s recent drama is a venture from the joint creative team of PARKing CHANce, the collaboration between the media artist and his world renowned auteur brother PARK Chan-wook.

K O R E A N C U L T C L A S S I C S

Other highlights to watch out for are cult classics PUBLIC ENEMY (2002) a crime thriller from Kang Woo-suk, who will be in London to attend a ‘directorspective’ of his successful outings along with his latest film FISTS OF LEGEND (2013) an urban action drama.

Other cult classics in the retrospective are TWO COPS (1993), SILMIDO (2003), MOSS (2010), and the acclaimed sequel PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS (2008).

To celebrate the 60th Anniversary since the Korean War Armistice, three classic Korean war films depicting the strife and the effects on families, friendships and the soldiers who fought, are also screening: SHIN Sang-ok’s THE RED SCARF (1964) and LEE Man-hee’s MARINES ARE GONE (1963) and LEE Kang-cheon’s PIAGOL (1955).

The festival closes on the 15 November with a drama starring HOUSEMAID’S, YOUN YuhJung who plays the family matriarch in a story that explores the shifting dynamics when three adult children return to the fold, BOOMERANG FAMILY. She will present the Closing Night Gala alongside her co-stars.

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2013 WILL RUN FROM 7-15 NOVEMBER IN LONDON AND 16-22 IN OTHER UK VENUES.

French Film Festival UK 7-30 November 2013

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This popular festival is now 21 and celebrates its coming of age with an anniversary selection including restored versions of Jacques Demy’s LOLA, UK premieres and tributes to Maurice Pialat, Bernadette Lafont and Louis de Funès with the London screenings taking place at Cine Lumiere.

Primarily focused on bringing new French film to the provinces, the Festival highlights include Francois Ozon’s teenage prostitution drama, JEUNE ET JOLIE; Bruno Dumont’s CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915 starring Juliette Binoche in a tour de force as the artist in exile; Alain Gomis’ poetic goodbye: AUJOURD’HUI with its soft and sensuous visuals set in Senegal and Philippe Beziat’s rousing documentary: BECOMING TRAVIATA that follows a diva through rehearsals at the Aix En Provence outdoor opera season. MT

Shame (2013) 7th Russian Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Usup Razykow; Cast: Maria Semenova, Elenena Korobynikova, Helga, Filipova, Seseg Hapsasova; Russia 2012; 90 min.

Best known for his 2000 drama Women Kingdom, writer and director Yusup Razykov is a leading light in the New Uzbek Cinema movement.

His latest outing SHAME, opens with the unexplained abduction of a young woman. A symbolic introduction to a very grim film set in the Arctic Circle of Russia, Ekaterina Mavromatis screenplay sensitively depicts this study of ‘waiting women’ inspired by the case of the submarine “Kursk”, which was lost with all men in 2000. The main protagonists are the soon-to-be widows of the garrison hamlet, who are lied to by the authorities, even though the tragedy is apparent to them. Lena (Maria Semenova), is newly married to an officer of the submarine. Cold and distant, she drinks and has a one-night-stand, whilst the other women mourn; one even kills herself and her two children.

It slowly emerges that Lena has discovered passionate love letters from her husband to his former girl friend Irina, who is now in an ramshackle psychiatric hospital, after having set fire to a building, not able to take the six monthly darkness any longer. Lena saves her from the horror of this place, and promises her to take her into a clinic in St. Petersburg, her home town. The snowy landscape (more grey than white) and the downtrodden buildings, falling apart before our very eyes, the total lack of amenities and the darkness are the domineering elements of this film, the camera looks for humans, but only shows desolation. One has the feeling, that this place is a war zone and it only seems reasonable, that one woman says “that we need a war, because we do not know how to live without it”. SHAME is ruthless in its negative approach, never resorting to sentimentality. A stark reminder of a not so modern Russia, which is still ruled for and by a small minority, whilst the majority lives in places rotting quietly away. Andre Simonoviescz

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SHAME IS SCREENING DURING THE 7TH RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON FROM 7-17 NOVEMBER 2013

Blumenthal (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Seth Fisher;

Cast: Lailla Robins, Seth Fisher, Mark Blum, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Brian Cox; USA 2013, 96 min.

Ethan Blumenthal, played by the director himself, is a drug rep who suffers from a mental form of constipation: all his thoughts race around in his head, but he is unable to translate them into the right words. For example, when his girl friend Christina touches him gently after making love, he gets angry with her: “You woke me up”. Next morning he apologises, but soon he feels inferior again, and breaks their relationship off. Unable to cope with this, he tries to seduce an old girlfriend and gets a hand job from another girl – being on the run from himself, but involving and hurting other women randomly.

Ethan suffers from the wide discrepancy between his inferiority complex and a male need to feel superior to his partner. In this he is the mirror image of his father Saul, an academic, who is unable to come to terms with the death of his playwright brother Harold, and whom he accuses of ripping off his own writings for his successful plays. Saul does not see the crisis his wife Cheryl, an actress, is going through – like his son, his internal dialogue is overshadowing his life, making him unable to connect with his family. His problems manifest themselves in a pure physical constipation, making him spend most of his time in the bathroom.

Whilst clearly set in a Jewish environment, from which the protagonists suffer in different ways, the problems they encounter are very much universal, one does not have to be a Jewish man to be insensible – whilst feeling exactly the opposite, listening to one owns “great ideas”. One scene is particularly revealing: when Ethan finds out a few days after their split, that Christina is pregnant, he asks her: “What are your politics on this subject ?.”

Productions values are high and Seth Fisher’s debut film has all the merits of a first film (particularly a probing curiosity) and at the same time shows restraint , never letting the subtle humour of the characters degenerate into something raucous – Fisher keeps a distance, loving his protagonists, but not adoring them. The irony is never sharp, but the director allows no sentimentality: he observes with maturity, so rare in a first timer. The acting is brilliant, the ensemble trying to work for each other and the camera gives us enough intimacy, without being to obtrusive.

BLUMENTHAL is made with love, but executed with wit and a caring, but not forgiving insight into the male psyche. AS

BLUMENTHAL IS SHOWING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON 31 OCTOBER AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE, 3 NOVEMBER AT SEVEN ARTS CENTRE, LEEDS; 6 NOVEMBER AT PHOENIX LONDON; 14 NOVEMBER AT FACT, LIVERPOOL. tickets here

Ballad of Weeping Spring (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Benny Torati;

Cast: Uri Gvriel, Adar Gold, Ishtar, Dudu Tassa; Israel 2012, 106 min.

Torati tries to marry two genres: an Israeli form of the Spaghetti Western and a Mizrali Musical cum road road movie, scored by music played by Jews who has emigrated from Arab countries into Israel, sang in Hebrew. The episodic narrative is carried forward by the music, (rather like the recent Broken Circle Breakdown) and centred around the tar (lute) player Josef Tavila (Uri Gvriel), star of the long defunct “Tourqouise” ensemble. He has spent many years in jail, after he fell asleep at the wheel of the minibus, carrying the group. Two members were killed and his spouse Margaret (mother of his daughter Tamara) has been wheelchair bound since the accident. Since his release from prison, Jossef lives like a hermit, only visiting a pub twice a week to collect his shopping. One day, a young man asks the landlord about Jossef – it is Anram, the son of Avram, one of the surviving members of the famed group. Anram has come to see Josef to ask him to play for his dying father the composition of the title, which has never been performed.

What follows is an odyssey through the countryside, where Josef is collecting all the players of the new ensemble including his daughter Tamara, who, like her father, can drink any amount of alcohol, without showing the slightest effect – something which comes in handy when they free a blind flutist from his exploiters, Tamara drinking their boss under the table. Another musician has to be freed from his soon to be wife (who wields a huge machete) and her violent brothers. Needless to say that all goes well and the new ensemble reaches Avram just in time.

The action part of the film is executed well with many references and quotes to the Italian masters of the Western, humour and irony always helping the unbelievable incidents along. Camera work is impressive, and the actors are careful not to overdo their roles. But everything is dwarfed by the music, sad and melancholic, played on instruments very much unknown in our concert halls. Hybrid the film may be, but after seeing it, many may find that his strange and haunting music has a healing quality. AS

SCREENING DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 7 NOVEMBER AT THE TRICYLE, LONDON AND ON THE 13 NOVEMBER AT THE EVERYMAN HAMPSTEAD. tickets here

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

BROADWAY MUSICALS: A JEWISH LEGACY

Dir. Michael Kantor: USA 2013, 84 min., Narrated by Joel Grey (Documentary) + 185 min (Bonus Material, DVD)

Michael Kantor’s lively and informative film includes interviews, excerpts from the musicals and footage manages also to be very moving, helped by a running time of under 90 minutes. Particularly impressive are the scenes from the 20s, showing a “noisy, over crowded and dirty” Lower East Side in New York. True fans will enjoy the three hours bonus material of excerpts included in the DVD.

The Broadway Musical is the most American of art forms (apart from TV commercials), and its past and present is dominated by Jewish composers and lyricists. The reason for this is that Jewish artists successfully developed the tradition of the Jewish musical theatre of the Lower East Side into a national art form by the 1930s. They simply replaced the downtrodden Jewish heroes and heroines with other minorities. Nobody did this better than the composer George Gershwin and his brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics. But one should not forget that Gershwin was at first rejected many times by Broadway producers for being “too” Jewish”. His break trough “Rhapsody in Blue” was a sort of Blues played on a Klezmer clarinet, this being made possible by the fact that both Black and Jewish music was both mostly written in the minor key, to describe the suffering of both minorities. The Gershwins, unlike others, had a healthy distrust of orthodox religion, starting “Porgy and Bess” with the debunking of the Torah, by opening a ceremony with the line “It may be not be so”.

It helped, that some of these composers and lyricists ‘anglicized’ their names, like Irving Berlin (Isidore Beilin), or had it done by their parents like the Gershwins (Gerschowitz). The musical became soon a feel good factory, Rogers and Hammerstein being the leading pair with hits like “Oklahoma (1947), “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I” and their last cooperation “The Sound of Music” (1959), which dealt with emigration from Hitler Austria in a rather quaint form. By then Irving Berlins songs “Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “God Bless America” (which for a long time was the second National Anthem) were the epitome of post-war optimism, though it should be said that many Christian leaders protested openly against the latter song, questioning if a Jew had the right to express anything about the Lord.

We also learn how from the sixties onwards, Jewish composers and writers started to come to term with their own history, starting with “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964), composed by Jerry Bock. In spite of the catching songs, the story, starting with a pogrom and ending with an emigration was hardly uplifting. The same can be said for “Cabaret” (1966), where John Kander’s music could and would not camouflage the rise of Nazism in Germany. The musical was, in contrast to the film version of 1972, not a success. Finally, Mel Brooks tried more or less successfully with “The Producers” (‘Springtime for Hitler’) to kill the ghosts of the past in 2001 with laughter. AS

SHOWING AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL ON SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER AT CORNERHOUSE, MANCHESTER AND 13 NOVEMBER AT BARBICAN LONDON tickets here

Closed Season (2013) UK Jewish Film Festival

Franziska Schlotterer’s feature debut, Closed Season, is a well-crafted and visually atmospheric wartime drama that takes place in the German Black Forest. A boorish farmer Fritz (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and his wife, Emma (Brigitte Hobmeier) yearn for a child but he is infertile. When Albert, a young Jewish refugee, arrives on their doorstep, he is offered sanctuary for ulterior motives.

At first Emma is appalled at the idea of harbouring an illegal Jewish man. But once she gets to know Albert (Chrisian Friedel) and his cultured ways with literature and classical music she is seduced and acquiesces to her husband’s plan to use him as a surrogate father. Intoxicating chemistry between the three of them creates some emotional scenes (particularly when Fritz eavesdrops on their lovemaking) and much soul-searching and further suspense is provided by visits from a local Nazi friend (Thomas Loibl) of the family.

This engaging narrative s neatly enveloped inside a seventies reunion in Israel where a young German man, Bruno (Max Mauff) arrives in a kibbutz to deliver a letter from his dead mother to the father he never met. Avi (the former Albert) is reticent to accept his former life but eventually acknowledges his son.

As wartime dramas go Closed Season is a slim but nevertheless an engaging one with believable performances from the largely unknown cast. With shades of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and even Lore, the study of human dynamics between the desperate characters in contrast to the gentle farm setting is the most rewarding element MT

CLOSED SEASON IS SHOWING AT THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL on 6 NOVEMBER AT TRICYCLE, LONDON AND 17 NOVEMBER AT 10.30 AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE tickets here

LEAF London Electronic Arts Festival 7-10 November 2013

Not so much a film festival, more a weekend festival featuring film and exploring the legacy of London as a pioneering centre for the global electronic music movement. LONDON ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL runs from 7-10 November showcasing a series of talks, parties, installations and technology masterclasses.

Legendary impressario and Academy Award-winning composer GIORGIO MORODER will be in town to present his re-scored version of Fritz Lang’s cult classic METROPOLIS (1923) set to a 1984 score which features contemporary songs and added rock and pop soundtracks from the early days of MTV. His long career has involved such luminaries as Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Roger Daltrey, David Bowie and Blondie. His award-winning film scores include those of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, FLASHDANCE AND TOP GUN and his contributions to AMERICAN GIGOLO, SCARFACE AND CAT PEOPLE.

METROPOLIS ‘envisaged a utopian city of the future with a dark side. Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers, the downtrodden masses worked ceaselessly underground for the benefit of the elite above. The city’s ruler creates a robot to incite a revolt and lead the rebels to their deaths – thus making room for a less troublesome robot workforce. Painstakingly restored and re-edited under the initiative of Giorgio Moroder to create a thoroughly modern interpretation of this silent classic’.

ROB DA BANK (Bestival) will also be there to present his live re-scoring of KING KONG (1933). ‘Digging through his record library to give an eclectic collection of dubstep, electronica and weird beats to accompany for the greatest adventure-fantasy film of all time which will be played alongside the screening of this much-loved cult classic’. MT

TICKETS FOR THIS FILM EVENING AVAILABLE AT LEAF

UK Jewish Film Festival in London 30 October – 17 November 2013

The UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL is one of the highlights of the Autumn social calendar following on from the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL with a glittering array of star-studded features. The opening gala is THE JEWISH CARDINAL, Ilan Duran Cohen’s historical drama that mixes faith and identity to focus on Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish-born head of the French Church during the Papacy of Jean-Paul II.

Another highlight of this year’s s programme is IN THE SHADOW: David Ondicek’s fifties noir thriller. Set in Prague, it stars Ivan Trojan as a police chief investigating a mysterious jewellery robbery and David will be hosting a Q&A following the screening. The festival hosts an exciting selection of events and discussions and will also screen last year’s Venice Film Festival winner (2012) FILL THE VOID and an exclusive preview of THE CONGRESS, Ari Folman’s follow-up to DANCE WITH BASHIR. The festival also offers a chance to see some good old classics such as dark comedy, A SIMPLE MAN from the Coen Brothers. Book tickets here and for other Jewish film titles via VOD

The Road A Story of Life and Death (2011) UK Jewish Film Festival 2013

Director: Marc Isaacs
Written by: Marc Isaacs, Iqbal Ahmed
Producer: Rachel Wexler, Aisling Ahmed

UK 75mins 2011 Doc

What may seem at first to be quite an unpromising premise: the A5, Edgware Road; becomes rather an elegant elegy to the hidden, forgotten immigrant population of Britain, providing as it has a key workforce that has been underpinning the British economy for centuries.

Isaacs has evidently spent a great deal of time getting to know his subjects: A blind 95-year-old Viennese Jewish lady who lost her mother to the Pogrom, a Kashmiri Sunni Muslim hotel worker hoping to bring his wife over; two Irish, young and old; an aspiring Burmese Buddhist monk and a German ex-flight attendant living with her estranged husband. And all of them live on the Edgware Road. A route most would associate merely with getting to somewhere else.

The production values are affected by the small, digital camera utilised throughout and some of the storylines are inevitably more interesting than others. But this nevertheless is filmmaking rich in content and our guide and documenter, if not subtle in his manner of questioning, has definitely won over the trust of the people he befriends in the pursuit of their story.

His evident empathy and understanding enables Isaacs to cast a light into these very ordinary peoples’ lives and encourage them to share their dreams both aspirational and dead, with the audience; sometimes in a quite breath-taking way.

Keelta is a young Irish girl leaving the Emerald Isle for the Big Smoke, arriving at one end of the A5 straight off the ferry in Holyhead, full of hope for her future. Billy is a man who came over in the Sixties, worked tirelessly building Britain’s future on the railway, the Eurotunnel and the roads. But his is a far more pessimistic though not embittered appraisal of life away from home. Being an outsider in Britain is no picnic. ‘Always a pound short and a day late’ is how he expressed a lifetime of dreams thwarted with heartfelt Irish understatement.

This doc is a real treat and tremendously moving. The filming spanned an 18-month period, so we get to see how things develop for all concerned, good and bad. It’s a fascinating snapshot of an invisible London; an everyday one and the A5 is the perfect foil. One might drive down it a hundred times and never really glance right or left for any period of time longer than it takes for the lights to change.

But Isaacs forces us to slow down and take in what is a tiny sample of the very real people that live and work there and in so doing opens up a whole tapestry, a whole conversation about life and what life means; the choices we make and the ramifications thereof. Andrew Rajan.

SCREENING AS PART OF A MARC ISAACS RETROSPECTIVE FOLLOWED BY Q&A WITH THE DIRECTOR ON SUNDAY 10TH NOVEMBER AT 12.00 AT ODEON SWISS COTTAGE tickets here

Gothic: The Dark Heart Of Film October/November 2013

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Madeline Smith (Theatre of Blood), Charlie Higson (King of the Ants), Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentleman) and Jane Goldman (scriptwriter) sharing some Gothic moments from their childhood at the press conference for GOTHIC: THE DARK HEART OF FILM that runs at the BFI Southbank until early in 2014.

Soho Cigarette (2013)

Dir.: Jonathan Fairbairn

Cast: David Galea, Andrea Padararu, Jean-Baptiste Fillon, UK 2013, 94 min.

D, a young Italian, shows tourists around Soho telling them vivid stories about Henry VIII having sex with Anne Boleyn at “this very spot”. He loses his job and girl friend Anastasia, a bar maid specialising in nicking bags. After a mysterious stranger gives him an old Mercedes, D talks to the woman who died in the backseat, sleeps in hotel kitchens and in the flat of his friend Luc, who runs off with Anastasia.

At first, the b/w photography gives hope that at least the aesthetics may save the film, but soon even the pictures becomes insipid and repetitive. The film is simply as unexciting as its main protagonists: lots of talk about nothing, pretending to be cool, but actually being boring. Everyone wanders aimlessly through the film with its unstructured ‘narrative’ and if there would be a cliché counter, it would have given up the ghost after thirty minutes. Sunglasses at night were original a very long time ago, and the actors are pretentious wannabes playing themselves. Even the score is gratingly second hand.

SOHO CIGARETTE is low on budget, but even lower on ideas, succeeding only in making Soho look uninspiring. AS

The Taste of Money (2012)

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Director/Writer: Im Sang-soo

114min South Korean English Subtitles Drama

This slick beast reared its tempting head in the Cannes Competition section luring us in for a potential South Korean treat. It’s the latest drama from Housemaid director Im Sang-soo and focuses on a super wealthy but dysfunctional family headed by a monstrous workaholic matriarch who runs their crooked business affairs while bedding a young adonis gofer who yearns for her divorced daughter. Sadly its grandiose goings-on and opulent visuals fail to ignite any real excitement or satisfaction beyond the sensationalism. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 25 OCTOBER AT CURZON SOHO AND CURZON HOME CINEMA

The Selfish Giant (2013) DVD/Blu

Director/Writer: Clio Barnard

Cast: Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder, Steve Evets. Lorraine Ashbourne, Conner Chapman

93min Drama UK

The gently rolling countryside of Yorkshire is the setting for Clio Barnard’s contemporary coming of age fable of under-privilege seen through the eyes of two young lads, Arbor and Swifty. Played with extraordinary sensitivity by newcomers Connor Chapman and Shaun Thomas, these boys have similar family problems and difficulties at school that help them forge a close and compatible friendship. Arbor is the less likeable of the two, with a soft spot for his mum, rather like the Kray Twins. When they meet scrap metal dealer, Kitten, Arbor discovers his knack for dealing and with Swifty’s riding skills the pair start scavenging with the help of Kitten’s shire pony, Diesel.

Barnard’s linear narrative echoes the social realism of many current British Films but here Barnard tempers the harshness of Hudderfield’s scrapyards with enchanting images of starry skies and nature. Swifty has a way with animals and develops a strong attachment to Diesel, handling him with skill and compassion and gaining credibility with Kitten who favours him in contrast to the cocky Arbor. Clio Barnard handles the direction with great skill, evoking an unsettling underlying tension in these social dynamics that make it clear that this is a journey that will end in tears. MT

THE SELFISH GIANT SCREENS AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 14 OCTOBER AND 16 OCTOBER AT THE OWE2 AND CURZON MAYFAIR COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL EYE AND now OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY from 27 JANUARY 2014

Luton (2013) BFI 57th London Film Festival

Director/Writer: Michalis Konstantatos Writer: Michalis Konstantatos

Cast: Nicholas Vlachakis, Eleftheria Komi, Christos Saupountzis, Connie Zikou

104min Psychological Drama Greek with English subtitles

Michalis Konstantatos’s debut feature LUTON, initially appears to have about as much going for it as its eponymous Bedfordshire town. Suffocating in the same washed-out visuals and bland aesthetic as recent Greek “Weird Wave” outing (and Venice-winner) Miss Violence, it opens rather like an episode of EastEnders on valium, Greek-style, with monosyllabic dialogue. Following the workaday lives of three unconnected people: Eleftheria Komi plays Mary, a lonely solicitor looking for more than sex in her life, Saupountzis is Makis, a newsagent in a rut and Vlachakis is teenager Jimmy, trapped by his strict parents: all give performances of considerable appeal.

The film opens with dark-haired Mary exercising in the gym. We then meet Makis riffling through the pages of a newspaper, fag on the go, as he serves a blond customer. Mary, then goes lingerie shopping for her night out. This dark lawyer is a dark horse and once inside the cubicle, she starts to fondle herself slowly. Meanwhile in a chinzy dining room, Jimmy has a stultifyingly silent dinner with his grandma and mum. Later in the park, a couple is snogging voraciously, endlessly: it’s Jimmy and his girlfriend. Mary’s evening at a nightclub ends in oral sex in the car park; no prizes for who’s the giver. And so Konstantatos continues to flesh out the ordinary lives of his sad protagonists and we wait patiently for the drama in this drama to be unleashed.

When their disparate lives eventually collide it’s almost too fast to process, given the deliberately banal build-up. LUTON is a slow-burner sharing its story cryptically, resentfully, eerily but eventually the pieces fall together in a cataclysmic meltdown leaving us mesmerised at its long-awaited denouement. Bide your time, if you can, and you will be rewarded. MT

LUTON IS SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 20 OCTOBER 2013 AT HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir: Nicolas Wrathhall; USA2013, 89 min

Like many critics of the capitalist system, Gore Vidal, who died last year age 86, came from a very privileged background: his father Eugene Vidal was working for the Roosevelt administration in aviation (he had an affair with Amelia Earhart), his grandfather Thomas Gore was Senator for Oklahoma. Archive footage showing the young Gore in a plane with his father, declaring on embarking “that it is easier to fly a plane than a car”. His mother Nina married later into the Kennedy clan, the older Gore Vidal would be a friend of the future president, running (unsuccessfully) for congress in 1960. In the early 60s Vidal travelled with Tennessee Williams through Italy, where he would later settle for over 20 years in Ravello.

As a (prolific) writer, Vidal was to fall foul of the literary establishment early on with his novel “The City and the Pillar (1948), because of his open description of homosexual sex. The New York Times literary section blacklisted his books. In the 50s he wrote many important TV plays, like “The Best Man”, starring Henry Fonda. His reworking of the film script for Ben Hur (1959) included a subtle homosexual plot, which director William Whyler had to hide from Charlton Heston, playing the title role.

Vidal was bi-sexual, he had an affair with Anais Nin, and was engaged for a short time to the actress Joanne Woodward, who later married Paul Newman. For most of his adult life Vidal lived with his companion Howard Auster, who died in 2003; it was a true friendship, because for Vidal “sex destroys relationships, because either one looses interest in the other”. His novel “Myra Breckinridge” (1968) caused a scandal because it discussed transgender issues; it was filmed in 1970 by Michael Sarne with Mae West.

Vidal was not only critical of the system, but equally so of the politicians who run it. Asked about JFK, Vidal calls him “a most ineffectual president, in his thousand days in office he invaded two countries: Cuba and Vietnam”. Vidal’s political novels like “Burr” and “Washington DC” show the political classes, from the founding fathers onwards, as corrupt and only interested in property: Washington, a general who never won a battle, becoming rich whilst in office. Vidal’s criticism was never dull, he was witty and funny as well as angry. About Reagan he said “the establishment decided that it was easiest to have the best cue card reader as president, so they choose Reagan. But then his house burned down, and his whole library was destroyed – all two books. But the worst was, that he had only coloured in one book”. All his life, Vidal was on committee’s fighting those in power, like the campaign to remove President Bush jr. from office for war crimes.

Apart from archive footage and interviews (very moving Vidal’s meeting with Gorbachev in Venice in the 90s), the film shows long footage of the TV debates between William Buckley jr. a conservative author and Vidal. Both men, quiet patrician, sharing an upper class background, really loosing their temper, with Buckley calling Vidal “a queer, who should go away” and Vidal countering with “Buckley being a product of a system, that has only invented one art form: the TV commercial, selling soap and presidents in one program’.

A lively, informative film about a great intellectual and political campaigner. Andre Simonoviescz

Today (2012) Aujourd’hui (Tey) | African Odysseys

Director: Alain Gomis Writer: Alain Gomis Dialogue: Djolof Mbengue

Cast: Saul Williams, Djolof Mbengue, Anisia Uzeyman, Aissa Maiga

France/Senegal 86mins

Saul Williams plays Satche in this hauntingly bittersweet drama from French Senegalese director, Alain Gomis. A fit and well-educated man wakes up in his mother’s house near Dakar and knows instinctively that this day he will die. Friends and family gather round and share their candid thoughts about his life. And it’s not all good. Some are far from complimentary but given with grace and a sincerity leavened with tolerance and good humour of their long associations with him. Anger and bitterness are expressed and released naturally for all to hear in the warm sunshine of this final day in his life.

As Satche drifts seamlessly through the pastel-coloured streets of his neighbourhood friends rush to greet him laughing and joking. He’s popular and good-natured. There’s a sense of spiritual acceptance tinged with dread about his impending fate. Will it be shocking or painful? Will he just serenely slip away? These thoughts swirl round like the empty paper cups in the local town square where a ceremony to celebrate his life has already taken place – without him. After breakfast with his best friend Sele (Djolof Mbengue) he visits an elegant ex-girlfriend (Aissa Maiga) who tries to in vain seduce him for the last time.

There is a silent scene spent in languorous love-making with his partner Rama and they relax in harmony as the sun goes down. His mind jumps forward in future reverie to see the kids grown-up in a wonderfully shot sequence. This is a surreal but quietly contemplative study embued by Crystel Fournier’s cinematography that makes great use of the unique light and gentleness of this French-flavoured West African country where everyone wears their heart on their sleeve and lives in harmony with the rhythm of nature.

Meredith Taylor ©

TEY IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE AFRICAN ODYSSEYS STRAND AT THE BFI TOGETHER WITH OUSMANE SEMBENE’S BOROM SARRET

A Long and Happy Life (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Despite the ostentatious wealth of Moscow’s elite, two films at the London Film Festival show us that modern life for ordinary Russians is still hard-going and hasn’t change much since the times of Dostoevsky. Boris Khlebnikov’s A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE is actually wishful thinking. Shot in a cinema verite-style on a hand-held camera by Pavel Kostomarov this low-budget indie drama is the tragic tale of a struggling middle class employer.

Alexander Yatsenko plays Alex Sergeevich, or Sasha, to his friends (and he hasn’t got many), a decent employer who has given up his city life to embrace the great outdoors and running a rural farm by a fast-flowing river in northern Russia. When faced with a compulsory purchase order from the local council he eventually decides to take the money and run but when his poor farm workers beg him to support of their liveliehoods and keep the farm, he has a change of heart and with their support, he prepares to stand up to the authorities.

His on/off girlfriend Anya (Anna Kotova) has ideas to lure him back to the city, where she works in local government but he feels a strong responsibility to his workers who appear to need him more until they start to show their true colours.

As typical Russian films go, A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE, is short and brutal but nevertheless wrought with human confrontation and emotional pain. The change that takes place in Sasha’s stance towards his business venture, seen as a tonal shift to sudden melodrama, does feel somewhat unbelievable though given his profile as a businessman. Worthwhile but unconvincing. MT

A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE IS SHOWING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY 18TH AND SUNDAY 20TH OCTOBER AT NFT1 AND CINE LUMIERE, RESPECTIVELY

Sniffer (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Director: Buddhadev Dasgupta Writer: Buddhadev Dasgupta

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ananya Chatterjee, Pankaj Tripathy

132 mins Language: Hindi Origin: India Drama

A fruitful collaboration between the prominent Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta and the major Indian star Nawazuddin Siddiqui (recently seen in the highly-acclaimed Gangs of Wasseypur), SNIFFER begins as an amusing off-beat comedy and, by its end, becomes an almost-epic fable of magic-realist proportions. If the use of the word ‘epic’ implies length, the film admittedly feels a little stretched at 132 minutes, but the beauty of its ending makes the duration more than worthwhile.

Siddiqui plays alcoholic private detective Anwar, who lives alone with his dog in a Muslim tenement, unaware that he is being closely watched by two of his neighbours: a devout Muslim who wants Anwar evicted due to his drinking, and a young woman who has fallen in love with him. But Anwar, it seems, is haunted by thoughts of his own lost love – the one that got away.

The spectre of the past, and of a simpler more honest way of life, runs throughout the picaresque narrative, in which Anwar’s belief in the common decency of humanity becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to. Through a series of cases, the sorry state of modern society is slowly revealed, alongside religious intolerance. When a case leads Anwar away from the city, he is offered the chance to journey back to his past and reconnect with his roots.

If Anwar’s drunken monologues to his dogs occasionally fall prey to exposition, the film’s quirky, surrealist tone makes them seem all the more fitting. When Anwar takes the dog for a walk late one night, he stumbles across three wailing, ghost-like figures leaning over a bright blue railing: the first has suffered from years of constipation, the second from years with no sex, the third from years of no sleep. It’s a haunting moment which nicely encapsulates the film’s blend of dark humour, social examination and mysticism. Added to Siddiqui’s excellent performance and Dasgupta’s fluid camera, it all equates to an experience which will not be soon forgotten. ALEX BARRETT

SNIFFER IS SHOWING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY 18TH AND SUNDAY 20TH OCTOBER AT RICH MIX AND VUE5 WEST END LONDON respectively.

The Long Way Home (2013)

Dir.: Alphan Eseli; Cast: Ugur Polat, Nergis Ozturk, Serdar Orcin;

Turkey 2013, 112 min. Turkish with English Subtitles Drama

Alphan Eseli’s debut film THE LONG WAY HOME, a gruelling masterpiece centring on the aftermath of the battle of Sarikamis in Eastern Anatolia, in which 90, 000 Turkish soldiers were killed in the WWI battle with Russian soldiers in 1915. Eseli’s heart-felt narrative is based on long stories which his late Grandfather (a survivor of said battle) told him when he was a child. The film is dedicated to him.

Long panoramic shots open over a snowy landscape: a man tries to coax a horse pulling a carriage up a mountain, but the horse expires of exhaustion. A symbolic beginning to a film which will test the audience’s sensitivity to the limit – and sometimes beyond. The man mentioned is Saci Bey, an officer wearing civilians. He is trying to find a way to the city of Erzerum, where he is to deliver Gul Hanim and her daughter Nihan (relatives of a high ranking politician) to the authorities. The trio is forced to continue on foot and Saci Bey, always the gentleman, carries the girl for long periods of their arduous snowbound trecks. When all seems lost, they reach a village which has been set on fire and hide in one of few habitable places. Later they are joined by Coban Ali, who survived the plundering of the village, and a teenage girl from a neighbouring village.

After the glaring shots of endless snow the images change to a claustrophobic existence, only a meagre fire lightens the room where the survivors huddle. Hunger is the worst enemy, and Coban Ali tries to convince Saci Bey to start the walk to Erzerum. But the officer is reluctant: he once lost his soldiers, because he didn’t prepare them for a snow battle. The class distinction between villagers and the three members of the upper-class are subtle but always obvious, especially when Nihan gives the peasant girl her gloves, and Coban Ali reprimands her “for having airs, because the lady gave you gloves”.

The modus vivendi is eventually disrupted when two soldiers arrive with a dying officer. One of the soldiers kills the officer and this mood of nihilism makes way for the delirious finale where Nisan’s mother is forced to into the mêlée.

Eseli’s camerawork is impressive and the outdoor scenes are lively, the long panning shots always broken up with intimate POVs. The haunting music is by Mihaly Vig, a regular composer for Bela Tarr. The Long Way Home is a gruelling drama but Eseli never resorts to pure realism, creating a poetic disturbing atmosphere. AS

A Hijacking (2012) DVD/BLU

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Director/Script: Tobias Lindholm

Cast: Johan Philip Asbaek, Soren Malling, Dar Salim, Roland Moller, Abdihakin Asgar, Amalie Ihle Alstrup

99min English and Danish with subtitles

From the opening scenes there is a prescient doom about A Hijacking that sends cold shivers of anxiety down your spine. Told in linear narrative form by lauded scripter Tobias Lindholm, the writer behind Borgen, Submarino, and standout hit The Hunt, the strength of this story is that it feels so real. A Danish cargo ship is held up by Somali pirates in the Indian ocean, but the way that it’s told has a chilling quality that keeps you on your toes throughout, hoping against hope for a positive outcome.

Shot on location off the East African coast in a real ship with its own experience of hijacking and in the sleek and architecturally magnificent offices of a Danish Shipping Corporation this is a visually ambitious film quietly realised without resorting to heightened melodrama or outlandish displays of emotion from its strung-out protagonists. It’s very much a case of less is more. And the key to success here is that ‘reality rules’.

We first meet the crew through the ship’s cook Mikkel, who is ‘ship to shoring’ his wife with the date of his homecoming. All is present and correct on board as they proceed on a normal day’s sailing back to Denmark. In the next scene they are unceremoniously overcome by a brual gang of Somali pirates and forced into the hold. Back in steely-lensed Copenhagen, bespoke besuited CEO Peter (Soren Malling) is being advised by a professional hostage and non-actor negotiator Gary Skjoldmose Porter that negotiations are better handled by an disinterested party. Peter, begs to differ, takes full control and responsibility of the reins here not only of his company but also of his staff. The performances are understated but committed, tight-lipped and austere with the only ripples of emotion seen from the cook (Johan Philip Asbaek) and his wife Amalie (Ihle Alstrup).

What ensues is a suspense-filled battle of wits between the corporate mindset of a captain of industry Danish-style and of the criminal gangsters who have no interest or intention in playing by any rules as the tale spins out with increasing hostility and barely controlled anger over a period or several months. And it’s a surprisingly discrete white-knuckled and nuanced ride, which will have you reaching for the valium in lip-biting tension until the final gut-twisting denouement delivers its final shock. MT

A HIJACKING RELEASES ON 9TH MAY 2013 IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK and OUT ON DVD ON FROM 16 OCTOBER 2013

Looking for Hortense 2012 DVD/BLU

Director: Pascal Bonitzer

Writers: Pascal Bonitzer and Agnès de Sacy

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Isabelle Carré, Marin Orcand Tourrès

100min Drama French with subtitles

Kristin Scott Thomas and Jean-Pierre Bacri star in this intelligent Parisian drama about a married couple who’ve lost their spark and are slowly drifting apart.

Billed as a comedy, it’s not quite up there with Bacri’s previous outings Le Gout des Autres or On Connait Le Chanson but will satisfy the arthouse crowd who enjoyed Scott Thomas’s performance in François Ozon’s recent In The House.

Here Bacri leads as Damien, a middle-aged professor of Japanese Civilisation whose relationship with his father is also causing him grief and diminishing his masculinity as a fully-fledged adult. Having discovered to his chagrin that theatre-director Iva (Scott Thomas) is contemplating an affair with one of her young actors, his ego is boosted by the delightful Aurore (Isabelle Carré), who he meets in a nearby restaurant. The local Asian community is also drawn in with a humorous subplot that offers a contemporary nod to multiculturalism.

Jean-Pierre Bacri is as sullen-faced as usual here and the script doesn’t quite give rein to his signature deadpan humour that has made previous outings so engaging so it’s a shame Bonitzer doesn’t give more time to Kristin Scott Thomas’s sublime acting skills and the development of her romantic story. But if you’re looking for solid and sophisticated French fare, well-acted and skillfully told then Looking for Hortense will fit the bill . MT

LOOKING FOR HORTENSE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9TH AUGUST 2013 AT WATERMANS ARTS CENTRE, BRENTFORD AND OUT ON DVD ON 2ND DECEMBER 2013

The Kill Team (2013)

Dir. Dan Krauss: USA 2012, 79 min.

To make a proper anti-war film, one has to avoid glorifying any action and Dan Krauss THE KILL TEAM shows very little war action, apart from a few stills and footage and adopts a visually unappealing style befitting its indie, low-budget nature. Instead, the film tries to answer the question: why do ordinary Americans become murderers?.

Between January and May 2010 soldiers of the 3^rd Platoon of Bravo Company (US Marines) killed three civilians in Kandahar Province. One of the soldiers, SPC Adam Winfield, than 22 years old, phones his father after the first killing, asking him to help him since he feels threatened by Staff. Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the leader of the men, who “hates” all Afghan people, and encourage his subordinates “to always carry a spare rifle, so you can shoot a man and put the spare weapon next to him as proof, that you were attacked”. As one witness at the court hearing, PFC Justin Stoner testified: “They have a lot of practice staging killings”. The first and youngest victim was 15 year old Gul Mudin, his murderers not much older than him: CPL Morlock (21) and PFC Holmes (19).

Centred around Winfield and his family, particularly his father Christopher who was a Marine himself, the film shows the preparations for his trial and the reaction to the outcome. We see home movies of young Adam, a kid growing up in Florida, in a loving and secure family. And yet, when confronted by the murder of a man called Adahdad in May 2010, Winfield shoots at him, trying to miss. Later he blames himself for not trying to save the victim. But the real motive was fear: The photo of him and Gibbs over the body of Adahdad is the proof of his complicity, which may have saved him from being killed by Gibbs. After pleading guilty of manslaughter, Winfield is sentenced to three years in prison, Gibbs gets life for three cases of premeditated murder, still insisting on his innocence.

In conversations with his parents, Adam Winfield describes the war as “some non-event, mostly boring”. The “incidents created by Gibbs were the only “thrilling moments”. He says this matter of fact, half apology, half excuse. His family listens, only interested in getting him home, seeing him as the victim. His sentence is seen as unjust, the Army “tricked him”. And nobody ever asks the question, why the war in Afghanistan is fought. It’s just about getting Adam home.

KILL TEAM fails to answer the question why boys like Adam have to be afraid of men like Gibbs and become executioners themselves, but one reason might be that Adams parents never ask these questions. And it goes without saying that Gibbs and the 3^rd platoon are only the tip of the iceberg of American war crimes (not only in Afghanistan) – all the families at home only seeing their boys as victims. The collective American psyche in the Land of the Brave, never admitting to any guilt. Andre Simonoviescz

KILL TEAM SCREENS AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 17 OCTOBER AT HACKNEY AND 19 OCTOBER AT NFT2

Le Grand Cahier (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

János Szász’s magnificently-crafted adaptation of Agota Kristof”s French-language: ‘The Notebook’ (hence the title) is a lesson in history and a treasure of Hungarian contemporary cinema which has lurked much in the shadows of late. Christian Berger’s sumptuous visual treatment almost blunts the harrowing nature of this Second World War tale of twin boys who are taken by their mother Gyöngyver Bognar, (Opium) to live in near-starvation with their tyrannical peasant grandmother (who villagers call “the witch”) deep in the countryside.

But when László and András Gyémánt’s arrive at the primitive home of their grandmother (a stony-faced Piroska Molnár), they also have to live in the shadow of a Nazi officer (Ulrich Thomsen, Brothers) who has taken up residence in her farmhouse. The twins survive by immersing themselves in study and develop a punishing regime of mutual physical abuse to toughen themselves up in the harsh environment.

The tone here is bleak and emotionally distant; Szász’offering up an objective view of his survivors and making no attempt to endear us the boys who remain stern and disciplined throughout despite their young years – in contrast to the recent appealing depiction of kids in wartime outings such as Wolfskinder (2013) and Lore (2012).

Recording their experiences in a notebook (seen and heard in voiceover), the boys provide illustrative testament to this time of suffering that has a profound effect on their psyches. In learning to stand up to their grandmother in this powerful game of wits and willpower, Szász illustrates a psychological dynamic that makes the oppressed capable of the same brutality as the Nazi oppressors and also provides intriguing psychological texture to this wartime narrative.

Despite its harsh subject-matter, Le Grand Cahier is a beautiful film to experience accompanied by its atmospheric score. János Szász has provided a rich and important account of the impact of the war on the Hungarian countryside. MT

LE GRAND CAHIER IS SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2013 AT THE CINE LUMIERE

Enough Said (2013)

Director/Script: Nicole Holofcener

Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Toni Collette

USA 91min Comedy drama

If you’re a fan of Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her particularly brand of self-deprecating humour, then this is your film. Upbeat and zinging with wit and authenticity, ENOUGH SAID is a classic farce revolving around a group of semi-sorted couples and striving singles with kids in the sunny suburbs of LA. Living with her daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairway) Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays divorced massage therapist, Eva.

At a crowded cocktail party she talks to Albert (Gandolfino) about the unattractiveness of the other guests, agreeing to have dinner one night as friends. She also meets offbeat poet Marianne (Catherine Keener) who is so drawn to Eva’s accessible humour and empathy she starts to open up about her ex-husband and his strange habits at the dinner table.

Albert and Julia get on surprisingly well at dinner. Albert is overweight and eats like a pig, but has a certain charm and conversation flows naturally as they discuss their daughters who are both heading for University.

Like her character in Seinfeld, Julia always puts her foot in it but does so with such charm and warmth she makes Eva an appealing and funny woman who can be also be naive. As she gets to know Marianne, it gradually dawns that Albert was her ex-husband. Toni Collette provides additional humour as her best friend Sarah and emotional side-kick when the chips are down, but somehow Eva manages to save the day despite her massive social gaffe which naturally leaves her in the dog-house, but not for long.

James Gandolfino too emerges smelling of roses in this his penultimate film (Animal Rescue will be released in 2014). He manages to pull dignity and integrity out of the bag and certainly proves he is no pushover in the game of love. Catherine Keener achieves the right blend of superiority and emotional aloofness in contrast to Julia Louis Dreyfus’s sparky candour. An upbeat gem. MT

ENOUGH SAID IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH OCTOBER 2013

2 Guns (2013) DVD/Blu-Ray

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

Script: Blake Masters

Cast: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Bill Paxton, Paula Patton,

109min Action/Thriller/Comedy

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s last outing was the Iceland-based documentary The Deep. Buddy cop caper, 2 Gunscould not be more different. But hopes of it following in the well-loved footsteps of Midnight Run rapidly fade despite a stellar cast, whipsmart script and superb production values. Why, when it has all the right ingredients to be an action comedy winner? I guess it all comes down to the lack of real charm.

Mark Wahlberg is larger than life as Stig Stigman, an undercover agent who goes on the run after a botched attempt to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel with a side-line in bull farming. Aided and abetted by slick DEA exec Denzel Washington as Bobby Trench, they join forces, each unaware of the other’s uncover status. And they certainly make an impressively butch pair: Wahlberg’s rippling muscles and Washington’s glistening gold tooth adding a touch of macho fun to the proceedings with Kormákur’s slick direction mostly avoiding CGI.

Getting off to a cracking start, the film gradually loses interest enmired in gratuitous violence despite the easy chemistry of the leads. A touch of mysogyny is thrown in with a lingerie-clad love-interest (Paula Patton) for Washington that doesn’t quite wash, particularly as she’s supposed to be of the same professional rank. Bill Paxton saves the day, giving a rock solid performance as dodgy CIA agent.

So although not quite up there with Kormákur’s previous indie fare, 2 Guns is a mainstream, respectable but glib gangster movie; well-crafted if slightly underpowered tension-wise, but sure to replenish the coffers for his next arthouse treat. MT

2 GUNS IN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 16TH AUGUST 2013 and ON DVD/BLU FROM 9TH DECEMBER 2013

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Honey (2012) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Director: Valeria Golino Writers: Valeria Golino, Angela Del Fabbro

Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Carlo Cecchi, Libero De Rienzo

96min Italy/France Drama Italian with subtitles

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Italian actress Valeria Golino sees euthanasia as a necessary evil in her debut feature as director. Screening at Cannes ‘Un Certain Regard’ section, this is a low-budget drama about Irene, (nickname: ‘Miele’) a gamine and restless woman with a questionable code of ethics who sees it her duty to assist the terminally ill to die in exchange for money.

After a brave start where she travels to Mexico to procure animal drugs for her human use, the narrative soon descends into ‘lost souls’ territory as Irene (Jasmine Trinca – La Stanza del Figlio) joins her patients in the melée of lost souls from varying age-groups and walks of life.

On the face of it, Irene is having a reasonable time of it and plenty of sex with her vapid boyfriend Rocco (Libero De Rienzo). But she is unlikeable and tense as a character and fails to warm up despite Rocco’s avid ministerings and the attention of a suave and sophisticated retired engineer, Signor Grimaldi, (Carlo Cecchi) who wants to die but actually ends up supporting her in a surprising volte-face.

Emotionally distant but flirtatious, Irene is also unconvincing as a ‘sister of mercy’ so despite Golino’s excellent premise (based on the novel A Nome Tuo by Mauro Covacich) she appears to have cast Irene as lead in the wrong film, as if she’s wandered in from the set of the Milliennium Trilogy . To make matters worse, the edgy tone of the piece melts away in the second half where Grimaldi comes to the fore as the father figure she never had and as the ethical slant on euthanasia retreats into the background we’re left wondering: “Was this woman to be taken seriously or was she just looking for love in an extremely creative way”? If so, she certainly lucks out with Grimaldi who ends up being by far the most promising character with the wittiest lines.

This is a stylishly artistic debut from Golino, who is certainly talented as is Trinca, in her own way, as an actress; but she seems to have started with one idea and finished with another and, in the process, failed in both attempts to bring this engaging and worthwhile story to a satisfactory conclusion. Any similarities that have been drawn between Miele and Marco Bellocchio’s euthanasia-themed film La Bella Addormentata (Dormant Beauty) are misplaced here. That is quite a different beast as it deals with the real life case of a comatose girl on life-support, which occupied the Italian media for quite some time due ethical conflicts between the Catholic Church and medical establishment. MT

SCREENING AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 12 AND 13 OCTOBER 2013

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2013)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen Adaptation: Carl Joos/Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Neil Cattrysse, Geert Van Rampelberg

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a musical love story. Inspired by Johan Heldenbergh (one of the stars of “The Misfortunates”) and Mieke Dobbels, it’s cleverly brought to life by Van Groeningen in fractured narrative form, captured on the widescreen in the lush, bucolic countryside around Bruges, Belgium.

Didier (Heldenbergh), a singer and musician and his partner Elise (Veerle Baetens), a tattooist discover during a hospital visit in Ghent that their 6-year-old daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), has leukaemia.

Flashing back to the moment they first met, the chemistry is ardent and their affair takes off as they instantly bond through music. Life takes its natural course, as the narrative dances back and forwards dipping into their lives in a way that feels natural and easy to follow. They move into Didier’s restored barn and create a life together. There’s a vibrant energy to Moving Circle that echoes that of Cafe de Flore (2011). Heldenbergh and Baetens attraction feels real in moments of elation and sadness and they give passionate performances especially between the sheets, and when they perform with the Didier’s local ‘Blue-grass’ Band.

As the narrative develops, the storytelling becomes more erratic and a sudden shot of Elise in a ambulance fighting for her life, feels abrupt and disorientating, as if we’ve missed a vital clue. What follows is heartbreaking and the tone becomes increasingly sinister switching from melodrama to something darker and more muffled. Didier becomes unbalanced, ranting at the television in an unmoving outburst that attempts unsuccessfully to add a political dimension to proceedings. His touching sensitivity, previously anchored by Elise’s practical nature, transforms into the realms of psychosis and she also starts to lose the plot in a personality change that lacks believability as Broken Circle finally goes into meltdown in a dispiriting denoument to a promising start. MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 18TH OCTOBER 2013

Love, Marilyn (2013)

Dir: Liz Garbus,

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Jennifer Ehle, Lindsay Lohan, Lili Taylor, Uma Thurman, MarisaTomei, Evan Rachel Wood,

107min USA 2012

One can say without hype that Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) is one of the most exploited women in our media age. After her mother, a cutter at RKO, could not look after her anymore due to mental health problems, Norma Jean Mortenson was bounced around between orphanages and foster parents. At the age of 16, working in an aircraft factory, she married a man whom she called “Daddy; they divorced in 1946. Her acting career started the following year as an un-credited voice of a telephone operator. Fox, who let her first contract expire, re-signed her, and she had small parts in the 1950 films Asphalt Jungle and All about Eve. But nothing prepared her or the media world for her status as sex symbol, which she cemented with Niagara in 1953.

Here in Love, Marilyn, a documentary-style biopic, Liz Garbus tries to give the late idol a voice based on diaries and personal letters previously published as ‘fragments’ in 2010 (as discovered in Marilyn’s house in Brentwood by Anna Strasberg, daughter of Lee, her acting coach). It goes without saying that the subject-matter is gold-dust, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee top marks for Love, Marilyn as a successful piece of filmmaking. Liz Garbus falls on the first hurdle in her decision to cast a selection of contemporary Hollywood actresses to recite the “different voices” of Marilyn (rather than just one lead), giving the piece a slightly disorientating feel at first as we grapple with trying to identify who’s being whom. Clearly it’s impossible to find an actress that evokes Marilyn’s multi-faceted persona, so casting a variety of actresses seemed a stroke of genius but actually it’s rather a flawed one. These moments are, however, successfully inter-cut with archive newsreel and private footage which are always going to be endlessly fascinating, no matter which filmmaker wields them. And the camera obviously loved Marilyn: possibly one of the most expressive and charismatic of all the actresses of her era. The most appealing aspect of this doc are the endless stills of her looking devastatingly beautiful, touchingly naive; endlessly sexy; happily ‘in love’ and tellingly lost; disappointed and broken.

We learn nothing really new, only snippets like Jean Russell mentioning that Monroe was frightened to leave her dressing room during the shooting of Gentlemen prefer Blondes (1953). Or the scene Monroe’s husband Joe DiMaggio made in 1954, when director Billy Wilder shot the famous subway footage over and over again, while 1500 hooting men stood by, asking for more. The same Wilder, who would call Monroe later “the mad person on the plane” during a troubled shooting schedule. Or her brave engagement for her soon-to-be husband Arthur Miller in 1956, when he was hunted down by the HUAC committee and could not get a passport (Fox told Monroe, she would be finished, if she supported Miller); the same Miller who wrote the script to Misfits, her and Gable’s last film, in which Monroe played a role she felt degraded by, whilst her husband met his next wife, Inge Morath, on location.

No wonder she was so disturbed that she agree to enter Payne Whiting Psychiatric Hospital voluntarily in February 1961, a month after her divorce from Miller. Mistreated and cut off from her friends, she smuggled a note to DiMaggio, who got her out, threatening to tear “the building down brick by brick”. Her relationship to her psychotherapist Ralph Greenson (she moved closed to his home in LA) was ambivalent too, since the doctor prescribed her in the end more or less anything having grown distant from his star patient. In May 1962, whilst on the set of the troubled Something Has To Give, she flew to Washington to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for JFK; Fox sacked her for breaking contractual obligations, only to re-instate her days before her death on 5 August 1962.

Garbus saves us from all the theories regarding the Kennedy brothers, but the earnest declamations of the Hollywood stars do not make up for the fact that this, too, is just another vehicle on the exploitation bandwagon circling a troubled woman who was unable to put the many fragments of her life together and who wrote in her diary shortly before her death: “Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone”. AS

LOVE, MARILYN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 18TH OCTOBER AND ON DVD 28TH OCTOBER

Abuse of Weakness (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir; Catherine Breillat; Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jool Shen, Laurene Ursino;

France 2013, 104 min. Drama French with English subtitles

After two rather disappointing films The Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat has returned with ABUSE OF WEAKNESS to her usual confrontational style – chronicling the gender war in films which show that women are not always the victims as commonly assumed. Sale comme un Ange (1991), in which the heroine Barbara, married to a young policeman, falls for his superior and gently coaxes him into killing her husband in an arrest gone wrong, so that she can marry him, is a good example. ABUSE OF WEAKNESS is an autobiographical film too. The protagonist, Maud (Isabelle Huppert), is a middle-aged film director, suffering from a recent stroke, which has left her impaired.

While recovering in bed, Huppert (in her usual ‘couldn’t-care-less mode’) sees gangster Vilko (Jool Shen) being interviewed on TV and decides to cast him in her next film. Vilko is a wild boy and Maud’s family and friends are very protective of her. They seem justified in their suspicions: Maud is lending Vilko more and more money – seemingly to keep him keep on board for the film project. Vilko’s introduces Maud to his young wife and baby and from then on the power structure changes. Whilst the sums of money Maud is giving him get bigger and bigger, so grows Vilko’s dependence on Maud and a worrying dependency between the pair gradually gets stronger.

Breillat’s character of the hemiplegic Maud is a challenging role for Huppert and she rises to the occasion giving a magnificent performance: suffering physically, only to get stronger mentally. Vilko starts with the upper hand but he turns out to be a real pushover, unable to see the trap Maud is setting for him: luring him into her lair like a crafty cat playing with a mouse. Vilko’s only interest in life is money and he can’t work out how Maud has managed to capture his soul. She might not be able to compete sexually with his attractive wife, put she can push the right buttons to make Vilko into her own creature, even joking “that she is doing his wife a favour”.

Breillat’s cat and mouse game develops slowly, set in the wide open seascapes of the Belgian Riviera and Brussels. The longer the films goes on, the muter the lighting becomes; the living quarter shrink and in the end Maud and Vilko are living in a quasi building-site more or less in one room. It is a perfect symbol of their relationship: the handicapped Maud imprisons Vilko in this small room, as he slowly relinquishes his masculinity. The power of money is for once defeated by a cruel but effective woman. Her weapon is not her beauty, but her sheer strength of an analytical strategy and willpower. For Isabelle Huppert lovers, it’s a film to be relished.

Andre Simonoviescz

SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 14, 15 OCTOBER AT OWE2 AND 17 OCTOBER AT CINE LUMIERE

Pieta (2012) Now on DVD

Director: Kim Ki-duk

Cast: Min-soo Jo, Jeong-jin Lee, Ki-Hong Woo, Eunjin Kang, Jae-ryong Cho

104mins Drama

Pietá means mercy in Italian. And mercy is very much the central theme in Kim Ki-duk’s Golden Lion Winner that muses on the lack of this inherently human quality in the daily life of a sadistic Korean loan-shark, Gang-do (Lee Jung-jin).

Each day after devouring hand-slaughtered animals, he emerges from a bare apartment in a poverty-ridden district of Seoul, a vengeful and mercenary creature who exacts crippling injuries on his hapless debtors usually by forcing their limbs into their own machine tools, cashing in the insurance claims they’ve signed before their painful fate.

An fervent and anti-capitalist drama, Kim Ki-duk’s 18th outing is well-served by disenfranchised characters who are sinking below the poverty line at the mercy of encroaching urban development and economic hardship. Ming-Soo Jo stands out in a superlative tour de force as stranger Mi-sun, who arrives at Gang-do’s place one day purporting to be the mother who abandoned him but her enigmatic agenda offers a lethal cocktail of redemption, remorse and retribution . MT

PIETA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH SEPTEMBER AND ON DVD FROM 14 OCTOBER 2013

Eliza Lynch – Queen of Paraguay 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir.: Alan Gilsenan, Cast: Maria Doyle Kennedy, Leryn Franco;

Ireland 2013, 80 min.

Some films really bring something new into one’s life, and ELIZA LYNCH: QUEEN OF PARAGUAY is such a film. Director Alan Gilsenan tells the life story of the title’s heroine in many forms: part docu-drama, part interviews and quotes from Lynch’s book “Exposition, Protest made by Eliza Lynch”, which she wrote in 1876 in Buenos Aires. To say that her life was stranger than fiction, would be an understatement. Particularly for a woman of the 19^th century, she showed enormous courage under the most tragic of circumstances, which encompass most of her life.

Eliza Lynch was born 1835 in Cork, Ireland; her family fled ten years later from the Great Famine to Paris. Eliza had a failed marriage with a French officer, and might or might not have lived as a courtesan in Paris where in 1854, she met Francisco Solano Lopez, son of the President of Paraguay, who in his role as defence minister bought weapons for his country in Europe. Eliza became pregnant and followed Lopez to South America where he installed her as his mistress in the capital Asuncion. They had seven children altogether, and after the death of his father, Solano Lopez became President in 1862. Now Eliza, who was very much disliked by the old president and the upper classes, became officially the First Lady of the country, she and her husband were one of the richest landowners in South America. In 1864 Solano Lopez started a war with Brazil, and, after some early successes, found himself facing by a triple alliance of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, Instead of giving up, he continued the war, finally loosing his life (his eldest son was also killed) in the battle of Cerro Cora in 1870, which is described as a massacre. The Brazilians took cruel revenge, 90% of the male, and 50% of the female population of Paraguay was slaughtered in what could be called a genocide. Eliza was captured and later went back to Paris. In 1875 she returned to Paraguay, trying to claim her estates, but had to flee again. She died in obscurity in 1886 in Paris. In the 1950s her remains were brought back to Paraguay by the dictator General Strasser.

Maria Doyle Kennedy plays Eliza like a ghost returning to life, setting things straight. The lightning is diffuse, shadows are domineering, and the atmosphere is that of German impressionist film of 1930s. In stark contrast are the sober interviews with historians, who cannot agree if Eliza was a heroine or a wicked woman, lusting only after power. But the strongest impression from the film is Eliza’s romanticism, which seems to have conquered not only her husband, but the ordinary people of Paraguay – shades of Evita Peron. Told without sensationalism, the film opens new avenues into our understanding of a rather unknown era and the courage of a unique woman.

Andre Simonoviescz

Five Tales from Europe this Weekend at the 57th BFI London Film Festival

CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915 * * * *

Juliette Binoche stars as Camille in this austere and pared-down portrait, none the less beautiful for its ascetic treatment, of a woman artist who is denied her creativity due to confinement in a mental institution in the i by her family in 1915, to remain there for the rest of her life. while Renoir was living out his days in surrounded by love and attention further south in Provence. SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER AT CURZON MAYFAIR

EASTERN BOYS * * * *

Accomplished scripter, Robin Campillo (The Class, Foxfire), takes a random group of illegal immigrant young men from Eastern Europe and constructs an unpredictable and unflinching thriller set in the suburbs of Paris. It revolves around a gay Frenchman (Olivier Rabourdin) in his fifties and his unexpected adventure with one of the teenagers (Kirill Emelyanov). Watchable and absorbing, this is one of the best thrillers at Venice festival this year.

SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER AT VUE5

IDA * * * * *

As a film, Ida seems to be built upon forbears; the spirits of Bresson, Dreyer and Antonioni are all here, alive and well, not least in the film’s stunning, 1.37:1 black and white images. If those names imply an austere coldness alongside a total mastery of the cinematic medium, then all the better – when it is handled as well as this, such a tone is surely something to commend. Ida is intensely visual, impeccably performed and quietly profound – and, at a compact 80 minutes, it may even be perfect. SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT OWE2

UNDER THE SKIN * * * *

Jonathan Glazer’s inventively daring visual treat stars Scarlett Johansson as a femme fatale who meets her victims in the backstreets of Glasgow. Influenced by the surrealism of David Lynch, this contemporary story is both sinister and alluring with a twist of horror.

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT OWE2

GRAND CENTRAL * * * *

Grand Central’s nuclear decontamination unit provides the sinister backdrop to this tense drama of friendship, love and divided loyalties from French director Rebecca Zlotowski. Gary (Tahir Rahim) and Tcherno (Johan Libereau) are two young men who become friends as they travel to find work at the plant, set in the heart of verdant countryside. A modern French thriller with a believable storyline. Lea Seydoux also stars. SEE SEARCH BOX FOR FULL REVIEW

SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER AT RICH MIX

The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Director: Wiktor Eriksoon. Prod Erik Magnusson.

Sweden-Norway 2013. 78min. Documentary

Can a film about sexploitation be funny, upbeat and endearing?: This one is. Despite a rather off-putting title, I wandered in rather by accident and, as often the case, it turned out to be a serendipitous experience.

Called the ‘Ingmar Bergman of soft porn’ (by one actress, Annie Sprinkle), Joseph W Sarno preferred to style himself as an erotic auteur. Sweet and entertaining, he comes across as one of the least sleazy people connected to the industry. With his exquisitely beautiful and intelligent wife and collaborator, Peggy, he made a collection of ‘sexploitation’ films on low budgets, characterised by stark black and white photography and cleverly artistic lighting. None of his actresses had breast implants but many wore wigs and the camera rarely travelled below their waistlines, concentrating on sounds and facial expressions to convey the ecstasy of orgasm.

Titles such as Sin in Surburbia (1966) focussed on womens’ thoughts and feelings surrounding their erotic pleasure. Men were merely regarded as ‘sex objects’ in a genre that aimed to build on narratives where the female was central to the plot with suggestive stories of seduction and psycho-dramas that were seen as ‘female friendly’ and looked at life from a woman’s point of view. The cinemas of 42nd Street (some with 1000 seats) were home to this erotic fare that was popular in the sixites and early seventies, but also had their fair share of the raincoat brigade. Lash of Lust, Bed of Violence and Slippery When Wet were other titles in a filmography that ran into over 121 features until his death at 89 in 2010. Joe was even called to Sweden to direct Inga, purportedly because American audiences felt that Sweden had an outré image in sexual arena.

Photographed before his death in 2010, the Sarnos make an appealingly attractive couple: she in her early seventies, he considerably older, who are still very much in love. Asked to direct spend a part of the year in Sweden where they own an apartment they call “our castle on the hill”. A old VW Beetle sits in the garage waiting to take them to visit friends on their annual visits.

The film provides fascinating insight into Joe’s long career as a screenwriter up until 2004 – sexual positions are quaintly sketched in pencil on his scripts (an aspect Peggy glosses over) and it deals with the denouement to a sub-genre of artistic porn as the industry ushers in hardcore features by the mid 70s. Strangely, these were to centre on male pleasure, with the ‘money shot’ (ejaculation) being the primary focus in a strange twist were females are the new ‘sex objects’ despite their emancipation in an increasingly permissive society.

The Sarnos is an important study of auteur-driven artistic porn genre but also a poignant portrait of the love story of Joe and Peggy and their remarkable artistic collaboration until his death in 2010. MT

THE SARNOS: A LIFE IN DIRTY MOVIES IS SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 11 AND 16 OCTOBER AT VUE5 AND THE ICA, LONDON

The Man In The White Suit (1951)

Director: Alexander Mackendrick:

Producer: Michael Balcon:

Cinematographer: Douglas Slocombe

Cast: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood,

Cecil Parker, Michael Goff, Vida Hope

85mins UK Drama

In the first of his finely-crafted comic roles, Alec Guinness plays a blue collar worker with a Cambridge degree who trounces his mill owner employer by inventing a fabric impervious to dirt or wear and tear. Naively thinking his creation will be welcomed by the garment trade he persists with his dream, even though the brainchild implies redundancy for factory workers and disaster for shareholders. On the plus side he snares the boss’s daughter played by Joan Greenwood, famous for her huskily sexy voice. The feature revealed Mackendrick as an intellectual filmmaker and one of Ealing’s greatest directors although the darker implications of the piece are tempered by the light-hearted whimsy of the Ealing brand. MT

The DVD/Blu-Ray celebrating the 100th Anniversary of MacKendrick’s birth has been restored by STUDIOCANAL

Fandry (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival 2013

Dir.: Nagraj Manjule

Cast: Somnath Avghade, Syraj Pawar, Kishon Kadan

India 2012, 105 min.

Manjule’s contemporary rural drama about a Dalit (untouchable) teenager Jabya is a simple but never simplistic affair. It shows that the caste system, even though officially abolished after independence, is still claiming its victims. Jabya is an intelligent boy, who would like to go to school, but the abject poverty of his family means that he has to spend many days helping his parents with their badly paid, but exhausting jobs. Somnath Avghade gives a spirited performance as Jabya, wandering around the country side with a young friend in search of the black sparrow, who would, if caught, give him magical powers. These powers would help Jabya to conquer the girl he is in love with: Shalu, his fellow student, a member of a much higher cast, whom Jabya adores.

The film is shown from Jabya’s perspective with lively colours. Long tracking shots dominate, the camera always in motion reflecting Jabya himself. The poverty of his family is shown in hues of brown and grey light, whilst the riches of the upper castes are shot in glaringly exotic primary colours.

After a series of personal setbacks, Jabya flees into a dream world where the magic power of the sparrow unites him with Shalu. But the reality is much more cruel: as the lowest of the low, his family is forced to hunt wild pigs, who disturb the religious ceremonies, since only they are allowed to touch animals considered unclean by the caste system. The rest of the school, including Shalu, watches the family haplessly chasing the pig. This derails the boy and is cleverly shown in two perspectives: the jeering crowd on the little hill follows a slapstick spectacle, whilst Jabya and his family are running with a tunnel vision.This degradation of all this is too much for Jabya and his shame turns into violent anger.

An important film, showing that the world of rural poverty still very much exists beyond the technological advancement of the new world of the Indian metropolis, or indeed, the pure spiritual world that so many Europeans hope to discover when they travel in search of mysticism. Andre Simonoviescz

FANDRY IS SCREENING AT THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER, SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER AND TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER AT NFT2, THE SCREEN ON THE GREEN AND RICH MIX.

Starred Up (2013) 57th BFI London Film Festival

Dir: David Mackenzie, Cast: Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend

UK 2013, 100 min. Action Drama

‘Starred Up is a term used in the British prison system, where a juvenile offender, who is particularly violent is sent to an adult prison, and not a juvenile correction institution. The ‘starred up’ young man in this film is played by Jack O’Connell (The Liability). He lands in the same prison as his father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), who was more or less absent during his childhood and has his hands full trying to curb Eric’s tendency to violent reactions at the slightest (imagined) provocation. In a turn of superb strength Jack O’Connell has to prove his over-the-top aggression from the opening sequences. Oliver (Rupert Friend), an understanding voluntary therapist, whose group Eric joins, tries to curb the young man’s tendency to violent reactions at the slightest (or imagined) provocation, but looses his distance from the men he is supposed to help. After Eric attacks a sadistic prison warden, he has to leave, and father and son embark on another string of unbridled attacks.

It goes without saying that violence is part of any prison film, but Mackenzie here overdoes his share of gratuitous violence and gradually it looses its function becoming the norm in a feature that lacks texture and tension with the dire cinema-verite style accentuating the grittiness: repeating the prison procedures over and over again has a tiring and repulsive effect that distances us from the narrative with the continuously sweary verbal exchanges, become tedious and lack style in comparison with other films of this genre such as Audiard’s The Prophet. The protagonists fall into simplistic categories and are paired up for easy recognition: the sadistic chief prison warden versus the understanding therapist; young, unformed Eric, always on the outlook for violence, versus the more mature father, trying to control himself, at least sometimes. That said, O’Connell and Mendelsohn both give their emotions full throttle in performances of considerable skill.

David Mackenzie is unable (or unwilling) to reign his ideas in and goes completely over the top, losing control of the action because he fails to maintain distance to structure his narrative. There is no grey, only black and white. STARRED UP is self-indulgent; lacks artistic direction, simply stating one argument with the same images repetitively, undermining any message the director wants to convey. The actors are the only saving element of this film, whose grimy, conventional aesthetics don’t help us to connect. Andre Simonoviescz

STARRED UP IS SCREENING AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON 10, 11 AND 12 OCTOBER AT THE OWE2 AND HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSES RESPECTIVELY

Haewon, Nobody’s Daughter (2013)

Dir. Hong Sang-soo, Cast: Jung Eunchae, Lee Sunkyun

South Korea 87 min. Drama

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha)) shows in his latest film NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON the unravelling of a personality: aspiring actress Haewon, played by a very impressive Jung Eunchae, has an on/off relationship with an older, married professor (Lee Sunkyn), who is the father of a recently born baby.

After her mother leaves Seoul for Canada, Haewon looses her last ‘anchor’ in life. Her personality fragments, she sleeps at day time, loses more and more contact with her acting school, drinks too much and flees into a parallel universe, in which she ‘directs’ life via a permanent inner monologue. She can’t differentiate any more between important and unimportant events and wanders off into a vacuum that only her inner voice can fill. Her often hysterical laughter is the only obvious sign of her psychological deterioration, so that her friends find her rather ‘odd’, because they are too self-centred to help and unable to commit to anything but the acute present.

The narrative develops in episodic format, so as to underline the lack of continuity in Haewon’s life. She always visits certain places: mainly a park, a motel and an old fort, as if trying to re-connect with the past, even though it is exactly this past with has thrown her life into disarray. But she is unable to find a solution,because she can’t connect the important points in her life any more and it becomes totally structureless as she drifts more and more away from herself. She wanders often and long, particularly in the rain, as if trying to purify herself. But since she can’t ask the right questions, or even worse, can’t remember what to ask, all her physical exercises take her even more away from herself.

Her relationship with the professor has issues, so does her relationship with an fellow student: everything is in flux. Haewon is the object rather than the subject of Sang-soo’s film – even though paradoxically both men in her life believe her to be strong. She drifts along in a way that makes her loose more and more of her personality. Sang-soo has selected a muted palette here and most of the drama takes place outside, with a few claustrophobic indoor shots): everything is murky and somehow diffuse, just like Haewon. There is a timeless feel to the narrative which could be set anytime between the 70s and today.

The sensation here is one of being dragged along on a slow-moving river, not unpleasantly, but somehow disturbingly. There are no dramatic incidents, everything is more or less of the same colourless grey: a permanent misunderstanding on the part of Haewon, who is floating away into near oblivion. Unable to read her own (or anybody else’) real intentions, she relies only on her internal world to direct herself. She does not say it, but one expects her at any moment to voice the obvious: “I don’t know why I am doing this”.

Hong Sang-soo’s latest treat IN ANOTHER COUNTRY is a quirky comedy drama starring Isabelle Huppert is yet to hit our screens but in the meantime this well-observed portrait of a young women fragmenting under the pressure of her loneliness, low-key but with extreme sensitivity is something worth discovering. A little gem. Andre Simonoviescz

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11TH OCTOBER 2013 IN SELECTED LONDON CINEMAS

Camp 14: Total Control Zone (2012)

Director: Marc Wiese

106min Documentary Korean/English

Are we inured to the atrocities of death camps? Do they become less horrific the more we are exposed to their heinous crimes upon humanity? Here a South Korean escapee of Kaechon’s repressive North Korean ‘Camp 14’ tells his true story. Shin Dong-Huyk was born to prisoners in the camp; his first memory is of a public execution, aged 4. From that point he is subjected to starvation, forced labour, torture and deprivation. From this early age, lies and murder were just as common to him as love and affection are to most other children. Deceit and hatred became the norm. With no conception of family life, how can Shin become a decent human being having been dehumanised?

With its sombre visuals and ambient soundtrack of wind and rain, Wiese’s documentary makes depressing and unsettling viewing. Based on Shin’s commentary intercut with animated sequences created by Ali Soozandeh (The Green Wave), Shin comes across as a reasonable man as he chats to young people in the Human Rights group ‘Link’, occasionally losing his nerve. But, like most children subjected to emotional hardship at an early age, Shin is damaged and the only place he can really fit in is the camp.

Camp 14’s unspeakable environment can only breed sociopaths, witnessed in interviews with former guards who talk candidly of their crimes: rape, torture, cruelty, calling to mind Joshua Oppenheimer’s recent doc: The Act of Killing. But what is missing here is the reasons for these guard’s defections and tangible facts. History can never forgive what went on in Camp 14, and this remarkable story gives further evidence of the capacity for evil present in a human nation. A valuable piece of filmmaking that warrants a viewing; if you feel strong enough. MT

CAMP 14: TOTAL CONTROL ZONE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 4TH OCTOBER AT RICH MIX CINEMA BETHNAL GREEN

9th London Spanish Film Festival 27 September – 9 October 2013

The 9th LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL brings a spicy selection of Spain’s latest dramas and documentaries right to your doorstep at the CINE LUMIERE, London this Autumn.

STOCKHOLM stars Aura Garrido and Javier Pereira who share a poignant night of seduction in the Swedish city. In THE EXTRAORDINARY TALE, boy meets girl in a modern humorous re-working of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ set in contemporary Seville and starring Ken Appledorn (The Imposter) and Aida Ballmann.

From Barcelona, A GUN IN EACH HAND (UNA PISTOLA EN CADA MANO is Cesc Gay’s latest comedy drama about eight fortysomething men and their mid-life crises. Led by Javier Camara (Talk to Her) and Ricard Darin (While Elephant) it’s a well-scripted affair of bittersweet moments seen from a male perspective. THE END (FIN) is a thriller with a sci-fi twist, starring Andres Velencoso (the Spanish model) and Maribel Verdu (Blancanieves) who head to the mountains for a reunion with sinister overtones. Isabel Coixet is well-known for her ground-breaking films and this UK premiere of YESTERDAY NEVER ENDS (AYER NO TERMINA NUNCA) is her metaphor for Spain’s economic and social woes, seen through a couple’s turbulent relationship, set in 2017.

On the documentary front, THE LABEQUE WAY follows the legendary French piano duo Katia and Maria Labeque as they perform across Europe with appearances from Sir Simon Rattle and Semyon Bichkov. THE EYES OF WAR (LOS OJOS DE LA GUERRA) explores the motivations behind four journalists reporting from Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and The Congo. There will be a Q&A with the director Miguel Angel Idigoras to follow.

Sumptuously set in Paris, LA BANDA PICASSO is Fernando Colomo’s entertaining comedy drama that delves into the intrigues between Braque, Gertrude Stein, Apollinaire and Picasso when the Mona Lisa is ‘stolen’ from the Louvre. THE BODY (El CUERPO) offers dark and seat-gripping thrills from Catalan director Oriol Paulo and the producers of THE ORPHANAGE and centres on the disappearance of a corpse from the local morgue.

A fifties masterpiece and one of the biggest commercial hits in Spanish film history is THE LAST TORCH SONG (El ULTIMO CUPLE, 1957) starring Sara Montiel as Maria Lujan, a forgotten diva who sings some of the best-known songs from Spanish cinema here. She went on to Hollywood to headline with the likes of Gary Cooper and Joan Fontaine.

Finally from the archives there’s Bigas Lune’s 1992 modern classic JAMON, JAMON which launched Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and explores the complex relationship between erotic desire and food, set in the arid Zaragoza desert. I wonder if it was love at first sight for the Spanish duo who are now happily married with kids! MT

For the full programme

Mademoiselle C (2013) London Fashion Week

Director: Fabien Constant | With: Carine Roitfeld, Tom Ford, Donatella Versace, Karl Lagerfeld | France, Doc 90′

Let’s face it. the French and Italians still dominate the world stage when it comes to effortless chic and natural style. Carine Roitfeld is the juicy subject-matter of Fabien Constant’s behind the scenes documentary. After a long career, we discover the story of legendary editor-in-chief of French Vogue, who has finally laid down her crown to set up her own title.

Fabien Constant’s entertaining documentary is an upbeat and cinematic affair following her through a glitzy, globe-trotting year taking in Paris, New York, Moscow and Tokyo showing the hectic schedule required to construct and capture the vapid dream that is fashion. Buzzy and fascinating, Constant’s biopic is like a well-edited glossy mag: complete with visual allure, intriguing facts and well-researched and intelligent material. Just what a successful documentary should be.

Unsurprisingly, what emerges here is a world of artifice and image underpinned by gruelling planning, explosive temperaments and highly creative and volatile personalities. We meet Carine’s new creative team, all long-time supporters who sing her praises as they fawn and air-kiss their way through busy roundtable meetings to thrash out a new look for the project. Tom Ford says she brings out the best in him as they share the same visual background and taste, possessing an unique ability to empower whoever she works with.

Carine comes across as a highly-sensitive but grounded person who, like many successful people, thrives in adversity and conflict, constantly striving for a new twist and an edgy update on her classic background of innate style. Her aim is to create an offbeat look based on top-drawer erotic chic (not porno chic, she is at pains to point out). Her photo-shoots involve a mixture of paper-thin and pallid models with skyscraper bone-structures. Some even have noticeable breasts.

As you might have guessed, the chicest accessory to have here seems to be a new-born babe strapped to your hip, even if you’re emaciated from a diet of carrot tops. The granddaddy of fashion, Karl Lagerfeld is keen to be seen pushing the chic, black pram of Carine’s grand-daughter, in a skilful bid at personal rejuvenation. But it’s clear that Carine’s success is due to her personality not just her talent in making everyone feel very special from the doorman to the top photographer. And behind every successful woman, there’s always a man: Her husband has been her emotional centre, providing the bedrock of her world and a font of advice and support on the home front.

Talking candidly in dulcet tones, Carine lights up every frame; impeccably soigné in the latest Balmain jacket or Celine shirt, and posing delicately on a designer chair. A gamine figure with coal black eyes and slightly dishevelled tresses, she’s more accessible (and appealing) than Anna Wintour, and has a girlish touch that belies her tough Russian Jewish roots and fierce determination to climb the lacquered ladder to the stars. And like its star, Fabien Constant’s documentary is engaging and well-put-together. Mademoimoiselle C is a must see for anyone interested in fashion, style and luxury high-end publishing. MT

MADEMOISELLE C IS ON DVD

Side By Side (2013)

Dir: Arthur Landon, Cast: Bel Powley, Alfie Fields, Sara Stewart, Diana Quick, Mark Powley

UK 2012, 103 min Drama

Lauren, a teenager and her younger brother Harvey live with their mentally impaired grandmother, who is their legal guardian in this British film that has a ‘made-for-TV’ feel to it. Living in constant fear of her going into a care home, matters are further complicated by the fact that Lauren is a gifted runner. Her untrustworthy agent Janice is trying to split the siblings up so that Lauren can live with her (and so pay for her daughter’s university education), whilst Harvey would end up with foster parents. When the dreaded day of grandma’s sectioning arrives, Lauren and Harvey run away – with an address of a long-lost grandfather, somewhere in Scotland.

SIDE BY SIDE is an imaginatively told ‘coming of age’ family drama, but there are some questions to be asked. Harvey is obsessed with video games, he meets some adult gamers via the net, and they help the siblings on their way north. Not only that, but they split the reward for their capture with Harvey – so the two then set out again for another search at the end of the film. Should a child really be encouraged to have contact with adults, whose background and intentions are not known? And would a psychiatrist really give the siblings the address of a family member, knowing very well that the two will elope again?

But the acting of the youngsters (Bel Powley and Alfie Fields), and in particularly Sara Stewart’s blond ”witch” Janice, who is defeated by the solidarity of the children, are convincing, and the camera tries to get away from showing only the bright spots of this country. The storyline sides always with the outsiders, as in the encounter of Lauren and Harvey with a helpful tinker, who is shown in a much more positive light than all the authority figures of the film. Overall, SIDE BY SIDE a modern fairytale, told with humour and optimism, and like all good fairy stories, with lots of improbabilities. Andre Simonoviescz

More Than Honey (2012) Out on DVD/Blu

Director: Markus Imhoof Writers: Markus Imhoof and Kerstin Hoppenhaus

95min US Documentary

Bees are our future but the future’s not bright according to this important documentary that examines why our favourite buzzing insects are gradually being decimated by a killer disease: ‘colony collapse disorder’.

Pollination is key to our food production and bees pollinate most of our plants. Markus Imhoof shows, with a fascinating array of cameras, how these complex creatures observe stylised rituals as they go about their business. The hive has the same level of activity as a small industrial town; the bees conducting a minutiae of tasks and observing a strict pecking-order that’s both intriguing and frightening.

Narrated by the melliflous tones of John Hurt, this visually alarming doc switches between a traditional German bee-keeper and the highly advanced and artificial Californian methods showing how, for some inexplicable reason, these insect are being exterminated by an alien parasite. Imhoof remarks that bees are much the same as humans with their primary motivations of fear and greed but what is causing the bees to die? Medication, stress, electromagnetic forces? Whatever it is, More Than Honey is a buzz-worthy wake-up call that we should all heed before it’s too late. Scary! MT

NARRATED BY JOHN HURT MORE THAN HONEY IS OUT ON DVD/BLU FROM THE 21 OCTOBER 2013

Thanks for Sharing (2013) ***

DIRECTOR: STUART BLUMBERG WRITERS: STUART BLUMBERG, MATT WINSTON

CAST: Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Joely Richardson, Patrick Fugit

112min US Romcom

Following on from Steve McQueen’s Shame, this is not the first time sex addiction has been explored in contemporary cinema. However, although Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing is not quite as intense or dark as the former – tackling the subject matter in a far more jovial manner; the The Kids Are All Right writer offers a picture equally as poignant with his directorial debut.

We follow three friends who meet at 12-step meetings to help combat their unhealthy addictions to sex. At the heart of our story is Adam (Mark Ruffalo) who is five years ‘sober’ and now feeling ready to meet women again and attempt to strike up a relationship. However when he meets Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow) he falls in love, but struggles to overcome his previous habits. He seeks help from his mentor Mike (Tim Robbins), who has problems of his own, as his drug-addicted son (Patrick Fugit) has just shown up out of the blue. To complete the cycle, Adam himself is also a mentor, but to a young man named Neil (Josh Gad), who is desperately seeking help, as his sexual deviance has landed him in trouble on several occasions. We intertwine between these three corresponding lives, and see how each individual relies heavily on the next to get through this challenging treatment.

Thanks for Sharing treads the line between comedy and drama masterfully, portraying sex addiction sincerely, giving it the gravitas it deserves and considering it as a genuine disease. However the often frivolous nature to the film allows for us to see the humorous elements too, easing us into understanding and appreciating the true severity of the condition. That said, Blumberg can be accused of being overly lighthearted at points, particularly at the start when introduced to Neil. He is the comedic figure of the piece, providing the film with the vast majority of its witty one liners – but he is actually a sexual predator with a dangerously perverse outlook on life, and the sexual abuse he carries out is inappropriately depicted as humorous. Though jokes are a necessity within Thanks for Sharing, sometimes they are implemented in the wrong places.

Nonetheless, the story is structured ingeniously, as we weave in and out of our lead characters’ lives effortlessly, each individual story being substantially told. We care enough about each and every character and their own personal journeys, enough so that at the end we are intrigued to see how each one will conclude. Blumberg must be commended for this, as many ensemble pieces fall at this very hurdle. Much of why we are so empathetic to the characters is as a result of the screenplay, with each role crafted beautifully and the dynamics between each varying relationship perfectly judged. There are several themes at play too, such as romance, friendship, addiction and family matters – and these are all dealt with well, with every plot-point being given enough screen-time for us to invest emotionally in each one.

Thanks for Sharing is a picture that could so easily be underwhelming, dealing with various themes we have seen done to death in Hollywood – yet this avoids cliches. It may be overly melodramatic at times, yet Blumberg manages to steer away from ever feeling mawkish or over-indulgent in the slightest. He may have crafted a reputation for himself as a valuable screenwriter, but now it seems that he is equally as adept at directing, with a bright future certainly beckoning. STEFAN PAPE

THANKS FOR SHARING IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 4TH OCTOBER 2013 at Vue Cinemas, Odeon Cinemas Cineworld and Shortwave Bermondsey

Adore (2013) (Two Mothers) 57th London Film Festival

Director: Anne Fontaine

Screenplay: Christopher Hampton

Cast: Robin Wright, Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn

100mins Australia/France Drama

The oedipus complex provides the counterpoint to this complex drama about female sexuality and friendship. It follows two women who have grown up together in an idyllic oceanside location in Australia. Their visceral bond has kept them close through marriage, children, widowhood and separation; exploring the nature of friendship, love and sexuality from a uniquely female perspective.

Based on a short story by Doris Lessing, The Grandmothers: subversive French auteur Anne Fontaine (Nathalie, Coco Before Chanel) has refreshed the narrative bringing it firmly up to date, casting two attractive and well-maintained fortysomething ‘cougars’ as the women: they could be you or me: Naomi Watts plays Lil and Robin Wright, Roz completely dispelling the image of ‘grannies’ being old biddies with knitting. Healthy living has enabled these two to look good. A potent cocktail of emotional maturity and enduring sexual desire empowers them to enjoy young lovers in the same way that traditionally was the preserve of men. Enjoying a beach lifestyle, Roz and Lil are neighbours at work and home, living with their respective grown-up sons.

Lensed by Christophe Beaucarne, ADORE is lovely to look at but initially suffers from clunky moments on the dialogue front. Gradually this resolves as a taut drama emerges. Robin Wright is magnificent, giving one of her best performances so far as the tough but emotionally available Roz and is by far the stronger of the two. Naomi Watts is more fluffy and unsure of herself, but convincing as the ultra feminine Lil. The boys are powerfully handsome with an appealing vulnerability that ramps up the erotic value of what happens next.

Fabulously plotted by Doris Lessing, ADORE covers all the intellectual aspects and subtle nuances of female sexuality reflecting poignant biological truths and exultant moments of pleasure and insight. Anne Fontaine is at pains to point out the barren male choices available to these women that has driven them towards their eventual romantic entanglements. But their behaviour never lacks decorum, steering well-clear of the pitfalls of gratuitous over-emoting. These are women who are really worthy of praise as role models despite all. The adult male characters here are predictable: self-centred and puffed up on their own egos. Roz’s ex-husband drifts off to prioritise his career in Sydney with unsurprising results. Lil attracts a work colleague Saul, who pursues her endlessly failing the read the signs and then accuses her of being a lesbian when she fails to reciprocate. So no evolvement on the adult male characterisation there. ADORE begs to be seen by any intelligent audience, male or female. Long after the sheltering palms and sugar-white sandy beaches have faded from view, the complexity of this absorbing film will stay in your memory. MT

ADORE IS SCREENING AT THE 57TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ON THURSDAY 10TH (VUE7), FRIDAY, 11TH AND SUNDAY, 13TH OCTOBER (CINE LUMIERE).

The Crash Reel (2013)

Director: Lucy Walker

90mins **** Documentary Biopic US

The story of snowboarders Kevin Pearce and Shaun White has an unexpected outcome.

Lucy Walker’s adreniline-fuelled, action-packed sports doc is a visual feast of panoramic time-lapse sequences in the snowbound landscapes of Canada and Colorado, set to an exhilarating soundtrack. But this snowboarding doc soon develops into something far more fascinating and meaningful. Meaningful, that is, even if you’re not a fan of the sport or of any sport, for that matter. The Crash Reel is really about the nature of risk, of human frailty and how the support of a loving family can enable us to reach our full potential, whatever life throws our way.

Kevin Pearce and Shaun White are highly competitive World champions and arch rivals in the extreme sport of snow-boarding. We see them competing here for the Vancouver Olympics but when Pearce suffers a tragic accident, White goes on to take the Gold medal. The story then turns the spotlight on Pearce, following him in the aftermath and recovery process. Examining at close quarters his will to survive and sheer conviction that one day he will return to the slopes and beat Shaun White are extraordinary. But his medics and family fear that this may cost him his life.

Growing up with a close family in an upmarket part of Vermont, Kevin Pearce and his three brothers (one of them with Down’s Syndrome) had every possible advantage in life. But he’s a reckless individual who develops into a risk-taker whose will to win becomes paramount. In this climate of industry pressure and lack of regulations, extreme sports people will push themselves to the preternatural extremes, risking life, limb and family loyalty to meet the expecations of their public. Lucy Walker shows how ultimately greater awareness of our own boundaries can actually help us develop greater spiritual awareness and that evolvement of the mind rather than the body is the real key to human success. MT

THE CRASH REEL IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT THE CURZON SOHO AND THE ICA LONDON

70TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL Daily Update WINNERS 28 August-7 September

GRAVITY *** OUT OF COMPETITION

Seven years after Children of Men, Mexican Director Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY 3D swirled silently into Venice with a distant murmur of astronauts talking via satellite in space. George Clooney (Matt Kowalksy) gradually floats into view, as sauve in a space-suit as he is in Gucci tailoring. With his co-pilot Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), he injects much-needed humour into this claustrophobic but technically brilliant sci-fi drama that follows a stricken space-ship as it floats towards the Earth’s orbit with its surviving astronauts. The pair float helplessly amid a welter of emotionally-charged memories of the World they left behind. A pithy script and Emmanuel Lubezki’s ethereal visuals make this a worthwhile experience for the art house crowd and Sandra Bullock is surprising moving as a co-pilot who has nothing left to live for but every reason to survive.. MT

TRACKS *** IN COMPETITION

Take the Australian outback, three wild camels, a black labrador and a woman with a mission and you’ve got John Curran’s drama inspired by the true life of Robyn Davidson, who walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean in 1977. During this breathtaking travelogue of painful and sweaty trials and tribulations, she makes some interesting discoveries about survival and herself: that she wants to be alone. Mia Wasilowski gives an exultant performance as Robyn, not the most pleasant of characters, but certainly dogged and single-minded in her pursuit of a dream. It also has Roly Mintuma as her Aboriginal guide and Adam Driver as the photographer who fails to win her heart. Despite looking for solitude, Robyn bemoans her deep loneliness at every step of the way and although the scenery is beautiful, the woman herself remains a cypher. MT

LA BELLE VILLE **** GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI

Jean Denizot’s feature debut LA BELLE VIE is a classicly told, ravishingly-shot, rites of passage idyll set in the rolling countryside of the Loire River. Based on a true story of two boys on the run with their father, who has flouted French custody laws, it paints him as a loving but also mentally abusive man. Newcomer, Zaccarie Chasseriaud, stands out as the youngest boy, Sylvain, whose desire for a proper life and a girlfriend finally bring matters to a dramatic head.

WOLFSKINDER **** ORIZZONTI

Poignantly brutal and achingly beautiful, Rick Ostermann’s Second World War survival drama follows the plight of four young German orphans fleeing the Red Army through the stunning countryside of Lithuania. Levin Liam leads the group in the role of Hans whose innate gentleness and determination shine through against the odds in a performance of subtle complexity and depth for such a young actor.

LAS NINAS QUISPE *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA Haunted by sadness, mistrust and a hostile political climate, three sisters herd goats in the high planes of seventies Chile as they contemplate their bleak future. Sebastian Sepulveda’s debut is a plaintive affair shot through with human tenderness and a captivating sepia-tinted aesthetic.

JOE ** IN COMPETITION

David Gordon Green’s last outing, Prince Avalanche, was one of the standout comedies of Berlin this year. Here in JOE he casts Nicolas Cage as a brooding ex-con with a heart of gold. And Cage doesn’t disappoint, bringing forth a performance of echoing intensity alongside Tye Sheridan’s abused teenager. But where MUD succeeded in the ‘sins of the father’ dynamic, JOE never really comes together as a cohesively absorbing drama.

NIGHT MOVES **** IN COMPETITION

A Simple plan to blow up a damn has far-reaching consequences for three environmentalists in this explosive psychological crime thriller with a moral twist from MEEK’S CUTOFF director, Kelly Reichardt. Jessee Eisenberg leads a dynamite cast of Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard. Chilling and memorable MT

PHILOMENA **** IN COMPETITION

STEVE COOGAN AND JEFF POPE WIN BEST SCREENPLAY

Stephen Frears takes this heart-rending adoption story, overlaid with Steve Coogan’s lightly comedic touch, to produce an inspiring drama that raised the roof on the fourth day of Venice Film Festival. Judy Dench plays Philomena Lee, a stalwart Irish mother who harks back to her lost son on his 50th birthday. World-weary journo, Martin Sixsmith (Coogan,who also acts and produces), takes up her story and their instant chemistry leads to a moving, funny and entertaining film with universal appeal and likely box-office success. MT

CHILD OF GOD ** IN COMPETITION The James Franco production line continues with this adaption of a Cormac McCarthy novel about an angry loner in sixties Tennessee. Scott Hare gives his all to the role of Lester Ballard in a drama that blends necrophilia, defecation (and every other bodily function) with washed-out landscapes and unimaginative camerawork depicting one man’s descent into Hell. If you like your dramas ‘warts and all’ then this is one to go for.

THE WIND RISES ***** IN COMPETITION

Another enchanting piece of Japanese Anime from Studio Ghibli, this time a delicately- drawn story of Wartime aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the amazingly effective ‘Zero’ fighter during WWII. THE WIND RISES is particularly special because its director and writer, Miyazaki Hayao, is well-known for being behind the most successful films: Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo. What starts as a largely biographical story of Jiro’s childhood, training and early career gradually transforms into an endearing love story when he finally meets his sweetheart while saving her umbrella in a gale. The two have previously met during an earthquake, (the Great Kanto disaster of 1923) wonderfully depicted in the early part of the film but now the visuals reflect lush and flowery country landscapes including almond blossoms, billowing meadows, breathtaking cloud formations and sunsets. As usual with Ghibli, the dreamy visuals often belie a heart-rending or serious storyline, and THE WIND RISES is no different, underpinned as it is by Jiro’s personal tragedy and the Wartime context of conflict and geographical disaster. Immersive from start to finish, THE WIND RISES is a stunning piece of filmmaking accompanied by a richly-textured narrative that will delight regular devotees as well as those still unfamiliar with the genre. MT

VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA *** (A STREET IN PALERMO) IN COMPETITION

ELENA COTTA – BEST ACTRESS – COPPA VOLPI

Emma Dante is known in Italy for her theatre work. Here, she directs and also stars as a lesbian woman who won’t give way to the oncoming vehicle in a narrow street, while on the way to a wedding with her partner (Alba Rohrwacher – Sleeping Beauty). But the driver of the other car (Elena Cotta) is well-known locally for her stubbornness. A noisy and argumentative film that serves as a metaphor for Italy’s more general ills.

MISS VIOLENCE *** IN COMPETITION

THEMIS PANOU – BEST ACTOR – COPPA VOLPI

As Greek tragedies go this one is a slow-burning, pastel-tinged affair: Brooding with malevolence and bristling with suspicion from the opening sequence involving the suicide of a young girl during a family birthday, to the final half hour of shocking revelations as the toys are thrown out of the pram.

PARKLAND ** IN COMPETITION

Peter Landesman’s attempt to examine the fall-out of JFK’s death from the perspective of those involved in his final hours, fails in bringing anything new to the table with a motley selection of characters from the backstory. Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother is a particularly nasty piece of work played by Jacki Weaver. Paul Giamatti is compelling as the guy who shot the amateur footage on CIne and Zac Ephron plays an earnest young doctor who fails to save his life and Billy Bob Thornton also stars.

THE SACRAMENT ** ORIZZONTI

Based on a true story about a cult community in Georgia, Ti West’s mockumentary is a well-intentioned but unconvincing thriller with a strong central performance from Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color).

THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE *** IN COMPETITION

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE WINNER

This three-hour film takes an epistolary format to slowly flesh out the married life of a policeman, his wife and their infant daughter, in a small German town. Beautifully drawn, with detailed and appealing use of the local countryside to give context, it serves as testament to the subtle but corrosive effect of modern life on one couple’s relationship. Director, Phillip Grõning has served as Venice Orizzonti Jury President in 2006. MT

THE ZERO THEORUM ** IN COMPETITION

Terry Gilliam is back with a psychedelic mish-mash of mysogyny and male musings: THE ZERO THEORUM is a mathematical formula that seeks to determine whether life has meaning, as seen through the eyes of Christophe Waltz’s middle-aged geek in a dystopian town of the future. Waltz is perplexed and benign in the role as he’s badgered to settle down by Melanie Thierry’s blonde piece of fluff who taunts him to commit in various states of undress (a typical male fantasy from the warped mind of a commitment-phobe). It’s online, corporate Hell so just hope that we never get there . An acquired taste to divide audiences: I’d give it a miss unless you love his films.

LOCKE **** IN COMPETITION

Steve Knight’s in-car drama nevertheless offers plenty of action-packed thrills in this ‘one-hander’ for Tom Hardy. He plays a father and engineer whose life unravels as he races South on the M1 to meet the latest of his offspring while managing a complex building project. All conducted over the telephone from his BMW, he talks to his wife, his lover, two teenage sons and members of his building team: the traffic police would have a field day but they’d probably thoroughly enjoy this seat-clenching thriller that could be re-named ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik”. Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson and Tom Holland plays the telephone roles.

TOM AT THE FARM **** IN COMPETITION

Quebec wild child Xavier Dolan roars backs into form with this screen adaptation of a play by Michel Marc Bouchard. Set in the open prairies of Canada’s farmland, Dolan plays the main character, Tom (sporting a curious corn-like mop of blond hair), a gay man who turns up at his lover Guillaume’s funeral not only to discover that the family is unaware of his existence but also unwilling to accept Guillaume sexuality. With a great support cast that features Evelyn Brochu (Cafe de Flore) and Pierre-Yves Cardinal, this visually exciting and unpredictable thriller follows a linear narrative but otherwise challenges perceptions and reality at every step of the way as Tom becomes caught up in a web of lies, deceit and homoerotic desire.

THE CANYONS – SEE MY REVIEW.

MOEBIUS ** OUT OF COMPETITION

The human psyche is a twisted and tortured affair according to Kim Ki-duk who brought his latest outing to Venice after winning the GOLDEN LION in 2012 with PIETA. The subject is still family dynamics but there’s a father involved this time. His random infidelity gradually leads to family breakdown after his son sees him in a restaurant with his lover. MOEBIUS, whch was banned by the censors in his homeland of Korea, features just about everything from humiliation and rape to autoeroticism and demonstrates show how easy it is to unlock evil in the human mind and turn decent people into animals. Disturbing and graphic MT

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN **** IN COMPETITION

In this, the first of two documentaries competing for the Golden Lion, Oscar-winning director Errol Morris looks at Donald Rumsfeld’s engaging personal recollections of his time in office. Seen through cine footage of state tours with the Kennedy’s and his private musings with members of the administration, Morris succeeds in capturing an ‘innocence’ here that has long gone from contemporary politics. Fascinating for anyone who remembers the era or who has an interest in American political history. MT

EASTERN BOYS **** BEST FILM – ORIZZONTI

Accomplished scripter, Robin Campillo (The Class, Foxfire), takes a random group of illegal immigrant young men from Eastern Europe and constructs an unpredictable and unflinching thriller set in the suburbs of Paris. It revolves around a gay Frenchman (Olivier Rabourdin) in his fifties and his unexpected adventure with one of the teenagers (Kirill Emelyanov). Watchable and absorbing, this was one of the best films in the festival this year.

A PROMISE **** OUT OF COMPETITION

Patrice Leconte’s haunting and fabulously romantic drama with Belle Epoque overtones is set in a German industrial town before the Great War. It stars Alan Richman in a subtle performance as an ageing steel magnate whose wife (Rebecca Hall) falls for his young assistant. Based on a novel by Austrian Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers during the 1920s and 30s.

L’INTREPIDO *** IN COMPETITION

Billed as a comedy, Gianni Amelio’s competition entry has few laughs but some bittersweet moments. It stars Antonio Albanese as an industrious and enterprising middle-aged man who deserves the Golden Lion for his admirable work ethic and old-school values during the current economic crisis in Milan. Dogged by bad luck and a truculent son, he is a tribute to his generation, setting a shining example in this worthy, uplifting but overlong feature. MT

WALESA. MAN OF HOPE ***** OUT OF COMPETITION

What an amazing contribution Andrzej Wajda has made to Polish and World film. Here, he brings an important, well-crafted and watchable docudrama about the life of Lech Walesa and his single-minded efforts to improve freedom for ship-workers in Gdansk during the latter part of the seventies and early eighties. Skilfully editing archive footage to blend with visuals depicting police riots and clashes, it elegantly envelopes the love story of Walesa and his wife Danuta into this gripping episode of Polish political history shot through with occasional moments of dry humour. MT

JEALOUSY *** IN COMPETITION

Louis Garrel stars as….Louis Garrel in an out of love in this slim drama which also stars Anna Mouglalis and centres around a family split apart by infidelity and financial insecurity. Phillippe Garrel is a Venice regular and has one the Silver Lion twice for J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE and REGULAR LOVERS.

STRAY DOGS ** IN COMPETITION

GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER

Taiwan is experiencing a building boom that is displacing and disenfranchising the inhabitants of Taipei, who scratch around to make ends meet. Tsai Ming Liang’s drama is set to divide critics and possibly audiences. Will appeal to the most ardent art house devotees of long, lingering shots and close-up footage.

ANA ARABIA *** IN COMPETITION

Israeli director, Amos Gitai, filmed this insight into a small community of Jews and Arab outcasts in one single 85-minute shoot. It provides a fresh and authentic slice of life in a contemporary border enclave.

THE ROOFTOPS *** IN COMPETITION

Set in his own neighbourhood in Algiers, Merzak Allouache’s lively multi-stranded narrative feature brings another modern-day look at life in an Arabic culture to the competition.

THE REUNION *** SETTIMANA DELLA CRITICA

BEST DEBUT WINNER

Actor Anna Odell’s debut feature in which she plays a striking lead, is a psychological drama that looks at the dynamics of power and bullying within friendships. Taking a class reunion meeting up 20 years after school years, it examines how individuals can be ostracised in the classroom leading to mental issues later on in life. Impressive and watchable. This film won the FIPRESCI Award at Venice 2013 for Best Newcomer.

AMAZONIA ***** OUT OF COMPETITION

AMAZONIA is Brazilian helmer Thierry Rogobert’s enchanting and eye-popping 3D docudrama set entirely in the Amazon jungle. It concerns Kong, an endearingly cute cappucine monkey, who is stranded after a plane crash deep in the rain fores of Brazilian. From the opening sequences we instantly bond with Kong and, as his bewildered little face looks up at the camera, we want to protect him on his journey to fend for himself in the wild. Apart the ambient sounds of rain and random predators, Rogobert’s film is entirely unscripted and provides audiences with a rich visual canvas of vibrantly colourful and exotic flora and fauna on which to meditate. David Attenborough eat your heart out!. MT

SACRO GRA **** IN COMPETION GOLDEN LION WINNER

Gianfranco Rosi’ documentary is a well-crafted and peripatetic affair that tells the story of a famous ring road ‘Grande A’ that surrounds Rome. Literally meaning ‘Holy Grail’, it dabbles in the lives of the many characters who live around this major highway offering a selection of random vignettes cutting across the social divide. Accompanied by an evocative soundtrack, Rosi’s observational style allows the viewer to muse and meditate on this fascinating slice of urban life.

Malgorzata Szumowska – Film Director

Having dipped her toes in international cinema, with her French based production ELLES, Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska has since returned to her native country for the poignant drama In the Name Of. In a film that depicts repressed homosexuality in the Catholic Church, Szumowska discusses her own religious background and influences in making this production. She also tells us about the varying reactions to the film, how she went about casting unprofessional actors – and whether or not she can see a future for herself as a director, outside Poland.

The film gets off to an uncomfortable start, with the young boys teasing somebody and making him eat ants – why did you decide to throw the audience in at the deep end so early on, and create this tense atmosphere from the word go?

MS: I felt from the beginning we wanted to make this feel like a documentary, to show this rural village and we used real people from the village in the film. We have only a few actors, and the rest are people from the village, like all of the boys, they are not actors. Also the movement of the camera, we were trying to follow them and we had a plan from the beginning to create a special atmosphere in this countryside, to show that the setting is also a hero of the film somehow. Myself and Michal (Englert) have made four documentaries together, including two in the same place in the countryside in Poland, so we wanted to give off a similar feeling to make this story believable and more powerful.

It’s incredible that you were using unprofessional actors, it must have been inspiring that you were able to find such raw talent in such a small town?

MS: It’s funny because a young director recently asked me how I went about communicating with these boys, because they were kind of dangerous, I mean, some of them are from pathological families and hardcore boys. So you just have to be in their skin and behave like them, and I did it. I had a very big group then I chose eight of them, and I chose them by screaming with them, dancing with them, playing football, and they started to treat me not like a lady from the big city, but a friend, older, but a friend. Then I took this group and we spent a week together without shooting, including actors, and we’d play football, drink beer, talking… Just to give them the feeling that we aren’t any different than they are, and also to observe them. Afterwards it was pretty easy to be honest, the first two weeks before shooting it was hard and I wasn’t sure if it would work out, but because we created this special atmosphere, it works.

Were you any good at football?

MS: [Laughs] I’m not, but they were! I was trying but it was more for fun.

There are several severe themes in this film, how much did you have to explain to these kids about the context, and were their parents involved at all?

MS: They were all more or less 18, we tried not to have any kids. The parents didn’t care about them, because it’s very complicated, sometimes there is only a mother, or their parents are alcoholics, it’s a really brutal Polish countryside. For them it was very good they could have some money, a bit like a job on holiday. It’s not such a civilised part of Poland, and it was a kind of experiment, but they all came to the premiere in Warsaw and it was the first time they had been there, and it was very touching.

The rural setting is so important to this film, it’s an angry place for Adam to live – was it metaphorical of the homophobia that he suffers?

MS: Yes definitely, because if I put the story into the big city the priests are in different positions and people are different in Warsaw and the provinces. The provinces are very homophobic and close-minded and the people are really focused around the church, but for pragmatic reasons more than for metaphysic ones. The people are simply poor, and I wanted to portray this part of the country because it’s like 80% of Poland. Poland is not Warsaw or Krakow, it’s just the provinces, and for me it was important to show what a Polish province is. Very important to put the priest into that setting.

As one of the biggest Polish filmmakers working today – do you almost feel a responsibility to show the world what is going on in your native country?

MS: Yes, definitely. I got the feeling that I wanted to show people what’s happening in Polish provinces, Polish churches, Polish streets, and Poland’s attitudes to homosexual people and I was concentrating on this part. However I was also concentrating on the love story. In my next film I want to say something else about Poland and maybe more deeper.

Your previous film ELLES was shot over in France, do you think that helped you go back to Poland with a new perspective?

MS: Definitely. For me it was a very hard experience. Even though I had an amazing relationship with Juliette Binoche, who I am planning on making another movie with – it was very tough for me. I didn’t speak French, I had to move to Paris, I had to work with people I didn’t know and it was a lot of pressure from production, the film has to be like this or like that, you know what I mean? Finally, it was a traumatic experience, even though I like the film. But it was such a pleasure to get back to Poland and I just wanted to make a small Polish film only with Polish people and no co-production and it gives me a perspective that I want to say something about Poland, because I was outside for a while. Now I really find myself as a Polish director, with Polish roots and I understand that for me it’s better to tell the stories that are really connected to my country of origin, because Poland is very interesting. It’s a strange country, and it’s not multicultural, which is a pity, it’s very local – we have only Poles living in Poland, which is terrible because it puts the society in a locked position. At the same time, it’s very interesting our history, like the Second World War, the German occupation, the Russian occupation, and suddenly in the 90s we had capitalism, it’s terrible and everybody freaked out and wanted money to buy all of these colourful things, and now the current generation in Poland are extremely international and speak many languages. It’s an interesting mixture and you can talk about it in the movies, more than here in the UK I think, because here or in France everything is so obvious somehow.

Another very important theme is the Catholic Church – as a Catholic growing up yourself, was religion and faith an area you always wanted to explore in film?

MS: Definitely. My parents used to be communists and they were atheists, so I didn’t grow up as a Catholic, then my father switched and then I became a Catholic when I was 14, I was very old. Then the next 10 years until I was 24, I was a Catholic. I was trying to explore religion very seriously, like all the metaphysic and mystic, but then I quite the church, and I was full of ideas. In the beginning when I quite the church I was twenty-something, and I had an obsession in my mind about making a movie of a believer, a priest or somebody who really believes in Jesus, as for me that was extremely interesting, as somehow I passed through and saw it from a close perspective.

Did you therefore have to do much research, or when writing the screenplay was a lot of the material from your own personal experiences?

MS: We did research and I spoke with a few priests. Also I met a man who used to be a priest but he got married, and is a very famous professor of anthropology and he helped a lot and he came to Berlin for the premiere and he appreciated the film. We didn’t do a huge amount of research though, and that’s why I can see that Poland really is a country of paradox, because the reaction is very complex. People from the right wing think it’s terrible, but I expected that, it’s not unique to hear this. But from the other hand, people on the left, they don’t like the film because it’s not radical enough, it doesn’t attack the church enough. Now there’s a gay priest who gave his story to a newspaper, and it’s much more violent than what we showed in the film. It’s another discussion, but he said, ‘I’m a priest and I’m a homosexual and I’m fucking around all the time. I cannot stop myself, I have five or six boys a week’. Comparing that to our film, which is like poetry! A lot of people went to see the film in Poland and we had a good box office, but we had good reviews and bad reviews, but it’s very emotional, people love to discuss it, which is good.

Did you feel any apprehensions when dealing with religion in film, knowing of the potential backlash? Or do you welcome the inevitable debate?

MS: I welcome it. I’ve never been afraid to touch the matter. Nobody did it in Poland and I’m the first one, and I’m fine with this, we should do this somehow in Polish cinema, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to be in such a religious country. But no, I wasn’t worried.

It must be fascinating for you when travelling across the world at various film festivals, to see how different countries react to the film?

MS: Oh it’s very, very interesting. I’m not travelling that much because I have a small baby and I’m trying to work on my next films, but when I am travelling I always get completely different reactions. For example in London at a screening I went to, it was only young people, and half of them were Polish people and the other half was their English friends, but they all liked the film. Apart from this one Polish, old lady and she was yelling “This is terrible”. It’s so interesting to see their reaction.

Do you find it more interesting to speak to somebody who does like the movie, or somebody who doesn’t?

MS: To be honest, I prefer speaking to the people who love it [laughs]. To explain to somebody who really doesn’t like it, it’s very hard because we are so far away that we can’t really talk, it’s complicated. I try to avoid these people!

Talking of film festivals, you won the Teddy Award in Berlin – that must have been a great moment for you?

MS: Yeah it was amazing, especially that we kept joking with friends that we should get the Teddy Award because we go back to Poland and be like, “Yeah, look at this!” and yeah it happened. It’s a very good award and opens a lot of doors, and it’s a stamp of tolerance and I treat it very seriously. Afterwards we have collected many awards, the film now has more then 10 awards and it’s still travelling. Also, there is a nomination to the European Film Awards which is very cool.

When you win an award like this, does that help you get more creative license when you want to make your next film?

MS: For me it really helped, but from a professional perspective, the best thing was that the film was in competition at Berlin. It’s really helpful because usually it’s so hard to have a film in competition in Berlin, Venice or Cannes, because they take only 15 or 16 movies, and if you are in this selection you have an almost stamp of quality. I think this will make it easier to do the next films now. Also, Elles was very helpful because is sold out in so many countries.

Talking of Elles, both that and In The Name Of deal with corrupt worlds where sexuality are very prevalent themes – what is it about this particular world you wanted to explore?

MS: It was a moment in my life when I was interested in exploring people like this. In Elles it was women’s sexuality, and for me it was a taboo because I haven’t seem many movies about women’s sexuality, so I had a feeling maybe it wasn’t understood well because I showed it only from a woman’s perspective and not too many people understand that. If I did the film now perhaps I would be more intellectual and show more spectrum, but anyway in this, we just loved the story to In the Name Of, the idea of a priest who cannot have sex because he’s not allowed and is celibate, and yet he feels such a huge desire, and for a young man who has never had sex because he comes from a pathological family, so I wanted to show this sexuality and how it awakens. It’s easy to explain because in my experience women grow up sexually when they are around 40, and maybe that’s why all of these issues regarding sexuality were interesting to me because I am in that age group, so I wanted to explore this side of human nature. Now I’ll probably turn to another direction though [laughs].

Was it helpful to have co-written the screenplay with Michal Englert then, and to have that male perspective infused into the script?

MS: Yeah definitely, but we tried not to divide. Sometimes we were laughing because I was more male and he was more female. But yes of course it’s helpful to see how he sees and feels the erotic scenes between two men are like, so yes it was interesting to work with a man.

This film is so much about the lead character Adam, so how did you decide Andrzej Chyra was perfect for this role?

MS: He is one of the most famous Polish actors of his generation, and I used to work with him in small scenes, such as in Elles, and I was always planning on making a special part for him because I knew he deserved it because he is an amazing actor. So I wrote a scenario for Andrzej and I was thinking about him from the beginning.

Is that something you often do?

MS: I will only be doing this from now on. I wrote this part for Andrzej, another part for Mateusz (Kosciukiewicz) and all the other parts for the actors I knew from the beginning were going to be involved. Now I’m writing another script the same and I’m thinking about some actors I want to use because I don’t like casting. I think it’s too hard to judge on casting, it’s an unnatural situation.

You’ve spoken about an upcoming project with Juliette Binoche – can you tell us about that?

MS: There are two projects, one is with Juliette and it’s called SISTERS. It’s an experimental film because it’s based on documentary archives I have at my home. I have loads of archives of conversations with my sister, which was a few years ago. Out of this material I am writing a scenario, and it’s very funny – I think it will be a kind of black comedy, and I found it so interesting to transfer a documentary into a feature. Also there is another small Polish project, again with Michal, as we’re writing together. It’s going to be more about Poland, but also about how people have relations with their bodies.

Do you have any long-term plans to make a film in either the UK or the US?

MS: To be honest I’ve never thought about it because it’s not for me. The producer is always the most important, and I’m afraid the UK is the same. Also the stars… You have to have the stars, and the stars tell you what to do and I cannot imagine. I like the European art house style where you have such freedom and nobody is forcing you to do anything. At the moment I’d like to keep my art house way.

Poland have a really impressive film history – the likes of Polanski, Zanussi, Wajda… Are there any in particular that really inspired you though?

MS: Yeah all of them. Of course I admire Polanski and his work, but there are so many who are inspiring. At the same time, the younger generation are rejecting this, we want to do something different, which is typical. But we are really under the influence of all of these masters of Polish cinema, even sub-consciously. STEFAN PAPE

IN THE NAME OF is on current release at selected cinemas including the CURZON SOHO AND ODEON PANTON STREET, LONDON from 27th September 2013

In The Name Of – W IMIE (2013) Berlinale 2013

Director: Malgoska Szumowska Writers: Malgoska Szumowska and Michal Englert
Cast: Andrzej Chyra, Mateusz Kosciukieiwcz, Lukasz Simlat, Maja Ostaszewska

Malgoska Szumowska’s second outing after the acclaimed Elles centres on Adam, a celibate Catholic priest who works with delinquent teenagers in a village in rural Poland.

As Adam, Andrzej Chyra is well cast and generates a profound benevolence and warmth that’s the nearest feeling to true goodness that one can possibly imagine. He embodies unselfishness, empathy and kindness but also commands respect and authority in a really moving performance. Michal Englert’s soft summery visuals heavily mingled with striking imagery from Christ’s Passion render the hazy bucolic setting in a powerful yet soothing way as Adam’s calming presence gradually deepens into something more heavy and unsettling.

Despite sharing a resonating chemistry with one of the inmates Lukasz, a young simple country lad, Adam rejects his advances and also those of Ewa a blonde alcoholic, stating that he’s already spoken for (by Jesus). But he also experiences moments of despair, repression and lonliness in this moving portrait of confused emotions and abstinence and the journey towards self-discovery and self-acceptance.

With its atmospheric soundtrack this is an absorbing and emotional drama that echoes Brokeback Mountain in its intense and delicate subject-matter. MT

IN THE NAME OF is on general release from 27TH September 2013 AT THE CURZON SOHO AND THE ODEON PANTON STREET.

IN THE NAME OF WON THE TEDDY AWARD AT BERLINALE IN 2013

As I Lay Dying (2013) 57TH BFI London Film Festival 2013

Director: James Franco Writers: James Franco/William Faulkner

Cast: James Franco, Danny McBride, Logan Marshall-Green, Danny McBride, Richard Jenkins.

US Drama

Like him or loathe him, James Franco is certainly prolific. Here he offers up another faithful adaptation from American literature this time from William Faulkner’s 1930s novel of the same name. To be fair he’s certainly not one to cut corners or quail away from testing tomes: this Mississippi tale is told from the viewpoint of no less than fifteen different characters, mostly in heavy and occasionally unintelligible Southern drawl. Handled deftly with the use of split screens, as one character talks while the other’s reaction is shown, he uses a technique that’s experimental and not altogether successful, requiring audiences to ‘bear with’ him on another of his projects. You can imagine the young James obviously got a great deal of patient encouragement from his parents: and this occasionally feels very much like a college affair that’s reached the international arena.

The essence of the story is that of a quest to fulfill the final wishes of one Addie Bundren by his kith and kin. It takes the form of a Southern country road movie that follows them down a long and winding road – quite literally – with his coffin strapped to a wagon – and recounts at length the mishaps that befall the motley crew. I won’t elaborate on the storyline; suffice to say there are some gruesome moments in the marathon which is on the whole well-performed and imaginatively-crafted with some cracking cinematography from Christina Voros (127 Hours) and an atmospheric original score by Tom O’Keefe. It you like Franco’s schtick, this one will be for you. MT

THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 9 – 20 OCTOBER 2013

Come As You Are (Hasta La Vista)**** Out on DVD

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Director: Geoffrey Enthoven

Script: Pierre De Clercq, Asta Philpot, Mariano Vanhoof

Producer: Mariano Vanhoof

Cast: Robrecht Vanden Thoren, Gilles De Schrijver, Tom Audenaert, Karel Vingerhoets, Katelijne Verbeke, Karlijn Sileghem, Marilou Mermans, Johan Heldenbergh, Isabelle de Hertogh

Belgium 149mins 2011 Drama

A road movie with a difference. Three Flemish guys in their Twenties- Philip, Lars and Jozef, with a taste for fine wine, a good time and hot women, decide they want to go to Spain for some sun, sea and sex.

The problem is, they all live at home, cared for their whole lives by their parents. Philip is paralysed from the neck down, Jozef is blind and Lars is wheelchair bound due to a brain tumour. And all of them are virgins. It’s one thing to want to rebel and fly the coup, but if you’ve never travelled and your life actually depends on the coup, it becomes another thing entirely.

Running similar territory to Midnight Cowboy, Intouchables, Rain Man even Scent of a Woman, this is a very honest film about real people, not those you would normally expect to see in a ‘movie’. People who are otherwise like you and me: just unable to survive without unconditional friendship: and therein lies the poignancy, drama and even humour, particularly appealing here.

It’s by turns a hugely enjoyable and affecting romp and for anyone not so afflicted, an eye opening insight into the other worldliness that confronts people with disability, making the day-to-day mundane that most of us would never think twice about, into insurmountable obstacles; reaching objects from a top shelf. Steps. Dropping something on the floor. Pushing a button.

But the humour is also perfectly pitched, the interplay between the three main protagonists just right, as their characters come to the fore under duress and the negotiation that is any friendship is played out with a ring of truth to it. What makes this film is the commitment of the leads and strength of the supporting cast.

Taking its time to reach our screens due to a thorough stint on the festival circuit, it is no surprise that Come As You Are won the Audience Award at both Karlovy Vary and the European Film Awards. It also won Most Popular Film of the Festival and Special Jury Mention at Montreal in 2012. It’s a real feel-good crowd pleaser that will go down particularly well with arthouse festival-goers the world over. Come As You Are: funny, moving, affording insight and examining wider issues. Andrew Tomlinson

COME AS YOU ARE IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY FROM 7 OCTOBER 2013

Van Gogh (1991)

Dir. Maurce Pialat | Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London,Gerard Sety, Bernhard Le Coq, Corinne Bourdon, Elizabeth Zylberstein. | France 1991, 158 min. Drama

French director Maurice Pialat (1925-2003) was a maverick: a late starter in film-making – he directed his first feature L’Enfance Nue (Naked childhood – in 1968 at the age of 44. An antagonistic person, he thrived on controversy, on and off the set. His relationship with the French film critics was poisonous: when he received the Palme D’Or in 1987 for Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the sun of Satan) he was roundly booed and retaliated by sticking out his tongue.

Sharing his lack of aesthetic compromise with Bresson (it’s no accident that Under the sun of Satan is based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, whose Mouchette and Diary of a Country Priest were filmed by Bresson). And Pialat was a painter – albeit with little success.

Dialogue-driven and aesthetically rather underwhelming, Van Gogh is well-crafted with a strong central performance from Jacques Dutronc who portrays the last three months of the artist’s life.

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh arrives at the station of Auvers-sur-Oise, a little village 40 miles away from Paris, where is met by his friend Dr Gachet (Gerard Sety), an amateur collector of works by Cezanne, Renoir and other contemporary French painters. Van Gogh has just left the hospital in Saint Remy, after treatment for physical and mental illness. Even though Gachet wants to look after Van Gogh and admires his works he is wary of him; with good reason as it turns out. Van Gogh stays in a cheap inn, but sees Gachet regularly, meeting and painting his teenage daughter Marguerite (Alexandra London), with whom he forms a romantic bond. Brother Theo, an art dealer, also visits with wife Jo (Corinne Bourdon) at the Gachet place, where they have fun in the garden. Van Gogh works tirelessly, only interrupting his work when friends from Paris arrive, one of them is the Cathy (Elizabeth Zylberstein), who is supposed to be the love of his life. After a night out in Paris with Theo and Marguerite, Van Gogh sinks again into a deep depression and meets a tragic end.

Pialat mistrusted all forms of psychological interpretation. His long shots show what is happening, nothing else. He demystifies Van Gogh and argues, that if the painter had really been that ill, he could not have created so many masterpieces in the last two month of his life. In common with Eustache and Cassavetes, Pialat welcomed confrontation on many levels: On set, he drove the actors mad and even came to blows with many of them.

Pialat resolves many scenes with conflict, particularly those between couples (here Van Gogh/Marguerite and Theo/Jo are arguing constantly and violently. Like all Pialat’s films, Van Gogh is rigorously structured, nothing is left to interpretation. Unsentimental it may be, but the director is not interested in romantisicing the artist: his Van Gogh is a lonely, cantankerous man, unable to express himself in words, only knowing how to confront. Whilst he is not a misogynist, his relationships with women are mainly exploitative, at home in chaos and catastrophe – not unlike the director, whose films all have an underlying autobiographical tone. AS

VAN GOGH IS OUT ON DVD/BLU and a selection of his films are now on MUBI | COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA.

Dracula (1958) *** On DVD and Blu-Ray

Director: Terence Fisher

Script: Jimmy Sangster (Bram Stoker)

Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, John Van Eyssen, Valerie Gaunt

UK 84mins 1958 Horror

Terence Fisher came to filmmaking extraordinarily late, directing his first feature at the grand old age of 43, through the J Arthur Rank Studios. And he helmed a fair few films with some notable stars such as Jean Simmons, Dirk Bogarde and Herbert Lom.

However, his big break came when in 1957, Hammer Studios asked him to direct a remake of Frankenstein, aged 52. The Curse of Frankenstein was a box office smash, sealing his fate as the horror go-to guy for the rest of his career. This Hammer debut also created bankable careers of Cushing and Lee, who reunited for Dracula the same year, made also basically for peanuts.

John Van Eyssen plays Jonathan Harker, the man on a mission to kill Dracula under the pretence of being a librarian employed by Lee’s Count Dracula to catalogue his extensive library. When the cavalry fails, it’s Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing who goes in to clear up the mess.

The film has definitely aged, in terms of style and content. The acting style is more theatrical than today’s tastes will allow for without parody and, by today’s standards, the content is staid, the effects naïve, but the power and commitment of the performances, particularly Cushing and Lee are undeniable. At the time of its release, this kind of horror with attendant bloodletting was revolutionary and caused quite a stir. Something almost unthinkable now, when one considers the gallons of blood used in Chainsaw Massacre 3D, or the Saw franchise.

It is however heartening to see that it has been singled out for restorative treatment for many more generations to enjoy. I’ve no idea what sort of condition the original was in and there are still a few places at which one can tell the film must have been in a parlous state, but in the main, it feels very fresh and clean. The two disk DVD has an armoury of extras, including alternative versions of the full film. I suspect in the end this may be one for the interested and the collector, but a fine piece of work nevertheless by filmmakers, cast and restorers alike.

A classic then, but a classic ‘B’ horror, not on a par with a Lawrence Of Arabia say, so not without interest, but it was never made to look classy. This is Hammer House of Horror’s Dracula, after all, for Satan’s Sake. AT

DRACULA IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

FOUR BRAND NEW FEATURETTES.

DRACULA REBORN. New 30 min. featurette about the film’s creation and history, featuring, among others: Jimmy Sangster, Kim Newman, Mark Gatiss, Jonathan Rigby and Janina Faye (Tania in the film).

RESURRECTING DRACULA; New 20 min. featurette about the film’s restoration, from the BFI’s 2007 restoration through to the integration of “lost” footage, featuring interviews with key staff at the BFI, Molinare and Deluxe142. Also covers the February 2012 world premiere of Hammer’s interim restored version including “vox pop” interviews with fans after the event.

THE DEMON LOVER: CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING ON DRACULA New 30 min. featurette.

CENSORING DRACULA; New 10 min. featurette on the original cuts to the film ordered by the British Board of Film Censors.

Beyond The Hill (2012) Tepenin Ardi | London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Script: Emin Alper

Producer: Emin Alper, Enis Kostepen, Seyfi Teoman

Cast: Tamar Levent, Reha Ozcan, Mehmet Ozgur, Berk Hakman, Banu Fotocan

Turkey, Greece | 94mins Drama Subtitles

As impressive an opener as you are going to get, from auteur Emin Alper. Made on a tiny budget and set in the enormously atmospheric mountain countryside, Alper has already pulled down some international festival awards for this debut, including Best First Feature (Special Mention), Berlinale, Caligari Film Prize, Berlinale Forum, Best National Film Award, Istanbul FF, NETPAC Award – Karlovy Vary IFF, Special Jury Award – Sarajevo FF and Best Feature Film – Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Retired forester Faik, living with friend Mehmet and his wife Meryem, has his son Nusret and two grandsons Zafer and Caner staying for the summer, but the rifts are not far beneath the surface compounded by Faik’s ongoing feud with the local nomads encroaching on his land.

This really is a fine film; never mind debut, and the story reveals itself in a minimal, finely-weighted manner as we begin to understand the relationships between the various men as much in their differences as in their ties. Faik has such a strong link to the land, which is already lost to his son, never mind his grandsons. For him there is the earth, his goats, his poplar trees and not much else but you unquestioningly defend these things with your life.

Beyond The Hill is all but a Western in genre. The epic nature of the land really is king and must be respected. Its brooding presence almost airless, despite the wide-open spaces The acting throughout is just splendid. The cast all inhabit their characters totally and in a way that one feels as though one is witnessing life, not just a drama. There’s also a timeless quality to the setting that transcends the now and a universality to the parable as an observation of man and his failings down through the Ages.

Really masterful storytelling, a million miles from civilisation and 3-D. AT

BEYOND THE HILL is screening at the LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013 AT THE ICA, RIO DALSTON AND CINE LUMIERE FROM 21 FEBRUARY TO 4 MARCH.

Metro Manila (2013) ***** Sundance London 2013

Director/Script: Sean Ellis

Cast: Jake Macapagal, Althea Vega, John Arcilla, Ana Abad-Santos, Miles Canapi, Moises Magisa

90min Crime Drama UK

British director, Sean Ellis, started life as a fashion stills photographer in the nineties. His film debut was born out of a short of the same name Cashback (2006). His second feature, a critically-acclaimed psychological thriller The Broken (2008) starred Richard Jenkins and Lena Hedy.

Metro Manila contains no famous actors and although the initial treatment generated keen interest, his quest for authenticity and his desire to shoot the film in local Tagalog language made the project a hard sell to financiers. The story centres on a young couple of economic migrants with two small kids who move to the violent urban conglomeration of Metro Manila from the countryside, in a bid to survive.

Fortunately for us all, Ellis succeeded in filming and financing his endeavour and the native language adds authenticity and an exotic edge to this first rate crime drama which completely transcends its need for subtitles, such is the power of the cinematic narrative, and is one of the best thrillers I’ve seen for some time.

To illustrate the extreme measures to which the central character, Oscar Ramirez, is forced to go to, Sean Ellis took, as inspiration, the true story of one Reginald Chua whose father was murdered by rivals envious of the success of his silk factory. Eventually, their threatening behaviour to his workers became so serious that we was forced to shut the factory and go bankrupt. Facing mounting debts, he boarded a plane and forced the passengers at gunpoint to hand over their money. He then jumped out with a parachute made from the silk of his father’s factory.

Poetic in feel and sumptuously shot, Metro Manila is a beautiful thriller: Sean Ellis’s skill with his lenses, the lush tropical countryside, and the gentle-looking Philipino leads Jake Macapagal (Oscar) and Althea Vega (Mai), who give natural performances and their lovely children make this a pleasurable watch that feels refreshingly thoughtful as a counterpoint to the mounting suspense it generates.

Metro Manila starts as a quietly realistic story set amid the paddie fields as the family leave their farmland and set out on a colourful bus journey to the city. But a sinister edge soon sets in when they fall amongst thieves a few hours into their arrival they are firstly swindled by a rogue landlord and then turned out into the street. Greedy employers exploit their honest naivety, seeing them as a soft touch and setting out to take advantage of their lack of guile. It’s a sad state of affairs: Mai is working as a hostess in a lap-dancing club and Oscar partners a corrupt guard dealing with laundered cash for a security firm. They find themselves in a filthy flat on the slippery slope to hell with only their love for each other and their faith in God to redeem them.

Proceedings turn increasingly tense as Oscar’s job feels like a game of Russian Roulette due to the mercurial and unpredictable character of his shady partner Ong (John Arcilla). His lack of shrewdness threatens to land him in deep water but Oscar is no fool and manages to stay ahead of the game as the final denouement is ingeniously unwrapped in the final seat-clenching moments. You’ll never guess the ending. MT

Metro Manila won the Audience Award for best drama at Sundance Film Festival 2013 and BEST FOREIGN FILM at the BIFA 2013. It is the British submission for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM AT 2014 ACADEMY AWARDS 2013

Tales of the Night (2011)**** Les Contes de la Nuit

Cert12 84mins Fantasy Animation

Fairytales have reached a point in cinema where they have been dumbed down so as not to frighten or shock children in any way. Who remembers the unnerving “Tales From Europe” or even “The Water Margin”? These tales were deeply sinister and wicked without being bloody. violent or foulmouthed in any way. Kids love that element of fear and edginess on screen especially when set, as these are, in a charming Medieval style with beguiling black silhouettes delicately rendered against a lusciously colourful background.

The five animated fables filmed in cutting-edge stereoscopic 3D are enchanting and wonderful to watch. Best of all, they have appeal for adults as well and weave a web of intrigue shot through with strands of ingenious morality retaining the ancient tradition of fierce dragons, beautiful princesses and brave knights all set to an eerie chamber choir ensemble.

This is an intelligent family film that will capture the imagination of kids and adults alike.

Showing at the Everyman Hampstead on 21st September 2013

Meredith Taylor ©

InRealLife (2013)

Director: Beeban Kidron

90min *** UK Documentary.

Beeban Kidron is well known for her TV series, documentaries and dramas: everyone knows Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Here she tackles the thorny subject of the internet, taking a look inside the sinister online world to try and find out how it’s shaping the future generation.

Not surprisingly, many of the large conglomerates refuse to take part so this at times feels slightly incomplete given that Facebook, Google and Youtube represent the lion’s share of what goes on online. That said, InRealLife certainly offers compelling subject-matter, quite whether it’s worthy of big screen treatment is another question, given the inherent geekiness of it all.

Creative shots of underwater cables twisting as fish glide by, accompanied by a sinister, twanging sound and some corporate-looking footage of the large global ‘cloud’ storage facilities in Miami, is about as cinematic as it gets: so visually exciting it certainly ain’t. There’s also a scattergun approach to the material that feels very much like clicking through a search engine giving snippets from no less than thirteen different professional commentators ranging from Norman Doidge, a neuroscientist; Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange and Sherry Turkle, who offers insight into the ‘authenticity of intimacy and connection through the internet’.

Given the startling fact that 40% of of teenagers spend more time with their friends ‘online’ than in reality; the message here is that perpetual internet usage does shape teenage brains encouraging behaviour that is at best, less socially-aware and, at worst, verging on sociopathic.

Professional views are intercut with those of the teenagers themselves: Tobin (19), a highly articulate Oxford graduate who enjoys online games as a displacement activity for more meaningful self-improvement; Ryan (15), who believes he’s addicted to online porn on his iPad, describing his daily activities as ‘me-time’ and surfing through categories such as ‘MILF and ‘Amateur’ while indulging himself before having his shower (!). Although they claim to prefer meeting friends face to face, several feel that their internet habit comes largely from living in isolated parts of the country where they have little recourse to like-minded friends or interesting activities. In this respect, the internet has almost become an easy or soothing activity; like smoking or sucking a dummy.

Perhaps the most depressing fact to come out of this film is that sharing on the internet also has a commercially driven element with the large conglomerates using our to data to make money. And although google is ‘free’, the information that users offer in return has netted the googles of this world billions of dollars over the years. And there’s a nefarious element: google has recorded every single page that you have ever looked at and used the information to build an exclusive profile, almost as telling as your individual DNA. Eeek!

Beeban Kidron’s documentary makes quite sobering viewing. It will certainly make you think twice next time you log onto Facebook, youtube or Twitter. You have been warned! MT

INREALLIFE GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2013

Grace of Monaco (2013) coming up in November

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From Up On Poppy Hill (2011) DVD BLU

Director: Goro Miyazaki Writer: Tetsuro Sayama and others

91mins Studio Ghibli Animation

Though famed for their fantastical creations, Japanese animators Studio Ghibli have also displayed a unique ability across their 28 year history, for placing the viewer in a particular time and place in modern history within their productions. Be that World War One in Porco Rosso, or the end of the Second World War in Grave of the Fireflies, they depict a world we know so well, yet enriching it with fantasy elements and the enchantment for which they have become so well renowned. Their latest picture From Up On Poppy Hill is no different, this time taking us back to Japan in 1964, ahead of the forthcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.

In director Goro Miyazaki’s (son of co-founder Hayao) sophomore Ghibli endeavour, we begin in Yokohama, following student Umi (Sarah Bolger) as she cares for her family while her mother is away. Struggling to overcome the untimely death of her father in the Korean War, she soon starts to rediscover some meaning to her life, when she meets the anarchic and enigmatic Shun (Anton Yelchin). Focusing primarily on saving the latter’s clubhouse from the wrecking ball, the pair develop feelings for one another – although the situation grows somewhat untenable when some unexpected information is brought to light.

With a voice cast also consisting of the likes of Christina Hendricks, Jamie Lee Curtis and Bruce Dern, From Up On Poppy Hill provides a rich, political and social context to proceedings, and though the core of this story is a romantic tale, the setting adds more poignancy and substance to the narrative. Such context enhances the realism of the piece, as although this is as magical as one may expect, by placing this tale in real circumstances, it makes it seem all the more naturalistic. Such a sentiment only heightens the emotional aspects of the picture too, because the more we believe in this tale, the more invested we are. It’s certainly an easy backdrop to associate with, what with a big city gearing itself up for such a prestigious sporting occasion, and the political implications such an event can arouse. Somewhat familiar, isn’t it?

In the meantime, the animation is about as good as Ghibli have been able to boast, with beautiful scenery complementing the story. The varying, picturesque images of the clouds and vibrantly colourful skies form an alluring backdrop, adding to the romanticism of the piece. In a typical Ghibli manner, every single mundane task appears magical and bewitching, as even the scene where the family sit down to eat breakfast has an air of enchantment around it. Such scenes are embellished with a typically witty script, as a feature that carries several dryly humorous one-liners.

Though not quite reaching the heights of some of the classic Ghibli productions, this remains an improvement on their most recent title Arrietty, in that this has more originality to the story as a bewitching piece that tells a touching and heartfelt tale, and one that is masterfully dealt with. With a plethora of twists and turns, at one point Shun remarks, “this is like a cheap melodrama”: and though the narrative may indicate such a notion, Miyazaki does an almighty job to ensure this not be the case, as the themes are dealt with delicately and triumphantly. But then again, it’s Studio Ghibli: could we really have expected anything less? SP

FROM UP ON POPPY HILL IS ON DVD/BLU AND WILL BE POPULAR WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DIRECTOR AND ANIMATION LEGEND HAYAO MIYAZAKI.

Classe Tous Risques (1964) ****

Director: Claude Sautet

Cast: Lino Ventura, Stan Krol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sandra Milo, Marcel Dalio, Simone France

110min French with subtitles

Claude Sautet is better known for his dramas Un Coeur En Hiver and Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, but in it’s own way, Classe Tous Risques is a significant thriller of the late fifties that launched Jean Paul Belmondo, to be immediately overshadowed by his breakout hit Breathless, as the tsunami of French New Wave rolled in making him into a star after this screen debut.

Sombre in tone and impressively shot in black and white, this quietly brutal road movie with its central theme of dishonour and broken loyalty in the criminal fraternity, has Lino Venturi in the lead as Abel Davis, a square-set, hardened criminal living in Italy, who needs one last job to retire so he can take his family back home to France. And how many times have we heard that before?: he should have known better.

After losing his partner in crime (Stan Krol) in a twist of fate as they reach the French coast, he teams up with a small time thief Eric Stark (Belmondo), who drives him to Paris.

France of the fifties is grittily depicted here and Paris takes very much a central role still recovering from the hardship of the war days. Tightly written with some witty moments helping to lift the overall mood of grim inevitability, it is accompanied by George Delerue’s atmospheric score. He went on to compose the theme tunes to A Man for All Seasons and The Day of The Jackal and has just written the soundtrack to current hit: Frances Ha.

The female characters here know their place in film noir is to be cool and simmering or proud and coquettish in support roles well-performed by Simone France as Lino’s wife Therese, Sandra Milo as Belmondo’s Liliane and a wonderful vignette from Evelyne Ker as the daughter of Gibelin.

Classe Tous Risques was a screen adaption of the novel by real life crim, Jose Giovanni, who had worked with the French Resistance and was at one point sentenced to death. His particular experience lends a touch of grim authenticity to the piece, preventing it from drifting into cliche. If you’re looking for a solid French thriller of the old school then this will fit the bill. MT

The Artist and The Model (2012) ***

Director: Fernando Trueba Writers: Fernando Trueba, Jean-Claude Carriere

Jean Rochefort as Marc Cros,

Aida Folch as Mercè, Claudia Cardinale as Léa Cros, Chus Lampreave as María

with Götz Otto as Werner, Mateo Deluz as Henri, Martin Gamet as Pierre and Christian Sinniger as Emile

Marc Cros was a French sculptor who associated with Cézanne and Matisse. In Fernando Trueba’s arthouse drama, we meet him during the 1940s working quietly from his studio in an idyllic corner of the French Pyrenees and married to the vivacious and supportive Lea (an exuberant Claudia Cardinale).

Lanqourous and lushly photographed in black and white, Jean Rochefort gives a masterful performance as the ageing Cros, who slowly develops a bond with a local Catalan girl Merce (Aida Foch), who has recently escaped the Civil War in Spain and with Lea’s blessing, becomes his model. Not just a pretty face, or a naked body for that matter, she revives the old man’s dormant creativity and keeps him in his place, gradually emerging as a sharp-witted accomplice with a keen knowledge of the local countryside which she uses to help Pierre (Martin Gamet), a local resistance fighter. An an historian friend, Werner (Gotz Otto), also visits the studio to discuss work and Chus Lampreave injects a spark of comedy as the housekeeper Maria.

If you’ve recently seen Gilles Bourdos’s film RENOIR, there are similarities here in that Trueba and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carriere, one again refuse to let any real dramatic punch intrude into the innate lanquidity of the storyline so although Daniel Vilar’s liquid velvet visuals are endlessly seductive to the senses, THE ARTIST AND THE MODEL ultimately fails to engage the emotions. MT

In A World (2013) ***

Director/Script: Lake Bell

Cast: Lake Bell, Fred Melamed, Demetri Martin, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry

90min US Comedy ***

Lake Bell’s debut feature is a screwball comedy drama in which she also stars as a wannabe voice-over artist who has not yet found her groove. Suffocating under the enormous ego and physical hulk of her famous father Sam Sotto (an assured Fred Melamed) who rules their roost and occupies the stratosphere of the voiceover world, he has only one younger rival Gustav (Ken Marino) to threaten his dominion over the airwaves.

The film opens with a tribute to Don LaFontaine, the famous voice artist, and this is a story about fragile egos at the top and the competitive world of show-business. Lake Bell, as Carol finds herself suddenly ousted from the family home to make room for her father’s doting younger girlfriend and into the flat of her married sister Dani, (Michaela Watkins) and her husband, Moe (Rob Cordry) who are experiencing their own problems.

In A World, has the comfortable feel of a TV soap such as ‘Rhoda’ or even ‘Caroline in the City’ with its New York Jewish humour and sharp and punchy script. Lake Bell has perfect comic timing and an ability with accents which she trots out with a dead-pan expression as mimicking the people she meets during her day including a squeaky girl who turns out to be a lawyer. Dani plays the reliable older sister who is professional in her work, respectful and down to earth, but it’s clear that these two are resentful of their father and his girlfriend and this plays out in a well-considered and believable way.

A surprise cameo from Geena Davis injects a strong feminist message in the closing scenes and Eva Longoria appears briefly attempting a cockney voice. In A World is a fresh and informative.MT

Call Girl (2012) *** DVD/BLU

Director: Mikael Marcimain

Writer: Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten

Cast: Sofia Karemyr, Simon J Berger, Josefin Asplund, Pernilla August, David Dencik

140mins Thriller Sweden with subtitles

This intelligent Swedish art house feature joins the recent influx of Scandinavian films to flood our cinema screens. Along with The Killing and The Bridge, Call Girl makes challenging viewing not least for its subject-matter: the grooming of young girls to work as prostitutes for top politicians in seventies Stockholm. The city emerges as a bedrock of misogynist culture and child abuse emerges in the run-up to a scandal-ridden general election.

Shifting between two plot lines, the story focuses on how Iris (Sofia Karemyr) and Sonja (Josefin Asplund) gradually find themselves the victim of Pernilla August’s shrewd business woman, Dagmar, who operates a call girl agency with clients drawn from the top echelons of the local political and police elite.

John Sandberg (Simon J Berger) is hired to look into Dagmar’s activities but gradually his operation burgeons into a full-blown criminal investigation encompassing members of his own bureau, and in so doing casts a pall over other shady aspects of society which are inexorably drawn into the proceedings. It’s a tightly-scripted and skillful piece of filmmaking underpinned by a well-put-together seventies aesthetic and some truly excellent performances particularly from the two leads.

Told in a way that’s devoid of drama or sensationalism, it cleverly portrays a society where victims from the bottoms rungs of society are left without voice or proper recourse to justice; this absorbing drama is as chilling, dark and long as January in Stockholm. MT

CALL GIRL IS OUT ON DVD/BLU FROM 28 SEPTEMBER 2013 PRICE: £15.99 courtesy of Artificial Eye.

Breathe In (2013) DVD/BLU

Director: Drake Doremus Writers: Drake Doremus, Ben Yorke Jones

Cast: Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Kyle MacLachlan, Amy Ryan, Ben Shenkman

98mins US Drama

Much like his preceding feature Like Crazy, director Drake Doremus returns with yet another well-executed romantic drama featuring a young English girl finding love in the States. However where Breathe In differs, in that it focuses in on a more sophisticated and civilised coming together of two lost souls, rather than an idealistic, naïve first love between mere youngsters. It plays out almost as a reflection of Doremus’s natural progression as a filmmaker in what is a richer and more refined piece of filmmaking than his previous endeavour.

Felicity Jones plays Sophie, a foreign exchange student hailing from England, who is stationed in an upstate New York home with her music teacher Keith (Guy Pearce), his wife (Amy Ryan) and teenage daughter Lauren (Mackenzie Davis). While the timid and somewhat precocious Sophie first catches Keith’s eye with her exceptional piano playing ability, the pair soon develop feelings for each other in a potential romance that could break up this family dynamic and change the lives of those within it forever.

Once again Doremus has managed to draw incredibly naturalistic performances from his cast, whilst a maturing Jones is as alluring as always, further enhancing her reputation as one of the more beguiling screen presences in contemporary cinema. She brings a fragility that is sincere and endearing. Pearce also impresses, as one of few actors who is efficient at moving between genres effortlessly, adapting to a low-budget romance flick as he does to the science fiction blockbusters where he has made his name.

The realism is richly enhanced by the organically implemented score, where our characters’ own musical performances dictate the tempo and atmosphere of the picture, and complements what plays out on screen. The musical vibe here is classical, and this is reflected in the contemplative ambiance that echoes the narrative. What starts as pensive, slowly gets more intense and dramatic, as in many classical pieces.

The build-up to Sophie and Keith’s romance is subtle, yet we see more than enough to believe in it, and though not much actually occurs, it’s the potential repercussions of what may happen that maintains the compelling edge. The theme of romance between a foreigner and a local is effectively portrayed, as it provides a loneliness to proceedings. Sophie is missing her family and friends and feels isolated and lost in another culture, which breeds a vulnerability to her. However it also works in reverse adding an intensity to the romance with a prevalent ‘nothing to lose’ aspect: often typical in a holiday romance that succeeds from its exhilarating spontaneity.

There is a determinable ending in sight however, and though the relationship is extremely realistic and has you drawn in completely, you hold little hope for its longevity, as a foreboding feeling sweeps over the entire picture. Though it would be intriguing to see Doremus tackle a different genre next and explore relatively new avenues, if he was to simply make another picture much like Breathe In and Like Crazy, it certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world. STEFAN PAPE

BREATHE IN IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY ON 0CTOBER 7TH 2013

57th BFI London Film Festival 9-20 October 2013

Tom Hanks headlines this year’s London Film Festival in the opening gala of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS: a Somali hijacking drama on the high seas. He also plays Walt Disney in the closing gala SAVING MR BANKS co-starring Emma Thompson as the ‘Mary Poppins’ author P L Travers. This year’s festival will feature biographical films on Julian Assange, Princess Diana, Grace Kelly and Nelson Mandela. And Judy Dench joins Steve Coogan in Stephen Frears’ latest drama and Venice hit, PHILOMENA, about a mother’s search for her long-lost son, given up for adoption by Irish nuns.

The nine main sections are each headed by a Gala performance as follows:

LOVE with Cannes 2013 Palme D’Or winner BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR **** See Cannes highlights

DEBATE with Kelly Reichhardt’s environmental psycho thriller NIGHT MOVES **** (see Venice highlights)

DARE with Alain Guiraudie’s haunting waterside drama L’INCONNU DU LAC (STRANGER BY THE LAKE) **** (see Cannes reviews)

LAUGH with Joseph Gordon Levitt’s DON JON – a Berlinale hit ***

THRILL with Ivan Sens’s MYSTERY ROAD – an Australian thriller

CULT with Jim Jarmusch’s ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE **** a vampire drama with Tilda Swinton

JOURNEY with Alexander Payne’s road movie NEBRASKA **** which won Bruce Dern best actor at Cannes 2013

SONIC with Lukas Moodysson’s WE ARE THE BEST! a punk drama set in 90s Sweden

FAMILY with Juan Jose Campanella’s FOOSBALL 3D

BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE RESTORATION of THE EPIC OF EVEREST.

Of this year’s competition line-up, the features we recommend are LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON from Kire-Eda Hirokazu, Clio Barnard’s THE SELFISH GIANT, Xavier Dolan’s standout Venice thriller: TOM AT THE FARM and Jonathan Glazer’s existential drama: UNDER THE SKIN. Documentary-wise, Alex Gibney is back with another controversial look at the life of Lance Armstrong: THE ARMSTRONG LIE, and, if you have time: Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour AT BERKELEY is a fascinating insight into the legendary uni and its many famous alumni. However, steer clear of UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL, a thin and poorly edited effort to champion the Ukraine feminist movement Femen by Kitty Green. Other recommendations are Sebastian Leilo’s GLORIA, which won best actress at Berlin this year. Tomasz Wasilewski FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS tackles bisexuality. While female sexuality is dealt with poignantly in ADORE, Anne Fontaine’s adaptation of Doris Lessing’s short story and Jill Soloman’s AFTERNOON DELIGHT, a raunchy look at one woman’s bid to spice-up her marital relations.

Where would cinema be without Andrzej Wajda’s contribution? WALESA. MAN OF HOPE is his important, well-crafted and watchable docudrama about the life of nobel prize-winner and president who made an valid contribution to freedom in the workplace. Roman Polanski love of sport is not well-known but Jackie Stewart certainly is and the two old friends collaborated on a documentary with his favourite racing driver, entitled WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION. Francois Ozon is back with another look at teenage prostitution: JEUNE ET JOLIE. For all the ultimate in geekdom, 80s-style film COMPUTER CHESS will appeal – shame it’s not available on betamax. Documentary JODOROWSKY’s DUNE looks at the story behind the Chilean maverick director’s bid to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s fantasy opus DUNE.

In car thriller LOCKE is an action-packed one-hander that will keep you firmly wedged in your seat thanks to a immersive turn from Tom Hardy and finally classic music fans and anyone who’s interested in the story behind opera will welcome BECOMING TRAVIATA, an exultant piece of filmmaking from Philippe Beziat and one of the highlights in the Cannes Market section this year. FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME DOWNLOAD HERE

Museum Hours (2012)****

Director/Writer: Jem Cohen

Cast: Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits

107min Documentary/Drama

After a misspent youth travelling with rock bands, Johann (played by a quaintly appealing Bobby Sommer) has come to spend his days in the quiet splendour of the Bruegel rooms. Every picture tells a story and he is particularly captivated by the sumptuous detail of 16th century life, depicted in all its graphic gore and glory until one day the lost and diffident figure of Anne appears on the scene. Played by Canadian singer Mary Margaret O’Hara, a stranger to the city, she has come to comfort a dying relative.

Exploring the city together, Johann acts a guide as the two introverts grow close in a tentative and respectful meeting of minds in everyday surroundings. Against the bleak and wintery Viennese backdrop, the friendship is kindled by the warmth of human kindness and decency as Johann even accompanies Anne on visits to the nearby medical centre. Gem Cohen juxtaposes the complex splendour of baroque art against the rank and random simplicity of everyday objects allowing the viewer to contemplate and meditate on the wonder of art treasures, the nature of friendship and loss, the kindness of strangers and random acts of human generosity in this world of lost and lonely souls.

Museum Hours was a film I nearly didn’t see, tucked away in the industry screenings at the London Film Festival last year. Please don’t let it pass you by. MT

Any Day Now (2012) **

Director: Travis Fine

Cast: Alan Cumming, Isaac Leyva, Garret Dillahunt, Frances Fisher, Gregg Henry.

98min US Drama

Inspired by true events that took place in the seventies but have increasing relevance now with contempo themes of gay adoption and civil rights, Travis Fine’s tale of a gay couple attempting to legally parent a mistreated Down’s Syndrome boy is somewhat schematic despite its admirable subject matter.

It stars Alan Cummings as Rudy Donatello, a single gay man whose unsocial hours in cabaret bring him into contact with his home-alone neighbour Marco, an appealing boy with Down’s Syndrome. Then one night during the show, Rudy takes a shine to punter, Paul (Garret Dillahunt), and after a brief dalliance, ends up servicing him in the car. The respectable divorced lawyer falls for his charms and before you can say ‘human rights lawyer’ the two have set up home on the auspices of providing stability for the mistreated Marco.

It has to be said this is very much Alan Cummings’s film. As a drag queen, his tour de force of simmering anger, full blown histrionics and vulnerable charm grabs the limelight whenever he’s in the frame. Playing against the much lesser-known but competent Garret Dillahunt, (who just gets to wear a truly ghastly wig) he simply takes over and the central theme of adoption is forced into second place. As Marco, Isaac Leyva is captivating in a subtle turn that could have offered more in the way of dramatic pull had the script left room for Marco and Paul to develop their characters. Sadly, they are completely submerged by Cumming’s star quality from start to finish. Fine’s handling of the establishment figures also portrays them as perpetual baddies to the point of caricature, as in Frances Fisher’s crusty old crimplene-clad Judge Meyerson and Paul’s boss, Lambert (Greg Henry): who turns into a ill-judged weirdo to cause him grief.

Obviously, Travis Fine was delighted to have Cummings attached to the project and shoe-horned in the rest of the cast who were happy to be part of a vehicle featuring his acting pipes in a star turn that ends up completely taking over the action. Where Any Day Now could have been a sensitive, multi-faceted court room drama about a decent gay couple engaged in a laudable custody battle, it just ends up being a rather predicable and strangely unfunny comedy focussing on Alan Cummings star turn. MT

ANY DAY NOW IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 6TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT SELECTED CINEMAS

Upstream Color (2013) **** Sundance London 2013

Director/Producer/Writer/: Shane Caruth

Cast: Amy Seimetz, Shane Caruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins, Meredith Burke

96mins US Sci-fi Drama

Shane Caruth is a director of sci-fi films and Upstream Color is his second feature. He produces, lenses, scores (highly originally) and also acts here as Jeff, a man whose loose connection to a woman called Kris (Amy Seimetz) arises after they are both seemingly the victims of a radical medical experiment.

Technically brilliant and boldly photographed, Upstream Color follows an arcane narrative that has you back-footed and bewildered for most of its 96 minutes. It’s also a challenging and hypnotic piece of experimental filmmaking, the like of which you probably won’t experience again in 2013.

Many may even call it a love story between two people so linked and drawn together by a damaging past that they are destined to spend the future together, eventually accepting one another through force of circumstance.

There’s also an animal testing element to the film, that’s less appealing, involving what appears to be a piglet whose reproduce organs are removed and replaced with those of Kris, so it appears to gestate a piglet derived from her own genetic material.

The story sounds bizarre with the telling in a vacuum without the benefit of its dazzlingly edited images but, suffice to say, this is a film to experience and one which you will either embrace or reject due to its unorthodox nature.

Loosely, Kris finds herself the unwitting subject of a strange medical experiment at the hands of a thief (Thiago Martins) and is forced to eat a strange bug which then grows inside her and robs her of her mind. After losing all her savings, she then undergoes further intervention involving a pig owned by ‘the man’ (Andrew Sensenig). Eventually she meets Caruth, who appears to be connected to her through experiencing a similar trauma in the past. They share a visceral relationship that makes no sense to the outsider, communicating in a disconnected dialogue but remain bonded closely for the remainder of the film, possibly through a human need to make order out of chaos and to relate to each other in what is otherwise a lonely and isolating situation.

The leads gives strong performances expressing the deep trauma they have gone through but this is not in any way an emotionally affecting film nor does it make a strong dramatic impact. The only feeling it illicits is one of perplexity. Upstream Color actually makes haunting, soulless and rather uncomfortable viewing despite its potent visual appeal and imposing metallic score. It is nevertheless required viewing. MT

UPSTREAM COLOR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 28TH AUGUST 2013

Kings of Summer (2012) **** DVD/BLU out 30 September 2013

A refreshingly funny rites of passage tale and first feature for Jordan Vogt-Roberts who takes a simple teenage male-bonding outing in the woods and gives it universal appeal. Anyone can remember a time when parents seemed totally ‘uncool’ and the desire to break free from their clutches was the most natural and grown-up thing to do, especially if it involved leaving home for a camping expedition in a hidden location with a group of friends, in a bid to exert some authority and independence.

Here the friends are a motley threesome and well-played by: Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) joined by hanger-on and all-round weirdo Biaggio (Moises Arias). What starts as a breezy summer experience soons turns wintry as the dynamic shifts dramatically between the trio due to a unexpected turn of events. Cracks starts appear not only in their relationship but also in the cabin they excitedly build together.

Chris Galletta’s hilarious script and Vogt-Roberts’ skillful direction make this feelgood summer outing, shot through with touches of angst, a winner for all audiences. MT

Hors Les Murs (2013)

Director: Daniel Lambert Writer: Daniel Lambert

Matila Malliarakis, Guillaume Gouix, David Salles, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin

98mins French with English subtitles Drama

The recent batch of gay films has become more romantic and less sexually explicit in tone (Keep The Lights On, Weekend) and this fine example and directorial debut from Belgian writer, Daniel Lambert, tugs at the heartstrings like any classic love story. The thrust here is on the heady mix of power over tender vulnerability and makes appealing viewing for art house audiences although it’s not quite mainstream fare.

Paulo (Matila Malliarakis) is living with his girlfriend Anka but their sex life has pretty much ground to a halt. When he meets Illr (Guillaume Gouix) the chemistry is palpable and he is immediately seduced by Illr’s forcefully masculine approach. Exasperated by the lack of bedroom action, Anka throws Paulo out forcing him to move in with Illr despite a certain reluctance on Illr’s part. The two begin a convincing and passionate relationship in which Paulo very much forces the pace for commitment. As the dynamic between them reaches considerable depth and complexity the narrative develops with a well-crafted and involving plot line and authentic characterisations.

An atmospheric music selection from Canada’s Valleys band sets just the right tone for this bittersweet affair and Matthieu Poirot-Delpech’s sensual and distinctive widescreen visuals give poignancy to this indie drama marking Lambert out as a filmmaker with a promising future. MT

BEYOND THE WALLS IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26TH AUGUST 2013

Morrissey 25: Live (2012) ****

Director: James Russell

92mins Music Documentary

Director James Russell’s passion for music and multi-camera flair is showcased here in this close-up and personal experience of Morrissey performing live in the confines of the Hollywood High School arena in March 2013. Serving it up straight and simple, topped and tailed with idolatrous vox-pops from the visiting fans, James Russell does not try to put his own creative spin on the proceedings or to compete with the iconic star. This is Morrissey’s show marking 25 years of a solo career for the enigmatic English singer and lyricist, who has risen considerably in stature since the days of The Smiths when he rose to fame in 1984 with the words: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.

Thirty years later at this intimate gathering he gives the impression of still being pretty miserable. But he’s made his fans extremely happy and they all tell him so in mass hysteria grabbing the microphone when he asks in between songs “Do you want to talk?”. He certainly knows how to connect with his audience without giving away anything of himself, retaining an aura of alluring disdain that occasionally belies the revealingly emotional but candid content of his lyrics, delivered in a strong voice, mournful and mostly off-key.

Running through a range of new material and classics from “Alma Matters”, “Let Me Kiss You”, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”, “Please let me get what I want” and “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side”, Morrissey has an impressive and powerful animal physicality about him. Moving about the stage with relaxed ease, his blue eyes, broad shoulders and beautifully delicate hands sporting yellow-varnished nails, He’s a man in control of his own destiny but he has no illusions about where that may be.

The camera loves him but he’s oblivious to the filming process focussing firmly on his musical performance and his fans and treating them to regular handouts of his sweat-drenched designer shirts and handshakes as he bends forward into the crowd with impressive athleticism. By the end, fans are climbing onto the stage to embrace him before being carried away by security guards. Mystique, charisma, the ability to connect on a deep level: whatever it is, Morrissey has it in spades and James Russell’s film has captured it for posterity. It’s a wonderful thing. MT

MORRISSEY 25: LIVE IS A ONE-OFF EVENT ON 24TH AUGUST 2013 AT CURZON, VUE AND ODEON CINEMAS.

Circumstance (2012)

Director Maryam Keshavarz

Cast: Nikohl Bosheri, Sarah Kazemy

105mins Drama

Politics and sapphic desire go hand in hand in this coming of age drama from Iranian director, Maryam Keshavarz. It starts off as a fairly formulaic affair focusing on a group of friends kicking against the system of contemporary Iran but soon edges towards a strikingly sensual and provocative story of forbidden love between two lesbians.

Atafeh (Nikohl Bosheri) and Shireen Sarah Kazemy) are clearly in love. Both coming from enlightened backgrounds of affluent Tehran society, Shireen’s parents were victims of the strict regime, Atefeh’s are a professional couple. Thirty years ago they would have had the glamorous lifestyle of young Westerners but that was pre-revolution and nowadays they could be arrested for holding hands. But when Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Rezo Sixo Safai) turns fundamentalist as a throw-back from addiction and starts laying down shariah law with predictable consequences for all concerned, the picture becomes darker.

Strong images of female discrimination drive the narrative forward and the girls are subtle and convincing as friends and lovers but the standout performance comes from Rezo in his slow and and sinister transformation from sensitive musician to controlling religious bigot.

Meredith Taylor ©

DVD release on 24th September 2012.

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Plein Soleil (1960)

Dir: René Clément | Cast: Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Marie Leforêt, Erno Crisa | 118mins | France, Thriller

Writer: Patricia Highsmith

When it comes to style, no one does it better than the French and Italians. PLEIN SOLEIL, René Clément’s adaptation of ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’, perfectly epitomises the laid-back sixties summer of a group of friends holidaying on the Italian riviera and slipping easily from French to Italian to English.

While retaining the sinister edginess of Highsmith’s novel, Clément floods the screen with a sunny Mediterranean vibe, skilfully directing his largely debut cast to produce a thriller embued with the insouciant glamour of the era and superbly performed by these three beautiful young French actors.

Alain Delon stars as a rather feline Ripley, moving sinuously across the screen-his physique honed from an early career as a paratrooper in the Marines, he’s a French version of Dirk Bogarde (or American, James Dean) both in style and background and, like Bogarde, fell into acting in the late fifties after a series of odd jobs, eventually becoming a star in Plein Soleil. Delon went on to find international success in Visconti’s ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960), he came to represent the ideal young male of the Nouvelle Vague: energetic, good-looking and rakish. He was perfect for the role of Ripley; a charming sociopath with murderous intent.

Marie Laforêt plays Marge Duval, in a sultry turn that exudes nonchalent sex appeal and Maurice Ronet, who had already made his name in LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD, is another genius piece of casting as her suave boyfriend Philippe Greenleaf.

The ending is a shocking departure from that of the original novel and displeased Highsmith on the grounds of its “indictment of public morality”. But although the more recent Anthony Minghella version starring Matt Damon clings more faithfully to her storyline, this by far exceeds the latter in style and execution and was to set the tone for the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut to usher in the French New Wave. MT

ON NETFLIX AND PRIME VIDEO

Venice International Film Festival at Biennale 2013

The Venice Lido hosts the longest-running international film festival. A highlight in the cultural calendar, Venice is legendary for its glamorous parties and innovative and cutting- edge cinema, screening the latest films that missed the runway at Cannes, and are narrowly squeezed in before Toronto follows hot on its heels in September 2013.

Hollywood stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock open this year’s 70th festival with Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, a fantasy sci-fi in 3D and, for the first time ever, a documentary has been chosen for the closing gala. AMAZONIA, a docu-fiction that follows a monkey from captivity to the heart of the jungle to fend for itself, again in glorious 3D.

But enough of the Hollywood hype. Festival Director, Alberto Barbera’s official line-up this year actually reflects some rather stark economic and culture realities around the World with the focus on family break-down, domestic violence and prostitution: it’s a social crisis all rolled into 10 days!

Bernardo Bertolucci is president of the jury this year. Amongst others, he is joined by Martina Gedeck fresh from success in eco fantasy drama The Wall and our own Andrea Arnold, best known for her edgy urban features Fish Tank and Red Road. Chilean director and writer, Pablo Larrain, whose latest film NO won 7 academy-award nominations in 2013 and French actress Virginie Ledoyen (Farewell My Queen) will also take part.

With seven North American indies competing for the Golden Lion this year, Venice is feeling very much like the European equivalent of Toronto. The tireless James Franco is on board with CHILD OF GOD, a violent drama set in Tennessee and David Gordon Green’s (Prince Avalanche) latest offering JOE, starring Nicolas Cage is among the role call. Venice has stolen the chase on Toronto with the premiere of Peter Landesman’s Kennedy-themed PARKLAND, starring Paul Giametti, Zac Effron and Billy Bob Thornton. Documentaries also feature heavily in the competition line-up, with Errol Morris’s political title THE UNKNOWN KNOWN, about the life of Donald Rumsfeld featuring alongside THE WIND RISES, an animated fictionalised biography of WWII aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi, from the Japanese Studio Ghibli .

Italy is well represented in competition with Gianni Amelio’s comedy L’INTREPIDO, starring Antonio Albanese and director, Emma Dante’s VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA, a Sicily-based comedy drama in which she also stars alongside Alba Rohrwacher (Dormant Beauty). On the Italian documentary front, award-winning Gianfranco Rosi’s unveils his adventurous road movie: SACRO GRA.

Stephen Frears heads the UK contribution to the competition line-up with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan in PHILOMENA, a drama about a woman searching for her lost son and Terry Gilliam’s eagerly-awaited sci-fi drama THE ZERO THEOREM stars Tilda Swinton, Matt Damon and Christoph Waltz.

From Canada, Xavier Dolan brings another gender-busting indie TOM A LA FERME with Evelyn Brochu (Café de Flore). The French entry this year is from Philippe Garel who directs his son Louis in LA JALOUSIE, an adaptation of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s fifties novel. Anna Mouglalis (Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky) also joins the cast.

Out of Competition there’s plenty to look forward to on the documentary front with Alex Gibney’s THE ARMSTRONG LIE, about the myth of Lance Armstrong following on from his Wikileaks exposé, and PINE RIDGE by Anna Eborn, exploring inhabitants of the Native Indian Reservation in South Dakota. From Poland comes WALESA, the great Andrzej Wajda’s depiction of the Polish Nobel Prize winner and leader. On the drama front, Korean auteur, Kim Ki-Duk is back (after winning the Golden Lion last year for Pietà) with MOEBIUS, a controversial film restricted in his own country, that depicts the moral breakdown of a family.

The Orizzonti Section focuses on the avantgarde and new trends in world cinema and offers such delights as PALO ALTO, Gia Coppola’s debut (co-written by the ubiquitous James Franco). STILL LIFE, Uberto Pasolini’s poignant drama starring Eddie Mersan as a council-worker tracking down relatives of those who have died alone. Dane, Luca Moodysson will be there with VI AR BAST! (WE ARE THE BEST) about a teenage punk band in 80s Stockholm and fashion designer Agnes B’s latest production as director, JE M’APPELLE Hmmm… which sees a young girl and an old man bring hope and experience to a glorious road movie. MT

THE VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 28TH AUGUST UNTIL 7TH SEPTEMBER 2013 AT THE VENICE LIDO.

What Maisie Knew (2013) Curzon Home cinema from 23rd August

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WHAT MAISIE KNEW is a custody battle drama showing at CURZON CINEMAS from 23 August 2013.

Hors Les Murs (2012) Beyond The Walls

Director: Daniel Lambert Writer: Daniel Lambert

Matila Malliarakis, Guillaume Gouix, David Salles, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin

98mins French with English subtitles Drama

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The recent batch of gay films has become more romantic and less sexually explicit in tone (Keep The Lights On, Weekend) and this fine example and directorial debut from Belgian writer, Daniel Lambert, tugs at the heartstrings like any classic love story. The thrust here is on the heady mix of power over tender vulnerability and makes appealing viewing for art house audiences although it’s not quite mainstream fare.

BEYOND THE WALLS IS ON RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26TH AUGUST 2013

Winter of Discontent (2012)*** El sheita elli fat

Director: Ibrahim El-Batout

Cast: Moataz Mosallam, Amr Waked, Salah Hanafy, Farah Youssef

96min Drama Arabic with English subtitles

Portraying the painful personal stories behind the events leading up to The Arab Spring, Ibrahim El-Batout’s quietly elegant and surprisingly intimate fourth feature has considerable charm and visual allure.

Taking the lives of three men from different sectors of Egyptian society he paints an authentic portrait of modern Cairo in a time of political and social turmoil on the eve of the January 25th Revolution. Amr watches youtube footage of torture inflicted on citizens by the state police and is reminded of the suffering he endured in similar circumstances recently. The focus switches to Adel, who was responsible for some of this torture in his role as chief of the Secret Police. But it’s when TV show host Farah enters the picture that we discover that the purported ‘truth’ that he is forced by his bosses to dole in his public broadcasts is quite different from the reality.

Almost poetic in feel, El-Batout’s unique brand of storytelling is sombre and engaging, creating a palpable sense of time and place. With some exquisite art house visuals and well-crafted performances; although at times Farah is unconvincing in his bid to convey the real moral inquietude key to his character. And although this feature comes a little late to the ‘party’ to be of current political relevance, it nevertheless captures the zeitgeist and stands as a powerful and significant insight into the Arab Spring. MT

THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT IS ON RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 23 AUGUST 2013

Espoo Film Festival 2013

Heading up to Finland this summer? Then why not visit Espoo, just west of Helsinki. Apart from being the home of Nokia and EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art), it’s also the home of the ESPOO CINÉ FILM FESTIVAL which takes place from 16th – 28th August 2013.

Premièring this year, there are number of the coming season’s new FINNISH films, the long-awaited Princess of Egypt, (Silmäterä) the debut feature directed by Jan Forsström, one of Finland’s foremost young screenwriters today. Taru Mäkelä makes a return to fiction features with the satiric comedy August Fools (Mieletön elokuu), starring Laura Birn and Kati Outinen in a completely original role. Ulrika Bengts presents her latest outing, The Disciple (Lärjungen), a powerful drama about the difficult choices made by a lighthouse keeper’s apprentice in the summer of 1939.

The parade of new Finnish films is rounded off by a German-Argentinian-Finnish co-production Midsommer Night Tango (Mittsommernachtstango), directed by the German filmmaker Viviane Blumenschein, where three Argentinian tango musicians travel to the land of the midnight sun to investigate the claim made by Aki Kaurismäki that tango music was actually born in Finland.

Espoo Ciné in co-operation with Helsinki Festival will also be screening a live film Kiss & Cry by Belgian film director Jaco Van Dormael and choreographer Michele-Anne De Mey.

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The festival kicks off with Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra and the closing film this year will be Icelandic drama, The Deep, based on a true story of survival surrounding a fishing disaster. The line-up includes Woody Allen’s latest Blue Jasmine starring Kate Blanchett and Alex Baldwin. Further highlights of the festival: The Best Offer starring Geoffrey Rush, Dormant Beauty with Isabelle Huppert and this year’s Golden Bear winner from the Berlinale Child’s Pose by Calin Peter Netzer.

ESPOO FILM FESTIVAL 16-28 August 2013 www.espoocine.fi

Espoo Film Festival 2013

Heading up to Finland this summer? Then why not visit Espoo, just west of Helsinki. Apart from being the home of Nokia and EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art), it also hosts the ESPOO CINÉ FILM FESTIVAL which takes place from 16th – 28th August 2013.

Premièring this year, there are number of the coming season’s FINNISH films: the long-awaited Princess of Egypt, (Silmäterä) the debut feature directed by Jan Forsström, one of Finland’s foremost young screenwriters today. Taru Mäkelä makes a return to fiction features with the satiric comedy August Fools (Mieletön elokuu), starring Laura Birn and Kati Outinen in a completely original role. Ulrika Bengts presents her latest outing, The Disciple (Lärjungen), a powerful drama about the difficult choices made by a lighthouse keeper’s apprentice in the summer of 1939.

The parade of new Finnish films is rounded off by a German-Argentinian-Finnish co-production Midsommer Night Tango (Mittsommernachtstango), directed by the German filmmaker Viviane Blumenschein which sees three Argentinian tango musicians travel to the land of the midnight sun to investigate the claim made by Aki Kaurismäki that tango music was actually born in Finland.

Espoo Ciné in co-operation with Helsinki Festival will also be screening a live film Kiss & Cry by Belgian film director Jaco Van Dormael and choreographer Michele-Anne De Mey.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gna_V9qgppk

The festival kicks off with Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra and the closing film this year will be Baltasar Kormákur’s Icelandic drama, The Deep, based on a true story of survival surrounding a fishing disaster. The line-up includes Woody Allen’s latest: Blue Jasmine starring Kate Blanchett and Alex Baldwin. Further highlights of the festival: The Best Offer starring Geoffrey Rush, Dormant Beauty with Isabelle Huppert and this year’s Golden Bear winner from the Berlinale Child’s Pose by Calin Peter Netzer.

ESPOO FILM FESTIVAL 16-28 August 2013 www.espoocine.fi

Silence 2013

Director: Pat Collins

Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride, Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Andrew Bennett, Marie Coyne,

Silence is golden. But a growing number of us in this fast-moving, computer-driven, noise-laden world increasingly value the stillness it brings. Sit in total tranquillity away from it all and notice the calming affect on the psyche and the deep inner calm and healing that come from silence.

Irish director Pat Collins has done just that in this part-documentary, part-drama that has professional sound recordist, Eoghan, attempting to discover a totally noise-free environment in the environs of rural Berlin. Taking his recording equipment into the surrounding forest, he hears the distant sound of rock-breakers at work puncturing the natural ambience with a dull and continuous thud. So, after a final meeting with his girlfriend, significantly drowned-out by a passing train, he returns to his native Ireland and sets off into the depth of the countryside on Bullock Island off the coast of Donegal hoping to find an environment away from man-made sound.

Richard Kendrick’s softly atmospheric visuals accompany this voyage of discovery to find peace and desolation, interweaved with footage from the past. As Eoghan finds peace, a strand of childhood memories gradually start to surface, fleshing out the enigmatic narrative with fleeting but tangible reference to events that occurred in these remote, enchanted islands set in the emerald sea. MT

SILENCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9TH AUGUST 2013 AT CURZON RENOIR, ICA CINEMA, THE BARBICAN CINEMA AND BFI SOUTHBANK.

Paradise: Hope (2012) (Paradies: Hoffnung)

Paradise: Hope is the third feature of the Ulrich Seidl’s trilogy of films focusing on female stories in a contemporary Austria. This one is based Teresa’s 13 year-old daughter Melanie, the 13-year-old daughter of Paradise: Love‘s character: Melanie is verging on obesity and is dispatched to a health camp for teenage fatties in the Austrian Alps, while Teresa goes in search of sex in Kenya. Once there the homesick Melanie soon finds herself sharing a room with another overweight teen Verena, (Verena Lehbauer) and exchanging sweets and salacious stories about their experiences with the opposite sex. There’s nothing new here about the sex-tinged gossip, it’s much the same as it was in my day but the obesity is what really stands out in these contemporary teenagers.

Ulrich Seidl uses the same observational style here that works so well in Paradise: Love, using minimal dialogue and lingering camera shots that leave space to speculate on and enjoy his darkly humorous and provocative narrative. It’s a style that works particularly well here leaving the audience to engage with the characters and the mood of his light but unsettling narrative.

During the regular medical examinations, Melanie (Lenz) starts to develop a plausible but inappropriate attraction to the in-house doctor, a man in his fifties. Joseph Lorenz gives a brilliant and highly inventive turn as Arzt. He doesn’t come across as a family man and could almost be a player, but Seidl leaves this very much to our imagination and in the process creates a seductive image that provides a clever counterpoint to Teresa’s male predators in Paradise: Love.

Melanie gradually emerges as a vulnerable character with a well-developed sense of her own sexuality and the ability to seduce and beguile: she an utterly normal teenager. In a quirky but poignant portrait of first love, the strange chemistry that develops between her and the doctor brings elements of suspense and titillation to the proceedings leaving us to speculate on how the story will progress; in other words: who will seduce whom? The outcome is quirky and disturbing but not as you would expect.

The other male lead is the archetypal sports trainer (Michael Thomas) who is only interested in exercising his ego, coming across as rather a sad figure to whose draconian authority the girls soon subvert with a mixture of tolerance and collective, covert mockery. Nestling in its placid and orderly Alpine setting, the ‘Clinic’ is a perfectly functioning model of authority ruled over here by dysfunctional role models. Scratch the surface and latent rebellion lurks in every corner and corridor, pointing at some very real concerns beyond. MT

PARADISE: HOPE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2ND AUGUST AT THE ICA CINEMA AND THE LEXI LONDON.

My Father and The Man in Black (2012)

Director: Jonathan Holiff

With: Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash

‘The untold story of Johnny Cash’

US Documentary 87mins

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Jonathan Holiff’s difficult childhood with his absent father Saul permeates this rather cryptic, meandering but heartfelt documentary on the man who dedicated his whole life to creating and managing the musical icon that was Johnny Cash.

After Saul’s suicide in 2005, Jonathan discovers a cache of letters, photos and audio diaries in the family home that unlock undiscovered memoirs from the legendary singer’s long career, helping him to understand and bring closure to his troubled relationship with his own father.

Fascinating if you are a fan; this documentary will also engage those will difficult or unresolved parental issues. MT

Locarno International Film Festival celebrates 75th Edition

The Swiss lakeside city plays host to one of the highlights of the Summer calendar, and this year Locarno International Film Festival celebrates its 75th Anniversary.

Famous for its outdoor screenings in Piazza Grande – the largest town square in Switzerland, seating up to 7,500 spectators – the 75th Edition of the LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL honours actor/director Matt Dillon, political filmmaker Costa-Gavras and auteuses Kelly Reichardt and Laurie Anderson with a selection of their features.

Meanwhile in this year’s highly anticipated Retrospective the luxurious red leather fauteuils of the Grand Rex are ready tomwelcome guests for the complete works of renowned director Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) who started his film career as Detlef Sierck in 1936 and went on to make over 75 films including Hollywood titles All that Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956).

The festival, taking place from 3-13 August, aims to attract cutting edge contemporary talent along with more established fare. Amongst the titles in competition for the Golden Leopard this year includes Alexandr Sokurov’s Fairytale, Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Patricia Mazuy’s Bowling Saturne, Abbas Fahdel’s Tales of the Purple House and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Matter out of Place. A host of other celebrations will also take place in the mountainside location of Ticino.

Piazza Grande

DELTA by Michele Vanucci Italy – 2022

BULLET TRAIN by David Leitch USA – 2022

COMPARTIMENT TUEURS by Costa-Gavras France – 1965

International Competition

ARIYIPPU (Declaration) by Mahesh Narayanan India – 2022

BALIQLARA XÜTBƏ (Sermon to the Fish) by Hilal Baydarov Azerbaijan/Mexico/Switzerland/United Kingdom – 2022

BOWLING SATURNE by Patricia Mazuy France/Belgium – 2022

DE NOCHE LOS GATOS SON PARDOS by Valentin Merz Switzerland – 2022

GIGI LA LEGGE by Alessandro Comodin Italy/France/Belgium – 2022

HIKAYAT ELBEIT ELORJOWANI (Tales of the Purple House) by Abbas Fahdel Lebanon/Iraq/France – 2022

HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH by Helena Wittmann Germany/France – 2022

IL PATAFFIO by Francesco Lagi 23 Italy/Belgium – 2022

MATTER OUT OF PLACE by Nikolaus Geyrhalter – 2022

TOMMY GUNS by Carlos Conceicao – 2022

PIAFFE by Ann Oren – 2022

RULE 34 by Julia Murat – 2022

SERVIAM – ICH WILL DIENEN by Ruth Mader – 2022

FAIRYTALE by Alexandr Sokurov – 2022

STELLA EST AMOUREUSE by Syvie Verheyde- 2022

STONE TURTLE by Ming Jin Woo – 2022

TENGO SUENOS ELECTRICOS by Valentin Maurel – 2022

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 3-13 AUGUST 2022

Days of Grace (2011)

Director: Everardo Gout

Cast: Tenoch Huerta, Kristyan Ferrer, Carlos Bardem

133mins Crime Thriller

Considering the vast display of passion and intensity within international football, it remains a relatively untouched territory in film. Mexican director Everardo Valerio Gout has picked up on its dramatic potential in Days of Grace, telling the disturbing tale of corruption and fervour in a broken society, set across three World Cups, all split four years apart.

We begin with Lupe (Tenoch Huerta), a law enforcer threatening young children for falling into trouble, before heading off to visit his wife and new born baby of his own. Fast forward a few years and one of the youths, Doroteo (Kristyan Ferrer) grows up and has dreams of becoming a boxer before he is pushed into a life of crime, getting involved in the capture of an innocent victim (Carlos Bardem), who is kept hostage and tortured. We weave in and out of these protagonists lives. amongst others, across 12 fateful years.

Days of Grace is an ambitious and creative piece of filmmaking, yet Gout can be accused of attempting too much in what is a convoluted and frenetic picture that will entertain the viewer but may also dumfound. Intertwining between three separate time periods is somewhat overbearing, as the differences between each World Cup isn’t palpable enough, and can become perplexing to audiences. Despite the fact Gout interconnects freely and intelligently, it certainly makes the viewer work hard. In short, Days of Grace is a tough watch.

Using the World Cup as a backdrop has many emotional implications, and the three stories cleverly progress in tune with the tournament, so as we reach the latter stages of our tale, each World Cup also reaches its intense climax.

Gout ensures that the elation the football brings to the people works as a bittersweet emotion, counteracting against the bleak, mundanity of everyday life. It brings a perspective to proceedings as it shows how trivial the sport can in the grand scheme of things, while alternatively portraying how it can also prove to be a vital form of escapism. The realism of the piece in enhanced by the fact that many of us can remember where we were when Brazil won the 2002 World Cup, or when Zinedine Zidane was sent off for head-butting an opponent. These shared emotions allow us to experience a chilling relationship with the lead characters, and ensures that the bleak storyline has even greater impact.

Meanwhile Gout must be commended for his unique approach to filmmaking with handheld camera work and out of focus techniques used so that we feel connected to the principal roles. When the hostage is beaten up, we see his tormentors through blurred vision, immersing us in the tale, as we even take on a first person perspective at times, as he hauntingly narrates his plight.

Though the characters are not particularly likeable the performances, especially Huerta, are impressive and full marks for originality in both the concept and the cinematic style. However the final execution is underwhelming, and the film is needlessly long – it should have taken a pointer from its football match counterpart and remained around the 90 minute mark. SP

Days of Grace (2011) ***

Director: Everardo Gout

Cast: Tenoch Huerta, Kristyan Ferrer, Carlos Bardem

133mins Crime Thriller

Simon (2012) Netflix

Director/Writer: Antonio Campo | Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Lila Salet, Michael Abiteboul, Solo, Constance Rousseau | 105min US Psychological thriller

Simon Killer, is a subversive second feature by Antonio Campos: you get the overriding impression that it’s being filmed covertly or by a hidden camera possibly due to the slightly muffled sound effects and a close range hand-help camera that give this psychological thriller an unsettling feeling of doom-laden urgency with its a syncopated score occasionally and abruptly punctured by long periods of uncomfortable silence.

Simon is clearly a disturbed, self-absorbed and morose individual: an American who’s moved to Paris and has just finished a long term love affair brought on by his ex girlfriend’s infidelity, and this plays on his mind.

Sexually he’s also very pent-up and troubled by the past and this comes across in his relationships with the people he comes across in this foreign city.

Paris feels like a dangerous place. Not the romantic city of dreams always billed – but a hostile, jagged and unfriendly place harbouring criminal types and the disenfranchised.

Simon eventually hooks up with a mysterious French call girl who offers him casual sex, and the two become close when Simon asks her for temporary refuge. He becomes increasingly emotionally and sexually involved with in scenes that feel authentic and visceral.The camera plays on their torsos and occasionally scans across the room in an unnerving way. The two engage in experimental and brutal sex that’s explicit and intermingled with feelings from the past for Simon, as he begins a slow and disturbing downwoods spiralling into his fate.

This is a first rate mesmerizing psychological thriller that’s stylishly produced and pulsating with believable performances from the writer and director of the acclaimed Afterschool.MT

SIMON is now on NETFLIX .

Viramundo (2013)

Director: Pierre-Yves Borgeaud

With Gilberto Gil, Peter Garrett, Paul Hammer, Vusi Mahlasela

95mins Documentary

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After football, Brazil’s second biggest export is music. Gilberto Gil’s eclectic style is showcased here in this colourful and entertaining documentary examining his life as an internationally revered bossa nova expert and musical ambassador who returned to the country to serve as Minister of Culture after a spell in exile as a political prisoner.

Now 71 but still radiating a gentle laid-back charm and modesty, we follow Gil, guitar in hand, on a musical journey of discovery from his native roots to other communities, examining the influence that his musical talent and charity work has and continues to have on the lives of ordinary people.

From the streets of Soweto to the shores of the Amazon and sweeping through Austrialian palm-fringed beaches the colour of icing sugar, this documentary serves as a calling card to the universal power of music and its ability to unite across cultures. MT

VIRAMUNDO IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 26TH JULY 2013 AT THE BARBICAN, LONDON EC2

Student Services (2010) Mes Cheres Etudes Out on DVD

Student Services joins the recent slew of dramas surrounding student prostitution along with François Ozon’s Jeune et Jolie and Malgorzata Szumowska’s Elles.

Student Services

Probably the least glamorous and certainly the most sexually graphic of the three, it is also the most disturbingly real thanks to a convincing turn from Belgian actress Déborah François (Populaire) who plays 19-year-old Laura.

Dating fellow student Manu (Benjamin Siksou) but desperately strapped for cash, she hooks up with an online site offering cash for bedroom services, and soon she’s earning good money from a variety of pervy men.

Although Student Services is slightly underwritten in character development, what makes it ultimately so appealing is the fabulous chemistry François develops with one of the punters, Mathieu Demy (as Benjamin) who gives a performance of considerable depth and allure as the two fall in love.

Student Services reveals the unexpected side of student prostitution and the fragility and vulnerability of teenage prostitutes is subtlely evoked here by François as she gradually becomes submerged in a low-life existence so distant from the one she hoped for. With an atmospheric soundtrack from artists The Walkmen and Soap&Skin, Student Services is a moving and engaging drama.

The Director Emmanuelle Bercot originally came to fame when her directorial debut Clément, in which she also starred, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2001. Her most recent film Elle S’En Va, starring Cathérine Deneuve premiered at Berlin 2013. MT

STUDENT SERVICES IS OUT ON DVD ON THE 8TH JULY 2013 COURTESY OF AXIOM FILMS complete with interviews and casting sessions.

When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010) DVD

However, as is often the case with this type of documentary, Simon keeps re-enforcing the salient points of the debate over and over again, overstimulating the viewer with a plethora of facts accompanied by Philip Glass’s pounding and ubiquitous musical score (although well-composed) which ramps up and intensifies the emotional content leaving us with little space to process and consider the importance of his message.

In the hands of a documentary-maker such as Richard E Grant, there would have been time and space for contemplation. A more measured approach here and some judicious editing (at nearly two hours it’s overlong) would have made for a more engaging and effective experience. That said, there are interludes, such as the audience with the Buddhist oracle and listening to the Dalai Lama’s pearls of wisdom, that offer truly riveting viewing. MT

Frances Ha (2012) **** CANNES Film Festival 2013

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7SxMaA0Om8

Director: Noah Baumbach Script: Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig

Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Esper, Adam Driver

85mins US Indie Drama

A ‘kooky’ and charming twenty-something New York tale that could have been penned by Hal Hartley or even Woody Allen, Frances Ha is the latest outing from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). Typically American indie in feel and freshly shot in crisp black and white and a large dose of chutzpah, it tells the story of a slightly jejeune sofa-surfing dancer who’s vulnerable yet determined to have fun in her quest for happiness. As Frances, Greta Gerwig gives a suberb performance that shows she’s much more clever than her friends would give her credit for. It’s a stylish film and well worth a watch for its sharp script, authentic characterisation and sparky performances. MT

FRANCES HA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26TH JULY 2013 AT EVERYMAN CINEMAS, VUE CINEMAS, CINEWORLD AND THE BARBICAN LONDON.

Lovelace (2013)

Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Script: Andy Belin

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone

92min US Drama

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In this compelling account of how a vulnerable young woman becomes the porn star Linda Lovelace, there are a some dynamite performances. Amanda Seyfried takes centre stage as the delicately elfin Linda with her mop of tousled curls. The product of a dysfunctional home-life that distances her from parents (Sharon Stone is suberb as her buttoned-up, embittered mother), she is thrown into the arms of Peter Sarsgaard’s disarmingly sexy but sleazy hustler and manager, Chuck Traynor. Taking her to New York as his wife, he then peddles her legendary ‘bedroom skills’ to porn directors Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria and Butchie Peraino (Bobby Carnevale) to create the phenomenon Deep Throat (1972): a money-spinning film that created a career for both of them and launched the era of ‘Porno Chic’, bringing pornography into mainstream popular culture.

Through a clever narrative structure, the truth behind the porn legend is gradually revealed in the second half of the film where the tone shifts from light-hearted comedy to disturbing and moving drama. We discover the extent of the abuse that Linda suffered to achieve this financial dream for all those involved (accept herself) and how she eventually manages to move on with courage and dignity. A really entertaining piece of filmmaking that really captures the spirit of the seventies made all the more memorable by its upbeat score featuring hits from T.S.O.P. and George McCrae’s ‘Rock Your Baby’ (1974). MT

LOVELACE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH JULY 2013

Kings of Summer (2012)

A refreshingly funny rites of passage tale and first feature for Jordan Vogt-Roberts who takes a simple teenage male-bonding outing in the woods and gives it universal appeal. Anyone can remember a time when parents seemed just totally uncool and the desire to break free from their clutches was most natural and grown-up thing to do, especially if it involved leaving home for a camping expedition in a hidden location with a group of friends, in a bid to exert some authority and independence.

Here the friends are a motley threesome: Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) who are joined by hanger-on and all-round weirdo Biaggio (Moises Arias). What starts as a breezy summer experience soons turns wintry as the dynamic shifts dramatically between due to a unexpected turn of events and cracks starts appear not only in their relationship but also in the cabin they excitedly build together.

Chris Galletta’s hilarious script and Vogt Roberts’ skilful direction make this coming of age story about childhood, a winner for all ages. MT

Roman Holiday (1953)

Director: William Wyler

Script: Dalton Trumbo, Ian Mclellan Hunter, John Dighton

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert, Margaret Rawlings, Harcourt Williams, Hartley Power

125mins Comedy Romance US

DIGITALLY RESTORED IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY

Stylish, poignant and perfectly performed by Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday is a Frank Capra-style fifties fable that delivers on many levels: as a coming of age story; an upstairs, downstairs romance; and moral tale of responsibility over recklessness set in an era when the media still had a sense of fair play and decorum.

Audrey Hepburn plays a British Princess called Ann in a perfectly-timed story that captured the imagination of the public due to a general fascination with the real life romance between Princess Margaret and non-royal Peter Townsend. The idea of a ‘Royal’ slipping away for a day of fun and frolics during an official tour is the stuff of fantasy and escapism but works here in a fifties setting where security was far less tight than nowadays.

That a press hack would respect such a valuable scoop and be so utterly entranced is testament to the power of love and is a theme that gives Roman Holiday its enduring and universal appeal setting it as a sparkling jewel in the Hollywood firmament. Under the inspired direction of Wiliam Wyler, Gregory Peck emerges as cool as a cucumber with the relaxed demeanour and calm integrity of a real hero and gentleman to Audrey Hepburn’s naive but dignified Princess.

For her part, Audrey Hepburn is the epitome of poise in a role for which she won 1953 Best Actress Oscar. Delicate and elfin-like, she graces every frame with her elegant diction (quoting Shelley) and wearing outfits inspired by fifties “New Look” designers such as Dior and Jean-Louis Scherrer, who created soft feminine silhouettes, luxuriating in haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Costumier Edith Head had designed costumers for the Hitchcock films of the era Vertigo, Rear Window and worked up until the eighties with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.

Frank Capra was originally optioned for the film and had hoped to cast Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant as the leads. But due to financial difficulties with his production company, Liberty Films, and problems working with the blacklisted Oscar-winning legendary screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (a victim of McCarthyism), he was forced to sell it to Paramount. So William Wyler eventually came on board to work his magic, fresh from directing The Heiress (1949) with Monty Clift and Elizabeth Taylor.

The project was a natural fit for Wyler and allowed him to turn his talents back to light romantic comedy, his first since The Good Fairy (1935) and also to benefit from tax concessions: Roman Holiday was the first American film made entirely abroad. MT

ROMAN HOLIDAY IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM JULY 19TH 2013

Wadjda (2012)

Director/Writer: Haifaa Al Mansour

Cinematography: Lutz Reitemeier

Cast: Reem Abdullah, Ahd, Waad Mohammed

98mins Arabic with subtitles

A hit at Venice 2012, Wadjda is a jewel in the crown of contemporary Middle Eastern film. The first full-length feature to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, it’s also directed by a woman. Despite the wealth of that country, one can only imagine how difficult it would be to raise the finance for such a venture and it was. So the funds came from Europe and the feature was backed by the Sundance Institute.

There’s nothing worthy about Wadjda. She’s a fiercely independent ten-year-old, as bright as a button and way ahead of her time. Living with her mother in a dusty suburb of Riyadh, she goes to school but sees her studies as a means to an end: to win the school prize so she can buy a bike and race the boys instead of taking the taxi provided by her father. He visits occasionally but has another ‘wife-in-waiting’, hoping that this one will provide him with the prize of a son. But Wadjda would rather be making wristbands and recording music discs and selling them for a profit than waiting to be married off to a local man.

Al Mansour’s clever script reflects every subtle nuance of Muslim society and Waad Mohammed’s charismatic turn as Wadjda is full of insight, wit and cheekiness marking her out to be a talent in the making. Supported by a cast of newcomers and seasoned actors: her onscreen mother Reem Abdullah and Ahd as headmistress Ms Hussa give performances of considerable allure. Lutz Reitemeier’s cinematography brings clarity and precision to the visuals.

The story is set against the backdrop of a society where women are the isolated chattels of men and merely exist to provide offspring. Woman are highly competitive with each other, gossiping and policing the sisterhood’s moral and r

eligious probity with an eagle eye and a sharp tongue. And whereas in Western society women compete in a machiavellian way for desirable males, in Saudi society this competition is right out there in the open and their only raison d’être in life.

Wadjda is a touching and playful portrait of a spunky little girl but more than that it’s a fascinating insight into a society with medieval values in the 21st century, and not all are to be dismissed as outdated. But even after all the dust has settled on its novelty value, this is a drama to be reckoned with on the international arthouse scene. MT

WADJDA is on general release from 19th July 2013. Haifaa Al Mansour will head the Dino De Laurentis Jury at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) | Bfi re-release

Dir: Werner Herzog | Cast: Bruno S, Volker Prechtel, Gloria Dor, Willy Semmelrogge, Brigitte Mira, Walter Ladengast | 109min, Germany

Werner Herzog drifts into visionary territory with a film based on the true story of a man who appeared in a town square in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, but carrying a cryptic note to a senior cavalry officer in his outstretched hand.

At the time, It was a case that caused much controversy and Herzog’s poetically pastoral costume drama attempts to recreate early 19th century life in rural Germany with detailed interiors, retro scenery and a haunting score featuring the music of Johann Pachelbel and Mozart.

The opening scenes see newcomer Bruno S as Kaspar grovelling around on the floor of a straw-covered hovel, playing with a toy horse and chomping on crusts of bread. A cloaked stranger discovers him, hauls him out and, teaching him a few basic words and his name, then abandons him after drafting the letter. Fortunately for Kaspar, he falls amongst ‘friends’ in an upmarket milieu and is taken in by the wealthy Professor Daumer (Walter Ladengast) who then begins a process of sensitive rehabilition with overtones of ‘Pygmalion’, although obviously far more radical given Kaspar’s regressive mental state. He then becomes the subject of intense curiosity and experimentation by the so-called intelligentsia of the era, who appear equally as disturbed as Kaspar, who then falls under the glare of a visiting English eccentric Lord Stanhope, from whose effete clutches he makes a lucky escape.

But what fascinated Herzog was the purity of Hauser and Bruno S (a non-actor) gives a performance of genuine authenticity as a complete innocent, an open book; untouched by guile, social conditioning, education or influence yet gifted with intuition and a canny animal instinct. Bruno’s distinctive voice and emphatic delivery, due to learning difficulties and a regional accent, contribute to this clearly disturbed but also deeply touching portrait of an outsider who has suffered and feels desperately disconnected from his fellow man while finding a deep connection with the animal world.

The ending is tragic and unexpected but marks this as a deeply philosophical piece with an enduring message that highlights the treatment of the outsider by the community, and resonates as clearly in the contemporary arena as it did back in the seventies, when it received much critical acclaim.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser picked up three awards at Cannes Film Festival in 1975: the Grand Prize, the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize. Herzog dedicated the film to the memory of Lotte Eisner, a film critc and historian, who encouraged him in his career. MT

NOW ON RE-RELEASE AT THE BFI CELEBRATING ITS 50 Anniversary

Les Invisibles (2012)

Director: Sebastien Lifshitz

105mins France Documentary

United by their pioneering homosexuality, eleven elderly men and women reveal their intimate thoughts about relationships nowadays and coming out in the France of their youth.

Accomplished director and professor, Sebastien Lifshitz, offers up an enlightening and poignant documentary made all the more engaging with its evocative wide screen visuals and pleasant soundtrack allowing the audience to build a sympathetic picture of these sincere individuals and gain a wider understanding of what it feels like to be a minority in the mainstream. MT

LES INVISIBLES OPENS AT THE CINE LUMIERE, LONDON SW7 FROM JULY 13TH 2013

The Deep (2012)

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Olaf Darri Olafsson, Johann G Johannsson, Porbjorg Helga Porgilsdottir, Theodor Juliusson, Maria Siguroardottir

Iceland 95mins Drama

Baltasar Kormakur originally came to fame in Iceland through his acting talents. But recently he has made superb drama 101 Reykjavik (with Victoria Abril) and crime thriller, Jar City, that screened last Autumn as part of the London Nordic Film Festival 2012.

His latest outing is based on an extraordinary incident in 1984 when an Icelandic trawler capsized off the coast of the West Islands leaving only one survivor. THE DEEP is the story of a miracle and Kormakur creates a convincing and tangible sense of place and suspense in the opening sequences that see a group of fishermen preparing to set sail for the high seas.

Tragedy ensues and the aftermath, staged in flashback, shows Gulli (Olafur Darri Olafsson) surviving against all odds in icy waters in a feat that will make him a national hero. His will to live and sheer determination is portrayed in a gripping and realistic performance by Olfur Darri Olafsson (who has recently won Best Actor at Karlovy Vary Film Festival) and is set against gloomy and atmospheric visuals of the treacherous volcanic landscape and choppy seas echoing his sense of fear, pain and desolation.

But rather than a superhero, Gulli emerges from all this as a nice enough, overweight bloke who is just looking forward to getting back for a drink with his friends and family. When faced with adversity he just took it all on board, or not, as it transpired.

And it’s due to this close engagement with the local community that the The Deep ultimately fails as an exciting narrative. A story that could have been moving or even devastating just seems to end up rather deflated. Perhaps Kormakur felt a need to protect the sensibilities of the locals by shying away from depicting what really happened in this fishing village. After the excitement and build-up of the first half, the film shifts in tone from drama to banal reality as it laboriously picks apart the aftermath of the tragedy, detailing the subsequent scientific findings in a procedural way that eventually descends into tedious documentary-style fare.

Presumably some of the people affected by the losses are still alive and, out of sheer respect for their feelings, one is left with the impression that Kormakur has reined back from giving full exposure to the grim reality of how tragedy ultimately affected this small fishing community. A missed opportunity then but nevertheless a remarkable piece of filmmaking that marks Kormakur out to be a technical genius with an eye for a story. MT

The East End Film Festival (EEFF) 25 June – 10 July 2013

IN THE NAME OF – Malgorzata Szumovska’s follow-up to ELLES screens 3 July

PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER – hot girls behind the Iron Curtain 4 July

FRANCES HA – a brilliantly witty black and white satire screens 6 July 2013

SATELLITE BOY – David Galpill still shines 40 years after WALKABOUT screens 6 July

The EAST END FILM FESTIVAL (EEFF) returns to London’s East End for its 12th and biggest edition this summer, from 25 June to 10 July. EEFF will present two weeks of cutting-edge films reflecting the culture, diversity and spirit of East London across an international programme. Artistic director Alison Poltock places the emphasis on first and second-time filmmakers, hot breakthrough bands and digital visionaries, EEFF is London’s destination for revolutionary new film, music, the arts.

This year ARGENTINA takes centre stage with six new releases featuring directors Armando Bo (EL ULTIMO ELVIS), Alejandro Fidel (THE WILD ONES), Matias Piñiero (VIOLA) and Sofia de Skalon (London Argentine Film Festival).

OPENING NIGHT GALA: THE UK GOLD

Filmmaker Mark Donne’s second feature THE UK GOLD takes up the subject of takx evasion following the dramatic battle of a vicar from a small parish in the London Borough of Hackney who pits himself against the City, revealing its central status as the tax-haven capital of the world. Narrated by actor Dominic West (The Wire, The Hour), and featuring an extraordinary new sound-score from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. All this is happening at the TROXY, a revived theatre in London’s E1, close to Shadwell tube. Its claim to fame is a giant wurlitzer that’s currently being refurbished.

CLOSING NIGHT GALA: LOVELACE

The festival closes on Wednesday 10 July with the UK Premiere of LOVELACE, the eventful and tragic story of Linda Lovelace, the most famous adult actress of the 1970s, is a power account of modern celebrity starring Amanda Seyfried, James Franco and Sharon Stone.

INTERNATIONAL FILM HIGHLIGHTS

One of the UK’s largest film festivals, EEFF will screen an international programme of over 80 features and 100 shorts, including UK Premieres:

We recommend:

HALLEY (dir: Sebastian Hofmann), a staggering tale of a lonely security guard at a Mexico City gym whose physical deterioration contrasts wildly with the healthy bodies around him;

SOLDATE JEANETTE (SOLDIER JANE) (dir: Daniel Hoesl), a provocative portrait of two women from different ends of the social spectrum;

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TELEVISION (dir: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki) showing the clashes that arise between religion and technology when a teacher in a Bangladeshi village buys a TV;

GENERATION UM (dir: Mark Mann) starring Keanu Reeves as a listless voyeur whose search for new experience leads him to video the dark confessions of two New York party girls – a European Premiere.

FRANCES HA from Noah Baumbach, a really inventive and witty coming-of-age story about a struggling dancer in NYC played by Greta Gerwig.

ANY DAY NOW (dir: Travis Fine) is set in seventies LA and stars Alan Cumming as a gay burlesque performer who, along with the closeted district attorney he’s just met, take in their neighbours abandoned and mentally handicapped son until a biased legal system questions the arrangement.

CALL GIRL (dir: Mikael Marcimain) is a brilliantly rendered seventies story of sexual exploitation and political corruption in Sweden, the same era and subject matter as our closing night gala, LOVELACE.

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DOCUMENTARIES

International documentaries worth looking out for:

AFTER TILLER (dir: Lana Wilson, Martha Shane), documenting a group of doctors who become targets of the pro-life movement.

BRITISH FILM HIGHLIGHTS

EEFF champions the best of new British cinema with the largest ever selection of British films, with 25 features from British filmmakers at every stage of the profession.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: the European Premiere Mike Figgis’s stylish psycho-sexual murder-mysterystarring Sebastian Koch, Lotte Verbeek and Emilia Fox;

WE ARE THE FREAKS, the new feature from award-winning shorts filmmaker Justin Edgar, a high octane teen comedy starring Jamie Blackley (Vinyl), Mike Bailey (Skins) and Rosamund Hanson (This Is England, Life’s Too Short);

DISCOVERDALE, George Kane’s feature debut is a fly-on-the-wall mocumentary about the frontman of a just-defunct band who believes his long-lost father is Whitesnake’s David Coverdale.

A FIELD IN ENGLAND with director, Ben Wheatley, cast and crew in attendance.

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PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER (dir: Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin), chronicling the way a small act of protest became an international story of human rights abuse;

For a local flavour, the World Premiere of WE AIN’T STUPID, the first feature from Mitch Panayis (winner in 2012 of EEFF’s Short Film Audience Award), documenting the changing nature of Queen’s Market in West Ham, in a timely examination of a fading trade; Trevor Miller’s first feature RIOT ON REDCHURCH STREET, a spirited tale of a love triangle and Anglo-Muslim relations in East London’s rock n’ roll subculture; and Jason Attar and Danny Wimborne’s first feature ONE NIGHT IN POWDER, a tale of an obscure British rocker’s last-ditch effort to find fame and fortune.

AWARD-WINNING SONIC CINEMA

EEFF’s signature paring of live soundtrack and silent film in a unique setting was voted Best Silent Film Event Of The Year in 2012 by Silent London. EEFF returns to Spitalfields Market in 2013 with a FREE outdoor screening of LA ANTENA (dir: Esteban Sapir). Set in a future dystopian city whose residents have lost their voices, this imaginative Argentine film will be accompanied by immersive contemporary dance by East End-based Neon Dance, and a specially commissioned score by gothic pop band Esben and the Witch.

DIRECTOR IN RESIDENCE / FESTIVAL JURY

This year’s Director in Residence is Armando Bo and the festival will include a special focus on Argentine Cinema, including UK Premieres of LOS SALVAJES (THE WILD ONES) (dir: Alejandro Fadel) and LEONES (dir: Jazmin López), both compelling tales of angst- ridden Argentine teenagers; and VIOLA (dir: Matías Piñeiro), which takes fragments of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to spin a labyrinthine web of desire.

Joining Armando Bo on a jury to choose this year’s Best Feature will be The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, producer and co-founder of Tugg, Inc. Nicolas Gonda, and My Brother The Devil director Sally El Hosaini.

This year’s Best Documentary Jury comprises writer and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker and poet Iain Sinclair, musician Mark Stewart, producer Rachel Wexler and head programmer of CPH:DOX, Niklas Engstrom. The Shorts Jury comprises multiple BAFTA winning short filmmaker Martina Amati, director of Rushes Soho Shorts Festival Joe Bateman, Vice Chair of the board of the European Film Academy Nik Powell, and actress Jodie Whittaker.

SPECIAL EVENTS

A day of Southern-fried cinema, GRITS ‘N’ GRAVY celebrates the American Deep South with films including DOWN BY LAW (dir: Jim Jarmusch) starring Tom Waits, and Alabama music doc MUSCLE SHOALS (dir: Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier) plus live bluegrass music from Dirty Gentleman, hearty Southern grub and free Bloody Mary’s.

THE EAST END FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 25 JUNE UNTIL 10 JULY 2013

Cleopatra (1963) Cairo International Film Festival 2024

Joseph L Mankiewicz’ version of Cleopatra is a real romp and one of the most magnificent romps in the history of cinema.

A restored Egyptian classic this dazzling epic had an original budget of a whopping $44million, nearly bankrupting Fox Studios. Filming took over the lives of those involved for nearly three years.

Infact, the gradually deepening suntans of the cast bear witness to this lengthy project which started in London in 1960 and re-located to Rome, in search of a more favourable climate, where it finally wrapped over two years later after the original director, Rouben Mamoulian, had been sacked and Mankiewicz hired, fired and hired again in a bizarre turn of events where he was forced to re-write the script after shooting had begun.

But this wasn’t the only set-back, Elizabeth Taylor nearly died of pneumonia during filming and was forced to undergo an emergency tracheotomy, the scar is still livid and visible in most frames. She sported an extensive range of no less than sixty five different rigouts.

Not to be deterred by poor health, she gives a glowing performance of regal grace and persuasive feminine powerl, her legendary violet eyes glittering under the weight of increasingly elaborate eye-shadow. The film not only garnered a record $1million contract but also the undying love of Richard Burton: their affair made headlines and brought intense publicity to the production.

The film opens with a masterful Rex Harrison who plays an ebullient but fair-minded Julius Caesar, victorious in his defeat of Pompey but creaking with back problems and vulnerable to the sedicious charms of Taylor’s Cleopatra, who arrives notoriously wrapped in a carpet.

One of the extraordinary things about this production, apart from the elaborate sets, monstruous props, fabulous costumes, bronzed thighs peeping from leather battle-dresses and sculpted Nubian Slaves, are the unexpected faces who who go on to more banal productions: Richard O’Sullivan (Bless This House) as a teenage Ptolemy, and George Cole (who become Arthur Daley) as Flavius. Also starring here is a strawberry blonde Roddy McDowall as the sly, scheming Octavian.

Caesar and Cleopatra are a force to be reckoned with as their plot for World domination takes centre stage in the first part, and is sealed with the birth of Caesarion, adding a further boost to Caesar’s ego.

Peter Finch was originally set to play the role of Caesar but there’s a masculine joviality to the world-weary casting of Rex Harrison which works rather well here. Gwen Watford is suitably elegant and restrained in the role of the long-suffering Calpurnia. After Caesar is stabbed in the senate, Octavian takes over and forms a triumvirate several years later with arrival of Richard Burton as Mark Anthony while Cleopatra has returned to Egypt.

The onscreen chemistry of Burton and Taylor is the vital ingredient that illuminates the post-interval part of this production. Their love is clear for all to see, both on and off-screen. But Burton is a more vulnerable and blustering masculine figure compared to the more statesmanlike Rex Harrison. As Mark Anthony, Burton becomes intoxicated literally and metaphorically with the image of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. And she is suitably incandescent when Octavian arranges his ‘marriage’ to his sister Octavia, another slightly questionable casting of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’s’ Jean Marsh.

Full of glamour, pageantry, inflated egos, botched battle scenes and bloated banquet sequences courtesy of John DeCuir who went on to win an Oscar for the production. Cleopatra more or less swept the board at the Academy Awards that year in 1963 winning and the only cut back was to the final edit which was taken down to just over three hours from a massive six-hour director’s cut. Truly a legend. @MeredithTayor

CLEOPATRA screening during CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | RESTORED CLASSICS.

Paradise: Faith (2012) *****

Director/Script: Ulrich Seidl

Script: Veronika Franz

Cast: Maria Hoffstatter, Nabil Saleh, Natalya Baranova, Rene Rupnik

113min Austrian Drama German with English subtitles

Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl returns to Austria for the second part of the Paradise trilogy, Paradise: Faith. In Paradise: Love we met voluptuous, blonde divorcée, Teresa. Here, the mood is more sombre as we meet her less attractive sister, hospital worker Anna Maria (Maria Hoffstatter), who is taking her holiday ‘at home’ in her gloomy apartment block.

This time the focus is on religion and Seidl’s stark and stylised interiors mirror Anna Maria’s empty unhappiness with her life. Hoffstatter gives a committed performance as an unlikeable and fastidious woman who clings to routine, old-fashioned clothes and a Wagneresque hairdo. As the narrative unfolds, she also emerges as the worst kind of religious bigot.

Ritual is a strong motif in this segment. Ostensibily a devout Catholic, Anna Maria’s days are spent observing meticulous routine: singing hymns and self-flagellating in front of a picture of Jesus. In neighbourhood forays as a door to door ‘Christian’ salesman, she comes across as insensitive and overbearing; projecting herself onto her victims, and coming to blows with a disenchanted Russian immigré (Natalya Baranova) and forcing a kindly but arthritic man (Rene Rupnik) to pray on his knees in a droll vignette that considerably lightens the tone injecting some much-needed dark humour.

The appearance of her crippled Muslim husband Nabil (Saleh), blows her cover and sheds a new light on her piety. A healthy physical relationship was obviously the focus of their marriage. His paralysis has exposed their incompatibility as a couple and caused Maria to ‘re-discover’ her faith, sublimating her sexual frustration into hero worship of Jesus. Saleh is quietly powerful as a reasonable man who rapidly morphs into a radical, raving mysogynist once rejected sexually. Anna Maria is actively disgusted by him and his religious beliefs and this only goes to heighten her own fervour, making his Islamic views appear strident and as they tussle with religious paraphernalia in the flat, the situation goes from bad to worse.

Occasionally spiked by provocative humour, Paradise: Faith is an uncomfortable film to watch, both from a dour visual perspective and a religious and moral viewpoint. There are echoes of Kieslowski and Haneke’s deep misanthropy piqued with wicked comedy. An observational style leaves us space to contemplate the deep and fertile complexity of the issues involved and draw our own conclusions in our own time.

As in the other Paradise segments (Love, Faith and Hope), there is a strong atmosphere of subversion at play and Anna Maria’s unhappiness with her marriage and sexual frustration have found a focus on the image of Jesus, as Melanie’s burgeoning sexuality reaches out to the strong male figure of the doctor in Paradise: Hope. As Anna Maria kisses and masturbates with a miniature statue of Jesus, she idolises his physical ‘beauty’ in a deeply disturbing episode that has shades of Vanessa Redgrave’s performance in The Devils (1971) but cleverly steers clear of titillation.

Like it or not, Ulrich Seidl’s non-judgemental viewpoint tweaks a raw nerve in his depiction of inescapable and inevitable truths that is always tempered with a lightness of touch and knowing humour. A well-pitched and timely comment on the multicultural debate, it also showing how the disenfranchised and disenchanted can subvert their feeling into religious fanaticism, using religious fundamentalism of any persuasion as a badge of honour to hide more covert psychological issues. Paradise: Faith is possibly the most harrowing of the trilogy but also the most apposite in terms of contemporary multiculturalism. Highly recommended. MT

THE PARADISE TRILOGY LOVE, FAITH AND HOPE ARE SCREENING AT THE RIO CINEMA DALSTON ON 16TH JUNE 2013. PARADISE: FAITH IS THEN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH JULY AT THE CURZON RENOIR.

Broken (2012) DVD/BLU-RAY

NOW OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY FROM 8TH JULY 2013 including INTERVIEWS WITH CAST AND CREW

Director: Rufus Norris Script: Mark O’Rowe Novel: Daniel Clay,

Prod: Dixie Linder

90mins Drama UK

Cast: Tim Roth, Roy Kinnear, Cillian Murphy, Zana Marjanovic, Bill Milner, Robert Emms, Clare Burt, Denis Lawson.

“Thoughtlessness and unnecessary cruelty always catch my mind” Daniel Clay, author, Broken

Broken is a contemporary tale of class warfare set in North London. But is it only a London story?. Once you scratch beneath the surface of our ‘Great Britain’ with its recent Olympic success and ‘caring’ society, repercussions of the 2011 riots and social turmoil seep through. And it’s from this stark reality that Broken emerges.

In the shires and suburbs you’ll come up against the characters of this smart debut from theatre director Rufus Norris. It has Mark O’Rowe’s sparkling script adapted from the original novel and presents the lives of three neighbouring families seen through the eyes of a diabetic 11 year-old called Skunk. She’s quite an old-fashioned little girl and played endearingly here by Eloise Laurence. With an upbeat soundtrack and touches of wit that lift it out of its gloomy premise, Broken kicks around themes of single parenting, the class system, teenage pregnancy, care in the community and bullying.

Skunk and her brother Stephen are the products of a middle class family. Their dad Archie is a local family solicitor and Kasia (Zana Marjanovic) is their Polish nanny. Although Norris had originally intended Roth for another character, once Tim read the script he was determined to play Archie and has really made the part his own. As Archie, he represents the positive attributes of decent citizen, ideal parent and loving partner all rolled into one, and does so sensitively and with humanity.

Neighbours Mr and Mrs Oswald are sadly in denial of their mentally disturbed son Rick (Robert Emms). The Buckleys also inhabit the J B Priestley-esque cup-de-sac. As Mr Buckley, Rory Kinnear gives a perfectly pitched performance as a foul-mouthed but misunderstood father of three horrible girls, one of whom accuses Rick of rape. In a dynamite opening sequence Shunk witnesses Mr Buckley giving Rick a thorough drubbing and this violence seems to take away her childhood innocence setting the scene for a story that’s authentic and newsworthy.

Cillian Murphy is convincing in an amusing side plot as Skunk’s teacher and Kasia’s sometime boyfriend. But Skunk’s budding love interest although cute, doesn’t quite ring true..

Despite tonal differences which shift from social realism to raging melodrama by the end, Broken is a gripping piece of social satire not be missed. Ingenious, unexpected and absolutely on the button of Britain today. MT

Broken (2012) **** DVD/BLU-RAY

NOW OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY FROM 8TH JULY 2013 including INTERVIEWS WITH CAST AND CREW

Director: Rufus Norris Script: Mark O’Rowe Novel: Daniel Clay,

Prod: Dixie Linder

90mins Drama UK

Cast: Tim Roth, Roy Kinnear, Cillian Murphy, Zana Marjanovic, Bill Milner, Robert Emms, Clare Burt, Denis Lawson.

“Thoughtlessness and unnecessary cruelty always catch my mind” Daniel Clay, author, Broken

Cillian Murphy is convincing in an amusing side plot as Skunk’s teacher and Kasia’s sometime boyfriend. But Skunk’s budding love interest although cute, doesn’t quite ring true..

Sophie Lellouche, Fim Director

Interview with Sophie Lellouche, Writer Director of French Rom-Com, Paris-Manhattan

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Why did you choose to make Paris-Manhattan as your first feature film?

I think it was perfect for a first movie, because a first movie is something that is very special, because you don’t know [yet] if you are a Director… it is something non-real and I was… I am very in love with old movies and some Directors, so… I didn’t know if I could be a Director myself.

So… in this first movie, I give you all my references and all the movies I love and then, by the end of (making) the movie, I will have become a Director.

But you have already made a Short film (in 1999)…

Yes, but after this Short, I gave up directing; it was terrible, a terrible experience and after making it, I said directing is not for me. I am not gifted enough. I was very unconfident and each time I went to see a film directed by someone of my own age, I was always ‘wow, they are so talented…’

I was very complex and I think that is why -when I was writing this movie this thought was not very clear to me- but now, looking back, I realised that I needed the approval of Woody Allen. It’s something weird but it was like, ‘ok, if Woody Allen says no… no I can’t make films, then, ok.

So you are saying, you ask Woody Allen and -if he gives his approval- then that gives you permission and you accept you are a Director…

Yes. Yes.

When you put this film together, in terms of finance, which way round did it go, did you have to get Woody Allen aboard first?

It’s strange, this finance, because the first thing was to get the approval of Mr Allen. But it was the standard way of making a film… I had to find a Producer… that didn’t work… so then I had to find another one. It was very, very difficult.

But then, when Woody came aboard, it wasn’t ‘the answer’, as far as they were concerned. They were like,‘Well it’s just a cameo. Woody Allen is an intellectual’. It wasn’t like ‘Oh Woody Allen! Well, we can get Massive, huge audiences, then’ it was ‘Yes… Woody Allen, ok… then it is (a film) for just a few people; he will reduce the potential audience’(!). So it was… not so good for the financing! [laughs]

I wondered if it was a case of ‘well, if Woody comes aboard, then you get the financing’, but it wasn’t like that at all.

No, no, the money came aboard thanks to my Producer.

Did you approach your Producer after you had finished the script, or during the writing?

I finished the script, then got the approval of Woody Allen, then they loved the script. They also love Woody Allen. They are wonderful Producers- because they love film; they weren’t in it simply to make loads of money. They read it, came aboard and said ‘Ok, now we are fighting to make the movie’.

Ok, so… you felt it was a very individual project that needed very specific producers to make it happen.

Yes. Very much.

So, safe to say, you are a Woody Allen fan. How autobiographical is the film?

Yes, I am of course… It’s not autobiographical; it’s personal. It’s very personal because I think, it was… for me… In Alice, there is alot of me, but I don’t have a sister, there are alot of things here that are not me, that I invented.

But the way that it is very personal, is in the way that she needs to leave her childhood and has to accept- to be herself, even if she doesn’t have… or isn’t what she expects to be -in life.

And for me, it is very personal, because before (making the film), because in the past I was simply dreaming of being a Great Director, but didn’t do anything about it. And now I am an adult and, with this movie I accepted to do my best, to work alot; to try personally to improve, as I make each movie.

But I accept I am not Woody Allen… or somewhere else, like, sitting on a beach… I accept this. And Alice in the movie makes the same decision, she accepts not to have a wonderful, charming prince; that happiness is to accept your own reality.

So when you made the film, was there anything that surprised you with the finished film, away from how you pictured it when you wrote it?

Yes. For instance, I was not expecting the end of the movie. The last ten minutes, it was like it wasn’t mine.

Even though you wrote it…

Yes. The last ten minutes, when Woody appears, it’s very strange. Any time I view the last ten minutes, it’s like I am purely a spectator. Not the filmmaker at all. I want to cry… there is something very strong. It’s like it is not my movie.

But when I see all the things I don’t like, it’s my movie! [laughs]

Because when you watch your own movie, having made it, all you do is watch the movie in your head of your movie being made…

Yes, yes! It’s very strange.

Also, the script; the things I didn’t like in the script, I also didn’t like in the movie. But we -the Producer and I- we didn’t find any better alternatives… once we got the money, we didn’t have any time. But at the end of the movie, the things I didn’t like when I wrote them, I didn’t like when I viewed it.

How long did it take you to write?

I write alot… so it wasn’t hard to write. I did ten drafts, and each rewrite took only about three weeks. Speaking to my producer for notes. After I rewrote it, my movie, it was one life, it was Alice, but I wanted to highlight some different aspects of her life… but, having said all this, it was six years [from start to finish] and you know [by the end], you are not the same person you were six years ago.

Did you have a cast in mind when you wrote it?

No. Only at the end.

And were you happy with your cast?

Patrick Bruel its something like… like a dream… I was dreaming to have Woody Allen and… when I was around 18, or 20 years old, I loved Patrick, so it was like something synchronous, so when I was looking I said I know exactly who I want for this role, it is Patrick Bruel.

So he was the one person you had in mind before…?

Yes.

For Alice, it was different; I was searching for her… I wrote the part, but not with an actor in my head. I don’t write with actors in mind.

I knew I was looking for someone blonde… for the light, I wanted….

Someone fair…

Yes, fair, I was looking for someone fair and when I saw an Alice Taglioni movie, I was laughing because she is a comedy actress. She gets a rhythm like a tomboy. She has a very light touch, but also she plays comedy seriously. So for me it was perfect and Alice and Patrick, they fitted together perfectly.

And then there was no… adjustments you needed to make to the script?

Oh yes, there were many. They are both Very experienced and they would say ‘this is not good’ and I would go ‘ok’ and go with their suggestions.

Some spontaneity from the performers?

I was not stressed, so we worked just to find the best thing. And Patrick gets alot of energy; is very playful and has alot of ideas. I loved to work with them and they worked with me and they wanted to make the best movie I had in my head.

How long was your shoot?

Seven weeks. I think I wanted one week more. Because the movie is short and I wanted more. For me, I would have liked ten more minutes to develop more ideas, but the movie, it was good, but the script… Alot of what I wrote ended on the cutting room floor. Well, for my next script I am going to work more… seven weeks [as a shoot length] would be perfect if the script was perfect and it wasn’t perfect on this shoot.

What’s next for you?

I am writing two scripts at the moment, but I don’t know really… one is a comedy, which I love writing, but there is another script which is big. It is an adaptation of a novel and after the holidays, I am going to meet the author, but it is a big movie and I am not very confident [in myself]. I am scared because it is a big movie.

Cubby Broccoli said that all filmmakers are optimistic by nature. They have to be, with everything that can go wrong from beginning to end, making a movie…

I am an optimist and I have faith. So I believe that life is going to choose also, for me. You know, I work and after, there are things that happen that one cannot explain, so…

Sophie, thank you.

You’re welcome.

PARIS-MANHATTEN GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 5TH JULY AT THE CINE LUMIERE LONDON SW7

Tropicália (2012)

Director: Marcelo Machado

Script: Vaughn Glover, Marcelo Machado, Di Moretti
Producer: Paula Cosenza, Denise Gomez
Cast: Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Arnaldo Dias, Sergio Dias, Gal Costa, Glauber Rocha, Jorge Ben, Rogerio Duprat, Rita Lee

Bra/USA/UK 87mins 2012 Music Doc

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When done right, music and film will forever make perfect bedfellows. Concerning Brazil, 1967-1969, but a music documentary about far more than just another band or style, here the music was a vehicle for something much bigger.

‘Tropicália’ was the name attributed to a Liberalist artistic movement that came into being in 1967, in reaction to the dictatorship that came into force in 1964. Encompassing not only music but poetry theatre and film, it was a movement created by the young, fusing together traditional Folk with Rock and Roll, Pop, foreign influences and the avant-garde. It hit the choked populace of martial Brazil like a blast of oxygen. It spoke of freedom; freedom of thought and freedom of expression which to a Brazilian in the late Sixties was either stunningly, bravely, liberatingly beautiful, or a ridiculously dangerous arrestable offence.

Without knowing a great deal of the circumstances prevailing in Brazil at the time, either politically or indeed, musically, some viewers may not grasp the full import of what it is they are watching. It’s difficult in this day and age to comprehend the notion of a song capable of changing the course of history, or influencing an entire country. What Rodriguez managed in total ignorance in Apartheid South Africa, Caetano et al did with full cognizance in Brazil.

This film chooses to concentrate more on the music aspect of the movement, rather than the theatre and poetry, although there is some film. It follows the stories of the main protagonists of the music and how their influence spread extraordinarily quickly and widely through the nascent medium of television; it’s wonderful that so much original footage, both tape and film, still exists of the singers back when it was all going down.

Filmmaker Machado has also gone to great lengths to make what few grainy black and white still photographs survive of some of the events of the time interesting using various tricks, but this is more than compensated for by the amazing music from the likes of Os Mutantes and Caetano Veloso.

Tropicália explores what the movement was and what the music signified to the people of Brazil, culminating in an album of the films title, employing all the singers and songwriters of the day creating what was effectively, a political manifesto in song. How Rock n Roll is that? Dynamite.

TROPICALIA IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 5TH JULY AT CURZON SOHO PLUS PANEL DISCUSSION AND RICH MIX ON SUNDAY, 7TH JULY 2013

The Wall (2011) Die Wand | Prime Video

Dir: Julian Posler | Wri: Novel: Marlen Haushofer Script: Julian Posler | Cast: Martina Gedeck, Karl Heinz Hackl, Ulrike Beimpold, Luchs | 108min Germany/Austria 108’Inappapp

So taken was Julian Posler with German cult novel ‘The Wall’ (1963) that he waited patiently for nearly twenty years to acquire the rights from author Marlen Haushofer, and another seven years on the script that deals with personal freedom, isolation and loneliness, bearing a remarkable similarity to the experience we have all just through with the covid lockdown.

Essentially a one-hander it’s a memorable and empowering film. Martina Gedeck plays an unnamed woman in her forties who suddenly becomes trapped behind an invisible wall in the Alps. Although on the face of it the experience appears restrictive, she gradually finds strength and a new sense of purpose. Posler describes their working relationship as largely unspoken, relying on mutual trust and body language to feel out a narrative based on fear of the unknown, apprehension and bewilderment.

Filmed in the magnificently scenic landscape of the Paltental Valley in the Steiermark of Austria during the course of just over four seasons, The Wall offers some of the most striking scenery in its lush mountain setting. No fewer than nine cinematographers worked in extreme conditions from deepest winter to the height of Alpine summer immersing themselves in the natural habitat.

The narrative unfolds in flashback with periods of silence which have the therapeutic effect of allowing audiences space for contemplation without Martina’s voiceover interjecting. The silence actually enhances the film’s ability to inspire a growing of sense, uncertainty and introspection. At times, a little less voiceover would have allowed the visual strength of the story greater impact. That said, it’s an impressive piece of filmmaking.

Arriving at a remote hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains with a couple of friends, the woman stays with her dog Lynx (Luchs) while the others go in search of provisions. When they later fail to re-appear, she deciding to explore but she is suddenly hemmed in by an invisible wall that traps her near to the hunting lodge and its immediate surrounds. Escape and communication with the outside world are now impossible, but the woman draws on the healing power of her natural surroundings, animals and the changing seasons to remain calm and in control. Her impressive grounding in animal husbandry and food preparation obviously comes in handy, she fine-tunes her mindset with some deep and far-reaching discoveries. It’s an physically and emotionally-demanding role which Gedeck acquits impressively in her portrayal of survivor who manages to carry on blistered and battle-scarred to the bitter end with its inexplicably tragedy.

The highly unusual and unsettling original soundscape is based on the Earth’s magnetic field, with a few Bach partitas thrown in, enforcing the feeling of suspense and creating gravitas. This is a weirdly moving film that touches briefly on sci-fi but then broadens out into a quietly intense psychological drama that explores our complex relationship with nature and the animal kingdom. But most of all it’s about finding power and serenity through emotional strength MT

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Paris-Manhattan (2012) ***

Writer/Director: Sophie Lellouche

Producer:Philippe Rousselet

Cast: Alice Taglioni, Patrick Bruel, Marine Delterme, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Michel Aumont

France 80mins Rom-Com

Paris-Manhattan is Sophie Lellouche’s feature film debut. Her experience of making a short film back in 1999 had cured her of ever directing again, or so she thought. Over the last six years, she then penned Paris-Manhattan and tentatively took to the helm again.

Paris-Manhattan opened the UK Jewish Film Festival 2012, just kicking off now at the NFT on the South Bank. It’s a light rom-com, following the trials and tribulations of Alice, a thirty-something Jewish girl, with a love of all things Woody Allen, insistent that she is happy being single to her parents, who are trying desperately to get her married off.

As with nearly all rom-coms, there are moments that don’t quite stitch together, but there is certainly enough to keep an audience after a proper French rom-com entertained. Director Lellouche provides some lovely moments and references a great many great films in this, her love-letter to movies past.

Alice Taglioni, perhaps unknown outside France, has, in her short career, amassed quite a filmography, having first trained as a pianist and she is both attractive and engaging in this role, bringing something of the Julia Roberts to the character of Alice. She is well supported by the likes of Patrick Bruel and Michel Aumont as her father.

I suspect this film won’t have a long run in theatres, but will do well as a DVD, pulled out for the girlie night in of popcorn, vino and sofa chat. AT

Satellite Boy (2012) East End Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Catriona McKenzie

Cast: David Gulpilil, Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley, Rohanna Angus, Dean Daley-Jones

Australia 2012; 90 min English Genre: Drama

Catriona McKenzie’s feature debut, Satellite Boy, is a fine addition to the canon of Australian films and, like so many, showcases the enduringly magnetic presence of David Gulpilil. She has made several short films and indeed, directed serial television in Australia prior to this but took a while before deciding to make her feature debut.

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Gulpilil came to prominence in Nic Roeg’s 1970 classic Walkabout and here, 42 years later, he passes the baton in another coming of age story, Aboriginal style. 12-year-old Cameron Wallaby was a boy playing in the road before this, his acting inauguration, and brings with him a naturalism and a very real sense of where Aborigines are now in their relation to ‘civilisation’.

Satellite Boy is a sensitively drawn depiction of something that could so easily have tipped over into mawkish or derivative fodder. The two young leads are engaging and their motivations and actions certainly believable in this rite of passage, à la Rob Reiner’s excellent 1986 Stand by Me. Where it differs though and, to the writer/director’s credit, travels in a different direction, is that her film is not only about the brotherhood of boyhood friendship, but about real traditions, about the land and our immutable connection to it and the danger to us of losing sight of that.

Catriona describes the film as a love letter to her father, now passed away; an effort to explain that she now understands his process and what it was he was wishing to pass onto her, too young as she was to grasp it at the time. I would say she succeeded. AT

SATELLITE BOY IS SCREENING AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE FROM 5TH JULY 2013

Renoir (2013) ***

Pierre-Auguste and Jean Renoir connect through the same muse in this painterly portrait of a creative family at a pivotal point in history.

Director: Gilles Bourdos

Script: Michel Spinosa, Jerome Tonnerre Gilles Bourdos from a work by Jacques Renoir

Cast: Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Roittiers, Thomas Doret, Romaine Bohringer

111mins Drama French with subtitles

Imagine a warm Mistral wind wafting a fragrant cloud of lavender along a sun-drenched Provençal hillside and you have the essence of Gilles Bourdos’s latest film. Captured through the painterly lens of Mark Lee Ping Bin, who also lensed In The Mood For Love and Norwegian Wood, this languorous drama is in no particular hurry to tell its story thanks to leisurely performances from Michel Bouquet, Christa Théret and Vincent Rottiers who shine through despite the safe script which chooses not to expose any emotional skeletons hiding in the Renoir household. Instead, the story feels its way gently through rich colours, vibrant tones and evocative turn of the century detail, sensuously capturing Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s creative life as he paints compulsively from dawn til dusk, the need flowing out of him and onto the canvas.

The light-hearted tone of Renoir is in complete contrast to that of Camille Claudel: 1915, Bruno Dumont’s tortured study of a contemporary artist, who was languishing distraught in a mental asylum nearby, unable to pursue her craft. In contrast to Juliette Binoche’s ‘no holds barred’ emotionally raw exposé of Camille Claudel, Bourdos’s Renoir is a buttoned-up, winsome affair, which has the painter relishing his dotage in a quiet villa by the sea surrounded by beauty and kindness, cosseted from the unspeakable horrors of the Great War which was raging in the trenches of the Somme, a few hours to the North.

Crippled by painful arthritis but wistfully reflecting on widowerhood, the artist here is in the mood for love realising that his wellbeing depends on being able to paint and sketch with the inspiration of a muse. Michel Bouquet dabbles and experiments with tones, hues and textures on a palette for all to see; sketching studies in pencil before attempting his portraits and compositions.

Then into the picture drifts Andrée (Christa Théret) an unappealing coquette of dubious background, looking for a leg-up on the back of a rich man who’s looking for a leisurely leg-over and companionship, more than real sexual passion, or at least that’s what we’re led to believe in Gilles Bourdos’s version, which fails to plummet any depths beyond those of Renoir’s solvent jar. With a pretty face and a high opinion of herself, Andrée has little respect for Renoir’s talent or indeed his status at this stage in the game. Rubbing all the female staff up the wrong way, she succeeds in snaring the vulnerable Renoir and gradually a modus vivendi develops as they settle contentedly into a gentle routine, very much due to the old man’s wisdom and understanding of the nature of women: “All my life I’ve had complication, now I simply want peace”.

But the calm is soon ruffled by the arrival of his elder son, Jean, (Vincent Rottiers) wounded and battle-scared from the front, and the household dynamic shifts once again. Vincent Rottiers plays a diffident Jean Renoir, wracked by uncertainty and his duty as a soldier. Andrée spreads her affections to accommodate this younger man, who is in someways easier prey, although it’s hard to believe that this creative father and son could be so placid and seemingly benign about sharing their joint lover. There is a cameo from Thomas Doret, (of The Kid With A Bike fame), who plays the disgruntled, younger son (Coco) and the only one who appears to display any real emotion.

Renoir drifts along gracefully without rocking any boats. It’s an atmospheric drama, steeped in summer and seductive charm but totally lacking in any real passion despite the rich potential of its subject matter. This is an outing for those wanting the milk chocolate box version of the Renoir story rather than the juicy and salacious underbelly. MT

RENOIR IS ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 28th JUNE AT THE CURZON, BARBICAN, CINE LUMIERE, GREENWICH PICTUREHOUSE AND WATERMANS ART CENTRE CINEMA.

Bula Quo! (2013)***

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Director: Stuart St Paul Writers/ Stuart St Paul and Jean Heard

Cast: Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Jon Lovitz, Craig Fairbrass, Laura Aikman, Matt Kennard and Jean Heard.

Action Comedy UK

It started with guitars and ended with guns!

Action comedy Bula Quo! sees British rockers Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt on the run from a crime gangster on the Island of Fiji. The film has been financed through their company ‘Status Quo Films’ and helmed by sometime stuntman, Stuart St Paul (Freight) who also directed them in Coronation Street a while ago. Playing themselves (obviously) they have a professional support cast of Jon Lovitz, Craig Fairbrass and Laura Aikman, assisting them with ‘acting tips’ during filming. Inspired by Blazing Saddles, the aim was to make a funny musical movie. The script is an ad-libbed affair written by St Paul and Jean Heard who also stars as Reiko Best.

Does it work?. Well that’s another matter. One gets the impression that this is a ‘jolly’ for a highly successful pair of rock musicians who now want to experiment with their fame, enjoy themselves and push their talent into another area of creativity. Paul McCartney has had a bash at painting; Blur’s Alex James has made a fruitful stab at dairy farming; and David Bowie is making increasingly positive waves in different directions; so how about Status Quo as actor/producers?

Bula Quo is an ambitious project harnessing speed boats, jet skis and all manner or water craft in the action scenes on location. As Wilson, Jon Lovitz gives a great comedy performance as does Laura Aikman, who’s probably the star turn here. Parfitt and Rossi’s on-screen chemistry overcomes their wooden acting skills and they certainly give their all to the fight scenes. There’s no doubt fans will be rooting for their efforts and this will carry them through, even in the decidedly patchy moments, and there are quite a few here.

That said, this upbeat action caper exudes fun and has a few laugh out loud moments. Cinematic through it ain’t. But I don’t think this really matters in the context of the film’s success as a vehicle to extend the enjoyment of the band’s fan base, or indeed their own creative efforts. If Status Quo are your idols, this comedy will certainly be you cup of tea. If not, probably best to give it a miss as there are some far better films out this week. MT

BULA QUO! is on general release from Friday 5th July 2013 at selected Odeon Cinemas and Vue Cinemas across London

The Bling Ring (2013) DVD/Blu-ray

Director: Sofia Coppola Writers: Sofia Coppola and Nancy Jo Sales

Cast: Emma Watson, Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga, Leslie Mann

90mins US Drama

Sofia Coppola’s latest outing is a frivolous affair and certainly her most amusing to-date. Young audiences will no doubt find its ‘celebrity’ subject matter entertaining and those fascinated by the vacuous ‘bling’ lifestyles of the minor stars in the Hollywood firmament should flock to this juicy social satire.

Based on a true story ‘The Bling Ring’ were a group of LA teens who purportedly managed to gain entrance to homes of the likes of Paris Hilton. Gleaning information from the internet and Facebook as to stars’ whereabouts, they then plundered and pillaged their homes during absences taking handbags, jewellery, designer clothes, even make-up and went on the rampage often selling on the booty to local dealers.

Texturally bland but very well-written and predictably glossy, the film epitomises the odious and seditious nature of high-end and luxury brands nailing with absolute perfection the behaviour, gestures, and parlance of these fame-obsessed youngsters, although Coppola’s stance appears equivocal and non-judgemental towards these characters to the point of nausea. Emma Watson is particularly good as the hard-edged and insensitive Nicki who believes she’s an “old soul” while totally buying into the culture of celebrity and fame. Worth watching for its depressing and frightening depiction of American ‘youth’ which appears to verge on the sociopathic. I blame their mothers. A fun romp with sinister undertones. MT

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Italian Doc City 2013

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iTALIAN DOC CITY JULY 2013 is a weekly event at the ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE in London, showing contemporary documentaries, followed by a Q&A with the directors and an ITALIAN APERITIVO. The INSTITUTE also presents regular screenings throughout the year of Italian dramas, documentaries and films related to Italy.

I Want Your Love (2012) ****

Director: Travis Mathews

Cast: Jesse Metzger, Brontez Pumell, Ben Jasper

Travis Mathews came to public attention earlier this year with his sexually explicit re-imagining of the ‘lost’ 40 minutes of the Al Pacino original Cruising. As Interior. Leather Bar, it starred the well-known TV actor, Val Lauren and screened to rapt audiences at the Berlinale 2013.

This is his latest collaboration with James Franco (that actually pre-dates INB). The selling point here is a really lovely natural and totally convincing performance from Jesse Metzger as Jesse and his group of gay friends based in San Francisco. With scenes of graphic and explicit sex, Jesse plays a performance actor on the point of moving back to Ohio and feeling insecure about developing his career and finding like-minded individuals back East in more traditional territory. Ok, it’s not a deeply plotted story but the mood is engaging and light-hearted. Mathews gives a gentle and tolerant view of West Coast gays guys seen through their friendships and their relationships where often the boundaries blur in a fascinating and intimate way. Be prepared for some hardcore but surprisingly inoffensive sex. MT

The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012)

Dirs: Joao Pedro Rodriques and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata | Cast: Lydia Barbara, Joao Rui Guerra da Mata, Cindy Scrash, Joao Pedro Rodriques | Portugal/Macao – Drama

A bittersweet and wistful story with an experimental feel, set in the faded backwaters of Macao. Through glimpses of its past as a devout Catholic Portuguese colony and now a gambling island (surpassing Las Vegas), a mysterious and seedy tale of love, regret and intrigue emerges as Guera de Mata (who also co-directs) returns to the place where he grew up 30 years previously.

Rodriques and Guera de Mata handle the material skillfully, weaving lush visuals and atmospheric songs together to create a sensual cinematic experience. There are echoes of Almodovar and Miguel Gomes to this noirish semi-autobiographical drama told through a fictional tale of missed opportunity and paradise lost. The main character’s alter ego returns to rescue an elusive female friend Candy, haunted by an unsuitable and unsatisfactory lover through tropical, rain-washed streets and run-down rooftops. She pleads for his help on recorded phone messages but the two keep missing each other despite desperate attempts to connect. The piece has an elegiac quality that haunts and beguiles in equal certain leaving us to wonder, can we ever return to the past? MT

Venus and Serena (2013)

Director Maiken Baird and Michelle Major

With: Serena and Venus Williams, Richard Williams, John McEnroe, Billie Jean King, Anna Wintour

99mins US Sports Documentary

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When businessman Richard Williams bought a manual on teaching tennis there was no doubt in his mind. His aim was to hothouse his little daughters to success on the international tennis circuit.

Today Venus and Serena Williams are the first African Americans to have won the World Finals Championships at Wimbledon. Maiken Baird and Michelle Major’s cinéma vérité piece follows the pair through the 2011 tennis season. Alex Gibney, the director of Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God has also backed the project which combines early childhood footage of the girls, interviews with family and tennis luminaries such as John ‘You Cannot Be Serious’ McEnroe, together with top moments from the world of tennis.

The Williams sisters share a similar background to that of Michael Jackson: a controlling, even draconian father figure; a gruelling training lifestyle that precludes any childhood pleasure and, above all, a commitment to God. A self-made man with thriving business interests, Mr Williams was determined that Venus and her younger sister, Serena, would both follow his path to success. But they took things one step further, overcoming countless setbacks along the way due to their unique bond with each other.

Fascinating and fact-filled; Venus and Serena is an absorbing watch, catching the superhuman quality of the girls with their amazonian physiques (and rock-hard thighs). Focusing on their positivity and total lack of self-doubt, it charts their glittering successes and, what is more surprising, their total respect for their father. At one point Serena calls him ‘Sir’, despite his philandering ways: Williams is on his second marriage. They also discover some astounding home truths about their large family and reveal to us the secrets of their own brand of success which now extends beyond the tennis courts.

Venus and Serena is a well put-together documentary. With moments of triumph and dark humour, it provides an absorbing account of this classic ‘rags to riches’ story and will appeal to sports fanatics and tennis lovers everywhere, particularly in the run-up to Wimbledon. MT.

The Moo Man (2012) **** Sundance London 2013

Director: Andrew Heathcote

Cast: Stephen Hook

90min Documentary UK

It costs a dairy farmer 34p to produce a litre of fresh milk. The supermarkets will pay 27p per litre to the farmer and so dairy farmers throughout England are living on the breadline, unable to make money by producing the most vital of all food products and the tax payer subsidises their existence.

Andrew Heathcote’s brings the issue to the fore with a touching documentary focusing on Stephen Hook, an organic dairy farmer with a difference: not only does he run a profitable dairy farm but he believes in having a close and chatty relationship with his 75 cows and particularly Ida, the queen of the herd. It’s a fascinating and surprisingly moving story.

Andy’s approach is observational and relaxed, leaving Stephen to calmly take us through, at close-range, the challenges and joys of his daily life. Often physically hard but always rewarding, the narrative moves backwards and forwards over one year in his delightful Sussex farm amid gentle sounds of nature and a gloriously uplifting original score from Stephen Daltry. The Moo Man is an informative piece of fimmaking that works on three levels: as a narrative on the demise of the local community tradesman, a human interest story about our relationship with the animal world and an important wake-up call to the British Government and the supermarkets about one of our oldest, and most important industries, Farming .

And it’s not all scenes of freshly mown meadows and summer sunsets: the birth of several calves at eye-wateringly close quarters is a difficult sight but life-affirming one. On a humane leverl, the bull calves are not shot at birth here on Stephen Hook’s farm but manage to enjoy two years before they finally go to their maker and produce organic beef for the locals.

Stephen claims his raw milk can lower cholesterol and blood pressure and get rid of eczema. Apart from caring about his animals he also prides himself with his shrewd business approach, selling to customers direct through the local farmers’ markets. There’s a wonderful scene where the cows frolic and buck as they are let into the field on the first day of Spring. The success of this film is that it never feels worthy, serious or heavy-going and delivers its message with a lightness of touch and a quiet firmness. A real gem. MT

THANKS TO THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN THIS FILM IS NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE AT THE RIVERSIDE STUDIES, LONDON FROM 11TH JULY 2013.

JOIN THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN.

The Brood (1979) DVD Release

David Cronenberg made this iconic psychological thriller with its well-crafted characters and plot-line at the height of his career.

Oliver Reed plays Hal Raglan, a secretively sinister psychiatrist experimenting with a new kind of therapy that unleashes violent reactions in his patients, one of whom is Samantha Eggar as Nola, who is locked in a bitter custody battle for her little girl Candy with husband Frank (Art Hindle) who desperate to rumble Raglan and his unorthodox methods.

But that’s not all – a group of little red-coated people, who are supposedly mutants bred inside Raglan’s dodgy clinic – are bludgeoning Nola’s relatives to death before you can say “Don’t Look Now”.

Deeply seventies from the wall-papered interiors to the dated fashion statements (Reed sports the classic waist-coated suit and sheepskin car-coat straight out of ‘High n Mighty’), displays the classic Cronenberg visuals; the screeching violin score presaging doom and desolate snowscapes of Toronto.

THE BROOD is out on BLU-RAY and DVD in July 2013 on SECOND SIGHT FILMS

Night Of Silence – Lal Gece (2012) *** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Screenplay: Reis Çelik

Cast: Ilyas Salman, Dilan Aksüt, Sabri Tutalü

93min Drama Turkish with subtitle

Night of Silence is an award-winning Anatolian take on the classic story of Scheherazade. A Muslim teenage bride finds herself on her wedding night in the clutches of a raddled old criminal just out of jail. Not only that, he’s also ugly, bald and overweight. After a colourful and boisterous banquet and knees-up with the local fiends and their womenfolk, this cinema verité piece morphs into a two-handed chamber drama between the newly married couple. And, not surprisingly, only the groom is in the mood for love.

What follows is a cleverly drawn study in human dynamics played with grace by a bride who, aided by well-written dialogue, cleverly prolongs the moment of consummation for as long as she can, conjuring up palpable fear mingled with mild disgust at her fate at the hands of this old lover. That said the groom (Ilyas Salman) comes across as benign and gentle rather than lascivious as he blows her smoke rings and engages with her almost as if she was his young daughter. Dilan Aksût’s brilliant turn as the bride starts as timid and sweet and grows more confident and convincing as a chemistry of sorts develops between them with some surprises during the long, tiresome night. MT

Spike Island (2012) ***

Director: Mat Whitecross

Cast: Elliott Tittensor, Emilia Clarke, Nico Mirallegro,

96mins UK

There’s a brimming glee to Mat Whitecross’s breezy Britflic about a group of teenagers who’ll beg, steal or borrow to see their idols, The Stone Roses, in concert on May 27th,1990 on Spike Island.

It’s the ‘baggy’ era and a big year for music: Eric Clapton sings in Hyde Park, the Stones tour Japan and the Byrds re-unite. But in Manchester, where the prisoners are rioting at Strangeways, The Stone Roses are quite simply where it’s happening and their debut album is the biggest thing to hit the local Rock scene.

Against this background, schoolboys Tits, Dodge, LIttle Gaz and Zippy have formed a band called Star Caster in the hope they may just pick up some stardust from their heroes but somehow homework, girls and stuff get in the way and their biggest goal becomes snaring tickets for concert that will define the decade at Spike Island in the Mersey.

With Chris Cogshill’s slick script, Mat Shawcross stylishly re-creates the furore with this coming of age story which has Elliott Tittensor as the rowdy and rousing ringleader although not the all round good guy, as we discover. Spike Island is a feelgood film bouncing with affection for the era and featuring some of the best music ever committed to soundtrack. MT

Before Midnight (2013) Berlinale 2013

Director: Richard Linklater

Script: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Panos Karonis

108mins US Drama

Julie Delphy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater reunite for a third installment of the ‘Before’ series.

Getting older is not a pretty sight or an edifying prospect as we see here in the final film of the ‘Before’ trilogy that started so positively with a one-night stand in Before Sunrise (1995) as Celine and Jesse who ended up as the unmarried parents of twins.

Not only has Delpy’s girth increased but Ethan Hawke is also showing a few extra wrinkles (and over-zealous highlights judging from his appearance at the Berlinale press conference) but they remain convincing in middle age as they did as Spring chickens as those who have followed the saga will appreciate and even share some empathy with them.

Here they are at the end of a Greek holiday that has Jesse seeing his son, Hank, off on a plane to Chicago where he lives with his ex-wife. The couple share a car journey, bickering the while about the usual concerns that middle-aged people bicker about and on their way to spend the night in a hotel, organised by their friends as a fillip. Quite why people find this sort of caper entertaining it’s difficult to fathom but one can only assume that there’s a comfort in knowing that, at the end of the day, every couple faces more or less the same trials and tribulations. Linklater’s script, written collaboratively with Delpy and Hawke, nails this with authencity and aplomb and therein lies the appeal along with convincing and well-honed performances from the leads in this sunny, Mediterranean setting.

We’re left wondering whether minor disfunction will continue into old age with the dawning final acceptance that their relationship ‘is what it is’ or whether they will embark on another foray into pastures new in their fifties. Only time (and financing for a fourth instalment) will tell. MT

Open City Docs Fest – 20-23 June 2013 in London

Love documentaries? Then this film festival is for you!. Open City Docs Fest is a vibrant and thought-provoking chance to explore the World through the vision of documentary film.

OPEN CITY DOCS FEST is London’s global cultural exchange which takes place at various LONDON venues, offering Live music, Q&As, panel discussions for the industry and the public; and it all happens during the long weekend of June 20 until 23rd 2013.

VENUES: Bloomsbury Theatre: Gordon Street WC1, The Darkroom: University College, Taviton Street WC1; ICA, The Mall SW1

CITY STORIES – Tales of The City looks at the modern city through documentary films:

LOST RIVERS (2012) ***

An idyllic co-existence between water man has always existed in our major cities in trade, industry and everyday life. But many waterways have long gone underground: The Tyburn in London, The Saint Pierre in Montreal and The Saw Mill River in Yonkers. Lift any manhole cover, and you can hear them gushing away below the surface.

Narrating in her soft Canadian burr, Caroline Bacle’s LOST RIVERS plunges underground in Montreal, Toronto, New York and Brescia to trace ancient waterways that have disappeared due to disease or disuse or have simply been capped and covered by car parks. Fact-filled and fascinating, LOST RIVERS flits around and occasionally waxes lyrical but manages to produce an absorbing account of efforts to re-connect with the past and not all have been successful.

Q&A with Caroline Bacle follows the film.

Friday 21June/ 14.30 Darkroom

THE HUMAN SCALE (2012) – Andreas M Dalsgaard 83min

A Danish award-winning documentary examines what happens when we put people at the heart of urban planning in a bid to achieve a feeling of intimacy and inclusion in our major cities. Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl looks at what it’s like to live in mega-cities in 2013.

Saturday 23 June/ 17.00/ Bloomsbury Theatre

THE VENICE SYNDROME (2012) – Andreas Pichler 80min

Venice is one of the meccas of modern tourism, but how to the citizens cope with the constant influx of tourists that have led to high rents and a crumbling infrastructure.

Friday 21 June/20.30/ Darkroom

WORLD VISIONS – a cultural exchange of unique stories from around the World.

SALMA (2013) – Kim Longinotto 90min ***

Salma emerged from a troubled and traditional background in South India to become South India’s most famous poet. Told in Kim Longinotto’s famous observational style, this documentary shows how education can form a link to the outside world which liberates women in repressed societies.

SOFIA’S LAST AMBULANCE – Ilian Metev 76min ****

Joins a stressed-out and under-funded medical team in their clapped-out ambulances as they race around Sofia ministering to the needs of a growing population and remaining cheerful to the last against all odds. A story full of humour and humanity making us glad of our own National Health Service in the UK.

Sunday 23 June/18.30/Bloomsbury Theatre CLOSING GALA

PUSSY RIOT – A PUNK PRAYER – Maxim Lerner ****

Nadia, Masha and Katia unite in protest at the Soviet regime through the devastating power of Art. For their efforts they’ve been jailed: what does this say about a regime that smothers mothers who dare to exercise their right to freedom of speech?

ELENA (2012) – Petra Costa *****

Elena is one of the ‘must see’ films of this festival and one of the most visually intense and beautiful documentaries I have ever seen. An elegy to her older sister (Elena) who goes to work in New York from their home in Brazil, Petra narrates the story through sumptuous visuals which are occasionally blurred, hypnotic and soften the visceral rawness of painful loss. She uses a palette of pastel hues overlaid with coloured lenses to show photographs, diaries and footage of their childhood. Experimental in feel, this testament to family and catharsis through creativity intoxicates and beguiles remaining in the memory for a long while afterwards and marking Petra Costa out as a talent to follow in future.

Sunday 23 June/15.00/Bloomsbury Theatre

WRONG TIME WRONG PLACE – John Appel ***

A highly moral piece of filmmaking in which John Appel strives to make sense of the murderous acts of terror wreaked on a small community by Anders Breivik. A tribute to those that survived, who tell their stories and discuss their coping strategies. After a slow start, this develops into a moving and intense piece of filmmaking.

Friday 21 June/16.00/Bloomsbury Theatre

THE MACHINE WHICH MAKES EVERYTHING DISAPPEAR – Tinatin Gurchiani

A series of stark and searing interviews with young people from Georgia make up this cinema verite piece that creates a fascinating portrait of modern Georgian society. Far from the cliche and the commonplace.

Friday 21 June/20.30/ICA

OPPRESSOR

This strand focuses on perpetrators as protagonists, a theme normally only seen in fiction, and challenges the ethics of representation and responsibility.

THE ACT OF KILLING – Joshua Oppenheimer 159min ****

An attempt to recreate through narrative cinema, the astonishing acts of violence that took place in an Indonesian Massacre in 1965. Survivors remain silent as their attackers talk freely of their atrocities. Even Werner Herzog describes this as ‘powerful, surreal and frightening”.

MASTERCLASS

Saturday 22 June/Lightbox/WC1

CINEMA AND MEMORY – JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER – the director, discusses the ethical implications raised in the film-making process and the interplay of fiction and non-fiction in re-telling community memories.

DUCH: MASTER OF THE FORGES OF HELL – RITHY PANH

The notorious S-21 KHMER ROUGE prison was run by the infamous Duch who disposed of 12,000 victims from 1975-1979. Together with archive material and face-to-face interviews, Pahn offers an alarming but objective study of the criminal mind of a sociopath who looks like a normal guy.

Wednesday 19 June/19.30/ AV Hill Theatre

CLICK HERE FOR THE THE FULL PROGRAMME OF EVENTS TAKING PLACE FROM 19-23 JUNE 2013

Filmuforia helped the Moo Man get funding via Kickstarter

KICKSTARTER – here’s how the dream starts

Tabu A Story of the South Seas (1931) DVD Blu-Ray

Director/Writer: F W Murnau and Robert Flaherty

Cast: Matahi, Matahi Hitu, Jules, Kong Ah, Anna Chevalier, Jean Jules

80min German Adventure Drama

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The south sea Island paradise of Bora Bora is the setting for this picturesque lyrical love story of a Polynesian legend. F.W. Murnau invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran) to collaborate on an experiment featuring a cast of island natives (“and a few half-castes and Chinese”!!!). It won an Oscar for Best Cinematography thanks to the efforts of Floyd Crosby who delicately captures the exotic and untouched feel of this untainted territory in black and white. It turned out to be a labour of love for the director as well as those depicted in the film. In a weird twist of fate, F W Murnau was killed in a car accident before the film premiered having financed it himself and fallen out with Flaherty over script issues.

Bathed in sunshine under the sheltering palms, TABU plays like an exotic thirties travelogue with its lilting Hollywood soundtrack composed by Hugo Riesenfeld. A sultry native girl, Reri, (Chevalier) is declared ‘tabu’ and untouchable by her fellow tribespeople and promised to the local deity. But a pearl fisherman, Matahi, falls for her charms and they escape to a nearby French colony where they are forced to adapt to Western life with tragic consequences. ‘Tapu’ is a Polynesian word from which we get the English ‘Taboo”.

In 1994 The film was declared “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Scenes of nudity that had been previously banned by Paramount were reinstated in the DVD transfer which includes:

– Commentary with R Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens;

– 15-minute Germany documentary about TABU by Luciano Berriatua;

– Newly presented outtakes from the original shoot;

– An interview with Floyd Crosby;

The original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for TABU

RELEASED ON DVD AND BLU-RAY FROM 24TH JUNE 2013 AT MASTERS OF CINEMA

Like Someone In Love (2012)

Dir: Abbas Kiarostami | Cast: Tadashi Okuno, Rin Takanashi | 109min Drama

Sometimes a one night stand is just that

Like Someone in Love is exquisitely photographed with its references to Yasujiro Ozu depicting ordinary lives of ordinary people as they unfold randomly and realistically with the promise of something intriguing always waiting in the wings.

In Tokyo, Tadashi Okuno’s amiable, retired professor hires a prostitute for the night (Rin Takanashi) and tries to project his humanity on to her vapid character in a bid to connect in a deeper way during their brief time together. Her disappointed boyfriend feels angry and let down. It’s not Kiarostami’s finest work: the narrative descends into self-indulgence at times and lacks a clarity of purpose which eventually becomes irritating and even dull in comparison to his early films such as Taste of Cherry and Close-Up; but is certainly worth watching for its gorgeous visuals, soothing soundtrack and playfully delicate performances. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Summer In February (2013) **

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Director: Christopher Menaul

Cast: Dominic Cooper, Dan Stevens, Emily Browning,

100min UK Drama

From the man who brought us Prime Suspect comes Summer In February, a light conconction that tries hard but fails to generate real warmth: much like any typical British Summer. Supported by the best of young British acting talent it has Dominic Cooper, Dan Stevens and Emily Browning looking winsome in fishermen’s jumpers and cavorting in a Cornish artists’ colony in the run up to the First World War. Dominic Cooper is good at being arrogant and boorish as we’ve all seen in The Devil’s Double and Mama Mia! but here he lacks the vital ingredient of charisma much needed to make his character irresistible and plausible in the role of artist Alfred Munnings who falls for Emily Browning’s fledging dauber Florence Carter-Wood. Together with local land agent Gilbert Evans (Stevens) they form a ménage à trois that gets about as risqué as clotted cream and is as dull as the Cornish skies. Ultimately Summer in February is a pleasant art house drama that subverts its dramatic pretensions due to uneven pacing and Jonathan Smith’s pedestrian script leaving it feeling very much like Sunday night TV fare after a wet weekend in June. MT

Edinburgh Film Festival 19-30 June 2013

The Edinburgh Film Festival is one of the major festivals for discovering and promoting the best in international cinema. Intimate in scale but ambitious in scope, it aims to spotlight the most exciting and innovative new film talent and celebrates Scotland’s cultural and creative strengths on the World stage. This year EIFF celebrates 67 years.

This year features a JEAN GREMILLON strand entitled Symphonies of Life offering such delights as Daïnah la Metisse (1931); Maldone (1928); Le Ciel est a Vous (1944) and Remorques (1941) (Stormy Waters). There’s also a chance to join an international panel of film specialists to talk about the films of the acclaimed French director who was active from the thirties to the early fifties.

7 BOXES (2012) – Drama Paraquay

Although fleetingly reminiscent of Hollywood suspense thrillers, this lo-fi award-winning crime caper has its roots much further back: it brings to mind the The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), with its bungling criminals, street-savvy kids, honour among thieves and urban setting. That and Meirelles’ sublime 2002 film City Of God. Likewise, 7 Boxes simply could not have been made on 35mm; with the imaginative, progressive choice of camera angles, some lightning set pieces not to mention the nighttime low-light location of the Asuncion outdoor market bazaar. A must see. MT

FRANCES HA (2013) USA – Drama

Noah Baumbach Oscar-worthy black and white drama set in New York, tells of a twenty-something dancer and her fashionable and aspirational friends. Whip-smart script and sophisticated visuals.

THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (2012) Portugal/Macao – Drama

A bittersweet and wistful story set in the faded backwaters of Macao. Through glimpses of its past as a Portuguese colony and now a gambling island, a mysterious and seedy tale of love, regret and intrigue emerges and asks the question, can we ever return to the past?

LEVIATHAN (2012) – Documentary

How does it feel to be a deep sea fisherman in the cruel sea, or a crab, for that matter? Haunting and atmospheric, LEVIATHAN has worked its magic slowly up through the festival circuit. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel use the frightening power of sound and vision to transport us on a bare-knuckle ride through a commercial fishing trip from the perspective of the both the fishermen and their catch.

MAGIC MAGIC (2013) US Drama

With more than a shade of Polanski’s Repulsion and The Tenant, Sebastian Silva presents a supernatural thriller set in Chile. Michael Cera (Juno) and Emily Browning (Summer In February) inhabit an eerie and portentous tale of a woman’s descent into madness and loss of identity.

THE DEEP (2012) Iceland – Docudrama

Based on a true story of a sailing accident in Iceland, THE DEEP shifts in tone from drama to documentary-style as it charts the extraordinary aftermath of this tale of survival. Although it sometimes fails to give full throttle to the tragedy for fear of upsetting the existing fishing community, it’s nevertheless a remarkable piece of filmmaking.

FAT SHAKER- Iran – Experimental Drama

A curious and at times grotesque study of a young Iranian man and his relationship with his obese father. Experimental in nature, the narrative sails close to the wind with some sights for sore eyes and is often muddled but this is a film worth watching for its unusual approach.

THE BERLIN FILE – Korean Drama

Stationed in Berlin, North Korean secret agent and weapons trader Pyo and his embassy staffer wife Ryon lead risky lives. When an arms deal with an Arab organization is exposed, Pyo’s intuition tells him that North Korean security is compromised and he becomes the target of investigation by South Korean intelligence.

JISEUL (2012) South Korean Drama

With its striking black and white aesthetic comes a tale of South Korean islanders’ 1950s uprising against police brutality. Combining episodes of eerie calm and histrionic emotion this abstract drama feels detached as an exercise in storytelling but as a visual masterpiece it is outstanding and won the World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize at Sundance 2013.

FOR THOSE IN PERIL (2013) UK Thriller

This low budget britflic has a brilliant central performance from George MacKay who plays a bereaved brother and the lone survivor of a fishing trip in Scotland. Part ghost-story, part psychological thriller, its atmospheric visuals and pervading sense of sadness and loss marks it out as a stunning feature debut for writer director Paul Wright

SOFIA’S LAST AMBULANCE (2013) Bulgaria Documentary

An optimistic and beautifully observed documentary that follows the critically underfunded and painfully pressurised team of Dr Krassi as they serve the needs of Sofia’s A&E patients with care and dedication and surprisingly good humour, amid closures and roads that make ours look like superhighways.

SOYLENT GREEN (1973) US

This nightmarish classic from the science fiction genre seems to be coming true a few years before its originally projected date of 2022. Richard Fleischer predicted an over-populated New York fed by synthetic food supplies in this ambitious thriller with surprisingly prescient environmental concerns for an era where plastic black forest gateau and coloured mayonnaise was ‘de rigeur’ at most dinner parties. Charlton Heston and Edward G Robinson are convincing leads.

UPSTREAM COLOUR – US Drama

A bold and beautifully expressive film with its oblique and innovative narrative and hypnotic soundtrack. This is Shane Carruth’s follow-up to Primer in which he acts, directs, writes and also produces. Part-thriller, part sci-fi it remains in the memory for a long time afterwards with its chilling subject matter.

THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 19-30 JUNE 2013 AT VARIOUS VENUES. FOR THE FULL PROGRAMME. MT

Much Ado About Nothing (2013) ****

Director: Joss Whedon Script: Joss Wheden/Shakespeare

Cast: Amy Acket, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Sean Maher, Spencer Treat Clark, Ricky Lindholme

109min US Drama

Joss Whedon’s clever comedic touch and a lively cast make this contemporary version of the bard’s social drama witty and watchable. Set in Whedon’s airy LA mansion (Shaker kitchens, marble floors) it’s sophisticated, remarkably low-budget and classily shot in black and white.

Managing an acting company, as he does, it’s not surprising that the director of Toy Story and Cabin In The Woods also has a feel for the classics and a troupe of actors who can reel off Shakespearean lines with consummate ease while managing slapstick in a production that plays like TV soap ‘Coupling’ or even ‘Seinfeld’. His Much Ado respects the sensibility of the original version without eschewing modern gadgetry such as smartphones, cuddly toys and a sexy soundtrack.

Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker shine as particularly good farcical lovers Benedick and Beatrice and there is a well-played absurd twist that turns Nathan Fillian’s inspector Dogberry into a figure of fun as he is let down by his hilariously incompetent henchmen. Shakespeare can be hard work but this light-hearted and vivacious version is sure to appeal to purists and young audiences alike. MT

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING PREVIEWS AT THE BFI AND THEN GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 14TH JUNE 2013 AT CURZON, VUE, CINEWORLD AND THE BARBICAN.

Paradise: Love (2012) ****

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Director/Writer: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz

Cast: Margarethe Tiesel, Peter Kazungu, Inge Maux

120min Austria Drama German with English subtitles

With wicked humour and a sinister twist, Ulrich Seidl and his long-time collaborator, Veronika Franz, have tapped into a raw nerve of the female psyche with three interlocking stories based on Odon von Horvath’s 1932 play ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’.

The “Paradise” trilogy of films eloquently and provocatively probe the trans-generational experiences and differing concerns of a contemporary Austrian family of three women: a young girl, Melanie; her mother, Teresa and aunt Anna Maria. These focus on teenage issues, sex and religion.

The first in the trilogy, Paradise: Love, centres on Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), a voluptuous but matronly blonde in her forties who has disappeared below the search radar of most men on the local dating scene. But when she heads off to Kenya for a much needed blast of sun, her prospects seem to improve.

In an atmosphere laden with post-colonial overtones, alluring young African men line the sandy beaches pandering to the egos of white female tourists and offering their wares: and we’re not only talking coconuts and local crafts here.

Seidl perfectly captures Teresa’s glee and naivety here. Like a child in a sweet-shop, she is flattered by attention and ‘strings free’ sex. Later in the hotel bar, her new friend (Inge Maux) confides the transactional nature of these encounters. Far from innocent, they do offer rich rewards: sex with the young and toned and a welcome change from the tired and baggage-laden men back home. Her new friend has already found a virile biker to sleep with and can hardly believe her luck.

Tiesel tackles the role with aplomb, managing to come across as flirtatious but in control to the first guy she meets, pursuing the usual line of fake conversation laden with intent. Attempting to ‘teach’ him how to kiss her she then becomes truculent and tearful when he doesn’t play the game. Wising up, she begins to assert her superiority in a finely-turned turn that combines vulnerability with wilfulness and a certain amount of playful guile. As her skin turns golden, her methods become more sophisticated in the game of looking for love in all the wrong places. Cinematographers Ed Lachman and Wolfgang Thaler’s seductive-looking beach scenes contrast with the hard-edged reality of poverty and humiliation where women turn the hunter as much as they do the prey.

Eric Cantat’s Going South already dealt with the subject of female sex tourism in his acclaimed feature back in 2005, so does Ulrich Seidl bring anything new to the story of passport hunters and white, middle aged cougars, nearly ten years later? The answer lies in his observational approach to the subject matter, allowing us to form our own opinion of the state of play, and in the well-drawn characters. He also takes the narrative forward showing how power can lead to degradation in a role reversal that is both intriguing and novel and adds considerable depth to the male/female dynamic taking it into the realms of anthropology. Subtle dialogue captures the intricacies of the female mind in this authentic story that’s entertaining and insightful particularly for male audiences. MT

PARADISE: LOVE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY, 14TH JUNE 2013. THE ENTIRE TRILOGY CAN BE SEEN ON SUNDAY, 16TH JUNE AT THE RIO CINEMA, DALSTON, LONDON.

The Terracotta Film Festival 2013

The Terracotta Far East Film Festival is celebrating its FIFTH YEAR and once again proving to be a big hit with audiences; many of the screenings are ‘sold out’. The festival kicked off with one of the all time classics of modern cinema: Wong Ka Wai’s DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990) a sumptuous recreation of sixties Hong Kong with the transient love stories of some of its more louche inhabitants told over one hot and sultry summer in the city. Tony Leung, Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung star.

We recommend:

HAPPY TOGETHER (Chun Gwong Cha Sit) 1997 7th June 2013, PCC

Fans of Wong Ka Wai and his long-term collaborator, Tony Leung should make a bee-line for this subtle portrait of two lovers (Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung) who move from Hong Kong to Argentina to make a fresh start. A tragic incident brings them back together in this atmospheric feature graced by the ethereal and enduringly memorable images of DoP Chris Doyle. MT

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WHAT THEY DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT LOVE 13th June, ICA

Love the first time around is sensually captured through the eyes of partially-sighted Indonesian teenagers played by Karina Salim and Ayshita Nugraha. Movement, sound and stunning images coalesce to produce this magical debut from filmmaker Mouly Surya. A big hit at Sundance this year. MT

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THE TERRACOTTA FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE AT THE ICA AND PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA FROM 6-15 JUNE 2013

Come As You Are: we talk to scripter Pierre De Clercq and the cast

As festival favourite Come As You Are is now on general release across the UK, we spoke to the leading trio of actors Robrecht Vanden Thoren, Gilles De Schrijver and Tom Audenaert, joined alongside the screenwriter Pierre De Clercq. With a premise consisting of three disabled gentlemen travelling across Europe to lose their virginity, there is always bound to be plenty to talk about.

Q: It must be pretty exciting for you all to be here in London promoting the movie?
PDC: For us it feels like the movie is coming home, because it started here with Asta Philpot, so that’s why we’re excited for its release here in the UK.

Q: In the film the characters are going on this journey together to experience new things. Do you feel almost as though you’re all doing that yourselves now as a group?
GDS: Yeah we have, we have. We’ve been travelling a lot together, doing some festivals, and I think is one of the last trips, but this is a journey that has been going on for almost two years now.

Q: When doing the festivals, is it interesting to see how different audiences react to this film worldwide?
PDC: It’s all been unanimously appreciated. The reception has been great. It’s had the largest Flemish audience ever in France.
GDS: It’s been good everywhere. We’ve had brilliant reactions everywhere.

Q: So how much research did you all have to do into playing disabled characters?
GDS: Well it mostly Robrecht, because he is the most inspired on Asta Philpot himself.
RVT: Yeah I did a lot of research, I talked to people.

Q: Did you feel at all nervous taking on these roles? Because if you get them even slightly wrong, people could get really offended.
GDS: Yeah. At the beginning all three of us were very, very nervous about doing it because if you hit this wrong, it’s really wrong, and people don’t forgive you that. As Robrecht was saying, we were constantly checking each other, saying, is this genuine? Do you believe this? We all had our different researches…
TA: Yeah I had a friend of mine who is partially blind so I talked to him a lot and practised with the stick. I talked to a lot of different people who were blind. Though mostly I looked at them, and how they moved around, how they follow you, things like that. In the beginning when I heard I had the role I thought, yes! It’s very interesting to play a role like this, but after a while I thought, oh my God, I have to play this well because if I do it badly, it could be the last job I ever do [Laughs]

Q: In that dream sequence when we see you all walking, that was the first time I realised you were you just acting, so that’s a good sign that you all got it spot on, anyway.
GDS: In Montreal the festival director wanted to take us out for dinner and they had been searching for all the places that had special entrances for our wheelchairs. Then after a while they thought maybe they should rewind the scene and they actually thought for a long time that it was CGI of us walking. That was a big compliment.
TA: In Cuba they were saying “Oh they’re so brave travelling the world”.

Q: Talking of approaching the characters delicately, that was really your job to begin with Pierre. Were you quite cautious about how to portray a story of three disabled guys on a journey to lose their virginity?
PDC: I didn’t actually. I approached it like any other script and wrote the characters like any other character – that is the biggest respect you can pay to handicapped characters, to treat them like anybody else. Like Philip, there are small, tiny bad sides inside him, and it’s the most honest way to portray them. When the producer came to me to write this screenplay it was such a gift to tell this story. It was easy to write, really easy to write. I know I shouldn’t say that because we’re supposed to suffer, but it was fun to write.

Q: Like you said, these characters aren’t always sympathetic and sometimes you just want to tell Philip to shut up…
GDS: He’s an asshole basically.
TA: That’s his biggest problem. Not his disability, his character!

Q: Is that something that attracted you to the role Robrecht?
RVT: We did a week’s rehearsals and we went over the script again and I remember being encouraged to make the conflicts as big as they could be. But then when we were shooting there were a couple of days when I only had scenes when I was a nightmare. I remember thinking that I had started to hate myself and I wondered if that was still good. Are the audience going to still like me? Because if they hate you they cut you off, and it’s important that they keep being emotionally involved, even if they sometimes don’t agree with the things you do. So yeah that was hard, at one point I didn’t think he was a nice guy. But after a while you start to see the good sides.
PDC: Like at the beginning when he is picking a fight with his mother just to make an excuse to be able to leave the next morning, and there are small touches, like when he quietly says to himself “Goodnight Mum”. These touches make you as a spectator forgive him, because you know he has a kind side behind his big mouth.
RVT: Also the way we shot the journey chronologically, he gets sweeter every day, so that’s a good thing.

Q: Was it quite a challenge for all of you as actors to balance both the comedy and dramatic aspects to this film?
GDS: I mean, you’re always acting one thing, so in that way it wasn’t harder than any other film. So in a way we were all happy and we really found each other on this project, because we tend to approach even the more serious aspects of life with a lot of humour and laughs. Tom we didn’t even know before starting the shoot but he quickly became one of our friends and we hit it off so well because we’re all in the same level at that point. There isn’t any subject that you can just approach dramatically, I don’t believe in that, and I don’t think any of us believe in that.

Q: You can get a sense that you are all quite close off-screen in the film, it must have been a really fun film to shoot, travelling around together.
GDS: It was great fun.
TA: Super fun.
RVT: The great thing also is that we started with the trip and like it was in the movie we had just started shooting so we were all pretty nervous. But it was okay to be nervous because the characters were nervous also. But we were on a trip and we got to know the crew because you stay at hotels, drink at the bar.
GDS: The fact it was a road movie made the whole crew get involved in this trip.
PDC: I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard the stories…
TA: It’s become a little bit of a legend in Belgium, because it was such great fun when we shot it.

Q: You all speak very good English, have any of you had any thoughts in moving to the US or over here to make a movie?
GDS: If the opportunity was there it would be stupid not to take it. But moving to the UK would be difficult. Our film industry has picked up a lot in the past 10 years in Belgium, so we can do really great work and we get really nice parts. It would stupid to give that up to move just to make movies with a little more budget or more exposure, I don’t think that is a goal for us.
TA: But if they ask you…
GDS: Well if they ask you, then why not. But we woldn’t move here to give up everything we have at home.
PDC: Especially as this film has travelled so well all over the world, we all put our heart in it and it’s so rewarding when a small movie like this travels around.

Q: Were you expecting it to take off like this, and be released in so many countries?
PDC: You never know.
GDS: You never know. But even if I had thought it would be a success, I didn’t ever think it would be this successful.
TA: Also because, apart from Gilles, we aren’t very famous in Belgium on the television or in film.
RVT: Though internationally that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t count.
TA: That is true, but after this showed in Canada, it had a big boost. If it had come out in Belgium without that, it may have not have had the same results.
GDS: It’s a chain reaction basically. If the press like it and the audience like it, then the dominoes start falling, and that’s what happened. But it’s a dream. A dream. We really put our heart in to it and it’s so nice it’s been so well-received?

Q: Would you say that Belgian cinema is booming at the moment? Because there have been some fantastic films to come out of there recently.
GDS: Completely. Five years ago there were like two movies being made a year. Now there are 10, or 12 easily.
PDC: They’re doing very well locally and also abroad, at more and more festivals.
GDS: Flemish cinema really finds its way to its viewers because some directors go international through the festivals are cult based, but then you see the box office in theatres and it’s not so great in our own country. But Flemish films really find their audience and it’s something to be proud of.

Q: So why do you think there has been this rise in Belgian cinema of late?
PDC: A good funding system, doing fiction for television and then films and people getting more and professional as a result, making for good actors.
GDS: It’s an economical thing. There is good funding and it’s a tax shelter.
PDC: During these times it’s one of the few sections that is still being given more and more money.
GDS: We haven’t really felt the recession.
TA: It’s still not enough.

Stefan Pape

COME AS YOU ARE (HASTA LA VISTA) IS SHOWING IN LONDON AT VUE CINEMAS FROM 7TH JUNE 2013

Paradise: Hope (2012) Paradies: Hoffnung

Paradise: Hope is the second feature of the Ulrich Seidl’s trilogy of films focusing on female stories in a contemporary Austria. This one is based Teresa’s 13 year-old daughter Melanie, the 13-year-old daughter of Paradise: Love‘s character: Teresa. Like many young girls in their teens these days, she’s verging on obese and is dispatched to a health camp for teenage fatties in the Austrian Alps, while Teresa goes in search of sex in Kenya. Once there the homesick Melanie soon finds herself sharing a room with another overweight teen Verena, (Verena Lehbauer) and exchanging sweets and salacious stories about their experiences with the opposite sex. There’s nothing new here about the sex-tinged gossip, it’s much the same as it was in my day but the obesity is what really stands out in these contemporary teenagers.

Ulrich Seidl uses the same observational style here which works so well in Paradise: Love, using minimal dialogue and lingering camera shots that leave space to speculate and enjoy his darkly humorous and provocative narrative, it’s a style that works particularly well here leaving the audience to engage with the characters and the mood of his narrative which is light yet unsettling.

During the regular medical examinations, Melanie (Lenz) starts to develop a plausible yet inappropriate attraction to the in-house doctor, a man in his fifties. It’s a brilliant and highly inventive turn by Joseph Lorenz as Arzt. He doesn’t come across as a family man and could almost be a player, but Seidl leaves this very much to our imagination and in the process creates a seductive image that provides a clever counterpoint to Teresa’s tomboys in Paradise: Love.

Melanie gradually emerges as a vulnerable character with a well-developed sense of her own sexuality and ability to seduce and beguile: she an utterly normal teenager. It’s a poignant and moving portrait of first love. The strange chemistry that between her and the doctor brings an elements of suspense and titillation to the proceedings leaving us to speculate on how the story will progress; in other words: who will seduce whom? The outcome is dark and disturbing but not as you would expect.

The other male lead is the archetypal sports trainer (Michael Thomas) who is only interested in exercising his ego and comes across as rather a sad figure to whose draconian authority the girls soon subvert to with a mixture of tolerance and collective covert mockery. Nestling in its placid and orderly Alpine setting, the ‘Clinic’ is a perfectly functioning model of perfection for normal teens ruled over by dysfunctional role models. Just scratch the surface and latent rebellion lurks in every corner and corridor, pointing at some very real concerns beyond. MT

The Iceman (2013) ***

Dir: Ariel Vromen | Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, James Franco, Ray Liotta | 103min US Thriller

Every so often you get a central performance that far outweighs the overall quality of the film itself. Take Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, or pretty much any film Daniel Day-Lewis has appeared in, and now we have another entry into that exclusive list, as Michael Shannon turns in a remarkably harrowing performance in Ariel Vromen’s biopic of notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski. A performance that does enough to ensure The Iceman, though flawed, remains a commendable crime thriller worth seeking out.

Beginning in 1986, we witness a weary and discontented Kuklinski, having finally been arrested after what is feared to be over 100 contracted murders. The ageing killer then proceeds to recount his life tale, explaining how this innocent youngster became one of the most feared assassins of all time. Kuklinski had a loving wife (Winona Ryder) and two young daughters, and while they believed he was making a success of himself in the financial world, he had in fact been recruited by crime lord Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) to take out hits on his behalf. As the money began to pour in and Kuklinski developed a taste for it, he spiralled further into a dark and dangerous world, while managing to keep his lifestyle a secret from his adoring family.

In what is an intense character study, Shannon pulls out all of the stops in his performance, fully embodying the role at hand. He plays Kuklinski with a guarded nature, disallowing any of his emotions to filter through to the viewer, though every now and again he lets you in, which feels so precious given its rarity. Physically he is perfect casting too, as his gangly demeanour adds to the chilling aspects of the role, while he has an intensity that prevents the viewer from ever taking their eyes off our protagonist. Shannon plays him as an empathetic character, which is imperative as we need to fear and sympathise with Kuklinski in equal measure.

There is an issue, however, with the crafting of the character itself, and as strong as our lead performance is, by the time the credits roll, we still don’t feel as though we know Kuklinski particularly well. This effectively puts us in the same shoes as his wife Deborah, unable to comprehend him, or to genuinely understand his motivation. We do touch upon his childhood and relationship with his brother (Stephen Dorff), yet we merely scratch the surface, and rarely get to the bottom of these issues, perhaps proving that tackling such a convoluted character over his entire lifespan is too ambitious a task for Vromen. In a sense, this tale may have actually been of more benefit had it been told from the perspective of Deborah instead.

The Iceman struggles in that Vromen doesn’t quite know what his film is hoping to be: half mob flick, half family drama, falling carelessly between the two. In a sense this is reflective of Kuklinski’s life itself, yet the film does lack direction as a result. Although feeling like a picture we’ve seen countless times before, there remains plenty to be admired about The Iceman, with enough in here to suggest that a bright future in Hollywood beckons for our budding director Vromen. STEFAN PAPE.

THE ICEMAN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 7TH JUNE 2013

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

Director: Werner Herzog

Script: Werner Herzog

Producer: Werner Herzog

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Cecilia Rivera, Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling, Daniel Ades, Armando Polanah, Edward Roland

German 93mins 1972 Drama

A quite extraordinary film and for a great many reasons. From a sketchy idea, Werner Herzog took a bunch of 300 cast and crew up the Amazon to make a film that very nearly did for the cast and crew, through both accident and near starvation.

Based on a true story taken from a diary left by one of the original party, Klaus Kinski gives perhaps his greatest performance as an unhinged Richard III type figure, taking a bunch of conquistadors on a raft deep into uncharted territory, circa 1560, in search of the mythical El Dorado, the City of Gold.

Exploring similar inner territory to Apocalypse Now, with a river trip into darkest recesses of the mind, this film is a slow-burner but very much worth the ride. Towards the end it drew gasps of incredulity from the audience. That’s quite hard to do with a bunch of seasoned movie reviewers.

AGUIRRE was all shot on one camera. A camera Herzog liberated from the soon to be Munich film school, when he was refused the loan of one. The Amazon plays the all-consuming Antagonist of the piece and what an antagonist; the ignorant Spanish explorers are surrounded by unseen tribes that threaten to knock off the unwary traveller. Combined with two fine Ladies of the Court, infighting amongst the group, starvation, a lack of experience or equipment and a large bunch of unwilling slaves and it’s a cocktail for disaster.

Aguirre has hovered in the Top 100 Greatest Films Of All time in several illustrious lists. It’s one of those crazy, legendary shoots you read about from time to time, where, despite quite ridiculous odds, the film gets made, although it perhaps isn’t the film they thought they were making when they first set out.

Kinski is a notoriously difficult actor to work with and it’s said that at several points, the crew were so hungry, Herzog was forced to pawn his own belongings to feed them. Whatever the circumstances, the film is quite brilliant. Perhaps the duress that everyone was under lending itself very genuinely to the end product. The performances are terrific throughout and none more so that the single-minded Kinski as Aguirre, the personification of the Wrath of God.

A truly amazing film, epitomising the filmmaking endeavour of the Seventies and a most welcome reboot to boot. One you watch through your fingers, with a growing sense of horror and incredulity. Nothing like it would ever be attempted now. AR

MY BEST FRIEND, (MEIN BESTER FEIND, 2011), Werner Herzog’s documentary about his work with KLAUS KINSKI and their outrageous love/hate ralationship, is an interesting companion piece to AGUIRRE providing extraordinary, at times hilarious, comment and footage about the making of the film.

Therese Desqueyroux (2012)

Director: Claude Miller | Cast: Audrey Tatou, Gilles Lellouche, Anais Demoustier, Stanley Weber, Catherine Arditi | France Drama 110min

Claude Miller was a French director, writer and producer who honed his craft under the gaze of Francois Truffaut, Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard. Working quietly away during the latter part of the last century he came to fame with his trio of shorts La Meilleure Facon de Marcher (The Best Way To Walk) eventually winning a César for Garde à Vue. A Secret and Class Trip were other successful outings. Therese Desqueyroux was his final film presented at Cannes after his death in April 2012.

A twenties adaptation of François Mauriac’s novel, it has Audrey Tatou in the leading role as a provincial girl who marries beneath her intellectual status to her next door neighbour Bernard who is boring but owns a large estate in Bordeaux.

Stylish sets and elegant period detail certainly make this watchable but it lacks any real drama despite the rich possibilities of social intrigue, misogyny and poisoning along the lines of Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary’.

For some reason, Claude Miller decided on a straighforward linear narrative in contrast to the fractured narrative of the original work. This has the effect of placing all the action in the second half of the film, making the first half feel aimless and stolid.

Audrey Tatou plays a tight-lipped and emotionally straight-laced Thérèse, doyenne of her extensive estate in the ‘Landes’ but is unable to bond with her child. There’s an enigmatic quality to her wish for revenge on her husband Bernard. For his part, Gilles Lellouche is perfectly cast but emerges a ‘himbo’ who is inert and ineffectual, but does he really deserve to be poisoned?.

Anais Demoustier is certainly believable as her friend Anne, who falls pregnant by her Portuguese lover (a stiff Stanley Weber) but Therese appears vague about her motives towards Anne in a role that could have provided some much needed cut and thrust in an era known for its prudishness. Was she just bored by Bernard’s lack of personality or envious that her friend was having great love life while she was hardly seeing any action – It’s difficult to say and even more difficult to feel any sympathy or understanding for this woman who remains locked behind a mask of inscrutability. Go for the costumes and the cinematography but don’t expect to be particularly moved or excited by Claude Millar’s last film. MT

THERESE DESQUEYROUX Is now on PRIME VIDEO

Helsinki Forever (2008) | Splinters (2011) Lastuja – taiteilijasuvun vuosisata

Splinters (2011) | Director/Writer: Peter Von Bagh

Peter Von Bagh (1943-2014) was a Finnish film historian and director of Helsinki, Forever (2008).

As a companion piece, his documentary Splinters offers an insight into the work of artist Johani Aho and his family. Narrated by architect Eero Saarinen and Peter Von Bagh himself, it spans a century of creative output from his wife Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, sons Heikki Aho and Bjorn Soldan, covering their contribution to art in film, and daughter Claire Aho’s photographs. With Martii Turunen’s original score it provides a fascinating and nostalgic backcloth to Finland’s contemporary art scene.

Helsinki Forever | Director/Writer: Peter Von Bagh

From a startling opening sequence of an ice-breaker entering the harbour to the sobering final moments of Wartime occupation, Peter Von Bagh, former director of the famous Midnight Sun Film Festival, reveals a hundred years of Helsinki in this paean to his birthplace.

Darting backwards and forwards in time and place from 1907 with a modest population of 40,000, the capital grew into a vibrant and exciting centre offering up its pleasures gladly and never taking itself too seriously, leaving you wanting more. The abundant and endless creativity of its painters, architects, cinema directors (Ari Kaurismaki, Tapio Suominen, Alvar Aalto) and musicians who built and shaped the city, some of whom are little known abroad, are showcased here via a montage of archive footage, photographs and paintings. Von Bagh and two female voices narrate to a light-hearted soundtrack featuring Finnish composer Henrik Otto Donner, and visuals by contributing cinematographer Pirjo Honkasalo (Concrete Night). @MeredithTaylor

AVAILABLE ON MUBI

The Big Wedding (2013)***

Director: Justin Zackham
Script: Justin Zackham, Jean-Stephane Bron
Producer: Anthony Katagas, Clay Pecorin, Richard Salvatore, Harry J Ufland, Justin Zackham
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Robert de Niro, Katherine Heigl, Robin Williams, Susan Sarandon, Topher Grace, Ben Barnes, Diane Keaton, Marc Blucas, Kyle Bornheimer

US 90mins 2012 Rom Com

A remake of Jean-Stephane Bron 2006 title Mon Frere Se Marie (aka ‘My Brother Is Getting Married’) set in Switzerland, where an adopted Vietnamese son is getting married to a well-to-do Swiss girl and his birthmother is going to make the trip of a lifetime, not only for the wedding of her boy, but to meet the family she gave him up to, all those years ago.

Here relocated to America, the adoptee Alejandro (Barnes) is now Columbian(!?), went to Harvard and speaks five languages (one senses that the production bent over backwards to please the PC brigade). The problem is still the same though: the impending birthmother is a traditionalist and devout Catholic, so the American family needs to be on best behaviour and pretend they are whiter than white. Excuse the pun. This means that the adoptive parents (de Niro and Keaton) have to pretend they are once again husband and wife, much to the chagrin of de Niro’s long-term partner, Sarandon.

Ostensibly, a comedy of manners then, with the visitor not speaking a word of English, everyone on best behaviour and acres of banter and bad language (hilariously..) lost in translation. And this film does rely heavily on perceived shock factor, spilling expletives out like confetti, in place of much real wit or repartee.

Very much a calculated ensemble piece, everyone gets their fifteen minutes of sub plot, although surprisingly, the one to get the least footage is top-billed Seyfried herself. We have the sister (Heigl) going through her own relationship issues, the brother (Grace) still a virgin at 29 and the groom (Englishman Ben Barnes), trying to juggle his adoptive family, his bride, his brides family and his birthmother on the day before the nuptials.

When all is said and done, it is a better film than I was prepared for, going in, but this is not to say it’s a great film. I settled in prepared to be disappointed, but it did make me laugh a couple of times. It’s an idea with legs, that obviously did well enough in its original incarnation to spark interest and warrant a makeover Financially and the producers (all five of ‘em) saw it as a great opportunity to wedge it chock-full of faces, but they also know they aren’t going to the Oscars with it either.

Presumably, everyone involved saw the irreverence of the script, the size of the paycheck and called their agents back with one word on their collective lips: ‘Kerchingg’. Followed, on Final Day of Principal Photography, by ‘Thank you very much’.

It’s of mild interest though, how audiences will receive it. It’s dressed up for all the world as an inoffensive, summery Four Weddings type of gig, but the humour is a fair bit more base than that. Certainly de Niro won’t be saying ‘Cunt’ in the crop and chop TV version, you can be sure of that. How edgy. AT

Populaire (2012) ***

Director: Regis Roinsard
Script: Regis Roinsard, Daniel Presley
Producer: Alain Attal

Cast: Romain Duris, Deborah Francois, Berenice Bejo, Shaun Benson, Melanie Bernier, Miou-Miou

Fr 111mins 2012 Romantic Comedy

A feature debut from director Roinsard supplies another quintessentially-French kooky rom-com from Duris. Set in 1958 and beautifully designed by Silvie Olive, this is a warm, feel-good film about the travails of love never running smooth, with a light dusting of psychology to ensure it all makes sense.

Duris plays an Insurance boss with a heart, in need of a secretary. And a wife.
Into the frame steps the unpromising ‘Rose Pamphyle’, a village girl growing up in her fathers shop, but harbouring dreams of being a secretary and seeing the world. She proves a rubbish secretary, but a demon two-finger typist. Duris leaps on this talent seeing her as the tool through which he, as a truly competitive spirit, can win. Win what? Win the Fastest Typist Competition, of course.

But the star of the show and what makes it is Deborah Francois. She is beautiful, dissembling and feisty in equal measure and convincingly in love. Her journey from ingénue to woman of the world is an engaging one and Duris plays second fiddle to it.

Fans of Duris will presumably not be disappointed. He models a smashing line in single- breasted suits and cuts a fine, slender Gallic figure sporting a Gauloise for the films entirety, but far less is asked of him than from the superior (2010) Heartbreaker and there is alot less comedy to boot.

I feel certain it hits all the right notes for the intended audience. The set design rejoices in the Fifties setting, the costumes, colours and hair-do’s are all sumptuous and beautiful, but it is nevertheless a case of style over content, running a little long at almost two hours.

There’s something missing in the box ticking that went into the creation of this film, which is So ‘There’ in Heartbreaker and The Beat My Heart Skipped. It’s not that this is a bad one, it’s that we’ve come to expect ‘exceptional’ from Duris and this one isn’t. AT

POPULAIRE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY MAY 31ST IN CINEMAS ACROSS LONDON. READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH STAR ROMAIN DURIS

Duran Duran: Unstaged (2013) ****

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Gerard Way, John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor, Simon Le Bon

112min US Musical Documentary

Billed as a documentary, David Lynch’s long-awaited and much anticipated musical outing turns out to be an onscreen live gig filmed at a recent concert of the band in the United States. Duran Duran are an English rock band that was formed in 1978 and went on to be one of the most successful bands of the eighties and a leading force in the MTV-driven “Second British Invasion” of the US, from whence this film comes.

Shot in black and white, superimposed images and pictures glide over the live footage in a surreal kaleidoscope of incongruous, shifting visuals in all colours of the rainbow lending a dynamic feel to the concert: cars race down freeways and into tunnels giving way to pop art pictures of naked women, animals, weird graphics and the like. It all feels very upbeat and exciting as the band plays oldies and new material taking their creative output from its origins in the eighties right into the 21st century and beyond.

Simon Le Bon, ever the showman, introduces a variety of contemporary guest acts who are all introduced as “something very special”. It’s a shame that his slightly laddish image detracts from the uber-stylish presentation of what is still a very impressive and avant-garde musical stage act with melodic, catchy tunes and well-written lyrics. Nick Rhodes is still prettily made-up with his blonde-tinted hair, and guitar geniuses Andrew and John Taylor strum away gleefully: they still wear it well – in black leather, of course.

During the gig, they are joined by (the very special…!.) music producer, DJ and musician, Mark Ronson who is attributed to have helped to upgrade the band’s image with his own entrepreneurial ‘je ne sais quoi’. He plays the saxophone and sings. Kelis and Beth Ditto (who?) are also ‘special’ guests joining the band on stage for more ‘special’ numbers and their own material.

It’s a highly enjoyable and watchable piece of filmmaking that will rouse seventies fans and is likely to attract newcomers from younger or even different audiences. From standout hits: ‘Rio’, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ and ‘Say A Prayer’ Duran Duran still have what it takes when it comes to musical entertainment and have served their public well over the decades proving them to be ‘Notorious’ even now. MT

Paste the link to your browser for a watch: http://vevo.ly/i7erE6

DURAN DURAN: UNSTAGED PREMIERED AT CANNES FILM MARKET DURING THE 2013 FESTIVAL. ARCLIGHT HAVE ACQUIRED THE PICTURE AND ARE SEEKING UK DISTRIBUTION .

Everybody Has a Plan (2012) Todos Tenemos Un Plan ***

Director: Ana Piterberg

Writers: Ana Piterberg, Ana Cohan

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Soledad Villamil, Daniel Fanego, Javier Godino

118 min Argentinian thriller

The best thing about Ana Piterberg’s Argentinian slow-burning noirish thriller is Viggo Mortensen in the lead role. Speaking in faultless Spanish, (he is an actor obsessed with really getting under the skin of his character), he plays Pedro, a depressed bee-keeper whose confidence is at a low ebb after being involved in a kidnapping attempt. An interesting premise, then, and an indie which has echoes of the Coen Brothers and offers a challenging role for Mortensen who is utterly convincing here.

He hatches an elaborate plan to fakes his own death and escape from his wife by becoming his twin brother. It’s an ill-thought-out and complex plot, that starts well but ends up having more pitfalls than convincing positives to carry it through a running time of two hours.

Set in the wild and swamp-infested landscape of the Tigre Delta, Piterberg’s ambitious debut does offer some startling scenery which is the perfect backdrop to the psychological twists and turns of the plot and Lucio Bonelli’s camera work evokes an unsettling atmosphere with echoes of Winter’s Bone, and an atmospheric original score by Federico Jusid. MT

EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN IN ON RELEASE FROM 31 MAY 2013 IN CINEMAS ACROSS LONDON AND THE UK

Only God Forgives Cannes Film Festival 2013

Director/Script: Nicolas Winding Refyn

Production Design: Beth Mickle, Cinematography: Larry Smith, Music: Cliff Martinez

Cast: Kristen Scott Thomas, Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke

90mins Denmark/France

[youtube id=”JKiMdn7Qz9s” width=”600″ height=”350″]

For sheer cinematic brilliance and artistic style, Nicolas Winding Refyn’s Bangkok-set revenge tale really set the night on fire at Cannes and was far and away my favourite film of the festival, dividing critics and polarising opinion. Some derided it for its cold brutality and lack of emotion but Heli was equally violent, gratuitously so, and won an award.

In Only God Forgives there is plenty of controlled emotion, seething under the surface of Winding Refyn’s glittering jewel-box of tricks; from brooding resentment, latent anger, moody scorn to dysfunctional lust wrapped up in a pervasive sense of dread, all heightened by a dynamite score. The performances are stylised, mannered and supremely elegant: Ryan Gosling, who runs a Thai boxing club, very much serves the film rather than stars in it, wearing a sharp suit and the expression of a frightened rabbit as the submissively loyal son of Kristen Scott Thomas’s vampish mother and drug baroness, Crystal. She’s a woman at the top of her game, her two sons are trophies she toys with dispassionately.

We first see her arriving in Bangkok to demand retribution for murder of her ‘first son’ Billy (Tom Burke) on the grounds of his raping and killing a local teenager. She opines: “I’m sure he had his reasons”. In short, she is very much her own woman. It’s a superbly entertaining performance and one which should have won her Best Actress in the festival. Sporting a long blond wig and killer heals, she is every bit as sexy, poised and alluring as any actress half her age.

Against advice, she hires a hit man to take out Chang (Pansringarm), the local police chief responsible for the killing of her son Billy. But the plan backfires and Chang turns the tables on Crystal and her agent (Gordon Brown) who is tortured and killed in possibly one of the most inventive and exquisitely painful deaths in cinema history, juxtaposed against a glimmering back-drop of a laquered night club interior. Glamorous hostesses look on motionless and expressionless in compliance with their oriental culture of self control.

Only God Forgives glides gracefully along, each frame an expertly composed, perfectly balanced and glittering masterpiece. Punctuated by brusque episodes of savage violence, it epitomises a world of clandestine doings and shady characters suggested but not fully fleshed-out adding an exotic mystique to the piece rather than detracting from it, leaving room for the imagination to wander, to speculate and to dream. It’s a world where evil meets evil and no one is up to any good.

Byzantium (2012) **

Director: Neil Jordan

Script: Moira Buffini

Producers: Sam Engelbardt, William D Johnson, Elizabeth Karlsen, Alan Moloney, Stephen Woolley

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Jonny Lee Miller, Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Riley, Thure Lindhardt, Tom Hollander, Daniel Mays

UK USA Ireland 118mins 2012 Horror

Another addition to the already rammed horror subgenre marked ‘Vampire Movies’, so it was interesting to see if anything could be added by Neil Jordan, a (hu)man with prior fang success, inInterview With A Vampire…

However, the script proved immediately disappointing in the dialogue department. Buffini has previous as writer of Tamara Drew and the recent Jane Eyre directed by Fukunaga. Byzantium is oddly overwritten; expositional and unnatural and so failed to shake off its stageplay origins. It’s also lacking in any humour whatsoever, which never helps.

This latest addition to the fashionable (potentially lucrative) vampire canon concerns the lives of two women, Clara and Eleanor Webb, forever trapped in their respective ages by the curse of everlasting life and roaming Britain drinking the blood of unfortunates for the intervening 200 years. The twist on this tale is more the distinctly emotional lives of these usually ruthless moral-free killers.

Mother and daughter play at being sisters, always on the run and one step ahead of their pursuers, Clara providing for her offspring the only way she knows how, pulling tricks; their entwined histories revealed in flashback as we move deeper into the film.

Two of the best things in the piece are the youngsters, Caleb Landry Jones, playing a tortured anaemic waif who falls for the fatally unattainable Saoirse’s Eleanor Webb (best known for Atonement and The Lovely Bones). She is very good, very watchable, but really isn’t helped by the script much.

The second half moves better however and with more cohesion than the first, but the film nevertheless plays long at almost two hours. I can’t help thinking there’s not enough gore to keep the Horror fans sated and not enough relationship to hook the young female cinemagoer. Basic Vampire rules are also ignored- they stroll about during the day with impunity, there is no fang-work at all and the all-important superior vampy-strength seems inconsistent, at times there, but other times not.

With five producers and a slew of funding partners perhaps, in the end, there were too many chefs in the kitchen. Better than the God-awful Twilight franchise, but not a patch on the sheer quality and originality of Let The Right One In. It remains to be seen how successful this female-centric vampire outing will prove to be. AT

BYZANTIUM IS SCREENING IN CINEMAS FROM 31 MAY 2013

Blood (2012) ***

Director: Nick Murphy

Cast: Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, Natasha Little

95min UK Thriller

Adapted from a story by writer Bill Gallagher from his own TV series Conviction (2004), Blood tells how a young girl is found brutally murdered and police brothers Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissie Fairburn (Stephen Graham) set out to catch her killer. When their prime suspect is released, due to lack of evidence, they take the inquiry into their own hands but are hampered by the ethical nature of their methods and tragic consequences ensue for all concerned.

Nick Murphy sets his police thriller in the atmospheric surroundings of the bleak and windswept Wirral Peninsula. It has a sterling British cast: Mark Strong, Brian Cox and Natasha Little all give well-crafted performances. Paul Bettany is well-cast as the angst-ridden local CID officer who discovers Angela’s body at the local skateboard rink and keenly feels his responsibility for finding the killer. That said, Bettany and Graham don’t make a convincing pairing as brothers: not only are they chalk and cheese looks-wise but they appear to come from completely different social backgrounds.

Policing in a tight-knit community, they go for the underdog and arrest a local paedophile Jason Buleigh. But there’s something about Buleigh that cries out “I’m innocent” and it’s Ben Crompton’s well-drawn and convincing turn that has a vulnerability and sincerity marking him out an innocent man – or is he?.

Brian Cox plays the brothers’ dementia-riddled father. He’s a gruff task-master of the old school and his advice weighs heavily on the two to close the case. They drive out to a remote beach location in Hilbre Island, and try to force Buleigh into a confession. But the plan backfires in a sinister way. Meanwhile their colleague Mark Strong, the ‘Columbo’ character here, has sniffed a rat and is determined to pursue his hunch in the sorry state of affairs.

So what starts out a simple local murder soon becomes a nightmarish, full-blown thriller that leaves Paul Bettany sweating with anxiety, as he desperately struggles to convince his wife (Natasha LIttle) and daughter of his innocence in an enveloping tide of guilt, family loyalties and professional pride.

Blood is an intense and involving drama if a tad formulaic and occasionally suffering from under-developed characterisation of the support cast, largely due to its modest running time. That said, there strong and enjoyable performances from the leads and a well-crafted and appealing visual aesthetic that help to lift it out of the shifting sands of North West England. It offers decent Saturday night entertainment for mainstream audiences with an arthouse twist. MT

Olivier Assayas – Director

Olivier Assayas. French Director, Screenwriter and film critic.
Born 1955. Son of celebrated French filmmaker, Jacques Remy.

AT: Your father, he worked in television and film…

OA: He worked a long time in television, but alot of films. He assisted Pabst and Max Ophuls and moved to the US during the War directing. Then had a very solid career as a screenwriter for the French and Italian industries in the Fifties and then, in the Sixties, he mostly did TV work.

AT: The Neo-Realists: was he at all influenced by that movement?

OA: I don’t know… these were things I could and should have discussed with him, but he died when I was fairly young: I was in my early twenties and he was… he grew up in Italy, in Milan and he was a militant anti-Fascist and was close to alot of people involved in Neo-Realism. He was perfectly bilingual and was writing in Italian and in French and he was writing alot of screenplays, working mostly with alot of writers, like (Cesare) Zavattini (Bicycle Thieves) and people like that who were involved in the history of Italian Neo-Realism, but he himself, to my knowledge, he didn’t write any kind of movie that had any kind of solid connection to the Neo-Realist movement. (But) he wrote for people like Alessandro Blasetti (1860) and Riccardo Freda (Giants Of Thessaly)… those people.

AT So, you obviously grew up steeped in film, in one way or another… and indeed, you worked with him when you first started out…

OA Yes, yes, I suppose it was the proximity of cinema, the fact that it was not something that was not part of a different world… it was not alien, that made me imagine that I could one day become a filmmaker.

AT You took a long time…

OA I took a path certainly very different from whatever my father would have imagined, in the sense that… my father did not encourage me to be a filmmaker at all… to make movies, quite the opposite in fact

AT Get a ‘proper’ job…

OA Yeah, and he said “if you want to work in movies then work your way up, you know, do a serious job in the industry and work your way up…” and I did not want… It was the Seventies and I did not want to do some boring factory job.

AT In terms of influences, you talk of Bresson more than Truffaut, is that correct?

OA …Both. Both. How shall I put it..? I worship Truffaut. I think Truffaut is really like an extraordinary filmmaker and an extraordinarily important filmmaker. To me, he is the true heir to Jean Renoir. He is a fascinating and a complex artist and I have always loved his movies; I have loved them as a child, as a teenager and as a grownup, I still love every single movie he has ever made. So, he’s for me, a very important figure and I suppose the ‘Model’ as a filmmaker- with the difference that he was never interested in making movies outside of France; he’s the epitome of a French director, whereas I have always been attracted by the notion of making cosmopolitan/international, or, should I say, trans-national filmmaking. But it was another era, another time.

But then… I suppose that Bresson was essential to my desire to become a filmmaker, in the sense that it is the overwhelming beauty of his films that gave me a sense that movies were as important as any other art form. You see, the paradox is that I grew up with a family that is connected to cinema (although) my mother was a fashion designer, but my parents did not consider cinema as an art, at all. To them, art was painting, it was literature… and I wanted to be an artist and I suppose that it was (only) by watching the films of Bresson that gave me a sense that movies were as deep, as important, as profound as the greatest literature, as the greatest paintings. I realised then that there is no debate, it’s like, way, way up there and if movies have taken Bresson that far, then it’s worth trying. It’s worth devoting your life to trying…

AT How old were you when you came to that kind of conclusion?

OA I would say my early twenties.

AT And, when you are making a film, would you say you have a consciousness about how Bresson for instance, directed?

OA Do you know, the lessons of the great artists, is ‘Do Things Your Way’. Bresson made movies in a way completely different from anything anybody had done before and that is why he is Bresson and that is why he is a genius. The basic message is do things your own way. Invent your own method, invent your own style, your own path and try to go as far as you can on your own path.

Bresson is a very powerful influence, because he found one of the keys to beauty in film. So when I started making films, the presence of Bresson was there… this kind of intimidating presence of Bresson was always there… you can see it in my early films (but) at some point, you have to break from that and you start your own journey.

AT And (Filmmaker, French Marxist theorist and founder Letterist) Guy Debord… what does he bring to the table for you?

OA For me, Debord brings a lecture of Modern Society. Essential. Essential for me, because he saves me from the dogmatic (nature) of Leftism. Because I was a radical kid, you know, as all kids are, but even more so in the 1970’s.

But instead of being (completely) absorbed by Totalitarian thought, by the Stalinism of what alot of French Leftism was about, was reading Debord, because Debord was anti-Stalinism. He was a Radical, he had the vision, he had this antagonism of the materialism of modern culture. He antagonised the growing alienation of Western Societies and he used the early writings of Marx, of Hegel in ways that were the complete opposite of the dogmatic Communist work of the time and it came also with a quality and a beauty of writing that reminds you that ‘ideas’ and ‘style’ are one and the same thing. So, in that respect, Debord has been hugely influential to help me structure my reading of modern society and gradually bringing me to my reading of the Frankfurt School… Philosophy- Gunther and (Max) Horkheimer.

AT Which actually brings us very neatly on to Something In The Air- a film I liked very much, especially in terms of its lyricism and refusal to adhere to a hackneyed structure. How much difficulty did you have finding your lead, Metayer?

OA It was a long process. So much depends on it. When I started working on this film, I knew that the hardest part would be in finding the cast. Because I wanted, in that sense, kids that had the kind of ‘Bressonian’ internalisation (of the role) that I was looking for.
Because when I’m making a movie like Something In The Air, what I have in mind is that there are only two movies in French film history that deal genuinely with the Seventies, one is Le Diable Probablement (Robert Bresson, 1977) and the other is J’entends Plus la Guitar (1991) by Philippe Garrel. So, when I am making this film, it certainly takes place in a world not dissimilar to the world that Bresson’s film (inhabits). So basically, I think that when I am looking for someone who can represent me at that age, I am also ultimately looking for someone who is similar to Antoine Monnier (the lead in ‘Le Diable Probablement’.

AT Something I got from the film is that it is a film about growing up.. a film about maturing. That when one is young, there is just the black and the white, without any greys inbetween, but that as one matures, other things take on a greater importance…

OA Yes it is, of course, it is, but it’s also in a certain way about instinct. When you have a vocation as a painter or as a filmmaker, it’s something you have no control over, it’s just something that happens to you; that you have to do. You are not sure why, you also have in the back of your mind that you might be wrong, you don’t know. Ultimately, it’s if you follow your path, what you are basically following is your instinct. That tells you ‘Go this way, you will understand later’ and you say ‘Ok, why not? I will try that’.

AT So, Gilles…

OA Gilles wants to become a painter… has this impulse to paint, because of this immediate (payback). I mean, at that age, you are not going to make movies, but you can pick up a pencil and obtain an immediate result. You have the pleasure of getting something out of your system. At that age, movies cannot give you that. So painting is very important to Gilles, but at some point, he realises I suppose like I did, though not exactly as I did… but he realises that there is one thing that is more important than what you do with paint, which is the human figure; which is the attraction of reality to the physicality of cinema.

So, if we want to describe in the shortest possible way what this film is about, then it is about this kid dripping ink on a piece of paper, who ends up understanding that movies is about the resurrection of his girlfriend and that it’s all about the human face. But he …arrives there… he feels his way there… he never really manages to rationalise his way there; following the current… and of course, when I was making the film, I thought this was the most challenging thing to do.

AT You also touch on unrequited love, where he is going after the unattainable…

OA Yes.. that’s the Racine triangle [laughter] it’s a tragedy! But then of course, as much as Christine is real, is tangible, is deeply rooted – she is as autobiographical as it gets in the film. Laure is real too in her own way, but she is also abstract… on two different levels. She is also his muse, she is also the embodiment of the times, she is also what Gilles is aiming at- she’s what connects him to art in a certain way.

AT What’s next for you?

OA I will be shooting this summer, a movie CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA with Juliette Binoche, very much centred on her based on her, as an actress, but also as a person.

AT I think we have to finish now. Thank you so much for your time.

OA Thank you very much.

Something In The Air (2012) Apres Mai

Something In The Air (Apres Mai)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Script: Olivier Assayas
Producers: Charles Gillibert, Nathanael Karmitz
Cast: Clement Metayer, Lola Creton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Hugo Conzelmann, Mathias Renou, Lea Rougeron, Martin Loizillon, Andre Marcon, Johnny Flynn, Dolores Chaplin
Fr **** 122mins Drama

In March of 1968, there was a near-revolution, sparked by events at Nanterre University, leading to ten million workers shutting Paris down, in solidarity with the students. Olivier Assayas’ hugely accomplished film takes place in 1971, with the pungent tear gas of revolution still lingering in the air, the Sixties having opened a lid that wasn’t going to be put back on and anything felt possible.

Newcomer Clement Metayer plays artist Gilles, son of the middle classes, in love with the unattainable Christine and dedicated to The Fight. On one such night, a student is partially blinded by a brutal Police Force, intent on crushing any resistance. The image of his blooded face becomes an iconic symbol of the struggle for humanity and justice and the stakes and impact on the activists’ lives escalate accordingly.

Assayas’ semi-autobiographical feature won two awards at the Venice Film Festival, including Best Screenplay and it is indeed a beautiful, freewheeling, open, energetic piece, that effortlessly captures the essence of being young, pumped with the exuberance of life, when issues were black and white and immortality, or at least, lack of anny consequences that mattered, was the reality.

However, these revolutionary times prove to be only the picaresque backdrop. The real story is essentially one of growing up, of passion and of unrequited love. That the decisions we make when we are sometimes too young to make the correct ones can prove very bitter and of course in some cases, terminal.

The soundtrack is select and seamlessly woven into the storytelling rather than simply plastered on to create the period and the film is expertly lensed and lit by award-winning DoP Eric Gautier (Into The Wild, The Motorcycle Diaries).

It is also a bastion of independent filmmaking. It resolutely refuses to adhere to the standard, hackneyed rules of film storytelling, going off on its own lyrical riff in the spirit of the Artist and is all the richer for it. What it lacks in directly recognisable plot, it more than makes up for with subtlety, vibrancy and introspection. AT

Benjamin Britten: Peace and Conflict (2013) ***

Director: Tony Britten
Script: Tony Britten
Producers: Tony Britten, Katja Mordaunt, Anwen Rees-Myers
Cast: Alex Lawther, Mykola Allen, Bradley Hall, John Hurt, Christopher Theobald

UK 150mins Docudrama

Director Tony Britten (no relation to Benjamin) has had an interesting and varied life; known more for his composition than his directing, even conducting the music for ‘Robocop’. Safe to say then, that he is a fan of Benjamin Britten, still the most performed British composer worldwide, celebrated for operas ‘Peter Grimes’, ‘Billy Budd’ and ‘The Turn Of The Screw’ and of course, his War Requiem.

Born in Lowestoft, 1913, Peace and Conflict marks the centenary of Britten’s birth and takes us from his formative years at Norfolk’s liberal Gresham School, where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of defector, Donald Maclean and one of the founder members of the CND, Roger Simon, through to his trip to Belsen shortly after the war, the US and his final years in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

The film charts his early years, pinpointing some of the heaviest influences on his young life, not least of which being the First World War. One hundred boys from Gresham’s lost their lives in that conflict which had a profound effect on the composer, who abhorred violence of any kind and became a Pacifist and Conscientious Objector for life.

Indeed, Gresham’s banned corporal punishment and became the first public school in the country to form a branch of the League of Nations Union, set up to foster peace and prevent future conflict.

Although a strong and emotive topic, the film is flawed, with the dramatised segments not sitting particularly well with the documented parts. Lawther though, as the young Britten, is a discovery and will undoubtedly go on to bigger and better things. John Hurt provides the narration, with typical aplomb; he is as much a dear and recognisable part of the fabric of Britain, as Sir David Attenborough or, of course, Benjamin Britten. But the overriding star of the show was always going to be the music and Tony Britten has squeezed as much as was humanly possible into the running time.

Although not always thoroughly engaging, it’s still fitting that a coherent record be made of a man who not only profoundly affected, but truly represented a generation. He wrote music for the people and was proud to do so and Peace and Conflict gives a little insight into the single-minded man behind it. AT

Cannes Film Festival 2013

CANNES WINNERS 2013

PALME D’OR: LA VIE D’ADÈLE, CHAPITRE 1 & 2 (BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR) by Abdelatif KECHICHE

GRAND PRIX: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIES by Ethan COEN and Joel COEN

BEST DIRECTOR: Amat ESCALANTE for HELI

JURY PRIZE: CHICHI NI NARU (LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON) by KORE-DA Hirokazu

BEST SCREENPLAY: TIAN ZHU DING (A TOUCH OF SIN) JIA Zhangke

BEST ACTOR: Bruce DERN in NEBRASKA (Alexander Payne)

BEST ACTRESS: Berenice BÉJO in LE PASSÉ (Asghar FARHADI)

CAMERA D’OR (Debut) ILO ILO – Anthony CHEN

Cut and paste the link into your browser to watch the full closing ceremony http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/mediaPlayer/13498.html

Abdelatif Kechiche with Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos

UN CERTAIN REGARD :

Prix Un Certain Regard
L’IMAGE MANQUANTE by Rithy PANH (Cambodge/France)

Prix du Jury
OMAR by Hany ABU-ASSAD (Palestine)

Prix de la Mise en Scène
Alain GUIRAUDIE for L’INCONNU DU LAC (France)

Prix Un Certain Talent
L’ensemble des acteurs de LA JAULA DE ORO by Diego QUEMADA-DIEZ (Mexique/Espagne)

Prix de l’Avenir
FRUITVALE STATION by Ryan COOGLER (USA)

The sun shone on the Croisette this year for the 66th Cannes Film Festival. There have been some strong contenders in the COMPETITION and UN CERTAIN REGARD sections and there are some appealing documentaries in the mix. Here’s a round-up of a selection of screenings from the Competition, Un Certain Regard and the Cannes Film Market:

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IN COMPETITION

YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL 2* COMPETITION

After the clanging furore of Baz Luhrmann’s brash but ambitious GREAT GATSBY in 3D things could only get better but they didn’t. Francois Ozon’s coming of ager YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (JEUNE ET JOLIE) is a competent drama centring on a teenager, playing by French model Marine Vacth, who is unimpressed by her first sexual encounter but discovers that she can finance her studies through offering her body. Nothing new there. She services old married men until tragedy strikes. Well-crafted and competent, it nevertheless fails to set the night on fire.

HELI 2* COMPETITION

Amat Escalante offers a pared-down portrait of an impoverished Mexican family at the wrong end of the drug trade. Punctuated by episodes of brutal and gratuitous violence: do we really have to see a puppy’s head being torn off or a man genitals being set alight – ouch; a film should be remembered for the story it tells and the emotions it engages rather than for savage, attention-seeking violence. HELI fails to move because we care little for the characters involved and their lives.

THE PAST 4* COMPETITION

Secrets from the past are unlocked when Ahmad returns to Paris to finalise his divorce from his French wife, Marie (Berenice Bejo). An involving, schematic drama that becomes increasingly intriguing as the truth emerges. THE PAST is an authentic study of a contemporary, urban family although it doesn’t quite have the kick of A SEPARATION. Strong and subtle performances from Tahir Rahim and Ali Mosaffa.

A TOUCH OF SIN 3* COMPETITION

Interweaving four stories from different locations and social settings in modern China, Jia Zhangke’s shows contrasts rural ways with those of the high-tech metropolis. A TOUCH OF SIN has a well-developed visual aesthetic and some great performances from leads, JIang Wu, Wang Baoqiang and Zhao Tao, although ultimately it feels in-cohesive and meandering.

JIMMY P (PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN) 3* COMPETITION

Arnaud Deplechin offers up an intelligent if ponderous insight into postwar Second World War psychotherapy. Based on a true story, Benecio Del Toro is well cast and engaging.

BORGMAN 2* COMPETITION

A darkly comedic and confusing parable set in the Dutch countryside, BORGMAN has echoes of Pasolini’s TEOREMA without the style and presence, or indeed, the acting talent. At times preposterous, it could be viewed as a simple tale of the infiltration of a sociopath into a smug, middle class family or a treatise on immigration, on the part of xenophobes.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS 4* COMPETITION

The Coen brothers return with a wittily-scripted, lusciously photographed and offbeat look at the struggle to fame of a young folk singer in Greenwich Village in 1961. Shot through with brilliant moments and vignettes, particularly from Carey Mulligan and John Goodman, it captures the true essence of what it is to be an artist although its musical content may not appeal to mainstream audiences.

L’INCONNU DU LAC 4* UN CERTAIN REGARD

The first really provocative thriller of the festival is Alain Giraudie’s STRANGER BY THE LAKE which feels peaceful, disturbing and utterly gripping right up until its intriguing denouement. This will not appeal to a mainstream audience due to its all male cast who indulge in naturism by a lakeside, swimming, chatting and bonding with each other and occasionally indulging in explicit sex in the lush vegetation nearby. Leavened by quirky, almost humorous moments, the overall tone is intense and the undercurrent as sinister as the characters involved.

BLOOD TIES 4* COMPETITION

Guillaume Canet’s family drama features a starry cast of James Caan, Marion Cotillard, Clive Owen and Billy Crudup as a close-knit but feuding New York family from the rough end of town. A remake of the French hit, LES LIENS DU SANG, It focuses on two brothers: one a policeman (Crudup) one a perp (Owen) who are unable to reconcile their love-hate relationship. With its authentic seventies aesthetic (Sidney Lumet comes to mind) and dynamite performances from the leads, BLOOD TIES sounds promising but fails to lift off after a stodgy first hour and remains inert despite occasional bursts of action. James Gray co-wrote the script but ultimately it feels turgid and, at over two hours running time, overlong. Matthias Schoenhaerts has a slim but powerful part as a gangster and he really shines in a scary portrayal of evil.

ONLY GOD FORGIVES **** COMPETITION

Malevolent, dark and exciting: Nicholas Winding Refyn’s latest is one of the festival highlights so far. Each frame is a masterpiece of form and composition, its cinematic look and incandescent sound design dominate the narrative. This is not a film that will not appeal to mainstream audiences. Ryan Gosling is totally submissive here, very much serving the film with his perfect look of haunted composure. It’s elegant, sophisticated and brooding with a colourful, exotic Oriental aesthetic, rooted in Danish style and precision. With a mesmerising performance from Kristin Scott Thomas, it is certain to polarise audiences.

A CASTLE IN ITALY *** COMPETITION

Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi has been rather quiet since her sister took centre stage as France’s first lady but here she makes her directorial debut with a contemporary comedy drama in which she stars as a fortysomething woman from a wealthy Italian industrialist background (her own but not in name) who is tasked with raising finance to pay off vast tax debts. It’s a histrionic, strident and neurotic peace of filmmaking beautifully set in rural Italy. Her character is desperate to procreate finding herself without “a husband, children or a job” as her traditional mother points out scathingly. She enters into a relationship with Louis Garrel’s young and unstable actor, while her brother is dying of AIDS. It’s a spot-on portrait of modern Italy and of a woman in crisis set against a traditional family background.

MARKET SCREENINGS

BECOMING TRAVIATA 4*

A soaring story that asks the question: does the emotion in opera come from the music, the acting or the singing? BECOMING TRAVIATA follows Nathalie Dessay behind the scenes in rehearsals, preparing for an outdoor opera season in the South of France. It’s one of the most moving, mesmerising and enjoyable music documentaries I’ve seen for a while and I’m not an opera-lover.

LA DANZA DE LA REALIDAD 3*

OUT OF COMPETITION

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest outing is fraught with dystopian characters and freaks as he revisits his surreal childhood. It’s a real family affair this time, even the score is created by a family member. It’s deliriously outrageous and imaginative but, at times, too self-absorbed: and with a running time of over two hours, it’s debatable whether even fans will want to stay on the dance floor.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED *** OUT OF COMPETITION

Eric Baldwin’s documentary filmed during 2012 in Cannes, purports to offer an insight into film financing as her prepares to fund a soft porn film featuring himself and Neave Campbell. In reality it’s only of interest for its interviews and footage of Baldwin talkig to Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, James Caan and Francis Ford Coppola about the bad times and the good times of their road to success.

BASTARDS 3* UN CERTAIN REGARD

Claire Denis always divides audiences. She returns to Cannes with her first film shot on digital: an enigmatic thriller starring Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroanni . Elliptical in nature, it’s a spare but provocative story with intense performances and pounding electronic score from Tindersticks. Vincent Lindon plays a tanned and sophisticated captain in the merchant navy who falls for Chiara Mastroanni’s married woman when they become neighbours. Both are embroiled in complicated financial and family circumstances. Agnes Godard’s deft cinematography creates a dark and brooding work.

OMAR 4* UN CERTAIN REGARD

OMAR is another strong drama. Set in the Middle East and dealing with the Arab Israeli conflict from a Palestian perspective, it certainly doesn’t hide its allegiances which lie firmly in against the IDF – Israel Defence League. With a cast of newcomers, Hany Abu-Assad’s drama is visually powerful and politically resonant despite a slightly predictable storyline.

The festival continues until 26 May..and we look at David Lynch’s DURAN DURAN: UNSTAGED…and more CANNES award winners. Here’s Roman Polanski talking about his latest film VENUS IN FUR which premiered on Saturday 25th May 2013 at Cannes:

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FESTIVAL TURKEY

A great director and writer doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good film: such was the case for THE CANYONS, Paul Schrader’s much-anticipated ‘erotic’ thriller described as “Youth, glamour, sex and Los Angeles 2012”. Oh dear!.

Matters got off to an unpromising start when it was reported that Leslie Coutterand had been on call throughout the entire filming process due to Lindsay Lohan’s repeated absences and feuds with the director. Finance was raised through a Kickstarter campaign, and the resulting film was rejected from Sundance and SXSW. I was determined to give it a chance being a fan of Schrader’s earlier work, though not, I hasten to add, of Lohan.

As it is, she appears vaguely unhinged and physically bloated during her entire performance as young actress, Tara. This is supposed to be a soft porn movie, so why is Lohan wearing a pair of Bridget Jones-style knickers under her leatherette treggings for an evening out with a girlfriend?. One can only assume it was to rein in her porky midriff from too much booze and cigarettes. Sexy or what?

As suggested by the title, Tara is living with her producer boyfriend Christian (porn star James Deen) in a rather glamorous modernist house on the edge of the hillside overlooking the ocean. Theirs is not an easy relationship with Christian being a control-freak and demanding to know her whereabouts as he swings in from a day at the studios to find her poolside. He cleverly swaps her phone to discover a text messages showing that she’s cheating on him with a pretty young actor called Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk). When the camera starts zooming in on mobile phone screens, and relying on text messages to drive the narrative forward, one realises the story is doomed. The strange thing is, it’s possibly the least sexual film of the entire festival (apart from BlackFish). There are no real sex scenes to speak of but a great of deal of glowering, posturing and pouting goes on, largely from Lohan and Deen. It transpires that Ryan, who is straight, has his own cross to bear: he is up for a juicy acting role, but success may require him to sleep with the gay head of the studios and he is forced to have oral sex with him just for starters.

What follows is a predictably troubled but unremarkable voyage through the seamier side of a dysfunctional relationship. It almost feels like one of those ‘made for TV’ soaps you catch in a holiday hotel room in Spain or Italy when surfing through the options. In a cameo, Gus Van Sant plays Christian’s shrink, and it’s the best thing about the whole affair. Brett Easton Ellis’s script is appalling with cardboard dialogue along the following lines: “Are you cheating on me? What d’you mean by cheating? Well cheating, with another guy.

Please Mr Schrader, you’re such a talented man. When you next make a film, make it with proper actors and a decent storyline.

The Great Gatsby (2013) ** Cannes Film Festival 2013

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Director: Baz Luhrmann

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan

143mins Romantic Drama

If you like your films brash, glib and raffling then Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby is for you. It takes a slim volume by Scott Fitzgerald, almost a novella, and turns it into an opulently gargantuan feast of a film at nearly two and a half hours, that is sumptuous to look but far too much to endure in one sitting and leaves you feeling rather unwell. And to make matters worse, this all-singing, all-dancing affair is in 3D.

The main drawback here is that the top table visuals are simply too heavyweight to support the lightweight script. And the book’s subtle and finely crafted romantic lost love affair is swamped with a long drawn-out courtship that feels leaden and overworked despite excellent performances from the leads, who are well-cast and watchable. Narrated in flashback, there is a 21st century angle of having Toby Maguire’s Nick undergo therapy for his alcoholism and to underpin this he sports a sullenly condescending expression throughout the proceedings.

The film is magnificent in its recreation of the Long Island parties and extravagance of the roaring twenties but if you’re looking for a really great Gatsby then my advice would be to stick with the Jack Clayton 1974 version until a better one comes along. MT

THE GREAT GATSBY OPENED THE 66TH CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2013

The Liability (2012) ***

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Director Craig Viveiros John Wrathall

Tim Roth Jack O’Connell, Peter Mullan, Talulah Riley,

82min Action Thriller UK

I spotted this nifty comedy thriller in one of the market screenings at Cannes last year and I’m glad to see it’s been picked up and is now on general release from Friday . Essentially a two-hander, this low-budget Britflic, has the magical alchemy of Tim Roth and Jack O’Connell, who play two bungling hitmen managing to brew up something dark and amusing under the clever direction of former cinematographer Craig Viveiros. It also has a cracking original soundtrack by Vicky Wijeratne and a sixties classic number ‘Una Rotonda Sul Mare’ by Fred Bongusto.

O’Connell plays Adam, a 19 year-old whose mum is dating crime boss Peter (Peter Mullan). As punishment for crashing Peter’s car, Adam agrees to drive his associate, Roy (Tim Roth), on a journey that starts in a old Ford Escort and transports him to a world of murder, sex trafficking and Latvian crims. Enter Talulah Riley.

Shot in and around the bleak and beautiful coastline of Northumberland, with vague echoes of Get Carter and The Hit, The Liability wanders into road movie territory but never quite gets into the fast lane because the story revolves around the relationship of the two leads that comes unstuck eventually in a violent and implausible climax, leaving too many lose ends. That said, this is a promising third feature for Vivieros and the well-drawn performances from a stellar cast are sure to keep you entertained and amused for the modest running time. MT

THE LIABILITY WILL BE SHOWING IN CINEMAS FROM 17TH MAY 2013

Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) **** DVD and BLU-RAY

Director/Script: Jay Bulger

Cast: Andrew S Karsch, Fisher Stevens, Erik H Gordon,

92min US/South Africa Music Documentary

Beware of Mr. Baker begins with legendary Cream drummer extraordinaire Ginger Baker, violently and authentically attacking our documentary maker Jay Bulger, leading us in to what appears to be a comedic tale of an angry and bitter old man who has lived a comprehensive rock and roll lifestyle to its fullest. However this opening scene actually marks the beginning of a somewhat tragic tale of a lonely man whose corruptive nature has seen him make many enemies, and lose many friends, across the course of his remarkable life.

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Bulger had the privilege of staying at Baker’s South African residence, getting to know his subject through a series of candid interviews following a career that has seen him dip in and out of various projects from Cream to Blind Faith to collaborating with Fela Kuti, having aggressive fights with his band members, getting heavily addicted to heroin, marrying four times, and even taking up the sport polo. The key components in this fascinating life: the wives, the friends (and enemies), the abandoned children, are all interviewed too, as we paint a poignant picture of a somewhat unfulfilling livelihood.

To begin with, this feature seems to be heading down a Louis Theroux style of filmmaking, with the director consistently present. But such an approach doesn’t last very long, and Bulger soon detaches himself, avoiding any self-indulgence in the process. His presence is important though, as through Bulger we learn how Baker communicates with people in the present day, which is essential in fully understanding him. Bulger admits to having never heard of Baker prior to taking on this project, and such an innocent form of ignorance is vital too as he enters into it with no personal attachment or preceding knowledge, making for an objective piece of cinema.

When you can see past the initial façade of Baker, we are left with a somewhat sad tale, and while our subject wears sunglasses throughout the course of the film, it’s only at the very end when he removes them that you realise they had been covering up a great deal of sadness and regret. The more affecting moments derive from subtle moments within the movie and some expert editing such as when Baker declares Eric Clapton is the best friend he ever had, only for Clapton to distance himself, with great compassion, from the strenuous drummer. The brilliance of this piece is mostly thanks to the alluring figure that we are exploring. Baker has lived through so many hardships – most of which are as a result of his own wrongdoing. His self-destructive, callous nature leads to many incredible anecdotes, while his charisma ensures we always stay on his side, despite everything.

At times Baker can be guarded, and Bulger has to work hard to earn his respect, but fortunately the surrounding talking head interviews ensure we have people to fill in the gaps, candidly opening up to camera to make sure we are presented with the most authentic picture of this man’s life. As such we truly feel that we are getting into his head, proving that we shouldn’t be in need of a biopic anytime soon, as Bulger has immortalised this temperamental, hugely memorable figure on screen for good. That said, it is somewhat tempting to get one in the works, for the sole factor that Bill Nighy would be perfect casting for the lead role. SP

BEWARE OF MR. BAKER IS OUT ON DVD AND BLU RAY FROM 22ND JULY 2013 COURTESY OF CURZON FILM WORLD WWW.CURZONAE.COM

Village at the End of the World (2012)

Directors: Sarah Gavron and David Katznelson

Producer: Al Morrow

76min UK/Denmark/Greenland 2012

Lars is a tall, good-looking 17-year-old: he has the latest Nike trainers, a tee-shirt emblazoned “Will fuck on first date” and 200 friends on Facebook. But Lars doesn’t live in London or any urban centre; he eats seal meat with a knife and is one of only 59 people living in a remote part of Northern Greenland where there are no girls his own age.

True to his Shamen ancestors and beliefs, if he gets angry or frustrated he makes a ‘Tupilat’ out of sealskin to ward off evil spirits. Ilannguaq, the only immigrant here was attracted by online dating and ended up dealing with the sewerage. He now feels part of this community and has set up a thriving tourism link with neighbouring countries.

Niaqornat, Northern Greenland is a hostile but ravishingly beautiful lunar landscape, where fish and seal blood stain the snowy beaches visceral red and the inhabitants hunt as a matter of survival, toiling cheerfully to an ambient sound of howling dogs and bitter winds.

And they’re a happy breed these Greenlanders and a handsome one too with their dark looks and almond eyes. There’s something enviable about their apparent good mental health attributable to the fact that everyone here has a role and respects it. Fellow Danes, who still hold sway over this part of the World and who visit on the cruiseships to buy trinkets and marvel: “Nothing has changed here since the old days”. But any condescension towards the islanders swiftly evaporates when we spend some time with them: these are fierce, traditional hunters who kill AND have shrewd 21st century business brains. For mod cons they rely on the visit of the Royal Arctic supply ship but the ice is getting thinner with each passing year.

Told through the eyes of four inhabitants: Lars, the teenager; Karl, the hunter; Ilannguaq, the outside; and Annie, the oldest woman: Sarah Gavron’s documentary starts in Summer 2009 and takes us through a year in the life Niaqornat where’s everyone is related staring the surname ‘Kruse’. Colourful wooden houses shelter them from the icy blasts but connect them to the rest of the world via satellite, internet and telephone, remarkably.

There is a local school where the kids have ambitions to be pilots and shopkeepers, although there is only one shop and no definitely no ‘Starbucks’. According to Annie, Brigitte Bardot is the nemesis of these people whose survival depends on traditional fishing and hunting and, thanks to Ilannguaq, craft sales to visiting cruise-ships. The plan to get a fish factory back into production is not going to be easy but for Kark Kruse, head of the village, harpooning a Polar Bear and dealing with Danish Health and Safety execs are all in a day’s work. The villagers don’t want to lose their community but to be self-sufficient. And their fight very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

And it’s a tough story to tell: Greenlandic is a complex visual language based on the weather which naturally made the 3-year shoot a difficult one but what shines through is a fabulous human interest story: David Katznelson’s striking visuals help us live it like a native. With close-up shots on a hand-held digital camera it feels like we’re actually part of the action, from riding the fishing boat and butchering a whale to sharing an arctic sunset or the welcome reappearance of the sun on the first day of Spring.MT

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 10TH MAY 2013 IN SELECTED CINEMAS

1860 (1934)

Also known as Gesuzza the Garibaldian Wife, this compact but hugely influential war epic employed non-professional actors in the leads and was largely filmed on location in rural Sicily. The adventure certainly has enough in common with the Post-War Neo-Realist films to be considered a seminal contributor.

Biasetti will always have his detractors and, whilst he was no Leni Riefenstahl, he was certainly a fan of Il Duce. It might perhaps be argued that he was simply a practical filmmaker who understood that if he was going to get a film made at all, he needed to understand which side his bread was buttered; hence a film with an openly nationalistic stance about an almost mythic hero of Italy, Garibaldi.

Two major points of influence in Biasetti’s choices was a rejection of the huge impact of Hollywood films, with their studio-built elaborate sets and massive superstars and instead, the migration towards the aesthetic of recent Russian films, from the likes of Eisenstein and Dovzhenko. Biasetti wanted to get back to what made Italy “Italy’, casting a real shepherd as his lead, wearing traditional Sicilian garb; a film populated by recognisable Italians from up an down the country and with a recognisable country as backdrop.

But Blasetti’s film proved hugely influential beyond just propaganda of the time and has remained iconic. His choice of shot, lighting, design, style and sound have individually and collectively provided much to marvel and influenced not only the Neo-Realist movement, but a great many filmmakers who followed.

1860 concerns the plight of a simple everyman partisan tasked with finding the legendary Garibaldi in his Northern Headquarters and getting him to return to Sicily with him to galvanise the people to repel the King’s hired mercenaries. Leaving his new wife behind, he travels across the whole of Italy and then attempts to petition the peoples’ hero to come help his cause.

This is a quite extraordinary venture despite its modest running time, and loses none of its power in the intervening 80 years. The acting is anything but Historical Drama. There’s a very definite documentary feel to the film, from the use of so many local people and no little art and effort in the construct, folding in emblematic art and shot composition to reflect known and familiar art of the time, with jingoistic anthems and a great attention to detail in costume.

So, apart from being a film of great historical note and no doubt the subject of many a dull college dissertation, 1860 is also a watchable adventure, with a cast of hundreds and one of the greatest battle scenes of all time. Be amazed. AT

AVAILABLE VIA CRITERION AND AMAZON.CO.UK

The Comedian (2012)**

Director: Tom Shkolnik

Cast: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Edward Hogg, Elisa Lasowski

70mins Drama

There’s nothing funny about The Comedian. A slice of realism developed by Tom Shkolnik: it has an improvised script and features a bland array of one twenty and thirty-something characters attempting to express their feelings, sadly coming across as inarticulate and one-dimensional.

Ben (Edward Hogg) is a confused messer: a person you really hope you’ll never meet, let alone become involved with emotionally or even as a friend. Working in a call centre but wishing he could make it in stand-up comedy, he drifts around the fringes of his mixed-up sexuality with Nathan (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), a genuinely pleasant young artist who adds a spark of authenticity to the proceedings. But when they start a relationship, with some tender and emotional sex scenes, Ben becomes evasive and starts to develop feelings for his flatmate Elisa (Elisa Laswoski), a musician, who then decides she’s needing time alone.

These characters are a drag and The Comedian is bogged down with poor visuals and a flabby narrative structure, despite well-crafted performances from the three leads. At 70 minutes, it feels like a short that’s been extended into a full feature. It’s like a bad joke that has you desperately waiting for the punchline. MT

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012)

Director: Mira Nair

Script: William Wheeler, Ami Boghani, Mohsin Hamed Prod: Lydia Dean Pilcher

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Om Puri

USA/UK/Qatar 128mins Drama

Based on the book of the same name by Mohsin Hamed, who helped adapt the screenplay and filmed around the world in India, Istanbul, Atlanta and New York, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an interesting choice by Director Nair to make, familiar as we are with her previous films such as Monsoon Wedding, Kama Sutra and Vanity Fair. However, she has also illustrated an interest as a filmmaker with the wider political sphere, having made the India segment of 11.09.01- September 11, a film concerning the impact of events on September 11^th.

Best known for Shifty, Four Lions and the more recent Ill Manors, Riz Ahmed takes the title role which, for a Hollywood movie, is a rarity in itself, bringing with it a stellar cast. He is eminently watchable, despite sporting a rather poor false beard for much of it. But this film, however interesting it may be in subject matter, has to rest in the ‘worthy but dull’ category. The film never really manages to get off the page; characterisation and dialogue are both leaden and predictable and there are never any surprises thrown up, even though the actors are good. The characters remain rather rote and two-dimensional. The ‘Greedy Boss’, the ‘Troubled Girlfriend’, the ‘Honourable Dad’. There were no extra colours thrown in the mix ensure these characters life.

It could also have benefited from a sharper knife in the edit, running long, at over two hours. This is a great shame, because the story and the conversation it asks for is an interesting one, unfortunately not best served by this slow moving, ultimately unabsorbing stab at ‘race issues’. AT

Mud (2012) ****

Director: Jeff Nichol

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard, Reese Witherspoon

130min US Drama

Jeff Nichol’s story of a likeable but mysterious loner (Matthew McConaughey) who bonds with two young boys in the deep south has much to recommend it in terms of gripping drama, adventure and strong performances. It’s also a beautifully told love story with a ring of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ to it, imbued with palpable swampy heat and Adam Stone’s lush and scenic visuals.

The story surrounds a group of characters who, for some reason or other, appear to be broken or down on their luck. Teenager Ellis (Tye Sheridan) is worried and insecure over the likely divorce of his parents. His best friend Neckbone’s, (Jacob Lofland) parents are no longer around and he’s looked after by his fisherman uncle in a characterless and poverty-stricken town.

While playing around near an island in the Mississippi, the boys stumble across an old boat which is the secret home to the raddled and sunburnt “Mud”(Matthew McConaughey) who appears to be in hiding after killing a man during a argument . Somehow, maybe because of Mud’s genuine remorse over his past ways, this doesn’t seem to register in the collective consciousness of the boys who are more interested in the the boat and readily help Mud, feeding him during visits to and from the town rather than reporting him to the local sheriff.

Ellis is a sensitive character played here by newcomer Tye Sheridan. He portrays a self-possessed boy with wisdom and stature way beyond his years giving him the maturity to attract an older girlfriend. He is by far far an away the most most impressive character in the piece, commanding respect yet retaining his childlike vulnerability. He’s also a well drawn portrait of disappointment and despair. Mud confides in him and asks him to get in contact with his ex (Reece Witherspoon) in the hope of patching things up with her. He also asks them to commit a small crime which they gladly do on his behalf, such is their trust in him. Naturally events dont go according to plan.

Matthew McConaughey and Reece Witherspoon give the best performances of their careers to date as star-crossed on/off lovers with a difficult past. Reece Withersppoon is convincing and serious in her role as Mud’s trailer trashy ex, who’s nevertheless worthy of respect and not going to be hurt a second time. Sam Shepard is also strong as Mud’s shady father figure, who also has a sketchy and not all together straightforward past. MT

MUD IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 9TH MAY 2013 IN CINEMAS ACROSS LONDON

Ealing Studio Rarities Collection – Volume 2

Network Distributing is releasing the second in its series of so-called Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, featuring four black and white short feature films with some heavyweight star power.

MIDSHIPMAN EASY (1935) Carol Reed 70mins

Starring Hughie Green Margaret Lockwood, Roger Livesay Robert Adams, Harry Tate.

Melodramatic comedy set during the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic War. Green plays Easy, a maverick young man who runs away to sea seeking adventure and gets a little more than he bargains for. This was a studio pic made before Lockwood came to international renown in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, here playing a Spanish Grandee’s daughter. Perhaps one for Lockwood completists only.

BRIEF ECSTASY, (1938) Edmond T Grenville 72mins
Starring Paul Lukas Hugh Williams, Linden Travers and Marie Ney

Shot very much in silent movie style, Basil Mason’s script concerns the love of a student, Helen Norwood, for aviator Jim Wyndham. But their blossoming relationship is curtailed when he leaves for India to care for his father. Their love is further threatened by the attentions of a professor at the university and the vagaries of communication before BBM. Another workmanlike short feature, with comedic touches and a good central conceit: the course of true love and all that.

THE BIG BLOCKADE (1942) Charles Frend 73mins

An extraordinary cast to this wartime propaganda docudrama; John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Will Hay, Robert Morley, Leslie Banks, Bernard Miles, Alfred Drayton, Michael Rennie and commentary by Frank Owen. A Michael Balcon Production for the ‘Ministry of Information’, showing the impact of the blockade put in place by the Allies against Nazi Germany at the start of the war, told in a series of series of humorous sketches. It does finish however, more soberly with some blanket bombing on behalf of the RAF.

THE FOUR JUST MEN (1939) Walter Forde 85mins

Starring Hugh Sinclair, Griffith Jones, Francis L. Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Alan Napier, Anna Lee.

Also known as The Secret Four, an adaptation of Edgar Wallace’s novel, The Four Just Men is set in WWI but is also clearly another propagandist film, made as it was under the eaves of the impending WWII.

An Espionage Adventure film, Frank Lawton is sprung from a Prussian prison just prior to being executed and then sets about attempting to rescue the free world from dastardly Nazi plots with the help of The Four Just Men: vigilantes, operating outside the law, fighting injustice wherever they find it.

Perhaps one for the collectors and fans of the many faces on offer here, but certainly not for lovers of arthouse, or particularly well-crafted films. Great that they are preserved for future generations though and they certainly don’t make ‘em like this any more.

THE EALING RARITIES COLLECTION VOLUME 2 Release date: 13 May 2013, £14.99 has a running time of 360 minutes. www.networkonair.com

FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL London 10-19 May 2013

FIFF celebrates its fourth year with an excting array of films from 10-19 May in four locations around London. Showcasing the common ground shared by the creative industries of fashion and film, this biennial culture show highlights the rich and vibrant array of costumes and fashions that have graced the silver screen. Adding cinematic edge and visual impact and allure, fashion and costume is an invaluable element in creating the right atmosphere for the era portrayed.

2013 FOCUS; MARCEL L’HERBIER

This year the focus is on the work of one of France’s most iconic and innovative filmmakers: Marcel L’Herbier. An ‘architect’ of film, he collaborated with the likes of Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Delauney, Fernand Leger and Lucien Lelong to bring together the various creative crafts of costume design, set design and make-up in the hope of elevating cinema to a new art form. An avant-garde figure in the world of film during the vibrant cultural milieu of inter-war Paris, his films will be showcased in this year’s festival which paying homage to some of his classic silent films.

We particularly recommend: L’ARGENT (1928) which brings Emile Zola’s deuxieme empire novel to the screen in the era of Art Deco and has live musical accompaniment.

THE FULL PROGRAMME IS AS FOLLOWS

LONDON |

10 MAY 2013

L’Argent

Location:	BFI Southbank, NFT3
Date & Time:	10 May 2013 – 18:30
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams

11 MAY 2013

L’Epervier

Location:	Ciné Lumière
Date & Time:	11 May 2013 – 14:00
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams

12 MAY 2013

Le Parfum de la dame en noir

Location:	Ciné Lumière
Date & Time:	12 May 2013 – 14:00
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Introduced by Mireille Beaulieu

13 MAY 2013

Le Vertige

Location:	BFI Southbank, NFT3
Date & Time:	13 May 2013 – 18:15
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Introduced by Nick Rees-Roberts

14 MAY 2013

Your Guide to the Fashions of the Future

Location:	The Horse Hospital
Date & Time:	14 May 2013 – 19:00
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Hosted by Ken Hollings and Marketa Uhlirova

15 MAY 2013

Claude Autant-Lara

Location:	BFI Southbank, NFT3
Date & Time:	15 May 2013 – 18:10
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Claude Autant-Lara: from the Inter-war Avant-Garde to New Wave Pariah. An Illustrated lecture by Sarah Leahy

16 MAY 2013

Le Vertige

Location:	BFI Southbank, NFT3
Date & Time:	16 May 2013 – 20:30
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams

17 MAY 2013

Looking at L’Herbier: French Modernism Between the Wars

Location:	Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, LVMH Lecture Theatre.
Date & Time:	17 May 2013 – 14:00 – 18:00
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Symposium organised by Caroline Evans

18 MAY 2013

L’Inhumaine

Location:	Barbican
Date & Time:	18 May 2013
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Introduced by Caroline Evans

19 MAY 2013

L’Argent

Location:	BFI Southbank, NFT3
Date & Time:	19 May 2013 – 15:50
Directed By:	Marcel L’Herbier
Programme:	Marcel L’Herbier: Fabricating Dreams

FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL IS AT THE BFI, THE HORSE HOSPITAL, THE CINE LUMIERE AND THE BARBICAN, LONON FROM 10-19 MAY 2013

Le Long Weekend French Gala London 8-12 May 2013

Taking place in London at the Tricycle and Cineworld, LE LONG WEEKEND is an opportunity to preview some major new French films before they official open in London courtesy of UKJF.

Festival highlights include ROMAIN DURIS in Régis Roinsard’s glamorous retro rom-com POPULAIRE and Claude Miller’s much anticipated THERESE DESQUEYROUX starring Audrey Tatou, based on François Mauriac’s eponymous book.

Popular French actor comedian Gad Elmaleh stars in the UK premiere of CAPITAL, set in the world of high finance, along with Gabriel Byrne. Director Costa-Gavras will be there to answer your questions after the showing. Bob Geldof is the somewhat unexpected guest actor in the adaptation of Justine Levy’s novel BAD GIRL, directed by Patrick Mille.

This is also an opportunity to catch some of the films that took part in the UK Jewish Film Festival last November, but not necessarily with Jewish themes.

POPULAIRE – UK Preview – Wednesday 8th May – Cineworld Fulham Road – 8.30 pm

Dir. Régis Roinsard | France 2012 | French with English subtitles | 111 mins | Cast: Romain Duris, Deborah Francois, Berenice Bejo

Régis Roinsard’s debut is a charming retro rom-com set in the 1950s, that shifts the Eliza Doolittle / Henry Higgins dynamic into the dazzling world of speed typing contests. After having left her small village, in which she was promised to a dead-end future, Rose decides to settle into the city of Lisieux where she meets her destiny. We spoke to Roman Duris during his recent visit to London.

FREE MEN (LES HOMMES LIBRES) – Thursday 9th May – Tricycle – 7 pm

Dir. Ismael Ferroukhi | France 2011 | French with English subtitles | 99 mins | Cast; Tahar Rahim, Michael Lonsdale and Mahmud Shalaby

Tahar Rahim recently starred in Joachim Lafosse’s OUR CHILDREN and Francois Audiard’s A PROPHET with veteran French actor Niels Arestrup. Here he plays Younes, a young Algerian who agrees to spy on the Paris Mosque to avoid a jail sentence. Younes’ deep friendship with a Jewish Algerian singer leads to political conflict.

BAD GIRLS (MAUVAISES FILLE) – UK Premiere – Thursday 9th May – Tricycle – 9 pm

Dir. Patrick Mille | France 2012 | French with English subtitles | 108 mins | Cast: Bob Geldof, Carole Bouquet, Arthur Dupont and Izia Higelin

César Award 2013 for Best Promising Actress- Izia Higelin

Worth seeing for the luminous Carole Bouquet (Feux Rouges, Unforgivable) who stars as Alice, a terminally ill mother to Louise (Izia Higelin). Adapted from the novel by Justine Levy (daughter of media star and philosopher Bernard Henri Levy) and directed by her husband Patrick Mille, this is a thought-provoking film about an interesting family. Naturally, who else could play rock star Georges but Bob Geldof, the father of 20-something Louise, who has to deal with her mother’s disease at the same time that she learns she is expecting a baby with boyfriend actor, Pablo, a bull-fighting enthusiast.

THERESE DESQUEROUX – Saturday May 11th May – 9:30 pm

Dir. Claude Miller | France 2012 | French with English subtitles | 110 mins | Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche

Audrey Tautou gives a strong and spirited performance as Thérèse, a heroine from the same stable as Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina. Suffocated by her loveless marriage in 1920s France to a boorish landowner, she makes a fatal bid for freedom, in the late director Claude Miller’s exquisite adaptation of the classic novel by François Mauriac, which closed the Cannes Film 2012.

(ALMOST) FAMOUS

UN PRINCE (PRESQUE) CHARMANT (2013) UK Premiere – Brunch screening – Sunday 12th May – 12 pm Brunch & 12:30 Film

Jean-Marc’s road trip to the south of France for his only daughter’s wedding is threatened by a pressing business deal and then a general strike. But when the beautiful Marie asks for a ride, Jean-Marc’s life is turned upside down.

WHAT THE DAY OWES THE NIGHT (Ce que le jour doit à la nuit) – UK Premiere – Sunday 12th May – Tricycle – 3:30 pm

Dir. Alexandre Arcady | France 2012 | French with English subtitles | 159 mins | Cast; Nora Arzeneder, Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Anne Parillaud

An epic tale of impossible love by the leading Jewish Algerian director Alexandre Arcady. Set amid the simmering tensions of French-Algerian relations between the 1940s and 1960s. Nine year-old Younes builds up a special relationship with the beautiful Emilie. Only later does he learn, when they meet again as adults, that a tragic error has changed his life forever.

CAPITAL – LE CAPITAL – Le Long Weekend Gala – Sunday 12th May – Tricycle – 6:45 Reception & 7:30 pm Film – Q&A with film director Costa-Gavras

Dir. Costa-Gavras | France 2012 | French with English subtitles | 114 mins | Cast: Gad Elmaleh, Gabriel Byrne, Natacha Regnier

San Sebastian2012 Nomination for Best Feature

Winner of the Solidarity Award at the 2012 San Sebastian Film Festival and directed by the Oscar-winning French/Greek director Costa Gavras (Missing, Music Box, Z), Capital is a thoroughly entertaining spoof melodrama set in the contemporary world of high finance, although actor Gad Elmaleh is miscast in the lead of here. When appointed as head of a French bank, Marc Tourneuil’s ruthless ambition becomes apparent as he stops at nothing to keep his newly acquired position.

LE LONG WEEKEND – make the most of it while you can!

Bakumatsu Taiyo-Den (1957)

The Sun Legend Of The End Of The Tokugawa Era

Dir: Yuzo Kawashima | Script: Shohei Imamura | Cast: Frankie Sakai, Sachiko Hidari, Yoko minamida, Yujiro Ishihara, Izumi Ashikawa, Toshiyuki Ichimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Hisano Yamaoka | Comedy, Japan, 110mins

A prestigious Blue Ribbon for star comedian Frankie Sakai, a Japanese award set up in 1950 by the critics, little-known internationally, but very highly prized at home. It’s worth remarking that it also won top prizes at two other prestigious Japanese awards, the Kinema Junpo (Sakai-Best Actor) and Best Score for Toshiro Mayazumi at the Mainichi Film Concours.

Black and White, with English subtitles, Bakumatsu Taiyo-Den combines a variety of straight all the way through to broad slapstick comedy, almost in the ‘Carry On’ vein, with genuine drama, so to Western sensibilities it can feel quite uneven in tone. This said, in 1999, it was voted fifth greatest Japanese film of all time in Japan.

Japanese comedy is without doubt an acquired taste, but if you are self-assured in your points of reference within the Japanese milieu, then there is alot to be gained from this complex, layered, confident piece from director, Kawashima.

To offer a little of the homework necessary to frame this film, it is set mainly within the confines of a brothel in the Shinagawa District of Tokyo in 1862, six years before the fall of the (Tokugawa) Shogun Era; Japan lay under quasi-British occupation, to the understandable chagrin of the Japanese people.

At this time, prostitution was still legal and huge districts of brothels servicing the Samurai had existed for centuries. Bakumatsu Taiyo-Den is set at a time just before the fall of the Samurai, when the future of the country was uncertain and a steady living hard to come by, especially those in the service industries.

So, this red light district attracts all sorts; soldiers find themselves rubbing shoulders with superiors, relatives and even sworn enemies whilst hoping to snatch a little RnR from their hectic lives… hence providing the comedy and the drama, as the geisha’s swap rooms as fast as affections in a sometime successful attempt to keep several suitors sweet and thus scrape a living to pay the rent.

Into this cutthroat every-man-for-himself world of greedy landlords, resistance fighters and treacherous affections steps Sakai, ‘the Grifter’, a man who lives entirely on his wits, dancing on quicksand. He understands need and knows there’s a profit to be made in times of upheaval.

For me, it’s a question of taste. I’m happier to watch Ozu, Kurosawa, Koreeda, Kitano, Kobayashi, Mizoguchi… the broader comedy elements here left me unengaged and yet I marvelled at the accomplished depth and breadth of the film, as well as the performances of most of the cast. Without doubt, the inclusion of real drama is one of the reasons it has endured so well with audiences for so long. It refuses to be dismissed simply as a forgettable, nebulous Japanese comedy and the film will without doubt resonate with me for some time to come. If you like your pathos served with bathos, there’s certainly plenty here to enjoy. AT

The Masters of Cinema series on DVD and Blu-ray

The Eye Of The Storm (2011)

Dir: Fred Schepisi | Wri: Judy Morris from the novel by Patrick White | Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Alexandra Schepisi, Robin Nevin | 119mins Australian drama

Faithfully adapted here for the screen by Fred Schepisi, Patrick White’s celebrated novel leaps from the page with intensity and vivid detail before flatlining despite a starry cast of Charlotte Rampling, Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis, and newcomer Alexandra Schepisi.

Gathering round Charlotte Rampling’s deathbed in a bid to get a slice of her fortune they fail to save a narrative hampered by subplots, the Edwardian sets are unimaginative and poorly lit and Paul Grabowsky’s score seems inappropriately upbeat in certain scenes.

The story jumps back and forth beginning with a young Elizabeth Hunter (Rampling) walking alluring along a tropical beach. She apparently suffered a head injury in 1952. A voiceover makes it clear that Sir Basil Hunter (Rush) is very much his mother’s son and patently adores her and, as the story leaps forward 20 years to the seventies, we see him making his way back to Australia to join his mother on her deathbed with along with her daughter Dorothy, who has become the Princess de Lascanbanes but still is deeply resentful of her mother. These two make short work of the sardonic dialogue giving subtle glimpses of their emotional pain and Rampling is majestic as a mother who still holds sway over her family and is unlikely, as ever, to change. A powerful story, and hats off to Patrick White for writing the book which led to his winning the Nobel Peace Price for literature in 1973. That said, the film version just doesn’t take off here despite Fred Schepisi’s directing efforts. MT

Running From Crazy (2013) ** Sundance London 2013

Director: Barbara Kopple

Cast: Mariel Hemingway, Bobby Williams

105min US Doc

Running from Crazy is a documentary seen through the eyes of Mariel Hemingway in an attempt to piece together clues as to why seven members of her legendary family have committed suicide.

The first thing that strikes you about this family is how perfectly photogenic and good-looking they all are with their long, lithe limbs and perfectly symmetrical features. Mariel is now in her early fifties now but still has the distinctive voice and childlike vulnerability she exuded in Woody Allen’s Manhatten. She has made friends with her ex-husband and the father to her two grown-up girls and is now appears settled with her business partner Bobby Williams, a fitness guru, in her Malibu ranch, spending the days jumping on a trampoline or attending functions for the many mental health charities she supports. A telling outburst between them during a climbing expedition hits a raw nerve leaving Mariel in a hissy fit on the ground but this is left aside without comment: it speaks volumes.

Barbara Kopples’s documentary is quite a self-indulgent and dilatory affair allowing Mariel scope to talk endlessly about her lack of a ‘real’ childhood and feelings of hatred towards her sister Margaux who she calls ‘dumb’ and deeply resented. It can’t have been easy being the youngest of three spirited girls with an alcoholic and unhappily-married mother (to her father Jack) who suffered from terminal cancer and slept in her bed for the first years of her life.

From a voyeuristic point of view, the film has a passing appeal from those interested in the Hemingway family but it has its own split personality as a piece of serious filmmaking, falling between two stools of neither being a cogent study of the Hemingway family and their legacy of suicide and alcoholism nor a satisfactory study of coming to terms with mental health and depression for Mariel.

The archive footage of the family is fascinating and welcome, like flicking through the pages of an old ‘Hello’ magazine or ‘Town and Country’, but doesn’t every family have their secret hates and desires? Without allowing the other members to comment – only Muffet survives and appears to have mental issues of her own when we see her in a brief exchange – It’s a one-sided and inconclusive affair, particularly as Mariel claims her father never talked about her grandfather Ernest; far the most interesting and accomplished member of the clan. Furthermore, she portrays her father as straightforward and down to earth, so the gene obviously missed a generation here but there’s no explanation or detail given here.

All in all then, Running From Crazy offers mild, passing interest but fails to tackle or dig deep into the real issues concerning the family or mental health, portraying Mariel as a decent and kind person but seemingly one with many personality conflicts of her own. MT

In A World (2013)

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Director/Script: Lake Bell

Cast: Lake Bell, Fred Melamed, Demetri Martin, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, Rob Corddry

90min US Comedy

The film opens with a tribute to Don LaFontaine, the famous voice artist, and this is a story about fragile egos at the top and the competitive world of showbusiness. Lake Bell, as Carol finds herself suddenly ousted from the family home to make room for her father’s doting younger girlfriend and into the flat of her married sister Dani, (Michaela Watkins) and her husband, Moe (Rob Corddry) who are experiencing their own problems.

In A World, has the comfortable feel of a TV soap such as ‘Rhoda’ or even ‘Caroline in the City’ with its New York Jewish humour and sharp and punchy script. Lake Bell has perfect comic timing and an ability with accents which she trots out with a dead-pan expression as mimicking the people she meets during her day including a squeaky girl who turns out to be a lawyer. Dani plays the reliable older sister who is professional in her work, respectful and down to earth, but it’s clear that these two are resentful of their father and his girlfriend and this plays out in a well-considered and believable way.

A surprise cameo from Geena Davis injects a strong feminist message in the closing scenes and Eva Longoria appears briefly attempting a cockney voice. In A World is a fresh and informative bit of light-weight fun with strong performances and skilful direction. Lake Bell has considerable talent and a highly developed sense of the absurd: I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next. MT

The Changeling (1993) *** Jacobean Tragedy Season 2013

Director: Simon Curtis

Writers: adapted for screen by Michael Hastings from the play by Thomas Middleton

Cast: Hugh Grant, Bob Hoskins, Elizabeth McGovern, Sean Pertwee, Leslie Phillips, Adie Allen.

As part of the Jacobean Tragedy Season at the BFI, The Changeling is an excellent modern version of the classic play by Thomas Middleton, filmed for television in 1993 and directed by Simon Curtis, who then went on to success as a producer and director with David Copperfield (1999) and My Week With Marilyn (2011) which spawned Oscar nominations for Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh.

Elizabeth McGovern gives a commanding performance as Beatrice-Joanna, one of the most intelligent and cynical heroines in English literature and her machiavellian servant De Flores, who secretly lusts after her and is played here masterfully by Bob Hoskins. This adaptation has removed a sub-plot that takes place in a madhouse, in favour of its central focus on the stormy but close relationship between De Flores and Beatrice-Joanna. It opens days before her wedding with a chance encounter that will change her life forever. She then collaborates with De Flores to have him kill her fiance in order that she is free to marry her true love, but misjudges the mood, and tragedy naturally ensues.

All the cast skillfully handle the Jacobean text with aplomb, making it feel completely natural: no mean feat requiring a deep understanding of the dialogue and its meaning. The monochrome, predominantly black and white-themed costumes perfectly complement the dark nature of the piece and there’s also an excellent use of light and shadow to convey the sinister tone and murderous intent. Bob Hoskins is availed of a navaja folding knife, an accurate weapon for this 16th Century story, it was a time purportedly even more violent than that of Shakespeare.

Hugh Grant shines in a remarkably good turn as the dark and dashing character Alsemero: he was relatively unknown at this stage in his career before Hollywood stardom beckoned. There is also a wonderfully convincing performance from Leslie Phillips as Vermandero. The whole piece is set off by Stephen Warbeck’s atmospheric and unobtrusive original score. MT

A 1974 version of The Changeling starred Helen Mirren in the role of Beatrice-Joanna (pictured above). Simon Curtis is married to Elizabeth McGovern.

The Company You Keep (2013)

Director: Robert Redford

Script: Neil Gordon, Lem Dobbs

Producers: Nicholas Chartier, Bill Holderman, Robert Redford

Cast: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Terrence Howard, Anna Kendrick, Julie Christie, Chris Cooper, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Stanley Tucci, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliott US

125mins 2012 political thriller

With the shock of the Boston bombings still reverberating, a piece on activism or terrorism, depending on your point of view, by and starring Robert Redford, based on Neil Gordon’s 2003 political thriller concerning the activities of the Weather Underground, a political movement that used violence to push home an anti-Vietnam War message in the late 60’s early 70’s. Cast-wise, Redford is one of those directors who will always be spoilt for choice and he certainly pulled out all the stops. Working for peanuts, they all jumped at the chance, except the semi-reclusive Christie, who, it seems, fought it all the way. A deeply political piece, with echoes of All The Presidents Men, The Company You Keep again concerns journalists digging a cold case. Redford’s interest actually stems from Les Miserables and the similarities this story has. He also recalls an interest in the Weather Underground at the time. Believing peaceful demonstration is having no impact, they resort to more extreme measures, managing to place a bomb in the Pentagon.

This time it’s LaBeouf playing the dogged newshound, as a National story breaks in his sleepy backwater, concerning the identification and arrest of one of the Weather Underground’s key players, thirty years after the fact. Sarandon’s ‘Solarz’ is now a middle-aged mother of two, haunted but not bowed by her past, whose arrest threatens to uncover the whole team. Now a father and respected civil right attorney, Redford elects to run, before he too is captured by the pursuing FBI. Playing Redford’s young daughter, this is Jackie Evancho, in her first role since winning ‘America’s Got Talent’ and she acquits herself very well in the face of such big guns. In fact the whole cast acquit themselves very well and the script has some really lovely, sparkling dialogue that lifts it above the workaday, but the thing that lets the film down is the predictability of the plot, making it less of a thriller than it could have been, the audience one step ahead of the plot. Nevertheless it addresses that salient dialogue concerning activism and terrorism and the crucial difference between the two; activism is both empowering and uplifting and terrorism, which strikes fear and loathing. AT

Come Out and Play (2012) DVD

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Director: Makinov

Script: Juan Jose Plans/Makinov

Cast: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vinessa Shaw, Daniel Gimenez

105min Horror

Makinov is an enigmatic Belorussian director whose interest in shamanism has shaped his filmmaking activities and spawned two documentaries on the subject, shot in Mexico. By remaining anonymous, apart from his surname, he believes any critical acclaim will be focussed will be on his creative output rather than his own ego by revealing his full identity.

Come out and Play is a horrifying thriller that centres on Beth and Francis, a couple spending a last holiday before the birith of their child by visiting a remote island in Mexico that appears to be largely populated by children. It’s not a holiday they will ever forget. Shot in black and white, the film has a bleached-out, eerie otherworldliness to it that’s enhanced by a sparse script heightening suspense as it builds to a dramatic climax delivering B-movie thrills with its stylish visuals despite overstaying its welcome at nearly 2 hours long. MT

COME OUT AND PLAY IS OUT ON 3RD MAY 2013, FOLLOWED BY A DVD RELEASE ON 6TH MAY 2013.

Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes (2013) * Sundance London 2013

Director/Writer: Francesca Gregorini

Cast: Alfred Molina, Jessica Biel, Kaya Scoledario, Jimmy Simpson, Aneurin Bevan

96min US Drama

Probably my least favourite at Sundance London this year is the offbeat drama Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes which tackles themes of sadness and motherhood in an unsatisfactory resulting in a drama with no drama and a story of grief that fails to deliver on all levels.

As the story goes, Emanuel killed her mum. During her birth, her mother was in the throes of dying and, accordingly, she becomes a living tribute to her untimely death. In the opening scene, we meet Emanuel fully grown-up: a spiky, ‘sorted’ singular teen, played by Kaya Scoledario. But the family tragedy doesn’t seem to have had an overtly negative impact on her father, a considered and philosophical man, played here by Alfred Molina, who has subsequently formed a childless union with his winsomely insecure wife (Frances O’Connor). Emanuel rejects her motherly pretensions outright, so it’s an unhappy trio that lives in a wooden house in the suburbs of what could be Boston or, possibly, Toronto. The weak link to the piece is next door neighbour Linda, played by a vapid and one-dimensional Jessica Biel, as a surgically enhanced yummy mummy, who lives with her newborn daughter, Chloe.

This is Francesca Gregorini’s second feature following the pretentious but well-put together Tanner Hall. It doesn’t appear that she’s grasped the nettle of these delicate issues personally or had any dealings with them to produce a story that appears to trivialise the concepts and themes it aims to explore and engage with.

Although Emanuel forces her father to recount the intimate details of her traumatic birth over and over again, it’s axiomatic that Emanuel has absolutely no memory of her mother, and this is made patently clear by the circumstances of her loss. And yet she fixates on Linda from the minute she sets eyes on her, offering to babysit and seemingly to bond with her despite Linda’s unappealing personality and attempts to alienate Emanuel with female guile and coyness making sure she has control over the everything concerning her baby girl.

And Linda is certainly no earth-mother: in some ways, she appears to compete with Emanuel on the female front: flirting with her co-worker (Jimmy Simpson) and occasionally being unpleasantly domineering; so there is no grounding or believability in their closeness from the start and neither is there any attempt to develop or examine the individual characters as their working relationship continues.

When Emanuel realises that baby Chloe is infact a doll, instead of reacting she buys into the conceit (to protect Linda?) and goes along with it seemingly unperturbed yet growing increasingly obsessed with the actual doll rather than attempting to engage privately with LInda whereas Linda appears undisturbed by the concept of anyone finding out about her deceit. When Emanuel’s step-mum tries to befriend Linda by asking round for dinner, Emanuel becomes hostile and thwarts any attempt for them to get to know one another by gross machiavellian tactics involving a love interest she meets on the bus, in the shape of the promising Aneurin Bevan, whose role is never developed beyond kissing her and riding a bicycle.

Gregorini then introduces a fantasy element into this soulless, cold drama by tacking on a beautifully-rendered and surreal (CGI) water and fishes sequence, presumably aimed at exploring Emanuel’s psychological state, which feels out of place, absurd and bewildering.

None of the female characters here is remotely appealing which seems counterproductive in a story that’s all about us sympathising or emphathising with its very feminine and important issues. Emanuel is rude and short-tempered even with her love good-looking lover, LInda is a bland cypher and the step-mum is a winsome and fractious shell of a woman. The only character with any perceived depth and who really elicits any sympathy is her bereaved father.

Emanuel makes off-putting viewing: I couldn’t wait for it to end but it left wondering what Gregorini had in mind for us with her next outing. MT

Gimme The Loot (2012) ***

Director: Adam Leon

Cast: Tashiana Washington, Ty Hickson, Zoe Lescaze

80min Drama

A spunky urban adventure that focuses on two non-actor ‘dudes’ from the Bronx, Malcolm and Sofia who make it their business to up the ante on some punks from Queens who have invaded their territory on the graffiti turf wars in the Big Apple. Their goal is to write all over a well-known and important New York landmark and in order to do this they need to raise USD 500. Director Leon was assisted by real time Polilce Officers for ‘health and safety” reasons in his endeavour.

Although these two are mouthy street-fighters they still often get the rough end of the deal and everyones’ tongues in this warm-hearted ‘gangland’ debut low-budgeter from Adam Leon, which took the Grand Jury prize at SXSW last year (2012).

With a score that’s fun and unexpected, Gimme The Loot is a fresh and colourful feel-good film that tells it like it is and doesn’t take any prisoners. MT

A.C.O.D (2012) ** Sundance London 2013

Director: Stu Zicherman

Writers: Ben Karlin, Stu Zicherman

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Adam Scott, Jessica Alba, Jane Lynch, Richard Jenkins, Amy Poehler

90mins US Comedy

Before we start, it is worth noting that A.C.O.D. stands for Adult Children of Divorce, as Stu Zicherman’s directorial debut – featuring at Sundance Film Festival London – delves into the life of a thirty-something still attempting to come to terms with his parent’s breakup when he was a child. Whether or not the viewer is an A.C.O.D. themselves, it bears little relevance, as a film that ultimately feels somewhat difficult to relate to, offering few laughs along the way.

Carter (Adam Scott) is the man in question, having dealt with the messy divorce between his parents Hugh (Richard Jenkins) and Melissa (Catherine O’Hara), following an aggressive and certainly somewhat memorable argument taking place on his ninth birthday – an argument that has ensured the pair have yet to reconnect ever since.

Carter has since discovered he was unknowingly a subject of a study by author Dr. Judith (Jane Lynch) about children who had lived through their parents divorce. Now, 15 years on, she plans on writing a follow-up piece, and when she gets back in touch with Carter, old memories and disturbing flashbacks are unwillingly brought back, all amidst the planning of Carter’s younger brother Trey’s (Clark Duke) wedding.

Presented as a comedy of sorts, A.C.O.D. is far more of a character study that one had initially envisaged and Carter is an intriguing role, as a multilayered man certainly suffering from the repercussions of a turbulent upbringing. It’s interesting how the audience have an ascendency over the role as while Carter is adamant that life is going well and he isn’t affected by his childhood, we can see the cracks appear in his demeanour, as a character who is fragile and troubled. That said, on the whole Carter is not a character who is particularly easy to relate to, which detracts from the emotional investment in this film. It’s certainly difficult to find sympathy for a man who has to decide between Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Jessica Alba too. Poor thing.

What also doesn’t help in this regard, is that Scott hasn’t quite got that charisma and amiability that is required of our leading man. There is no denying the talent the actor possesses, but he has proved to be more effective in the more villainous roles, as a performer who thrives when portraying imperfect bastards, such as the immensely annoying character in Step Brothers. He simply doesn’t provoke much empathy from the viewer. In the meantime, both Jenkins and O’Hara are brilliant as the superbly cast parents – with much of the film’s humour deriving from their offbeat relationship.

On the whole A.C.O.D. feels somewhat inconsequential and irrelevant – not fully reaching the desired conclusions that the first third of the movie had promised. As a film that is not particularly moving or poignant, and yet without the legs to be considered a comedy, it falls in between the two genres somewhat, as a middling production that is ultimately rather forgettable. SP

Planet Ocean (2012)

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Director: Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Michael Pitiot
Script: Michael Pitiot, Lucy Allwood
Producers: Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Nicolas Coppermann, Jean-Yves Robin
Cast: Josh Duhamel

US 100mins 2012 Doc

It’s important to remember that this film is made for and aimed at a school audience and American heartthrob Josh Duhamel, famous for The Transformers franchise The Picture of Dorian Gray and New Years Eve will no doubt give this film the requisite boost it needs to reach the attention of kids, although it must be said, his voice sounds far older than his years, giving the film a gravitas it may have lacked otherwise.

Although it is telling us a story or indeed stories we may already know, I terms of ice caps, global warming, over fishing, etc., Planet Ocean manages to tie a great many of these huge and perhaps disparate seeming ideologies together into a cohesive and digestible whole.

The content is also quite splendid, with stunning underwater footage shot by Denis Lagrange, in some of the most inhospitable environs on Earth; so sumptuous it feels almost Computer Generated, inter-spliced with some terrific and carefully considered aerial photography by Nel Boshoff.

This combination keeps the eye-candy coming and allows Duhamel’s sonorous voice to do its work, feeding us stats and info in quantities that, if left to the classroom, would have children soon wondering whether they’d had any texts.

So, facts like ‘fishing has depleted 90% of the worlds fish biomass in the past 50 years’ and ‘50% of the worlds fishing is executed by just 1% of the worlds trawlers’ still make an impact 80 minutes into the film. Did you also know that the oceans algae creates 50% of the oxygen we breathe?

By exploring our connection to the sea, our continuing dependence upon it, its overwhelming impact upon our lives, the extraordinary diversity and beauty therein and then highlighting our own escalating abuse and lack of management, the film makes its point.

And this is its central concept; that although we regard ourselves as Planet Earth, we are covered far more by oceans than dry land and the forces at work across and within the oceans have a far greater and immediate impact upon us than we are aware of.

Yet, although these oceans are vast beyond the capability of the mind to properly grasp, they are of course still finite and if we continue to plunder, pollute and ignore them, not only do we alter them irrevocably, we inevitably impact most drastically upon ourselves.

Finally, it attempts to answer the ‘well, what can we do?’ question on everybody’s lips; the overwhelming sense of inevitability, the monumental, all-encompassing size of the problem and the feeling as an individual of total helplessness in the face of far flung continents, corporate machinations and market forces.

But we also know that public opinion has the ability to move mountains and to stop big business in its tracks. That is what this film asks us all to do now… for the sake of all of us. AR

www.protectplanetocean.org #saveourplanetocean

The ABCs of Death (2012) *

Directors:

Nacho Vigalondo (“A Is for Apocalypse”)
Adrián García Bogliano (“B Is for Bigfoot”)
Ernesto Díaz Espinoza (“C is for Cycle”)
Marcel Sarmiento                  (“D Is for Dogfight”)
Angela Bettis                          (“E is for Exterminate”)
Noboru Iguchi (“F is for Fart”)
Andrew Traucki (“G is for Gravity”)
Thomas Cappelen Malling               (“H is for Hyrdo-Electric Diffusion”)
Jorge Michel Grau                 (“I is for Ingrown”)
Yudai Yamaguchi                              (“J is for Jidai-geki”)
Anders Morgenthaler                       (“K is for Klutz”)
Timo Tjahjanto                                  (“L is for Libido”)
Ti West                                               (“M Is for Miscarriage”)
Banjong Pisanthanakun                   (“N is for Nuptials”)
Hélène Cattet                         (“O is for Orgasm”)
Bruno Forzani                                    (“O is for Orgasm”)
Simon Rumley                                   (“P Is for Pressure”)
Adam Wingard                                  (“Q Is for Quack”)
Srdjan Spasojevic                  (“R Is for Removed”)
Jake West                               (“S is for Speed”)
Lee Hardcastle                                   (“T Is for Toilet”)
Ben Wheatley                                    (“U Is for Unearthed”)
Kaare Andrews                                 (“V is for Vagitus”)
Jon Schnepp                          (“W is for WTF?”)
Xavier Gens                            (“X Is for XXL”)
Jason Eisener                         (“Y Is for Youngbuck”)
Yoshihiro Nishimura             (“Z is for Zetsumetsu”)

Producers: Julie Lind-Holm, Petter Lindblad

US NZ 123mins 2012 Horror

Do forgive me not listing the cast.

Twenty-six short films about death, in the Horror genre, by twenty-seven directors, stitched together into a two-hour film. The directors must have at least one death and open and close their piece with the colour red. Oh, yes and the only have a budget of $5,000 each with which t create their masterpieces.

The end result was always going to be horribly uneven, with a few interesting segments interred in a morass of the very bad, the weird, the perverted and the sick.

The concept behind A for Apocalypse was ok, but the execution pretty poor.

B was poor and C very poor.

D is for Dogfight, a well-made, imaginative short, although whether it’s truly Horror… but then, it certainly wasn’t the worst offender in terms of Genre..
E features a red-back spider, exacting revenge on a would-be assassin.
F is a real oddity- I’m not sure where to begin… a Japanese lesbian fart-fetish film, made by a sick man with a sense of humour all his own. I don’t really know what to say about F. Not a Horror film. Perhaps a bargain basement freebie on a fetish site on which you’ve lost your way.
G again, not a horror and certainly the cheapest film made. It’s about surfing and not a great deal else. It was quite pretty though.
H another odd fetish film of a British Bulldog falling for a stripper cat, which goes strangely sideways from a position that began some way out in leftfield to start with. Devoid of any horror element. What’s that fetish called where everyone has to dress up in a fur suit..? Goofy.. no.. Not dogging..
The feature for the letter I was inscrutable, but interesting. I’ve no idea what happened, but I enjoyed the ride. in comparison..
J is another Really strange offering from the Japanese. I mean- Really Strange. But still no wiser.
K is a total departure and our first animation. Again, in no stretch a Horror film, but a cartoon of a turd that refuses to go down the toilet without a fight.. Funny though and well drawn.
L is a very dark, twisted piece that was the first to make me squirm with genuine discomfort, but again, I would resist calling it Horror. Schlock designed to repulse more accurate.
Ti West, director of ‘Cabin Fever 2’ gives us M. Another pretty cheap shot and not really horror at all. More simply ‘Gross’.
N was another amusing entry – and had me laughing by the blood spattered end.
O was never a Horror, but a wild visual exploration of what it might feel like to experience a (female) orgasm. At least the directors went to some trouble to communicate their idea here. Well shot.
P was one of the better-observed, really well acted and well thought out pieces. The protagonists life of prostitution could indeed have been regarded a Horror. A difficult film to see through to the end, but again, I would hesitate calling it Horror.
Lord preserve us from directors choosing to act, let alone be funny. That was the horror of Q. Shooting a duck (quack) is what it was about.
By now, one is only watching this DVD purely to get to the end, not for any merit or, Heaven forefend, any Horror. There has by now been several gallons of fake blood though, but as any Horror aficionado will attest, buckets of blood does not a Horror film make. Necessarily.
R may have had an interesting idea in there; a man whose skin appears to be made of 35mm film and he is kept, rather like a bear that is constantly let for its bile.
S a very basic metaphor on a subject covered innumerable times before, but featuring two buxom women and a sexy car to prevent us from thinking that we’ve been shortchanged again. Again, Horror-free.
T Lee Hardcastle’s very funny, twisted Claymation, about a boys terror of man-eating toilets. My favourite short from the whole anthology just for it’s imagination, craft and storytelling.
U was a well-made, elliptical short, but again falling short of Horror.
V more sci-fi than horror, but quite clever, a pretty good script and great production values.
W is another attempt by the filmmakers to get infront of the camera and be funny. A ridiculous short, made with really awful special effects that would shame a schoolboy with its amateurish stupidity. WTF indeed.
X was disturbing and one of the few that bothered to get into the mind of the protagonist and attempt to be something a little more considered. Here, a fat girl, picked on incessantly for her size by people in the street and preached at by advertising all around. One of the few highlights, it also probably had the most blood too, though I’m not going to rewind re-view and make sure on that point. If it’s all the same to you.
Y. What is there to say about Y, but why? A paedophile licking the sweat of young boys off a gym bench. Certainly horrific.

And finally, courtesy of Japan, the nadir that is Z… So weird. So very weird. Alot of nakedness, giant, bladed penises, tiny real penises, vaginas spewing vegetables and, in place of blood and semen, rice. If you can make any more sense of that, well done. You win a free copy of the ‘ABC’s Of Death’ DVD.

To sum up, alot of sexual violence towards women, puerile humour, graphic, pointless violence, gore drugs, sex, poor acting, bad production values and a massive dose of the ridiculous. There are a few items of interest in there, but the rest of it isn’t worth wading through to find the gems in the blood.

The most surprising and disappointing aspect about this whole venture is that there are a fair few very well-respected filmmakers in here. I have to say in their defence, $5,000 is not really a budget at all, when considering making a short, let alone something with any kind of special effects, but then, presumably they could have just said no. There are a great many Horror films out there that you need to see before resorting to “The ABCs of Death”. Save your money. Please. AT

Blood Brother (2013) ***** Sundance London 2013

Director: Steve Hoover
Script: Phinehas Hodges, Steve Hoover, Tyson VanSkiver
Producer: Danny Yourd
Cast: Rocky Braat, Steve Hoover

US 92mins 2012 Doc

Disillusioned with his life, Rocky Braat stepped out of his mundane existence as a Graphic Design Grad and took himself off to India. He’d not had a happy upbringing, not knowing his father and with an abusive mother, he had been rescued at the age of three by his grandparents and college’d in Pittsburgh.

By his own reckoning, it was these circumstances that led to what happened next. Visiting Chennai, he stopped off at an AIDS orphanage, full of children deserted, for one reason or another by their parents, with AIDS and no one to look after them. Rocky was there primarily for selfish reasons. He figured he could empathise with their situation, have a good cathartic cry and then move on. He spent a month there and then continued on his planned trip, but within a couple of weeks he was heading back. He felt in his bones that he could make a real difference there, but at the same time sate his own need for love and affirmation.

Steve Hoover was his best friend at college. Unhappy with his friend’s desertion and massive change in direction, he was at first, an unwilling witness. But, after three years, faced with a resolute Rocky, he eventually made the trip back to India with him and met the kids. It was to have as profound an effect on him as it had on his buddy. This film, Blood Brother, is the result of that trip.

Without reading any of the other reviews that must already have been written about this film- Winner of the Grand Jury Prize AND the Audience Award at Sundance, I’m guessing I won’t be wrong in saying that all of the superlatives have already been used up. This is not only an excellent example of filmmaking, it also has that special factor of extraordinary content. A journey of self discovery, combatting fear, grasping a life opportunity, confronting issues, prejudices and ones own capabilities as to what is or isn’t possible, but more than anything, grasping the nettle of life and being rewarded for it.

There will always be detractors to any Westerner going to the Third World and ‘helping’ and the PC brigade can -and will no doubt- say whatever they wish. But there is absolutely no doubt that Rocky is giving everything of himself to this endeavour and that it is making a profound and direct difference to these people’s lives, as well as his own.

The film was financed using donations and everyone that worked on it did so for free, so every bean that the film goes on to make here on is being ploughed into Rocky’s mission with the orphanage and another like it, threatened with closure.

It really is an incredible story. Most people, with or without the DNA for their adulthood that Rocky was dealt, would be doing far less with their lives. 99.99% of the population. To have turned what was potentially so negative into something So positive is a tremendously life-affirming story in itself. If you see no other film this year, see this one. Humbling, moving cinema at it’s best. Please visit www.bloodbrotherfilm.com www.givethemlight.org AT

SUNDANCE LONDON FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 25-28 APRIL 2013 AT THE O2 ARENA, NORTH GREENWICH

Scarecrow (1973)

Dir: Jerry Schatzberg | Wri: Garry Michael White | Cast: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Anne Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch, Eileen Brennan, Penelope Allen. Richard Hackman, Al Cingolani | US Drama 112mins”

It’s easy to see why Hackman and Pacino were drawn to this screenplay: it leaves so much scope for the actor to act. Indeed, Hackman cites Scarecrow as his favourite piece of work. The two of them are given full licence to get in some serious character work and went hitchhiking through California in hobo gear to scope out their roles.

The two hander is very much about their interplay, and the chemistry sparkles as this latter day ‘odd-couple’ busk their way across America, via goods trains, casual labour and hitching rides in open trucks.

Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter) provides the cinematography, much of it beautiful long lens stuff extracting the max from the fabulous vistas the journeying buddies find themselves oblivious to.

Hackman’s Max is an ex-con hoping to get across to Pittsburgh to pick up a stash he salted away and set up in the carwash trade. Like tumbleweed, he bumps into ex-Sailor Francis (Pacino) on a dusty, windswept California road, waiting patiently for a ride into town. Any town. Sure enough their individual stories soon get spilled as there’s precious little else to do but talk to each other.

Chanelling Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy, it’s the story of a difficult mission promising nirvana at the rainbow’s end but although the performances are exemplary from two bonafide character actors in the finely observed minutiae of hobo life. There are several great scenes but all this cannot quite compensate for the lack of a plot and distinctly underwhelming ending.

Interestingly, the film did far better abroad than at home, where it tanked at the box office. That said, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Best Foreign Film at Bodil and at the prestigious Tokyo Kinema Junpo Awards; foreign audiences more accepting of this unorthodox, meandering approach to storytelling. What plot there is comes in the final third and, without giving anything away, isn’t in keeping with what we’ve already seen.

Already a big star for the likes of The French Connection and The Poseidon Adventure among many others, Hackman was sincerely disappointed by the film’s performance and vowed henceforth to do more commercial fare.

A great many of us look back at the Seventies through rose-tinted specs, but that isn’t to say they didn’t make the odd star-laden misstep, even then. Without Scarecrow’s undeniable star power, it would never have been considered for the award season. Accordingly, there are perhaps other more worthy 35mm sparklers sitting in cold, dark archives. Let’s hope they get an airing too. Worth seeing then, for vistas, scenes and perfs, but by no means a classic. AT

SCARECROW IS now on AMAZON PRIME

The Look Of Love (2012) **** Sundance London

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Producer: Revolution films/Melissa Parmenter

Cast: Steve Coogan, Tamsin Egerton, Imogen Potts, Anna Friel, Chris Addison, James Lance, Matthew Beard, David Walliams

105min UK Comedy Drama

Michael Winterbottom’s biopic of sixties porn publisher and property magnate Paul Raymond marks a return to comedy drama for the director and what a cracking film it is!

Starring his regular collaborator Steve Coogan, who’s absolutely magnificent in the role of Raymond: brimming with hard-edged joie de vivre and embuing in Raymond a crude and letcherous charm: The story will have particular appeal to those who remember with nostalgia the swinging sixties for the sheer decadence, joy-filled optimism of an era that broke down the barriers of stiff-lipped tradition.

Told with great gusto, the story really centres on Raymond’s relationships with the main women in his life: his wife, daughter and lover in the shape of Fiona Richmond. And anybody with an older brother or father will remember her as the first really strong English sex symbol: both alluring and powerful in the early seventies: a business woman AND a centre-page cover girl. And this is a film about strong personalities but particularly about feisty female characters.

The story charts 30 years of Raymond’s hedonistic life starting in1958 with his brief dalliance as a stage hypnotist through to club owner, theatre producer to property magnate to publishing by 1992. He emerges as a coke-snorting, cold fish but also cuts rather a sad figure who, in the rush to make a commercial success of his life, fails to engage on any meaningful level with the women who really make it all worthwhile.

Anna Friel is gutsy and believable as his wife Jean and mother of his daughter Deborah. Imogen Poots excels in the role of the vulnerable, needy, yet strong-willed Deborah who casts around looking for a niche, first as an actress and then a singer. The film gives insight into Paul Raymond’s work methods and really unlocks the business man in him, through his relationship with his wife and daughter. Although Paul loves her madly as a dad, he lets money stand in the way of her happiness when a West End production she’s starring in fails: “I can’t keep haemorrhaging money into something that’s not working just to keep you happy”. Like many businessmen he sees only the balance sheet and never what money can do to make those important to him feel validated.

But it’s with Fiona Richmond that he really meets his match, sexually and intellectually. Tamsin Egerton makes for fabulously graceful casting here. She’s also appears way ahead of him class-wise leaving him slightly back-footed but looking like the cat that got the cream on more than one occasion: they make a appealing double act and are both better looking than the originals. Sadly, Paul’s eldest son (Derry McCarthy) from his first partner, is played here by Liam Boyle, makes a small appearance but gets short-shrift and goes away empty-handed, as he does in real life.

This is a richly entertaining film and the best that Michael Winterbottom has made in a long while. Particularly appealing to those interested in the era with its excellent footage of London’s Soho and sixties life offering a colourful back-drop from Kettners, Ronnie Scott’s, to L’Escargot in Greek Street; all still going strong. Paul Raymond emerges as a sad, cypher, reflecting the striking charisma of the women around him, yet possessing little depth and personality himself despite his shrewd business acumen. He certainly liked money and he liked sex but, at the end of the day, it appears the ‘King Of Soho’ only really loved himself. MT

THE LOOK OF LOVE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 APRIL 2013.

Bernie (2011) ****

Director: Richard Linklater

Script: Richard Linklater, Skip Hollandsworth

Cast: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey, Brady Coleman, Richard Robichaux

99min US Comedy Drama

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Rather like Michael Winterbottom, Richard Linklater never follows a straight line with subject he choses to film and here he takes a strange but true story of Bernie Tiede, a real life mortician from Carthage, Texas. This is Linklater’s home territory and his familiarity with the set-up comes across in the wry humour that pokes fun at his fellow citizens but never goes as far as to offend them.

Jack Black plays the leading role as the butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth but slightly tongue-in-cheek mortician and community do-gooder and tells the story of his friendship with rich but mean-spirited widow Marjorie, a savvy Shirley MacLaine. As the story goes, so popular is Bernie and so hated is Marjorie, even by her own miserable family who have tried to sue her for an inheritance, it’s only a matter of time before the relationship starts to hit the buffers.

Told in a jokey documentary style this light-hearted yet dark comedy has some bitter truths at its core. The story makes for great film material, due to it’s ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ quality and spot-on casting of Jack Black who appears authentic and yet there’s something deeply suspect lurking beneath his surface charm. For Black this is a character that’s totally new to his repertoire and yet he creates a fully-rounded Bernie and makes him larger than life despite his shortness in stature.

In a stroke of genius, Linklater uses real inhabitants for the community interviews which gives a documentary slant to the proceedings and adds to the believability of this homely tale with sinister underpinnings. But why has this obvious hit taken so long to grace our screens in the UK? I can remember seeing this at the London Film Festival soon after its release in 2011.

As the action unfolds, the two become inseparable and a strange bond develops and doesn’t bringout the best in either of them. Bernie’s a people person and his insatiable need to offer comfort to the bereft and find time for the local drama group are at odds with Marjorie’s wunderlust and control freakery. In the end it’s up to the local district attorney (Matthew McConnaughey) to prove that Bernie isn’t quite as saintly as he’d have us believe. Go and enjoy this. You’ll never believe the outcome but when you see what happens it will all make sense. MT

BERNIE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26 APRIL 2013.

White Elephant (2012) ***

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Director: Pablo Trapero

Script: Pablo Trapero

Cast: Ricardo Darin, Jeremie Renier, Martina Gusman

106mins Drama Spanish with subtitles 2012

In many large capitals the rich live cheek by jowel with the poor or disadvantaged. And this is the case in Buenos Aires which is the focus of Pablo Trapero’s latest film Elefante Blanco. It refers to the proposed structure that was to be Latin America’s largest hospital. It got off the drawing board in 1937 but was never completed and eventually became a drug-infested home to thousands of people subsisting amongst the rat-ridden squalor

In this hell-hole two Catholic priests, Julian (Ricardo Darin) and Geronimo (Jeremie Renier) and a social worker (Martina Gusman) make an emotional journey of salvation hampered by their own considerable personal difficulties. Carancho Trapero’s previous film was a work of social realism and cross-genre filmmaking. Elefanto Blanco takes a simple narrative structure without resorting to subplots. Not only is this refreshing but it also allows the importance of its social message to carry more impact.

Trapero’s adroitly-scripted and seamlessly-made film is slow-burning, (and at times too slow) tale charting the struggle and despair of Father Julian. With a masterfully resonant performance from Argentina’s finest actor, Ricardo Darin, he brings relief and succour to the poor no matter what their beliefs or backgrounds. While Martina Gusman’s social worker takes on board the government bureaucracy behind a community that has been largely forgotten. Jeremie Renier gives a mature and measured turn as Geronimo, althoug he doesn’t feel quite right in this role.

White Elephant takes time to get going and although it builds to a powerful climax never really builds enough momentum to be really gripping. It’s nevertheless a well-made and a worthy production and a timely release for Argentinian film in the light of the recent election of Pope Francesco to the Vatican. MT

WHITE ELEPHANT IS OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 26TH APRIL 2013

Sundance London 2013 25- 28 April O2 Arena

In 2011 Robert Redford decided his indie SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL US should go East so here we go for another year, at 02 Arena London, Greenwich, London. It’s worth the hike from central London to see a terrific slew of indie dramas and documentaries that have only just premiered in snowbound, sunnny Utah in January 2013. This year the focus is on exploring the interplay between independent film and music.

SUNDANCE LONDON 2013 will screen 18 features and a new Britflic spotlight at its Greenwich base, along with music, Q&As and other exciting events to keep you amused over a long spring weekend

Here is our review of what to go for:

THE LOOK OF LOVE **** Michael Winterbottom makes a film a year: some good, some not so good. He’s hit the jackpot this time with a raunchy, upbeat trip down memory lane sixties-style. A dazzlingly entertaining biopic of porn king Paul Raymond, played magnificently here by Steve Coogan and headlining this year’s festival. Tamsin’s Egerton’s legs are to die for and unrivalled anywhere on stage or screen.

UPSTREAM COLOUR: **** Shane Carruth’s intriguing second feature since his hit, Primer, first delighted audiences nearly ten years ago. Upstream was the talk of the town at Berlinale in February and set to be one of the gems of this year’s festival.

BLACKFISH, a documentary about the killer whale Tilkum has a eco-friendly premise and asks the question: should killer whales ever be kept in captivity?

RUNNING FROM CRAZY:showcases the good and bad of being part of the legendary Hemingway clan. Brought to us by the Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple.

HISTORY OF THE EAGLES PART ONE: Fans will be excited to have a documentary dedicated to this much-loved band that made the best selling album of all time. Alison Ellwood puts together archival footage and recent interviews with the stars who are still talking..just! Promises to be an interesting story even for non-fans interested in the life and times of a rock band in the seventies and eighties.

THE MOO MAN: Have you ever wondered how the poor dairy farmers struggle on against the leviathans of mass market food retail ? Here’s a chance to find out how Sussex farmer Steve Hook upped the ante in Andy Heathcote’s delightful documentary. 4*

In the worthy corner is BLOOD BROTHERS, a doco that tells the true story of Rocky Braat who went to India on hols and ended up working with HIV-infected children. (Grand Jury Prize Sundance US 2013).

THE SUMMIT****: Everest is a walk in the park compared to the dangers of climbing K2. Nick Ryan’s skilful documentary pieces together the events surrounding one mission to the mighty mountain. More people die on the descent of K2 than conquer this treacherous snowy peak. Winner of the Editing Award: US Documentary at Sundance 2013.

TOUCHY FEELY: ** Massage is a growth industry but what happens if you suddenly lose your desire to touch? A comedy from Humpday director Lynn Shelton and starring the watchable Rosemarie de Witt (Your Sister’s Sister) Has some great performances, particularly from Ellen Page but the uneven pace makes it a turgid affair.

THE KINGS OF SUMMER: Did you ever leave home as a teenager to spend some time with your friends? This rites-of-passage teenage bonding drama has some hilarious moments and shows what can happen when things don’t work out exactly according to plan. 3***

EMANUEL AND THE TRUTH ABOUT FISHES: Kaya Scoledario and Jessica Biel star in a surreal comedy about childhood, motherhood and loss. Freshly told by Italian director, Francesca Gregorini.

IN FEAR: TV director Jeremy Lovering’s Britflic thriller about fear of the unknown for a couple on a creepy car journey in the depths of the English countryside.

IN A WORLD…: American TV star Lake Bell’s buzzworthy rom-com in which she also stars as a voiceover artist with a gift of the gab where accents are concerned.

PEACHES DOES HERSELF: 3*** Self-styled Canadian, Berlin-based electronic musician Peaches will headline as herself live at INDIGO2 In an outlandish show were she struts her stuff wearing a shredded penis and falls for the ultimate lady boy. She will also present the film PEACHES DOES HERSELF. MT

THE SUNDANCE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS AT THE O2 ARENA FROM 25-28 APRIL 2013. TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE AT SUNDANCE-LONDON

Promised Land (2012) ***

Director: Gus Van Sant

Script: Matt Damon, John Krasinski Novel: Dave Eggers

Cast: Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie de Witt

106min US Drama

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Gus Van Sant’s latest outing Promised Land highlights the continuing narrative on community survival and corporate greed in the 21st century with a thoughtful and appealing drama centred on the controversial process of ‘fracking’ or extracting natural gas from the ground.

It has Matt Damon, who also co-wrote the script, as Steve Butler who is an energy executive for Global, a company that’s attempting to obtain drilling rights in the small American town of McKinley. In the opening scenes, his game-plan is to tempt the ageing and cash-poor inhabitants with money-spinning possibilities to finance the rest of their lives, naturally playing down potential environmental issues. They can do this, he claims, by investing in their town’s natural resources in the shape of the natural gas that is locked under their land. All bristling with energy, he arrives in McKinley with his boss Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), a world-weary but philosophical divorcee and mother.

Served by a sharp script, Frances McDormand and Damon make a witty and watchable duo as they work door to door to win over the inhabitants. Damon is utterly convincing as a salesman who appears genuinely to believe his soft-sell patter. Later, there’s an appealing vulnerability to his performance as he kicks back with Rosemarie de Witt’s sharp-edged but sparky schoolteacher, over drinks in the local bar, and is instantly drawn to her. McDormand’s Sue Thomason is more pragmatic about her job, she’s a character who embodies the likeable, middle-aged single woman, bringing up a child alone and simply concerned in getting the money in. But when they come up against John Krasinski’s glib environmental specialist, Dustin Noble, who’s championing the negatives of fracking, their campaign suffers a set-back with unexpected consequences for all concerned.

While many may focus on the political and environmental side of the story, what most of all appealed to me about this drama is the well-formed character arcs and strong performances of the leads: Krasinski, Damon, De Witt and McDormand all act their socks off and it’s the social story that holds the attention throughout. Matt Damon has really thought about these ‘guys’ and they feel completely believable. They’re people that you may know or even be, yourself. Where the piece falls down is in the final stages where the narrative becomes simplistic and takes the easy way out, presenting us with a ‘cheesy’ Hollywood ending that detracts from the convincing effort it made to engage us earlier on in the story and, in so doing, settles for the predicable rather than the surprising. That said, this is entertaining drama for sophisticated audiences who appreciate world class acting and contemporary themes. If you enjoyed Syriana, or Michael Clayton then Promised Land is a film for you. MT.

PROMISED LAND GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH APRIL 2013

Mathieu Kassovitz – Film Director

Mathieu Kassovitz is a French actor and filmmaker with several artistic and commercial successes under his belt and, at only 45, a glittering future ahead of him. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a highly-acclaimed yet controversial film that delves into themes of racial hatred, violence, and police brutality. The film won the Cesar for Best Film and won him Best Director at Cannes in 1995.

He later directed Purple Rivers (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller that enabled him to finance his more personal outing Babylon Babies. Kassovitz set up a production company MNP Entreprise in 2000 responsible for a number of co-pros including Avida (2006) in which he also stars.

Andrew Rajan spoke to him in London at the UK premiere of his latest outing REBELLION which he both stars in and directs. It’s an action-packed war film based on a true story of French commandos up against tribes in New Caledonia, a French territory.

Q How would you describe REBELLION for those only familiar with (your breakout success) La Haine?

MK As a grown up version of La Haine [laughter]. Less welcoming or accessible, still about brutality, the same kind of energy and message.

Q You seem happy to sit at odds with mainstream politics.. a revisionist view..

MK Revisionist… you need to be careful with words like that… [laughter]

Being a director is being able to tell stories and there are very many, but the true ones that you only hear one voice, one side and (then) you discover that there is another… so all of a sudden, what you have been told you find is not the whole story. There is nothing more fascinating than being able to show that to people.

That’s what historians are here for. As a director, if you take it seriously hen you become a reporter and the movie becomes like a very important piece of journalism, but the difference (with) a magazine is that a movie is here to stay.

So, when you are saying something with which you are able to revise history, or point of view, or… way of thinking, it is the best thing you can do… you cannot get a bigger kick than that. Because you aren’t only going to make a movie, but you are going to say something and reveal something and that is something very important.

Of course I feel very comfortable like that, it is how I am, not only in movies, but in everyday life; I like to confront ideas and to shock people, so movies are a great vehicle for that.

Q How has the film been received in France and on the island?

MK It’s a hard film for people to deal with, even for France. We were talking with one of your colleagues, about “Bloody Sunday”. Even now, the British are very uncomfortable with that story; the audience still has a problem with admitting that (the soldiers) went that far. I know this story.. I know it really well, but this story is 20 years ago and 25,000km away and… who gives a shit? That kind of movie requires patience and intelligence. I am trying to get the audience to be smart about it and think.. I designed a film to get the audience right into the centre of it, right into Philippe’s Legorjus’ shoes so they can experience it and say ‘what would I have done in his shoes?’

It’s a difficult movie to sell; best reviews ever, but no one went to see it in France. I understand, when you are down, you don’t want to hear the government is lying.. I don’t want to hear it all the time. And people want to laugh. I get that.

But it was really strange. I’ve never had such good reviews and (yet) no one went to see it. I thought a French audience would see it… but French people are not French any more. Five years of Sarkozy has just killed our spirit… and I don’t feel that any more. We aren’t French any more. A year and a half of (President) Hollande has not brought it back either, so.. we’re not the French people we were before…

New Caledonia is going to vote for its independence and I hope that the movie is going to be revealed then and people will think…. But you do need to sit down for two hours and think when you watch this and that is not what movies do today. Difficult and very subtle (film)… I’m a little sad… that it didn’t do well- I am very happy I did it, I am very happy with the movie- but just because it didn’t do well, it is just going to make it harder for any director wanting to do another movie like that.

Q Would you embark on another movie like that again?

MK I’m burned out right now. Ten years of my life and no one goes to see it? Why? Why would I put another ten years of my life to another project like that? That nobody cares about.

But people ask how I found it. I didn’t go out to find that story, that story found me. You stumble over it. That kind of story it doesn’t come along every day. You need to cross paths with it, be it a news article or whatever, but you need to find it, if you don’t you won’t have that kind of story to tell.

Right now, I am working on Hollywood, so I am doing the exact opposite… I am resting my brain and building a good muscle tone [laughter] and my tan.

Q How have the Kanaks reacted to it? Has it been therapeutic for them?

MK Yes, they’ve seen it. It was censored out there because the theatre owners were scared that people would burn the theatre down. And there was some politics involved there too, so that was a way to hide it and not to show it- to delay the screening yet again.

Q Did you expect these kinds of responses out there?

MK No.. No, I made a movie that didn’t show many things.. If I knew that was going to happen, I would have made a way harsher movie- for the French government. Here, I didn’t show torture, didn’t really show the violence.. I didn’t want to go that far.. I made it that it was balanced.. so I wouldn’t have those problems of censorship.

But people also say I am Partisan… people say the film is partisan and that I agree with the Kanak point of view from the get-go… the Story- with a big ‘S’, is that the French Army came a killed people. So, there are victims and in the Military too, there are victims also and you have to explain how and why it happened but there are no two sides to that story… some people can be on the side of the military. I didn’t expect that- we really worked hard… What I really want to do, when I say I want intelligent people to see the film, is have the Military see this film and the people responsible to see it I don’t want to shock them, or slap them in the face, but even by trying to be subtle and (respectful), they still can’t accept it, it’s too much for them.

Q How does Philippe feel about the film, was he involved much?

MK Very much, as soon as I started working with the Kanak, they were like, why not. I started working with them in 2001 and with Philippe from about 2003, so he was very much involved. I actually understand what he went through. He’s like a snake- he’s like a cold-blooded animal. They’re totally professional, they can’t let their emotions take over, so they don’t communicate that much. And even if he wanted to, he couldn’t really tell me much about how he felt going through it at the time because it was all happening. He realised only a few months later what happened, you know? So, he likes the film. The Kanaks like the film and he likes the film. From both sides, I have the same reaction. Both parties were so involved they knew the film they were going to get at the end.

Q Can I ask, is there a much more open culture now with the Kanaks now talking about these events? I understand they didn’t talk about it at all…

MK Well, the film is now out there. Discussions are now up in the air. If they want to discuss it they can. The film is here, so they can use it as a stepping stone.. I said I was not going to tell just their stories, I was going to tell a global story and their bad actions will be shown and the (military) bad actions will be shown but they needed something they could regroup around. It was very important for them. They wanted to be portrayed in a real way. Not in a good way, not in a bad way. What are they here for. What they are fighting for. I spent so much time with them. I love that island, that culture, that’s why they let me do it. I had the same thing with La Haine, in the projects. I’m not from there, but I could look in from a distance. If you live there, you are knee deep and do not have a perspective. You need someone to be able to come in from outside and se it for what it is.

Q You talked about Bloody Sunday being a favourite film.. What’s your view on the British in Northern Ireland?

MK I think it’s shit [laughter]. No, when I spoke about that film, I was really only talking about the way the film was made… and also the implications… he did it with people from the neighbourhood; used real people. The whole community was involved. To shoot the way he shot it was fascinating. You can feel the energy in the movie, I think. You couldn’t do riots like that if people weren’t involved. Like Ken Loach, you know, you have to be involved for the people to get involved, otherwise you cannot make films like this.

Q Injustice seems to be a common thread running through your films. Can you tell me what inspired you to become a filmmaker?

MK Very simple, my parents were filmmakers and very good filmmakers, so they taught me the craft and the love for the craft. And my father was very ethical you know, and taught me the basics, like you know, stay on schedule work under the budget, if you can do it for less then do so. Problems are solutions; you don’t need money to find solutions, you need to be smart. He knew his craft and he passed it on to me. My mother was the same, she was an editor. I always say, if they were butchers, I would have been a butcher. A very good one. I would be killing cows right now. In a very good way- without hurting them. [laughter] no, I mean, I would have been doing what my parents had taught me and with passion. I was lucky it was movies so I can hang out with beautiful people and not dirty cows, but the rest is simple.

MK Now, why political movies, I have no fucking idea. My parents- it was the Sixties, the Seventies and they were from Hungary; they escaped during a communist regime.

Making movies is difficult. You have two choices. Either you make movies because wow, I make movies and fuck(!), it’s a great way to make a living, you just want to make money and get rich, or you make movies because you have something to say and that’s where it’s really, really interesting, because its such a powerful and amazing medium to play with. I realised during this movie that when you make a movie like that, the movie is done and you said what you had to say and you say the truth, so it’s a great responsibility, but it’s also a great honour to be able to… I said the truth about that movie and what happened and that is going to influence the vote next year. That’s amazing. I am doing politics at the same time. And I did that for ten years with them.

It’s very difficult to make a movie, so it’s better to make it for a purpose other than your bank account or your next girlfriends, you know?

Thankyou Matthieu.

A Q&A AFTER THE PUBLIC SCREENING

Q&A *Contains Spoilers*

MC Thank you for a thought provoking film from beginning to end. Tell me, the story came from Philippe Legorjus’ book, I think he wrote it very soon after the conflict in 1990..?

MK I didn’t want his point of view. I didn’t read his book first, because I couldn’t trust his point of view. That story happened in 1998 around the time of the elections and all we heard in France was that 19 savages got killed cos they decapitated some militia, so they got what they deserved and then the elections went on and we all just forgot about it. So then some time after I discovered a book from the League of Human Rights they investigated for six moths. When I read that it was amazing- it was a movie by itself and the one name popping up was Philippe. So I read alot and did alot of research.

MC What do you make of Philippe’s book now?

MK I think his book is pretty close to reality and what he went through. Pretty accurate.

What I still don’t know is what he thinks about it all.. he spent alot of time buried in it and then after some time realised he simply couldn’t take it any more so he quit the military. He’s not the kind of guy that can take the wrong orders. Didn’t want to be influenced too much by him, as I knew he was the axis of this story, so I needed to get other voices first. And because he retired made me think he was an interesting character. I couldn’t have done this if he hadn’t retired.

What would I do if I ever meet these people? What would I do if I ever met Mitterand? I would go insane. I would tell them that they kill people. And Philippe just wants to understand how all this happened. Because it’s very strange when you look at the whole picture, something strange happened… How could Mitterand have made this decision? How could he have decided just to sacrifice these people?

MC You make a smart decision to show the archive footage and focus in very well and how it resonates at the top.

MK There was a decision about how much I show of Paris and the corridors of power, but I didn’t want to focus very much on the character of Philippe and focus on the issues. I’m trying to get as close to reality as possible AND would you pass on the chance to use this archive footage?! These two guys. They have ten minutes talking about New Caledonia.. if I had had the balls, I would have put the whole ten minutes in, you can see the fight that’s going on there between these two guys very interesting.

MC Research there on the island, was it easy?

MK The story itself the journalist investigation. One very important element is their culture and what they are fighting for. There is a whole civilisation there, all about listening and learning and taking time to respond and share. They tested me for ten years. They wanted to see how far I was willing to go. So I realised that I needed to be that guy.. if they had a problem, then I was the guy they could shoot.

In 2001, it was 13 years after the facts; people had their families wiped out, cousins, fathers, brothers, it’s a very small place and a very shocking story, but no one knows this story, because no one talks about it. So I heard the stories whilst I was there and from the news. It took ten years to get permission from the whole community to say yes. I mean everybody. Everybody on the island. There are different kinds of Kanaks, independence fighters, families, so, I had a friend who worked for five years full time to see everybody on that island and spent 8 hours with each of them, to explain what I was doing and get them to say yes. So that took a very long time.

We shot in Tahiti, as it was sacred ground almost in New Caledonia. It became way more than a movie. A political statement.

MC Finding actors was hard?

MK There are only five Kanak actors in the world. We are looking for the truth, so one way to do it is to work with people who could say that it is legit, or not. It is a big responsibility for them to let me do it. Of course, I could have just messed with them; told them something and then gone and made a totally different movie and it would totally destroy them. So they gave me a pass to express what they are around the world.

MC Kanaks have now seen it? That was nervous moment?

MK Yes, in needed to show the families of people who died. When I had them I knew how they would react.

It’s their and their culture- their story. They’ve never had a moment to get their own voice out. This film gives them that. They weren’t allowed to express their story. That’s very disturbing.

If I showed all the torture and the harassment going on in the villages, it would have shocked people, but I didn’t want to show that.

MC One very shocking scene we see at least two captured prisoners assassinated by soldiers. How quickly was it reported?

MK Never in a military assault do you have 19 deaths and no wounded… maybe you have 5 dead and ten wounded, some seriously… But here, no, they were all just shot. All 19. People were found with a bullet in their forehead. I didn’t want to show that. I don’t show, but if you are smart enough, you will understand. I could have shown it, they shot between 5-10 people, bullet in the head. That’s disturbing but I didn’t want to make the film about that. I wanted to make it about something more universal and tragic than just the death of 19 people.

MC How did you get large French companies and the army involved..?

MK I chose not to show too much. I didn’t want shock, I wanted to open the discussion. We went to Kanak and asked for their help and also the military also and asked for vehicles and choppers, in the hope that we could then say that look, everyone is helping here and perhaps that would start the discussion that needed to be had. Military said no. So, there is not one thing that comes from them.

The helicopter is made out of wood. We got it off the ground digitally. Cars, there is only one with an engine, the other is simply linked with chains to the first one. The two armoured cars are made of wood and dragged by another car. And we went to the politicians and they said ‘not only are we not going to help you, but it would be better if you didn’t actually make the movie.’

So no, we didn’t have any help. We got unofficial military to help. Part of the cast is military. We had both sides working with us, but in a very unofficial way, which makes the film very accurate. Concerning finances, we were very lucky, because of my career, and because I was so passionate about that story and it is so amazing, so cinematic, it wasn’t difficult to find the money. We had very good and trusting partners. It was a ten million Euro budget. Half went in to the logistics; fridges, lodging, food, everything. There are no compromises.

And we said to the army, just help us so we can start to bring people together and they just said ‘fuck you’. So we said ‘fuck you too’. [laughter]

MC Are you now a hero of the gendarmerie?

MK Am I a hero? It’s strange, officially no, and the high ranking officers, Hell no. but for the guys hat were there, I was approached by the grunts that were there not part of the GIGN, but that were here and they told me things that were too horrible to put in the movie but they were very grateful that we did the move and they needed some way to get it all off their chests. They have been living with this stuff for 20 years so for the regular army guy, we helped.

That’s the conflict of being in the army. They have to obey orders and if they don’t then the whole system collapses. But still they have brains and hearts and they can’t talk about it all, so when somebody else does, it helps.

MC The Cesars… you had a spat on Twitter with them..?

MK Yes, for those that don’t know, they are like our Bafta’s or Oscars… I have won, I think, three of them and been nominated for more, but I never went to get them. Because I don’t like them, because I think it’s tacky in the extreme. And boring and I’m not keen being seated next to these people. I would love to go to the Oscars and be seated next to Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola and all these people and these amazing directors that I built my childhood on. But I hate competition, I don’t like it.

I don’t really care about having a Cesar or not. It’s not about it being a good film or not. But if the French industry doesn’t help, doesn’t support films like that, you see, there is not another movie like that out there, so if they don’t support movies like that then we didn’t have ten political movies.. they gave Oscars to the most successful film of the year. Why? Why give a Cesar to a film that doesn’t need it? Just recognise that French movies and cinema are also (political) and if you just support comedies, then what does that mean? And why support films that are mimicking the Americans.? Fuck that. [round of applause]

We had a relationship with the Brits. But right now, we don’t have that relationship. So I made that movie because I thought the French were feisty and not any more. They aren’t concerned and they are no longer interested. I understand the public didn’t go and see it. They would rather laugh in the cinema and have a good time. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it… but for the industry not to recognise it, I was very shocked. I gave my best. I think it’s time for me to go somewhere else.

MC We have to draw things to a close. Thank you, Matthieu Kassovitz.

Io e Te (2012) You and Me ***

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast: Tea Falco, Jacopo Olmo Antinori, Sonia Bergamasco

96min Italian Drama with subtitles.

Bertolucci resurfaced in Cannes last year with this very Italian two-hander, his first since The Dreamers back in 2003.

Set almost entirely in a poorly-lit basement, Io e Te is essentially a character study that focuses on two well-heeled but emotionally-crippled siblings. Bertolucci is fascinated by Italian youth, and particularly the kids of well-off families. Despite bravado and stylishness, a gnawing vulnerability seeps through these two as they posture and pose in a effort to exude contemporary cool, flirting nonchalently with their nascent sexuality in a desperate bid to find a connection in their troubled lives.

Jacopo (newcomer, Jacopo Olmo Antinori) gives a thoughtful turn as a typical ‘mammalone’: or spoilt child, hiding out in the basement at home, on the pretence of being on a school skiing trip. He seeks refuge here to escape his mother’s suffocating attention. But his welcome solitude is ruptured by the arrival of his bohemian half-sister, Olivia, who appears in a state of cold-turkey and insists on staying and smoking her way through a packet of fags, much to Jacopo’s irritation. Gradually these two fall into an awkward intimacy that borders on incestuousness and very much echoes Dreamers in conception. However, there’s much less interesting character development here and none of the stylish gad-about fun and frolics although the production does have award-winner Franco Piersanti’s pleasing score to help it along.

These are damaged kids and typical of a generation who somehow, through ‘the sins of the father’, have developed minor neuroses and narcissistic personality issues and both the leads give believable and well-drawn performances in a story that nevertheless feels claustrophobic and uncomfortable. What could have developed as a fascinating foray into adolescence in the Italian borghesia becomes rather grungy and tedious after the initial stages and fails to lift off onto a really meaningful level despite a decent script (from a novel by Niccolo Ammaniti) possibly because of the unnappealing nature of the characters and physical and visual constrictions of the basement location,

As a study of half-siblings it just about holds the attention but at nearly two hours, it fails say anything that’s fresh or exciting. When you think of the rich and complex work of Bertolucci: from Once Upon A Time In the West to 1900, The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor this is slight in comparison. So don’t go expecting an epic: it’s extraordinary that this great master is still with us, let alone making a brave attempt at continuing his film career. MT

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IO E TE is on general release from 19th April 2013

F*ck For Forest (2012) Kinoteka 2013

Director/Screenplay: Michael Marczak

Cast/FFF Team: Leona Johansson, Tommy Holl Ellingsen, Natty Mandeau and Danny Devero.

86min *** Documentary

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorAFEakwv4

F*ck For Forest is a registered Berlin charity. But don’t get too excited or offended by the title: it’s not a porn movie.

Michael Marczak’s offbeat documentary kicks off in a luxurious modern home in Bergen where we meet a competitive horse eventer launching into a diatribe about his dysfunctional family. Next is a half-naked girl singing discordantly on stage about animal welfare. All very seemly, so far.

Tommy is in a threesome relationship and living in a nudist flat with other hippy-type animal lovers in Berlin. Another nudist who wonders around a woodland location is claiming F*ck for Forest has saved him from a nervous breakdown. All these bohemian youngsters have opted out of the mainstream and believe that their venture is worthy and worth pursuing. We see them having a (cleverly edited) orgy enboldened by plant-based psychedelic drugs with some female moaning ‘I vant to be alone’.

So this is F*ck for Forest. The aim of the salacious title is to raise funds for environmental causes by commissioning and selling amateur porn via the internet. And there’s nothing really new to say about the content as we could be in San Francisco in the sixties instead of Berlin in the 2012. But the salient point is that these shrewd operators have cottoned on to the fact that nowadays there are people keen to offer up their sexual antics or naked pictures as exhibitionists. It seems to satisfy a natural desire to be voyeurs and flaunt their assets in a cheeky display of pride with total strangers all over the World. But isn’t this really an excuse just to have a big sexual jolly? They all believe they’re making a difference in a world that’s ceases to care.

The action moves on to the Amazon in South America and so rolicking naked in the rainforest is not a hardship in all that humid heat. The film’s production values are of good quality and the dialogue is frisky with foreign accents adding a twist of exotic authenticity as a hotchpotch of sexual predilections is aired to tightly edited snapshots of kissing, caressing and cavorting. “Do you get jealous when I touch his dick?”, “Sometimes I have a desire for rough sex” are afew utterances bandied around as souls and bodies are laid bare. It’s a romp but the local Amazon villagers are less amused and feel taken advantage of and diffident about trusting such a weird venture; albeit in the name of charity. MT

F*ck for Forest was the winner of the Best Feature Documentary at the Warsaw International Film Festival 2012 and screens as part of the 11TH KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013 – 7-17TH MARCH

In The Fog (2012)

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Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Script: Sergei Loznitsa, Vasili Bykov (novel)

Producer: Heino Deckert

Cast: Vladimir Svirskiy, Vladislav Abashin, Sergei Kolesov, Nikita Peremotovs, Yuliya Peresild, Kirill Petrov, Dimitrijs Kolosovs, Stepans Bogdanovs, Dimitry Bykovskiy, Vlad Ivanov

Ger, Rus, Neth, Bela, Lat 127mins 2012 War Drama

‘The Fog of War’ is a phrase coined in 1837 by Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, encapsulating the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced during conflict, be it confidence in capability, in operations, in strategy, in the campaign as a whole, or in the enemy’s strength or weakness.

It can work at any level, from the soldier on the ground all the way up to chaps in charge in the War Office, where intelligence and counter-intelligence only serve to muddle the issue, to the point where the decision maker in question feels paralysed and unable to make a choice, in case it’s the wrong one, the stakes being so high.

Director Loznitsa has made far more documentaries than fiction; his only previous drama outing being the much-lauded 2010 title ‘My Joy’, which was nominated for the Cannes Palme D’Or and winning top prizes at three other film festivals the same year.

Here, the year is 1942 and Belarus lies under a German occupation showing no sign of weakening. Civilians face a stark choice; either survive in the woods as a freedom fighter, or fold under as a Policeman or crafsman in the job you had before the war, only now working towards German objectives.

Into this pressurised environment of fear and mistrust, where your lifelong neighbour or even family member will sell you out to save their own skin, Loznitsa introduces the epitome of moral rectitude in the shape of Sushenya, in the knowledge that, in a time of war, virtue fast becomes that rarest of beasts, hunted to the verge of extinction in the opening salvo.

Vladimir Svirskiy is excellent as the epitome of unimpeachable courage and unfettered righteousness in the face of impossible odds, where everyone else has a price at which they bail out and all others are judged by that standard, not on their own merits.

In The Fog, running a shade long at over two hours, is nevertheless a fascinating and very real examination of the mechanism that so easily falls into place when a culture is placed under extreme duress and starvation is only a week away. The veneer is soon stripped away and we see what people are made of.

It would be wrong of me to go into the details of what has transpired, as the story unfolds out of chronology and much of the interest is driven by wanting to know what has happened to create the situation the characters find themselves in.

Suffice it to say it is engrossing and believable at every turn; one is made to accept the importance of a single potato, rag and sound in the woods. When life is stripped down to this basic level, it’s no wonder that any of the more elevated qualities of humanity are quickly discarded against the more practical concerns of immediate survival; morals seen as an extravagance no one can any longer afford. One is certainly a member of the masses when one chooses cowardice and compliance above and beyond what may be right and wrong. Andrew Rajan

IN THE FOG IS IN CINEMAS FROM 26 APRIL 2013

3rd Spanish Film Festival Spring Weekend 25 – 28 April 2013

Meet the actors and directors over a glass of Rioja and enjoy the latest Spanish films to hit the international circuit from Paco Banos’ debut ALI to the beautiful BLANCANIEVES, an outright winner at this year’s Goya Awards. The programme runs from April the 25th until 28th at the Cine Lumiere in South Kensington, London SW7:

NO REST FOR THE WICKED – NO HABRA PAZ PARA LOS MALVADOS 3* (2011) 114min Director: Enrique Urbizu Spanish with subtitles

Enrique Urbizu’s bleak police thriller exposes ineptitude surrounding the Madrid bombings of 2004. Jose Coronado gives a standout performance as psycho police chief, Santos Trinidad, who gets on the wrong side of the law and everyone he meets. Grittily uncovers a network of prostitution, drug trafficking and terrorism loitering with intent into dark humour and strange lyricism on the way.

April 25th at 8.15pm Q&A + Campo Viejo wine

ALI (2012) 4* Director: Paco R Banos, 88min Spanish with subtitles

Banos’ debut is a visually stunning coming-of-age drama centring on a delightfully unconventional family where rebellious teenager Ali (Nadia de Santiago) parents her emotionally unstable mother (Veronica Forque) in a idealised world where men are simply not permitted to take part. MT

April 26th at 3pm April 27 at 4.30pm

CHRYSALIS (2011) – DE TU VENTANA A LA MIA *** Director: Paula Ortiz, 98min, Spanish with subtitles

The sad love lives of three woman in different eras of 20th century Spain unfold in this evocative and gorgeous-looking debut from Paula Ortiz which blends believability with bleak reality. Maribel Verdu stands out as Ines. MT

April 26th at 6.30pm

BLANCANIEVES (2012) **** Director: Pablo Berger, 104min Silent.

Goya Award-winning black and white silent rendering of Snow White. Achingly beautiful with its delicate visuals and evocative original score by Alfonso de Villalonga, it blends a cinematic Andalucian bullfighting theme with a romantic 1920s setting where malevolent villain (Maribel Verdu) and brave heroine (Macarena Garcia) spar superbly to a chorus of inventive dwarfs. MT

April 26th at 8.30pm followed by Q&A with Macarena Garcia

THE DANCER UPSTAIRS (2002) Director: John Malkovich, 135min, English and Spanish (Quechua)

Javier Bardem is compelling as a lawyer turned police detective hunting down a guerrilla leader in an unnamed Latin American country (filmed in Ecuador) in John Malkovich’s riveting directorial debut. Romance, intrigue and politics interweave in this stylishly intelligent thriller which takes its time but never outstays its welcome. MT

April 27th 2.00pm

THE ARTIST AND THE MODEL – EL ARTISTA Y LA MODELO (2012) Director: Fernando Trueba, 104min, French and Spanish with subtitles

Jointly scripted by Jean-Claude Carriere (Belle de Jour) and Trueba, this black and white swansong for Jean Rochefort is a paean to creativity set in the French Pyranees during the Second World War where he gives a resonant turn as ageing sculptor Marc Cros, devoted to his wife, a convincing Claudia Cardinale. He is re-awakened by a Catalan muse (Aida Folch) who is also a resourceful resistance heroine in her own right. Politics and the Spanish Civil War occasionally invade this textured and stylised study which is dedicated to Pierre Gamet (Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean de Florette), who composed the score. MT

April 27th 8.50pm followed by Q&A with Fernando Trueba

THURSDAYS WIDOWS – LAS VUIDAS DE LOS JEUVES (2010) Director: Marcelo Pineyro, 122min Spanish with subtitles.

An Argentinian-style ‘Desperate Housewives’ morality tale set in a gated community in Buenos Aires in 2001 where the walls gradually come tumbling down in tune with the local political meltdown of the era. Sumptuous visuals from Alfredo Mayo and sleek performances, particularly from Leonardo Sbaraglia, inject an enjoyable note of comedy to this subtle and appealing drama. MT

28th April 4.30pm – Preceded by intro with Juan Diego Botto.

WITH GEORGE BUSH ON MY MIND – LOS ABAJO FIRMANTES (2003) Director: Joaquin Oristrell, Spanish with subtitles.

Award-winning play within a play that sees a superb ensemble cast take Gabriel Lorca’s position during the Spanish Civil War (Play Without A Title) to express their feisty opposition to Spain’s entry in the Iraq War. Oristrell’s clever direction creates dramatic tension then relieves it with moments of black comedy and a storyline that ensures his characters’ relationships play out in fresh and unexpected ways. MT

28th April at 7.00pm preceded by an on-stage interview conducted by Prof. Maria Delgado with Juan Diego Botto and Maria Botto (siblings) about the challenges of acting on both sides of the Atlantic.

Rebellion (2011)*****

Director: Matthieu Kassovitz
Script: Matthieu Kassovitz, Benoit Jaubert, Pierre Geller
Producers:Matthieu Kassovitz,Christophe Rossignon
Cast: Matthieu Kassovitz, Iabe Lapacas, Malik Zidi, Alexandre Steiger,, Patrick Fierry, Macki Wea,

Jean-Philippe Puymartin

France 136mins Drama

Perhaps best known for his break-out 1995 smash, La Haine, if you didn’t like Rebellion, there would be nowhere else to place the blame, other than squarely at the feet of Matthieu Kassovitz.

Rebellion is based upon the real-life happenings surrounding the uprising and events of May 5th 1988 in French Noumea, New Caledonia. In typical fashion, Kassovitz has totally embraced rather than shied away from the central issues and myriad complexities surrounding the highly emotive and politically incendiary actions of the day, coming as they did upon the eve of crucial General Elections in distant France.

Kassovitz is a master minstrel, understanding the camera supremely well and here again manages to convey a great deal with simplicity, without losing the power or authenticity of the moment. Every shot is very carefully considered, both for maximum impact and for yield, and the story he decided to tell is a very well chosen one, not only in terms of what it offers up, but for what is says about where we’ve come to collectively; new values for old.

Kassovitz plays a negotiator sent onto the eye of the hostage storm to try to best hammer out a peaceful resolution. As that key player, he allows us insight into the many forces at work during the crisis, from the hostage takers, the hostages, the police, the army and all of the contingent politics prevailing at the time.

This is a hugely intelligent film, pulling off what could have been terminally mired exposition and plot with a deft brilliance, refusing to simplify or flinch from what happened, even though what transpires is far from France’s greatest hour. All this at the same time as avoiding becoming excessively violent or indeed, preachy.

‘By making believe we are fighting terrorists, we dehumanize our opponents, making violence much easier, to the detriment of future negotiations’. Kassovitz evidently still has the fire in his belly that made La Haine so powerful. But with all of the passion, the anger in his films born of frustration, there also remains no doubt that he is after all, a humanist. Superb storytelling then, as told by a superlative storyteller. AT

REBELLION IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH APRIL 2013.

Simon Killer (2012) ****

Director/Writer: Antonio Campos

Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Lila Salet, Michael Abiteboul, Solo, Constance Rousseau

105min US Psychological drama

Simon Killer is subversive in tone: you get the overriding impression that it’s being filmed covertly or by a hidden camera possibly due to the slightly muffled sound effects and a close range hand-help camera that give it an unsettling feeling of doom-laden urgency with a subtle and syncopated score occasionally and abrubtly punctured by long periods of uncomfortable silence.

Simon is clearly a disturbed, self-absorbed and morose individual: an American who’s moved to Paris and has just finished a long term love affair due to his ex girlfriend’s infidelity and this plays on his mind. Sexually he’s also very pent-up and troubled by his past and this comes across in his relationships with the people he comes across in this foreign city.

Paris feels like a dangerous in Simon Killer. Not the romantic city of dreams billed but a hostile, jagged and unfriendly place harbouring criminals types and the disenfranchised.

Simon eventually hooks up with a mysterious French call girl who offers him casual sex and the two become close when Simon asks her for temporary refuge. He becomes increasingly emotionally and sexually involved with her in scenes that feel authentic and visceral. The camera plays on their torsos and occasionally scans across the room in an unsettling way and the two engage in experimental and brutal sex that’s explicit and intermingled with feelings from the past for Simon, as he begins a slow and disturbing downwood spiralling into his fate.

This is a first rate mesmerizing psychological thriller that’s stylishly produced and pulsating with believable performances from the writer and director of the acclaimed Afterschool.MT

SIMON KILLER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 12 APRIL 2013

Love Is All You Need (2012) ***

Director: Susanne Bier

Script: Anders Thomas Jensen

Producer: Vibeke Windelov, Sisse Graum Jorgensen

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Paprika Steen, Molly Blixt Egelind, Sebastian Jessen, Stina Ekblad, Bodi Jorgensen, Christiane Schaumburg-Muller

Den/Swe/Ital/Fr/Ger 116mins 2012 Rom Com

Even for his relatively young years, Anders Thomas Jensen has been industrious, scribing over 30 feature films, including the superlative Open Hearts, creating the characters for Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and penning Joe Wright’s The Duchess. This is his fifth for Bier, who also returns to her favourite DoP Johan Soderqvist, to make the most of a sumptuous Mediterranean palette.

Love Is All You Need is an unorthodox love story, ostensibly the wedding of Ida (Dyrholm) and Philip’s (Brosnan) respective offspring, Astrid and Patrick, bringing everybody together in the beautiful Italian setting of Sorrento, for their impending nuptials.

However, this being a Susanne Bier film, you can depend upon things being more complicated than that. Brosnan, seems to have completely cornered the market in successful businessmen who have lost touch with their family and of course, their feelings. Here, he has plunged himself into his work, having lost his wife some years previously. Ida meanwhile, has been receiving treatment for cancer and is far from out of the woods.

Dyrholm is excellent as the sweet, optimistic but strong maternal figure; certainly the role asks a huge amount of her and she acquits herself brilliantly. The rest of the supporting cast are also exemplary, in particular, Kim Bodnia as Dyrholm’s husband and the wonderful Bier regular, Paprika Steen as Brosnan’s sister in law. It’s a great ensemble piece, let down I’m sorry to say, by the Brit of the piece in Brosnan’s unconvincing acting, particularly when asked to emote.

The story reveals itself quite early on and then it becomes a case of how things will unfold to generate the expected ending, but the characters are full and engaging, the dialogue, as expected, tight and well-observed and the beautiful setting of coastal Sorrento in the summer adds greatly to the lemon zest of the piece.

Bier remains the only Danish woman ever to be nominated twice for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (indeed winning for A Better World) and there is no doubting why. More Rom than Com, Love Is All You Need is no return to the top of her form, but it’s certainly no dog either. AT

LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 19 APRIL 2013

Susanne Bier

Daughter to German and Russian Jews, Writer/Director Susanne Bier was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1960. She first studied art at the Bezalet Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and then architecture at the Architecture Academy in London, before returning to Denmark to study as a Director at the prestigious National Film School of Denmark, graduating in 1987. Other alumni from around that time include Bille August, Lars Von Trier (1982), Lone Sherfig (1984) Anthony Dod Mantle (1989) and Thomas Vinterberg (1993).

Her graduation film helped set her on her way, winning first prize at the Munich film school festival. She followed this up with Freud Leaving Home in 1990 and Family Matters in 1993, but it was The One And Only in 1999 that proved her breakthrough, winning several gongs at the Danish Film Academy Awards and proving a great success with home audiences, breaking box office records. It also began a lasting and productive relationship with actress Paprika Steen, who went on to perform in several of her films, including her latest, Love Is All You Need.

In 1995 Trier and Vinterberg announced the Dogme ‘95 movement, based on a manifesto based very much on Francois Truffaut’s essay of 1954 concerning low budget filmmaking, saying that in a world of prohibitively high budgets, they wished only to redress the balance.

Open Hearts (2002) was Dogme film #28 and a great success internationally. It also moved Bier towards a more minimal methodology of filmmaking. The highly acclaimed Brothers (2004) and After The Wedding (2006) also helped greatly in her ascendancy, the latter being nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards. However, like many ‘foreign’ directors before her, she stumbled with her first American offering, Things We Lost In The Fire (2007) starring Benicio Del Toro.

Bier doesn’t confine herself solely to shooting feature films, taking on shorts, commercials and music videos. Her strength lies in her ability to explore the minutiae of relationships and the cost of betrayal, pain and forgiveness. Certainly her own take on things is that she wishes to address the conflict between characters and addressing storytelling and psychology, to make emotions the undercurrent to a story.

Bier has been married twice and has two children, Gabriel and Esther. She still believes ‘family’ has been her biggest influence and that she would have never become a filmmaker without children; that they gave her a career, rather than robbing her of one.
She says she desires very intense, close, intimate relationships with everyone she is involved with. ‘That way of living definitely informs the stories I tell.”

Bier has stated in the past that ‘her Jewish heritage embedded a strong sense of family in conjunction to a sense of instability and turmoil’. As a result of her fathers need to flee to Denmark, where he met her mother and then their need to escape yet again to Sweden at the onset of the war and this has proved to be influential in her work.

Her detractors at home say that her films have become too commercial and lack artistic value, however, she believes that she has a strong ability to empathise and her long term co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen agrees, saying that she has an innate ability to put herself into her characters shoes, making her a fine filmmaker and so allowing her characters to transcend borders.

To date, she has won an astonishing 29 awards, internationally and been nominated for a further 23. Bier also remains though the only Danish female to be nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Best Foreign Film with her 2010 offering, In A Better World.
This year she was invited to be a member of the Berlinale Jury.

FILMOGRAPHY

•   Freud’s Leaving Home (Freud flyttar hjemmefran…) (1991)
•   Family Matters (Det bli’r i familien) (1994)
•   Like It Never Was Before (Pensionat Oskar) (1995)
•   Credo (Sekten) (1997)
•   The One and Only (Den eneste ene) (1999)
•   Once in a Lifetime (Livet är en schlager) (2000)
•   Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt) (2002)
•   Brothers (Brødre) (2004)
•   After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) (2006)
•   Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
•   In a Better World (Hævnen) (2010)
•   Love is All You Need (Den skaldede frisør) (2012)
•   Serena (2013)

Place Beyond The Pines (2012) ****

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Craig Van Hook, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan, Harris Yulin.

140min Crime Drama US

Derek Cianfrance last feature was Blue Valentine, a moody arthouse piece that tracked the romance between a young married couple. His latest outing Place Beyond The Pines is a knockout thriller with rich tonal differences: what starts as a gritty indie drama rapidly switches to pure crime melodrama. That said, it’s one of the most intriguing and enjoyable films of the year so far and it works!

Not does it stand out as a gripping roller coaster, it also serves as a well thought out and ingenious meditation on fatherhood and male responsibility. It stars two of the most desirable male actors currently in Hollywood, Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, fresh from the success of Silver Linings Playbook, and the glittering female support of Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne thrown in for good measure.

Ryan Gosling plays Luke, a musclebound fairground stunt-rider who realises, rather late in the day, that he’s fathered a son, Jason, with his ex Romina (Eva Mendes), who’s now in another relationship. Determined to contribute to his son’s future, he harnesses his motorbike skills and starts robbing banks with a likeable accomplice Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who’s also his boss in a garage business. But the scheme goes wrong and brings him into contact with police guy Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) in an encounter which has disastrous consequences for them both.

At this point the story shifts to Avery and we discover how his life as a lawyer in the police service and son of a local judge, takes him into an area of the law he’d never anticipated and affects his life and those around him, including his infant son. The denouement is quite extraordinary and totally unexpected and deals with the future that he’s brought upon himself due to his choices and actions.

Visually slick thanks to the considerable talents of Sean Bobbitt who shot Shame, Hunger and Oldboy this is a well-paced thriller that never feels long despite its running time of over two hours. With an exciting narrative and well-formed characters that will satisfy even the most exacting cineastes, Place Beyond The Pines combines fast-paced action with subtle insight, shocking violence and a scintillating storyline. MT

PLACE BEYOND THE PINES GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE 11TH APRIL 2013.

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The Duchess of Malfi (1972)**** Jacobean Tragedy Series BFI

Director: James MacTaggart

Script: John Webster (play)

Producer: Cedric Messina

Cast: Eileen Atkins, Charles Kay, Michael Bryant, Gary Bond, Tim Curry, Dallas Cavell, Roy Evans, Jerome Willis, Sheila Ballantine

UK 116mins 1972 Jacobean Tragedy

Circa 1612, Malfi is a Five Act Play written by John Webster and loosely based upon true events in an Italian court of the early 16^th Century. It is renowned to this day for the superb complexity of the characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, here played by Atkins. Indeed, Michael Bryant was nominated for a BAFTA for his portrayal of Daniel de Bosola in this dramatization.

Starting out a love story, as so many Jacobean tragedies do, it all inevitably goes Pete Tong by the end, as the Duchess marries secretly beneath her and her two brothers set out exact their revenge for this unholy transgression.

Webster has a rare staying power, this play in particular has had many and varied productions throughout the intervening centuries and by the most feted actors of their day, surviving the fall from favour with audiences for it’s bloody and violent content, only to be revived again decades later. It is still appreciated today not only for Webster’s extraordinary and timeless characterisation, but also his undeniably powerful use of the language;

Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust,

Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

Broadly, a play concerning corruption- of power and of the mind as much as of society, of cruelty and of the place of women in society at that time. By meddling with any given intractable Law, one invoked The Wrath and things would inevitably be put right, albeit with much bloodletting and grievance along the way.

Eileen Atkins and Charles Kay (giving a rather unnerving though inadvertent impression of Peter Sutcliffe) as her twisted brother are the stand out performances and the language is brought alive by the entire cast. It must however not be forgotten that this is a ‘Play Of The Month’ and is styled such, rather than a more naturalistic production that we may now be more used to on our screens.

It falls down a little on the sound; without the use of radio mics, the sound suffers somewhat, muffled and indistinct in places, due to the limited manner of recording. The costumes however are excellent and the production is augmented by filming on location rather than a set, which also allowed the director to open it out to include exteriors.

So overall, a faithful interpretation of the original play, albeit inevitably shortened for TV and a rare treat to step back in time, if not to 1520, then at least to 1972 and see a different generation in the fire of their youth tackling an ageless story with vigour and aplomb. AT

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE JACOBEAN TRAGEDY SEASON AT THE BFI ON 10 APRIL 2013

Teorema | Theorem (1968) Venice Classics 2022

Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini | Cast: Silvana Mangano, Terence Stamp, Massimo Girotti

98min | Italy Fantasy Drama

A Milanese industrialist family is attracted to and then rejected by a ‘divine force’ in the shape of Terence Stamp who plays a young enigmatic English man with inappropriately tight trousers in the style of the era, who visits for a weekend that will change them all forever.

So taken was Pasolini after his first meeting with Stamp, that he never spoke to him again, giving no explanation of the role nor any indication of what he expected from him performance-wise even though he spoke rather good Italian. It’s quite obvious why he cast Stamp as the young man: He was enchanted with his blue eyes, angelic tousled hair and slim figure and used him to torture, dissimilate and destroy the family members one by one in this intriguing and controversial drama set in a Palladian palazzo in late sixties Milan. It was to blast onto the screens of European cinemas unveiling Pasolini’s pent-up views on his own sexuality, religious beliefs and his hatred of the Italian borghesia and of the political set-up, although the political set-up in Italy has always been subject to controversy.

Pasolini’s camera hangs around on street corners picturing beautiful and suggestively alluring young men in this complex and provocative political parable that portrays the working class southerners as religious bigots and the upper class Italians as intellectually and morally bankrupt because, at this stage of the game, they hold the economic power in Italy along with the Mafia. The industrial triangle of northern Italy (Milan, Turin, Genoa) paved the way to economic success and wealth for the region but the south was to stay relatively poor and agrarian.

Casting aside ‘scholarly interpretations’ for this review – you could go on all night – suffice to say Pasolini was disenchanted with his country. Being a Marxist and atheist, he despised the capitalist North and the South’s devotion to the Catholic Church. Each character in his film is but a hollow shell serving their particular ‘God’ whether it be money or religion and is overly concerned with outside appearances and social status rather than emotional and intellectual fulfilment.

It’s impossible to review this film without revealing substantial detail but this in no way diminishes the viewing pleasure: it’s such an extraordinary piece of filmmaking that, like viewing a work of art, there’s always something new to discover, no matter how much you look at it. It appears that Pasolini actually wrote the script after shooting the film so no one really knew what was expected.

Silvia Mangano is simply magnificent in the role of a society wife and mother. She was married to Dino De Laurentis, at the time, and had four children by him but had found fame due to her earlier romantic liaison with Marcello Mastroianni which lead to international stardom with Bitter Rice (1949). Here, decked out exquisitely in Capucci Couture, she is the imbodiment of an Italian woman of the era with her impeccable hairstyle, sense of entitlement and expression of extreme boredom. She is empty in every sense of the word but Stamp’s arrival ignites an unquenchable sexual fire in her and after his departure, she heads off in her mini, lust-crazed like some female Nosferatu, in the hthat sexual conquest with beautiful strangers will satisfy the emptiness she’s purported to feel inside. Possibly she is Pasolini, and how he feels confronted with beautiful Italian men and subject to the severe social strictures of Italian society in the late sixties.

The father (Massimo Girotti) gives his factory to his workers and is cast out into the wilderness of a volcanic landscape to roam around naked looking for succour. After sharing a bedroom with Stamp, the son abandons his career and becomes an abstract painter leaving home much to the dismay of his mother who had high hopes for him in the social scheme of things. The daughter goes into a swoon and becomes catatonic before being admitted to a mental asylum.

The maid, Emilia, (Laura Betti) is sanctified and returns to her home in Sicily where she floats dreamlike over her family’s farm, a vision of moral rectitude and grace, possibly embodying the feminine, caring qualities of Pasolini’s mother, who also appears in the film (she is a regular feature in his work) but also scorning the religious pomposity of the Catholic Church. Laura Betti won best actress at Cannes that year for her role. Scored by a innovative soundtrack encompassing natural sounds with Mozart and Morricone, the film placed Pasolini in pole position with the international film luminaries of the era.

THEOREM IS SCREENING IN VENICE FILM FESTIVAL CLASSICS STRAND | 2022

Gilles Bourdos – Film Director

GILLES BOURDOS was born in Nice (1963) and is particularly influenced by French painters in his filmmaking and screenwriting endeavours. His feature debut was at Cannes in 1998 with Disparus, a political thriller based during the Surrealist art movement in Paris in the thirties. Critical acclaim came with Inquiétudes (2003) based on the Ruth Rendell novel A Sight For Sore Eyes. His first English language feature Afterwards, starred John Malkovitch and Romain Duris, based this time on a French bestseller ‘Et Après’.

We met him during the Rendez-Vous with French cinema weekend at the Cine Lumiere in London to discuss his latest film RENOIR, which stars Christa Théret, Michel Bouquet and Vincent Rottiers.

AT Obviously, the first question has to be- what inspired you to make this film? You were in a museum-

So, maybe I have been making movies now 15-20 years, but this was the first time I had a feeling that I wanted to be a French director of this movie. It was very strange sensation and I started to read around Cezanne, Renoir and I found this specific story of when Andree Heuschling first arrived at Renoir’s house and I found it very fascinating, as we don’t know very much about this moment.

So she was the Perfect link to tell the story, not something intellectual, but something real, with flesh and blood, you know, the relationship between a father and a son, the relationship between cinema and a painting.

So, it was a ‘narrow’ situation, you know, with just a house, with a garden paradise around it and a big wall around that, so I found it to be a perfect set up situation for this film.

AT That being the case, the story is of course about two extraordinarily famous people. Were you at all worried about making a film about two ‘Sacred Cows’?

AT I am interested to know about you; where you were born and your influences…

GB Well, I was born in Nice (1963)..

AT Ah..

AT So, even as a working class boy…

AT Then, going through school, you didn’t decide you were going to become a painter…

AT …Enough.

GB Enough, exactly –enough to Start something. And make Alot of mistakes. And afterwards, you are learning because you are making mistakes. I just had to make my first 16mm movies.. and make alot of mistakes and… you learn, step by step, you know.

AT Your first films, you just made with friends, or…?

GB Yep. I was in Paris- I moved from Nice to Paris, because unfortunately, if you live in France, you cannot see films anywhere really, unless you live in Paris.

AT So you realised when you were in Nice you needed to move to Paris if you were going to be a filmmaker. And how old were you..?

GB Yes.. I was 24.. 23.

AT Ok, so you go to Paris…

AT Even then..

GB Even then, I didn’t know! I was just driven by this desire to see cinema.

AT Who would you say is an influence- you mentioned Bergman, Tarkovski..

GB Different moments of my life I would say different directors, but… Italian directors, really.

AT Such as…

AT Very close to the Italian sensibility..

GB Yes, yes, we are very close there to the Italian sensibility. We share the same coast, the water… And I did love Visconti, Fellini, Bertolucci… all those.

AT More than the French..?

GB More than the French, yes, definitely. More than the French.

AT Interesting. So you made a few short films. How did your first feature film get off the ground.. Disparus? (Disappeared).

GB Disparus, yes, (sighs) it was a big fight, because it was set in the Thirties, a kind of political love story.. it was a very ambitious film. Period films are very difficult to do anyway, as you always need more money; it was a kind of thriller. It was based on a true story too. There, the Surrealists and the Trotskyists were very close to each other in Paris before the war (1938), so there was political intrigue and infiltration. It was a big movie, which I also produced.

AT ..The story came from a news article?

GB A book. A novel..

AT Going back to Renoir– you live in New York too, I believe?

GB Yes..

AT When you go to a museum, is it the art that attracts you, or the space?

GB I going for the walk inside… actually, you know what? I think I am going to a museum, as others go to a church. So… it’s the whole thing…

AT A combination..

AT The thread.

AT …Continuity.

GB A continuity, of course

AT So, what’s next for you now?

GB Yes, I am working on a different possibility in France. It will be a European movie, an 18^th Century movie..

AT Ok, a Period piece in France… because I know before, you worked with the Americans and did an American film (Afterwards 2008).. how was that?

The Americans are very efficient at working.. and that is good, but there is no flexibility! That is my main problem with them. Because I am working with a Taiwanese DoP (Ping Bin Lee) and this is very different. But he works only with me in the West.. he works in Japan, in China, in Korea. But we work in a very similar way. We try to stay flexible. We work with a small crew; I am extremely precise the details, hair, costume, makeup, everything coming into my frame needs to be checked precisely, but I don’t use storyboards.

Whether I use track and what kind of shot, I decide at the last minute.

AT You like to see what the actors are going to do first..

As a filmmaker I am working with living elements; Weather, human beings. We are not puppets. So I don’t want to be too strict or lock it all down with papers and storyboards. That’s the problems with the Americans!

AT So, over there, the producers are wanting everything just so..

GB Not just the producers, everyone! Even the actors! Everyone in America hates improvisation.. they hate it!

AT The actors? I thought maybe with John Malkovich…

AT There’s no greys…

GB Yes, exactly.

AT Well…. I think we are done.

GB Ok, great!

AT Thank you very much indeed. I didn’t wish to pry too much, but I was interested and you were a total mystery, there is nothing of you online so…

GB No, but it is ok, I am a very private person, you know. But I understand. It is all about the movies, so that is ok.

GILLES BOURDOS – 8TH APRIL 2013 AT THE CINE LUMIERE IN LONDON’S SOUTH KENSINGTON

Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man (2002) On DVD

Director: Alberto Negrin

Novel: Enrico Deaglio

Script: Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli

Cast: Luca Zingaretti, Jerome Anger, Amanda Sandrelli, Franco Castellano, Marco Bonini

***½

Originally made for RAI TV but don’t be put off: Perlasca is a gripping and visually ravishing drama that will appeal to lovers of Second World War history and the Jewish Diaspora.

Perlasca: The Courage of A Just Man: is a historical drama that brings to light a little-known episode of history surrounding the ‘Italian Schlinder’, Giorgio Perlasca, who is credited with helping over 5,000 Hungarian Jews escape capture by the Nazis in Hungary during 1944-45.

This critically acclaimed film, originally made for RAI TV by the director of Mussolini and I (1985), is a straightforward linear narrative with precision visuals by Stefano Riciotti, who also lensed the BBCFOUR series, Inspector Montalbano.

The story starts in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War where Perlasca is tasked with meat provision for the Italian army. Socially well-connected he’s enjoying a pleasant lifestyle when the Hungarian authorities put out a warrant for his arrest. Fortunately, he manages to gain refuge in the Spanish Embassy due to his status as a supporter and fighter for fascism during the civil war in the 20s. This diplomatic immunity starts to work to his advantage in his struggle to help the Jewish community.

Adapted from Enrico Deaglio’s 1991 novel, ‘La Banalita del Bene”, what makes this film so captivating is a vibrant and rousing central performance from Luca Zingaretti as Perlasca. He really captures the spirit of the brave and resourceful hero who’s not only fearless but also incurably romantic and driven by his humanitarian conscience. Scored by Ennio Morricone’s original music, the production builds considerable dramatic punch through its personal and emotional focus on the individuals affected and in contrast to Schindler’s List, it gives an unflinching depiction of brutal atrocities occurring during this period in history. MT

PERLASCA IS NOW OUT ON DVD

Flying Blind (2012) *

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Director:Katarzyna Klimkiewicz

Script: Naomi Wallace, Bruce McLeod, Caroline Harrington

Producer: Alison Sterling

Cast:Helen McCrory, Najib Oudghiri, Kenneth Cranham, Tristan Gemmill, Sherif Eltayeb, Philippa Howard, Lorcan Cranitch

UK * 94mins 2012 Drama

Klimkiewicz was offered this feature on the back of her Short Hanoi-Warsaw, which screened at the Encounters Short FF in Bristol. Having seen her film, producer Sterling offered the opportunity of directing her first feature film, so it’s no mystery why she jumped at the chance.

It’s a mystery to me however, why this film was ever made. It has no bite; nothing memorable or remarkable about it at all and in the end comes across as no more than light filler for Middle-England television. It cuts no interesting, dangerous or new ground and if anything is sadly divisive and stereotyped in its portrayal.

McCrory plays a pretty unconvincing middle-aged aerospace engineer, engaged in designing the latest in ‘drone’ technology. Part-time, she also teaches aerospace technology at a college, which is where she meets the young handsome Najib Oudghiri, an Algerian studying engineering in Bristol.

Described as ‘a strong, bright woman making her way in a man’s world’, Frankie strikes more as an un-engaging, unsympathetic character designing bomb delivery for the MoD and behaves extraordinarily stupidly not just once, but throughout the film. There’s never the slightest whiff of authenticity as Frankie samples the ‘dangerous’ delights of forbidden fruit. Her relationships with her work colleagues, her father, the stab at aero-engineering, all of it smells fake and unexplored.

Having also played a role in 2007 title Rendition, I truly hope that Oudghiri’s career goes on to cover far more than merely that of playing terrorists for UK/US boring, stereotypical alarmist fodder; his ability demands alot more than this script, this role, ever afforded.

The audience is always more than one step ahead of the action, which is leaden and signposted. The dialogue never lifts off the page and all the characters remain resolutely stuck in the mud. Nothing about it is exciting. I would like to say ‘dull as dishwater’, but even dishwater can sometimes have depth. Flying Blind will sink without trace. AT

FLYING BLIND will tour through key cities in the UK throughout April including London , Bristol , Cardiff , York , Cambridge , Oxford , Nottingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh , Glasgow , Manchester and Brighton . Each event will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and/or cast TBC.

Thursday 11^th April – Barbican, London (Additional screenings 12^th– 18^th April)

Saturday 13^th April – Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Sunday 14^th April – Watershed, Bristol (Additional screenings 12^th – 18^th April)

Tuesday 16^th April – Greenwich Picturehouse

Wednesday 17^th April – York Picturehouse

Saturday 20^th April – Cambridge Picturehouse

Monday 22^nd April – Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton

Tuesday 23^rd April – Ultimate Picture Palace , Oxford

Wednesday 24^th April, Hackney Picturehouse, London

Thursday 25^th April – Nottingham Broadway (Additional screenings 26^th April – 2^nd May)

Friday 26^th April – Sheffield Showroom

Saturday 27^th April – Edinburgh Filmhouse

Sunday 28^th April – Glasgow Film Theatre

Tuesday 30^th April – Manchester Cornerhouse

Thursday 2^nd May – Brighton Komedia

For a full list of tour dates and tickets go to http://www.flyingblindfilm.com/

Sound Symposium APRIL 2013

A SCHOOL OF SOUND

A unique series of masterclasses exploring the art of sound in film, the arts and media taking place at the Purcell Rooms on the South Bank for four days in April.

Wednesday 3 APRIL

After a brief introduction to the tenth Symposium in 20 years, we kicked off with PIERS PLOWRIGHT, celebrated Radio broadcaster with the BBC: A Listening Life + A History of a World in 20 Sound Clips.

Examples made of poet Robert Frost, Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Chekov for his pauses and Neruda in terms of the power of poetry to lift the human spirit.
What you see and what you hear can be two very different things.
A great way to open the symposium, Piers is a legend of the game, a wise man and a funny man to boot. His foray into the world of sound was a personal one, but no worse for it.

· The silence when the lights go down and before the curtain goes up… the space we expect things to happen in.
· And the silence after the show ends but before the audience applauds.

There then followed ALEX BERNER, features film editor (Cloud Atlas, The Baader Meinhof Complex, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) on the integration of music and sound in preparing a picture cut for cinema. Alex was in conversation with SU NICHOLLS GÄRTNER, Head of Studies at the Internationale Filmschule Köln (ifs).

A more relaxed ramble, less structured, but very insightful nonetheless into the need for Sound Designer and Composer to be onboard as early as possible in the process of filmmaking, especially considering their key contribution to the finished article. These things tend to be budget lead though. Interesting example of sound used in place of smell in the film Perfume.

ANDREW KÖTTING, filmmaker (Gallivant, Swandown) and multimedia artist, speaking on ‘Trace Elements and Noise Spillage+ How Sound has always been the Motor for My Picture’ was the other highlight of the day. A very funny man, coming at sound from a very different perspective; that of an artist.

Interesting in how he chooses to utilize sound against the picture often rather than with it.

Thursday 4

SEÁN STREET, delves into his book, The Poetry of Radio + The Colour of Sound, to investigate topics including the power of the Human voice, alienation using sound art, audio as a one to one experience within developing technologies, sound as the driving force of the human imagination, as well! as his current preoccupation, sound and human memory.

Some great references, including Under Milk Wood, Samuel Becket and Ann Friz.

www.seanstreet.com

ANNE WOOD, from Ragdoll, producer of childrens’ television (including the acclaimed Teletubbies, DipDap, Rose And Jim) on Hearing and Listening: A Young Child’s World, with sound designer TIM VINE. An impressive lecture, concerning the extremely different world that TV for the very young entails, especially in terms of sound.

·       The use of background and foreground sound effects
·       Ensuring the theme tune is a call to the screen for the children, to then ‘enfold’ them.
·       Children live in the same world a adults, but perceive it differently
·       The use of sound rhythms and breaking them to create humour.
·       Never underestimating the importance of ‘silly’ in the entertainment of children.
·       Avoiding loud and high-pitched noises.
·       Innocence and vulnerability- too knowing lacks feeling.
·       The importance of the audience anticipating certain noises and having them fulfilled.
·       Program needs to be shared and with the room left for the child to react.

DAVID SONNENSCHEIN, writer, producer, director, sound designer and game developer, presents The Art of Listening:

Creating Audio for Film and Interactive Media. Theoretical models and practical applications demonstrate various creative sound design approaches, including the presenter’s Sound Spheres model and new music game app 3 Deaf Mice.

Sound and Narrative Structure-
Sound that helps tell the narrative story… augments the telling.

Sound Spheres-

· I Think- memories, daydreams, mental rehearsal, etc.
· I Am- speaking, heartbeat, breathing, chewing, etc
· I Touch- (Foley) Footsteps, clothing noise, food, contact sports, etc
· I See- TV, cars passing, etc
· I Know – people talking outside our sphere, birds, wind, etc
· I Don’t Know- no causal source/ unknown sound, maybe getting louder (used alot in Horror)

The drama is driven from the movement between these spheres.

BERNIE KRAUSE, a naturalist and former professional musician who records the sounds of animals, presents ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’, focusing on the ways in which the sounds of the natural world contain narratives that convey lots of useful information about how humans are treating that universe, And The cultural influences we have derived from it. In particular, it illuminates our connection To ‘biophony’ and the ways in which animals taught us to dance and sing. Via videolink from the USA.

An incredibly interesting lecture, from a man who suffers from ADHD and used the discipline of recording nature as a means of combatting this. Has made some extraordinary recordings and discoveries from doing so.

Drawing some amazing parallels between the use of sound space by animals with the structure that we use to create classical music. For instance, the different sound pitches employed by insects, reptiles/amphibians, mammals and birds, each taking a different vocal register.

Research also leading to the discovery of the impact of planes flying over a swamp of frogs, sound impacting on bird song and on ocean animals. Of de-forestation. How animals continually test their space for the best bio-acoustic structure and performance constantly evolves.

Friday 5

LARRY SIDER introduced EMAS, the new European MA in Sound.

MARK MILTON, mentor and advisor in self-leadership and governance, founder of the Swiss foundation Education4Peace: ‘From Noise to Empathy’, the path to presence + ways of listening.

An interesting alternative side to the ‘sound’ debate, with Mark enlisting the audience to take part in listening exercises. Discussed Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs-

Self-Actualisation
Esteem
Belongingness and Love
Safety
Biological and Physiological needs

‘Needs’ is where connections happen.
www.e4p.org

ROGER CRITTENDEN, editor, writer and film educator: ‘Space in Varda: A sound perspective’, on the soundtracks of French filmmaker Agnes Varda and more.
‘Our future is in the past’.
Referenced Truffaut’s Day For Night, Ozu and Tarkowski.
History is always simplified for film, but never to the good.
Sound, when juxtaposed and not synchronous, will create a strength and artistic height that synchronous sound never will.

JOE MORAN, choreographer, dancer and Artistic Director of the Dance Art Foundation, gave a talk on the relationship between movement and sound in the creation and performance of contemporary and Post-modern dance. He reflects on composition as a meeting point between sound and movement in new work, and considers the Historical perspectives concerned with more Classical notions of musicality in dance. For tis, he employed three dancers who managed to work, improvise and come up with a new dance sequence guided by Joe, who ran through a potted history of dance from classical through to where we are today n terms of dance and its relationship to music.
Referenced :

·       RB
·       Martha Graham- dancing from the standpoint of emotion.
·       Merce Cunningham- divorcing the causality between music and dance.
·       Rambert.

HOLLY ROGERS, lecturer and researcher (University of Liverpool), on Video Art as a musical/sonic genre, concentrating on the earlier period of work (Paik, Vasulka, Schneider and Jonas), and tracing developments into new media. (Utterback, Erickson, Rist, Viloa, Bjork, Arcade Fire). Three Turner winners have been video installations. An in-depth exploration of the work of Paik in video, at a time when no one else was doing it.
Taking us back to the inception of video in 1965 and the route that it has taken since; that video is far more related to the microphone and ‘digital’ rather than film, which has the mechanical/chemical ancestry of photography.

PAT JACKSON, Supervising Sound Editor whose credits include Jarhead, The Talented Mr Ripley, A Bug’s Life and The English Patient, presents The Discriminating Ear, focusing our attention on how we hear the real world and the level of audio detail needed for a film world.

An exploration into how sound works and convinces us that the picture is real and that it doesn’t need to be loud to be good.

Great examples of sound in film, where less can often be more. And the use of production sound is very often the better choice over ADR and reconstruction.

It is often possible to cut picture, but not sound without being noticed.
Using sound as the hook to bring an audience into a picture.

Referenced:
K19 Widowmaker
Jarhead
Hemingway and Gellhorn
Microcosmos
Titanic
The Social Network
Abbas Kaurostami

Saturday 6

Saturday morning gave us all a chance to MEET THE SPEAKERS and an opportunity to ask further questions in an informal gathering in the Purcell Room Foyer.

This was followed by THE SOUND OF MIKE GRIGSBY –an interview with the documentary filmmaker who died on March 12th made for the 2000 SOS, by event organiser and friend, Larry Sider.

Grigsby described his approach to the manipulation of sound and image, illustrating that creative sound is due as much to a strong point of view as to technical expertise.
This was followed by an excerpt from his final film, up on We Were Soldiers documenting the trauma on young soldiers returning from the Vietnam war, with the same subjects 40 years on in We Went To War.

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CHRIS WATSON, one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena who also uses his recordings in sound installations, multi-channel works and as filmic narratives for Touch. Chris presents ’90 degrees South’, a sonic exploration of the sea ice above and below the surface of a frozen ocean. He worked on a great many seminal works, including Frozen Planet with Sir Richard Attenborough.

An epic and inspirational journey through the worlds oceans, glaciers and whales with extraordinary recordings and observations, plus a trip to Terra Nova, the Antarctic base hut that the doomed Scott expedition to the South Pole set out from 100 years ago.

Covered the impact of sound pollution beneath the waves, from prop noise as much as sonar.

IVO ŠPALJ AND THE SOUND OF JAN ŠVANKMAJER video interview. Špalj, the doyen of Czech film sound design, an artist in the use of Foley effects, best known for his work with artist Jan Švankmajer, is profiled in a video interview produced by the SOS.

A thorough examination of Svankmajer’s work through long-term collaborator Spalj and the use of sound effects to create the fantasy worlds explored by Svankmejer’s films. Extraordinary insight into the creation and impact of the sound created, never using digital or electronic sounds.

STEPHEN DEUTSCH composer, educator, writer and Co-editor of The New Soundtrack journal, suggests Changing the Way We Feel About Sound.

Immersion, emotion and Potential.

Literal Sounds -make us believe what we see

Emotive Sounds -encourage us to feel something about what we see

Music is always emotive, but can lose its impact if it’s always present.

In works of art, there is no depth, only surface.

A work of art offers the audience room to bring depth to it.

References:
Psycho –                 Hitchcock
Psycho –                 Gus van Sant
Stalker –                 Tarkovski

www.schoolofsound.co.uk

Romain Duris – Eiffel

Versatile French actor Romain Duris, born in Paris in 1974, and now a star leading man. He has made over 40 films since starting acting, almost by accident, in 1994.

What is the main interest in your playing Louis Echard in Populaire?

RD I like how he is complex, you know? He is closed to sentiments, to love. He is frustrated (in his desire) to be a champion .. I think he has a difficult education, I like to play this guy, who we begin to understand through the movie. He is cold and then he warms as we move through.

And this world of typewriters? It’s a strange, antiquated world…

RD I love that. I love that world. If it was boxing or tennis, it would not be quite so interesting

He’s a first time director. How did this project come to you?

RD Regis sent me the script…

Through your agent…

RD Yes, well, through the producer because the Regis met the producer first and it came through him. It was great. Every step was exciting…

Had he written the part with you in mind?

RD No, no I don’t think so. When he was writing with his writers, they were just writing the script, you know and then they thought about the casting afterwards.

It’s unusual for you to do a Romantic lead…

RD I have done it before… not so many, but… the genre is not so important for me, I am interested mainly in the characters.

You are very much playing the underdog. It reminded me of a Frank Capra movie..

RD Ah, which one?

Quite a few of them actually! Striving to win. Your character is striving to win.

RD Yes. But I did not think alot about that. I saw American comedies from the Fifties, but it was not really about that. For me it was more that more focus in what happened in France. I needed to see some French movies from that time to see how they behaved… witness to see what happened.

Documentaries..?

RD Documentaries not so much, but Godard for instance, to look at the background… the people in the background to get a feel for them, even if it’s not documentary, you can feel how they are.

Mad Men. Do you watch Mad Men? You character is very Don Draper.?

RD Yes, I love Mad Men…

Cos he smokes alot…..

RD That kind of thing, yes.. But mainly the resemblance is the reserve. Don Draper is very reserved. And sharp and my character is similar.

Do you find that in your own career that you have had to fight to get a part? Do you feel that has happened to you at all?

RD No, no, not at all. [everyone laughs]

You’ve always got it? You’ve always got what you wanted?

RD It’s strange because maybe I have missed a role, but I don’t have any moment where I wanted to have something and it didn’t (come to pass)…like, you know, sometimes I was preparing for (auditions) and so -I think I am ambitious- but I am more like.. if it is (right) for me (to get it), then it is right, but if it is not to be, then.. it is not to be. So maybe I am an optimist. But yes, you know, I never then fought for a role that (passed me by) [more laughs] I have a kid so… maybe I fight for him, you know?! [more laughs] then, that’s a good fight.

I understand that your career came to you rather unexpectedly. You weren’t looking to act but were found on the street, literally, can you talk about how that came about?

RD It was very… you know… I grew up in Paris and at this time there was alot of castings in the street, because casting directors wanted to find different faces, so it happened several times and I always said ‘no’, but this time, I said yes. And I met Cedric Klapisch the French director.?

Why did you say yes this time.

RD Because of the director, because he did a movie before and I watched the movie and I said ‘yes ok’, because I was interested. I was 18 years old, I was very wild and shy and scared to be on the TV.. but I thought I would give it a go.

But you had studied art before at university?

RD Yes..

So what was interesting to you at Art School- what were you studying?

RD I was looking for a way to be free and a way to earn money in art, but mainly a way to be free. I never reached that point to make any money with my art. I never managed to earn any money. The goal was that. To express myself with painting, with drawing, but to find a way to be free, maybe I (would have) decided to (illustrate) children’s books, because I think that there, you can have some freedom.

You have just gone back to work with Cedric again, is that right?

RD Yes, that’s right Chinese Puzzle…

Can you say a little about that movie?

RD It’s a part of a series of movies we (first) shot Spanish Apartment when I was 25, after that we did Russian Dolls in Russia. It’s a movie about young people in the beginning, in Spanish Apartment, with European students sharing the same apartment… so Cedric is shooting different (ages)- 25 and 33 and 40’s and he is shooting life and the world through the eyes of those characters…

So you’ve got two films with Audrey Tatou coming up, because you’ve got that and Mood Indigo, so you two must love working with each other then!

RD We are good actors… [laughter] no, no she’s good. She doesn’t have too many obstacles that get in the way of her (emotion) and I am quite like that too, so it’s good, she’s great.

Have you got many international offers at all?

RD Yes, I have a few, but I really need to fall in love with the character first, you know, I need to have an idea I want to do it. And up until now there hasn’t really been…

You tend to get offered the same part..?

RD Yeah, yeah, the French lover.. [laughter] he’s nice you know.. but, I need to do something more (interesting)..

After the Audiard film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) you did, didn’t you get offered the tougher roles from America?

RD Yes, a few, but mostly small parts. I do not wish to be in this uncomfortable position you know, to play only small roles. I want to play something important.

But the Gondry film (Mood Indigo)… that’s big, that’s going to be important… that’s a big movie, surely?

RD Yeah, that’s a great movie..

You’ve seen it already?

RD Yes, I liked it.

Audrey Tatou is here in this hotel upstairs, promoting another movie… and so she was trying to explain that it is about a water lily that grows inside her or something..? very strange.

RD Yes, it’s a very famous book in France, you know? So, to try and explain is difficult… it’s a love story… and she is sick, so I try to make her feel better and go to buy her some flowers…

If you had a favourite scene when making Populaire, what would it be?

RD I love the scene with Marie- my ex- I love that scene for my character, it gives some clues for why he is the way he is and I love that scene because in that kind of movie I love to have that place to play something like for real like that, because Berenice Bejo was playing with her art and very natural and I really liked that moment.

Do you have another movie coming up; are you taking a break?

RD No, I am taking a break for a while, but I am open to any offers.. [laughter]

If you could take any role, what would you like to play?

RD I want to have something dark now. Deep. I need that. Between these movies I did some theatre, which I liked.

Was that difficult to do? Walking on stage is a very different thing from doing a film… presumably you’ve not had that training- to project your voice..

RD No

Is that scary to do?

RD Yes, but I was in good hands I worked with Patrice Chereau so.. I trusted him totally.. but it was really intense!

Is it easy for you to walk around Paris and not get accosted?

RD Yes, it’s ok, if you wear a hat, keep your head down… go where you want to go- and people are nice, you know. It’s just a question of… sometimes, I try to tell them I need space.. Today it’s everywhere. I am trying to find a way to escape. Today it’s photos. Everyone wants a photo and I don’t like this so much, really. Because of the internet now you can follow the life of anyone and I don’t like that.

Did you ever question whether acting was the thing you really wanted to do? Did you ever think about going back to your art..?

RD Yes today! I don’t have any plans, so I will do some today, it’s still there, I paint when I can.. I still do it. I am always still searching… finding what I can do with my painting. But is difficult, because I do not just want to be a ‘Sunday Painter’, you know. I want to be more involved.

Have you exhibited, ever?

RD No. no.

Would you, ever?

RD I don’t know… when I am old, maybe… not now.

I’m sorry, we need to end now.

RD Thank you very much indeed..

Thankyou

A Late Quartet (2012) ****

Director: Yaron Zilberman

Script: Yaron Zilmberman/Seth Grossman

Cast: Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Imogen Poots, Mark Ivanir, Wallace Shawn

104min **** US Drama

A Late Quartet is not the first feature in recent times to focus on the trials and tribulations of a four-piece musical act, following Dustin Hoffman’s comedy Quartet earlier this year; yet we now return in somewhat more sophisticated circumstances (and with a relatively younger cast), in Yaron Zilberman’s directorial debut, assembling a stellar cast in this quaint and affecting drama of an accomplished, once prospering string quartet.

Although Peter (Christopher Walken), Daniel (Mark Ivanir) and married couple Juliette (Catherine Keener) and Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are supposedly celebrating their 25th successful year together, ahead of their forthcoming season they are shaken by the news that Peter – the all-important cellist, and natural leader of the pack, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Expecting his peers to strengthen and unify at hearing such a disconcerting announcement, instead Peter witnesses his colleagues comprehensively entering into self-destruct mode, as they use this news as a catalyst for their suppressed emotions. Not only do Juliette and Robert find their marriage is disintegrating, but their daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) becomes embroiled in the quartet’s issues: a quartet that is on the brink of being torn apart once and for all.

A Late Quartet is a delicately-crafted piece, and one that takes a wry and astute look into the lives of four friends, seemingly bound together by an infallible bond and love of music, yet now finding themselves on the verge of indefinite termination. Zilberman manages to portray a poignant, affecting theme of one man suffering from a potentially fatal illness, and although exploring the themes of death and despair in a wistful manner, he intelligently adds an intense melodrama to proceedings, as we watch how this heartbreaking news can be the instigator for this sudden display of conflicting emotions.

Such melodrama works wonderfully against the contemplative ambiance, enhanced greatly by the plethora of classical numbers, bringing a strength and energy to an otherwise measured piece, as Zilberman unapologetically displays his own inherent passion for music. The symmetry and elegance of the film perfectly reflects the movements and moods of Beethoven’s Opus 131, a clear inspiration to this production.

Effectively this is a character study and we are therefore reliant on the performances of the leading cast members, and they do not disappoint in the slightest. Seymour Hoffman stands out, bringing a humility to the role but also an intensity, as you never quite feel fully at ease with his character, consistently reminded of his flaws and uncompromising nature. Meanwhile Walken is also terrific, and although not sharing quite as much screen time as his colleagues, he brings an empathetic vulnerability to the part, complete with a sadness behind his eyes reminiscent of the late John Cazale.

A Late Quartet is perhaps guilty of verging towards quite conventional, soap-opera like themes at times, but given it’s dressed up in such refined surroundings it works effectively. Although the characters may be struggling to come together and produce a beautiful piece of music, it’s fair to say that for everyone involved in this production, they’ve managed quite the opposite, joining forces to create an intelligent and provocative piece of cinema. SP

A LATE QUARTET RELEASES ON 5TH APRIL 2013 ACROSS THE UK

coming up….

FILMUFORIA HEADLINES IN THE CURZON SOHO WITH CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR REBELLION – WHICH GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 19TH APRIL 2013

Papadopoulos & Sons (2012) **

Director/Script: Marcus Markou

Cast: Stephen Dillane, Ed Stoppard, Georgia Groome, Frank Dillane, Selina Cadell, Georges Corraface, Cosima Shaw, Frank Dillane

UK ** 105mins 2012 Drama

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Played by the numbers bog-standard British family feel-good fare, with Dillane playing Harry Papadopoulos: the man who ostensibly has everything, having worked his way up from humble beginnings in a fish and chip shop, to Businessman Of The Year and a father of three.

One suspects the reason this film found its funding is in the casting of Dillane in the lead. Although a fine English actor, he is just that, a quintessentially English actor, so finding him here as the youngest brother in a Greek family remains unconvincing, particularly as he makes no effort to go for the Greek thing at all in contrast to his brother Spiros, played larger than life by real deal Georges Corraface, with whom he grew up.

Having previously made a short film (The Last Temptation of Chris) with Ed Stoppard, this is Markou’s feature debut. The humour is broad and the characters correspondingly thin. There’s an unevenness to the piece as much in the writing as the performances, with some playing straighter than others, so Corraface and Stoppard in particular jar with the rest of the piece having gone for the more expansive.

There are no surprises and most of the ends are neatly, if predictably, tied up. Dillane is always watchable and ones sympathies are guaranteed, despite his Business carapace, bringing up as he is three children in the absence of their mother. But in the end, it’s not much more than a piece of fluff, surprising enough to be found as an out and out feature film, rather than a made-for-TV movie, where perhaps it more happily sits.

The younger cast, particular Georgia Groome (London To Brighton) and Dillane’s son Frank (Harry Potter) do well considering the narrow bandwidth on offer to them.

A naïve, insipid but resolutely inoffensive crowd-pleaser then, which won the Audience Award at the 2012 Thessaloniki Film Festival; aiming perhaps for a younger, undemanding audience. AT

Le Streghe (1967)

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Les Cousins (1959) **** Out on DVD

Director: Claude Chabrol

Script: Paul Gégauff, Claude Chabrol

Cast: Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain, Juliette Mayniel, Stéphane Audran

112min French drama with subtitles

Claude Chabrol was one of the main protagonists of the French New Wave and this was his second and claimed the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 1959.

The Cousins are chalk and cheese: Charles (Gérard Blain) embodies bourgeois values of fidelity and straightforwardness while Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) is suave, urbane and an inveterate womaniser with feet of clay. The film also marked Stéphane Audran’s stage debut and she went on to marry Chabrol five years later (after a brief marriage to Jean-Louis Trintignant) and to star in most of his films.

Chabrol passes no moral judgement on his characters allowing their subtly-nuanced performances to lead us to our own conclusions in this parable which is as entertaining as it’s delightful to look at thanks to Henri Decaë’s sublime visuals and Paul Gégauff’s stylish script which he co-wrote with Chabrol.

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LES COUSINS IS NOW OUT ON BLU-RAY AND DVD COURTESY OF EUREKA’S MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES AND FULLY RESTORED BY GAUMONT PICTURES.

Le Beau Serge (1958)*** Out on DVD

Director:Claude Chabrol

Cast: Gerard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont.

99min French with subtitles

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Generally considered to be one of the first films in the French New Wave movement, Le Beau Serge was Claude Chabrol’s self-financed debut and he launches himself, full throttle, into this bleak piece of social realism that focuses on the homecoming of François (Jean-Claude Brialy) who is back from a few years in Paris. Full of sophisticated confidence, he finds that his old friends aren’t necessarily as happy to see him as he would have hoped, and particularly Serge, a leather-jacketed, rebellious roué who has turned to drink and settled for a loveless marriage

France was still getting back on its feet after the War years and there was considerable poverty in provincial life. With its nods to the ‘Nouvelle Vague’ and improvised and grainy indie feel, it’s an interesting starting point for those keen on Chabrol or Nouvelle Vague but not gripping or well made enough to warrant much excitement compared to what was to come in the Chabrol canon. Some of the editing is poor with some shaky camera-work, although the performances are surprisingly accomplished particularly for Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Lafont. MT

LE BEAU SERGE IS NOW OUT ON BLU-RAY AND DVD COURTESY OF EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT’S THE MASTERS OF CINEMA SERIES.

* GAUMONT RESTORATION.

* EXCERPTS AND INTERVIEWS WITH CLAUDE CHABROL.

* NEW AND IMPROVED ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

* ORIGINAL THEATRICAL TRAILER. 56 MIN DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE MAKING OF THE FILM.

Yurt (2011) Home

Director: Muzaffer Özdemir

Cast: Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan, Muhammet Uzuner, Muzaffer Özdemir,

75min Turkish with subtitles

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In 2002 Muzaffer Özdemir won Best Actor at Cannes for Distant (Uzak) and has appeared in many of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films.

Yurt in which he also stars, is his directorial debut. Essentially an arthouse piece it has a similar melancholic feel to Uzak and the wide screen visuals of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, although it lingers a little longer on them possibly reflecting the artistic leanings of its central character, Dogan, (Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan) a world-weary architect from Istanbul.

There’s also a mountain freshness to this tale of introspective nostalgia that sees him going back to his home Gumushane, in the verdant valleys and sweeping mountainsides of Anatolia, in the hope of taking time out to meditate on his life and re-connect with a positive past. It’s almost as if he is hoping to tap into a font of rejuvenating power to sooth his jaded palette of the fast-moving modern world of Istanbul. Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan gives a quietly resonating performance as the gentle but probing Dogan: he talks to a primrose at one point and creates light reflections in a stream with the bell rescued from a dead lamb. It’s a delicate touch symbolic of the fragility of nature and a technique that also appears in Jîn, Reha Erdem’s recent Anatolian fantasy drama.

What Dogan finds is no more the peaceful and luxuriant playground of his childhood but a region over-developed and harnessed by industry with locals fighting officialdom to retain rights to their homeland and cultural heritage and suspicious of strangers. In a cruel twist, he even has to prove that he was born in the region.

Yurt is a paean to the simplicity and serenity of pastoral life in danger of disappearing due to modern progress. A richly contemplative and observational film that examines the feelings of sadness and alienation brought about by increasing urbanisation in contemporary Turkey. MT

YURT WAS THE WINNER OF THE GOLDEN WINGS AWARD AT THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL 2011 AND GOES ON GENERAL RELEASE AT SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 5TH APRIL.: THE ICA,

Billy Liar (1964) Bfi Player

Dir: John Schlesinger | Wri: Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall | Cast: Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Leonard Rossiter, Rodney Bewes, Helen Fraser, Mona Washbourne, Ethel Griffies, Finlay Currie, Gwendolyn Watts, Wilfred Pickles | UK Drama 98′

A so-called ‘kitchen sink’ drama, this was the second collaboration between Schlesinger and Waterhouse, following the 1962 Alan Bates starrer, A Kind Of Loving. Schlesinger would go on to direct some seminal work, including, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Marathon Man and Midnight Cowboy, for which he won a Best Director Academy Award.

Filmed in Bradford, but depicting a never defined Northern town, Courtenay reprised his stage role, having taken over from Albert Finney, to star in the film adaptation. On the back of The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, this was to cement Courtenay as a bonafide star, as well as launch Christie’s career, shoehorned in at the last moment when Topsy Jane became too ill to continue filming.

Courtenay plays Billy Fisher, a frustrated 22-year-old small-town man who hasn’t yet managed to shake off the overactive imagination of his childhood. His habit of lying is now forcing him into a corner, socially, work-wise and also with his long suffering family, making him retreat even further into the make-believe land of Ambrosia, where he can be both understood and successful: a triumphant President, War Hero, Band Leader and whatever else takes his flight of fancy.

Judging by his complete self-centredness, Fisher might be an entirely unlikeable character, were it not for his imaginary world and the very real sense that he is totally aware that he has behaved like an idiot, but simply cannot help himself. His frustration with himself as much as those around him is tangible; Courtenay is masterful in his portrayal, flitting with seamless ease through a litany of characters both imaginary and real, to the point where he runs away with himself before he has the sense to censor. It’s wonderful to witness.

Shot in black and white against a backdrop of change, Julie Christie’s character is the one offering a way out of the stifling, blinkered provincial mentality, if he can but see it for what it is, and have faith. The old town is being torn down, demolished, to make way for the Brave, New, modern world being constructed in the wake of the war; old notions and ways being swept aside, much to the wistful chagrin of the older generation.

The supporting cast are wonderful: a young Rodney Bewes plays sparring partner and equal, understanding what Fisher is going through and shares much of his humour in lampooning the old guard. Also, Leonard Rossiter as the pernickety boss and Helen Fraser as the sweet local girl, wanting nothing more than a cottage, kids and the comforts of home. But it’s Mona Washbourne, playing Billy’s mother, who quietly runs away with this beautifully drawn film. The picture of patience and long-suffering, when there really wasn’t alot to brighten up a day. Stories are seldom better than when written from the inside, from someone who knows. It is a testament to great writing also when no one in a film is judged. Just observed. By ‘eck it’s Grand. AT

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | A NEWLY RESTORED VERSION OF BILLY LIAR IS OUT ON BLU-RAY

Trance (2013) **

Director: Danny Boyle

Script: Joe Aherne and John Hodge

Cast: Vincent Casell, James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson

101min Crime thriller UK

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As you might expect from Danny Boyle’s Olympic track record, he’s a director who’s big on bluster and bling. His latest outing Trance is no different. Billed as a heist thriller that uses hynotherapy to recover a stolen painting, it kicks off with a stylish monologue delivered by the ubiquitous James McAvoy, as the thief. In his best bib and tucker, all bristling with West End finesse, he plays Simon, an art auctioneer with a sideline in crime that funds his poker debts but leaves him open to the menace of a criminal gang when a robbery goes wrong. All very stylish and promising.

So, an exhilarating, pulsating opening sequence. Brilliant. A crime thriller with a psychodrama thrown in. Even better. And with the charismatic Vincent Cassel, as Franck, heading up the gangster syndicate? Settling into my seat, I tried to think of a poor choice he’s made in his acting career to date..Mesrine, La Haine, Irreversible, Eastern Promises are all top notch.,,

During the robbery, Simon suffers a head injury that leads to amnesia. He can’t remember the whereabouts of the stolen Goya and is frogmarched off to Harley Street by Franck who hopes that Rosario Dawson’s gorgeous hypnotherapist will unlock the secret from his unconscious, for a share in the stash.

What then follows is a mind-blowing bewildering box of tricks, twists and turns that has even the most diehard plot maven searching for clues. It’s as if Boyle had injected the entire proceedings with an excessive dose of speed: eventually nothing makes sense and we’re strapped to the engines of a turbo-charged prop heading to a dazzling denouement wondering what happened, why they even trusted McAvoy in the first place, and who is going to buy the priceless Goya to make it all worthwhile…

So what could have been a fascinating foray into the edgy world of mind-reading and art, in the hands of, say, Cronenburg, just turns into a disappointing blockbuster with an ambient soundtrack so overbearing it’s impossible to think let alone enjoy.

This was such a great premise and there are dynamite performances from Cassel as the urbaine and brutal gang leader and Rosario Dawson who sashays stylishly through the story complete with buttery burr and cool demeanour, only to blow it all with full frontal nudity removing any sense of mystery, allure or seriousness from her character; almost as if Danny Boyle was saying “Look what I got!”.

In short, the film lacks plausibility despite its positive pretentions and drifts into brash bonkbuster territory half way through, so very far from its distinct HItchcockian possibilities at the outset. Danny Boyle is a uniquely talented director with a stash of standouts but sadly Trance is not one of them. MT

TRANCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 27TH MARCH 2013

Jacobean Tragedy on the Small Screen series

A series of six Classic plays adapted for television and screened at the BFI South Bank 25th March until 29th April 2013:

Women Beware Women 1965               25 March
Hamlet At Elsinore 1964               1 April
The Duchess Of Malfi 1972               10 April
Tis Pity She’s A Whore 1980 18 April
The Changeling 1993               26 April
Compulsion 2009 29 April

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Q & A with Curator John Wyver as MC, Director Greg Doran and actress Dame Diana Rigg, who played Bianca in Women Beware Women.

Greg Doran is the current Artistic Director of the RSC.

Curator John Wyver is employed to document all the plays on TV, as funded by AHRC and University of Westminster. He has produced Hamlet, Macbeth and Julius Caesar and won a Bafta and in International Emmy for his work.

JW- can I start with you, Greg. How do you feel Thomas Middleton suits television?

GD: Very well.. there’s a simplicity that suits TV more than the denser texts with longer sentences…

JW: Dame Diana, how was it for you?

DR: I feel relieved. I’ve never seen it before, but I was relieved, (director) Gordon Flemyng made us zip through the text and pick up cues. The wit and irony is all there… I was pleased. And relieved.

JW:- Do you recall making it?

DR: No. [laughter] In those days, it was the early days and there were no retakes. We just ran with it.

JW: What was the sense of being at the RSC at that time and then doing television?

DR: Well, TV at the time was considered very much the poor cousin.

JW: Was it a difficult decision to do?

DR: t was a job. And you were being paid considerably more than at the RSC. Of course, it’s never about money for an actor, it never is but… it was a job and TV was a new thing. But now of course, it has changed and rightly so.

JW: What did you make of seeing yourself?

DR: I was pleased with my performance… We got through it. It was well directed.. I was very young. I was 24.

DR: I wondered how much they had cut.

JW: – well, quite alot.. there’s Nothing of the Cardinal. The religious aspect is almost entirely missing. Many speeches are half or a third of there length and Mackie modernised the language, but he has kept the ideas and the substance…

GD- I can see why the play gained its moment in the 60’s. The women’s parts are fantastic. Bianca, Livia and Isabella… The RSC had revised the play in 1962 and did a season of plays there. Then there was a TV version and then in 1969, it was revived again. I think it is regarded as one of the Great Jacobean plays. But the simple reason is that there are so many plays that are good, but not done, simply because they are not done. [laughter]

DR- I’m fascinated by this quantum leap between Shakespeare and Middleton- a huge leap into something how and why did they get there?

JW- Is it a big leap?

GD:-I think it is familiar, but why they resonate is that they have a similar world view. The gunpowder plot was a [game-changer]. If you can destroy parliament and the entire royal family in one fell swoop… I think we were tipped into a sense of dislocation. In Shakespeare, you get the ‘abyss’, he makes us stare into it, but Middleton gives us a sort of punk reaction. And that’s what we get in the final scene (of Women Beware Women)- How many can we kill and in how many different ways? In a way it has similarities to Hamlet, but with it; an esprit.

DR: It crosses every single line. Crosses class lines, incest… fascinating. You don’t need to flesh Jacobean drama. Get on with it.

JW: And the excess of the drama itself..?

DR: Well, what have we got theses days? We’ve got Tarantino… still massive emotions, gallons of blood.. you have to handle excess with exquisite taste.

GD:- Moral sententia; we enjoy wickedness and plotting and how that plays off each other at the end…

DR:- Parables wrapped up in hyper-drama and it is exquisitely written. The director got on with it and the wit was presented to you, no one dwelt on it, it was there and if you wanted to pick it out it was there for you.

JW:- Is there a way of doing this for contemporary audiences now? Is there something missing from TV now?

GD:- Well there’s no reason why they can’t be. They do resonate; a sense of being in a society that has lost its moorings. There are alot more of these plays that we haven’t rediscovered. There is not always a valid reason for why they haven’t been done. Comedies are harder to do than tragedies. In tragedies, the wit comes over very well. Comedies need a sense of communal celebration, which can be missing from TV rather than in theatre performance.

JW:- opening out to the audience. Any comments or questions?

Audience: Middleton was very good at intimate dialogue between men and women…

DR:- Women had not had a place on the stage for very long… this period gave women all the qualities fully-rounded characters that were missing before.

JW- …even though they were still being played by boys at this time.

Audience: Turning to the camera works very well for the asides… an intimacy that TV really does well. We hardly see this on TV now.

DR: Miranda does it. In a different context. But very well- Turns to the camera and goes ‘this is shit’. [laughter]

Doran- House of Cards did it very well too, Urquhart does it very well, confiding in the camera.

Audience:- Great to see the three-camera technique used. You could actually rehearse back then. Now, there’s a minimal rehearsal, as there’s no time. There may be more takes, but they usually only happen for technical reasons, rather than for the actors. Years ago you could have an initial reading with the whole cast there. I say bring that back, that process of the three camera filming!

DR: The tracking shots were So impressive. Alot of them, particularly at the beginning. That opening bravura shot of the actor walking along and picking up the other couple.

JW- also the use of depth of frame; characters close up in the frame and others in the deep background was very good.

Audience- The pacing was excellent. Was that an atypical narrative?

JW: We think of television of that moment as rather crude and hopefully we can see a richness there that we can see and celebrate…

DR:- It was an achievement of its kind and in its time, but it still has relevance now.

AT- Greg, do you feel that soaps have somehow in recent years gone down the direction of these old melodramas? I mean, these days when an actor is leaving the soap, they always set them on fire or blow them up…

Doran- Yes, I think so too. I was watching (Women Beware Women) thinking this could be an episode of EastEnders. But they might do well to go back to these old Masters and learn from them in terms of writing…

In conversation with Filmuforia, Curator John Wyver then had this to say concerning the season:-

I’m both a producer of art programs and of ‘performance’ films, but I’m also interested in the history of TV and of theatre plays on TV, documenting all of them since 1930 and this BFI season came out of that.

Last year in conjunction with the BFI, we did the Greek tragedies, which went really well, lots of interest and good audiences. So this was really a follow up. I was interested in exploring the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, even though there weren’t alot of them.

I want to highlight some of the great work done putting these wonderful plays on TV. I want to celebrate that. I’m interested in having them more available to people. Be it academic, as plays, as television… I feel discussions of theatre-produced plays tend to be strongly remembered and extensively written about, but when on television, they get overlooked and not written about, or studied so much and I wished to redress this balance.

It’s just a very different form of TV… not better, but different.
There’s a strength in capturing and portraying performance across 20-30 minute takes and I am interested in the link that is there between quite theatrical TV and say, the RNT doing theatre plays transmitted live onto cinema screens.

There is however, a very small body of plays that are available, which is why I picked what I picked. I’m trying to procure some DVD releases, but it is quite difficult with rights issues with the BBC and it all takes a long time. But that’s why we’re here…

Part of the academic research is to build a database of the work that exists and raise the profile on TV. It’s all about trying to get more awareness of the richness of these works both as TV and as plays.

I just want more people to see them and know about them, so thank you for your interest in helping us to spread the word. AT

THE JACOBEAN TRAGEDY FOR THE SMALL SCREEN SERIES RUNS FROM 29TH MARCH THROUGHOUT APRIL 2013 AT THE BFI LONDON

Barnaby Southcombe – Filmmaker

Barnaby Southcombe’s directorial debut, I, Anna, was released in cinemas last December, with advance showings at the BFI London Film Festival. Now, ahead of the film’s DVD release – on April 8 – we were fortunate enough to speak to man himself about his dark and delectable film noir which stars Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne, the former of which is the filmmaker’s very own mother.

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We’re now in the wake of your first ever theatrical release – how has the whole experience been? Noticed any dramatic changes in your life since I, Anna came into it?

BS: [Laughs] It’s been an amazing journey to be honest, and not one that I ever quite expected it to be. I think, a bit like your first girlfriend, it’s going to be a voyage of discovery. You know, with releasing a film and it coming out and getting good reviews and some very vitriolic stuff as well, so it’s quite a thing to get your head around, then with the release of the film some reviews that were a lot better and you just understand that the people feel very differently and very passionately about film in a way that, you know, you and I do. We feel very strongly about the films that we like and also the ones that we dislike, so it’s just getting to grips with being on the end of that is a novel one, and that’s come around and it feels like now I’m doing this part of the journey with the DVD release: it’s coming to terms to feeling a bit more acceptant about that. So yeah, it’s good, and very keen to move on now. I’ve followed the film – and it’s still out theatrically and it will be until the end of March in various locations in the UK. I’ve been following it and introducing it and talking with people, so it’s been really good having made the film to see who and where it’s connecting with, and how it’s connecting.

Q: You’ve toured the world with this film having done the festival circuit – that must have been a really fun experience, particularly in seeing how different audiences react to the film?

BS: Absolutely. As you say, it started off with this incredible round of festivals that it did and to see it play in China to what I assumed would be a very small, ex-pat community, but you know, there wasn’t one white person in the cinema and very few of them spoke English, so God knows what the translation was, but there was just this kind of sign-language understanding of appreciation of the film afterwards which was kind of extraordinary, and the same in Russia and stuff. That’s the beauty of the film, is to be able to travel.

Q: The film is certainly influenced by world cinema, with Nordic noir and also the likes of François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Melville too. Do you think such cultured influences helped in connecting with a worldwide audience?

BS: I dunno, it’s a personal thing isn’t it? I guess what you try and do is feed in to a consciousness of film and then hopefully you bring a new element to it, so you’ve got something which people can relate to: a kind of languid, formal, quite architecturally-framed film, as you say, from Melville and Truffaut, then you add what I felt was this British quality to it. You bring those things together and hopefully you have something fresh but feels familiar at the same time. It has gone down well, it was very well-received in Sydney for example, so yes, in effect, I think that it does help. But it’s difficult, I mean, what did you think of The Master?

Q: I loved it – thought it was great.

BS: It’s a difficult one to get though isn’t it? It’s not an easy one, because you’ve got no frame of reference for it. You’re looking at something which is pretty startling and new, and I think it will outlive us all as a result. It’s not the easiest one to get.

Q: In terms of adding a British quality to the film, the original story this is based on was set in America, so was moving it to London a conscious decision, or more logistical?

BS: A conscious one. I liked the premise of the novel and I liked that it was very much about this woman in a very particular time in her life, a very fragile and delicate time in her life and I found that very interesting. Then there’s this cop who becomes involved with this woman, who may or may not have committed a crime. In New York it felt like it had been very well explored and done by far bigger directors, so right from the start I wanted to give it a European flavour and bringing it to London would add that element, this new, fresh element and also keep this European flavour that I was quite keen on.

Q: What do you think it was that attracted you to this story of an older woman?

BS: Very much her. I just found her fascinating, I found these small, emotional journeys that are actually quite epic in their courage and what they have to achieve. Small things that, to the person, becomes these mountains to climb. This idea of being shelved at a certain age, that the rug is pulled from beneath your feet. You feel that you’ve paid your dues, you’ve done everything right and you feel like you can settle, and then bang, you’re thrust out into the world to find yourself again and define yourself through other people’s eyes, and I think that is a kind of scary thing to do and place to be. I don’t see a lot of that in cinema and I felt that it was something I wanted to explore, so I really connected with this older woman I guess. Also the guy as well, that’s what I liked about it, I liked these characters who have so much to give and are definitely more interesting given their life experience, and yet find it more difficult to connect and find companionship.

Q: Did you instantly think about casting your mother – Charlotte Rampling – for the lead role?

BS: It was a lightning bolt for me. I was given the novel by my producer at the time and we were developing something completely different, a teen drama, and we were struggling with the script and he told me about this book he remembered from when he was a teenager that created quite a stir in Germany and told me to have a read to see if it still stands up, and it was very much that, it just seemed absolutely right for her and no-one else. To a certain extent, when I started writing, Gabriel Byrne was the same, I wrote it with both of them in my head, I could hear their voices when writing, and that was the one compromise I wouldn’t make – those two or nothing. I really felt that I hadn’t seen that cinematic pairing and I just knew the chemistry would be great and it was something I wanted to see as a viewer so that was just one thing I wouldn’t have done any other way.

Q: Considering this is your debut feature film, how helpful was it to have people as experienced and talented as Charlotte and Gabriel on set?

BS: Oh it all makes all the difference, it defines us. I have worked a lot on television and worked with some fantastic crews, but I made a conscious decision to work with a new crew. Not because I was unhappy with anyone else but I wanted people to have more film experience than I had and I wanted people to really understand the differences and language more than I would. My editor had edited The Hours, and a number of highly-acclaimed, big feature films, and worked with great directors. Everyone really had a lot of experience, and down to the actors who you know are just going to give you so much, the smallest scene becomes this little jewell of a moment, it makes all the difference.

Q: So what was the dynamic like in directing your own mother? Is it quite comforting to have her around, and is it difficult to avoid calling her ‘mum’ and maintain a level of professionalism?

BS: Yeah that was the hardest thing, I kind of made a decision I wasn’t going to call her mum on-set, although a lot of the crew would just come up to me and say “Oh yeah your mum wants to know when you’re going to be ready”, so that was the only thing I felt that I needed to exert some sort of authority, but actually it was a very natural, very comfortable environment and one that I would certainly repeat if the subject matter was right. You know she dragged me round a lot of film sets when I was a kid so I’ve always had a fascination for film, so of all the kids, I was the one who lurked around her film sets the most, so I’ve always been hanging around, so she’s used to having me around, so it was just a nice environment. She wouldn’t necessarily race off back to her trailer as soon as we said cut, she would be hanging around on set, it just makes for a good, kind of gypsy caravan type of feeling and environment.

Q: There is a real vulnerability to the character of Anna and that was enhanced by the fact she had a broken wrist – but am I right in thinking that wasn’t a deliberate move, she actually did fracture her wrist?

BS: Yeah [laughs[ she did. About three or four days before the shoot which was an absolute catastrophe at the time, for her and for me. Having spent so long and having got this far without having had to compromise too much and then suddenly have this thing which just seemed ridiculous and completely out of the blue was something that was tough to deal with. So we explored the possibility of claiming on insurance – and we had a very valid claim – and we could have put it off, but we couldn’t really put it off for very long because Gabriel’s availability disappeared and he went off to two very long engagements, and with the film industry being the precarious house of cards that it is, there was a great risk of the film not being able to come back together so we had to make a decision as to whether we were going to find a way around this or let the whole thing go – so I spent a few days with the script and came to what ultimately I felt was a really interesting development and one that I had to hit myself for not having thought of before. Because as you say, it’s a very strange place to injure yourself to that extent and not know how you did it, and without any kind of words it becomes a very unsettling place to be for somebody and I thought that was quite effective. It was also a very clear metaphor as well of suppression, that this thing is itching away underneath and bursting, trying to get out – like the memories of the murder that she is suppressing. So it seemed to work very well in the end – so it’s a happy accident.

Q: To add to Anna’s vulnerability, there was a very voyeuristic camerawork that would follow her around as though following a man’s gaze – can you tell us about that approach and what you felt it brings to the film?

BS: Again that is very classic noir, the idea of the male gaze, and the male gaze being that of a police detective, and that’s one that fits into a very comfortable, familiar stereotype of filmmaking and the idea was to try and find ways to evolve and to work around that and to have a different kind of relationship, one that starts off as a voyeuristic one but then ultimately develops as one of connection and empathy, opposed to one of lust and obsession.

Q: You were filming on location at the Barbican, why that particular setting?

BS: I didn’t want it to be a familiar side of London, I wanted the feeling I had when I first came to London. I didn’t grow up in London, I grew up in France and I went to school in France, and I came to University here and it felt very overwhelming, the city felt so much bigger than what I knew, and it was kind of unforbidding. Although most of London is, architecturally, very small and terraced houses, the feeling of it is much more smaller and forbidding than it looks and I really wanted to capture that feeling, that feeling how in the city of London, what are the chances of two people actually meeting? Two people who are right for each other? So I was looking for an environment that would stand out and would fit into a slightly out-of-time feeling and these two characters are kind of stuck in time, they are stuck a few years back and haven’t really been able to move on, so I wanted everything to feel out-of-time to a certain extend. It’s very much a contemporary film, but all the locations just don’t quite feel of this era, and the Barbican really fitted that bill perfectly. Also, just on a geeky level, there had been a 10-year shooting ban in the Barbican, so it’s not the most familiar of cinematic landmarks and I liked the fact that we were one of the first crews to be allowed back into the Barbican to shoot.

Q: Having mentioned before that you’ve grown up around the industry and spent time on film sets as a child, do you think that that insight has inherently given you a deeper knowledge of how the whole industry works, and has put you in good stead now as a filmmaker?

BS: It’s too early to say. I mean, let’s see how I get on. The film thing is somewhere I’d like to stay, certainly for a while, and let’s see if I’m allowed to. It feels like a comfortable environment, whether that’s successful or not I don’t know. Time will tell.

Q: Is this what you’ve always to do though? Had you ever contemplated a career outside of filmmaking?

BS: Um, not really. It’s been a long road to filming though, that’s for sure. I’ve worked in TV a lot, and I was always interested in that. The directing thing came on a little bit later, after school basically. I was quite into theatre when I was in school, but then when I went to University I discovered directing and I found working with actors more rewarding than being an actor.

Q: So finally, what have you got planned next? Are you working on anything at the moment?

BS: I’m actively working with some really exciting, new, young writers – a playwright and also a filmmaker whose script I’m working on. I’m absolutely developing stuff that isn’t quite ready to go yet, but the last few months have been a very creative time in development, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to announce something soon – but I’m not quite ready to do that. SP

February 2013. I, ANNA IS OUT ON DVD FROM 8TH APRIL 2013 COURTESY OF AMAZON AND CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE.

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Women Beware Women (1965) ***

Director: Gordon Flemyng

Script: Philip Mackie, Thomas Middleton (play)

Producer: Philip Mackie

Cast: Gene Anderson, Michael Barrington, Michael Blackham, Michael Burchill, Martin Dobson, Clifford Evans, William Gaunt, Diana Rigg

UK *** 73mins Tragicomedy

A Granada Production playing under the ‘Blood And Thunder’ Play of the Week, Mackie scribed a necessarily heavily cut and gently updated version of one of Middleton’s better-known tragicomedies, showing here as part of the BFI Classics on TV: Jacobean Tragedy on the Small Screen.

This was televisions early days, but no less edgy for it. The actors were pretty much running a theatrical performance to all intents and purposes. Filmed live, on one set with three cameras, there really is a sense that come what may, the show must go on, as there was no going back and doing it again.

Middleton’s original Jacobean play (@1621) comes not that long after Shakespeare and brings with it another sensibility. Although women still weren’t allowed on stage, certainly Middleton was exploring and expanding on the role women play in life and getting more into the psychology of the human condition than in Shakespeare’s day.

One of the casualties of making a shortened version for television is the chopping back of this exploration in going for the drama, although there is still a sense of it, the other casualty being the prominence of the church in the play as a whole. Bravely shot by Flemyng, he makes sure none of the actors dwell at all and races the piece along to its extremely (risible) melodramatic denouement.

In a nutshell then, this is a play concerning power, lechery and the giving in to the baser elements of ones passions. Said to be drawn from true happenings in the Medici family in 1580 Florence, the story centres around a Duke’s court, where the powerful, meddlesome widower Livia (Anderson) plays an easy and practiced game of chess with the pawns of her city, thinking nothing of hoodwinking a girl into giving herself to her own uncle and facilitating the rape of a married woman (Rigg) by the Duke (Evans) himself.

She quickly comes undone herself though, when she falls for the cuckolded husband in question (Gaunt); a man bought off and powerless to stop his ambitious wife’s public philandering. Of course, it all ends badly in this morality tale of the ages.

Shot in black and white, the tape in brief places is showing terrible wear and tear, but this does somehow add to the atmospherics of the piece. If you will forgive the antiquity and accept the super-stylisation of a theatrical, period tragicomic melodrama, in verse, made in the Sixties for television, then there is actually something to be gained from the wit and insight of the original playwright and thus, when all’s said and done, perhaps better seen as a play. AT

SCREENING AS PART OF JACOBEAN TRAGEDY ON THE SMALL SCREEN AT THE BFI DURING MARCH AND APRIL 2013

François Ozon – Film Director

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François Ozon has never been one to rest on his laurels, as the French filmmaker attempts something new with each and every project and with his latest feature: In the House, theatrically released on March 29, he presents a somewhat satirical black comedy starring Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ernst Umhauer in a tale about a student who systematically submits a story to his teacher describing his ventures into the middle class abode of a fellow classmate.

Of course In the House is an adaptation of the play ‘The Boy in the Last Row’, why did you chose this particular play to adapt? And how much did you change?

FO: I was invited by a friend of mine who is an actress and she was in the play, and she insists that I come to see the play because she said it was a play for me, and I didn’t want to go. All the actors always invite you to see them and you don’t know if it’s for the play or for them, so I didn’t want to go. But when I discovered the title ‘The Boy in the Last Row’ I was intrigued, so I decided to go, and she was right – the play really interested me and I thought it was very clever, funny and so I decided to take the rights of the play. The Rights were in Spain taken by a Spanish director, so I was afraid because I thought maybe it’s Almodóvar who wants to do it as a film – but thankfully it was an unknown Spanish director who didn’t find the money to make it, so I kept the rights and do my own adaptation.

What do you think you can accomplish through the film that you couldn’t in the play?

FO: You know when you do an adaptation you can’t keep everything, you have to follow your instinct and keep what you like. In the case of this film, because it’s a story about storytelling and the process of working and writing, I decided to take what was close to me, you know, and because the author of the play Juan Mayorga was very nice, he said to me “I respect your work, do what you want”, he didn’t want to control the adaptation, and let me be totally free, to do exactly what I wanted. So I cut many things because the theatre language and the cinematic language are totally different and I changed the characters and the ending, I did many transformations – but I tried to keep the spirit of the play.

So why the title change?

FO: In French, ‘The Boy in the Last Row’ is too concrete, it was just one situation of the film, and I had a feeling the film would be larger than that. In the House is abstract enough to put exactly what you want in it, and because of my other films are very often about houses, I think it was a good metaphor, you know, entering in the house, like entering a film – it was perfect with what I wanted to do.

Following Potiche, this is the second adaptation of a play in a row, is there something that appeals to you about transferring stage material into film?

FO: This time is different, you know. For Potiche I didn’t want to lose the origin, whereas in the case of In the House, if you don’t know it’s an adaptation of a play you can’t imagine it as a play, because I tried to make it very cinematic because for me it’s really a film about the mise-en-scene of cinema, so it depends on the project, but each time it’s different.

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Talking of different; on the surface, your films appear very different but do you think there is something that unites them all? A common thread, or a style particular to you?

FO: I don’t know, maybe. Don’t ask me these kind of questions [laughs] I don’t analyse too much of my own work, it’s your job to do that. I try not to repeat myself, I like to try new challenges and to go in different directions, I guess there are maybe links between all my films, and sometimes I am shooting a scene and I think, I’ve done this before, but I try to have a new experimentation each time. Especially because I do a film a year, if it’s always the same thing it can be very boring.

I assume you identified with the young writer in the film, did you also identify to any extent with Fabrice’s character Germain?

FO: I identify more with the student in the film than to the teacher. I feel that myself, I am still like a student, learning. But yes I am close to the two characters, just a bit more to the young boy because he is the storyteller, and in my mise-en-scene I try to follow the route he goes in his story because he tries to follow the advice of his teacher but very often he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. Is it a parody? Is it a melodrama? A comedy? A thriller? For me it was very exciting to play with these different genres.

Did you have a teacher who took you under his wing when you first started your career?

FO: Not like Germain, not someone so close. But yes, there are some people who were very important when I was a younger, cinema student. The fact I discovered some directors, for example a big retrospective of Fassbinder when I was a student was very important, because suddenly I had the feeling he was talking to me, you know, and his work and way of working, and the different genres he was able to do, was very helpful because when you are young and you realise you have different influences you can be a bit afraid, you don’t know exactly what kind of film you are going to do. So to suddenly see a master who is totally free, it’s very helpful.

In terms of influences, a lot of people have talked about Hitchcock with this film, for obvious reasons, but the way Claude talks about class seems to relate somewhat to Claude Chabrol. Were either of those filmmakers influences on you?

FO: When you speak about storytelling it’s an obligation to speak about Hitchcock because he was the first one to think about how to tell a story, how do you play with the audience with the idea of suspense?

FO: So for me it was obvious to do references to him, especially at the end of the film, with a shot that is like Rear Window. As for Chabrol references, no I didn’t have him in mind, and what amused me was to show the point of view of Claude and this middle class family, and how it’s very ironic at the beginning and then cynical and step-by-step as he follows the advice of his teacher, he learns to like his characters and at the end it’s more like a melodrama and he falls in love with the housewife, so I liked to show this evolution. For non-French audiences not only are we looking into somebody else’s house and different class, but we’re looking into a whole different culture. Do you think that changes the meaning of the film, or how it can be perceived in different countries?

FO: Yes. I guess it must be. Even for the French the film must be very strange because the middle class doesn’t look like a typical French middle class, it looks more like an American middle class. Even the school, we don’t have uniforms in France, it’s very unusual and so actually my first idea when doing the adaptation was to do the film in England, to make it in an English school because you have uniforms because I thought it would be a good idea to have all the students like a herd of sheep, always the same, except for the one in the back row who is different. I realised it was too much work though, and I didn’t know the English education system enough to set it in England.

In terms of the casting, you do seem to give quite prominent roles to actresses over 40, the likes of Charlotte Rampling in the past and Kristin Scott Thomas this time around…
Over 50 [laughs] I’m sorry! Do you think that French cinema is more accommodating to older actresses than perhaps Hollywood is?

FO: Yes of course. But I think it’s sad for the American and English actresses and that is why so many of them come to France to work. When you see the parts that Kristin has in England, very often she is a supporting part, she is the auntie, the grandmother, or the mother – in France she has lead parts. In my film she is a supporting part but she has a very strong part, even if it’s short she has the possibility to take on a complex part. I don’t know where it comes from, perhaps because in France cinema is an art first and after it’s an industry so we like to give parts to everybody, for women over 40 and 50 years old, and maybe that is why actresses like Isabelle Huppert or Catherine Deneuve are still working a lot as the leading parts.

Charlotte Rampling is in your next film as well, what is about her that appeals to you? Would you call her your muse?

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FO: She has a small part. But yeah, it was really great to meet Charlotte when we did Under the Sand, it was amazing meeting work-wise and then we became very good friends. She was very important because the film Under the Sand was a real fight, you know, everybody was against the film, they would say Charlotte Rampling is over, she’s too old, nobody will be interested in a film about death and a film about grieving, and we fought to make the film against everybody. When the film was released and it was a huge success in France and proved to be the comeback of Charlotte Rampling, so it was a real pleasure and we were very happy with that. We began a professional relationship because after that we did Swimming Pool, Angel and now the one I’ve just finished.

What do you think the film tells us about storytelling?

FO: The film says nothing, you know, I don’t have a message, I don’t do propaganda in my movies. I just want to share with you, the experience of the storytelling and the process. I want the audience to be engaged and it’s only when I speak with the audience that I realise that people have different interpretations of the film and I’m very happy with that because that’s what I want. In the beginning of the film it’s very clear what is real and what is fiction, but step by step I mix everything and decide to treat everything on the same level and it’s up to you to decide what is fake and you do your own film, and that was the idea, to make an interactive movie. I have no message, I just show things and give you the freedom. When I go to the cinema I don’t want someone telling me I have to think something, I am not Michael Haneke. I’m not a teacher, I try not to be a teacher.

The student-teacher relationship in the film reminds me of what it may be between a writer and producer, were you able to draw on your own experiences as a writer within that relationship?

FO: Yes, I need to speak with people when I’m working. The process of creation in movies is not lonely, you need to work with a crew, you don’t stop speaking with the others. When I’m writing a script I like to give it to friends, my producer for different point of views, because it’s a process that is always moving. If I’m not in the editing process I do some test screenings to see if people are bored, what they understand, for me it’s very important.

Speaking of editing, your films are very fast paced…

FO: When you tell a story you have to keep your audience captive, especially in the editing process: we didn’t want to lose time but to make it quick and make it funny and to have a good rhythm.

So when you direct do you keep up that pace on set?

FO: No because it’s not so quick. Maybe between Kristin and Fabrice, because it’s very wordy and I wanted a comedy tempo between them. I had in mind Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.

There isn’t actually that much drama that takes place in the house itself – was that a challenge for you?

FO: I asked myself many questions, because I think if I was a Hollywood director I would have put a murder in the film, make it like a thriller. But I think it was interesting to have nothing in the house. It was a challenge you know, but it’s not so much about what happens, but how do you describe what is going on in this house?

This is your second time directing Fabrice Luchini and you do seem to work with a similar cast of actors multiple times – is that something you find helpful, or comforting?

FO: It’s just that sometimes you work with an actor in one way and you know this actor is richer than that and they have more faces, and for Fabrice in Potiche he was the main character, and the part was like a caricature, but I wanted to give him the opportunity to show another face of his personality, so when you like someone you want to show difference faces of their work and personality.

As you said earlier you make a film a year and you’re incredibly busy – do you ever take a break or do you just love working?

FO: I like to work but I have time to take a break too? Do you want me to take a break? A long break? [Laughs]. I like to do movies, I don’t like to do promotion but I like to do movies. If I didn’t have to do promotion I would be able to do two or three films a year, but it’s not the case.

What was the last film you saw that you really enjoyed?

FO: Hmm… The last film I saw, oh my God. [Pauses] I saw a film on the plane called The Life of Pi, which is not the sort of film you should see on the plane, but I really enjoyed it! Each time I am on the plane I love the films because I am drunk because I get afraid, so I love all the films. But yeah, I liked Life of Pi because it’s a film about storytelling. I was surprised by it as I didn’t know the book, so I liked the ambiguity at the end. It was a beautiful idea.

You speak about doing the promotion for films, is it quite nice though, that when you make a film a year or so earlier to then travel the world promoting it, you almost get to relive it by talking about it?

FO: It’s easier because I have a distance, you know. But now I have a new film and already I have turned the page so it’s like talking about your last love. So yes it’s easier.

You’ve said that like to work on very different things and try different genres – is there something that you haven’t been able to do yet that you would like to?

FO: The West End. No, I don’t try to do do something different each time, I’m not like Kubrick who wanted to do different genres, I just follow my instinct, I don’t have a career path, I just follow my instinct and my pleasure, that’s all. SP

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March 2013

Point Blank (1967) ****

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, John Vernon.

92min US Thriller

John Boorman’s 1967 Hollywood debut Point Blank was quite exhilarating even by American standards even though the 50-year-old-thriller does now feel quite dated and very sixties: It’s always the soundtrack that gives it away but Johnny Mandel’s original music was highly innovative for the time.

The coordinated ‘futuristic’ interiors by Oscar-winner Henry Grace (North by Northwest and The Man From U.N.C.L.E) and Philip Lathrop’s strikingly modern visuals of LA cityscapes must have been quite exciting for European audiences of the time. A prolific cinematographer, Lathrop also worked on sixties titles The Pink Panther and They Shoot Horse Don’t They?

Then there’s Angie Dickinson’s mini-skirts and geometric hairstyle by Brit, Sydney Guilaroff, credited with making Lucille Ball a redhead and giving Claudette Colbert her bangs; and that tell-tale frosted lipstick, not to mention the eye-liner that was all the rage back then and screamed “Mary Quant” and “Courreges”: all high-profile icons of the era back in the UK and Europe.

Using a dream-like fractured narrative Point Blank centres on Lee Marvin’s Walker, who has been stitched up by his partner Reese (John Vernon) during a heist and then left for dead in Alcatraz prison off the coast of the San Francisco Bay. He pursues his partner, aided and abetted by a strongly sensual Angie Dickinson as his sister-in-law, and the strange figure of Yost (Keenan Wynn) in order to recover a sizeable amount of money from a syndicate of crims called “The Organisation”. Sharply-scripted and intensely gripping, this is a real sixties classic and not to be missed.The Curzon Mayfair would be the perfect place to screen this movie with its ‘iconic’, futuristic interiors that have thankfully survived a refit up to now. MT

POINT BLANK IS SCREENING AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK FROM 29TH MARCH UNTIL 11TH APRIL 2013 AS PART OF A MAJOR JOHN BOORMAN RETROSPECTIVE.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 4-7th April 2013

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Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, the annual showcase of the best in contemporary French film, takes place at Curzon Soho and Ciné Lumière from April 4-7 and promises to be an exciting long weekend of French talent.

During 4 days, Rendez-Vous is an opportunity to discover some of the best of recent French productions and to get to know the actors and directors during the Q&As following each screening.

THERESE DESQUEYROUX

In the French region of Landes, near Bordeaux, marriages are arranged to merge land parcels and unite neighboring families. Thérèse Larroque becomes Mrs. Desqueyroux (Audrey Tatou). But her avant‐garde ideas clash with local conventions and she will resort to tragically extreme measures to break out of the bourgeois lifestyle imposed on her…Claude Miller’s film was a big hit at Cannes 2012 and also stars Anais Demoustier (Elles) and Gilles Lellouche.

Audrey Tatou (Coco Before Chanel) will be attending a Q&A at the Curzon Soho on April 5th at 6.00pm

POPULAIRE

Set in fifties France, Berenice Bejo (The Artist) and Romain Duris (Heartbreaker) star in this tale about a simple girl from Normandy who gets noticed because of her special skill….It’s a French Dr Dolittle from Director, Regis Ronsard.

Screening April 4th at 6.15 at the Curzon Soho and April 5th 8.15pm at the Cine-Lumiere with Q&A with Romain Duris, Regis Ronsard and Berenice Bejo.

CYCLING WITH MOLIERE (ALCESTE A BICYCLETTE).

Fabrice Luchini (In the House) plays a grumpy, retired actor living in the Ile de Re who’s offered the chance to return to the stage once more as Moliere’s Misantrope. Also stars Lambert Wilson.

Director, Philippe Le Guay will be in on stage to answer questions after the screening at the Cine Lumiere on April 6th 2013.

RENOIR

In 1915 Pierre Auguste Renoir is living out his twilight years in the luscious landscape of Provence when a beautiful model (Christa Theret) ignites his passions and those of his son Jean Renoir who arrives back from the First World War.

Christa Theret, Michel Bouquet and Vincent star in the Gilles Bourdas’s film which will screen at the Curzon Soho on April 6th at 6.00pm and April 7th, 6.15pm at the Cine-Lumiere. A Q&A with the director and Christa Theret will follow.

ZARAFA

A delightful animated story for children about a 10-year-old Maki’s adventures with an orphaned giraffe from Remi Bezancon and Jean-Christophe Lie

Screening at the Curzon Soho on Sunday April 7th with Q&A with Remi Bezancon.

OUR CHILDREN (A PERDRE LA RAISON)

Joachim Lafosse’s troubling tale of a mixed race marriage between a charming French girl (Emilie Dequenne) and her Moroccan beau (Tahir Rahim) and his controlling family headed by Niels Arestrup (You Will Be My Son).

Q&A with Joachim Lafosse to follow the screening at the Curzon Soho on April 7th at 6.15 pm.

In The House (2012)***** Dans La Maison

Director/Screenplay: François Ozon Juan Mayorga (original play)

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Fabrice Luchini, Emmanuelle Seigner, Ernst Unhauer

97mins Drama French with Subtitles

François Ozon is a master of the dark domestic drama inhabited by clever, feminine women who always have the upper hand such as Potiche (2010), 8 Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003). He once declared his muse to be Charlotte Rampling and over the years has cast the crème de la crème from Catherine Deneuve, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Jeanne Moreau to Ludivine Sagnier, Emmanuelle Béart and even Isabelle Huppert. His latest release has echoes of Chabrol: it’s a sardonic, rather outré tale of sophisticated French provincials with a superb cast headed by Fabrice Luchini and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Kristin Scott Thomas is a natural as the chic but frustrated art curator wife of Fabrice Luchini’s Romain, a French literature teacher bored by his pupils’ lack of imagination in their written work. One exception is Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), a teenager emotionally intelligent beyond his years. For homework, he writes about his exploits at schoolmate Rapha’s house in a tone that makes the prof prick up his ears in fascination and even envy, awakening dormant memories of his own failed writing career.

Ozon’s latest outing is a tightly-plotted and smartly-scripted affair with captivating performances from Luchini and Kristin Scott Thomas who interact gracefully as a seemingly contented married couple who eat dinner and queue for the cinema together; each harbouring an agenda that’s completely covert until the final dénouement. Emmanuelle Seigner, who is in real life married to Roman Polanski, is an interesting choice for the role of Rapha’s mother, a bored suburban housewife who flicks through magazines all day waiting for her bumptious husband (Denis Menochet) to come home. Watching her quietly on the sofa, it’s difficult to eradicate from the memory her glowering turn as a sex siren in Bitter Moon (1992) or as Michelle in Frantic (1988). Newcomer Ernst Umhauer is perfectly pitched as the sensitive but subversive schoolboy whose difficult childhood forces him into fractured adulthood well before his time. MT

IN THE HOUSE is showing on general release from 29 March 2013. Read our interview with Francois Ozon.

We Went To War (2013) ***

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Director: Michael Grigsby

Script: Michael Grigsby/Rebekah Tolley

Producer: Rebekah Tolley

Score: Gallagher & Lyle

Cast: Vietnam War Vets -Dennis, David, Lamar

UK 77mins Doc

With the recent news that Documentary Filmmaker Michael Grigsby died last week on March 12^th comes this film concerning the long-term effects of the Vietnam War on its Vets, forty years on.

Grigsby was a doc maker for decades, making more than 30 films for the Granada World In Action and Disappearing World strands. He favoured giving his subject the mic, preferring to remain invisible and allowing them to speak for themselves. Accordingly, he never gave commentary, used voiceover, or even questioned on film and would always show the finished documentary to the subjects of his film for approval, before releasing it.

Filmed in deepest Texas, it inter-splices footage of the soldiers when they were very young, just back from the war, with where they are now: as old men trying to come to terms with what happened to them and the lasting legacy of their psychological scars not only upon themselves but their wives, children and grandchildren too.

They were a generation of men as we know, whom nobody thanked or congratulated upon their return, who felt when they went out there that they were serving their country. However, when they got back their country did precious little in returning the favour, leaving them to cope alone with the tremendous trauma of what they had witnessed and did and the multi-generational impacts of Agent Orange: premature death and children born with abnormalities and defects, unacknowledged by the state.

The film also pulls in Iraq vets, who are experiencing similar problems upon return to civilian life and again a total lack of support from their government. 18 ex-soldiers commit suicide daily.

A very moving topic then, but one given a longeurs that it doesn’t quite do enough to fill. Lingering shots of the countryside through car windows and statics of long, straight Texan roads and intersections, accompanied by a very sparse vet voiceover, leaves too much room for ones own mind to wander rather than mull.

Very little of the information given is new or insightful. Sadly, there have been so many wars before and since that the Vietnam Vets revelations that war is pointless, costs the lives of the poor, ordinary folk and that only the rich and those in power profit from it isn’t really news these days even though it seems to make no difference to American foreign policy, with young men and women continuing to return home in body-bags from some theatre of war or the other.

Michael Grigsby was a champion of the outsider; those without a voice; living on the fringes of society and his skill and insight will be sadly missed. AT

WE WENT TO WAR IS SCREENING AT THE ICA FROM 24TH MARCH 2013

Good Vibrations (2012)

Director: Lisa Barros D’Sa

Script: Colin Carberry, Glen Patterson

Producers: Bruno Charlesworth, Andrew Eaton, David Holmes, Chris Martin

Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodie Whittaker, Dylan Moran, Mark Ryder, Killian Scott, Adrian Dunbar, Kerr Logan

UK/Ireland 140mins Biopic

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I love this film. It’s all very well as a reviewer sitting po-faced thinking up embroidered sentences, but sometimes… you know? Already winning awards for script, Best Film and Costume at Dinard, Galway and the Irish Film & TV Awards, this is one to savour. Brim-full of life energy, Good Vibrations is the biopic of Terri Hooley, gleefully charting his childhood through the Sixties and Seventies in a world riven with hatred, mistrust and death.

For anyone growing up in Ulster during the Seventies, Good Vibrations is legendary. A record shop-turned label for young Punk kids surviving the battleground, that was living in the Troubles of Northern Ireland, where everything was shot to shit and prospects were sub zero but for the vision and grace of one Terri Hooley, a local man who decided one day to set up a record shop in the last bit of road that wasn’t a bomb crater and went on to launch the careers of a generation of Irish Punk bands.

Good Vibrations is a film that was long in the gestating; about 13 years. One might call a genuine ‘passion project’, with a pilot shot originally to raise money for the full feature. One can only imagine the journey the filmmakers went through to convince the financiers to stump up the cash. But thank the Protestant and Catholic Gods that they eventually did.

Joining a small but growing canon of brilliant Punk Movies, alongside Sid & Nancy, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and The Punk Syndrome, Vibrations is a great script, properly acted, with a superb central performance by Richard Dormer as Hooley, exquisitely shot and effervescent with spirit. In edit and direction, it’s quite simply a joyful, life-affirming film, rather as Searching For Sugarman is; a bright, brave, resilient bloom flowering in the darkest of times and a testament to the human spirit.

As the great Joe Strummer of The Clash is quoted:

“When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and the shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious moment.”

Get maximum value for every punt you spend on a cinema ticket: go see this most excellent of fillums. A film full of heart about a man who is all heart. AT

The Servant (1963)

Dir: Joseph Losey | Wri: Harold Pinter | UK Drama

Although generally attributed to Joseph Losey it should always be borne in mind that there were three intellects behind this film.

It makes much more sense if one is aware that it originated with a novella by Robin Maugham, who admitted that it was based on an episode when he was a young man when a butler introduced a good-looking young ‘nephew’ into the household and the book is a speculation on what might have happened had he risen to the bait; and certainly makes one view the ‘fiancé’ played by Sarah Miles in a new light.

Also with a claim to authorship was Harold Pinter who supplied the sly humour (such as the venomous arguments of the two bachelors forced to cohabit); while Maugam derisively sneered upon viewing (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the climactic orgy that the script was plainly the work of a simple working class lad “who’d never been to an orgy in his life!”

Finally the element of serendipity dictated the considerable visual impact supplied by a London shrouded in snow by the great winter of 1963 that the film of ‘The Caretaker’ had also recently benefitted from.

Losey arrived in England in 1951 at the onset of MacCarthyism, realising that his career was over, to all intents and purposes, in the States.

The Servant is a classic film and groundbreaking for several reasons. Losey brought with him a completely different approach, doing away the rather staid practices over here and bringing something new and fresh to the table. He is also responsible for discovering both Edward and James Fox.

With music by John Dankworth and his cinematographer of choice Douglas Slocombe, Losey got hold of Robin Maugham’s novel, which Pinter had previously made into a play, and then adapted further into a screenplay. They almost came to blows over the finished script, but Losey persisted and it proved time well-spent; The Servant is a remarkable film.

Good timing too for Dirk Bogarde, who had long since tired of stock ‘leading man’ roles and wanted something a bit more interesting and dirtier to get his teeth into. Great turns also by a host of household names, Sarah Miles, Patrick Magee, Wendy Craig, Annie Firbank and even Pinter himself.

The Servant centres on an aristocrat (Fox) not long back in the country, who has bought a London townpad and feels the need for a manservant; an already outdated notion in the early Sixties. The film opens with potential, Bogarde, approaching the house for his interview. What follows is a brilliant concoction of Pinter’s dialogue, Losey’s direction and two very handsome actors at the top of their game.

Exploring myriad themes of the day: the class divide; the bankruptcy of the aristocracy; the moral bankruptcy of the working classes; the sexual revolution; homosexuality and a general shaking off of the value system of the day, principally, this is a film about power. Heady stuff, the impact of which cannot be underestimated, in terms of both content and style, on work to come thereafter.

Losey is quoted thus: ‘Films can illustrate our existence…they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But not give the answers’. It’s a complex piece with many characters, none of whom escape untarnished and is all the better for it. Gone are the stock stereotypes of yore, where it was easy to know.

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV

Compliance (2012) Mubi

Dir/Wri: Craig Zobel Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy, Philip Ettinger, Matt Servitto, Ashlie Atkinson, Nikiya Mathis, Bill Camp | 90min US Drama

If this story wasn’t based on real events in the US – that happened not just once, but 70 times in 30 states, you would write this off as the most far-fetched nonsense requiring a suspension of disbelief beyond the stiffest resolve. Unfortunately, it is and you can’t.

Dreama Walker plays Becky, a young girl struggling to survive on low wages in a dreary fast food joint. Then one day, a call from someone purporting to be a Police Officer turns her world upside-down in the most extraordinary and humiliating way.

The acting throughout is quite superb. Ann Dowd, the unquestioning manager of the restaurant is brilliant. Everyone there is convincing in their depiction of the characters who might staff such an establishment. But as a sentient adult with an IQ anything over 40, you find yourself sitting there squirming and watching the film through your fingers, needing to shout at the screen for someone somewhere to come to their senses.

Whether Craig Zobel intended this as a sinister straight drama or some kind of Corporate Educational video for anyone working in the fast food industry in dealing with the potential dangers of scam calls, is questionable. But Compliance certainly beggars belief. He would go on to make The Hunt an equally dark and discombobulating thriller, some years later.

If you are at all worried that, as a species, we infact peaked some years ago and are now sliding back towards the swamp at a rate of knots then, whatever you do, don’t go and see this. It’s all the proof you needed. Only in America. But also – increasingly – over here.

COMPLIANCE is now on MUBI

Post Tenebras, Lux (2012) ***

Director/Script: Carlos Reygadas

Cast: Adolfo Jimenez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo, Willebaldo Torres.

120min Spanish with subtitles

After darkness, light

Carlos Reygadas’ latest outing was greeted with boos and cheers at Cannes last year where it went on to win the feisty Mexican: Best Director. An provocative film then, and very much an acquired taste.

The opening scenes of magnificent natural allure showcases the Mexican countryside and contrast with the unflinching originality of more experimental sequences and a slightly disorientating, fractured narrative. The focus is Natalia and Juan, a couple with kids, who appear to be at the end of the line. Reygadas looks at their story from different perspectives and phases all interwoven with subplots and tonal contrasts through a vignetted, wide-angle lens. The effect is awesome but what’s it all about? Reygadas leaves us to our own conclusions in a similar way that Bruno Dumont does with Hors Satan. “The real proof of a film’s quality is not what the ciritics say or how many prizes it wins, but what happens when you see it more than once.” The more I think about this, the more it applies to all good films. MT

Reality (2012) *** Grand Prix Cannes 2012

Director: Matteo Garrone

Cast: Aniello Arena, Paola Minaccioni, Loredana Simioli, Nando Paone.

Roman director, Matteo Garrone’s latest provides a rich contrast to his last outing, Gomorrah, in a similar way as pecorino does for pears. After the acerbic and steely-lensed Gomorrah, Reality is a garishly-stylised, hard-edged fairytale comedy which muses on the relative merits of fame X-Factor-style in an upwardly-thrusting consumer-orientated, low-rent Napolitan backwater.

Reality taps into the Italian psyche: to the Italians how you look is imperative: and they literally wear their wealth on their backs. No self-respecting man or women ever appears shabby or unfashionable; even the dustbin men look a million dollars. They spend more on labels and luxury goods than possibly any other European nation. ‘Fare bella figura’ literally means ‘putting your best out there’.

And so it’s easy to understand how a poor wheeler dealer and fishmonger (Aniello Arena, who’s currently serving a prison sentence for Mafia-related crimes.) could be persuaded by his aquisitive wife and kids to go for Big Brother (Grandi Fratelli) to achieve this aim.

The seemy side of life in Naples may be dilapidated and down at heel but it’s authentic and real and Garrone contrast this with the phoney world of reality TV. Aniello Arena is in a class of his own in his portrayal of a man who becomes increasingly self-delusional and obsessive in his efforts to seek celebrity-status and leave his hard-grafting past behind him in his search for a happy ending. Be careful what you wish for. MT

Salma (2012) *** Open City Docs Fest 2013

“Father would shout, Mother was scared. We wanted to escape but there was no way out”.

Director: Kim Longinotto

Script: Olly Huddleston

89mins UK Drama

Champion of women’s oppression, Kim Longinotto, takes the emotive subject of female subjugation and turns it into an a sympathetic documentary about how one Indian woman became a mover and a shaker in the male-dominated arena of pubic life in Chennai.

Her lens tones down the lipstick vibrancy of the colours normally redolent of India and instead she offers soft pastel hues and gentle musings with Salma and her female family members who reflect on the sober realism of life behind the veil for Muslim women in this part of the World. Longinetto’s observational and unobtrusive style allow complete freedom giving Salma and her sister a certain dignified presence in front of the camera as they express their views, without bitterness or rancour.

We hear how Salma spent the first part of her life under curfew in a small room, abandoned by her parents until arranged marriage prevailed in this community where women are merely chattels to serve mens’ sexual wants and their societal aspirations – to sire male heirs. A simple story then, without any particular drama, but a positive and heartening tale of triumph over adversity. MT

SALMA IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE OPEN CITY DOCS FEST ON SATURDAY 21 JUNE 2013

Simon Killer – out now

Wojciech Marczewski, Film Director Kinoteka 2013

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Wojciech Marczewski, Polish Film Director, born in Lodz in 1944. Winner of the Silver Bear and FIPRESCI Prize in Berlin, Special Jury Prize, Critics Award, a Golden Lion and two Silver Lions at the Polish FF and the OCIC award at San Sebastian. Here for the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival in London.

AT I have only had the opportunity to see two of your films prior to this, due to difficulty seeing your films in this country! Shivers (Dreszcze) and Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema (Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolnosc’).. Great then that you have this festival in London…

WM Ah yes. Both of these films Shivers (1981) and Liberty (1990) were made right on the cusp of the Solidarity Movement so when Solidarity first appears, only thanks to this do these films appear! Shivers, I wrote this script before Solidarity appeared..

AT But you knew that Solidarity was coming…?

WM Nobody Knew! [laughs] We sensed something Maybe would happen, but… also I would say that especially Shivers is a part of my biography, so it was important for me and also an important part of Polish history, because it was (set in) the mid-Fifties in Poland, which was the darkest of times there. So I wrote the script anyway. I didn’t believe that the film would be made right now.

AT But it was something you felt you had to write?

WM Yes, yes. So when my producer saw the script, he said ‘Are you kamikaze?! You have no chance.’ But I insisted. The procedure was that we had to send the script to be accepted… or not- to the Ministry of Culture. The first answer was ‘Are you crazy?…’ but then, in (just) two weeks, the Solidarity Movement hit and it was like a big blast, so in the meantime, I was asking the Minister for a meeting and he turned around and said ‘I am forced to meet you and say yes. I am forced’ and I said ‘what do you mean ‘forced’? Look at what is happening on the streets’. I had one year to make it and in three months, Martial Law was declared and the film was banned for more than four years. That’s the story of Shivers..

AT But the film wasn’t destroyed…

WM No. No. (You see), the film won a prize at the Polish FF and there were some German distributors and some people from the Berlinale and they said ok, we want this film and (the Ministry) said ‘ok, in a couple of months we will send you the perfect print’ and I said ‘No. You take this one right now, otherwise, no deal’. (One) sensed that, at any time, anything could happen, you know, so I wanted them to take it right then. They took the print with them (and) that was crucial. And then it was accepted into Competition at the Berlinale. So (then) the (Ministry) said they would ‘like to change the film’ to (better) represent Polish cinema at the Berlinale (ie use an alternative film, not Shivers). But the Berlinale supported me and stated ‘We have already published the catalogue with stills from this film, we cannot change them now, or tear out a page..’ but this was not true [laughs] and a German distributor also said if the film didn’t appear in the Berlinale, that they wanted to put on a limited release of the film in cinemas around the Berlinale anyway. So the Polish authorities, they had no choice and then the film won the Silver Bear.

AT And Escape from the Liberty Cinema.. What inspired this story?

WM After Martial Law came in… I felt badly, you know, I felt like a Rottweiler… that I couldn’t let it go. I hated these people that (created) this Martial Law but I felt that for some years, being in this (angry) emotional state was not the right state to make this film, so I left it a while and then one day I (realised) I needed to find a special code to say what it is I want to say, but at the same time, I don’t want to make a film where the main character simply hates everybody; that it should be a bit ironic, a bit sarcastic you know, a bit crazy and I decided the main character needed to be a Censor.

Because for any artist, any writer, any filmmaker, they are of course the biggest enemy; several films were banned- some of them were even destroyed, so I decided to make the main character a Censor, because during this Communist period, everybody was (inevitably) involved in this regime. Of course, when there was Solidarity, then that was different, but when they came at you with tanks, then, you (toed the line). (So) let’s make a film about a guy who was involved in this system, but I (wanted) to see how he became a censor and also (illustrate that he is) still a human being.

No one could predict what was going to happen, but we felt that something was going to. It couldn’t stay as it was. So I sent the script to the Censor and the Deputy Minister called me in for a meeting and he said ‘this is like something from a Gogol play, you know’, he said ‘listen, it so beautiful, the images are from a Chagall painting, wonderful this small town..’ I said ‘why is it a small town?’ And he said, ‘yes of course, in a small town there is no censorship, but it’s not necessary that your character is a Censor, he could be a clerk.. or an office worker… he mustn’t be a Censor’. But I insisted… I thought ‘Either I will wait, or I will not make this film’. History helped me; what happened politically;
The DAY we finished shooting officially, the Polish Parliament (ended) censorship in Poland. Can you imagine what kind of party we had?!?!! [laughs]

AT It’s funny isn’t it when you set out to make a film, how sometimes amazing things can conspire to help you.

WM Exactly So! Very much, yes.

AT What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

WM That’s not a simple easy answer. I was not crazy about film and filmmaking. I was much more involved… as a teenager, I painted, I wrote some simple but funny poetry. I loved theatre. Film came later. When I painted I exhibited and even got a few prizes, but I felt that the (indicates)…

AT Ceiling was quite low.

WM …Ceiling was low, yes, exactly. And the same with poetry.
But I saw more possibilities as a Director- (In film) you need many halves… you needed to have a half of talent.. (and skills in) many different disciplines: imagination, literature, drama, images, actors and humanity. Then I said (with all of) these different halves, this is interesting to put together! So I came to film school when I was 18. But it was too early. I got good grades, but it was too early (I was too young). The director has to have some (life) experience and personality. What kind of film can I make that will compare or have anything to say? You need to be able to say something personal as well, you know, because everybody lets talk about freedom about brutality but it’s all the same you know?

We all know the old plots, you know from Greek tragedy… but the tone, how you are telling it and what you are saying and how you balance your story makes a big difference. So the Directors personality is so important. So after (only) a year and a half, I left film school and went to University and studied History and Philosophy I quit, then I worked as a regular worker in the street and only then did I come back to the film school and then I studied. Before, I was a pupil but I wasn’t a student. Then I started making films and so then it becomes my dream. So it wasn’t from my childhood that this was what I wanted.

AT You grew into it.

WM I grew into it.

AT What inspires you to make a film, is it anything…

WM There are several sometimes strange sources. Sometimes it’s a book, sometimes a short news article, but very often I make quite alot of notes, nearly every day.

AT Thoughts?

WM Thoughts… observations, situations, dialogue, sometimes an image I remember and (it) is very interesting sometimes then to go through a copybook and look at these notes and ideas. Then, sometimes you can see something that later on you realise, maybe even a year later… you see that it can be important or a theme (evolving).

But very often I think much more about the characters than the plot. I believe that the plot you can invent. You sit down on your arse.. Concentrate.. And you can invent. But the characters… to feel the characters, not only know (them), that’s sort of a deeper understanding..

AT For them to be real…

WM Yeah, right. Real, unpredictable sometimes, very often…. for example when I made Escape From The Liberty Cinema When I found that the Censor (himself) could be my main character, then I tried to imagine myself being that main character.

AT And that’s what makes the film suddenly spring into being real because the Censor was originally an artist himself….

WM Right….

AT …Who then went over to the other side.

WM Exactly. When I teach, I usually advise students to shorten the distance between the author and their character; try to imagine himself as that person. Doesn’t matter who he or she is doesn’t matter if they are a bank robber… or a Minister.. try to imagine yourself to be in their position. Then, very often you escape from the cliché way of thinking.

(It is easy to say) that the Official is very tough and it is easy for him to make a decision. (But) Maybe he is frightened. Maybe he can be fired at any moment, so he is terrified to make a decision. Immediately the character becomes much more complex, more human and therefore more interesting. I think.

AT But also much more believable. So with this man (the Censor in Escape From The Liberty Cinema) he must have been full of ideals when he was young, wanting to be an artist, but he crashes headfirst into the reality of his Communist society.. those around him… and has a child he needs to feed..

WM Exactly. My main question – how to behave and how to be honest. How to survive. The Church, family, school, friends, they have a good attitude- they wish you no harm, but, at the same time they are saying to you ‘be as we are’. How (do you) survive and create your own personality?

My first nightmares.. 30s in Poland the church was strongly against this book (and) in the 70s, the church was still against this book, but I found in it this beautiful story about a child who is fighting to be free. To be himself. I envied this author (for writing) this story… that it wasn’t me. And here we are decades later and still we have the same problems, the same issues. So I decided to make this film that the church still is against. But it doesn’t matter. What can you do?

AT You made a decision to be a filmmaker, but on top of that you… were very courageous. Do you feel that there is something about filmmaking that is about more than just being an entertainer?

WM Absolutely, yes…

AT Do you believe that making a film is also making a political statement?

WM I think that, yes. We are not only obliged, we are responsible. We cannot just talk (drivel), because we then make our society rubbish..

AT And film is a powerful medium..

WM Film is an extremely powerful medium. And of course I am not against comedy or entertainment and I like some of them as a viewer as well, but I also need to know where those films are when I want to talk about important issues and things in a serious way, or listen to someone scream through the screen… that somebody wants to tell me something really important. These kinds of films need to be produced as well.

AT Talk to me about producers. How do you find working with them?

WM Now I’m not really happy that producers organise everything as well. Europe make mistakes. They see the American way of doing things and they/we accept this way without questioning it at all. Poland just accepted this method without question. But look what’s happened. I don’t know too many ‘Creative’ Producers. I fully agree to have a partner or a boss if the producer is a partner for me. If he knows what it is I want to say. If he knows what my script is about. If he knows which actor is really a great actor and not necessarily just a star at the moment. Then I will say right, ok, the producer can be in charge of this. But most of the time they think solely about the money, about distribution- and they take final cut and they change your film! I think that they’re just silly and that it is not ‘producing’.

AT So many producers call themselves ‘creative’, which actually means that they merely take creative control over the film, but don’t allow the real creatives the room to create.

WM You know, when I think about ‘creative’ producers… I once met I remember, David Puttnam; it was a private party and we talked… about theatre, music, art… but not about film. And when I left the party, I was walking down the street and I thought about it and realised that if I hadn’t known who he was and someone were to ask me ‘what job does that man do?’ I would say- maybe a writer, or a director- not a film director, but a theatre director, because they are usually far better educated than film directors… they have read more, etc., but never would I have said ‘he is a Producer’.

It’s absolutely a partnership and if (I were to) work with him, then the final cut can be his, because he is honest, he’s not stupid, he’s an educated man I respect, is sensitive…

AT Has integrity.

WM Exactly. But it is so rare. So I think that there is a need to educate the right producers and, as a matter of fact, the system needs to be more flexible than it currently is.

AT It seems to be run by the accountants, by the budget and the creative element is all but absent. There was a time when the creatives were left to go and do what they do best, but now there are so many execs all wanting a say… sorry. I’ve gone off topic.

WM No. I fully agree. Yes.

AT Do you know what’s next for you?

WM I am working on a script. But you know my problem is I am not very much interested in telling a compact, linear story.. I would like to… I am thinking about a film that would be like notes on a screen, but it is extremely difficult. if the audience accept the main character, then they are (involved) in the film, but I am a bit bored by this (kind of) fiction story-telling.

The way of telling a story… (formulaic) out of books… how to make the story Progression… ‘and there’s the Turning Point..’ so dull. Of course, it should not be boring, it has to be interesting, but this (also) does not mean that there is only one way to make something interesting.

AT Are there filmmakers that you like? Do you like Altman?

WM Yes I do, but I’m not so… I would say that I am much closer to literature than film.

AT So…

WM Some short stories. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the 19th Century, or from South American writers right now. Some Czech stories I like also right now. But life is interesting, so I am not bored.

AT I think we have to wrap up now. Thank you so much…

WM Thank you. That was interesting.

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FILMUFORIA SPOKE TO WOJCIECH MARCZEWSKI AT THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE IN LONDON ON 11TH MARCH 2013 DURING KINOTEKA 2013

Welcome To The Punch (2012) ***

Director/Writer: Eran Creevy

Producer: Ridley Scott

Cast: Mark Strong, Andrea Riseborough, Shaun McAvoy, Peter Mullan, David Morrissey

99mins UK Crime Drama

On the whole, Britflics tend to be sink estate sagas, gritty urban cop capers or period dramas. Welcome to The Punch attempts a slick Hollywood heist with the best of British manhood. But the problem is it doesn’t quite work. British cop features are best when they’re gritty and sinister (Elliott Lester’s Blitz, Get Carter, Long Good Friday) or when they have a heart of gold (Dexter Fletcher’s Wild Bill) which is why the standard cop drama works so well on TV.

But when Ridley Scott comes on board with his money, you have to jump to and put on your best bib and tucker and that’s what’s happened here. For a start there’s a problem with casting: James McAvoy is uncomfortable as embittered Detective Max Lewinsky who’s rather ‘hors de combat’ with an injured arm: even the name is wrong for a Brit policeman but he makes a decent go of it. And Andrea Riseborough, as his savvy sub is far too subtle for this kind of vehicle and only gets a thinly written minor part. David Morrissey’s Police Chief is lacklustre and rather like his role in Blitz.

Location-wise we’re back in docklands (where else): a place that has seen so many dramas, so many times before. That said, Welcome To The Punch is a decent film with appeal for international audiences who just love Great Britain: it doesn’t feel at all British to us Brits. The shipping container fight sequence and shoot-out shenanigans are far superior in Batman, Killer Elite and even Hanna but Ed Wild’s hard metal visuals add notable style and pazazz and there are certainly plenty of action-packed shootouts for those who are looking for just that.

The good news though, is that this has Mark Strong and he’s just right as a masterful baddie with a heart of gold…well let’s say a decent heart… There’s a hypnotic strength and control to his performance that speaks volumes. We meet him as ex-crook Jacob Sternwood hiding away in Iceland, of all places. His son (Elyes Gabel) has gone off the rails rather badly and he is forced back to London to face the music. There’s a believability in the sub-plot story of father son bonding that works rather well and so does Peter Mullan as Sternwood’s convincingly loyal side-kick crim. And it just so happens that Sternwood’s wronged Lewinsky in the past. Cue Lewinsky, with a chance to get even while there’s still time.

Welcome To The Punch is a big leap from Creevy’s debut Shifty, a nifty little urban tale of drug abuse in the ‘hood that had heart and soul and authentic and fresh. This is a big budget ‘blockbuster’ but it mostly feels impersonal and unmemorable although it’s certainly stylish and competant. Eran Creevy a filmmaker of talent and potential who has jumped at the chance to work with Ridley Scott. He may be out of his depth here but it has no doubt given him a ‘leg-up’ and another dimension to his craft. It will be exciting to see what sort of project he brings us next. MT

It Looks Pretty From A Distance (2011) **** (Z daleka widok jest piekny) Kinoteka 2013

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Director: Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal

Script: Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal

Producer: Anton Kern Gallery

Cast: Marcin Czarnik, Piotr Nowak, Elzbieta Okupska, Jerzy lapinski, Hanna Chojnacka, Michel Pietrzak

Poland 77mins Drama

A very different flavour to this years Kinoteka comes from filmmaking team Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal, who give us a hard slice of life in present-day rural Poland, redolent in style and depiction to our own Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank).

Nominated for awards at the Jeonju and Rotterdam Film Festivals, this minimal approach to storytelling packs a very powerful punch. Life, death and the human instinct for survival is what is on display here, among the grimed reality of an everyday life bumping along the surface of complete destitution, where it seems even words are too expensive to be bandied about willy-nilly.

There is simply no room for frills and niceties and everything is up for grabs, be it in nature or a car. Into this frame comes the love between a young woman and her beau, a scrap metal collector, living with a mother lost to dementia.

There’s a compression, a palpable claustrophobia despite the bucolic setting, brought on by ever-present poverty and that other accompaniment to country living; that everybody knows your business. There’s no plastic castle for hiding in this goldfish bowl.

It’s a super bleak take on life, shot with an economy, an absence of fat that complements the harsh beauty of their living landscape. There’s precious little to aspire to, so anything that alleviates the grind or the boredom is picked clean by hungry fingers. It’s a constant battle just existing in an arena where no quarter is given. Ever.

First film then from the Sasnal Writer, Producer and Director team and what a strong debut it is; an excruciating portrayal of the constant anger and frustration simmering just below the surface when lives are given no hope of relief. Hopefully it proves strong enough for them to get their next one off the ground.

Like taking a cold shower with a scouring pad. AT

IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE IS PART OF THE ICA’S REGULAR ARTISTS’ FILM CLUB SERIES AND WILL SCREEN AT THE ICA, LONDON ON 16TH MARCH 2013 AS PART OF THE KINOTEKA SERIES. KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013: LONDON, BELFAST, LIVERPOOL AND EDINBURGH 7-17 MARCH 2013

Evil Dead (2012)

Director: Fede Alvarez
Script: Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues
Producer: Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell
Cast: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore

90min US Horror

A reboot of the Sam Raimi classic of 1981 and I find myself having the same conversation with myself as I did when I saw Texas Chainsaw 3D.

These reboots have all the bells and whistles, all the blood, the unflinching shots of dismemberment or stabbings, with clinical, graphic digital detail and thunderous, all-piercing 5.1 Surround Sound, but for all of this, they remain a mere shadow of their original forebears, for all of the 16mm footage with mono sound, shot on a shoestring.

So what is it? I think perhaps the current concept of ‘Horror’ needs to be reclassified. It is no longer Horror. It has become ‘Shock and Gore’, with surprisingly little horror; the shock and constant unease coming almost entirely from the unremitting soundtrack, rather than the visual narrative. And there is a festival of blood.

The skill of Horror has been lost, rather as in action films too, lost to the ability of highly skilled Digital Special Effects wizards, capable, for the right budget, of providing anything a writer or director can dream up. Plus. And this is great, so long as it is tempered by and married with a really strong idea of suspenseful storytelling and what is left out.

To give it it’s due, there are some good, unexpected plot turns, but these in the main serve only to increase the ‘jump’ factor. The dialogue, especially early on, is also particularly contrived, not helped by lines like ‘is that ..blood?’

Director Fede Alvarez was selected for his youthful take on the genre and the fact that he made a low-budget online Short called Panic Attack that went viral, taking more than 7 million hits. That’s impressive and all power to him. He shot the film well.

So what is it about? Mirroring the original, five youngsters head out to a log cabin in the woods to help one of their number quit the shit and go cold turkey, free of any distractions or the possibility of relapse, only to discover their cabin has had a break in and there’s a really putrid smell emanating from the basement. I don’t think I need to say any more.

What I take away from this film, as well as any number of other similar is, when faced with the decision about where to go for a short trip/weekend/holiday in America, just don’t choose the camping/log cabin in the woods miles from anywhere option. Go Disney. Or Hawaii. Or even Vegas. Especially if the girls are fit and one of your number is an ethnic minority. AT

EVIL DEAD is released in UK cinemas on April 19th

Michael H. Profession: Director

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At the Curzon, Renoir and Chelsea from 15th March 2013

Shell (2012) ***

Director/Writer: Scott Graham

Cast: Chloe Pirrie, Joseph Mawl, Tam Dean Burn, Morven Christie

90min UK Drama

Scott Graham’s debut feature is a beautifully-crafted and gently haunting mood piece of indie, arthouse cinema. In the desolate Scottish Highlands a young woman mans a petrol station alone. Her dark locks and a marble white looks seem at one with the moaning wind and angry skies of this remote landscape and are as much company as her sullen father (Joseph Mawl) who suffers from epilepsy. The two are viscerally close. Shell’s mother is no longer around.

Chloe Pirrie gives a restrained but engrossing performance as Shell, a dutiful and self-contained daughter who occasionally takes a gun into the hills and comes back with venison for the long winter evenings by the fire. A dark horse whose story gradually unfolds through the occasional visitor who passes by, Shell seems opaque and deliciously mysterious.

The unexpected denouement to does feel slightly at odds with the slow and patient narrative build-up of a drama that started life as short. But nevertheless marks out Pirrie and Graham as talents to watch out for. Joseph Mawl is watchable and intriguing in this understated portrayal of familial claustrophobia and mental illness. MT

The Spirit of ’45 (2013) ***

Director/Writer: Ken Loach

94min UK Documentary

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A moving documentary tribute to the Second World War replete with original footage of war torn London and impartial commentary from ‘ordinary’ people who speak of their wartime experiences and give their personal impressions of the era.

Following on from the allies victory under Churchill’s leadership, Ken Loach focuses his documentary on the immediate postwar period with a rousing tribute to the new Labour Government of the time under Clement, Earl of Attlee, describing how he set up the NHS, nationalised major industries and embarked on a much-needed housebuilding programme.

Post-War Britain in 1945 was a picture of economic and social devastation, so what’s new? With The Spirit of ’45, Loach attempts to illustrate how the solidarity and chin-up approach of the British people carried the nation through the immediate aftermath of economic depression and how, buoyed up by this optimism, the nation made a positive new start that subsequently paved the way social euphoria in the late fifties and sixties.

Where is this ‘spirit’ now, it asks? And that’s the one big failing of the documentary: while providing a great deal of food for thought about the British people and their attitude post war, it fails to analyse and engage with the fundamentals and examine why that frame of mind existed in the forties and whether it has possibly died due to cultural, ethnic and social change that has shaped Britain in the intervening 75 years. MT

Beyond the Hills (2012)**** Dupa Dealuri

Director Christian Mungiu

Cast: Cosima Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta

150mins Drama Romanian with subtitles

A great hit at Cannes, this is a disturbing and melodramatic tale of sexual politics and grinding poverty overlaid with religious pomposity and centres on the masterful central performances from Cristina Flutur (Alina) and Cosima Stratan (Volchita) who best won Best Actress this year at the festival. Purportedly based on real events that took place only recently in Romania’s Tanacu monastery, it has all the trappings of a medieval horror story rather than one based in 21st century Europe. The two girls are reunited in the monastery, where Volchita has become a novice, after growing up together in an orphanage in Germany.

It difficult to tell whether they are in love but there is certainly an emotional and physical closeness at work and Alina uses bond to persuade Volchita to follow her back to Germany to a life in the secular world away from the path she’s chosen as a submissive bride of Chris. In doing so, Alina comes across as a subversive and manipulative character in contrast to Volchita’s gentle and accepting personality. Alina sees these positive traits as evidence of a lack of strength and self reliance which causes Volchita to question her own beliefs and motives with tragic consequences for all concerned.

Christian Mingui’s intimate portrait of the mysterious yet brutal sisterhood of the monastery is beautifully shot and superbly crafted and yet hard-going with its menacing overtones, in much the same way as his last Palme D’Or win, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007) was, although more visually alluring with scenic shots of the Romanian countryside and stunning interiors. MT

Scanners (1981)

Director/Script: David Cronenberg

Producer: Claude Heroux

Cast: Jennifer O’Neill, Patrick McGoohan, Michael Ironside, Stephen Lack, Robert Silverman, Lawrence Dane

103mins Canada 1981 Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller

Sci-Fi has had a bad rap in recent times, due in the main to a plethora of massively-budgeted juggernauts thundering forwards in the total absence of a good story, dependent solely on the style of ever more outrageous Special Effects.

There remains however, a few standout titles which have weathered this storm of mediocrity, a list including (among others) Alien, Blade Runner, Terminator and Cronenberg’s Scanners, where an original storyline was enhanced by a Sci-Fi setting and some choice Special Effects.

Second Sight are releasing Scanners on Blu-Ray on April 8^th, with extras that include interviews with David Lack, Cinematographer Mark Irwin, Exec Producer Pierre David, actor Lawrence Dane and Make Up/Effects man Stephen Dupuis, in the days when effects were still created in latex…

Arguably Cronenberg’s most memorable film, although he is well known for quite a body-count of gruesome flicks such as The Dead Zone, The Fly, Naked Lunch and Crash. Scanners is all the more remarkable because it was shot on a very tight budget and schedule to the point where Cronenberg was actually writing and filming on the fly. All the more extraordinary then that the complex story hangs together so well in the execution.

Michael Ironside’s Darryl Revok is the villainous darkside to the ‘telepathically enabled’, named ‘scanners’ after their ability to remotely ‘read’ peoples brains. Stephen Lack the young scanner enlisted by McGoohan’s Dr Ruth to combat the threat of Revok simply taking over the world (hmm. Have we been here before?).

And it’s the attention to detail that’s so good here; any Sci-Fi film needs to adhere strictly to a set of given rules and to make logical sense at all times. So often this is where Sci-Fi falls down, where the story hasn’t been properly thought through and crucial elements are either glossed over, or conveniently forgotten. But Scanners remains reassuringly solid throughout. Even if the basic premise is somewhat… silly.

The thing that also finally lets it down is some indifferent acting in a few key scenes, but the effort and thought that has gone into the story construct is to be hugely admired and the reason it has stood the test of time.

This said, great turns also by Silverman, McGoohan and of course, the peerless Ironside in particular. A well-above par addition to anyone’s Blu-Ray Sci-Fi Horror collection. AT

SCANNERS IS OUT ON BLU-RAY

Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema (1990) ***** Kinoteka 2013

Escape From The ‘Liberty’ Cinema (Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolnosc’)

Director/Script: Wojciech Marczewski

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41f-6lqo0LM

Cast: Janusz Gajos, Michal Bajor, Artur Barcis, Aleksander Bednarz, Zygmunt Bielawski, Jerzy Binczycki, Henryk Bista, Monika Bolly

87min Poland Surreal comedy. Polish with subtitles

Set just before Poland’s communism came to an end in 1989, Janusz Gajos plays a tired, middle-aged provincial cog in the machine, having long sold out his ideals as a poet and a writer to become one of the enemy; a regime censor.

Things remain stultifying until ‘Daybreak’, the dull, new film screening at the local cinema takes an unexpected turn when the actors in it elect to strike, refusing to adhere to the unedifying script, thereby directly confronting our hero, who has to scramble to sort out the mess.

A brilliant idea, owing not a little to Bulgakov’s The Master & Marguerita and Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, but given a new spin here by Marczewski, has the town in a frenzy and the authorities in a spin as they try to work out how best to deal with this most surreal and unexpected of situations.

Gajos is perfect as the seasoned, divorced and disillusioned protagonist, well versed in the machinations of the hypocritical administration for which he works, in this supremely well-pitched and well-crafted satire of the times.

The supporting cast are also exemplary, especially Artur Barcis as the projectionist Aleksander Bednarz as Edward and Teresa Marczewska; a rich cast of strong character actors providing a secure comedy backdrop upon which to hang the central conceit.

1989 and Lech Wałęsa all seem like such a long time ago, as this snapshot from the past amply illustrates, in a time before mobile phones, when movie posters were hand-painted onto the cinema billboards, but it’s also worth noting that, as is so often the case, it often takes adversity to force creatives to come up with the truly brilliant over the merely pedestrian. One only needs to look at what’s currently on offer in the West End to realise this. Thoroughly recommended. AT

ESCAPE TO THE ‘LIBERTY’ CINEMA IS SHOWING DURING THE KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2013 IN LONDON, LIVERPOOL, BELFAST AND EDINBURGH

Women’s Day (2012)*** Dzien Kobiet Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2013

Director: Maria Sadowska

Writers: Katarzyna Terechowicz, Maria Sadowska

Cast: Katarzyna Kwiatowska, Eryk Lubos, Grazyna Barszczewska, Klara Bielawka, Ewa Konstancja Bulhak, Julia Czuraj, Zina Kerste, Dorota Kolak, Agata Kulesza

90mins Polish Drama with subtitles

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Maria Sadowska’s has many strings to her bow: jazz-pop vocalist, writer, composer and director. Her debut feature is a feisty, feminist affair and although much darker in tone, very much along the lines of Erin Brokovich (2000) or even Gloria (2012), the breakout Chilean feature that won Best Actress for Paulina Garcia at Berlinale this year. The setting is also more unglamorous: An eighties supermarket on the outskirts of Warsaw where the prolific Polish actor, Katarzyna Kwiatkowska, as Halina, plays a modest working woman who turns out to have hidden depths and remarkable staying power. Eryk Lubos is her co-star, another well-known Pole who leads in hard-hitting dramas: To Kill A Beaver and Rose; also screening during the impressive Kinoteka Film Festival this year.

The drama kicks off when Halina’s boss (Eryk Lubos) suggests promotion at the supermarket. Initially, it seems a no-brainer: greater responsibility but more money, social status and a new computer for her daughter Misia (Julia Czuraj) who’s dead against the whole idea. Promotion is beyond her wildest dreams and Halina is determined to give it a go and heads off for a ghastly team-buidling course where all the management is male and the watchword is “Productivity”!: echoing TwentyTwelve, the recent BBC4 satire. Halina realises promotion is a poisoned challis of toxic personalities and nightmares she hadn’t bargained for. But when her boss demands staff cut-backs (“Sack the old one or the pregnant one!”) she falls foul of the sisterhood and bitterly regrets her decision. And it seems like Misia is going off the rails. But Halina won’t give up.

Katarzyna Kwiatowska gives a strong and heartfelt performance as the modest but genuinely well-meaning Halina, battling against a turbulent tide of female rivalry and resentment, mysogyny and making ends meet as a single mother with little support in a country where employment laws of day favoured the company and there is little hope for change.

Women’s Day is a gripping drama with a strong support cast reflecting a country that’s tough, competitive and male-dominated. It shows how women can be the bitterest enemies and the strongest friends and emphasises the continuing importance of the Catholic Church in family life and the dominance of men in society.

Halina’s mother is the voice of the older generation reminding her: “never turn a man down” and yet the male characters here appear manipulative, controlling but ultimately weak and unsupportive. Maria Sadowska calls the feature a “feminist western”. Women’s Day is certainly a parable of a strong, mature and feminine woman who considers the easy route but then takes the high road to High Noon. MT

WOMEN’S DAY IS PART OF KINOTEKA 2013. A SPECIAL FREE SCREENING WITH A PARTY FOR ALL ‘FEMALE SPIRITS’ TAKES PLACE AT THE RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ON 8TH MARCH WITH MUSIC COURTESY OF CULT HERO, DJ WIKA

Cinema Made In Italy 2013 Cine Lumiere London 6-10 March 2013

Cinema Made in Italy 2013 kicks off on 6 March at Ciné Lumière, celebrating its third edition. The event offers lovers of Italian cinema, TEN BRAND NEW ITALIAN FILMS showing over a 5-day mini-festival. Four of these films are French-Italian co-productions, highlighting the long history of fruitful cinematic collaboration between France and Italy. The screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with directors and actors. This is a unique chance to see Italian films that have not yet had exposure in the UK and a rare opportunity to catch up with brand new, cutting edge Italian cinema at the CINE LUMIERE in South Kensington, London SW7 from 6-10 MARCH 2013.

Rose (2011) Kinoteka 2021

Dir: Wojciech Smarzowski | Writer: Michal Szczerbic | Cast: Marcin Dorocinski, Agata Kulesza, Malwina Buss, Kinga Preis, Jacek Braciak, Marian Dziedziel | 90min War Drama

Wojciech Smarzowski’s bleak feature set in 1945, brings to light a largely unknown slice of Polish history: the post Second World War persecution of the Mazurians who first colonised north-eastern Poland.

Rose is a brutal and unremittingly harrowing story of war, love and loss. To say it’s a romantic narrative is partly true but in the real sense that it evokes strong feeling, individual aspiration and a way of thinking. And this aspiration is bound up with a sense of pride and belonging for Rose (Agata Kuleska), a woman who has lost her land and national identity to the Germans and her husband to the ravages of war. Living alone in a isolated farmhouse she is just about surviving, the last knockings of war raging around her, framed by Piota Sobocinski’s masterful but stark visuals.

And into this setting steps Tedeusz (Marcin Dorocinski). His wife has been raped and killed and he has witnessed the murder of Rose’s husband and comes to report his death. The reception Rose gives him is frosty to say the least and if ever there was a more unlikely backdrop to a relationship it is this one. An uncertain pairing then; if ever there was one, but believable. Rose is certainly a film worth seeing despite its almost unrelenting gloom hauntingly scored by Mikolaj Trzaska’s poignant soundtrack. MT

ROSE WILL BE SCREENING during KINOTEKA on BFI Player

Shameless (2012) Bez Wstydu Kinoteka 2013

Director: Filip Marczewski

Script: Grzegorz Loszewski
Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Anna Prochniak, Maciej Marczewski

Poland 81mins 2012 Drama

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Shameless is director Filip Marczewski’s feature debut and quite a debut it is too.
Mateusz Kosciukiewicz plays Tadek, an 18 year old holding an unhealthy infatuation with his beautiful and sexually active older sister Anka. She however, has the hots for Andrzej an ambitious would-be neo-Nazi politician.

Into this already complicated mix comes Irmina, a feisty young gypsy who takes one look at Tadek and knows he is destined to be hers, if she can but break the ties that bind…

Of the many things that are refreshing about European films, one is sex. The Polish Film Festival is already yielding more than one title with not only a preoccupation with the subject but also a fascinated portrayal. No prudish, suppressed toothless American ideology here, but all the mess, the complexity, the darkness and the desperation spread out for all to feel.

This isn’t to say that Shameless is at all pornographic or gratuitous. It isn’t. In fact the sex is muted in comparison to some other films in the festival, but the adult way in which the topic is tackled is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the spotty teenage boys that rule Hollywood shenanigans.

Mateusz Kosciukiewicz is a real find and I’m sure a career beckons for his understated handsome charm coupled with juvenile Jagger-esque looks. The two women, Prochniak and Grochowska are also compelling and the supporting cast are excellent, adding a weight and authenticity to the piece.

Award-winning writer Grzegorz Loszewski has come up through television writing, but it is pleasing to see that the transition to film has not been at all difficult or lumpy. He has written a well-tuned, mature and balanced piece; a meditation on love, need and desire, with Romeo & Juliet overtones and that time worn but no less valid sentiment that you always want what you can’t have… tonally, it’s spot on.

Another strong offering from the Kinoteka then, leaving me hungry for more from this hugely exciting and so far captivating festival. Seek it out. AT

Manhunt (2012) **** Oblawa Kinoteka 2013

Director: Marcin Kryzysztalowicz
Script: Marcin Kryzysztalowicz
Producer: Krysztof Gredzinski, Malgorzata Jurczak
Cast: Marcin Dorocinski, Maciej Stuhr, Sonia Bohosiewicz, Weronika Rosati, Andrzej Zielinski, Bartosz Zukowski, Alan Andersz, Andrzej Mastalerz

Poland 2012 96mins War Drama

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Based on a true story and shot in Slomniki, Malopolskie, this WWII Polish resistance movement flick is the epitome of grit. Rightly nominated for the Grand Prix at Montreal FF last year, Kryzysztalowicz has delivered the goods here and on a miniscule budget.

Grim in the extreme and minutely observed, utilising a finely constructed fractured narrative, Kryzysztalowicz tells his desperate story of a partisan group living close to starvation in the Polish woods. A completely convincing Dorocinski plays ‘Wydra’, a resistance soldier given the odious task of rounding up Gestapo informers from the nearby town and executing them unceremoniously; the lives of the resistance fighters depend on it.

Kryzysztalowicz doesn’t blink, doesn’t blanch, either from the immediacy of war nor the unrelenting bleakness, the on-going struggle, the existence that the partisans had to wring from the land during their exile from their homes and families. One can almost smell the soil and taste the pitiful stew.

As one has come to expect now from Polish fare, the cinematography is again exemplary, here from the very experienced and award-winning Arkadiusz Tomiak.

It’s nine years since Kryzysztalowicz last made a film and let it be hoped he doesn’t have to wait as long before delivering another. His script, like the story it is based on is wiry and honed, stripped bare of any fat, any spare. The acting is superb throughout and the story smartly told. The very evident humanity lifting it above the standard war pic.

It’s the tale, if indeed any were needed, about the extremity of war and what it makes people capable of, once there is simply nothing left for them in life, once brutality has left its bootprint indelibly on their souls and, by extension, forces you to ask of yourself- what would you do? How would you react, given the same stimuli?

Go with a strong nerve, but go. These stories need to be told and, moreover, they need never to be forgotten. AT

To Kill A Beaver (2012) **** Zabic Bobra Kinoteka 2013

Director: Jan Jakub Kolski
Script: Jan Jakub Kolski
Producer: Wieslaw Lysakowski
Cast: Erik Lubos, Agnieszka Pawelkiewicz, Alexandra Michael, Marek Kasprzyk, Mariusz Bonaszewski, Mateusz Krol, Daniel Misiewicz

Poland 100mins 2012 Psychodrama

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My introduction to this year’s Kinoteka, the 11th Polish Film festival here in London, comes via Polish filmmaker and son of editor Roman Kolski, Jan Jakub Kolski has made fourteen films and is regarded as the founder of ‘magical realism’ in Poland. Certainly he’s an auteur at the top of his game.

To Kill A Beaver is a dark study into the psychology of one man and the damage that abuse or exposure to trauma can elicit. And it is quite brilliant. Eryk Lubos won Best Actor plaudits at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival last year for his completely committed performance in the lead role and appreciation also needs to go out to young Agnieszka Pawelkiewicz for her contribution. Let me tell you, the director demanded alot of both of them.

The camera is left simply to observe the actor’s fine craft of inhabiting the mind body and soul of his character, in this case an ex-soldier returning home to his house in rural Poland, after an extended time away. But there is no respite. He’s expecting guests and is on high alert.

The plot only slowly reveals more clues as to who he is, what has happened and indeed, what is happening now. But it is a delicious reveal. As an audience we are captivated and ready for each chip as it is dished up.

It will be interesting to see whether an American star sees this film and decides he has to do a remake. It’s one of those roles actors cry out for, showcasing their abilities more than effects or clever repartee.

This is also a first film for Cinematographer Michal Pakulski, having worked his way up the traditional way through the camera, from Gaffer to Operator and finally here lighting and lensing and he has done a superb job, with a real understanding of what the script and the central character required of him, helping augment the story without becoming the story. Hopefully he too will move from strength to strength on the back of this fine feature debut.

So, a salty introduction it is too, my appetite whetted for more from the Polish school of film. Let’s face it, when the Poles get it right, there really is no finer film to be had. AT

Kinoteka, the 11th Polish Film Festival runs 7-17th March 2013 in London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Liverpool.

Robot and Frank (2011) ***

Director: Jake Schreier

Script: Christopher D Ford

Cast: Frank Langhella, Susan Sarandon, James Marsden

89min US Comedy Drama

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Anyone with elderly parents will appreciate this whip-smart, offbeat comedy that centres on a grouchy retired burglar Frank (Frank Langhella) and his relationship with a household robot bearing a striking resemblance to Top Gear’s ‘Stig’: superbly voiced by Peter Sarsgaard. Although Frank initially resents the well-meant and strangely human gift from his grown-up kids, he soon realises that its skills go well beyond the housework.

The story unfolds in a rambling house in upstate New York, and although Frank is stumbling on the foothills of dementia, he’s selective in his mental capacities; still managing to flirt with the local librarian (a supurb Susan Sarandon) but often absent-minded about his offspring played by James Marden and Liv Taylor.

It’s a strong and ingenious debut from Jake Schreier and one whose subtle irony and worthy subject matter could have provided scope for more development and complexity given the modest running time. MT

Hi-So (2010)

Director: Aditya Assarat

Cast: Ananda Everingham, Cerise Leang, Sajee Apiwong

102mins Thailand Drama

HI-SO (Thai for High Society) eavesdrops on the life of a young graduate couple: Ananda and his American girlfriend Zoë (Cerise Leang). It’s a slow-moving, contemplative affair from Thai director Aditya Assarat, who brought us Wonderful Town (2007), told in English and atmospherically captured on the lens of Umpornol Yugala in a landscape still recovering from the Tsunami of 2004.

Ananda has returned to his homeland and takes a job acting in a new movie for a ‘famous’ director. This leaves Zoë bored and hanging around the appartment making trite comments all phrased as questions: “there’s no people”, “i broke a nail playing the guitar”, “maybe I shouldn’t have come here”. Newcomer Cerise Leang’s performance is so wooden and one dimensional it’s a relief when she finally disappears, presumably on a flight back to America to get her nails done.

Not surprisingly Ananda wanders off and pretty soon he’s caught the eye of May (Sajee Apiwong), a Thai girl who’s more lively but equally low on real depth, although again he fails to relate to her on any meaningful level and most of their time together he’s reading the paper in a pose of condescending intellectual superiority. It’s clear that American-educated Ananda is from a priveleged American-influenced background and used to doing very little of real worth and the girls he engages with are just waiting for a man to take the lead. So is Assarat trying to tell us that Thailand is still a mans’ world except for the few rich women such as his mother who hold the cards (quite literally) and gamble?

Despite its appealing aesthetic, Hi-So offers no real insight into modern Thailand or the “high society” it purports to represent other than showing us plush filming locations of a luxury beach hotel, empty apartment building and the odd bar full of people mooching around wearing tracksuits. It’s difficult to relate to the characters and the largely meaningless and facile narrative and so one cares very little what happens to them which is not very much. It also takes nearly two hours to do so. Certainly not on a par then with the slow-burning but affecting work of of fellow Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul. MT

Mission To Lars (2012)

Director: James Moore, William Spicer

Producer: James Moore, William Spicer

Cast: Kate Spicer, Tom Spicer, William Spicer

74min UK Documentary

It is unlikely you will see such an unlikely, sweet, life-affirming film this year. Journalist Kate Spicer has two brothers. William, a filmmaker and Tom, who suffers from an inherited learning disability called Fragile X Syndrome, a rather virulent form of autism.

Understandably, Tom lives in a home, where life is familiar and ordered, but it can still seem impossible for Tom; stress, a lapse in structure, anything out of the ordinary, crowds, queues and particularly loud noises to name but a few, cause total shutdown and retreat. But both Kate and William are aware that by leading their busy, ‘normal’ lives, they have over the years grown more distant from their brother and both wish to do something to address this rift

For someone with a fear of loud noises, Tom has a surprising fixation; the music that is Metallica, the loudest heavy metal band in the world. Moreover, his one main ambition in life has been to meet the drummer, Lars Ulrich. So, Kate and Will hatch a plot that entails taking Tom out of his comfortable home, flying him across the Atlantic and into a concert arena to see his idol. The biggest problem may be in actually getting him out of his bedroom. When Tom says no, he means No.

However, it’s not only Tom’s on-going battle with his own fears and fixations, but the dynamic between the siblings as they come together to try and make this trip of a lifetime happen that is as engaging as the idea of trying to get back stage passes for the biggest rock band in the world. For some, just being among brothers and sisters can be a trial, but doing that knowing that it is potentially exponentially more stressful for one of their number makes the endeavour all the more piquant, as they strive for familiarity and closeness.

It’s quite possible that if Tom’s brother Will hadn’t been a filmmaker, this film would not have had half the content that it does. It is precisely because the cameraman is an integral part of the unit that he is able to get the footage that this film needs to make it work so comprehensively as a film.

Even as the pair go into this Mission To Lars knowing it’s going to be a headache, it does nothing to prevent it being a migraine, as they try to cope with their own patterns of behaviour as much as try to cater for the entirely unpredictable Tom.

Hats off to everyone for even attempting it. What an amazing journey for all concerned. It’s only in the Doing that we learn what we might be capable of and solutions can sometimes come from the most surprising of places. I’m so glad I’ve seen this film. Be sure to stay for all of the end credits. AT

Caesar Must Die (2012) *** Cesare Deve Morire

Directed by Vittorio and Paolo Taviani (screenplay)

Cast: Cosimo Rega, Salvatore Striano, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca

77mins Drama

Caesar Must Die won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year, a fitting tribute to the Taviani Brothers who are well into their eighties and veterans of the silver screen. Padre Padrone (1977) was their brilliant adaption of the novel by Ledda Gavino that dealt a Sardinian farming community but nobody expected that they would be back again to the limelight with this piece of social realism similar in tone to Padre Padrone nearly 40 years later. That said, Caesar Must Die was always going to divide the critics and, indeed, audiences for its contraversial subject matter. For all its theatricality, vim and vigour, it’s a stark film to look at and a heavy one to watch.

You might expect a film about a mis-en-scene of Julius Caesar within a prison by its hardened criminal inmates to be gutsy and volatile but what you might not expect is that it could be emotional and heartfelt. All all these are actors who’ve committed crimes: murderers, rapists, thieves and embezzlers. People who’ve destroyed lives and caused untold misery to their victims none of whom are up for an award but who are coming to terms with loss, grief and heartache. But the Taviani brothers have given them a chance to express themselves through the medium of theatre and to act out roles in a play that originally featured characters who possess the same traits as they do. So who better to portray roles such as Brutus and even Caesar himself than inmates of Rebibbia maximum security jail on the outskirts of Rome.

Beginning with the ending of the performance the film then flashes back to the start of rehearsals. The actors ‘audition’ face to face with the camera as they talk about their families and their personal lives. As they craft their individual performances they start to compare how the subject matter reflects their own lives in such a way that boundaries between reality and artifice are sometimes blurred or hard to define. In this way, the Taviani’s on-screen prison becomes a metaphor for contemporary life, a microcosm of modern Italian society with its power struggle, social dynamics and contemporary political scene. A very clever film yes but an appealing one, not really. MT

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Side Effects (2012) **** Berlinale 2013

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Jude Law, Catherine Zeta Jones, Tatum Channing, Ronney Mara

104min **** US Thriller

Side Effects is a more persuasive endictment on the pharmaceutical industry than any worthy documentary on the subject of prescription drugs such as the recent Fire In The Blood. It really should be on doctor’s orders.

Steven Soderbergh’s cool and clinical thriller was a much needed shot in the arm at Berlinale this year and is purportedly the swan song for this successful indie revolutionary who broke onto the scene with Sex Lies and Videotape in 1989 and went on to win an Oscar (for Traffic) and create a lucrative franchise in the shape of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen and now seems set to retire from directing; at least movies, that is.

Set in contemporary New York it opens as a timely tale about a fall from grace suffered by a young wife, Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), whose trader husband is in prison for insider dealing. It portrays the fear, the spiralling humiliation and the hopeless depression engendered when we lose almost everything we have achieved. And even when husband Martin (Channing Tatum) comes home the blues don’t leave. “Depression is the inability to be able to construct a viable future” says her sympathetic Dr Jonathan Banks: Jude Law in one of his most brilliant turns so far. In fact Law’s performance is the one of the best things about Side Effects. He comes across with genuine integrity as an ethical doctor who’s not without his own family turmoil and financial worries. And recommends the ideal pick-me-up to his patient Emily a pill that supposedly works wonders for depression. Gradually the tone turns from character study to gripping psychodrama where nothing is as it seems.

Rooney Mara as Emily is unstable and aloof but then there’s a reason for this which gradually comes to light as the horror unfolds. Catherine Zeta Jones is sinister and surprising as Emily’s previous clinician Dr Victoria Siebert. Exit Soderbergh on a high then with an ingenious, dark Hitchcockian thriller that has more twists than a child-proof bottle. MT

SIDE EFFECTS IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 8TH MARCH AT THE TRICYCLE, VUE, CINEWORLD AND HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE.

The Stranger (2012) ** 18th London Turkish Film Festival 2013

The Stranger (Yabanci)

Director/Script: Filiz Alpgezmen

Cast: Sezin Akbasoğulları, Caner Cindoruk, Serkan Keskin

Turkey 94mins 2012 Drama

Özgür’s parents left Turkey after the coup in 1980, never to return. On her father’s death, Özgür elects to fulfill her exiled father’s dying wish of interment in Turkey, not their adopted home of France.

Not the easiest of journeys then, for a girl who has never visited the land of her forefathers, either for herself or indeed, for the expatriate body of her father, for whom bureaucracy awaits. There is no doubting that there is a strong story waiting here to be told but the film remains at arms length, chiefly because of the central performance. Whether it is the director’s choice or that of the actress, Akbasoğulları’s performance is resolutely unsympathetic throughout. She remains sulky, unresponsive and even downright rude to everyone who ventures a kind word or offers help, to the point where you realise you don’t really care for her and therefore stop caring about her situation too.

There is also something altogether unconvincing about her reactions to the things that happen and longeurs to the piece that one feels aren’t quite earned; too much time spent watching her walk down a road/stair/passageway and not enough of the actual action. She’s attractive but the camera certainly isn’t in love with her enough for the piece as a whole to carry this off.

This is a great shame as there are elements of merit to the picture but this is Filiz Alpgezmen’s first foray into feature films, so perhaps one is allowed to gain one’s feet. Many of the supporting performances are very sympathetic, convincing and strong and, although these cannot make up for the deficiency in the lead, they certainly help with the film as a whole.

I’m also unconvinced that this story can travel far beyond its own borders in terms of content and a wider audience being knowledgeable of the situation and circumstances of the film enough to take alot from it. Plenty of other superb fare on offer in the Turkish Festival then to more than make up for this one. But it’s what festivals are all about. AT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 FEBRUARY UNTIL 3 MARCH AT THE RIO DALSTON, ICA AND CINE LUMIERE LONDON

The Circle Within (2012) ***** 18th London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Script: Deniz Çınar

Cast: Fırat Çınar, Coskun Çetinalp, Kadir Vurguncu, Fadime Vurguncu

Turkey 72mins   2012 Psychological Drama

From the oblique Shakespearean opening quote from Othello- “Their best conscience is not to leave it undone, but keep it unknown”, The Circle Within is a fascinating, engrossing and quite unexpected exploration of faith, religion, trauma and belonging from Deniz Çınar, employing the disappearing world of the Kurdish Yazidi.

A minority religion, Yazids worship the sun and can be found in ever-dwindling numbers in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and Russia, but have been forced mostly into exile in Eastern Europe, due to persecution.

The Circle Within is a beautiful, measured film, shot in the vast, rolling, timeless countryside of rural Eastern Turkey. With a conceit as simple as a child’s game, this film manages to explore with a depth and totality, some of the darkest recesses of the human mind.

‘Cerci’ Halil, a humble travelling Yazidi peddler, sells his wares from village to village; cheap trinkets and baubles in the main, with a few useful items thrown in, from marbles and toys for the kids, to shaving brushes, spoons, rings and needles for the adults, he spreads his wares on an impromptu blanket for all to covet. Life appears quite sweet and innocent, if not exactly easy, until he crosses paths with Hasan.

Both leads, Coskun Cetinalp as Halil and Firat Cinar playing Hasan are quite brilliant; their contrasting characters and indeed, worlds creating all the drama one could wish for on the side of a pretty barren, if stunning, mountain.Plaudits to cinematographer Isa Toraman and also Volkan Zorlu for the music, although there is an inexplicable Sound issue at one point, which is a small anomaly that doesn’t detract from the film as a whole.

Another exciting Turkish Festival Film, similar in territory to that other excellent offering, Emin Alper’s Beyond The Hill, exploring the inner world by utilising the outer one. Try to catch it. AT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS UNTIL 3 MARCH 2013 AT THE RIO DALSTON, ICA AND CINE LUMIERE, LONDON

Stoker (2013) ****

Director: Park Chang Wook

Writers: Wentworth Miller and Erin Cressida Wilson

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Mia Wassikowska, David Alford, Phyllis Somerville, Jackie Weaver

98min Drama

After the blatant bloodiness of OldBoy and The Last Stand, Stoker opens as a lush arthouse drama In English, for a change. With magnetic performances from Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode this visually acute and tightly-scripted study is of family dysfunction brought into focus when Uncle Charlie comes to visit his niece India and widowed sister-in law Evie after the tragic death of his brother Richard.

Uncle Charlie sends shockwaves of potent sexuality through the females in the family with his hypnotically powerful presence. Both women develop a visceral attraction to him but Uncle Charlie’s glib smarminess also belies a secret that slowly starts to unravel and we discover that his smart clothes and accessories, designed by Kurt and Bart, don’t just cut a sartorial swagger.

Chun-hoon Chung, his regular cinematographer (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Thirst), knows his lenses like the back of his hand and uses them to sublime effect to create a sumptuously stylised and visually impeccable portrait of social dynamics. Shot in a palette of pistacchio, eau di nil and aqua spiked with cinnamon, Stoker has the emotional feel and distance of an Edward Hopper painting with Hitchcockian undertones. There are also servings of the auteur’s brutal signature violence lightly steamed through with the swampy heat of Tennessee all set to Clint Mansell’s discordant score. Chang Wook Park may have gone to America but his indie streak and black humour is very much alive and kicking. MT

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STOKER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 1ST MARCH 2013 AT CURZON CINEMAS

Can (2012) *** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director: Rasit Celikezer

Cast:

106min Turkish with subtitles

A compelling story of adoption seen through the eyes of a childless couple, Ayse and Cemal, whose seemingly perfect lives are gradually turned upside down due to their understandable desire to become parents.

Told in parallel narrative form, and considerably leavened by Ali Ozel’s superb visuals, the couple’s struggle is seen alongside that of a neglectful single woman bringing up her child alone. At times confusing, Razit Celikezer’s film throws up a minefield of challenging theme: male pride, visceral hunger to procreate, and a desire to conform in an increasingly child and family-orientated society that is unwittingly judgemental and critical of the childless.

A brave stab then at emotionally demanding subject matter that reflects the isolation and humiliation that infertility causes even amongst the most enlightened. One can’t help wonder if Celikezer has any personal experience of the dismal and poignant story he tells. MT

Can won the World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic for Artistic Vision at Sundance Film Festival 2012.

THE 18TH TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS BETWEEN 21 FEBRUARY AND 3 MARCH 2013 AT THE RIO DALSTON, ICA AND CINE LUMIERE LONDON

Somewhere in Between | Araf (2013) | London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Yesim UstaogluCast: Neslihan Atagul, Baris Hachihan, Ozcan Deniz, Nihal Yalcin, Yesemin Conka

124mins *** Drama Turkish with subtitles

Another Anatolian story this time set in contemporary Karabuk, an industrial town that seems an appropriate location for its title, literally meaning in between heaven and hell or limbo. Yesim Ustaoglu tells her story of frustrated dreams and hopes in the middle of a snowswept winter where two young people are stuck in dead-end jobs with grueling schedules and long commutes.

Yesim Ustaoglu is a well-known filmmaker in Turkey and has had success with previous features Pandora’s Box (2008) and Waiting For The Clouds (2003) both focus on the human condition seen through difficult circumstances.

Here in Araf, Zehra (Neslihan Atagul) and Olgun (Baris Hacihan) are drawn to each other, attraction serves as an antidote to their monotonous lives. Then Zehra meets Mahur (Ozcan Deniz) at a wedding and the two become close but face considerable problems due to societal pressures. What follows is an unflinching portrait of a woman trapped in time and place with little choice or personal freedom. As Zehra, Atagul’s is convincing and believable as she scales the highs and lows of her emotions in this cultural backwater.

Yesim Ustaoglu is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. That said, her latest film is too long and tonally monotonous to sustain such emotionally demanding subject matter. Araf would have had more impact with the benefit of judicious editing and tighter scripting with the inclusion of some lighter moments to contrast with the gloom. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | FEBRUARY 2013

Verity’s Summer (2012) **

Director/script: Ben Crowe

Cast: Indea Barbe-Willson, James Doherty, Nicole Wright, Cristi Hogas

Producer: Emma Biggins

Cinematographer: Sara Deane

102min Drama UK

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Verity’s Summer is Ben Crowe’s debut feature. Set in the enchanting beauty of an English summer this slow-burning, lyrical coming of age indie has newcomer Indea Barbe-Willson as Verity, a Middle class teenage girl on the crest of womanhood and back home from boarding school to face her Policeman father recently from Iraq.

And it’s a time of change for Verity. On the way home, she crosses paths with Castle, a drifter who later is washed up on the beach. Her parents argue. Her mother (Nicola Wright) is unhappy; her father distant, awkward and harbouring a guilty secret. He is called in to lead the investigation into Castle’s mysterious death. And there’s an intriguing Polish stranger (Cristi Hogas) who appears on the scene: But how is he connected to the family?

An interesting storyline then but not a particularly new one. Verity’s Summer has much to explore with its themes of family dysfunction, immigration and the Iraq conflict but a script that fails to deliver a gripping narrative. It drifts along promisingly at first but then loses momentum and fails to reach any constructive conclusion or dramatic clout. Indea Barbe-Willson shows promise as an intuitive schoolgirl on the crest of discovering love and sex but James Doherty seems wooden as her dad: infact it’s difficult to believe he’s related to her or married to her mother as there’s no chemistry or spark between any of them.

What makes this watchable though is the glorious summer countryside and wildly sweeping coastal beauty of Northumberland. Sara Deane’s visuals are really magnificent and won her Best Cinematographer in the Cannes in A Van 2012 Awards. With an original score from Alexandros Miaris combining classical pieces, this is an accomplished first feature. It’s the sort of drama that would be great for Sunday night TV on the Beeb or ITV. MT

VERITY’S SUMMER SCREENS WITH Q&A AT THE TRICYLE CINEMA, LONDON ON 9TH AND 10TH MARCH 2013

The Gospel According To Matthew (1964) Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo

Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini | Cast: Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini, Marcello Morante, Mario Socrate, Settimio Di Porto, Ferruccio Nuzzo | 137min ***** Historical Drama

In 1962 Pier Paolo Pasolini found himself in Assisi invited by the Pope to attend a seminar at a Franciscan Monastery. He was a Marxist homosexual and the Pope wanted to engage with non-Catholic artists in a bid to raise the bar on traditional Catholicism and the organised Church. Pasolini didn’t believe in God or religion and yet his experience led him to make this low budget indie that is possibly the most important and starkly powerful film about Jesus and his life story.

Conjuring up the spirit of Italian neo-realism, Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo features a cast of non-professional locals taken from the villages of Apulia and Basilicata, and a script based exactly as the Gospel is written. As its core is a mesmerising performance from Enrique Irazoqui, a Spanish newcomer Pasolini had met by accident in the street after days of searching for the ideal actor. He is perfect for the role of Jesus, exuding a gentle magnetism that is the closest to ‘goodness’ imaginable. With the innocence of a child divested of centuries of awe and the inculcation of a religious believer, Pasolini creates a surprisingly devout version of Christ’s passion, set in the barren countryside of Basilicata in place of Palestine.

That said, the purity of Christ’s message is rooted in Christian beliefs of unflinching modesty, simplicity, social respect and equality. The miracles performed are so low-key they actually feel authentic and transcend moral statement or scorn in a drama delivered without sentimentality, cant or glorification. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Venice that year, and was screened in Notre Dame as a result of being awarded first prize from the International Catholic Office of the Cinema . Forget Terrence Malick, if any film deserves to be called To The Wonder it is this one MT

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW IS on

The Butterfly’s Dream (2013) Kelebegin Ruyasi London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Yilmaz Erdogan

Cast: Kivanc Tatlitug, Mert Firat, Belcim Bilgin, Farah Zeynep Abdullah, Yilmaz Erdogan

140min Drama Turkish with subtitles

The Butterfly’s Dream is a lyrical drama following the lives of two young Turkish wartime poets Rostu Omer and Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu. Their literary ambitions are set against the turbulent backdrop of World World II and unfold in 1941 in the Black Sea coastal town of Zonguldak where they are staging a play based on the local mining community, revealed in a stunning black and white opening sequence.

Gokhan Tiryaki’s magnificent wide-screen visuals and an evocative and rousing original score by Rahman Altin bring this vibrant slice of Turkish history to life. And although the humour was well-received by the largely Turkish audience at the world premiere, it was rather lost in translation in the English subtitles. That said, there this is much to recommend this to cineastes not least some spectacular performances from leads Kivanc Tatlitug (a TV actor and heart throb) and Belcim Bilgin who evoke the consumptive artists with palpable pain and creative insight.

This story within a story shows the poets engaged in the writing and staging process of their play as their own lives and loves unfold under the often austere guidance of their literary mentor, the poet Behcet Necatigi (Yilmaz Erdogan).

Muzaffer falls for Belcim Bilgin’s rich girl Suzan against the wishes of her stiffling and socially ambitious father. Rustu discovers love with the delicate Mediha (Zeynep Farah Abdullah) who he meets while recovering from consumption in the picturesque sanitorium of Istanbul’s Heybeliada.

Although their literary pretentions burn bright the future is less starry for this writing duo. Erdogan skilfully interlaces their story with frequent references to class and religious barriers of the era and gradually events on the world stage start to cast dark shadows on their sunny tale of love, friendship and what it means to be an artist.

Yilmaz Erdogan is well known on the Turkish scene as a writer, actor and director with appearances in Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011) and upcoming feature The Rhino Season (2013). His standout comedy Vizontele (2011) was a breakout hit in Turkey although it has to be said that Turkish humour is very specific to Turkey and has limited appeal elsewhere. The Butterfly’s Dream is a Turkish classic in the making. At two and a half hours it’s also a long one but is well-paced with laughter and tears, fabulous forties costumes and period detailing: a fitting opening feature then for the 18th London Turkish Film Festival 2013. MT

THE 18TH LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 FEBRUARY TO 3 MARCH 2013 AT THE ICA, RIO DALSTON AND CINE LUMIERE LONDON.

Somewhere In Between | Araf (2012) | London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director/Writer: Yesim Ustaoglu | Cast: Neslihan Atagul, Baris Hachihan, Ozcan Deniz, Nihal Yalcin, Yesemin Conka | 124mins *** Drama Turkish with subtitles

Another Anatolian story this time set in contemporary Karabuk, an industrial town that seems an appropriate location for its title literally meaning in between heaven and hell or limbo. Yesim Ustaoglu also tells her story of frustrated dreams and hopes in the middle of a snowswept winter where two young people are stuck in dead-end jobs with grueling schedules and long commutes.

Yesim Ustaoglu is a well-known filmmaker in Turkey as had success with previous features Pandora’s Box (2008) and Waiting For The Clouds (2003) both stories of the human condition seen through difficult circumstances.

Here in Araf, Zehra (Neslihan Atagul) and Olgun (Baris Hacihan) are keen on each other despite their monotonous lives. Then Zehra meets Mahur (Ozcan Deniz) at a wedding and the two become close but face considerable problems due to societal pressures. What follows is an unflinching portrait of a woman trapped in time and place will little choice or personal freedom and as Zehra, Atagul’s is convincing and believable as she scales the highs and lows of her emotions.

Yesim Ustaoglu is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. That said, her latest film is too long at over just two hours and would have had more impact with the benefit of judicious editing for such emotionally demanding subject matter. MT

THE LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | FEBRUARY 2013

To The Wonder (2012) *

Director/Writer:Terrence Malick

Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki

Cast: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem, Tatiana Chiline

112min * Arthouse Drama US

Terrence Mallick is back after the polemical Tree of Life (2011) with another poetic poser on existence. This time the quest for love is occupying Mr Mallick’s mind: “What is the Love that Loves us?” is his opening salve in a peripatetic drama that starts in Paris with its protagonists Ben Affleck (Neil, an American) and Olga Kurylenko (Marina, a Ukrainian) in the flurry of a whirlwind love affair. Mont Saint-Michel in the rain, pillow-talk and breathless whispers in the rippling breeze as the camera trips and sweeps over coast and countryside in a swirl of time and place all fused into one.

The action moves to Oklahoma for a homage to America is great. Not. Sweeping images of corn fields, vast housing estates, cheerleaders and the disadvantaged. Our lovers rattle around in their vast new build while on the seedy side of town Javier Bardem’s honest priest Father Quintana has the hapless task of healing and helping the broken souls and bodies of those who have fallen by the roadside of the American dream. Bardem is convincing here as a troubled man of the cloth who is unconvinced of his own value to the community, who also seem to have tuned it to this diffidence Nevertheless, he ardently prays for guidance. Meanwhile our lovers are falling apart.

Oh I did try to like it but with no convincing storyline, no meaningful script, or dialogue and no real character development how can actors be expected to emote out of nowhere and engage our interest or sympathies. How can we enjoy what feels like an empty, repetitive travelogue for a glossy magazine where plastic phrases are plucked out of the copy to excite us to read on: “You And Me” “Love makes us one” “You’ve brought me back to life” and all scored by a worthy soundtrack that somehow feels out of place and inappropriate and it’s Bach, Berlioz and Wagner we’re talking about here.

Ben Affleck makes a brave fist of Neil, haunting the breath-taking set-pieces like a cipher who can only smile, scowl and murmur platitudes. As Marina, Kurylenko twirls round and round endlessly, twittering mindlessly like a lustful 5-year-old looking for approval. Neither character appears to have any interests, real conversation, or even a worthwhile connection. In bed she asks him: “What Are You Afraid of?”: this is a phrase that speaks volumes yet no elaboration is given or scoped out and the question hangs in the air. Exit Marina. In comes Rachel McAdam, a girl from Neil’s past who’s the same person as Marina only blonde, local and plump. No relationship, just more dissatisfied glances and increasingly desperate looks. And so it goes on.,

The highlight is the widescreen cinematography but even that starts to pale with the absence of a gripping narrative. To watch To The Wonder is to ride on a swirling merry-go-round that promises excitement but ultimately causes tedium and nausea until the desire to get off is so overwhelming you could scream. Why is the talented, acclaimed filmmaker prone to making vacuous cinematic statements. MT

Lore (2012)

Director: Cate Shortland, Screenplay: Robin Mukherjee

Cast: Saskia Rosendahl, Nele Trebs, Andre Frid, Mika Seidel, Kai-Peter Malina, Nick Holaschke

109min Wartime thriller based on The Dark Room. German with Subtitles

Australian director Cate Shortland’s first feature Somersault was a light-hearted look at love and sex. In Lore she takes on more challenging subject matter and skillfully explores the nature of racism, sexuality and conflict without judgement or blame in this refreshing and well-crafted wartime drama.

Lore is a story of a journey; a gruelling journey across Nazi Germany for a young family during Allied occupation. And for teenager Hannelore (Lore) it’s also a journey from innocence into adulthood.

Gracefully played by newcomer Saskia Rosendahl, Lore confronts her family responsibilities and fear of the unknown with courage and perseverance when she is forced to leave her home with her younger siblings when they are abandoned by Nazi SS parents fearing capturing during the occupation. To survive the gruelling journey Lore cooperates with a stranger (a sinister Kai Peter Malina) who repells her but awakens her sexuality in a relationship that could have been more visceral on his part. Based on a story from Rachel Seiffert’s Booker-Prize nominated The Dark Room, Shortland paints a bleak portrait of personal loss and wartime deprivation brightened by Adam Arkapaw’s strikingly lush visuals of the German countryside and touching performances from the children, newcomers Nele Trebs, Andre Frid, and Mika Seidel. MT

Previewed as the Centrepiece Gala at Jewish Film Festival at the Tricycle Cinema on 10/11/12, the film will be on general release from 22 February 2013 nationwide.

Jîn (2013) **** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Director: Reha Erdem

Cast: Deniz Hasgüler
Onur Unsal
Yildirim Simsek

122mins Drama Turkish/Kurdish with subtitles

Time And Winds and Kosmos director Reha Erdem projects his ideas onto a broad canvas with visionary widescreen dramas that seem to have an otherworldly dimension.

Here he places the destructive Turkish-Kurdish conflict as the counterpoint to a sumptuous nature study set in the breathtaking beauty of eastern Turkey. The focus is a young but fiercely independent Kurdish refugee/guerilla (a superb Deniz Hasgüler) who is forced to extricate herself continually from the clutches of potential rapists who cross her path as she makes her way to safety across the breathtaking but hostile mountain terrain like an exotic bird perpetually in flight.

Erdem’s regular collaborator Florent Henry, captures the awesome scenery from rocky over-hanging cliffs to emerald green forests and portrays the wildlife in a tenderly gentle almost anthropomorphic way as the girl communes with nature rescuing a donkey who is later blown up by mortar fire and gingerly feeding a wild bear in an enchanting fairytale cameo.

It’s a touching film but also a wild and brutal one that juxtaposes the frailty of nature with the harsh intrusion of wartorn conflict in the troubled territory. Hildur Guonadottir’s unsettling score perfectly complements the feeling of potential doom and constant danger. Jin is a visually captivating adventure drama but one that ultimately fails to reach any conclusion due to a minimal script and basic lack of narrative conclusion but as a piece of alluring and cinematic contemplation it has a spellbinding quality that continues to resonate long after the titles have rolled. MT

18TH LONDON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 21 FEBRUARY UNTIL 3 MARCH 2013 AT THE ICA, RIO DALSTON AND CINE LUMIERE LONDON.

18th London Turkish Film Festival February 21 – March 3

The 18th London Turkish Film Festival runs from February 21 to March 3, 2013 at The Odeon West End, The Rio Cinema Dalston, The Institute of Contemporary Arts and The Cine Lumiere.

The festival celebrates another year of outstanding achievement that has seen Turkish films honoured at festivals around the world from Sundance to Berlin. Inaugurated by Vedide Kaymak in 1993, the festival has become a vital event in the London cultural scene. Over its 18 year history, the festival has screened over 250 feature and 350 short and documentary films.

HIGHLIGHTS 2013

 The World Premiere of THE BUTTERFLY’S DREAM, the new film from writer/director Yilmaz Erdoganstarring popular heartthrob Kivanc Tatlitug at a glittering Opening Night Gala at The Odeon West End.
 A Masterclass with internationally renowned Turkish director Reha Erdem.
 Films from veteran names of Turkish cinema as well as the debut features of an exciting new generation of Turkish moviemaniacs
GOLDEN WING AWARDS

 Five outstanding films will compete for the unique Golden Wings Digiturk Digital Distribution Award, worth £30,000. The winning film will be distributed in cinemas throughout the UK and made available via home digital platforms.This year’s competing films are: NIGHT OF SILENCE – Reis Çelik’s 2012 Berlin Film Festival prize- winner; JIN – the latest film from Reha Erdem, direct from Berlin 2013; CAN – Raşit Çelikezer’s Sundance Jury Award winner; BEYOND THE HILL directed by Tepenin Ardi and SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN directed by Yeşim Ustaoğlu.
 The Golden Wings Lifetime Achievement Award This year the festival will honour legendary actor and director Kadir Inanir, who will be the special guest at the Opening Night Gala and will be attending a Q&A screening of his new film FAREWELL KATYA. In previous years the festival has recognised the life and work of such cinematic greats as Türkan Şoray, Şener Şen and Hülya Koçyiğit.
 Golden Wings People’s Choice Award Voted for by visitors to the Festival at venues across London. This year more than twenty features will be competing.
THE JURY

 Wendy Mitchell, Editor of Screen International and ScreenDaily.com.
 Edward Fletcher, Joint Managing Director of Soda Pictures.
 Tony Grisoni, Writer Tony Grisoni has worked with many of the finest contemporary film makersincluding Michael Winterbottom, John Boorman, Rankin, Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker. He is best known for his collaboration with Terry Gilliam on a number of projects including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the ill-fated Don Quixote. He has written and directed a number of award winning short films. His latest screenplay is the four-part series Southcliffe, produced by Warp Films, which will be screened on Channel 4 this year.

Your Beauty Is Worth Nothing (2012) **** London Turkish Film Festival 2013

Your Beauty Is Worth Nothing (Deine Schoneit Ist Nichts Wert)

Director: Huseyin Tabak

Script: Huseyin Tabak

Producer: Milan Dor, Danny Krausz, kurt Stocker

Cast: Abdulkadir Tuncer, Nazmi Kirik, Lale Yavas, Yusa Durak, Milica Paucic, Orhan Yildrim, Susi

Austria 86mins 2012 Drama

A Turkish immigrant film shot entirely in Austria, with both Turkish and German languages spoken, this is a wonderfully strong debut feature from Huseyin Tabak, exploring issues of identity and belonging for a Turkish family trying to settle in Austria and make a new start, without the benefit of any of them actually being able to speak German

Everyone in the family, the Turkish mother, Kurdish father and their two sons have their own stresses to deal with, as they all endeavour to come to terms with life after just six months in a new country, with varying degrees of success. It’s not easy for any of them, vulnerable as they all are to their new environment, a major threat being the state itself

A fine, eloquent and acutely observed film focusing on the young Veysel; his dream of acceptance by his peers falling well short of reality and his childhood crush on classroom sweetheart Ana must remain just fantasy, stymied as he is by his lack of the lingo.

Although sounding like a potentially aggressive title, it actually stems from a poem and song by Turkish singer songwriter Asik Veysel, which features large in the film

Your Beauty Is Worth Nothing swept the board at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, with prizes for Lead Actor Abdulkadir Tuncer, Editing, Best Film, Screenplay, Supporting Actress Lale Yavas and Best Newcomer Yusa Durak as the older brother- really deserving of this recognition.

An excellent introduction to the Turkish Film Festival here in London which, along with the Polish Kinoteka opening in March, promises to be another strong ambassador for local stories told impressively well. AT

THE TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL IN LONDON KICKS OFF ON 21ST FEBRUARY AT VARIOUS VENUES INCLUDING THE RIO, DALSTON

Berlinale 2013 Awards and Winners

Here are the winners in the main section for Berlinale 2013:

GOLDEN BEAR for the best film:: Child’s Pose – by Calin Peter Netzer (Romania)

JURY GRAND PRIZE (Silver Bear); Episode In The Life of an Ironpicker – by Denis Tanovic – Bosnia and Herzegovina

AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR: (Silver Bear) David Gordon Green for Prince Avalanche (US)

AWARD FOR BEST ACTRESS; (Silver Bear) Paulina Garcia in Gloria by Sebastian Lelio (Chile)

AWARD FOR BEST ACRESS; (Silver Bear) Nazif Mujic as himself in Episode in the Life Of An Ironpicker

AWARD FOR BEST SCRIPT; (Silver Bear) Jafar Panahi (Closed Curtain) by Jafar Panahi (Iran)

BEST FIRST FEATURE; (Silver Bear) The Rocket by Kim Mordaunt (AUS)

FIPRESCI AWARD; (Silver Bear) Child’s Pose – by Calin Peter Netzer

Please join us once again for next year’s coverage of the BERLINALE 2014 which runs from 6 until 16 February 2014

In The Bedroom – W sypialni (2012) Kinoteka 2013

Director: Thomas Wasilewski Writer: Thomas Wasilewski

Cast: Katarzyna Herman, Tomasz Tyndyk, Agata Buzek

78mins Polish with subtitles Drama

[youtube id=”ewNz0vuJPOE” width=”600″ height=”350″]

What starts with boredom and sexual frustration for Edyta (Katarzyna Herman – Changes (2003) All That I Love (2009)) soon becomes despair and oppression when she enters the uncertain world of internet dating in this watchable arthouse debut from Thomas Wasilewski shot on a widescreen in and around Warsaw and scored by an original soundtrack from Leszek Mozdzer (FInding Neverland, Unfaithful).

The pickings are slim for late thirty and fortysomethings but after meeting a man who turns out to be married she decides to lie about her age and attracts Patryk, a photographer, who is drawn to her but angry when he finds out she is older. Nevertheless he pursues her and emerges as quite a unstable character with a few emotional skeletons in the cupboard of his own.

Told with a potent visual language that evokes emotional intensity and an economy of dialogue, this uncertain love story develops into an intimate two-hander with suberb production values, crisp direction and lovely creative widescreen compositions offering an unusual insight into a dating experience from a woman’s perspective. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7-17TH MARCH 2013 IN LONDON, LIVERPOOL, BELFAST AND EDINBURGH

For Ellen (2012) ***

Director: So Yong Kim

Writer: So Yong Kim

Cinematography: Reed Morano

Cast: Paul Dano, Shaylena Mandigo, Claire Taylor, Jon Heder, Jena Malone

94mins US Drama

Blue-washed icy landscapes of middle America are the backdrop to this gently bleak indie from Korean director So Yong Kim. It centres on Paul Dano’s troubled and tentative rock musician, Joby, who is on a mission to forge meaningful links with his tiny daughter Ellen (Shaylena Mandigo) after the bitter breakdown his relationship with a coldly stoic Claire Taylor a her ma. With his boyish painted nails and tattoos, he’s hardly able to be responsible for himself let alone another human being but is desperately affected by fatherhood and painfully screwed up by love. Jon Heder’s performance as his lawyer adds levity to the grim story marital break-down.

But the scenes with Ellen really bring this to life as a poignantly authentic study of a man in crisis and tenderly depict his feelings for his child. MT

FOR ELLEN IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 15TH FEBRUARY 2013 IN CINEMAS

Fire In The Blood (2012) *

Director: Dylan Mohan Gray

Script: Dylan Mohan Gray

Producer: Dylan Mohan Gray

Cast: Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Joseph Stilgitz, Zackie Achmat, Edwin Cameron

India 84mins 2012 Doc

With the tag line ‘They Tried To Stop The Crime Of The Century’, there is no doubt at all that Fire In The Blood is a truly important film on an extremely emotive and powerful subject; that of the millions who died needlessly from AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses in developing countries, due to the avarice of super-powerful drugs companies, who wouldn’t allow their drugs to be sold cheaply and then used the pressure of US economic sanctions to prevent cheap generic brands to save lives.

It’s a depressingly familiar tale to anyone accustomed to how the Third World is habitually treated by the West. The documentary predictably has some very high profile interviewees, such as Desmond Tutu and Bill Clinton, as well as footage of Nelson Mandela and George Bush.

With such a subject matter, it is therefore unsurprising that Gray’s film has had a strong presence on the festival circuit, snaffling a highly-prized slot at Sundance this year, however, that is not to say it is a good film. Setting out its stall early, we are handed the relevant information in no uncertain terms in the opening five minutes, but then the film then proceeds to make the same point over and over again using various examples from different countries, but all essentially thumping the same tub.

This, as I say, is not to detract from the content, which is both astonishing and depressing in equal measure as millions have indeed gone to their deaths needlessly, deprived as they were of vital retroviral medicines. Fire In The Blood fails to unfold a narrative story in any kind of engrossing or interesting way and we are left searching for more story beyond the repetition.

Of course, it is interesting to see high-profile individuals giving their take on the situation, not least an ex-Vice Chair of a drugs corporation, but the film’s point could have easily have been made in ten minutes, not the 84-long minutes we are then privy to. This is such a shame, as the topic truly deserves an absorbing, even overwhelming documentary, covering as it does such a shocking tale of corporate greed over the desperate plight of millions dying painful, unnecessary deaths. What could be more upsetting than that?

But this is Gray’s first feature-length film and he is yet to grasp the skill it takes to tell a long-form story in engrossing fashion, without a writer, or indeed producer to perhaps bounce ideas off. Five out of five then for choosing his subject matter, but only one out of five for its execution. An opportunity missed. AT

Side By Side (2012) ****

Director: Chris Kenneally

Producer: Keanu Reeves

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Danny Boyle, James Cameron, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Chris Nolan, Steve Soderbergh, etc

US 99mins 2012 Doc

With the tag ‘Can Film Survive Our Digital Future?’ Keanu Reeves is our window into the world of filmmakers, cinematographers and the twilit world of post production, but the interview list is nothing if not comprehensive. Over 40 of the movie ‘rich and famous’ grace this (digitally shot) documentary on the relative merits of 35mm over its rapidly maturing bastard offspring, digital.

Giving us an in-depth potted history of the story so far, with films that changed the way things were done, either in camera or in Post, Keanu talks to the movers and shakers about what they did, why they did it and what the outcome was. There are the staunch filmophites such as Chris Nolan, director of the latest in the Batman franchise and on the other side of the room, George Light Sabre Lucas, who could only see the drawbacks in shooting 35mm.

This film is fascinating, although I do wonder how interesting it might be for the casual popcorn-muncher. Certainly the girl next to me woke herself up with her own snoring; I’m not kidding. But it does give a clear understanding of the development of digital, the need for it and what all the essential terminology means like CCD, or ‘Red’ Camera, ‘2K’, ‘4K’, or what a Colourist does.

If you work in film, or have any deeper interest in film beyond simply rocking up at the local Vue forFast & Furious 8- What Happened To My Underpants? Then this is a valuable documentary, quite aside from the on-going argument on which is better: film or digital.

As more and more effects are called for in Post Production, the fiscal answer is always leaning toward shooting on digital but the aesthetes will forever lean towards emulsion. Then there’s the cost of distribution, the degradation that occurs with film prints… and there’s the whole archiving problem. Already there are films made digitally and stored on tapes that no longer have a machine that can play them.

The film really is a ‘Who’s Who’ of directors, cinematographers and Visual Effects guys and is almost worth seeing for that alone. The discussion will rumble on for some time, of that there is no doubt. And there will always be merits for using either. I do hope though that digital won’t signify the end of 35mm. And for some reason, filmmakers being the bunch they are, I don’t believe it will.

Go and be enlightened. Keanu never looked so bright. AT

Death and The Maiden (1994)**

Director: Roman Polanski

Producer: Thom Mount, Josh Kramer

Script: Ariel Dorfman, Raphael Iglesias

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Stuart Wilson

US ** 103mins 1994 Drama

Inbetween Bitter Moon, The Ninth Gate and The Pianist, the BFI Southbank Polanski retrospective continues apace with his interpretation of Ariel Dorfman’s 1991 play Death and the Maiden. A thinly veiled Chile is the setting for this three-hander, set on an unspecified windswept coast in South America during a storm.

Weaver plays Paulina, a much-haunted survivor of regime torture and rape, now living with her long-suffering lawyer husband and the scars of her trauma. One night her spouse is given a lift home by a man whose voice she knows she recognises.

Actors often love stageplay adaptations, as it can offer up an opportunity to do what actors love; to act. Often they can come across as not much more than a filmed play, but sometimes they can really work, like The Philadelphia Story, or Ides Of March. Death and the Maiden took quite a bit of work to translate it from a word heavy play to a screenplay, but the adaptation works well enough.

The cast started with Sigourney Weaver, with the other two roles cast around her and her availability. Ben Kingsley gives one of his less lazy performances and there’s a rare opportunity for a relative unknown, Stuart Wilson, another British actor who went to LA and did good, more recognised for his appearances in The Mask of Zorro and Lethal Weapon 3.

The play was far more successful than the film version; the film was nominated for some very minor awards and won a Third Place gong for Weaver at Dallas Fort Worth Film Critics Association. The acting, although competent in the main, sometimes strays into feeling less than genuine. As a play, it needs to be heightened, but this can jar on film if not carefully managed.

It’s by no means an exceptional film. I recall seeing it when it first came out and there was no small amount of anticipation for it in the media, but this quickly evaporated, the film failing to retrieve its production budget and by some way. Its logical progression is perfectly cogent, everything makes sense, but the ending lacks the punch that you might expect it would pack with such an illustrious pedigree behind it and my mind wandered constantly throughout, as they went through the motions.

Perhaps it’s that one is constantly aware that everyone is ‘acting’ so hard. Some of the dialogue rang untrue and I also didn’t for one moment consider Weaver, Anglo-Gujarat Kingsley, nor Wilson to be native to South America. There are no standout moments or indeed, performances, which makes me realise why I remembered so little about it from the first time I saw it.

Interesting to revisit then, if only for the nineteen intervening years, but not one I would go out of my way to see again. The print needs a damn’ good clean too. AT

No (2012)

Director: Pablo Larrain

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers

115mins Political Drama

NO is visually an unattractive film and at nearly two hours long this is not a point in its favour. In an effort to evoke the eighties, it looks like one of those trashy, florid cinema ads for carpets from that era and it’s subtitled.

That said, it’s worthy subject matter and the storyline engages your interest from the get go with its persuasive message and convincing central performance from Gael Garcia Bernal. He plays Rene Saavedra, the spunky and persuasive advertising executive who brought down Pinochet with his appealing NO cam

paign devised to rouse fun-loving Chileans in 1988.

Spiked with irreverent humour, it’s a fascinating slice of South American history. Go if you’re politically inclined or a big fan of this suberb actor but it won’t set the night on fire for an evening out at the flics. MT

I Wish (Kiseki) (2011) ****

[Director:Hirokazu Kore-eda

Script:Hirokazu Kore-eda

Producer:Kentaro Koike, Hijiri Taguchi

Cast:Koki Maeda, Ohshiro Maeda, Ryoga Hayashi, Cara Uchida, Kanna Hashimoto, Rento Isobe, Hoshinosuke Yoshinaga

Japan 128mins 2011 Drama

I Wish, Or ‘Miracle’, more literally translated, has already done a good slew of top tier international festivals bagging along the way a nice clutch of awards, including Best Screenplay at San Sebastian and a Special Mention at the Hong Kong IFF, hence it’s relatively tardy arrival in British cinemas. However, it is certainly worth the wait.

Following on from his superb 2004 title, Nobody Knows, which also blazed a trail across the festivals, Kore-eda cements himself as an extraordinary talent at directing children, eliciting naturalistic and wonderfully engaging performances.

Having written a script for I Wish, Kore-eda went off in search of his cast only to discover the two real-life Maeda brothers who were also comedians. Having met them, he tore up his script and completely rewrote it to reflect and complement his find. It was time well-spent

I Wish is a real slow-burner, taking time to reveal its purpose, but loses nothing in the doing. 12-year old Koichi is living with his mother, living apart from both his father and his much-missed younger brother Ryunosuke through his parents acrimonious divorce. However, his imagination is captured by the new bullet train, about to connect his city of Kagoshima with Fukuoka, home to his estranged brother.

The film explores the lives in minutiae of these two separated boys and how they cope in their new disparate worlds; their friends and the stresses and strains peculiar to kids; how they relate to each other, their dreams and their aspirations. The gang of wonderfully engaging youngsters are backed up by an amazing older cast, including Joe Odagiri, Nene Ohtsuka, Isao Hashizume and Masami Nagasawa.

As I watched this universal story, told with such simplicity and clarity so often difficult to recreate with child actors, I not only pondered on how poorly it might be remade by Hollywood, but also, as the film unfolds, how the events simply couldn’t happen in America as they do here in Japan due to the cultural differences.

The very things that draw you to this film- and since Nobody Knows, I am already a huge fan of Kore-eda – would be so absent from an American mainstream remake. It is entirely devoid of schmaltz, sentimentality or over-statement and its final message both a surprising and an interesting one.

As with all the best in arthouse film, this is an elegant essay and insight into humanity and is sure to delight those left high and dry by more populist fare. AT

I Give It A Year (2013) ****

Director/Writer: Dan Mazer

Cast: Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris, Minnie Driver, Jane Asher, Jason Flemyng

87mins Comedy

Borat writer Dan Mazer choses a tricky genre for his first outing as director: the Wedding Romcom. If you normally give these films a wide birth, don’t be deterred by I Give It A Year. Particularly with the current slate of lengthy films on heavy topics: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty; it’s refreshing to find a light-hearted, intelligent comedy feature that’s sharply scripted and perfectly timed at 87mins.

What starts as a fairly typical storyline: eyes meet across a crowded room leading to white wedding with lewd Best Man’s speech, soon becomes something more interesting and authentic: The grim realisation that some love affairs are not meant to get past the first flush of feelings. Not every romance ends in wedded bliss and the patter of tiny feet. So enough of cliches: I Give It A Year takes the story further and is underpinned by some great gags and solid performances from a starry lead cast of Anna Faris, Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall and Simon Baker.

The couple in question are Rose Byrne as an uptight PR woman Nat, who falls for Rafe Spall’s housebound writer, Josh. Cracks start to show in the marriage even before the champagne has run dry and each are drawn elsewhere. Nat to a dashing American client (Simon Baker) and Josh to his ex, Chloe (Anna Faris). Olivia Colman gives a strung out turn as a marriage guidance counsellor with anger management issues. And Minnie Driver, Jane Asher and Jason Flemyng provide a Greek chorus of positive and negative approval as family members.

From the start, each character is well-thought out and authentic with ghastly brother-in-law Stephen Merchant toeing the Ricky Gervaise line, Rose Byrne still in character from ‘Damages’, and Simon Baker fresh out of Hollywood charm school with real star quality. Gradually their roles start to gel with hilarious moments and tearful ones playing out to a surprising and feelgood finale. A touch formulaic but a wonderful start for Dan Mazer’s directorial career and a witty way to kick off the comedy year and blow away the February blues on Valentine’s Day. MT

I GIVE IT A YEAR IS ON GENERAL RELEASE IN LONDON FROM 8TH FEBRUARY 2013 AFTER PREVIEWING AT THE BFI AS PART OF THE LOCO LONDON COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL 2013

A Place In The Sun (1951)

Dir: George Stevens | Writer: Theodore Dreiser (Novel) Michael Wilson, Harry Brown (Screenplay) | Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle | 122mins Drama

A melodramatic film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s best seller ‘An American Tragedy’ and a remake of the Josef von Sternberg 1931 version.

What George Stevens lacked in prestige as a director he more than made up for in his shrewd decision to cast a 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor together with Monty Clift as young lovers across the social divide: Angela Vickers and George Eastman. Their potent sexual chemistry and screen kiss is considered one of the most erotic in Hollywood history especially considering Monty’s homosexuality.

They continued their friendship after the picture and when Liz Taylor pulled Monty from the reckage of his car after the near fatal crash that was to change his career forever, the two became close confidantes despite an age gap of thirteen years.

But Shelley Winters was not so happy cast as George’s needy and downmarket girlfriend, Alice Tipps, and took a long time to get over this role even though she was nominated for best actress for her performance. In the event, the film went on the win six Oscars
and George Stevens won Best Director for the outing. The best actress award that year went to Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Elizabeth Taylor is absolutely enchanting in her portrayal of society rich kid Angela Vickers and although many critics say the story is out of date with its societal divides, I would argue that there are plenty of Anglela Vickers and Alice Tipps around in today’s world of social extremes and the same type of spoilt young woman is still in existence, sadly lacking the poise and grace that Liz gave to the role in 1951. Her “White Lilac” dress became a fashion sensation overnight. There also a convincing turn from a young Raymond Burr who plays District Attorney Frank Marlowe.

A Place In The Sun may be slow-moving and sombre in tone but the romance is real: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift where never lovelier as these star-crossed lovers. MT

Hitchcock (2012) ****

Director: Sasha Gervasi

Writers: John J McLaughlin/

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, James D’Arcy, Richard Portnow, Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Wincott,

98mins Drama BIOPIC

Alfred Hitchcock has been having a hard time of it lately with Julian Jarold’s portrayal of our most notorious English film director as being something of a dirty old man. This Hitchcock, though, based on Stephen Rebellos’s non-fiction book, is more uplifting and entertaining than Jarold’s TV offering as well as being fascinating for its sparkling treatise on the Hitchcock marriage. It will certainly go down well with anyone interested in how Psycho came into being and how it ushered in a new level of acceptable violence and sexuality to cinema screens in the early sixties.

Anthony Hopkins brings his subtle charms to the role of Hitchcock and gives an insight into a man who, according to this version set in Hollywood in 1959, felt mystified, misunderstood, and misled by the female of the species. On one hand, it has him giving in to his uncontrollable urges as if he’s some kind of psycho himself; possibly due to a strict upbringing marked by lonliness and obesity, and on the other dressing his difficult behaviour up as the natural personality profile of a creative genius just trying to get a film made. I tend to side with the latter but that’s for you to decide.

And apart from flirting with Scarlett Johansson’s delightful Janet Leigh (which man wouldn’t) and looking through a peephole at scantily clad Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) in her dressing room, ‘Call me Hitch (hold the cock)’ confines his real emotional cut and thrust to his relationship with his savvy wife and erstwhile assistant director, Alma Reville. Helen Mirren excels herself in this role despite being physically unlike the real Alma; described as small and birdlike.

There’s definitely a complex chemistry between this couple and it plays out with consummate ease by two watchable, heavyweight talents portraying with humour and emotion the strengths and weaknesses of a marriage that had endured 33 years when Hitch decided to remortgage their mansion to finance Psycho (1960). The picture had been turned down for financing by Paramount and the Censors due to issues of nudity and the notorious shower scene because it involved a lavatory….rather than the web of political intrigue that had gone down so successfully in North by Northwest the previous year.

So, not surprisingly, Hitch is starting to feel the need for the support of his canny wife who is getting very chummy with a younger screenwriter, elegantly played here by Danny Huston. Sacha Gervasi’s film places the battle for Psycho as a delicate counterpoint to the crisis in the Hitchcock marriage.

Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography is not quite up to his usual standard in rendering the sixties technicolor feel to the piece. The trick of having Ed Gein (the serial killer who inspired the original novel by Bloch) haunting various scenes as Hitchcock’s nemesis, is also questionable as is the drift in tone from comedy drama into psychological thriller that this entails. James D’Arcy is edgy as the shy and diffident Anthony Perkins but lacks the characteristic spooky voice that was his calling card for the role. Support is well-cast and wonderful: Scarlett Johansson has poise and sparkling star quality as Janet Leigh, Toni Collette is a perky and switched-on studio girl Peggy Robertson, and Michael Stuhlbarg’s portrayal of Hitchcock’s shrewd agent has style and believability although none of these roles is really given much scope for character development.

As Alma, Helen Mirren is subtle in the quiet moments of pain she experiences as a woman who knows her relationship is in jeopardy to Hitchcock’s flirty blondes as much as her glorious Hollywood home and swimming pool. But she shines out as a strong and capable woman who punches above her well-toned weight in the creative partnership despite their very un-starry domestic arrangements.

Although lacking Hitchcock’s dark looks, Anthony Hopkins brings a layered sensitivity to the part, portraying him as a naughty boy in a marriage to Mirren’s ‘mean mummy’ who couches her frustration at always being the unseen contributor to his success. But the in studios Hopkins evokes our pride and respect for this cinematic national treasure who comes across as very much his own man, who, despite human failings, pulls off a stroke of genius and is endowed with much more than just creative flair. MT

HITCHCOCK IS SCREENING AT CINEWORLD ACROSS LONDON FROM 8TH FEBRUARY 2013

Frantic (1988) ***

Director: Roman Polanski

Script: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach, Robert Towne, Jeff Gross

Producer: Tim Hampton, Thom Mount
Cast: Harrison Ford, Betty Buckley, Emmanuelle Seigner,
Patrice Melennec, Yves Renier, John Mahoney, David Huddleston

US 115mins 1988 Thriller

Frantic is something of a curio. The studio demanded 15 minutes be cut from the original running length and the ending was also changed, but Polanski never really had much trouble persuading the stars to work with him, known as an auteur and actor-friendly director as he was. Indeed, Frantic was well received by the critics but, despite Harrison Ford, performed miserably at the box office, failing to recoup its production budget.

Some put this down to Polanski fleeing America ten years previously, having been found guilty of statutory rape. The silver lining for him in all this. however, was the finding of his new wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, here cast as Michelle, who went on to star in both Bitter Moon and The Ninth Gate, for Roman.

Ford stars as a successful doctor, Walker, in France with his wife to give a seminar. But on first arrival at their Paris hotel she steps out of their room for a moment never to return, and only Harrison grasps the seriousness of the situation having first tried to engage the hotel security, then the French Police and finally the American Embassy in his increasingly desperate efforts to find her.

Aside from a glaring plot hole from the start, the thriller unfolds pleasingly enough as Dr Walker becomes detective in a foreign country without a word of the lingo to help him, but thankfully plenty of French Francs to oil the wheels, and Seigner, his at-first unwilling accomplice thrown together as they are by their circumstance and need.

As with Polanski’s later outing, The Ghost, he channels Hitchcock in pursuit of the perfect thriller; an ordinary man spiralling out of his usual world of normality into one of deepening espionage where no one believes him and he’s forced to go it alone, here thrown into escalating crises and increasing tension as his fear for his beloved wife’s well-being drives him to ever more desperate measures.

Seigner is a welcome assistant in his search. An ex-model with bewitching beauty, they strike up an unlikely alliance taking turns to lead and be lead by the other; each having to trust a stranger in turn. It’s a thriller that works, although it has dated somewhat; things have certainly moved on in terms of audience expectation, speed and complexity, but Harrison has always done ‘harassed’ well and Seigner is gorgeous and kooky-French in equal measure.

It’s not a truly remarkable film and there are no memorable standout set pieces as you find in films like North By Northwest, for instance, but it’s also not a failure. It’s a well-crafted thriller with a strong score composed by Ennio Morricone and perhaps deserved to do better. Certainly, it’s worth another look. AT

FRANTIC IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE MAJOR POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK DURING FEBRUARY 2013

Red River (1948) **

Director: Howard Hawks, Arthur Rosson

Script: Borden Chase, Charles Schnee

Cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru, John Ireland.

133mins US Drama

Actually shot in 1946, Red River infact wasn’t released for a couple of years and is notable for launching the career of Montgomery Clift. Hawks had a good eye for a star and, as a director overlooked for most of his career by the Motion Picture Academy but still managed to roll out hit after hit launching many a career including John Wayne and Carole Lombard.

To be fair, Howard Hawks IS Hollywood. His filmography is simply extraordinary, with a massive career, encompassing legendary titles such as Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Rio Bravo and El Dorado, Red River coming off the back of To Have And Have Not and The Big Sleep. I remain however, of the opinion that Red River is one of his more overrated films.

It’s perhaps difficult to watch a proper Western these days without the sensibility of hindsight and the 21st Century. A man, shooting his way into Texas, decides huge swathes of the land are his regardless of any that went before; Native American or Mexican and puts down a ranch to brand his cattle. And anyone elses.

For me, it’s not even hard to side with the ‘Indian’. But that isn’t the issue here. Red River is one of those standout Westerns held up as an example and certainly it is epic in scale. The cattle push centre piece across the wide open spaces of the Wild West are really impressive, driven on by a massive score by Dimitri Tiomkin and Hawks is never more surefooted than when commanding expansive shots of cowboys atop horses against a thousand head of cattle, with dust, mountains and a ‘Simpsons’ clouded sky as backdrop.

But here is where the fairy-tale ends. The characters are infact mere caricatures and the dialogue clunky. All the action is telegraphed and the ending, the final betrayal. It’s a story that promises a great deal, but whimpers at the finish which is tonally greatly out of keeping with the rest of the film.

It’s never worse than the two major scenes with women, it’s as if the writers were as uncomfortable writing for them as much as the director was to be around them; everyone much happier and relaxed when with a herd of beef…

So I’m left casting about a bit for the good in a film that is held up as ‘something’ and a great classic Western. It’s pretty morally bankrupt ‘how the west was won’ and, of course, history is always written by the victor. Hard also not to reflect on American foreign policy, for that matter, but that’s perhaps another conversation.

The interactions and comedy interludes are all contrived and unconvincing, the dialogue lumpy, even though it’s all hung together on the bones of a promising storyline; one that originated from a Saturday Evening Post article dating around 1865, although it’s anyone’s guess as to what that original story may have been.

Wayne plays Dunston, a man on a wagon train across the West, eyeing up the land and deciding to stay put in Texas, as the train pushes on for California. He adopts a boy called Matthew, played by Clift, and brings him up as his own on a very successful beef ranch.

Wayne does as Wayne does, wading through the film with his chin set, heading in one direction, come what may. Clift weaves a softer, more eloquent path and in the main they’re watchable enough, but by no means exceptional. This one ends up as some fairly frustrating hokum wrapped up as something good and eventually simply running long at two and a quarter hours. You’re there more for curiosity’s sake than entertainment. AT

RED RIVER IS SCREENING AT THE MONTGOMERY CLIFT RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK, LONDON DURING FEBRUARY 2013

Kinoteka 11th Polish Film Festival UK 7 – 17 March 2013

This year’s annual KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival (March 7-17) is back with a diverse line-up ranging from restored Wajda work, sexually themed films, live psychedelic film scores, Polish culinary delights and a range of interactive film workshops.

Now in its 11th successful year, the festival celebrates the best of Polish International Cinema, including award-winning films from Poland’s great auteurs to cutting edge, exciting work from a new generation of Polish filmmaking talent. The festival is will be taking place at the Barbican, Riverside Studios, Tate Modern, Curzon Soho, The National Gallery, Queens Film Theatre Belfast, FACT Liverpool and Edinburgh Filmhouse.

Highlights from the 11th KINOTEKA programme include:

· The Opening Night film is the UK premiere of the re-mastered classic, Promised Land (Ziemia Obiecana), directed by legendary auteur, Andrzej Wajda which will be held at the Barbican. A tale of three young friends, a Pole, a Jew and a German who pool their money together to build a factory and their ruthless pursuit of fortune.

· Accompanying the screening of Andrzej Wajda’s Promised Land, KINOTEKA will also present new remastered copies of Krzysztof Zanussi’s Illumination and Escape From the ‘Liberty’ Cinema by Wojciech Marczewski, all screened at the Barbican and released during the festival by Second Run DVD as the second edition of its critically acclaimed ‘Polish Cinema Classics’ series.

▪ Highlights in the Contemporary Polish Cinema section, screening at Riverside include Imagine, by Andrzej Jakimowski, a Polish/UK co-production starring Brit actor, Ed Hogg; also, Katarzyna Roslaniec’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut Mall Girls, Baby Blues, which explores teenage pregnancy; in addition, Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose and Marcin Krysztalowicz’s gritty WWII drama, Manhunt, both starring the renowned actor, Marcin Dorocinski and with an unexpected shift into erotic thriller territory, director Jan Jakub Kolski’ To Kill A Beaver whose Eryk Lubos was the recipient of the Best Actor Award at this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Female audiences will be drawn to the Women’s Day, a snapshot of a woman’s life in eighties Poland from singer/composer Maria Sadowska and Tomasz Wasilewski’s In The Bedroom, one woman’s foray into internet dating.

▪ Still hot from it’s win at the recent Warsaw Film Festival, the Centre Piece Gala and UK premiere, F**k For Forest, directed by Michal Marczak promises to raise a few eyebrows as well as people’s awareness. Can sex save the world? This Berlin NGO thinks so and raises funds for its environmental causes by making and selling amateur porn on the Internet. On general release 19 April courtesy of Dogwoof.

▪ In order to celebrate this year’s sensual theme, Kinoteka have proudly commissioned one of Hollywood’s most prolific movie poster designers, Polish artist, Tomasz Opasinski to create his own interpretation of Polish cinema adding one more unique piece to his legendary body of work which includes iconic posters for Bourne Ultimatum and The Devil Wears Prada. There will be an accompanying exhibition of Opasinski’s original posters at the Riverside Studios.

▪ This year the Tate Modern will host a series of screenings from Polish revered artist and filmmaker, Wojciech Bruszewski, featuring a fascinating retrospective of his ground-breaking moving image experiments, deconstructing the mental clichés of perception and laying bare the power of media manipulation

▪ Also at the Barbican, this year’s unique Closing Night event is Andy Votel presents: Kleksploitation, a musical and visual feast based on the film music of Andrzej Korzynski (Everything For Sale, Possession), composer of more than 120 films including the cult children’s classic, ‘‘Pan Kleks’. Presented by Andy Votel from Finders Keepers, and commissioned by the Unsound Festival in Krakow, and produced by the Barbican and the Polish Cultural Institute, Votel describes the event as Polish psycho-disco re-explored.

▪ Kinoteka will be presenting a number of interactive cinema workshops for writers and directors in partnership with the London Film Academy and New Horizons, Poland. For children there will also be a number of free animation workshops inspired by Witold Giersz’ work, in collaboration with the London International Animation Festival.

▪ The festival will launch a national short filmmaking competition inspired by Roman Polanski’s work. KINOTEKA will also present a masterclass with Polanski’s regular DoP, Pawel Edelman, at the BFI Southbank and organised in conjunction with BAFTA. MT

KINOTEKA RUNS FROM 7-17 MARCH IN LONDON AT THE BARBICAN, THE RIVERSIDE STUDIOS, ICA AND ACROSS THE UK IN LIVERPOOL, BELFAST AND EDINBURGH

Tess (1979) ****

Director: Roman Polanski

Writers: Roman Polanski/Gerard Brach/John Brownjohn

Original Music: Philippe Sarde

Costume Designer: Anthony Powell

Cast: Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Lee Lawson, Tony Church, Richard Pearson

186mins Drama

One of the truest screen adaptations that Polanski undertook with his favourite scriptwriters John Brownjohn and Gérard Brach from the original novel by Thomas Hardy. The West Country’s landscapes and climate, and in particular Dorset, are very much a character in Hardy’s novels influencing their protagonists’ behaviour and lifestyles, so it was rather a cavalier decision on Polanski’s part to set his film in Normandy, thus altering the essential feel of the terroir that permeates the original novel. However, this tale of a strong-willed girl from a poor background who becomes the object of affection for two men, had to be made in France as Polanski could have been extradited from England at the time, due to his ongoing legal issues in the US.

Nevertheless, the verdant beauty of the countryside recreated in Ghislain Cloquet and Geoffrey Unsworth’s lush visuals together with Philippe Sarde’s haunting soundtrack add sensual appeal and make this outing very much Polanski’s film about a young woman’s innocence tinged with melancholy rather than Hardy’s one of cruel fatalism. It’s possibly the only Polanski film that engages our sympathy for the doomed central character (of Tess), played with earthy subtlety by Nastassja Kinski, and her interminable misery grounded in an austere Victorian context occasionally launching into melodrama despite its delicate pastoral setting.

In some ways Tess is almost bleaker than Hardy’s version presenting the heroine as a figure of besieged femininity in the same way that Hitchcock did with Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958) or even Max Ophuls in Lola Montes (1955) or Madame De… (1953). The tragedy of Tess is that although she is an intelligent and thoughtful woman, she is fated to become only was she is perceived to be by men. MT

The film was dedicated “For Sharon” after the opening titles. Geoffrey Unsworth actually died of a heart attack during filming in 1978 and so Ghislain Cloquet took over and the feature took some ten months to complete.

TESS IS SCREENING AS PART OF A MAJOR ROMAN POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, LONDON DURING JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2013

Do Elephants Pray? (2012) *

Director: Paul Hills

Script: Jonnie Hurn

Producers: Jonnie Hurn, Paul Hills
Cast: Jonnie Hurn, Julie Dray, Marc Warren, Rosie Fellner, Grace Vallorani, John Last, Jean-Baptiste Puech, Cassandra French, Dougal Porteous, Iain Lee, Abi Titmus, Yann Goven

UK 105mins 2010 Drama

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A personal project then from Jonnie Hurn who wrote, produced and stars. Do Elephants Pray? was made in 2010 but has made many a fair mile on the festival circuit prior to finally making landfall in British cinemas having not only attended, but won awards in a slew of minor festivals like Colorado, Mexico, Marbella, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Phuket and our very own Reading Festival of 2011.

Writer/Producer/Actors in general, can go one of two ways; either they create something quite remarkable… or not. I’m genuinely sorry to say that this one falls into the latter category. It’s poorly thought-out, flimsy scripted on a fundamentally flawed idea, the resolution of which is both obvious from the beginning and enervating in its execution.

The characters are almost all rudimentary and are certainly not served by the dialogue afforded them. The lead, Callum, doesn’t really have a problem at work. He’s the ‘maverick’ star in an ad agency who always delivers, albeit at the eleventh hour, but the Callum made flesh by Hurn is never at any point confused either with a cool maverick or indeed, a truly creative force.

Rather, the film serves solely in the wish fulfilment of a decidedly uncharismatic man, vainly portraying himself as his alter ego and dishing up cod philosophy in the name of enlightenment. None of the leads are likeable and in the playing, none of them comes across as at all real. The action feels forced or clunky and it’s all played by the numbers, although Marc Warren gives a good fist at trying.

There is no doubt that Hills is a committed filmmaker; he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of film -indeed, loves film. But this script was a good long way from being a shooting draft and he was sorely let down by the cast and by Hurn in particular, taking the lead. The budget also leaked across every frame, there being little or no production value to speak of.

I really wanted to like this film, Marc Warren is always watchable and it had an intriguing title. Indeed, Paul Hills has made some good work in the past and he and Warren are long term collaborators, never better than with Hills breakout 1995 success, Boston Kickout, starring a young Warren, John Simm and Andrew Lincoln in the cast.

It has evidently been a long trawl and indeed, perhaps a labour of love, being three years as it has before Elephants gained distribution. I think for good reason. Next time, perhaps. AT

Do Elephants Pray?’ was made in 2010, but has made many a fair mile on the festival circuit prior to finally making landfall in British cinemas, having not only attended, but won awards in a slew of minor festivals like Colorado, Mexico, Marbella, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Phuket and our very own Reading Festival of 2011.

Writer/Producer/Actors in general, can go one of two ways; either they create something quite remarkable… or not. I’m genuinely sorry to say that this one falls into the latter category. It’s a poorly thought out, flimsy script, on a fundamentally flawed idea, the resolution of which is both obvious from the beginning and enervating in its execution.

The characters are almost all rudimentary and are certainly not served by the dialogue afforded them. The lead, Callum doesn’t really have a problem at work; he’s the ‘maverick’ star in an ad agency who always delivers, albeit at the eleventh hour, but the Callum made flesh by Hurn is never at any point confused either with a cool maverick or indeed, a truly creative force.

Rather, the film serves solely in the wish fulfilment of a decidedly uncharismatic man, vainly portraying himself as his alter ego and dishing up cod philosophy in the name of enlightenment. None of the leads are likeable and in the playing, none of them across as at all real, the action feels forced or clunky and it’s all played by the numbers, although Marc Warren gives a good fist at trying.

There is no doubt that Hills is a committed filmmaker; he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of film -indeed, loves film. But this script was a good long way from being a shooting draft and he was sorely let down by the cast and by Hurn in particular taking the lead. The budget also leaked across every frame, there being little or no production value to speak of.

I really wanted to like this film, Marc Warren is always watchable and it had an intriguing title. Indeed, Paul Hills has made some good work in the past and he and Warren are long term collaborators, never better than with Hills breakout 1995 success, ‘Boston Kickout’, with a young Warren, John Simm and Andrew Lincoln in the cast.

It has evidently been a long trawl and indeed, perhaps a labour of love, being three years as it has before Elephants gained distribution. I think for good reason. Next time, perhaps. AT

Hyde Park On Hudson (2012) ***

Director: Roger Michell

Producer: Kevin Loader, David Aukin, Roger Michell

Script: Richard Nelson

Cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West,

95mins UK Drama

Roger Michell is a South African director who brought us Notting Hill, Enduring Love and Venus. Hyde Park on Hudson is a glossy and elegant outing with nostalgic echoes of The King’s Speech ‘American Presidential-style’ that centres on Franklin D Roosevelt’s “special relationship” with his distant cousin Margaret “Daisy” Stuckley based on correspondence discovered after her death.

The romantic story is underpinned by a much more interesting relationship that develops one weekend in 1939 when George VI, a very insecure ‘Bertie’ played sensitively here by Sam West, pays a Royal visit to Bill Murray’s FDR in his upstate New York residence. He’s hoping to secure America’s backing for the impending Second World War.

The role of Franklin D Roosevelt showcases Bill Murray’s gutsy talents as an impishly ingenuous seductor and shrewd politician and West’s performance is a perfect foil for Murray’s charismatic President. Laura Linney as the sweetly naive Margaret narrates the story, which swings back and forth between the romance and the political shananigans, the latter proving far more fun and engaging. It also has Olivia Colman as a frosty Queen Elizabeth playing to Olivia Williams’s rather more outré Eleanor Roosevelt. And although the Royal pair rubs along well here, they are pale in comparison with Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter.

Lush and beautifully crafted, Hyde Park on Hudson is a deliciously lightweight historical concoction that will appeal to audiences looking for an entertaining costume drama without serious pretensions of the lengthy Lincoln and Les Mis. Great for an easy night out with transatlantic overtones.MT

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY

Antiviral (2012) **

Director/Writer: Brandon Cronenberg

Cast: Caleb Jones, Sarah Gadon

106mins Fantasy Drama

Not being big on sci-fi but keen on David Cronenburg, I wanted to know out of sheer curiousity, if the apple falls near to the tree, Cronenburg-wise. And this is Brandon’s debut feature. In many ways Antiviral has an challenging premise and very much a Cronenberg family feel to it: that punters could be infected with the viruses and cultured cell-lines taken from their favourites celebrities.

It has Hannah Geist as Sarah Gadon who’s infected with a fatal virus that Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) has to demystify and dismantle in order to save his own life. And what emerges from this dystopian futuristic world of X Factor on speed is attractively packaged, visually exciting and tightly written but ultimately requires us to project our imaginations onto ideas and characters we care very little about and recognise even less. Don’t give up Brandon, better luck next time! MT

Sundance 2013 Awards

Sundance Film Festival 2013 draws to a close and the long awaited awards are dished out on the final Saturday night in Park City, Utah.

The argument will rage on ad infinitum about whether all submissions are actually dispassionately viewed, or skipped through in favour of more ‘name’ produce.

Creating a film festival line-up will always be supremely difficult. Sundance as much as any festival needs to pay heed to the fact that in the end, as a not-for-profit organisation, they do need to put bums on seats.

However, of the 113 accepted submissions, 51 were from first time filmmakers. There were also a fair few returnees, graduating up from their successful short film to their first feature, which pleases Festival Director John Cooper, as well as Director of Programming Trevor Groth.

Speaking of the World Cinema crop this year, Trevor says: ‘The World Dramatic Competition features a number of films that are shot by foreign filmmakers in countries outside of their homeland. A Chilean film shot in Italy, a German film shot in America, a Polish film shot in Spain, a UK film shot in the Philippines, and an Italian film shot in Brazil. There’s something remarkable about that. It speaks to the global filmmaking community that’s happening.’

Regarding the awarding of the prizes, Sundance is quoted thus:

“The culmination of the Sundance Film Festival is the Awards Ceremony. The competition juries, comprised of individuals from the worldwide film community with original and diverse points of view, select films from both the documentary and dramatic categories to receive a range of awards. Decided by Festivalgoers’ ballots, Audience Awards are bestowed upon films in each of the Festival’s four competition categories. Click here for a description of award categories.”

So, the juries are in, the decisions have been made and there is a massive slew of awards to win, about 37 in total- but the major ones of note are:-

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic: Fruitvale

Grand Jury Prize: Doc: Blood Brother

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Jiseul

World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Doc: A River Changes Course

Audience Award World Cinema Dramatic: Metro Manila

Audience Award World Cinema Doc: The Square

Audience Award US Dramatic: Fruitvale

Audience Award Best of NEXT: This Is Martin Bonner

Doc Special Jury Prize: Inequality For All

Doc Special Jury Prize: American Promise

World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award: Circles

Fruitvale then, the standout winner, admired by both jury and festival goers alike.

There were also acting gongs for Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley for The Spectacular Now and Shane Carruth and Johnny Marshall for Upstream Color

Of the titles we liked the look of before the festival commenced: Inequality for All, Blood Brother, The Square, Dirty Wars, Pussy Riot and A River Changes Course all took down major prizes and are sure to feature – if not at a local indie cinema near you over the coming months – then when Sundance London present the UK premieres of a selection of 14 films fresh from the Sundance Film Festival, between 25-28 April, at the O2 centre.

Gothenberg has already kicked off and the Berlinale is just around the corner. Let the after-parties commence. AR

From Here To Eternity (1953) *****

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Script: Daniel Taradash

Producer: Buddy Adler

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Philip Ober, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden

US 118mins 1953 Drama

Columbia Pictures goliath Harry Cohn invited Zinnemann into the office for a chat about directing the army epic, but Zinnemann successfully talked his way out of the job by insisting on Montgomery Clift for the role of Pvt Prewitt. No one told Cohn what to do. Surprisingly, he then got the call to say he was doing it. His other casting masterstroke was to put the clean, class act that was Deborah Kerr in to play a ‘scarlet woman’.

Frank Sinatra’s career also lay in the doldrums so he grabbed the opportunity to play Angelo Maggio – and for a very basic wage – supporting luminaries Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. An astonishing cast. It proved an excellent decision, effectively re-launching his career.

Austrian filmmaker Alfred Zinnemann followed High Noon in 1952 with the massive success of From Here To Eternity the following year. Nominated for 12 Oscars, it garnered 8 although nominations for Clift and Lancaster went unrewarded and instead, Sinatra and Donna Reed took down Best Supporting Actors. Zinnemann had an amazing career with four Oscars for himself with highlights that included Oklahoma (1955); A Man For All Seasons (1966); The Sundowners (1960); and The Day Of The Jackal (1973).

Eternity was an interesting idea: A war film without the war. Set in 1941 on the cusp of Pearl Harbour and America entering combat; soldiers were edgy, highly trained but with nowhere to put all that pent-up energy other than in on themselves.

Clift, a new arrival at Camp Schofield in Hawaii was hoping for a fresh start; to put behind him what went before. But his refusal to box competitively for his new Captain puts him straightaway at odds with a very unforgiving mechanism for unrelenting abuse. Outsiders never really work well in institutions like the army.

Lancaster is the war hero and sergeant witnessing the abuse but unable to do much about it, needing to keep his head down, falling as he does for the philandering Captain’s wife, Deborah Kerr. Cue famous scene on the beach. It’s easy to see why this film was up for a raft of Oscars and indeed, why it went on to win. Apart from the Best Supporting gongs, it also won Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Editor, Sound and Screenplay; an astonishing haul for any film.

The dual plot is most excellently aided and abetted by a youthful and imposing Ernest Borgnine, Sinatra at his affable cheekiest and the very beautiful soft-hearted escort played by Donna Reed. It’s an unusual film, absent of patriotic tub-thumping and cliché endings and very much worth the viewing, if only to allay preconceptions about what it’s all about and enjoy a cracking story, well told. AT

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE MONTGOMERY CLIFT RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI DURING FEBRUARY 2013

The Ghost (2010) tribute to Tom Wilkinson

Director: Roman Polanski | Writer: Robert Harris (novel) Roman Polanski/Robert Harris (screenplay) | Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Catrall, Tom Wilkinson | 128’ Thriller | Also known as the Ghost Writer

Tom Wilkinson – who has sadly died aged 75 – stars in this lugubrious thriller based on Robert Harris’ novel entitled Enigma. The film came about in unexpected fashion: Polanski was intent on getting a project (also written by Harris) to the screen called ‘Pompeii’; but for various reasons, the wheel came off. Whilst Harris was working on ‘Pompeii’, he was also tinkering with an idea that had sat with him for over a decade; that of a ghost writer and an ex-PM. But the jigsaw pieces didn’t all fall into place until he saw a news cast talking of someone wanting Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes.

When ‘Pompeii’ got buried, Harris sent Polanski his ‘Ghost Writer’ novel and the clear Chandleresque thriller aspect of it appealed greatly to Roman, who then immediately set to work with Harris to create a screenplay from it.

The Ghost absolutely has the fabric and feel of an old school Hitchcockian potboiler. Terrifically moodily shot by Roman’s long-term collaborator Pawel Edelman in out-of season Martha’s Vineyard, with glowering cloudscapes and windswept, unforgiving deserted beaches. It features a gardener who is a perfect picture in futility; sweeping leaves into a wheelbarrow as fast as it empties itself.

Polanski has here somehow managed to find a corner of Europe in the most unexpected of places. His mantra has always been ’story, character, logic’ and here, in the thriller genre the goal is also the fantastical. It’s what Hitchcock did so well; forcing a man into an extraordinary and escalating series of events, but purely through logical transitions.

The plot isn’t the most complex, but the film is still a tightly drawn bow, with no slack. An ex-PM living somewhat in self-imposed exile, hires a ghostwriter to finish the manuscript of his memoirs that has been started by another writer who tragically drowned by accident whilst inebriated, on the local ferry. And even as he accepts the job, sinister goings-on start to happen to the unwilling replacement.

Pierce is a very handsome, charismatic man and he has let this sometimes overshadow his ability to act. Here, he has a decent stab at playing an ex-PM, heavy on the showman and now hiring a writer to help with his memoirs. McGregor always jars when his Scottish drawl fails to slither and slip naturally out of his mouth and his oddly non-specific English accent lets him down. He has also always been drawn to everyman roles: He’s always seen himself not as a lead, but a character actor at odds with his usual casting.

Nevertheless, The Ghost drives inexorably forwards with both menace and mystery, as the meagre morsels of an answer to the riddle are teasingly, pleasingly tossed infront of our protagonist and we wonder whether he’ll succumb to the baddies before he’s managed to work it all out and found safety. Not one to watch then for the acting so much, but a taut, atmospheric, intelligent thriller nonetheless. AT

TOM WILKINSON (1948-2023)

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Rambert Unlocking The Passion 2012

Rambert’s first venture into filmmaking has brought 16-19 year-olds in from the Lambeth City Learning Centre with the object of revealing some of the inner workings of the Rambert Dance Company, following investment from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This carries with it the aim of increasing public access and engagement with the Rambert Dance Company archive.

The Rambert is unique for several reasons, one being a tremendously comprehensive archive dating back as far as its inception in 1926. This includes film footage, detailed production notes, newspaper articles, clippings and production design notes and artefacts from previous famous and not so famous productions, giving a wonderful insight for any future designers and choreographers wanting to re-visit previous ballets.

Marie Rambert was a distinguished ballerina herself, working with the likes of Diaghilev, Stravinsky and the Ballet Russes. Her company has thrived for the ensuing 85 years, enshrining as it does her strong belief that successful ballet requires strong collaboration between choreographer, composer and artist alike. Rambert remains the only company that still tours with its own orchestra.

Here, the current faces of the Rambert: the dancers; the Artistic Director Mark Baldwin, Music Fellow Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Archivist Arike Oke talk to the burgeoning filmmakers about what they do as well as what Rambert means to them and how they keep the Rambert flame alight.

The film works as a quick but nevertheless revealing snapshot; it’s clear from the interviewees that talking to a younger audience of filmmakers offers up a different level of confidence than perhaps an older interviewer would. There’s a sense of informality that pervades the film, to its credit. As with the Rambert, the film leaves you wanting more. AT

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To Walk With Lions (1999) **** DVD release

Director: Carl Schultz

Script: Sharon Buckingham, Keith Ross Leckie, Lorenzo Orzari

Producer: Julie Allan, Pieter Kroonenburg

Cast: Richard Harris, Ian Bannen, John Michie, Kerry Fox, Geraldine Chaplin, Hugh Quarshie, Honor Blackman, Guy Williams, David Mulwa, Grace Levi, Fred Opondo, Tony Ernest Njuguna

NZ 106mins 1999 Drama

To Walk With Lions is a follow up to the1966 smash Born Free, that was loosely based upon Adamson’s own diaries.

It’s a much darker film in terms of character portrayal and all the better for it. Richard Harris is extraordinary as George Adamson, the man who gave his life to the lions of Africa against mounting odds.

This next chapter in the life of the lions sees George now living with his brother, performed by Ian Bannen, on their self-appointed Kenyan nature reserve and joined here by a young firebrand named Tony Fitzjohn (John Michie), who falls into the job, rather than chooses it. What follows is an examination of the politics of the time in late ‘80’s Kenya, where the government is corrupt, the Police are related to the poachers, the farmers in need of grazing for their cattle and Park Rangers paid too little to prevent bribery. It’s a sad and salutary period in Kenyan history and one it seems that they are endeavouring to put right now.

In terms of drama however, it’s ripe fodder indeed and to cap it all off there is the African bush, the beautiful vistas and of course, those scene stealers of all scene stealers, the truly majestic lions themselves. Harris gives a masterful performance as an old lion himself who has seen too much and lost too many. Sacrificing pretty much everything to keep his beloved Kora sanctuary alive, with danger circling on all sides, not least from the lions he has appointed himself to protect.
Michie makes a good fist at the handsome feckless drifter Fitzjohn, who of course catches the lion bug from the wily old timer. Honor Blackman as Joy Adamson and Chaplin as Victoria, an old Adamson flame make little more than cameo appearances in this testosterone filled ‘Boy’s Own’ story, but it is nevertheless made all the more powerful by being based upon the factual happenings of the time. Here remastered for a widescreen DVD release by Second Sight, it’s an inspiring and ultimately moving story that any animal- lover will enjoy. AT

DVD release 28th January 2013 RRP £15.99

Bullhead (2011) Runskopp ****

Director: Michael Roskam Cinematography: Nicolas Karakatsanis

Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeroen Perceval, Jeanne Dandoy, Barbara Sarafian

124mins Drama French/Dutch/Flemish

Matthias Shoenaerts is emerging as the thinking woman’s Jan Claude Van Damme. First we saw him as a beefy love-struck boxer in Rust and Bone, here he plays a muscle-bound farmer who harbours a tragic secret. You wouldn’t want to mess with him on a dark night.
Bullhead is a meaty hulk of a movie, packing a powerful punch as writer director Michael Roskam’s debut feature and Belgian’s 2012 entry to the foreign language section of the Oscars lost out to an equally strong but subtler opponent, A Separation.

It’s a difficult film to watch in many ways as it grapples with themes of impotency and loss of face, and deals with them in fractured narrative that works to its advantage in expressing the bleak and buttoned-up emotional paralysis of its central character who at outset declares expressively “In the end, we’re all fucked”. This is a bonding moment in the film: we know we’re in for a tough ride but a meaningful one. And that’s what Bullhead delivers.

The story revolves around Jacky Vanmarsenille played with potency by Matthias Schoenaerts, pumping as much testosterone into his own body due to his condition as the cows he breeds in a Belgian cattle community. Farming here is a male-dominated world where even the females are butch and mouthy and Dutch lends itself very well to mouthiness with its strong and fricative consonants – as we see in weighty turn from Barbara Sarafian as rival Eva Forrestier.

This is big sky country tempered with gentle morning mists nuzzling the fertile landscape. Jacky’s a raging bull in sheep’s clothing but underneath the macho bluster there’s a wounded ego desperate to connect with a woman but lacking the skills to know how. The woman concerned is Lucia Schepers (Jeanne Dandoy) a childhood love interest from a rival breeder, who re-emerge from the past. A testosterone-filled brain is hard-wired to avoid tenderness although that is what he needs most. Jacky’s tale is set against a storyline involving a fraternity of competitive farmers who scheme to outwit each other in a shady deal involving illegal beef.

Bullhead is gripping throughout, if you can keep your grip on the plot, and has a great supporting cast. But it’s really Matthias Schoenhaerts who carries this film with his magnetic emotional presence and corpulent physique echoing Robert De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull. MT

BULLHEAD OPENS AT THE BARBICAN ON 25TH JANUARY 2013 AND WILL BE ON GENERAL RELEASE THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND THROUGHOUT LONDON AND THE SOUTH EAST.

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Hollow (2012)

Dir: Michael Axelgaard | Cast: Emily Plumtree, Sam Stockman, Matt Stokoe, Jessica Ellerby, Simon Roberts | UK 2011 91mins Horror

The Axelgaard/Holt team make their first feature off the back of their Short film ‘Lollipop Man’, pulling in a group of young TV actors for this foray into the genre of ‘self-shot’ mockumentary flicks, made famous by the likes of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and the more ambitiously budgeted ‘Cloverfield’.

Containing the nugget of a good idea: an evidently ancient tree in the woolly wilds of Suffolk is steeped in folklore and macabre mystery as a group of two young couples go down for the weekend, ostensibly to empty a recently vacated vicar’s home of the last few wanted possessions by the granddaughter, before a clearance company move in to complete the job.

Cracks in the relationships as well as the legends of the eponymous tree are gradually revealed, as time is spent with the four whiling away the hours without the benefit of a TV or computer games, all the while documented on a handheld camera.

A film employing this technique really needs to be exceptional in order to make new ground in the genre and what really lets Hollow down is both overwritten dialogue and unconvincing acting. This proves manifest in the opening sequence when a would-be Police video documenting the site of several unexplained deaths is our introduction to the film. This said, the plot itself and the manner in which it is shot and revealed is pretty good taking into consideration this is a feature debut.

The tree, the vacant country house and the ruins of a nearby abbey are all excellent at providing atmosphere and authenticity to the intrigue but there remains some poorly thought through plot holes that would prove spoilers if I were to go into them here. This said, I am sure if the DVD was played one weekend at a girls’ sleepover, it would prove scary enough to keep more than one of them awake.

There are without doubt many worse films in the horror genre. So Hollow is good effort and it is hoped the writer director team go on to do bigger and better. AT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Tenant (1976) ****

Director: Roman Polanski,

Writers: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach.

Cast: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Shelley Winters, Jo Van Fleet

Producers: Andrew Braunsberg, Alain Sarde

Original Music: Philippe Sarde

126mins **** Thriller

The Tenant is the last in the ‘Apartment Trilogy’ following Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby and is a faithful adaptation of the 1964 novel Le Locataire Chimerique. Not only does Roman Polanski play the leading role of Trelkovsky, a Polish emigré, in this twisted psychodrama, but it could also be described as his most obliquely “personal” film and a allegory of the outsider in society: a self-parody his public image and of the elements that his audiences have taken as being distinctively ‘Polanskian’.

Dark and unsettling and steeped in doom, it is a portrait of paranoia centering on a shy and retiring bank clerk who rents a Paris apartment from which the former tenant committed suicide. While Trelkovsky remains a cypher, he gradually takes on the guise of Simone Choule, the previous occupant of the rue des Pyrénées.

It’s a commandingly persuasive and subtle performance from Polanski and so pervasive that you actually start to question your own sanity as the storyline unravels. Strangely he received no acting credit for the role. It demonstrates Polanski’s particularly brand of enigmatic psychosis: the outsider’s descent into self-inflicted purgatory that eventually becomes self-fulfilling or does it? Underscored by a suavely syncopated soundtrack from Philippe Sarde and a standout cameo by Shelley Winters as the concierge; this is quintessential seventies Polanski. MT

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THE TENANT IS SCREENING AS PART OF A MAJOR POLANSKI RETROSPECTIVE AT THE BFI, LONDON DURING JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2013

A Liar’s Autobiography (3D) *

THE UNTRUE STORY OF MONTY PYTHON’S GRAHAM CHAPMAN
Directors: Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson & Ben Timlett
Script: Graham Chapman, David Sherlock
Producers: Bill Jones, Ben Timlett
2011 85mins Animated Autobiography
Based on the book ‘A Liar’s Autobiography’ by ex-Python, Graham Chapman, and made up of a smorgasbord of 3-D animations by disparate animators, presumably asked to portray the different episodes from Chapman’s own writings.

This isn’t in any shape or form a coherent narrative of Chapman’s life and you don’t learn a great deal you didn’t already know; his early years are crystallised into a few isolated moments. The voiceover narration is Chapman’s own as three years before he died, aged 48, of throat cancer, he taped some of his own writings. Many of the other animated characters are voiced by erstwhile Python members, but Chapman sets out to make sure that this is about him and decidedly not any kind of a Python extravaganza.

It cronicles his time at Cambridge, the Footlights, then Monty Python, his sexuality and his alcoholism; the various animations are uneven never pulling together as a cohesive whole and far too much time is spent waxing lyrical on his sexuality, the partying and the sex.
There are lights of fancy, fantasy sequences and some silliness, but far too few humorous moments and in the main it remains resolutely leaden in pace. He also talks candidly of his self-hatred, the endless partying, name-dropping, but mostly the self-loathing and the gin.

No doubt a brilliant mind and a sharp and undoubtedly kind man, never happy in his own skin, he paid the ultimate price. One suspects this is intended as small labour of love, a tribute from those that knew and appreciated him. One for Chapman fans or perhaps Python completists then, but it fails, either as a piece of standalone entertainment or information. AT

Ballroom Dancer (2011)***

Directors: Christian Bonke and Andreas Koefoed

Cast: Vayacheslav ‘Slavic’ Kryklyvvy, Anna Melnikova

Denmark *** 80mins 2011 Denmark

Ballroom Dancer, at first glance, might appear to be a film about glamour, glitz and lycra à la Strictly Ballroom. Infact, it’s anything but.

Vyacheslav ‘Slavik’ Kryklyvvy was World Latin American Dance Champion, but had to retire due to injury. After extensive surgery and recuperation ten years later at the grand old age of 34, he decides along with his new partner Anna, to rescale the mountain and retake the title. His ex-partner meanwhile has continued life at the top unabated, with a new partner of her own, adding a certain spice to the mix.

Slavik and Anna are not only dance partners, but lovers too and the pressure on them both to succeed is immense. Anna is herself an amateur world champion, so great things are expected of this union. But the punishment that dancers have to put themselves through is both punitive and unremitting. They sacrifice everything to get to the top; there is no other life. For it all to be over so young is also incredibly harsh.

As with all documentaries, it is often impossible to know what one is going to end up with in terms of story or material. All a documentary maker can do is assess a given situation and decide whether they think there is enough promise there to make it worthwhile committing a huge amount of time and money pursuing any particular chosen strand, be it brown bears mating in Alaska, or a local politician juggling the power game. In the end, it comes down to whether one is ‘let in’ and trusted by the protagonists and also whether anything of merit then transpires in the wider world of their chosen subject.

Directors Andreas Koefoed and Christian Bonke saw enough promise in this story to decide to document it, as Slavik cajoles aching bones back to peak fitness and then faces the circuit with Anna by his side. What may have come easy to him the first time isn’t quite so easy now. Maturity brings with it many things: hopefully insight but also the knowledge of fallibility, certainly old wounds and then a pressure to prove that we are not just a flash in the pan.

What follows is an unrelenting schedule of fitness, starvation, dance practice and competitions dotted across the world. There’s very little glamour and by God, you really have to want it. This becomes a film not so much about dancing as about people and partnerships.

But I was left wondering whether this story would have played out the way it did without the influence of the ever-present filmmakers; it’s a difficult thing to be witnessed, to be filmed at your most vulnerable and for a much of the film, I didn’t feel I was watching an uncensored reality on the part of the protagonists; not that I blame them for this, but if it had been me, I’m not sure I would have brought that additional pressure to bear too. Doing the Jive justice is surely more than enough to be getting on with. AT

BALLROOM DANCER IS ON GENERAL RELEASE AT THE ICA, LONDON W1 FROM JANUARY 18TH 2013 AND AT THE DUKE OF YORK’S PICTUREHOUSE BRIGHTON ON 7TH FEBRUARY, THE IPSWICH FILM THEATRE ON 14-15TH FEBRUARY, AND THE RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ON 28TH MARCH 2013

httpv://dogwoof.com/films/ballroom-dancer

My French Film Festival online – 17 January – 17 February 2013

How about a film festival you can watch from home? Entirely online and perfect for those sexy sofa suppers with a loved-one or just the dog, My French Film Festival is the antidote to going out in this bleak and blustery winter weather.

Offering ten new features at £1.99 each it’s an antidote for the January (and February) blues, so park your car and your parka and watch!

We recommend Senegalese drama ‘La Pirogue’ and ‘Early One Morning’ starring Jean Pierre Darroussian as an employee who rages against the system.

There’s only one screening at the Curzon Soho on January 19th of the French Immigration drama ‘Donoma’MT

Everyday (2012)

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Writers: Laurence Coriat, Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Shiley Henderson, John Sim, Shaun Kirk

106mins Drama

Everyday will not appeal to everyone. Filmed over five years and following a family as they wait for their father (John Simm) to come out of prison; hardly an upbeat theme but delicately interwoven with seasonal changes in the Norfolk countryside, it’s hard to beat the intimacy of this social realist study of a young family growing up. Real life siblings play the children with screen mother Shirley Henderson giving her best. A fictional portrait then but a tender one that also touches on the effects of separation for a couple; growing older and growing wiser. Not a patch on Genova, his other similar collaboration with Laurence Coriat but then that did bring us the subtle glamour of Colin Firth and Italian Riviera. I know which I’d prefer. MT

I Confess (1953) blu-ray

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Wri: George Tabori, William Archibald | Cast: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, O E Hasse, Roger Dann, Dolly Haas, Charles Andre | US 92mins 1953 Noir/Drama

By 1953, Hitchcock was over 20 years into his career and Montgomery Clift was arguably the biggest up-and-coming star in the Hollywood firmament, hot off the back of A Place In The Sun. Clift was also one of the original ‘method actors’, something that at times drove Hitch up the wall; when he would ask Clift to look in a certain direction for the camera, Clift might resist, claiming his character wouldn’t have any motivation to do so. Hitch never really understood that as an option.

But Hitch knew he was onto a good thing with Clift. A troubled closet homosexual who battled severe drug and alcohol addiction until his untimely death, aged just 46, he was also beautiful, and every inch a star.

Regarded by many as one of Hitchcock’s most underrated films, I Confess is a simple yet brilliant conceit; a man admits to murder to a priest during confession, in the knowledge that the priest is thereby silenced and cannot turn him in to the Police.

The wonderful Karl Malden plays the logical, dogged policeman trying his best to unravel the riddle, with a priest unwilling to help and evidently hiding something. Clift who, it must be said, is the most unfeasibly handsome priest you are ever likely to see, a man of the cloth, unimpeachable, predating all the scandals that have rocked the church since, with his faith utterly in God.

The cast is superb throughout, with Anne Baxter, Brian Aherne and O E Hasse, but also a bonafide German star in Dolly Haas, who gave up her life and career in Germany when she married an American caricaturist, here playing the relatively minor but nevertheless key role of Alma Keller, a role named incidentally, after Hitch’s own wife.

He was by this time at the height of his powers; I Confess is wedged into the canon between Stage Fright, Strangers On A Train and Rear Window and To Catch A Thief. ‘It’s a dark film, with the exteriors shot in Quebec, where Hitch made the most of the architecture as an atmospheric additional character in the film.

Hitch himself grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family, so was exploring territory very familiar to him and it’s also widely accepted that this film was a forerunner to his much more famous 1956 The Wrong Man, starring Henry Fonda.

But it’s Clift’s superb central performance which makes this movie; the depth and conviction that he brings to the role. Clift was already a deeply troubled alcoholic by 1953 and, just three years later, he smashed his face up in a terrible car crash. He survived with extensive reconstructive surgery, but lost his looks. By 1966, he was dead. The famous acting teacher, Robert Lewis, called his death ‘the longest suicide in history’. Everyone could see it coming, but no one seemed to be able to do anything to prevent it.

So many Hollywood stars are pretty, but very few have the acting chops too. Both Marlon Brando and James Dean looked up to Clift; that’s how influential he was and ‘I Confess’ is a superb opportunity to celebrate him at the height of his looks and lose yourself in his undoubted charismatic ability. Enjoy. AT

The brilliant talent of Montgomery Clift, with us for such a short time, blossoms here at its brightest in Hitchcock’s I Confess.

Dance of the Vampires aka The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Director: Roman Polanski

Writers: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach
Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Alfie Bass, Sharon Tate, Ferdy Mayne, Iain Quarrier, Terry Downes | 108 mins Comedy Horror

An old professor and his apprentice hunt down vampires and rescue a damsel in distress in a remote part of Transylvania.

Dance of the Vampires is a stylish antidote to the regular slew of vampire films. Hilarious, grotesque and weirdly compelling, it was Polanski’s first real acting performance (as Alfred, the apprentice) and his first outing in Panavision colour. Douglas Slocombe’s expert camerawork compliments the fabulous sets inspired by Eastern European folklore and, in particular, Jewish folklore showcased in the heightened performances of Alfie Bass and Jessica Robins as the Innkeepers, Mr and Mrs Shagal.

There are also some lewd moments keeping the tone light, but occasionally running the risk of it drifting into Carry On territory. The first half of this horror spoof set in a Transylvanian boarding house is uneven and slightly jumpy. It also suffered from being heavily edited down from 148mins to 91 mins but the film improves dramatically once the Professor and Alfred move on to the Vampire’s castle.

Polanski was a keen painter and echoes of Marc Chagall’s surrealism can be seen in the costumes and imagery. In fact, the film explores the lightless of tone in Polish folkloric culture that we don’t get to hear about in baroque folklore and is actually a far cry from the style of Hammer House of Horror.

There is a fairytale quality to the film that comes through in the enchanting set pieces reminscent of the Polish Avantgarde. And an absurdist aspect: the main characters of Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) and Mr Shetal are ridiculous in a cleverly stylised way. And the Midnight Ball scene has a surreal edge to it that’s extremely funny in parts. There’s even a kinky vignette featuring Alfred with Count Von Krolock’s Herbert (Iain Quarrier) with homosexual undertones.

Krzysztof Komeda’s needling original score is delicately composed to be spine-chilling and light-hearted to leaven some of the more frightening scenes. And there are horrific moments particularly in the opening sequence. Ferdy Mayne manages to be both comical and sinister as the Count. Sharon Tate gives an inspired turn as Sarah Shetal, the damsel in distress. The part was originally intended for Jill St John but Sharon took over in a role that was to change the course of her life: she went on to marry Polanski.

Many disregard this film as unimportant largely due to its billing as a comedy spoof of heightened melodrama. But it really belongs to a specialised horror genre and draws on the deviant strains of sixties art-horror such as the Castle of the LIving Dead (1960) or even the Polish film The Hour Glass Sanatorium (1973). If you’re interested in Polanski and his ingenious work, then this film is one you absolutely have to see. MT

THE DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES is on AMAZON.COM.

Django Unchained (2012)

Dir: Quentin Tarantino | Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo Di Caprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson, Walton Scoggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, David Steen, Dana Michelle Gourrier, Nichole Galicia, Laura Cayouette, Ato Eassandoh, Sammi Rotibi, Clay Donahue Fontenot, Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, James Russo | US 165mins 2012 Western

It is very easy to be up in arms about this film for any given reason: for the violence; the Black story being told by a white man; for politically correct motivations and so on. Tarantino has long been a fan of the Western and Spaghetti Westerns in particular. Django Unchained was a long time in the making; ten years, infact, and it came following an illustrious and not so illustrious line of ‘Django’ Spaghetti Western films.

Like it or not, the slave trade is a (deeply regrettable) part of history for black and white alike. To see it on the screen with just a minute few of its countless atrocities witnessed has to be a good thing. How many times do we see twee period dramas, all spotless lace and heaving corsets, ignoring the reality that made it all possible? How often is the Black experience, the Black story ignored?

So here we have black actors portraying a true facsimile of what it was to live then. Interesting on several levels, not least of which being that here is a $100M movie, that millions are going to see now it’s on Netflix, populated by a massive Black cast and with a Black lead.

All of that aside and moving onto the film itself, is it any good? Well, yes it is. After a terrible blip in the risible Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino returns to form with a really well-constructed, well-thought out and well-made film. The locations, in the Californian Alabama Hills, Jackson, Wyoming and New Orleans in the Deep South, are simply stunning, with Tarantino concerned to use the real and not CGI to create authenticity.

On top of the general genre of Western and the Black/White slave thing, it’s a story of empowerment, of love and of sacrifice and there are many notable cameos: Don Johnson; Bruce Dern; James Russo. But the stand out performances belong to Jamie Foxx and Di Caprio. Di Caprio is as guilty as any of being in some steaming turds in his time, but then, isn’t every actor? He was also always a good actor. Anyone witnessing him in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape could see that. Here, given free rein and the time to really inhabit his plantation-owning character, Calvin Candie, he really pulls off something special.

Foxx is asked for a truly committed performance and committed he is; his journey from slavery to freedom about a man learning to inhabit himself when even his name is not his own, is a well-drawn one, albeit attuned to a wide audience, rather than the sensibilities of an arthouse one.

We’ve moved on a great deal in the past decade since the film premiered and the argument will continue to run and run as to violence depicted in the cinema and its impact upon the viewing public, but it would have been a bigger crime to remove the teeth from a film about slavery and thus somehow sanitise it, than not. AT

NOW ON NETFLIX

GIFF Gothenburg 2013 Dragon Awards

GOTHENBURG FILM FESTIVAL: 25 JANUARY – 4 FEBRUARY 2013

THE DRAGON AWARD WINNERS 2013

BEST NORDIC FILM – Before Snowfall (Norway) Hisham Zaman

INGMAR BERGMAN INTERNATIONAL DEBUT – Dog Flesh (Chile) Fernando Guzzoni

BEST NORDIC DOCUMENTARY – Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart – Mike Ronkainen (Finland)

LORENS AWARD – Searching for Sugarman – Malik Bendjelloul (Sweden) 500k SEK for development finance for his next film.

FIPRESCI PRIZE – Northwest (Denmark) Michael Noer

DRAGON AWARD FOR NEW TALENT – La Ravaudeuse – Simon Filliot

AUDIENCE AWARD – BEST FEATURE Wadjda (Saudi Arabia) – Haifaa Al Mansour

AUDIENCE AWARD – BEST NORDIC FILM – A Hijakking – Tobias Lindholm (Denmark)

Gothenburg is the largest film festival in the Nordic countries and a great one to attend if you can cope with truly subzero temperatures and the sight of the icebreaker trawling around the harbour in an effort to keep it open for business. However, the welcome is warm and the audiences are massive: 34,000 enthusiastic filmgoers each year attend something like 450 films from about 70 countries.

In film going terms, it simply doesn’t carry the cachet of the Berlinales or Venices of this world and hence far fewer World Premieres on show, but this works in its favour too making it a much more informal, relaxed affair. The possibility of bumping into a real filmmaker and spending time chatting to them; even sharing a beer, is much more likely.

Gothenburg also hosts the Dragon Awards, a very handsome prize of 1 million Swedish Kröner for the best Nordic film- that’s almost 95 Grand in English money.

On January 25 Norway’s Oscar entry, Kon-Tiki, will open this, the 36th festival. Kon-Tiki was made by the directors behind the previous film success, Max Manus, and is Norway’s biggest and most expensive film production to date, filming at sea being what it is… (think ‘Waterworld’!).

Kon-Tiki is about the young Norwegian researcher and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 sets out on a sensational expedition to prove that the small islands in Polynesia are populated by people from South America—not from Asia as the prevailing theory claims. Despite his fear of water and poor swimming skills, he gathers a crew to sail 4,300 nautical miles on Kon-Tiki, a raft built according to an ancient design of balsa wood, reeds, bamboo shoots and banana leaves.

For three months the isolated crew sails the ocean while fighting sharks, raging hurricanes and scorching sun. The journey is punctuated by dramatic twists where they risk losing all but in the end, as we already know, Heyerdahl proves that faith can move mountains. For the first time, the festival’s opening film will be screened in several theatres simultaneously, allowing the festival to cope with the huge ticket demands customary for the opening film. Both the directors and actors will be in attendance.

Oddly enough, outside of Chile, Sweden has the highest proportion of Chileans per capita, more than any other country in the world and accordingly, this year there is a focus on Chilean films.

Chile is undergoing something of a resurgence subsequent to Pinochet’s rule where filmmakers activities were severely limited, to say the least.

Veteran Director Raul Ruiz, a forced exile to Paris, made Night Across The Street (La Noche De Enfrente) just before his death in 2011 and this, along with a whole slew from the upcoming generation of Chilean filmmakers screens this year. Dominga Sotomayor’s Thursday Til Sunday (you may have caught this at the London Film Festival in October 2012), Rodrigo Marin’s Zoo and Dog Flesh by Fernando Guzzoni are the titles being touted as strong and are sure to be enthusiastically supported by the resident Chilean public.

Three of the eight nominated films premiering at the festival are Dane, Tobias Lindholm’s film A Hijacking; Swede, Fredrik Edfeldt’s film Faro and Norwegian, Sara Johnsen’s All That Matters Is Past starring Maria Bonnevie (Reconstruction and The Banishment).

Among the nominees this year is Wadjda by Haifa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia’s first female director. The film is about ten-year Wadjda, a determined little girl who, in contrast to her country’s norms, dares to dream about a bicycle. Wadjda won best film at the recent Dubai Film Festival.

Another nominee is the Israeli director Rama Burshtein and her film Fill The Void, a story that gives an insight into a strictly religious Hassidic world in Tel Aviv. Hadas Yaron won best actress for this feature at Venice last August.

Another film worth mentioning is Ziba. It tells the story of a housewife from the upper classes who lives a life of repression and enforced silence, in the way that many Iranians are living today. Director Bani Khoshnoudi is a guest at the festival. Also visiting is Nahid Persson Sarvestani who shows her film My Stolen Revolution, a painful history in which she creates a picture of her assassinated brother’s life.

In the feature film Reliance, William Olsson gives a compelling picture of a society where security is threatened from within. In this year’s closing film Crestfallen, Tuva (Josephine Bornebusch) learns that she’s adopted and decides to find her biological mother. Johan Lundh’s feature debut is a suggestive drama thriller.

In the competitive documentary section there is Linda Vastrik’s Swedish-made Forest Of The Dancing Spirits, concerning the embattled pygmy tribes in the Congo River basin. Black White Boy, by Dane Camilla Magid about an albino taken away from his parents and facing severe racism among both teachers and pupils. No Burqas Behind Bars by Nima Sarvestani which focuses on womens’ rights and My Afghanistan-Life In The Forbidden Zone by Nagieb Khaja all look very interesting.

The documentary Call Me Kuchu (also shown at the LFF last October) shows horrific images of how priests preach that homosexuals are rapists, how the press is allowed to disclose the names and addresses of gays and draws connections to Al-Qaeda. The film will be shown in this year’s HBTQ-section and is a documentary about Uganda’s most famous HBTQ-activist, David Kato, and his struggle for a better life for Ugandan homosexuals.

In the Masters section, we see news films by major directors such as Olivier Assayas, Harmony Korine, Yousry Nasrallah, Brillante Mendoza, Cristian Mungiu, Kira Muratova, Goran Paskaljevic, Volker Schlöndorff and Ulrich Seidl.

A few of the festivals guests attending this year are German filmmaker, Volker Schlöndorff with his submission, Calm at Sea. The French director Olivier Assayas is also one of the year’s acclaimed guests with Something in the Air. Haiffa al-Mansour (Wadjda) is Saudi Arabia’s first female director and regarded to be one of the most important people in the country’s film industry, will also be attending.

Other visiting luminaries include Margarethe von Trotta, Peter Lord, Dominga Sotomayor, Barbara Albert, Nahid Persson Sarvestani, Esteban Larraín, Ulrich Seid, Matias Varela, David Denick, Stefan Jarl, Jens Jonsson, Gustaf Skarsgård, Sara Johnsen, Dag Johan Haugerud and Margreth Olin.

Not one of the top tier festivals, a la Cannes or Toronto then, but big, well-organised and very well attended by filmmakers and cinephiles alike. If you can go, I can thoroughly recommend it. AT

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Underground (1928) ***

Director: Anthony Asquith
Script: Anthony Asquith
Cast: Elissa Landi, Brian Aherne, Norah Baring, Cyril McLaglen

UK 94mins 1928 Thriller

Asquith shot this feature in the final years of the silent movies, penned by himself at the tender age of 26. The son of prominent politician HH Asquith, Anthony made several notable films including Pygmalion; The Importance Of Being Earnest; The Browning Version and The Yellow Rolls Royce. He always favoured adapting stage-plays, in particular the works of Terrence Rattigan, rather than opening out to the more specifically cinematic unlike his fellow filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock.

Having undergone extensive restoration, made possible only by recent developments in digital technology, Underground is here being released to mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground and what a remarkable snapshot it proves to be of London life in the 1920’s, showing more than a brief glimpse of what the Tube looked like back in the day.

Many of the locations are recognisable, albeit a world away from the underground we now know and there is also a fine scene upon an open topped bus as it swings through the streets of a bygone era. Brian Aherne is the Ticket Collector who falls in love with Elissa Landi one day whilst at work, Cyril McLaglen the rival for her affections.

Despite Asquith’s sensibilities, this is a lower working class tale from top to bottom, a story of the proletariat; the tube worker, the shop-girl, seamstress and electrician, all scraping a threadbare existence in bedsit-land London, managing to steal a moment of joy, a smile, from wherever they can get it in the daily grind that is the Smoke.

‘Underground’ takes a while to get going and again, the acting technique of the day -what was expected from the actors- can at times feel very stagey and melodramatic, but by the end, Asquith has successfully ramped up the jeopardy even for today’s audiences. The denouement is undeniably tense and moving aided and abetted by Neil Brand’s score (played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra) exploring the dark as much as the bright facets to love and the potential consequences of jealousy and a love thwarted.

In terms of directing, Asquith is quite assured for one so young and employs some finetechniques with panache, especially towards the end. There are also some diverting cameos, but the final word must go to the fifth lead of the piece: London in the 20’s. What an amazing backdrop it is. For me, in true Cockney geezer style, it manages to run away with the film. AT

At the BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide from January 11th 2013

What Richard Did (2012)

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Cast: Jack Reynor, Roisin Murphy, Sam Keeley, Lars Mikkelsen

Drama Ireland 87mins

Based on the book ‘Bad Day In Black Rock’ by Kevin Power and a script by erstwhile jobbing writer Malcolm Campbell, who came up through TV with notable work on The Bill, Skins, andShameless, among others, this is a fine debut from Director Lenny Abrahamson.

This is a new generation of film, used as we are to some (quite wonderful) films about The Troubles, What Richard Did comes as a breath of fresh air and paints what feels to be a very authentic, poised and evocative story of the next generation of Ireland’s youth.

The ensemble cast is superbly pitched by one and all, with crucial cameos (Gabrielle Reidy particularly) finely played, making this unassuming little gem a very well-judged, mature and beautiful meditation on coming of age and the nature of friendship.

The music is sparse and unobtrusive, the soundscape gentle and the cinematography unfussy, measured and translucent, sensitively edited by Nathan Nugent, allowing crucial space for the performances and all of these elements come together to reward the audience with a really genuine and moving experience. AT

WHAT RICHARD DID IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11 JANUARY 2013 AT CURZON CINEMAS AND THE RITZY PICTUREHOUSE, LONDON.

Chinatown (1974)

Dir: Roman Polanski | Script: Robert Towne |Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Burt Young | US 1974 Mystery Drama

Nicholson’s private eye struggles to stay afloat in Polanski’s stylish dream of a noir, set in pre-war Los Angeles. The first film as producer for Bob Evans, ex-Head of Paramount Studios, was not altogether a bad place to start. Nominated upon its release in 1974 for 11 Oscars, it only eventually managed to walk away with one; for the script by Robert Towne.

And what a script. It is said in the industry that it is quite possible to make a bad film from a good script, but entirely impossible to make a good film from a bad script. Held up now as ‘The Perfect Script’ and a byword in how best to construct and write a screenplay for film schools around the world, Towne’s only thought at the time was to ‘make it make sense’. It took him 9-months to complete a first 180-page draft and then a rather arduous couple of months with the director painstakingly going through a rewrite, entailing bits of paper stuck all over the wall whilst they worked out the plot and how it needed to unfold.

The genesis, as is so often the case, is interesting in itself. Towne, who had previously written a fair amount for TV and had also done some uncredited work on Bonnie & Clyde and The Godfather, had a screenplay stuck in ‘turn around’ called The Last Detail. Homeless, in need of money and casting around for ideas whilst he waited for Detail to go, Towne turned to his ex-roommate Jack Nicholson and said ‘What if I wrote a detective story set in L.A. of the ‘30s?’ Jack responded- ‘Great’.

Looking around LA, he had realised that there was a fair amount still there in terms of architecture from the 40s, a time he could still remember. He also liked the concept, based upon LA’s own dubious history, of having a story of power and corruption at the highest level rather than just a basic play-by-numbers murder mystery; “Water and Power” was infact an early candidate for the film’s title. Accordingly, he went off and did a load of research, read some Chandler and set to work.

Of great advantage to its realisation was that many involved in the project were old friends. Towne, Warren Beatty, Nicholson, Polanski and Hal Ashby were all dining companions, as were exemplary Production and Costume designers Richard and Anthea Sylbert. Had they not been the film, in all probability, would never have happened. But Polanski was looking to work with Nicholson and he was also first choice of director for Chinatown by Producer Bob Evans, who wanted a darker feel to the movie than he thought an American director might bring to the table.

Prior to Chinatown, Nicholson would never have been considered as a lead actor. Indeed, he had also had quite a few lean years before he launched; even his agent had recommended that he ‘go get a proper job’. But Towne always wrote with Nicholson in mind for the part of Gittes. The part of Evelyn Mulwray had been intended for Ali McGraw, wife of Evans, but she forfeited the role when she left him to be with Steve McQueen. Julie Christie then turned it down, so both producer and director were happy with the choice of Faye Dunaway.

Alot went wrong. Off the bat, shooting went badly, with Polanski’s Cinematographer Stanley Cortez fired soon after production began because his cumbersome classical style failed to match the fleet-footed naturalistic style Polanski wanted for the film. He had initially wanted William A Fraker, his collaborator on Rosemary’s Baby, but producer Evans felt that this alliance of DoP and Director might prove too difficult to control, so nixed it.

Late in Post Production, they also realised that the score by Phillip Lambro was all wrong and so brought in Jerry Goldsmith at the eleventh hour, with only ten days to (inspirationally) re-score the film. Interestingly, Polanski also elected to remove the Gittes explanatory voiceover in Post, thus allowing the audience to discover the plot at the same time as the detective and this masterstroke proved key to the film’s success.

The feeling by the end of all the trials and tribulations was that it was going to be a flop, but early screenings indicated otherwise: and the rest, as they say, is history.

Chinatown is an amazing blend of talents; all filmmaking is a collaborative process, so there are legion ways that it can all go pear-shaped. But Polanski’s meticulous attention to detail; in the casting, the lighting, the design and his use of camera and camera grammar is seamless to the point where as a viewer, of course, you don’t notice it at all. You are simply pulled in by the power of the piece as a whole. It’s a brilliant film that carries you along, suspended in a timeless thrall, from start to finish.

Towne had originally intended Chinatown to be the first in a trilogy, the second part being The Two Jakes, later directed by Nicholson himself. Principally though, he was just relieved to have pushed through with a successful script, on the eve of turning forty; happy that his ageing father could now relax and that his next films would get made. He indeed went on to write a great many successful films, including Shampoo, The Missouri Breaks, Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Tequila Sunrise, Days Of Thunder and Mission Impossible. Robert Towne, the Legend, started here. AT

A water feud is still going on to this day President Trump causing the California governor Newsom of preventing the water supply to flow and quell the raging fires

Montgomery Clift Season at the BFI, February 2013

When Montgomery Clift (1920-1968) made his cinema debut in Red River (1948), he brought a new kind of masculinity to the screen. He had the looks to make any matinee idol jealous, yet he didn’t play up to a star persona, instead drawing on his theatrical background and method training to bring to life a fascinating range of characters, from a fortune-hunter in The Heiress (1949) and a conflicted social-climber in A Place in the Sun (1951) to a tragic, idealist GI in From Here to Eternity (1953) and a priest guarding the confession of a murderer in Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953). His, now infamous, car crash occurred during the filming of Raintree County (1956), and left him with severe facial injuries, but the psychological impact was greater. He was ever critical of his own performances, though to watch him in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) or even The Misfits (1961) his talent was strikingly evident. He died at the age of 47, having earned four Oscar-nominations, but tormented by emotional demons of his own making. MT

DURING FEBRUARY 2013 THE BFI WILL BE CELEBRATING THE WORK OF THIS ICONIC ACTOR WITH A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE

Midnight Son (2011) ***

Director/Writer : Scott Lebrecht
Cast: Zak Kilberg, Maya Parish, Jo D. Jonz, Arlen Escarpeta, Larry Cedar, Juanita Jennings

USA 88mins Vampire Drama

Director Scott Lebrecht bills his debut Midnight Son as a “thinking man’s horror film”. I wonder what impact he’s hoping his film will have on female audiences? Well it’s certainly not aimed at the teenage market but hopes to approach the genre in a mature and sensitive way while appealing to the “monster-movie-loving kid inside us all”.

And he’s certainly picked an excellent male lead in ZAK Kilberg; a Robert Pattinson lookalike with acting skills honed in TV’s ‘Lincoln Heights’, ZAK (a sobriquet for his initials) possesses a haunted, gap-toothed frailty that’s perfect for the role of Jacob, a vapid security guard with a congenital skin condition that prevents him from spending time in sunlight.

Mostly shot at close range with a grainy feel and bleak urban locations, this unsettling but not overwhelming modern vampire story is unmistakedly indie fare. From the clanging opening sequence (scored by Kays Al-Atrakchi) we meet Jacob scoffing down the contents of his ‘fridge with a hunger that clearly indicates some kind of illness or mental aberration. But it’s not until he drains the polystyrene tray of his supermarket steak that this signifies blood-lust. Very soon he’s hanging around the clinical waste bins at the local hospital and decanting blood products offered to him by a crooked hospital orderly called Marcus (‘Everybody’s got their thing’) into Starbucks paper cups for his journey to work.

Jacob hooks up with Mary (Maya Parish) and develops strange physical changes when her nose starts to bleed during love-making. But there’s nothing rapacious or outlandish about his reactions and, on her part, it sparks off a desire to care for him. The chemistry between them is subtlely played but meaningful and Maya Parish brings a sexy sensitivity to her role as a hobo with a kind heart that echoes Let The Right One In. Less successful is the twist involving hospital crim Marcus (Jo D. Jonz) and the FBI but don’t let this put you off what’s otherwise a worthwhile and watchable addition to the Vampire genre. MT

MIDNIGHT SON IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 11TH JANUARY AND COMES OUT ON DVD THROUGH MONSTER PICTURES ON 11 FEBRUARY 2013 (£13.99).

May I Kill You (2012) **

Director/Writer: Stuart Urban
Cast: Kevin Bishop, Frances Barber, Jack Doolan, Hayley-Marie Axe, Kasia Koleczek.
90mins Comedy Drama

I’m sure there’s an audience somewhere out there for Stuart Urban’s low budget black comedy that takes a satirical look at the world of a techno vigilante mummy’s boy on a bike. It’s certainly an ingenious premise and one that’s been well thought out by this Bafta-winning director perhaps best known for his TV outing “Our Friends in The North”.

May I Kill You? has Kevin Bishop as Baz Vartis, a cop turned crim who inhabits a suburban dystopia echoing the London riots of 2011. Full of characters you’d rather not meet but you already know cleverly woven into an everyday story of contemporary life: a smothering mother (Frances Barber); a needy girlfriend (Hayley-Marie Axe); a teenage hoodie pilferer; there’s even an Eastern European blonde (Maya Koleczek) who Baz rescues from pimps and takes home to meet his mum. Baz bludgeons wrongdoers to death with the items they’ve stolen, tweeting, recording on his mobile and posting it all online with the catchphrase: “I’m not a killer, I’m a death facilitator”.

A clever idea then and particularly as Urban portrays Baz as very much a disturbed sociopath rather than the hero of the piece, side-stepping any direct moral indictment and poking fun at all concerned. There are digs at celebrity culture and the parlous state of society in general. Sadly the narrative fails to develop further and there is little to engage with after the first half despite believable characters and a sharp script. The lack of a gripping storyline means that May I Kill You? does start to drag and there are some tonal differences where it lurches from social satire to heightened horror; as in the gratuitously violent episodes. Great performances though from Frances Barber and Kevin Bishop make this just about watchable with some moments of humour and authenticity. MT

Roman Polanski’s short films (1957-61) ****

Roman Polanski talks about his early life in the recent Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir and the events leading up to success at securing a place at the prestigious Lodz film school in the late fifties. Here he made a series of short films themed around voyeurism, victimisation and violence. His screen debut at Lodz was The Crime (1957) a 3-minute silent film about a gratuitous murder. Next up was Toothful Smile (1957) about a Peeping Tom who gets an alarming surprise as he watches a young girl through her apartment window. Already setting the tone of subversion and subterfuge, Polanski followed these with a mockumentary piece: Breaking Up The Party (1957) where he actually arranged for a gang of hoodlums to arrive and sabotage a get-together between friends, creating the perfect situation for improvisation. Rather than viewing this idea as highly original and ingenious, the School took a dim view of his efforts and threatened him with expulsion. Even his tutor Andrzej Munk was appalled by the stint but stood by him and his unusual endeavour and accepted it as part and parcel of Polanski’s burgeoning creative talent and unusual line in storytelling.

Theatre of the absurd piece Two Men and a Wardrobe followed in 1958. The filming was disrupted by outbursts of uncontrollable anger from Polanski: he stormed off the set several times leaving the cast and crew bewildered only to return later to complete the shoot (according to his biographer John Parker). Two Men was to earn him a prize at the 1958 Brussels World Fair and a great deal of respect in international circles followed in its wake. It also heralded his commitment to work with only the creme de la creme of the film world and to seek excellence and perfection in all his collaborators.

When Angels Fall (1959) was Polanski’s first foray into colour and his graduation film from the Lodz School. Taken from a short story ‘Kloset Babcia’, it tells of a lavatory attendant who is forced to witness an endless stream of males relieving themselves in front of her. The lavatory attendant was played by a elderly non-professional but he hired a young actress to play her character in flashback, in the shape of Barbara Lass. He fell in love with Barbara during filming and she became his first wife later starring in Rene Clement’s Che Gioa Vivere (1961) with Alain Delon.

In 1961 Polanski made The Fat and The Lean: a two-hander portrait of power and domination seen through the eyes of a servant and master. Dominance and humiliation where themes that Polanski was to revisit time and time again in Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and even Chinatown.

THE BFI, SOUTHBANK ARE SCREENING A SELECTION OF POLANSKI’S SHORTS AS PART OF A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE STARTING ON 1 JANUARY 2013.

Les Misérables (2012) ****

Dir. Tom Hooper

UK 2012, Dur. 158 mins.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen

This is a big movie; in terms of the impressive cast, number of extras and the sheer scale of the settings and theme. Les Misérables tells Victor Hugo’s story, which was made into a stage musical and is still on in London (Les Misérables originally opened in London at the Barbican Theatre on 8 October, 1985, transferred to the Palace Theatre on 4 December 1985, and after 19 years moved to its current home at the Queen’s Theatre) and, indeed, all over the world.

The film is set in 19th-century France and shows the prisoner Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) being released on parole having served 19 years as a convict for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister – in fact he received five years for the crime and the rest for trying to escape. Valjean soon realises that he can’t get a job because his papers identify him as a criminal and steals silver from a kindly Bishop who forgives him and gives him all his silver. Valjean determines to leave the area and be good from then on. When he breaks his parole he is hunted for decades by the ruthless policeman, Javert (Russell Crowe).

We next see wealthy Mayor Valjean, who befriends a poor factory worker, Fantine (Anne Hathaway). She is sacked from her job and sells her hair, then a couple of her teeth and finally her body to survive and care for her young child. Valjean discovers her dying and takes over the care of her young daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen). Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne) as a young adult and they plan a life together. At first Valjean is wary of Marius’ intentions towards his adopted child, but comes around to help the student rebel later on.

The young lovers are assisted by Eponine (newcomer Samantha Barks) who loves Marius but realises that he only has eyes for Cosette. There are not many laughs in this movie, and, in fact, the only comic characters are the innkeeper Monsieur Theanardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), who manage to get all the fun they can out of their fairly small parts. Baron Cohen’s mispronunciation of Cosette’s name and constant correction by Bonham Carter is most amusing. They sell the little girl to Valjean who takes her with him when he once again escapes from Javert. The film is virtually sung-through and the well-known, lovely songs from the stage musical are all here – I Dreamed a Dream, One More day, Bring Him Home and so on.

The joy is that the stars have really good voices and, in spite of having to sing live, stil manage to perform most competently. Hathaway is a revelation as she sings ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ with real dramatic meaning. Eddie Redmayne has a glorious voice which I hope he uses on the London stage in the near future. The music is by Claude-Michel Schönberg, and the lyrics are by Herbert Kretzmer. Hugh Jackman not only sings (which improves as the film progresses and he gives us a very moving version of ‘Bring Him Home’) but has managed to adjust his body so that he is very thin in the early scenes in prison and fills out as the older man. The production qualities are superb with the life of the period including struggles at the barricades captured in sound. There is excellent photography under the direction of the DP Danny Cohen, and Lisa Westcott’s hair and make-up design is spot on. I expect the film to win some technical Oscars this year. Some might find the film depressing, but the great music and lovely performances give it life and joy. Carlie Newman.

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2012) *

Director: John Luessenhop
Script: Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, Kirsten Elms, Stephen Susco
Producer: Carl Mazzocone Cast: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Tania Raymonde, Trey Songz, Scott Eastwood, Shaun Sipos, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, James MacDonald, Thom Barry, Paul Rae

US 92mins Horror

Texas Chainsaw 3D attempts to be a faithful sequel to the original groundbreaking low-budget vision of writer director Tobe Hooper. However his 1974 film was never designed to be a franchise, supporting innumerable sequels and, rather like Jaws, what was originally a truly great movie, eliciting real fear and entering the pantheon of legendary horror films, has here been subjected to that final insult, the lowest common denominator, to prise that last dollar from the death-grip of a very tired corpse: 3D.

As a reviewer, it’s always a warning sign when there are no press preview screenings. The unwritten gen being that producers know it stinks, so prefer launching it onto an unsuspecting public and gaining at least a good opening weekend, before poisonous word of mouth kills it deader than any mindless slasher killer could ever manage.

So, why is it bad? It’s remarkable, with so many writers that the story didn’t hold up from any angle. With good television drama one expects a pool of talent to make the storylines hold up under scrutiny but here, one suspects, it was a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. Huge… I mean HUGE plot holes, combined with a derivative storyline, cardboard and predictable characters and, topping it off, some very substandard acting.

Alexandra Daddario to be fair, is a super-hot lead, far too hot to be working the meat counter at a local supermarket for sure and the makers are banking on a pubescent male audience being sucked into that particular sexual vortex to the extent that they simply don’t care whether the rest of it makes any sense or not. Ironically interesting too though, that Americans don’t bat an eyelid at portraying ever more extraordinarily graphic scenes of violence against a human being, but remain so ridiculously terrified when it comes to sex. Indeed, sex is so promised, so pasted over the entirety of this film, yet it signally fails to deliver in a manner a ’70’s-made film never would.

If they had considered for a moment what makes all the seminal horror films work; the threat of violence and the bit that isn’t shown but is imagined by an audience, that is the most terrifying and therefore the most edifying part of a film. In the original, despite the title, only one person is cut up by a chainsaw and the only blood we see actually elicited by a chainsaw is upon Leatherface himself when he cuts his own leg. The genre is so massive now, so illustrious, with so many examples to draw from, one would think it might be something easier to get right. Sure, you are made to jump a few times by the unseen attack, coupled with an ear-splitting dollop of sound effects, but this, as we all seem to know, does not a horror film make.

Here we are served up a series of horror movie clichés and in horribly unimaginative fashion; the character arc of the lead makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, considering what you know of her by the end. The best bit is perhaps the montage of the 1974 original, concertinaed in to a few minutes at the outset. Dan Yeager then does his damnedest to reprise Gunnar Hansen’s brilliant, monsterful creation and the film attempts to turn the story on its head to wring a story out, but all of this is comprehensively sunk in the bloody mire they made of the script. Sense and logic left the building.

The soul, the art and the impact of the original is completely absent. Tobe Hooper needed to think very hard about just how he was going to get his opus past the censors. In many countries he failed in that endeavour; failed for 25 years in some cases. And isn’t that the greatest compliment; the mark of a true Horror Film? Something that has a genuine bite; that moves the genre forward and does so by using what it chooses to leave out. By conjuring up a sustained and escalating threat.

Blockbuster upon tent-pole blockbuster hitting our screens year upon year; CGI leaping forward as never before in its ability to depict the previously impossible with ever finer detail. A new reality. But, spinning breathless under the weight of all the technology now at our disposal, we have perhaps neglectfully left behind the art of filmmaking. ARajan

Gervaise (1956) DVD

Director: Rene Clement:

Script: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost

Cast: Maria Schell, Francois Perier, Jany Holt.

120mins Drama French with subtitles

Fans of Emile Zola will appreciate Rene Clement’s penultimate outing Gervaise (1956) based on the novelist’s 1877 masterpiece ‘L’Assommoir’. Much of Zola’s work focussed on the influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution in France. Clement’s film is set against this traumatic period in French history and tells the story of a crippled working class woman’s struggle with an alcoholic husband. Very much a social realism piece but with a compelling grimness to it that is a worthwhile testament to the era.

It won a BAFTA for Best Film and Best Foreign Actor, two awards at Venice including best actress.

NOW OUT ON DVD COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL.COM £15.99 IN CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF RENE CLEMENT

And Hope to Die (1972) *** DVD

Director: Rene Clement

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Robert Ryan, Lea Massari, Aldo Ray, Tisa Farrow

135mins Drama French with subtitles

Based on the David Goodis novel “Black Friday”, this is a offbeat arthouse crime caper starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, who has recently triumphed again in Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) some 40 years since he ‘trod the set’ so to speak of this unusual drama. It also stars screen veterans Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray.

After an action-packed entree it morphs into a rather a slow-burning affair, lacking the very element that a crime drama needs: suspense. However, the quality of the leads does make it a watchable experience despite a few potholes and the sublime photography remains in the memory after the credits have rolled. Scored by a hypnotic soundtrack from Francis Lai, And Hope To Die has a lyrical quality that makes up for any shortcomings it has as a crime thriller. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL IN CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF RENE CLEMENT.

LOCO London January at the BFI, Southbank

Whether it’s the roar that greets a great visual gag, the rueful chuckle of emotional truth or the surprised gasp at taboos being shattered, comedy films come alive when we watch them together. For LOCO’s second festival at BFI Southbank and selected cinemas across the capital offering an extraordinary range of original comedies, many of them UK premieres will screen during a jam-packed weekend. The festival will open with a preview of the LFF 2012 hit A Liar’s Autobiography (3D), introduced by Terry Jones, and will close with Robot and Frank (2012). Other attractions include a 50th anniversary screening of The Pink Panther (1963), a focus on women in comedy, a shorts showcase and a Kickstart Your Comedy Career Course.

Partners in Crime DVD

Director: Pascal Thomas

Cast: André Dussollier, Catherine Frot

104mins. French with subtitles Comedy Drama

Prudence and Belisaire Beresford fetch up in a dodgy French health retreat to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy Russian heiress in this well-made and watchable Agatha Christie crime romp directed by Pascal Thomas. It stars André Dussollier (Amélie) and Catherine Frot (The Page Turner) as a sophisticated couple of sleuths who bite off more than they bargained for but never make a meal of things when it comes to solving crime. MT

OUT ON DVD ON 7TH JANUARY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL
1972. A young Jean-louis Trintignant (amour) and Aldo Ray are the standouts of this dark kidnap drama by frances answer to Hitchcock Rene Clement. Based on the david goodis novel Black Friday

Roman Polanski Retrospective at the BFI January and February 2013

Possibly the most notorious and provocative talents of international cinema, Roman Polanski is known for his precision direction and hauntingly moving films that plummet the depths of the human psyche often showcasing the loner, the underdog, the marginalised or the misunderstood. But his protagonists don’t elicit pity: the women are often scheming and the men cold-blooded. Does his work stem from his experiences of an early life of oppression and sadness? Undoubtedly. His films can strongly evoke our feelings but are they ever intimate? Polanski’s interest is in the behaviour of his characters under stress, when they are no longer in comfortable, everyday situations where they can afford to respect the conventional rules and morals of society, a theme that runs through all his thrillers from The Ghost, Carnage and The Pianist to Frantic, The Tenant, Cul de Sac and Bitter Moon.

Unlike many film directors, Polanski doesn’t have favourite actors but surrounds himself with a coterie of the best industry professionals: Cinematographer Pawel Edelman; Composers Krzysztof Komeda and Philippe Sarde and his brother as producer Alain Sarde; Scriptwriters Ronald Harwood and Gérard Brach. His meticulously crafted psycho-dramas are often uncomfortable to watch, drawing the audience into a private world of painful compulsion or twisted psychology: of servant and master, of an unhappy partnership; of a man trounced by his wife or an unhappy partnership or brought down by his own petty insecurities or the system. Apart from his most successfully acclaimed works such as Chinatown, The Pianist or the Rosemary’s Baby there are some niche thrillers that never made it at the box office but nevertheless offer insight into his creative genius in projecting the traumatic and the macabre such as The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Tragedy of Macbeth and the Ninth Gate. He also made a selection of short films during his time as a student at the prestigious Lodz film school in the late fifties

Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant and Repulsion form part of the ‘apartment trilogy’ portraying emotional trauma in social alienation. His forays into edgy psycho-sexual themes in Repulsion, Tess and Bitter Moon tap into the subconscious in a unique way. From early success in pristine black and white with Knife in the Water and Cul de Sac to his more questionable films such as What? (described as an oversexed version of Alice in Wonderland) and The Fearless Vampire Killers, and his recent outings with The Ghost and Carnage and upcoming Venus in Furs (2013); Polanski never fails to move, to provoke and to entertain.

Other features in this Roman Polanski  retrospective are the Academy Award-winning Tess (1979), an adaptation of Hardy’s classic novel (which had been suggested to him by his late wife Sharon Tate), the comedy swashbuckler Pirates (1986), followed closely by the thriller Frantic (1988), starring Harrison Ford as an American in Paris whose wife mysteriously disappears from their hotel room. His later work has shown a great diversity in subject matter and themes, including the revenge drama Death and the Maiden (1995), adapted by Ariel Dorfman from his own play, and the occult drama The Ninth Gate (1999).

But it was The Pianist (Le Pianiste, 2002) that reminded both audiences and critics, once again, of his remarkable talent. The film won awards around the world for the powerful depiction of a Jewish man in hiding from the Nazis and confirmed the importance of his films in the context of world cinema. Polanski continues to make films that explore a darker side of life with The Ghost (2010) and Carnage (2011), his work remaining thought-provoking with great appeal to audiences of all ages.

His latest film, a drama entitled Venus In Fur (2013) features his current wife, Emmanuelle Seigner as an actress who attempts to convince a director to cast her in his upcoming movie. Venus In Fur is due for release in the UK later this year. MT

During January and February 2013 the BFI celebrates Roman Polanski together with a programme of his short Films in a major retrospective that begins on 1 JANUARY 2013 AT BFI SOUTHBANK.

Quartet (2012)

Director: Dustin Hoffman Producer: Finola Dwyer, Stewart Mackinnon

Cast: Tom Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Sheridan Smith, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly

UK 97mins Comedy

Ronald Harwood adapted his own 1999 stage-play of the same name for this big screen outing. A long time in the making, Tom Courtenay originally had the desire to make this film with his long-term friend and compatriot, Albert Finney. However, the project resolutely refused to move forwards until Dustin Hoffman came aboard to direct, quite late on in the project, where most of the leads were already cast. That other inveterate irascible Billy Connolly takes Finney’s part.

Harwood deserves to be both a household name and undoubtedly a National Treasure, alongside Stephen Fry and Sir David Attenborough; his huge career has seen an Oscar and some extraordinary, enduring and diverse scripts, such as The Dresser, The Browning Version, The Pianist and The Diving Bell And The Butterfly.

It is often difficult with all-star casts to divorce the actors from the part enough to enjoy the piece in and of itself; this said Quartet is an enjoyable enough romp, funny and moving, the actors are in fine fettle, stars certainly, but I’m not convinced that I ever believed they were opera singers. There is no doubt however, that this film will have any problem finding an appreciative audience.

As Maggie Smith opined later in the conference, too few films are made for a more mature audience and, that being the case, there is a hungry mob out there who cannot wait to see their own favourites back up on the big screen again. All of the ensemble cast are ex-professional singers and musicians and they obviously still have it, so it is great testament to the film that they are given this opportunity to shine again and let’s hope more films begin to see the advantages of appealing to a more mature audience, both in terms of enjoyment, but also no doubt, returns…AT

Zaytoun (2012) ***

Director: Eran Riklis

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Abdallah El Akal

104mins Drama

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Friendship between an Arab boy and a Jewish soldier breaches the cultural divide in this sadly improbable but painterly portrait of the Arab Israeli conflict.

Set in the rolling beauty of hilly Lebanon in the run-up to the ill-fated Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 it stars Stephen Dorff as Yoni, an Israeli fighter pilot. Coming down in the hillside, he is captured by a group of fighters from the PLO amongst whom is Fahed, a cocky little orphan and refugee whose dream is to return to his birthplace in occupied Palestine.

Their improbable relationship takes root in extreme circumstances as they recognise each other’s strengths: Abdallah El Akal is spunky yet vulnerable as the ‘kickass’ little boy and Stephen Dorff is mellow and masterful as his adversary in performances of such exuberance they transcend the weak script and storyline.

Aided by breathtaking cinematography of its glorious setting, Eran Riklis’s (The Lemon Tree) film delivers a feel good message of eternal hope despite its limitations and the tragic circumstances of its backstory. MT

ZAYTOUN OPENS ON 26TH DECEMBER 2012 AT THE CURZON RENOIR and IS OUT ON DVD 8TH APRIL 2013

Midnight’s Children (2012) *

Director: Deepa Mehta  Script: Salman Rushdie

Cast: Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak, Satya Bhabha, Shahana Goswami, Rajat Kapoor, Seema Biswas, Shriya Saran, Siddharth, Ronit Roy, Rahul Bose, Darsheel Safary, Kulbushan Kharbanda, Soha Ali Khan, Anita Majumdar, Zaib Shaikh, Anshikaa Shrivastava, Purav Bhandare, Samrat Chakrabarti, Rakhi Kumari, Dibyendu Bhattacharyya, Harish Khanna, Charles Dance

Canada/UK 137mins 2012 Drama

Spanning decades and generations, celebrated filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s highly anticipated adaptation of Midnight’s Children By Salman Rushdie.

Midnight’s Children follows the destinies of two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947, the very moment that India won its independence from Great Britain and a moment when children born on the cusp of this historic occasion are endowed with strange, magical abilities.

Rushdie is without doubt a quite brilliant writer: Satanic Verses; Haroun And The Sea Of Stories and this, winner not only of the Booker Prize, but the Booker of Bookers. At this juncture though, I would humbly submit that novel writing and screenplay writing are two very different skills and this film, running exceedingly long at well over two hours, falls down on not one but two crucial areas: the screenplay and the direction.

Ordinarily, a screenplay writer is suborned to adapt any given novel and for very good reason. Script writing is a mystical art, written to the beat of a different drum – that of a visual medium, not a literary one. So where one’s imagination can take flight when reading prose in a novel, something very different is required to pinpoint and then transpose what works into the visual feat that is film.

The novel is indeed a treat. Supremely imaginative, humorous, moving… the characters leap off the page. In comparison, the script is leaden and somewhere along the way managed to lose all of the humour that buoyed the novel so well.

Accordingly, the actors also never feel comfortable; a combination one suspects of the stilted dialogue which is at times painfully obvious and unnaturally over-descriptive. The direction seldom has the expanse of a film, nor any sense of authenticity. There’s simply not enough consideration made by the script for the ease with which a story can be told visually. The characters don’t live and breathe convincingly and so set-ups and reactions remain contrived.

Employing a scriptwriter also means that another approach is brought into the equation; one that is not married to either ideas or to sentiment, but can hopefully break a literary work dispassionately into its constituent parts and then begin the process of putting it all back together in a coherent visual fashion.

A tome so massive and spanning so much, not only in terms of chronology but also in terms of ideas, was always going to come unstuck when rammed into such a (comparatively) short running time. Imagine trying to do similar with ‘A Suitable Boy’.

Midnight’s Children might perhaps have really benefitted from being adapted into a TV series where the three generations, the full character arcs and the myriad plotlines could have been far better explored. It is interesting to note that this is Rushdie’s first foray into screenplay writing and his next venture Next People, is indeed a TV series.

On the plus side, there is a little of the ‘exotic’ beauty that one might hope for in a tale from the subcontinent: the colours, the cossies and the heat. But it certainly isn’t enough to rescue this ponderous and unconvincing adaptation from the DVD bargain bucket section of the supermarket in a few months time. An opportunity squandered then, but do, absolutely, read the book.  AT

SHOWING AT CINEWORLD, CURZON, VUE, RITZY AND ODEON CINEMAS FROM 26TH DECEMBER 2013

Hors Satan (2012) Behind Satan ***

Director/Writer: Bruno Dumont

Cast: David Dewaele, Alexandra Lematre

110mins French drama with subtitles

In the picturesque rolling seascape of Pas de Calais, a stranger called Guy (David Dewaele) wanders mysteriously around praying and staring out to sea: is he a saint or a serial killer? Well what do you expect from Bruno Dumont, the French filmmaker and philosopher who brought us Hadewijch, Humanite and La Vie de Jesus and who shrouds his films in an air of mystery that either appeals or irritates but always haunts the filmgoer.

Certainly there are some violent incidents puncturing the overall tone of bucolic serenity here and and some subtly nuanced turns from the nameless guy and a punkish girl (Alexandra Lematre) who follows him around and gives him food parcels. They walk purposefully down pathways and look into each others’ eyes: is this the second coming? Patiently we wait for the miracle to happen.

Bruno Dumant wants us to use his work as a canvas on which to project our own spirituality and thoughts but after watching this well made arthouse poser, you come away with more questions than answers. MT

Boxing Day (2012) ****

Director: Bernard Rose

Cast: Danny Huston, Matthew Jacobs, Lisa Enos, Jo Farkas

84mins US

‘Some roads aren’t meant to be travelled alone’

Nothing will prepare you for the outcome of this cracking thriller, an ingenious modern take on Tolstoy’s 1895 novella ‘Master and Man’. Set in a wintry Colorado on the day after Christmas, it has plenty of themes to kick around in the snow: family breakdown, the global housing crash and the folly of social convention are but afew. Director Bernard Rose sticks closely to the original work with the script, the dialogue being largely an improvised affair of natural banter from the leads who are in real life close buddies.

Essentially a two-hander, it stars Bernard Rose’s regular lead Danny Huston and newcomer Matthew Jacobs (who wrote the screenplay to Paper House), and completes the trilogy of his Tolstoy project along with The Kreuzer Sonata and Ivansxtc).

Huston gives a powerful performance as a debt-ridden property developer who sets out on a Boxing Day recky to make a killing in the holiday doldrums. Matthew Jacobs is his klutzy hired chauffeur who is struggling with personal issues and the controls of his top of range Merc.

What starts as a road movie with comedy overtones soon becomes something surprisingly sinister. These oddballs aren’t likeable or laudable but Rose makes them believable: Basil is a condescending workaholic neglectful of his wife and family, Nick is a reformed alcoholic who’s failed at driving and marriage, but who’s nobody’s fool in the long run. Their differing strengths and weaknesses are skillfully drawn and well played out in this shrewd and compelling adaptation. MT

BOXING DAY OPENS ON 21ST DECEMBER 2012 AT CURZON CINEMAS – CHECK OUR LISTINGS SECTION FOR EXACT TIMINGS.

McCullin (2012) *****

Director: David Morris, Jacqui Morris
Producer: Jacqui Morris
Cast: Don McCullin

93mins Documentary

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As a young man he delighted in the excitement of action and covered most of the world’s conflicts from the Congo, Lebanon, Biafra, Vietnam (fifteen times) and Northern Ireland. His dedication and sensitivity to the subjects he photographed made him a household name by the Seventies.

Quite aside from the extraordinary catalogue of photographs that we are here privy to, it’s the unfolding of one man’s very personal journey as much as the stories behind the pictures that makes this film so moving. Some of the photos are almost impossible to look at such is their power. And it’s Don McCullin’s facing of himself through his subject matter, mostly of men, women and children dying in the most desperate of circumstances, that is so captivating.

He attempts to explain why he documented what he filmed and the times and reasons that he did not: that he felt that he was doing a service to humanity by telling stories that could only be told by photographing them and sending them back to the magazine. He fervently hoped they would make maximum impact after Sunday breakfast back home in Blighty. But he was never comfortable, always questioning both his own ethic and also what was suitable and what was not.

There are also some simply joyous photographs of England in the Fifties, a lost age captured and preserved here in a raw and real way. McCullin always endeavoured to empathise with his subjects; this was the source of his initial breakout success and he adhered to it for the rest of his professional career, literally going into war zones with soldiers and mercenaries alike to get the photo verité rather than dabbling at the edges. This methodology cost him dear.

David and Jacqui Morris have triumphed with this documentary, sensibly retaining an almost invisible profile, content just to let the story tell itself. Yesterday’s news this definitely ain’t. You cannot fail to be moved. AT

West of Memphis (2012) ****

Director: Amy Berg

Writers: Amy Berg, Billy McMillin

Producers: Damien Echols, Lorri Davis, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh

Score: Nick Cave

146mins Crime Documentary

A big hit at Sundance this year, the West of Memphis story was so ‘fresh off the press’ with some of the real life interviews having taken place just days before its opening at the festival’s 2012.

Amy Berg’s compelling documentary tells of the Memphis 3: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley who were eventually freed in August 2011 after serving nearly 20 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit but remain nevertheless guilty of in the eyes of the Law and will never be fully declared innocent.

Berg has assembled a dazzling array of interviews, timelines, and news footage together with graphic photos and videos from the crime scene to describe how three young boys were murdered on the night of May 5th 1993, and how the Memphis were convicted erroneously of their crime and the twists and turns that finally lead to their release from prison due to a crowd-sourced campaign led by Damien Echols’ wife Lorri Davis (they married whilst he was in jail) and support of well-known personalities including filmmaker Peter Jackson, Pam Hobbs, whose husband Terry who is now seen as the chief suspect, and an upswell of public opinion. It’s a fascinating insight into the outrageous workings of the criminal justice system and an testament to a story of injustice that looks like it will never be put to rights. MT

NOW OUT ON DVD

Dance Hall (1950) ****

Director: Charles Crichton
Producer: E.V.H Emmett
Script: Diana Morgan, E.V.H. Emmett, Alexander Mackendrick

Cast:Natasha Parry, Petual Clark, Diana Dors, Donald Houston, Bonar Colleano, Jane Hylton, Sydney Tafler

UK **** 1950 80mins Drama

A post-war picture from the Ealing stables, this is a somewhat complicated film to judge without first considering the times in which this film was made. At the period of its release, critics judged it harshly, the resulting box office was poor and even the director didn’t think much of it.

Now, with a remastered DVD release of the film, a fresh appraisal is possible, bringing with it a clearer understanding of the politics and climate of the time. Very often films that are poorly received can be the victim more of circumstance than actually being substandard in themselves. We learn from the ‘Making Of’ extras on the DVD that when the film first came out, it was a very male dominated industry and indeed, time. This meant that the critics were all male, so a film centring on the lives of women was never going either to appeal, or be well received by them.

Secondly, Crichton, a very experienced director who shot Hue & Cry amongst others, had no enthusiasm to make it, but the studio made him. They weren’t about to let a woman direct a film, even though it was for the most part written by a woman, Diana Morgan. That other huge name of the time, Mackendrick was also inbetween projects, so was brought aboard to finesse but the original concept and driving force behind it was one of the studios top writers, Morgan.

So what we have now is quite a forward thinking, if not revolutionary piece; a post-war film which centres on what was important not to the men, not even to ‘society’, but to the working class women of the time; the tension between a life of married domesticity with its implicit respectability, against one of fun and desire centred around the glamour and excitement of the dance halls, so widespread in the 1940’s and 50’s.

If nothing else, Dance Hall is both a revealing and captivating document of the times, in terms of the social environment, but also dance, etiquette, dress, work and even home life. It opens on a noisy workshop filled wall-to-wall, row upon row with metal lathes, all of them operated by women. You might have to go all the way to India to find that now.

In summation, the film has dated, but dated well in these respects. Although too far ahead of its time, it is also melodramatic and it’s interesting to see how tastes have changed in the intervening time in terms of what was accepted as ‘good acting’. That’s not to say it is bad, it’s just very different and jars with today’s sensibilities. There are also some interesting turns by a great young cast, before they rose to fame: like Diana Dors and Petula Clark.

I would also wonder, despite the intervening 62 years, whether things have really changed that much. Young women after all are still at work whilst thinking only of the whistle at 5pm, when they can then clock-off, rush home, change into their glad-rags and go and shake their booty on a dancefloor. Then maybe, just maybe, have a drink at the bar with some young stallion, be he a player or a keeper…

As a drama of interest to me, I give it ***. As a document of the times *****. AT

DANCE HALL IS AT THE BFI, SOUTHBANK ON 16TH and 22nd DECEMBER 2012 OUT ON DVD FROM 21ST JANUARY 2013 COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL.

Sundance 2013 Film Festival

So, the Sundance Institute has announced the films selected for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions and the out-of-competition strand of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival which kicks off from January 17-27 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Park City will be bursting at the seams with 113 feature-length films selected this year, representing 32 countries and including 51 first-time filmmakers, 27 of which are in competition. There were 4,044 feature-length films submitted, of these, 2,070 were from the U.S. and 1,974 were international. 98 feature films at the Festival will be World Premieres. A selection of films from the 2013 Festival will also be presented at Sundance London.

As with all festivals, it’s really just impossible to say which films will shine and which will prove smoke and mirrors. So often the hype around a title proves totally unwarranted upon screening and, historically, studios and production companies alike have lost small fortunes on the promise of a Sundance hit, only to be slapped somewhat rudely by reality once the festival fever has subsided. One thing for sure though, there will always be that unexpected gem to be found and I have to say, more than ever this time around, the documentary strand is looking particularly hot this January.

If it’s named talent you’re after, you could do worse than Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Nate Parker and Keith Carradine in ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’. Dean Stockwell is in ‘C.O.G’. Kaya Scodelario, Jessica Biel and Alfred Molina in Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes. Our own Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C Hall and Elizabeth Olsen come together in another Kerouac adaptation, Kill Your Darlings. Kristen Bell stars in The Lifeguard and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Spectacular Now.

Year on year, documentaries have been making unexpected progress in the cinema, with breakout sleeper hits like Searching For Sugarman making impressive numbers at the box office. Sundance 2013 boasts 16 American documentary world premieres.

Of the US selection, ‘Dirty Wars’, ‘Inequality For All’, ‘Blood Brother’, ‘God Loves Uganda’, ‘Manhunt’ and ‘Valentine Road’ all look worth the fee for starters. Click through 2013 Sundance Film Festival for more details on all these titles.

‘Pussy Riot’, ‘Salma’, ‘A River Changes Course’, ‘Fallen City’, ‘The Square’ and ‘Fire In The Blood’ all interesting topics from the Rest of the World Docs section. UK’s ‘The Stuart Hall Project’ may garner unexpected attention with recent events in the news concerning the titular broadcaster.

The International fiction segment looks impossible to fathom just yet, but my interest was piqued by ‘What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love’, an Indonesian offering described as ‘exploring ‘the odds of love and deception among the blind, the deaf and the unlucky sighted people at a high school for the visually impaired’. What’s not to like? AT

Please read our AWARDS section for the result of SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2013
http://www.sundance-london.com/news/sundance-film-festival-films-announced

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Dir: Frank Capra | Script: Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra | Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H.B. Warner, Frank Albertson | USA 1946 130mins Comedy Drama

History might argue this was not his finest film, as Capra bestrode the 1930’s like a colossus, previously winning Best Director at the Academy Awards no less than three times, but going away empty handed from this one, despite five nominations. Indeed, it was perceived as something of a flop upon its release, making a loss at the box office and marking the end of an extraordinary run of hit films and indeed an era, for Frank Capra. What however cannot be argued now, is the nascent and evergreen popularity of It’s A Wonderful Life for filmgoers now.

Now an Christmas chestnut, it is only since the early Seventies, when Wonderful Life fell into the public domain, that Capra’s unerring ability to portray emotional truth coupled with his absolute mastery of filmmaking as a craft enabled it at last to finally find its audience.

Quite aside from it being a staple Christmas movie and epitomising all that America stands for, what underlies is a Capra standard through and through containing surprisingly dark undertones for the day: A man George Bailey decides his life isn’t worth living seriously and contemplates suicide but his guardian angel then leads him through what life in his home town of Bedford Falls would have been like if he hadn’t existed. Tying this story in with the concept that any one person can effect change for the better in the face of overwhelming odds, and you have both a Capra classic and the recipe for some serious ‘feelgood’.

In interview, Capra stated that he was against: “mass entertainment, mass production, mass education, mass everything. Especially mass man. I was fighting for, in a sense, the preservation of the liberty of the individual person against the mass.”

Capra was born in Sicily in 1897 and came over to America penniless, in the stinking bowels of a ship at the tender age of six. He worked very hard, under terrible privation for many years; his father dying in a dreadful factory accident when he was just 15. But he also studied hard against the wishes of his parents, it must be said, but made good and then worked as writer, as an editor and even as an extra on many films, before finally getting a go at directing. He described filmmaking as akin to drug addiction; once it was in your bloodstream…that was it.

And a brilliant filmmaker he was. He made some extraordinary documentaries during the war and a string of feature hits, working with the biggest actors of the day, from Frank Sinatra to Clarke Gable, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck and of course the great Jimmy Stewart. But he was also directly responsible for dragging the medium of film forward; just as the silent era was ending, he was changing the way films were conceived and shot, jumping characters in and out of scenes instead of waiting for them to walk in and out of rooms. Of overlapping dialogue to make it feel both more natural, but also picking up the pace of storytelling and again, moving away from the staged play. The Directors Guild of America voted him a lifetime membership in 1941 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1959.

Capra will always have his detractors; those that saw his brand of filmmaking too saccharine, but as he saw it, life was tough and cinema was the perfect place for escaping, if only for a short while. And it was by his focusing on the emotional and moral issues his protagonists faced; conflict between cynicism and the protagonist’s faith or idealism, that has made this film in particular endure for so long with audiences. Well, that and Jimmy Stewart.

In short, be unmoved by this film and there has to be something wrong with you. AT

NOW ON

False Trail (2012) ****

Director: Kjell Sundvall
Script: Björn Carlström, Stefan Thunberg
Producer: Björn Carlström, Per Janerus, Peter Possne
Cast: Rolf Lassgård, Peter Stormare, Annika Nordin, Kim Tjernström, Eero Milonoff, Johan Paulsen

Sweden 129mins 2011 Crime Thriller

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This is the sequel to director Kjell Sunvall’s, huge 1996 Swedish hit ‘Jägarna’, concerning a Stockholm-based Detective heading out to the boondocks to solve a local crime. When quizzed, Producer Possne said it took 16 years to arrive at a script good enough for Lassgård to feel he could reprise his role as Stockholm CID and that Kjell Sundvall was also prepared to direct.

Here, Peter Stormare is also enticed back to his native Sweden to do what he does best; play an intense, brooding man, this time second in command to the local police force in the far North of Sweden where a girl from the local community has gone missing, foul play suspected.

As with the original Jägarna, help from outside the community is sought by Police Chief Mats, played by Johan Paulsen and Lassgård’s Erik Bäckstrom is the chosen one; a man who escaped from those parts, a long time ago… In the movies, it would seem that all small rural communities have their closely guarded secrets and this one proves to be no different.

False Trail has a great cast throughout. The two leads are terrific, but special mentions also need to go out to Kim Tjerström as the young Peter and Eero Milonoff as Jari Lipponen. Films can stand or fall on their supporting cast, who are often asked to produce compelling performances within very few scenes and these two are a great example of how it’s done.

Filmed in Överkalix, Norrbottens län, Northern Sweden, (the birthplace of director Sundvall), the landscape is truly breathtaking and, although we get precious few glimpses of it, still it serves as a majestic backdrop to the main dish.

As crime thrillers go, it’s certainly above par although I can’t help feeling it wasn’t served as well as it could have been by the title. The two leads really take to their roles with relish, Sundvall keeps the pot boiling and the plot rolling along at such a lick that it feels far shorter than its two hours + runtime. AT

FALSE TRAIL OPENS ON 14TH DECEMBER 2012 AT BLUEWATER, THE ICA AND VARIOUS SCREENS IN THE UK AND ON DVD AND BLU-RAY ON 28 JANUARY 2013

Doris Day Season at the BFI 2012

Doris Day is still rocking at 90 and will forever be remembered for her ‘golden girl next door’ image. Oscar Levant starred with her in It’s Magic, aka Romance on the High Seas” and joked: “I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin”. Nevertheless she starred in 39 films, married three times and is the number one female star of all time at the box-office. Her screen debut in 1948 was the highly acclaimed romcom It’s Magic directed by Michael Curtiz who claimed she was a natural behind the camera and she went on giving her best until Move Over Darling in 1963.

To celebrate the BFI are offering a season of 25 screenings, talks and events surrounding this wonderful and much-loved talent throughout the month of December 2012.

A Christmas Tale (2008) Un Conte De Noel ***

Director: Arnaud Desplechin

Cast: Catherine Denueve, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupard, Chiara Mastroianni

Cert 15 150 mins French with subtitles

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Don’t’ expect cosy carols round the tree and a starry-eyed Christmas get-together. But if you’re up for a warts-an-all story of dysfunctional family; then this one’s for you. Catherine Deneuve is the cool matriarch Junon, inviting the family back for the holidays. But it’s not because she wants them all home. The reason is far more sinister and more selfish.

Smoking her way elegantly through the part she’s a perfect picture of emotional detachment and possibly the key to why her children are all so screwed up. The fun and games will be to guess who is the most devoted of her breed. Family members gradually bring their lives, loves and sad secrets to the party in rain-soaked Roubaix. Eldest son Henri (Matthiew Almaric) is a bankrupt alcoholic who has fallen out with his playwrite sister, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny). She is a depressive with a problem son and an unreliable husband. Their younger brother Ivan and his seductive wife Sylvie (Chiara Mastroianni) have two challenging boys but seem to be happy until we discover that she is keen on cousin Simon who secretly lusts after her and is wasting his life as a painter. Quite a normal family get together then. Jean-Paul Roussillon is the wise old pater familias, Abel, who dotes on them all and offers plenty of advice, lashings of red wine and the odd ‘coup de champagne’ in this well-observed and enjoyable drama that is probably more similar to most people’s family Christmas at the end of the day. MT

QUARTET Press Conference at the 56th London Film Festival 2012

Quartet Conference Maggie Smith (MS), Dustin Hoffman (DH), Tom Courtenay (TC), Pauline Collins (PC), Billy Connolly (BC), Sheridan Smith (SS).

Tom and Dustin I want to talk to you about the origins of the movie because we are not just talking about Ronnie Harwood’s play but also about a documentary that I was fascinated to hear was one of the inspirations.

TC I have to keep reminding Dustin that this whole thing was my idea – it is not that he is resentful of me he is just forgetful. Seven or eight years ago, I asked Ronnie Harwood if he fancied the idea of making a screenplay of his play Quartet, I had seen it some years before I remembered how moving it was at the end. He was very excited and BBC Film commissioned a screenplay and nothing happened until Dustin came along.

DH I just wanted to back up what Tom and Albert Finney met Ron Harwood on The Dresser… that was how it started. The documentary- The Kiss… Do you mind if I take my coat off? I’m going through the menopause. [laughter] Just a few flashes. It’s a wonderful documentary and it’s called Tosca’s Kiss and er… Ronnie Harwood told me about it when I asked him what the genesis was and it was made in 1983 and Verdi, rich and successful, decided to build a mansion for himself and he stipulated that when he died, musicians and singers, because of course, he knew so many, playing at the Scala and many were, you know, poor… could stay there and you can find it, it’s called Tosca’s Kiss. And it’s about these retired opera singers living at a villa in Milan, which still exists.

And you gave this film to some of your cast to see first?

DH I told them all to see it and I think they all ignored me.

MS: Certainly not! It’s a very moving documentary and then this is terrific, ‘cos if Dustin is on this wavelength, then we should be safe.

Maggie Smith, first of all are you aware that there has been a sandwich named after you?

MS: Oh, God. Ham?! [Laughter] Where is this? In Venice.

Many sandwiches are named after famous actors and the vegetarian one is named ‘Maggie Smith’.

MS It’s a vegetarian one? Well, that’s kind of a relief, I suppose.

Haven’t you been resentful of the fact that you’ve been asked to play aging women all of the time? Even thirty-five years ago, California Suite comes to mind…

MS I’m just glad to get any role. The fact that they’re all Ninety is…. [laughter] It started because… it was Hook that started it.. I think it was Peggy Ashcroft couldn’t do it and somebody was asked ‘how old was I, and would I be able to do the part?’ and the person replied -92, Very quickly and so I’ve been stuck ever since, but I’m actually very grateful.

DH I’d like to throw in that… Maggie is being very modest here. But she has been offered quite a few younger parts turned down a film a month before, called My Week With Marilyn [laughter].

It’s a really charming film, but British and American sensibilities are very different and I wondered how the English actors working with an American director and how Dustin Hoffman found it working with our Grand British Thespians.?

PC- Dustin Hoffman is a dynamo and a darling and both of those things helped to make the atmosphere of this film. He’s one of the kindest and most inspiring directors that I’ve worked for, because he understand how actors work- because he is one. I found him really easy to…

we’ve heard stories that he gives directors a hard time. Is that true?

DH Yes. [laughter]

PC Well, maybe now he knows how it feels like. The culture thing… I would sometimes say to Dustin ‘ you don’t really know what we’re talking about, wouldn’t I?

DH Yes.

PC And he would say ‘tell, me tell me, tell me what I’m doing wrong’, so I loved the lack of hubris in the man. There was one thing he didn’t understand, I said ‘unlike Maggie, I’m always below stairs’, I explained to Dustin, when I tried to talk my way out of the part and he said after this, I wouldn’t be, thinking I was meaning below the title, which I have been many times, but I think we begin to understand each other a bit more now.

Billy `Connolly, because we haven’t heard from you..

BC I forget the question! [laughter]

What was he like as a director?

BC: A nightmare. [laughter] There were tantrums, long silences. Inappropriate touching. You know the kind of thing. It was excellent. I’ll tell you…

DH –In terms of the touching.. [laughter]

BC He’s an excellent toucher! The thing I like best about him. I don’t crave praise. I’ve had enough in my life to be getting along with, but it’s sometimes nice to be told you’re doing ok- and he’s very good at that.

PC Absolutely.

TC Can I do an impersonation when it was a good take? ‘ [American accent] Ah, Gorgeous- gorgeous fuckin’ take. That’s in the movie!’

BC -Nothing like me! Sheridan, we’ve not heard from you at all…. Your reactions to working with someone like Dustin Hoffman..?

SS Overwhelming. Just to be part of the film has been an absolute honour for me. I mean just to be on set with all of these amazing people, it was difficult not to curtsey every day… and I just was a sponge every day and tried to take it all in.

Why did you decide to take a chance as a director and what did you like the most about this story of opera artists?

DH Because a long time ago, I decided to direct and that was 40 years ago and sometimes it take s a long time to get around to doing something and that’s the truthful answer.

Billy Connolly, I was wondering whether you were looking forward to an old age, where you could say exactly what you wanted to say.

BC I’m there!

And also if you had said anything where you thought you were inappropriate.

BC I’ve been accused of being inappropriate from day one. And I think it’s one of the joys of getting older you can say exactly what you want to say as you please. There’s not much to add to that. I’ve pretty much said everything I’ve wanted to say all my life and it’s done me no harm at all. You know there’s something I really can’t stand, you know… it’s when somebody says ‘what do you think of so and so?’ and I say ‘oh, I think he’s an arsehole’ and they say ‘oh, come on, speak your mind’. You know, that shitty thing that people say. As if speaking your mind was actually something… weird… I think, if more people spoke their mind, we’d be in much better shape, so yeah, that kind of answers it, I think. I wasn’t just pretending to be old.

DH you know… we all know that these press conferences you take whatever’s said with a grain of salt, because whenever you ask an actor how they liked another actor- or the director and they just say- ‘…an asshole’. You don’t really hear that much. [beat] But it’s true! [laughter]

Sheridan, you’ve alluded to being thrown in the deep end here you said soaking these things up like a sponge. What did these people teach you on the set? What did you go away with?

DH Groping [laughter]

SS So much, the film is so special. All the cast is amazing retired opera singers and retired musicians and inbetween scenes they would come in and there’d be a great pianist and he’d just get on the piano… and the stories, there’ d be great stories that they told me… so I just had to pinch myself every day… it’s just been an incredible opportunity.

Dustin, you once said that filmmaking was some kind of magic. Did you feel the same way being a director? Getting everyone together, that it’s very special… do you feel that being a director?

DH well, this is the first time I’ve directed and I feel this again… we all felt it on this movie. Crew and cast. You’re never going to – no one in the middle of a movie says ‘this is going to be a great movie’, you know, Casablanca, they ended up with the B-list cast on that… so you know, you’re always in a tunnel, you know, you can’t see the end, but there’s something that took place on this movie where -once we had decided that we were going to use real people… real retired opera singers, real retired musicians- and some of these people- the phone hadn’t rung for them for 20-30-40 years- and they can deliver. The trumpet player Ronnie Hughes, he’s still got his chops still, today. But for some strange reason, the culture doesn’t call him, because he’s 83 years old and these people are in their 70’s and 80’s and 90’s and playing with such verve every day and we’d be doing these 10-12 hour days and they still could do it and that made it a really special occasion for us all to do; it wasn’t a Job for the crew after a couple of days, [the shoot had] another tone.

Can I ask Tom Courtenay, having been with the project- the film- for so long, how did it turn out? Did it come out the way you imagined it, all those years ago, having wanted to play Reggie for so long?

TC No well, it moved on, after so long… I mean Dustin asked [writer] Ronnie if he could make some changes and one of them, in the play, they had fallen out because Reggie was impotent and Dustin didn’t like that so he changed it, so… a big change for me and it was fun being the juvenile lead, actually [laughter] I never ever had so much make-up and Dustin was most particular [indicating his neck] ‘this line under here, cover with a scarf’. And I would check our Billy every morning to make sure that he had no… he couldn’t have the shading [under the chin] Dustin was determined that I look as handsome as possible and I am very grateful to him. Thank you very much Dustin. [laughter]

DH He is.

PC Handsome, or grateful?

DH Both! [laughter]

Earlier this year a film about ageing won the Cannes film festival. Recently we’ve had The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with Dame Maggie being successful and now this. I wonder is there a new genre of films of older people’s experiences and Should there be many more films about this sort of subject matter?

MS I think -playing the usual age- I think it’s because a lot of grown ups would like films for grown ups and about grown ups. It seems to me there s a sort of change into what audiences want to see I can only hope that’s correct because there’s alot of people of my age around now. we kind of outnumber the others, so that’s why. I don’t think film s about elderly people have been made very much. I mean there have been I can think of Driving Miss Daisy and Cocoon and but they always seem to be very successful, so it’s a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five years old. Was there much ad-libbing when it came to jokes and was there much corpsing during the takes?

MS yes..

PC there’s lots of ‘impro’ on the dialogue. Which I absolutely love and Dustin gives us free rein on that and I think it’s… I’ve learned so much on this because I came to film very late- not ‘til I was fifty. I’ve learned so much from this man and that what you start with this script and not every writer will want to hear this, but a script is a basis… it’s not the end and sometimes things will happen during the process which take you down a more exciting avenue and he always let us do that. I mean… didn’t he? Guys? [short silence] Nobody agrees with me… Billy- was it freewheeling, to some extent?

BC Yeah, it was openly encouraged and it was a very good idea. TC there was one time though, while we were waiting to go on and um.. Billy did it awfully well, but in his own words and Dustin would come round and say ‘Too lonnngggg Billy, Tooo lonnngggg.’ [laughter]

BC They took one of my best ad libs out. We were… talkin’ to the editor there and…

DH Let me just set it up for you Billy then you can say it. He’s upset. Reggie’s upset because they are doing his rap thing with the kids Jean is there watching he leaves and of course Wilf goes out and finds him out in the wilderness cos he knows he’s going to be put there. And Reggie is just standing there and in the script it just says that a young deer -a doe- is there and he’s looking at it, but we are a low budget movie and it didn’t look right, so we scrubbed it… but when we filmed it and it was there, Wilf comes up to Reggie and says-

BC Do you think it knows it’s delicious? [laughter]

DH It’s a good line! Dustin you had a quote a Billy Wilder quote that kind of fired you up… an inspirational quote… DH Yes, there were a few things that went into it you know, doing something -you are trying to be your audience at the same time. When you hear that it’s about retired opera singers ‘oh, maybe I’ll wait for it to come to DVD or something’ you’re not rushing off to see it. And I knew that we had a location and that was to keep an energy in it. In fact, I asked alot of the cast to look at His Girl Friday, a Howard Hawks film… Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, they talk over each other and there’s great energy and I wanted t have energy here. So, Billy Wilder… Volker Schlondorff got Wilder to agree to these kinds of conversations and he said to Billy Wilder, ‘what’s on your mind?’ And… I’m a fan of Billy Wilder and he said ‘if you’re going to try to tell the truth to the audience, you’d better be funny, or they’ll kill you.’ And I haven’t forgotten that.

Dustin, despite the films you’ve been in over the years,., this film feels very British.. .since it’s based on a British play and a British cast. Is that intentional?

DH well, no it… well, I had to. You know. I just finished a film called Last Chance Harvey, a few years ago and I became friends with (cinematographer) John… John de borman, is it?… De Gorman (oh, it starts!) [laughter] it’s amazing isn’t it? You gotta love getting old, don’t you? It just jumbles up the world in the most amazing way. And after the film, we would talk about shots and he would say ‘you should direct!’ Finola Dwyer the producer of a film he’d just done, called An Education had just sent him a script and they had a director- the director fell out- and he asked me to read it and I read it and I jumped in. Sometimes it just… you know… it turns out that way. .

Where was this film shot?

DH In Germany. [laughter] Just kidding. Was it Buckinghamshire?

TC Yes, it was.

DH …Buckinghamshire… it took an hour to get there every day. And Maggie, because she’s such a diva, made sure she lived in a house no more than ten minutes away [laughter]. MS I’m just trying to remember where I did stay….

Notoriously, people often have to turn up and do their stuff pretty immediately, often without knowing really whom they are working with. Was there any rehearsal time. Did you get a chance to bond on this movie before you actually started shooting?

DH Let me say, right at the beginning, I came on board this movie right after a director left and Tom Courtenay had talks with Ron Harwood about making the movie and Tom and Albert Finney had been friends since the start of their careers and had a 40-odd year friendship with each other and with Mr Harwood. So when I came on it Albert, Tom and Maggie were in the cast. And then Albert wasn’t up for it and had to withdraw. The stars, the only ones I cast, were Billy and Pauline and…

PC Thankyou!

DH …I was in Los Angeles working and alot of this took place on the telephone. I had met Maggie just once. I had come backstage, which I am usually loathe to do, as actors just want to get home, but after I saw Three Tall Women…

MS In which I was 93… [laughter] DH Yes! And I thought it was a great character job because usually she’s 28, and er… so we talked on the phone and introduced ourselves to each other… and because we should ask good actors whom they think is right for the part I said to her well, who do you think and Maggie immediately said Pauline Collins. Now I didn’t know Pauline Collins but I saw Shirley Valentine and then another film… what was it..? A Woody Allen film…

PC You’ll See A Tall Dark Stranger.

DH No…

PC You Will MEET A Tall Dark Stranger.

DH No, it wasn’t that.

PC Yes it was!

DH ok. Is that where you played a psychic?

PH Yes…! Oh, it was? Ok…. She was wonderful as the psychic in that, you must see her performance. So I said to her on the phone, ‘the dialogue in that seemed improvised’. She said ‘it was. Every word of it.’ I said ‘with Woody Allen?!’ She said ‘yes…he said- say whatever you want’.

PC He did…

DH and so that’s how I came into it… I ‘lucked out’, as they say in America. Does that answer the question? I forget the question too… I just have to tell you that we all loathe these press junkets and yet, when we get here, we LOVE them. We want it to go on all day. Except -and I haven’t asked all of them, but the first or second thing we realised when we sat down is ‘why the fuck wasn’t it a full house?! [laughter]

PC It’s a good house. Mr Hoffman, how did you find it moving from acting to directing and what did you draw on from working with other directors previously?

DH you know well, 45 odd years of doing it. So all of us we pile up the things we like about directors doing it, and the things we Don’t like about directors and sometimes we are very similar. And one thing you have to be aware of when you come on set and you see a director standing there and mouthing all the words while the scene is going on, it’s usually a Very Bad Sign… because it means the director has already shot the scene in his head, he knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and usually those people don’t even like actors and they cant wait ‘til they get in the cutting room and they- directors- kind of break down into categories. Directors usually either like to be surprised, or some directors abhor to be surprised and actors learn that very early on. And as actors we all direct as we act, every one of us. You know, and we are like convicts you know, all talkin’ out of the side of our mouths, you know, to each other, saying ‘look out, here comes the screw’ And we’re like that during takes, actors, ‘what do you think- The director wanted me to do it really loud, but I think…’ ‘well don’t do it…’ ‘sshh!! Here comes the screw!’ [laughter] That’s what we do. And, you know why? You have to protect yourself. Everyone with half a brain who does movies year after year after year, learn they have to protect themselves because it’s a bastard art-form for us. We’re not allowed in the cutting room. That’s extraordinary. So, when the director is asking for certain colours, certain nuances and we feel that they’re phoney, but we do it because the director asks for it, that’s the one they pick in the cutting room I contend that when you se a movie with bad acting, don’t blame the actor. Blame those guys that sit in the cutting room, because they choose the take. On behalf of everyone here present thank you very much for being here with us and congratulations for a magnificent piece of work I guess my question is on behalf of all the young performers who have been inspired by the collection of your luminous works, is there any one particular piece of advice that you would offer them? Sheridan?

SS There was one moment I remember on set and I was so nervous and Dustin took me to one side and said the clothes are the character, but all you need to do is think about how amazing these actors are around you and that was really good advice for my character, thinking of them all as amazing opera singers, so that was really useful advice. Billy Connolly…

BC I’ve no idea. Get on with it. Learn your words and avoid the furniture. Tom…

TC Get Dustin to direct it… and this was Dustin’s key bit of advice he used to say ‘Do nothing, do nothing. In a movie, like this (frames his face with his hands) nothing is something…’ Maggie Smith…

MS try not to cry too much. [laughter] because it can be pretty heart-breaking. Pretty hard. Pauline Collins…

PC I have a couple of member of the family- young people who are in the profession and my advice to them always, whenever I see them, is wear more blusher. And it works. Thank you very much for attending and thank you very much, our guests. [Applause]

THIS WAS RECORDED DURING THE PRESS CONFERENCE FOR QUARTET (2012) ATH THE 56TH LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2012

Love Crime (2010) **

Director/Writer: Alain Corneau

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier,

French with subtitles

104mins Thriller

Thomas Middleton declared ‘Women Beware Women” in his Jacobian tragedy of 1657. And Alain Corneau once again proves that there’s nowhere as competitive as the workplace for women and their own sex.

In his final film, he takes this theme and explores it to the full using the provocative chemistry of Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier as his leads in a highly charged ‘erotic’ thriller.

It’s a well-judged casting: the coquettish Ludivine Sagnier as Isabelle in a powerplay with Kristin Scott Thomas’s experienced older woman. After a titillating opening sequence you wonder if this is a lesbian arrangement? No, it soon emerges that these two feisty females are boss and protege in a powerplay that plays out in the boardroom of a French multinational where sexual competition seems less important to them than a coveted New York job. And although Corneau and Carter’s script lacks believability, it’s held together by his lusty leading ladies but eventually loses steam. No matter how manipulative Ludivine Sagnier’s methods are Kristin Scott Thomas’s acting skills were always going to eclipse her French counterpart.

The Brian de Palma remake Passion using Rachel McAdams and Noomi Repace premiered at Toronto this year and by all accounts was not an improvement on this original version. MT

Chasing Ice (2012)

Director: Jeff Orlowski Writer: Mark Monroe

Cast: James Balog, Svavar Jonatasson, Adam LeWinter

USA Documentary 76mins

If I were able to give this six stars, I would. If I were able to make it statutory viewing for anyone in any position of power; in industry, in commerce, in politics in religion or in state, I would.

Presumably, anyone going to see this is already clued in to global warming and the state of the planet, so in the main, this film will only ever preach to the converted, which is its eternal shame. This said, it is also a stunning visual feast. James Balog is an eminent and quite brilliant photographer, who has committed his life to photographing ice in all its resplendent timeless, awesome (in the true sense of the word) glory.

Balog has spent most of the last decade travelling to the likes of Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Glacier national Park, Bolivia, Canada, Nepal and the Alps perfecting time-lapse cameras that will operate in vast wastelands in -40 degrees to capture the receding glaciers around the world and tabulate in concrete form, the true visible impact of global warming and chart in a manner that the average person can understand, the rate at which the ice worldwide is melting, never to be replaced.

Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski decided to commit his filmmaking efforts to projects that he felt had importance and therefore an impact on global humanity and his decision to follow the driven visionary that is James Balog was an inspired one. We aren’t subjected to endless diatribes, graphs and crusty, bearded boffins lecturing us on concepts that, even if we wanted to, we simply cannot grasp. Instead, we are witness to some quite remarkable footage and stunning stills of ice and light from around the world, which tell their own story in an unarguable, horrific, monumental simplicity that absolutely anyone can understand.

‘Global Warming’ has almost become a swear word in the English lexicon. As soon as the word is uttered, people will spring onto one side of the fence or the other so it has quickly become a taboo topic of conversation as it will tear apart the politest of parties. Orlowski’s stance is unequivocal but quite beautifully stated; the silence thereafter, deafening. AT

AT THE RITZY (PICTUREHOUSE) BRIXTON FROM 3 DECEMBER AND THEN ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 14 DECEMBER 2012 www.chasingice.co.uk

Babette’s Feast (1987) Bfi Player

Dir: Gabriel Axel | Cast: Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson | Denmark Drama | 102mins

Based on Karen Blixen’s 1950 short story, originally set in Norway, but here transposed to 19th Century Jutland by Franco-Danish director Gabriel Axel, the project initially struggled to launch. For 14 years, Danish producers proved somewhat recalcitrant. Babette’s Feast finally received finance from the Danish Film Institute, a funding body actively encouraging independent productions. A remarkable tale in itself, when one considers the films enduring worldwide appeal, amply illustrated by wins including Cannes and BAFTA, topped off with a Best Foreign Film Oscar. But, notably, nothing in Denmark. Interesting.

Broadly then, a film about the relationship between spirituality and sensuality, translated here to the microcosm of a small, windswept coastal village, governed in totality by a stern Lutheran pastor and father to two beautiful women; the quintessence of stifled austerity.

Upon the original release, Axel was interviewed by Sight & Sound and, when quizzed upon the finer details of the film, he responded: “I was asked recently if I was a believer, if I thought the Church has a role. All I can say is that in Babette’s Feast, there’s a minister, but it’s not a film about religion. There’s a General, but it’s not a film about the army. There’s a cook, but it’s not a film about cooking. It’s a fairy tale and if you try to over explain it, you destroy it”.

It is so often evident, especially with period dramas, when it was made. A 1940s version of Sense and Sensibility is markedly different from one made in the 1970s, and all are watermarked indelibly with their decade; by the production and prevailing style of the day. But Axel’s austere, minimalist, piece, set in a time and a place where there was little to get excited about- even if you well went out and looked for it- has aged tremendously well; the human, nuanced performances timeless depictions of… well, humans through the Ages. The responses and reactions feel real. Nothing is forced by plot. It all just unfolds naturally and unhurriedly, but so lucidly. It’s basically the epitome of what you go to the movies for and now available on Bfiplayer from a new digital transfer. AT

NOW On BFI PLAYER

Baraka (1992)

Director: Ron Fricke

Original Music: Michael Stearns

92min Documentary

If you enjoyed Samsara, here is Ron Fricke having fun with his lenses again, capturing human life and the natural world in a stunning re-release to celebrate its 20th Anniversary.

Once again he takes us through a awesome array of time lapse sequences from a gently meditative monkey to baby chicks tumbling through the food system likening them to commuters sprewing through Grand Central station at rush hour. Fricke touches on all the major religions offering up images of peace and tranquility contrasted with the horrors of the Auschwitz, now quiet and weirdly eerie. He makes no comment, only beautiful pictures.

There is beauty, cruelty, wonder and death here: a sequence on the Ganges introduces a spark of humour as a woman takes out her false teeth and rinses them in the holy waters while further down the bank we witness the shocking burning of corpses, all in a day’s work.

Travelling through 24 countries on 77mm film stock to a hypnotic soundtrack, Baraka is an exotic holiday for the eyes and a soothing balm for the senses leaving you relaxed and ready for the Christmas rush.

BARAKA HAS WON VARIOUS AWARDS INCLUDING THE FIPRESCI AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE ON THE YEAR OF ITS RELEASE.

Out on 14th December 2012 in the Curzon Mayfair and Panton Street W1. Click on the images below for the DVD and BLU-RAY information.

You Will Be My Son (2011)***

Director/Screenplay: Gilles Legrand

Cast: Niels Arestrup, Patrick Chesnais, Anne Marivan, Lorant Deutsch, Nicolas Bridet

102min French with Subtitles

Family dysfunction, wine-making and inheritance are the themes that gently ferment in this well-made and watchable French drama set in the renowned vineyards of Saint Emilion, Bordeaux. Gilles Legrand adapted the screenplay from the 19th novel and cleverly blends wine trade terminology and its deep-seated traditions and snobbery of terroir into this full-bodied study of family politics and professional rivalry. It stars Niels Arestrup as a truculent widowed dad who owns a successful domaine with his talented viticulteur Francois, a quietly powerful Patrick Chesnais.

But all’s not well in Paradise: Francois has a terminal illness and Paul is not convinced that his son Martin is equipped to carry the business forward retaining the prestige of his fine wine. And Francois’s son, Phillippe, just back from a California winery, is more suitable for the job.

You Will Be My Son is the sort film Claude Chabrol might have made back in the sixties with more overtly sinister undertones. Legrand’s characters are supremely believable and the storyline is appealing and plausible. But what makes this so enjoyable, apart from Yves Angelo’s striking visuals, are the strong performances from Patrick Chesnais, Nicolas Bridet (as his son Phillippe) and Lorant Deutsch as Martin. Anne Marivan is also convincing as Martin’s wife Alice, who stands up to Paul in a feisty turn.

Niels Arestrup is particularly powerful as Paul. He’s a versatile actor who can be warm and paternalistic as in War Horse or distant and uncomprimsing as in Our Children and here in this portrait of a bitter and sadistic old man intent on blocking his son’s chances of inheritance with unexpected consequences for all concerned. Wine buffs with love this foray into the world of wine. MT

SHOWING AT THE CINE LUMIERE FROM 7-21 DECEMBER 2012

A FREE GLASS OF CLOSERIE DE FOURTET WILL BE OFFERED TO EVERY CINEMA-GOER (OVER 18) ON THE OPENING WEEKEND OF RELEASE IN ENGLAND.

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Director/Writer: Martin McDonagh

109mins UK/USA Comedy

Cast: Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish

In Bruges goes to California here on a less successful jaunt.

If you laughed all through In Bruges you won’t find this latest outing from Martin DcDonagh nearly as funny. In Bruges is a hard act to follow and the day I saw this at the London Film Festival the place was full of film students who were laughing sycophantically throughout detracting from the moments of this black comedy that were funny.

True, it’s a sparky little number but feels too self-conscious for its own good. If you do go you won’t be disappointed by the stellar cast though: Once again McDonagh’s teamed up with Colin Farrell who’s just right as Marty, a self-mocking Irish writer working on a script called Seven Psychopaths. On the plus side too, it has Christopher Walken as Hans, a weirdly likeable long-term criminal in partnership with Sam Rockwell’s mysogynist failed actor Billy, a role that he manages to make both charming and off-the-wall. In a convoluted storyline, Hans and Billy have kidnapped a fluffy dog from Charlie (Woodie Harrelson), an arch bad-guy who’s distraught at the loss of his pet and planning his revenge here as another silly baddy, a style which he’s perfected since No Kingdom for Old Men.

Take this jaunt as light comedy that applauds the very things it pillories, or see if you can find anything deeper in the convoluted Tarantino-style violence blended with the silliness of The Darjeeling Limited. MT

Great Expectations (2012)

Director: Mike Newell Screenplay: David Nicholls

Cast: Helelna Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane, Holliday Grainger, Ewan Bremner, Jason Flemyng, Toby Irvine.

128mins Drama adaptation of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens could have been a scriptwriter: his work is highly visual with a terrific range of emotion and characterisation. There are comedic elements and complex storylines involving the intricate social politics and history of the day. The coming of age classic Great Expectations (1861) has had many screen adaptations with David Lean’s definitive 1946 version arguably hard to beat with its spectacular graveside opening scene.

And Dickens also created great dialogue. David Nicholls (One Day), who adapted the screenplay for this version, calls it the most “humane, warm, emotional” of all Dickens’s novels, depicting, from his experience, “that awful period between when we want to escape our childhood selves before knowing what we really want to aspire to”.

Filmed partly at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire and partly in an underground disused factory teeming with rats, this latest outing is certainly warmly emotional and dark, quite literally: But do we really need another version of the film? Does Mike Newell have anything new to bring to the table with the story of Pip Pirrip, a boy who goes from rags to riches: the 21st century equivalent of winning the National Lottery?.

Helena Bonham Carter heads a starry cast, in a hairpiece to die for, as a foxily haughty Miss Haversham. As mistress of the put-down, she also has a warm and sensitive heart burning through her frosty exterior (especially when it catches fire) and her coterie of mannered acolytes inject a glint of humour in one or two comic set pieces. As Young Pip, Toby Irvine is well cast in his screen debut. Jeremy Irvine wanted to create a “more driven” Pip for the main role, adding a certain hard-nosed edge “bred out of childhood poverty and emotional abuse” to the part. He manages his gentrification well, complete with plummy accent, and also conveys the heart-pinging emotion of teenage love in palpable on-screen chemistry with Holliday Grainger who shines as Estella. Ralph Fiennes is strong as the sinister Magwitch. Robbie Coltrane plays the indifferent solicitor Jagger, who can shave a moral principle ‘as fine as paper’ and has the great line: “to be guilty and to be found guilt are two very different things”. Olly Alexander is a convincingly kind Herbert Pocket.

Faithful to the era, some interior shots seem to rely on natural firelight or candlelight à la Barry Lyndon. The outside scenes are mostly gloomy giving an impression of black silhouetted figures flitting across rainy streets or windy landscapes which is very effective. Flashbacks are shot as blurred-edged vignettes through a looking glass.

All in all, it’s a skilful piece of filmmaking with some great performances and a gorgeous visual aesthetic. David Nicholls’s meaningful screenplay successfully brings through the emotion of teenage romance and there are some moving and humane moments accurately reflecting the original novel. Mike Newell has given the archives a version which engages our sympathies and has a beating heart and a warm soul. At just over two hours it’s a tad long; but on balance this is a great Expectations. MT

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I, Anna (2012) ****

Director: Barnaby Southcombe Screenplay: Barnaby Southcombe, Elsa Lewin (Novel)

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Hayley Atwell, Eddie Marsan

93mins Drama

If your mother was Charlotte Rampling you’d be delighted to have her in your film, particularly your screen debut. And I, Anna is very much a family affair and one that stays in the memory due to la Rampling’s mesmerising turn as a divorcée with a foxy past, great legs and a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’; despite her reduced circumstances on the man front. As Anna Welles, she’s lonely in a small flat somewhere near the Barbican and lamenting the dearth of desirable males. Hayley Atwell, as her daughter, suggests some ways of extending her circle and she flips through the usual suspects who naturally don’t appeal. Then one night she emerges with wrist injuries from the home of another unsuitable candidate and later runs into Gabriel Byrne as Detective Bernie Reid. The chemistry is instant, but it turns out he’s investigating a murder and Anna may be connected.

Cleverly adapted from the novel by Elsa Lewin, I, Anna is one of those subtle and ambiguous thrillers where no one appears to be straightforward least of all the main characters and these two actors are past masters at portraying the obsessive and the uncertain. Charlotte Rampling simmers seductively in trench coat and stockings, tension mounts in seedy hotels rooms and dark, rainy streets shot in hues of grey against harsh angles of concrete, seen through a clever lens. Gabriel Byrne is perfect as Bernie, all seedily sexy and unsatisfactory. In contrast to Hayley Atwell’s no nonsense young mother, Charlotte Rampling is a clever antithesis of ‘mother as femme fatale’. It’s a well thought out and brave attempt at film noir and it succeeds despite a few plot holes. But with the capable talents of Charlotte Rampling in the leading role how could it possibly fail? MT

Releases at CURZON CINEMAS from Friday, 7th December 2012

First Nordic Film Festival in London 2012 Day For Night

NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL 30 NOVEMBER – 5 DECEMBER 2012

The Nordic Film Festival brings together a broad mix of indie films from across Scandinavia celebrating the best in Nordic film past and present and garnering support from the recent wave of UK interest in Nordic fiction. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway all have a vibrant independent film-making tradition and this exciting new festival hopes to share that now here in the UK. The festival kicks off on the 30 November with a chance to see this year’s hit at Venice starring Pierce Brosnan LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED before it opens in cinemas next year. Here’s the programme in full and takes place at the Riverside Studios unless indicated:

Fri 30 Nov, 6.15pm – Opening Gala Screening + party, Cine lumiere –LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED I Susanne Bier, Denmark 2012, 112 mins

Sat 1 Dec, 2pm FESTEN I Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark/Sweden 1998, 105 mins, cert 15

Sat 1 Dec, 5.15pm – HELSINKI FOREVER I Peter von Bagh, Finland 2008, 74 mins, London Premiere

Sat 1 Dec, 7pm – BEYOND I Pernilla August, Sweden/Finland 2010, 99 mins

Sat 1 Dec, 11.30pm – Midnight Screening, Prince Charles Cinema –TROLL HUNTER I Andre Ovredal, Norway 2010, 103 mins, cert 15

Sun 2 Dec, 6.45pm – JAR CITY I Baltasar Kormakur, Iceland/Germany/Denmark 2006, 91 mins, cert 15

Sun 2 Dec, 8.45pm –OSLO, AUGUST 31ST I Joachim Trier, Norway 2011, 96 mins, cert 15 –

Mon 3 Dec, 6.45-OLAFUR ELIASSON: SPACE IS PROCESS I Jacob Jorgensen/Henrik Lundo, Denmark 2010, 76 mins, UK Premiere –

Mon 3 Dec, 8pm – Cine lumiere –BABETTE’S FEAST I Gabriel Axel, Denmark 1987, 103 mins, cert U, Special Preview –

Mon 3 Dec, 8.30pm –THE PUNK SYNDROME I Jukka Karkkainen/Jani-Petteri Passi, Finland 2012, 85 mins, London Premiere –

Wed 5 Dec, 7pm – Closing Gala Screening – PURE I Lisa Langseth, Sweden 2010, 97 mins, UK Premiere

www.day-for-night.org/nordic-film-festival

Pure (2009) First Nordic Film Festival London 2012

Director/Writer Lisa Langseth
Producer: Helen Ahlsson
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Samuel Froler, Isabella Alveborg, Josephine Bauer, Doris Funcke, Ylva Gallon, Elisabeth Goransson, Kim Lantz

Sweden 97mins 2009 Drama

On the strength of a short film Godkand, Langseth got to make this, her first feature film Pure, which has already garnered some success in Scandinavia. Not to be confused with the 2009 climbing video Pure, the Finnish 2002 Pure (Koukusa), or Gilles McKinnon’s 2004 Pure, or indeed the titles of the same name from 2004 and 2005.

Langseth’s mines a similar vein to Andrea Arnold’s early work: Katarina, a working class girl with very little in terms of prospects, via Mozart, realises that there may be something more to life, if she can but loose those ties that bind.

Katarina is a troubled 20-year-old, already brushing society up the wrong way and having great difficulty finding some peace and a decent way to make a living; with mistakes she’s made in her past refusing to leave her alone. Her mother is more a hindrance than a help but she does at least have the love of a good man.

Playing the troubled young Katarina, is a spirited, engaging and very likeable Alicia Vikander, who certainly has her moments, aided and abetted by a fine supporting cast, who are excellent throughout. However, the storyline in summation feels insubstantial, a little over simplistic and the resolution, although thoroughly earned by the plot, still stretches believability in any real terms.

The opportunity has done no harm at all for Vikander who, as well as doing another film with Langseth, has also landed a Hollywood role with Julianne Moore and I do hope she can go from strength to strength. It will be very interesting to see Langseth’s next outing titled Hotell and see if she can make the step up from this promising, if somewhat light debut. AT

Oslo, August 31st (2012) Mubi

Dir Joachim Trier | Wri: Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt | Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava, Anders Borchgrevink, Andreas Braaten, Malin Crepin, Petter Width Kristiansen | Norway 2011 95mins Drama

August 31st; the day they empty the outdoor City pools, denoting the end of Summer. A variation on a theme of the 1931 novel Feu Follet by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, previously dramatized by one Louis Malle.

This is the second collaboration between filmmaker Trier and the sublime Anders Danielsen Lie, playing the lead in the story of a 34 year old man allowed out of rehab two weeks before he completes his course to go for a job interview, thereby helping facilitate his path back to normality.

Anders is a handsome, erudite, educated, middleclass man who by succumbing to addiction, lost five years of his life to drugs. His day out allows him to consider his life, revisit fractured friendships and wander the vibrant streets of sunny Oslo with new eyes.

Oslo is a quiet, powerful and profound meditation on what it means not just to be an addict, but upon the burden of adulthood and the facing of one’s own mortality. The disparity between ones hopes and dreams, one’s ignorant optimism as a child and the burgeoning reality of existing in the modern Western world.

It’s for this reason that the film elevates itself beyond drama, to the level of a poem, an ode to life, through this very personal journey of just one. The stand out central performance by Anders a study in pain, frustration, anger and self-loathing never overplayed, nor false note hit.. AT

NOW ON MUBI

The Hunt (2012) Jagten

Dir:Thomas Vinterberg | Cast Mads Mikkelsen. Susse Wold, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Anne Louise Ranthe | Drama, Denmark. 111mins.

Thomas Vinterburg’s study of abuse strikes at the core of his beloved Danish roots and follows in the footsteps of Festen without the Dogme. Jagten‘s gripping screenplay by Tobias Lindholm sails right up to the wind and never lets go in this mischievous psychodrama set in a close knit community in the heart of the Danish countryside.

Mads Mikkelsen is Lucas, an appealing metrosexual man who has returned to his childhood roots after a difficult divorce and a custody battle for his son. The performance won him best actor in Cannes in a bumper year where Michael Heneke’s Amour won the Palme D’Or.

Working as a teacher in the local mixed infants, Lucas soon strikes up a relationship with pushy colleague Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport) and gets back in touch with old friends and family. His laid back nature makes him popular with the kids and particularly with little Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) who is the little daughter of his best friend Marcus (Thomas Bo Larsen).

The popular idea that kids are innocent is proved wrong here when Klara’s infant imagination gets out of control. It’s easy to dislike her, although this was never Vinterberg’s intention at the start, and the little girl turns in a convincing performance as a nonpro. The theme of viral networking is twisted into the plot at this point when Klara casually blurbs her mixed message which rapidly becomes fact, spreading like wildfire through the village and leading to a catastrophic fallout, revealing what happens would spoil the tightly wound plot. But the repercussions of what happens next provide much food for thought and are still relevant, even though the film was made nearly a decade ago.

Vinterberg has won over 60 international awards for his films in a career that have been in the spotlight for nearly three decades. Yet he still considers his 1993 graduation film Last Round, to be his best. Ironically, this echoes his latest feature Another Round (2020), and now Denmark’s hopeful in this year’s Academy Awards, so for Vinterberg – the spotlight’s back. MT©

THE HUNT is on ARROW PLAYER

Beyond (2010) *** First Nordic Film Festival London 2012

Director/Writer Pernilla August Novel: Susanna Alakoski
Ola Repace, Noomi Repace, Outi Maenpaa, Ville Virtanen, Tehilla Blad, Junior Blad

97min Drama (Sweden, Finland) Subtitles

Scandinavian domestic dramas are hot property as the moment. They can be unflichingly brutal and emotionally searing while still being entirely believable. And Beyond is no exception. It stars Nooma Repace (of Lisbeth Sander fame) in a performance here of depth and dramatic skill as a woman coming to terms with a childhood fraught with abuse and alcoholism in seventies Sweden. As Leena, we meet her living happily in the present day and on the verge on celebrating Christmas with husband Johan and their two kids. When a phonecall shatters their tranquility, the past comes back to haunt her interweaving with the present in a tense and gripping thriller that packs a powerful punch throughout.

Losely adapted from a novel by Susanna Alakoski, the film won Nordic Council Filmprize for debut director Pernilla August who honed her considerable skills during a long-time career in acting. Beyond is dark and moody tale featuring scenes of harrowing domestic and emotional abuse made all the more penetrating by Erik Molberg Hansen’s gritty cinematography and the heartfelt chemistry of leads Leena and Johan (her real life partner Ola Repace) and by an oustanding turn from newcomer Tehilla Blad (as the young Leena). Well-known Finnish actress Outi Maenpaa plays her alcoholic mother in a performance that’s both impressive and at times hard to watch. MT

THE FIRST NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 30 NOVEMBER – 5 DECEMBER 2012

Festen (1998) **** First Nordic Film Festival London 2012

Director/Writer: Thomas Vinterburg Writer: Mogens Rukov

Cast: Thomas Bo Larsen, Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen, Trine Dyrholm, Birthe Neumann and Henning Mortizen.

105mins Drama/Denmark

In Festen, Thomas Vinterburg wags a fun-filled finger at the bourgeois hypocrisy of his beloved Denmark in a no-holds-barred tale of family secrets and lies surrounding a birthday celebration deep in the Danish countryside.

It has a lot in common with his latest outing The Hunt in that it deals with uncomfortable realities embedded in contemporary society. A classic Danish Dogme piece and the first of the movement, Festen is all awkward angles, jerky hand-held shots from ceilings and raw emotion as these these beautiful blondes rattle around a sprawling country house. Feelings here erupt like champagne bubbles and a provocative script pushes all the buttons ensuring rapt attention with its toxic blend of tragedy and comedy.

Ulrich Thomsen is caustically convincing as eldest son Christian who sets the ball rolling with his coruscating welcome toast sending the assembled mass into collective meltdown as they spew out their differing stories of growing up together, some in an attempt to stiff upper lip the proceedings. Paprika Steen, is strong yet vulnerable as his damaged sister Helene and Thomas Bo Larsen is outrageous as younger brother Michael, who abandons his wife on the journey and then has rough sex with her in a standout turn. Soon everyone wants to leave but someone has hidden the keys. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes for Vinterburg who appears in cameo as the taxi driver. MT

The film was shot on a Sony DCR-PC7E Handycam on standard Mini-DV cassettes and was the first film created under Dogme 95 rules, by Vinterberg and Lars Von Trier, as a movement of young Danish filmmakers following simple production values and naturalistic performances prohibiting post-production editing, apposing Hollywood-style filmmaking

Laurence Anyways 2012 **

Director/Writer: Xavier Dolan

Melville Poupaud, Suzanne Clements, Nathalie Baye

160mins French Canadian with subtitles

Precocious wild child, Xavier Dolan takes a fabulous premise: that a trans-gender man can maintain an exciting sexual relationship with his female soulmate; but spins it way beyond the attention span of the most avid cinephile let alone his long-suffering leads played with great elan and passion by Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clement, who won acclaim at Cannes for her role.

The story is beautifully shot and detailed and has the eighties to a tee; from the outfits right down to the shoulder-pads and earrings (and especially the earrrings) and a score that’s crammed with 1980s and 1990s hits that serve the extravagant set-pieces and rich interiors so well in contrast to the undernourished screenplay.

Dolan tracks the emotional highs and lows of relationships with great success but, at 23, lacks the knowledge to explore experiences that are foreign to him with greater depth and the necessary gravitas. As a follow-up to Heartbeats (2010), Laurence Anyways is work of style over substance: It’s not a failure as a film but it fails the subject matter, and that’s the biggest shame. MT

Helsinki Forever (2008)**** First Nordic Film Festival London 2012

Director/Writer: Peter Von Bagh (2008)

74mins Documentary Black/White with Subtitles

From a startling opening sequence of an ice-breaker entering the harbour to the sobering final moments of Wartime occupation, Peter Von Bagh, director of the famous Midnight Sun Film Festival, reveals a hundred years of Helsinki in this paean to his birthplace.

Darting backwards and forwards in time and place from 1907 with a modest population of 40,000, he shows us how the capital grew into a vibrant and exciting centre offering up its pleasures gladly and never taking itself too seriously, leaving you wanting more. The abundant and endless creativity of its painters, architects, cinema directors (Ari Kaurismaki, Tapio Suominen) and musicians who built and shaped the city, some of whom are little known abroad, are showcased here via a montage of archive footage, photographs and paintings. Von Bagh and two female voices narrate to a light-hearted soundtrack featuring Finnish composer Henrik Otto Donner. A fascinating documentary that’s not to be missed at the Nordic Film Festival 2012. MT

Jar City (2006) **** First Nordic Film Festival in London 2012

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Script: Baltasar Kormakur, Arnaldur Indrioason, Michael Ross

Cast: Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir, Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson, Olafia Hronn Jonsdottir, Atli Rafn Sigurdsson

Iceland/Germany/Denmark 93mins 2006 Murder Mystery

Based upon the novel by Arnaldur Indrioason concerning real life events in Iceland, where it was somewhat controversially decided to create a DNA database of the entire 300,000 island population to better enable the chronicling of genetic diseases.

Kormakur, perhaps best known for his 2001 hit 101 Reykjavik, has translated the novel into a rather fine, icily dystopian murder mystery. This said, I’m a little bit nonplussed as to why this film would be included in the 2012 Nordic Film Festival line up considering it was made six years ago and I saw it in the cinema five years ago.

A cleverly constructed piece then, weaving together two seemingly disparate story strands with an incredibly desolate, windswept and darkly drawn Iceland.

The script is particularly strong with very little spare to it and boasts very strong characterisation; none more so than that of of our lead protagonist Inspector Erlendur, a fatherly homicide Policeman with more than enough troubles of his own at home. Indeed, the acting throughout is totally believable, understated and the actors very well cast.

Through his canon, Kormakur is also creating a distinctive filmmaking style of his own, with a particularly black brand of humour, but also a reassuringly deep understanding of what makes film work in terms of motif and structure.

A piece then of taciturn, frost-hardened Arctic-living types with secrets buried deep in the permafrost, where it seems it will take more than just a warm personality to unearth the passion behind the truth. AT

Jar City won the Crystal Globe Grand Prix at Karlovy Vary in 2007.

Troll Hunter (2010)**** (Trolljegeren) First Nordic Film Festival London 2012

Director: André Øvredal
Script: André Øvredal
Producer: Sveinung Golimo, John M. Jacobsen
Cast: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Urmila Berg-Domaas, Hans Morten Hansen

Norway 2010 103mins Fantasy

Three student documentary filmmakers decide to go and cover the death of a man purportedly attacked by a bear and get much more than they bargained for.

Director Writer Øvredal has pulled off something rather lovely here. Dressed up in the wolfs clothes of the Horror genre, this is in fact a wickedly observed mockumentary about Scandinavian trolls. Styled rather in the vein of Cloverfield, it playfully ties tales from a Norwegian childhood together with some really impressive low budget CGI -and a healthy dose of shaggy dog story.

For those of you that had a deprived childhood, absent of the abject terror that is the Troll, they were fabled to live in the hills, under bridges and in caves, coming out only at night to feed upon the unwary- be they goat, sheep or errant child… but most particularly, Christians.

When filmed, Scandinavia seldom if ever fails to be anything less than epic and here proves no different. Norway has never looked so beautiful and here lends its raw, vasty nature to the mystery and foreboding in Øvredal’s tongue in cheek conceit.

Much of the actors dialogue was improvised and indeed, improvised well, so there’s a frisson of spontaneity to the reactions and their inter-relationships that gives an added sense of authenticity to this fiction. One cannot help but smile wryly as one watches, both at the central idea and at how Øvredal has pulled it off.

Granted, there are some plot holes, but they are more than made up for with what the rest of the film has to offer. The acting is indeed very good, particularly Hans (Otto Jespersen) and the seriously atmospheric cinematography by Hallvard Bræin.

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into the design and creation of the different troll characters and, with the (giant) steps it seems now being made in CGI almost daily, what might just five years ago have cost a Norwegian King’s ransom, is now proving achievable by a cunning producer, to the benefit of everyone.

So long as you don’t take either yourself or the film too seriously and allow it just to unfold- as you would a yarn in a warm pub when it’s sub-zero outside, then there’s nothing here you will fail to enjoy.
AT

Forbidden Games (1952) Les Jeux Interdits DVD/Blu

Director: Réné Clément Screenplay/Dialogue: Jean Aurenche

Cast: Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, Amedee, Laurence Badie

96mins War Drama

Réné Clément first developed his creativity studying architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1930s. It was there that he discovered filmmaking and his first short featured the famous Jacques Tati. A decade of documentary-making later his first feature arrived in 1946.

Described as the French answer to Hitchcock, he went on to become one of France’s most successful and lauded filmmakers winning the Golden Lion at Venice in 1952 and a BAFTA for this war drama Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games) based on the eponymous novel by Francois Boyer. It was described as a work of great lyrical purity in depicting the innocence of childhood set against the tragedy and devastation of war without attempting to sensationalise the emotions or events it portrayed.

Fleeing from a country village during the WW2, a little girl is orphaned by enemy gunfire that also fatally wounds her puppy and scatters the escaping farming community. Further traumatised and bewildered after the dog is thrown into the river, she meets 10-year-old Michel Dollé whose family take her in and the children bond closely, burying her little dog and other animals in a secret cemetery, marking the graves with crosses stolen from a nearby graveyard.

Crisply shot in black and white, and featuring convincingly natural and touching performances from Brigitte Fossey (who went on to be a successful actress) as Paulette and Georges Poujouly as Michel, it tenderly evokes the fantasy world of children, reflecting how they process trauma and the reality of death by escaping into their imagination.

But it’s by no means a film for children and was heavily criticised at the time for attempting to trivialize its subject matter. Clément got round the tragic scenes with the child actors by filming them around the character of Paulette so she didn’t have to witness the awfulness of them. In this way, the film is testament to an entire generation who suffered extreme emotional stress during wartime and attempts to show how they internalised their grief without really coming to terms with it. MT

Now out on DVD courtesy of STUDIO CANAL to commemorate the centenary of Rene Clement’s birth with alternative ending and opening sequences.

The House I Live In (2012)

Director: Eugene Jarecki
Producer: Melinda Shopsin, Sam Cullman, Christopher St John
Cast: Nannie Jeter, David Simon

US 108mins Documentary

As a Jew acutely cognisant of his own ancestral history and the price his parents paid for his freedom, Jarecki returns to visit his parents’ home help, his Nanny, in an effort to try to understand current laws governing drug crime in America.

In starting this dialogue he achieves the impossible; he offers up an astonishing insight and overview on the seemingly endlessly labyrinthine process of both the inherent misery and the War On Drugs policy, making it so crystal clear that even a five-year-old could grasp it with ease.

One of the Executive Producers, a certain Brad Pitt, had this to say on the subject:
“My drug days are long since passed but it’s certainly true that I could probably land in any city in any state and get whatever you wanted. I could find anything you were looking for. Give me 24 hours or so. And yet we still support this charade called the drug war. We have spent a trillion dollars. It’s lasted for over 40 years. A lot of people have lost their lives for it. And yet we still talk about it like it’s this success”.

Jarecki has done his homework and picked perfect targets to interview to best enable his story to be told. One of the interviewees is David Simon, creator of the amazing HBO series concerning the Great American ghetto and drugs, The Wire. The House I Live In examines the origins of the drug war, how it came into being and why it persists to this day; even though the devastation it incurs is evident to all from those arrested, those left behind, the Police, the judges, the DEA and the Prison Officers.

It may be surprising to note that historically opium, cocaine and marihuana were all legal in America and anyone suffering addiction was treated with sympathy and, indeed, remedy in the past. That these drugs were outlawed for reasons of Race, is just about as uncomfortable a truth to swallow as any that America has needed to over its recent rather indigestible past. That in more recent times the reason has slid over to one of poverty can hardly be any more comforting.

Fact after fact that rolls out of this film is simply jaw-dropping. As the movie continues, a growing realisation occurs and it becomes at once profoundly sad, frustrating and enraging in equal measure as the full impact and ramifications set in. I could sit here and list any number of them, but would only succeed in reducing the impact, thereby robbing both film and audience. I can only urge one and all to see it for themselves. AT

End of Watch (2012) ***

Director: David Ayer Screenplay: David Ayer Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Natalie Martines, Anna Kendrick, David Harbour 109min US Detective Thriller

A heartstopping action thriller with knockout performances from dynamite duo Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as police officers patrolling the gang ridden streets of downtown Los Angeles. As they dive deeper and deeper into danger, they eventually become marked men.

Sharing their patrol car and their daily banter, we can almost smell the venti cappucinos as we bond with their lives and loves: Natalie Martines and Anna Kendrick give convincing support as romantic partners but their connection with each other as pals on the beat is the relationship that shines out as being most convincing and real. Contrasting this soft centred police pairing is the grittier turn by David Harbour’s hard-bitten older cop, Officer Van Hauser.

End of Watch compells and propells the narrative forward in an adrenalin rush of gruelling police life, from dawn to dusk. Although the private love lives of the detectives is a little sugar-coated for some tastes, the gut-wrenching immediacy of the central story is skillfully evoked. Roman Vasyanov’s superb cinematography with its slick visuals and awkward camera angles and David Ayer’s (Training Day) snappy screenplay make it all seem so real as we track the action at fever pitch. MT

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RELEASES THIS WEEKEND AT ODEON, VUE, CINEWORLD AND PICTUREHOUSES.

Starbuck (2012) ***

Director: Ken Scott

Script: Ken Scott, Martin Petit

Cast: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand

Canada 109mins Comedy French with subtitles

This multi-award winning French-Canadian comedy was the most successful ‘domestic’ film at the Canadian Box Office last year and is about to be remade by Dreamworks, albeit with the same director, but starring Vince Vaughn. Mr Vaughn is not to all tastes and, as with so many remakes this new version may lose a lot that supplies it current charm. This (subtitled) rom-com is a mature gem, despite its perhaps unpromising teen-male premise.

With the self-chosen pseudonym ‘Starbuck’, 40-something permanent adolescent David Wozniak financed his late teens perpetually masturbating into a cup at the local sperm bank. And now as he faces up to his current relationship, his past in the shape of 142 of his progeny, go to court to assert their right to find him.

Apart from a few minor plot-holes and character simplifications so prevalent in today’s comedies, what follows is actually a very sweet, poignant and funny dissection of what it means to be a father and guarantees some laugh-out-loud moments and a feel good factor by the end. AT

‘STARBUCK’ OPENS IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK ON 23RD NOVEMBER AND IS ALSO SCREENING AT THE UK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2012 8-30 November 2012 at the Cine Lumiere.

Margin Call (2012) DVD/Blu

Director/Script: J C Chandor

Cast: Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Simon Baker, Penn Badgley

107mins US Thriller

In the wake of the 2008 financial melt-down, Margin Call takes a saturnine view of banking when a derivatives trader discovers a fatal turn of events exposing the bank to losses greater than its worth. Senior management and compliance are called in to manage the fall-out but this well-made elegant thriller lacks the vital cut and thrust needed to drive the action forward into the real world of high octane nano-second trading not just the back office. Worth a watch though for its dynamite leads: a reflective Kevin Spacey, a suave Jeremy Irons and a mouthy Paul Bettany. The Oscar-Nominated screenplay is bang on the money. MT

OUT ON DVD/BLU-RAY

Medal of Honour (2009) Romanian Film Festival of London 2012

Director; Colin Peter Netzer Writer: Tudor Voican
Victor Rebengiuc, Camelia Zorlescu, Radu Beligan, Mircea Andreescu, Ion Lucian
103mins Black Comedy Romanian with Subtitles

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With Remembrance Day still fresh in the memory, Medal of Honour seems a good film choice for the Romanian Film Festival in London which opens on the 22nd November 2012.

Medal of Honour gives a valuable insight into Romania’s cultural heritage under Fascism and its post-Communist transition, it also showcases a subtlely nuanced turn from one of Romanian’s best known actors Victor Rebengiuc. Set in the wake of Ceausescu’s epic fall from grace after a repressive regime, Medal of Honour doesn’t take itself too seriously and Tudor Voican’s witty script makes it a comic success and an entertaining piece of cinema.

The story centres on Ion (Victor Rebengiuc) an ageing WW2 veteran living quietly with his wife Ninotchka, (a saturnine Camelia Zorlescu) in an apartment block somewhere near Bucharest. The heating is dodgy and the plumbing would work better if Ion didn’t store his secret stash of liquor in the cistern. So deprivation and frugality are the order of the day in this arthouse drama that benefits from Liviu Markghidan’s pristine visual treatment. I

Ion still uses his army knife for cooking, and, given the chance, would use it to do away with his grumpy wife, who doesn’t seem to understand his need for intimacy. Romanians of this generation have known bad times and hardship is very much hard-wired into the psyche and treated with philosophical good humour and dogged determination and this is reflected in well-crafted characterisation and a strong support cast.

The unexpected arrival of a letter informing Ion that he is to be honoured with a gold medal for his wartime services is the trigger that sets him off on a nostalgia trip back to his glory days and feeling chipper he to sets off to share his wartime tales in the light of his newfound status but also trying to work out what he really did to earn the medal fifty years previously: was it defending the Germans or turning against them?

The Bureaucracy of Communism is still a thorn in the side of Romanians and runs like steel wire through their cinema up to the present day in features such as Aurora and the highly-acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, long after the Iron Curtain has fallen. Its presence is felt along with a sense of the absurd depicted here in comic scenes with the postmistress at the Ministry of Defence. But Medal of Honour isn’t just about a veteran and a gold Medal, it’s a portrait of family values and friendship that shines brightly through the murkiness of a tumultuous past. MT

Everybody in Our Family (2012) Romanian Film Festival in London 2012

Director: Radu Jude
Script: Radu Jude, Corina Sabau
Producer: Ada Solomon
Cast: Serban Pavlu, Sophia Nicolaescu, Gabriel Spahiu, Mihaela Sirbu, Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez, Stela Popescu, Alexandru Arsinel

Romania/Netherlands 107mins Black Comedy

This is the third feature film from Director/Writer Radu Jude, in this instance a film depicting the life of Marius, a dentist very much looking forward to spending time with his five year old daughter, having separated from his spouse and retaining only infrequent visiting rights.

Director Jude has tried to do a difficult thing here, marrying broad farce with some of the darker elements of familial dysfunction and, finally, it’s here that the film fails to hang together as a cohesive whole, although some aspects of both elements work very well; Serban is a fine actor, well cast for the role of the desperate Marius, but what really makes this film at all is the believability of the young Sofia, played sublimely by Sophia Nicolaescu.

The characters throughout are well depicted. We can see that each of them has a strong reason for the stance that they take as the story unfolds and all the actors are good, but what they are asked to do in terms of the tone of the piece proves to be the impossibility. The plausibility of their reactions to the escalating situation is stretched way beyond breaking point and we are left unconvinced, having first been sold a straight drama. And, because of this, the humour therefore doesn’t work either.

It didn’t help either when at one point in the rather cramped surroundings of the flat, the boom also dropped into shot. A noble failure then, albeit with much mitigating content and I wouldn’t preclude going to see Jude’s next outing. There’s definitely talent there. AT

Headwinds (2012) Des Vents Contraires UKFFF

Based on a novel by Olivier Adam, this unsettling family drama with softly muted visuals reflecting its Brittany coastal setting has Benoit Magimel near to breakdown. He plays Paul, a young father who has re-located from Paris with his two children after the disappearance of his wife Audrey Tatou as Sarah after a domestic dust-up (don’t get excited, she only has a small part).

We last saw Magimel in the feisty role of Claude Francois, here we find ourselves rooting for him in his quietly convincing turn as the outsider, the patient father and the man still very much in love and hurting as he refuses to believe that his wife is gone for good.

To cap it all he’s dealing with the small-mindedness of the local community: beleaquered by an unprofessional detective (Isabelle Carre) over some anonymous phone-calls and a highly unstable father of one of his kids (Ramzy Bedia) who also involves him with the police. Although this all appears slightly bizarre and unbelievable in the scheme of things, it serves to ramp up the tension as nagging doubts start to creep in about the disappearance of Sarah building towards a moving denoument. The only question that rests is why Audrey Tatou took on such a small role in what could have been meaty material for the French super star? MT

Gainsbourg by Gainsbourg: An Intimate Portrait (2009)

Director: Pierre-Henry Salfati

Writer: Marianne Salfati

Featuring: Jane Birkin, Emilie de Preissac, Clement van den Bergh, Serge Gainsbourg

94mins French with subtitles

Watching the opening sequence to this paean to a pop/rock god, it’s difficult to imagine what Jane Birkin, Juliette Greco and Brigitte Bardot saw in Serge Gainsbourg. Circling the stage he presents as a raddled figure puffing on a cigarette as he mumbles the words to Javanaise Melody in his trademark gravelly voice, which accompanies the soundtrack of this latest biopic along with archive footage, anecdotes and musical recordings made during his lifetime until his death in 1991 at the age of 62.

But tracking back to 1968 and to ‘Je T’Aime, Moi Non Plus’, a hit that lasted as long in the charts and in the public memory as the orgasmic effect he evidently had on these sixties sex sirens, there must have been a potent quality to his unique brand of showmanship and romance. But how do you capture this on film? He was certainly a charismatic entertainer back then and a treasured public figure for French audiences and one whose charms were felt more keenly in France than on this side of the Channel, ardent fans apart. After Joann Sfar’s feisty 2010 feisty effort which conveyed that SGB had rather ran out of steam by the end of the sixties, did this latest offering get under the skin of a man who was both enigmatic and outrageous in equal measure?.

To a large degree, yes. Although in the smoke-filled haze of Gainsbourg’s career, it offers little in the way of biographical detail or straight narrative but what it does do is to capture the essence of this impenetrable singer who was both repulsive and compulsive and felt, in his own words, a constant struggle between the ‘man and the showman’ with the showman seemingly coming out on top. And it’s strangely in the unsettled showman side of Gainsbourg that his unique talent seemed to reside. And so, Salfati somehow exposes this introspective man in a fascinating and moving way, offering insight and an entertaining watch for fans and general audiences alike. MT

GAINSBOURG BY GAINSBOURG: AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT IS SCREENING AS PART OF THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2012 CURRENTLY IN ITS FINAL WEEK IN LONDON UK

Romanian Film Festival in London 2012 The Other Side of Hope

THE LONDON ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL 22-25 NOVEMBER 2012 is rocking into its 9th year with an exciting line-up of films showcasing new talent and paying tribute to the past while challenging stereotypes. Backed by Curzon Cinemas, you can look forward to Cannes Award Winner, Christian Mingiu’s Beyond the Hills; Everybody In Our Family, a darkly comic tale of desperation from Radu Jude and Medal of Honour, an amusing drama set in the post-Ceausescu era and starring Victor Rebengiuc as a war veteran who reconsiders his past. MT

Amour (2012) ***** Palme D’Or winner Cannes 2012

Director: Michael Haneke

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert

127mins Drama French with English subtitles

How many films deal with mature love as elegantly as Michael Haneke’s latest outing? Here he gives us a thoughtful and profoundly graceful study of a happily married couple in their eighties. Blissful in their long-standing relationship and living independently in an elegant apartment in the heart of Paris, Anne and Georges are professional musicians. The intimacy of their closeness is quiet and understated and their everyday conversation is cordial, respectful and refreshingly free from tension or any kind of discord. Refreshingly also, they are not overly engaged in the life of their grown-up daughter Eva, well played by Isabelle Huppert, and her English husband Geoff, who do not appear as content in their relationship and live abroad.

Jean Louis’s Trintignant’s mature performance as Georges and his muted expression of concern and fear mingled with gentle love for the woman of his life is a joy to behold. Moving with ease and confidence in the role of an accomplished gentleman in his twilight years he exudes loyalty and integrity. When Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) has a stroke he is composed and understanding and this demeanour continues until her life gradually fades. The only anger he displays is short-lived and borne out of frustration with her paralysis. It’s a restrained turn but a satisfying one dealing with the domestic drudgery of life with elegance and discretion. The only tearful, raw emotion comes from Isabelle Huppert’s character crying for the bereavement of her own marriage as much as for the impending loss of her mother.

There’s a touch of pure brilliance when a dove flies into the apartment on two occasions, possibly signifying a soul set free, as often happens. On the second visit Georges captures and cuddles it in an imaginative flourish that signifies gentleness as much as a need to express the physical affection that was maybe intended for his wife in her final days but somehow seemed to be submerged by the demands of caring for her less appealing physical needs. This is an assured piece of filmmaking from an auteur at the peak of his creative genius.

Roman Polanski A Film Memoir (2011)

Director: Laurent Bouzereau | Music: Alexandre Desplat | With: Roman Polanski, Andrew Braunsberg | 90mins Doc UK/Italy/Germany

Roman Polanski is possibly still the most controversial figure in the world of film. The mere mention of his name is apt to unleash a torrent of accusatorial abuse even from those who have little knowledge of his work or any interest in it. After the more sensational 2008 biopic Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Laurent Bouzereau’s watchable and well-put-together documentary is a far mellower affair: a portrait of 79 year-old-man who has suffered and succeeded more than many in his cinematic career and here looks back to accentuate the positive from his cosy armchair, or, as he puts it, the amplitude of his life from his own unique perspective.

Bouzereau opts for an interview format accompanied by an original score from Alexandre Desplat, and graced by a melodious introduction from Polanski’s friend and producer Andrew Braunsberg. It works well and has them relaxing in the comfortable surroundings of the Gstaad chalet where Polanski was detained after arrest at the Zurich Film Festival, bizarrely, while receiving a lifetime achievement award. They fall into a convivial conversational style reminiscing over Polanski’s life from his birth in Paris in 1933, intercut with family photographs and archive footage of his childhood during the war years in Paris and Poland; sometimes indistinguishable, intriguingly, from that of The Pianist, his largely autobiographical work and the one closest to his heart.

Braunsberg is an easy-going almost fawning interviewer but, in his defence, one gets the impression that Polanski is a man who has a powerful affect on those around him with the ability to charm and seduce not only women but also men, into his way of thinking.

For cineastes and fans, what follows is a fascinating and engaging insight into the filmmaker’s early career in Warsaw, Krakow and Lodz, showing how his experiences lead him into the world of acting and filmmaking in Poland and eventually to Hollywood to court controversy and commercial success. Occasionally overcome by emotion, he interlaces the story of his private life with that of his struggle for professional acclaim; his love affairs with Sharon Tate and Emmanuelle Seigner; the mix-up surrounding the Manson murders and alludes to the Geimer affair giving a strong impression that closure has been reached for all concerned backed by archive footage of Geimer herself.

The skill of A Film Memoir is that it shows Polanski to be not only a man of considerable passion and allure but also the master storyteller that we see in his films, with the ability to overcome adversity and focus on the positive. But there also a strong sense of enigma about the man. This is how he has chosen to present himself to the World but is it the real story? That is for you to decide. @MeredithTaylor

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_w4KQ4Dc8M

Up There (2012) **

Martin is desperate to move on with his death in this low-budget Britflic set in a grim Strathclyde.

Director: Zam Salim

Cast: Burn Gorman, Warren Brown, Kate O’Flynn, Jo Hartley, Iain De Caestecker

80mins ** UK

Adaptations from short films often lack the ballast to make satisfying features and this is very much the case with Up There. Suitably set in a grim Strathclyde, it’s a morbidly downbeat affair in the same tone as The Office and well-cast with ashen-faced Burn Gorman as Martin, a likeable guy who’s discovered that being dead is not all it’s cracked up to be in the movies.

Having died in a car crash, he’s stuck in the afterlife waiting room trying to move on ‘up there’ and it’s not just a case of floating through walls or up stairwells. To make things worse, he’s dogged by unsympathetic characters and a storyline that hasn’t the will to live either. Although Up There gradually outstays its welcome it’s well-served by Salim’s quaintly amusing script and a great performance from Gorman who’s spot on and believable. He has also appeared in The Hour on BBC2 and is a talent well worth watching. MT

Alps (Alpis) 2011 *****

Director:Yorgos Lanthimos

Script:Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

Producers:Yorgos Lanthimos, Athina Rachel Tsangari

Cast:Stavros Psyllakis, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed, Aggeliki Papoulia

Greece 93mins Drama

Yorgos Lanthimos’ last film, Dogtooth floored me with its terrific economy and power, in its performances but also in its storytelling style where, as an audience, one is left to stew, wondering, thinking, trying to work out what is going on and why. But, as with any Master storyteller, it is always wisest to allow yourself to trust in the filmmaker; let them unravel the story how they would wish to unravel it and simply sit back and enjoy the delicious ride.

Ordinarily, I hesitate to tell you anything at all of any given film plot, happier that you simply accept it might be worth seeing. Confident that you would be content that the surprise of not knowing what is going to happen will increase your enjoyment tenfold. Alps is no different. Infact, it is almost more important with this director in particular, that you see the film knowing nothing. I would much rather you went along and allowed Lanthimos to tell his story as he would wish, over almost any other filmmaker. He has a fiendish wit and an exquisitely black sense of humour, but a sense of humour nevertheless.

His films are proving not for the fainthearted, but reward any with a sharp mind willing to be led blindfold around the next corner and are absolutely built on anticipation; on information withheld; to be thrown down as titbits and teasers along the way, very much in his own time and all the more succulent for it.

Lanthimos is a great student of the human condition, his films are a direct product of that and the cast accordingly, is exemplary throughout. I am a huge fan of his work and look forward to each serving with the rapt anticipation of a Doberman awaiting a tardily served morsel. If you liked Dogtooth, I am certain you won’t be disappointed by Alps. If you haven’t yet seen Dogtooth, shame on you. See Alps, then get hold of Dogtooth and get bitten by the bug. AT

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ALPS IS SHOWING THIS WEEKEND FROM 9TH NOVEMBER 2012 AT CURZON CINEMAS

Aurora (2010) ***

Writer/Director: Cristi Puiu

Cast: Cristi Puiu Clara Voda, Valeria Seciu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Catrinel Dumistrescu, Gelu Colceag

181min Romanian with subtitles

Aurora has Cristi Puiu flitting about nervously in his Bucharest neighbourhood with sparse but trenchant dialogue, he’s also written and directed this cinema vérité drama. Tension mounts when he starts to build a gun but after an hour it’s difficult to keep watching his endless daily routine without some clue of what’s really going on with his life. Friends and family come and go but none stands out enough to keep our attention although Puiu does offer a good insight of life in contemporary Romania. When the action finally gets going after nearly three hours of watching and waiting, the Kafkaesque showdown comes as an anticlimax .

Cristi Puiu’s debut feature, darkly funny The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005), won critical acclaim in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes but was unsuccessful at the Box Office, and I suspect this outing will go the same way due to its long running time which is taxing on the viewer and commercially unfeasible for independent cinemas: a shame because Cristi Puiu has some real talent as a director and writer. MT

AURORA is showing from 9th November 2012 at the Curzon Mayfair

My Brother The Devil (2012) Best British Newcomer LFF 2012

Director/Writer: Sally El Hosaini

Cast: Saïd Taghmaoui, James Floyd, Fady Elsayed, Letitia Wright

111mins Drama UK

Sally El Hosaini won critical acclaim at Berlin, Sundance and London this year for her debut feature that has newcomer Fady Elsayed in a cracking turn as Mo, a teenager growing up in a traditional Arabic household.

Beyond the front door of the family’s modest London flat is a completely different world: the streets of Hackney. The impressionable Mo idolizes his handsome and charismatic older brother Rashid (James Floyd) and wants to follow in his footsteps. However, Rashid wants a different life for his younger brother and will do whatever it takes to send him to college. Desperate to be seen as cool, Mo takes a job that triggers a fateful turn of events and forces both brothers to confront their inner demons.

David Raedeker’s cinematography and Sally El Hosaini’s sensitive direction brings a fresh and poetic feel to this sink estate story of two young men on the crossroads to criminality who find redemption through their brotherly love for one another. Saïd Taghmaoul adds a touch of class to the proceedings as an urbane Franco Egyptian photographer who plays the pivotal role that lifts the story above familiar territory without sacrificing its believability; reinforced by a script reflecting street patois and jargon. The superb production values and subtle performances particularly from James Floyd and Letitia Wright as his girlfriend Vanessa, make this a distinctive and memorable drama marking El Hosaini out as a striking new talent. MT

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SHOWING THIS WEEKEND AT CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK and at the Picturehouses Ritzy and Hackney and Cineworld Cinemas from 9th November 2012

Argo (2012) ***

Director: Ben Affleck

Script: Chris Terrio

Producers`: George Clooney, Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher Denham, Kerry Bishe

120min USA Drama

Based on true events of 1979, when the American Embassy in Iran is overrun and hostages taken, the ride we are then taken on is literally fantastic and quite probably unbelievable, if it weren’t based upon factual events, recently coming to light, as the CIA allow previously Top Secret documents to be published.

Affleck has gone to great pains in some ways to recreate the circumstances from footage and photos taken at the time and, as with his previous title, The Town he has really pulled out all the stops for a sense of authenticity. It is interesting that this film has been made on several levels. It is quite probable that it would never have seen the light of day, if it had been pitched in Hollywood by anyone else, but with heavyweights and known politico ‘s Affleck and Clooney behind it, it was always going to get funded and it was always going to get made. And made pretty well.

Alot of ingredients then; Argo runs essentially as a political thriller. The performances are fine throughout, with a fair splashing of humour to offset the threat and the drama of the piece being served up by those most dependable of old hands, Arkin and Goodman.

The downside to the generous dollop of Tinseltown, is that it veers close to another example of Heroic American tub-thumping. It is after all, a Movie; the tension ramped accordingly. Many of the characters are less than complete in their depiction and I was disappointed to see the now bog-standard stereotyping of the Middle Eastern Bad Guy, even if the film does get points at the front for laying much of the blame for the circumstances in which the protagonists find themselves, squarely at the feet of Brit-American foreign policy.

Worth seeing then, but seeing with a healthy pinch of salt. It would be dangerous to think that this is a documenting of fact, rather than a yarn told well, but this said, the (movie) ending delivers. AT

RELEASES THIS WEEKEND AT CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK at the Cineworld, Odeon and Vue from 9th November 2012.

The Devils (1971) Tribute to Murray Melvin

Dir: Ken Russell | Cast: Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, John Woodvine, Georgina Hale | 107min UK/US Drama

‘The Devils’ is based upon factual happenings in the plague-ridden French walled-city of Loudun, in 1634. Established heavily upon two main sources, John Whiting’s playThe Devils and Aldous Huxley, who exacted a huge amount of research for his book on the subject entitled The Devils Of Loudun. In it, Huxley describes the scenario as redolent of a ‘rape in a public lavatory’ and Russell very much took this as inspiration for his film design, as did the debutant film-score composer, Peter Maxwell Davies.

A happy chance meeting on a train between a friend and colleague of Russell’s and a young designer and artist called Derek Jarman, gave Jarman his first experience of set design and the film a quite brilliant set. Jarman later stated that his experiences with Russell were instrumental in shifting him across to being a filmmaker himself.

The amazing set was built on the backlot at Pinewood. Russell said of the design, ‘To anyone living in Loudun at the time, theirs would have felt to be a new city, a contemporary one and one of which they were proud. I didn’t want to film in an old, lichen and ivy covered relic that looked ancient. I wanted new. And I wanted it to look like the toilet described by Huxley’.

Russell, who wanted to make an unashamedly political film about religion and the state, was by this time no stranger to controversy with his 1969 Oscar winning Women In Love. Upon completing The Devils and knowing it was at best borderline, Russell showed it to a censor. Scenes were then cut to save the film from an all-out ban and to this day, these scenes remain cut. In the US, the film has only been seen in a select few festivals, despite being backed by Warners at the time of original release.

Many of the cast were at the height of their powers here and for me, this is perhaps Oliver Reed’s finest hour. As Russell said, the camera loves him. They had a discussion prior to filming, where they resolved that Reed had three possible levels of playing emotion. Prior to a take, Reed would call over ‘which level here, Ken?’ and Russell would say ‘2!’ (Or whichever he felt he needed). Originally it even contained a cameo from long-time Russell fan Spike Milligan, but his scene was reshot subsequently with Dudley Sutton. The film also provided a graceful cameo for Murray Melvin whose delicate features and luminous presence would keep him in work, albeit often in minor roles, for the remainder of his career until 2023. After his role her as Mignon he went on to collaborate with Ken Russel in The Boyfriend, Lisztomania, and star in big screen hits Barry Lyndon, The Krays and various TV outings, including the very first episode of The Avengers, winning a Best Actor Award at Cannes in 1962 for Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey

All the actors were aware that they were filming something remarkable, even at the time of shooting and there is something about brilliant films, however they are received at the time of their release, they remain evergreen; truth remains the truth and they therefore retain an extraordinary power that can span generations of filmgoers. It would seem politics has changed little since 1634, let alone 1971, or in 2023, for that matter. AT

MURRAY MELVIN | 1932-2023

20th French Film Festival UK 8 November to 2 December 2012

FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL UK 2012 2nd November – 2nd December 2012

The French Film Festival UK is a round Britain feast of the latest French and francophone film that’s now into its 20th Year. You’ll find it in London at the CIne-Lumiere, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Bristol and Kirkaldy. The programme includes Canadian flics, Starbuck and Laurence Anyways. Bestiaire, an unusual documentary examining our relationship with the animal kingdom: Belgian director Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children starring Tahar Rahim and Emilie Duquenne; romcom Paris-Manhattan which is Sophie Lellouche’s directing debut and stars Alice Taglioni. It also gives you a chance to see special previews of films that will shortly be on general release in the UK such Headwinds, a family drama with Audrey Tatou and Benoit Magimel, You Will Be My Son, a glossy drama about the future of a St-Emilion vineyard, and Colonial dramas in the shape of Matthieu Kassovitz’s action-packed hard-hitter Rebellion and Almayer’s Folly, Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s dark and beguiling adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel set in the Far East. MT.

Korean Film Festival 2012 1-16 November

The Korean Film Festival runs from 1-16 November 2012, showcasing the latest young stars in a gala opening of Choi Dong-Hoon’s THE THIEVES. Other delights on offer are GABI, a 19th century drama about a foreign invasion of Korea and EVERYTHING ABOUT MY WIFE, a light-hearted look at the lengths a man may go to escape his wife. The European premiere of MASQUERADE followed by a Q&A with lead actor Lee Byunghun who is currently shooting RED 2 with Bruce Willis and Anthony Hopkins will be the closing gala for London this year. MT

UK Jewish Film Festival 2012

THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL this year kicked off on Thursday, 1st November with PARIS:MANHATTAN, a feisty romcom from Sophie Lellouche who we talked to about her full debut feature. Also on offer was LORE a harrowing wartime drama set in Germany, the long-awaited ROMAN POLANSKI: A FILM MEMOIR and ZAYTOUN, a story of friendship across the Arab Israeli cultural divide and also offers GAINSBOURG BY GAINSBOURG: AN INTIMATE SELF PORTRAIT. MT

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 1-18th November 2012. LONDON UK

Keep The Lights On

Director/Screenplay: Ira Sachs Prod: Lucas Joaquin

Cast: Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, Julianne Nicholson,

102min US Drama (Gay Interest)

Based in the early nineties Manhattan, this torrid drama has Thure Lindhardt as Erik, a wounded documentary filmmaker looking for casual sex on the rebound from a broken relationship and Zachary Booth as Paul, a lawyer he meets through chat lines. The sex is great but Paul has a girlfriend and doesn’t want to get involved. But the affair continues and becomes complicated because these two are incompatible emotionally and there are issues of sex and drug addiction.

Based on a true life experience, Ira Sachs directs with a heartfelt emotion that’s compelling, raw and full of pain. This is a tough and effecting indie drama with a grainy look and good performances, a great deal of sexual activity that feels real and an authenticity that makes the ten-year affair seem totally natural. Keep the Lights On also touches on wider issues for the gay community at that time such as the burgeoning AIDs crisis and the work of artists Avery Willard and Arthur Russell. MT

Keep The Lights On releases in cinemas across London from Friday, 2nd November 2012 at Curzon, ICA, Hackney Picturehouse and Ritzy, Cineworld Glasgow and Cardiff.

The Master (2012)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams.

144mins US Pyschological Thriller

Joaquin Phoenix was shared Best Actor at Venice this year for this dramatic portrayal of a mercurial Naval veteran who emerges emotionally damaged from the wreckage of the second World War to face an uncertain future. Dazed by the spotlights of a spiritual cult named The Cause, he falls under the spell of its charismatic and delusional leader, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman as joint Best Actor) who peddles past life regression therapy to the great and good of Philadelphia in 1950.

Stanley Kubrick had a look at Scientology-style cults with Eyes Wide Shut and this is Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on the secret and slightly sinister cult. Magnolia was another outing where he glamorised a cult leader in the shape of Frank Mackey who was played by Tom Cruise. But this time Anderson paints more just a portrait of a cult: this is a landscape of America at that time.

Dazzlingly shot on 65mm format, there’s certainly nothing cultish about the look of this film with its alluring aesthetic, dazzling camera work and authentically crafted ’50s detail. Jonny Greenwood’s unsettling orchestral score gives the film a disturbing undertone; but it’s Joaquin Phoenix and Seymour Hoffman, who really make this story as utterly involving as it is, and for over two hours, and that’s some achievement. Seymour Hoffman fills the screen with his ebullient presence and paternalistic strength appealing to Phoenix’s almost childlike need for stability and acceptance as they slowly develop a strangely interdependent chemistry that verges on the visceral and, at times, even the sexual as’servant and master’.

In some ways Phoenix’s Freddie Quell represents the broken America rising from the ashes of War and finding a new sense of direction and power represented by The Cause and Lancaster Dodd. But whichever way you see it The Master is an exciting and vibrant piece of cinema from a Paul Thomas Anderson at the top of his game. MT

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WTM8eO1Oec

THE MASTER releases on 2nd November in 65mm format exclusively at the Odeon West End and then from 16th November nationwide.

Shock Head Soul (2012) *

Director/Script: Simon Pummell

Producers: Bruno Felix, Janine Marmot, Femke Wolting

Cast: Hugo Koolschijn, Anniek Pheifer, Thom Hoffman, Jochum ten Haaf, Ian Christie

Netherlands/UK Docudrama 86mins

Famous in the world of Psychoanalysis, Daniel Paul Schreber was a lawyer who, in 1893, believed he had started to receive messages from God, through a ‘Writing Down Machine’. Over the next nine years, consigned what one might consider barbaric treatments by today’s standards, inside an asylum, he kept a journal of his journey. Shock Head Soul splices interviews with eminent psychoanalysts, fictional reconstruction, CGI and text from Schreber’s celebrated book ‘Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness’.

There is no doubt in my mind that Schreber’s original journals must indeed be astonishing reading and an amazing insight into ‘madness’, or a form thereof. However, dramatic reconstructions of events, if they are not dramatic, can fold over very quickly into the dull.

Drama, by its very nature, has to be dramatic. I have a sense that the filmmaker may have been a little too in awe of the subject matter and failed to step outside it enough to create something more engaging for an audience keen to gain an insight into the man. Watching an actor acting mad, however good the period costumes are, is still not of itself ‘dramatic’ or indeed, interesting, if subjected to it for extended periods, without the narrative moving forward. Likewise extended CGI sequences of animated floaty objects.

The distinguished cast of genuine analysts given rein to expound their own -and Freud’s- theories, came across as awkward, as they were all dressed up as they were in Victorian garb and placed in a Court as if to give professional opinion. But as none of them were actors, simply dressing them in the period was not enough to convince that they were at all of the time.

Perhaps of interest to serious devotees of Schreber, but even then, I still suspect not. There simply wasn’t enough to keep one engaged or interested on any level; intellectually, visually, or dramatically. AT

httpv://www.google.com/ig?hl=en#m_5

Rust and Bone (2011) De Rouille et d’Os

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure.

116mins Drama French with English subtitles

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Marion Cotillard plays Stephanie, a tough French whale tamer, in this gutsy and moving drama about love, loss and reconciliation. Out on the town one night in the French coastal resort of Antibes she meets Ali, an unemployed bare-knuckle wrestler who’s recently moved to the area with his son Sam. Blessed with a fabulous figure and a beautiful face that hardly ever cracks into a smile, Stephanie doesn’t take nonsense from anyone, especially the whales she trains at the local Aquarium. Ali asks for her number and they go their separate ways. But Stephanie’s not a girl who’d phone a guy back, least of all in the middle of the night. Until one day when disaster strikes.

What develops is a story that’s admirable and gorgeous to look, with well-executed CGI and a real sense of place but not nearly as awe-inspiring or as visceral as Audiard’s last outing A Prophet (2010) (which also won the top prize at the LFF in 2009). Despite its tragic subject matter the only relationship that really rings true here is that between Ali and his young son. MT

RUST AND BONE is on DVD/BLU

It Always Rains On Sunday (1947)

Dir: Robert Hamer | Cast: Googie Withers, Sydney Taffer, John McCallum | 92mins UK Thriller

It Always Rains On Sunday is a tale of Post War austerity and a noir thriller rolled into one. And Post War austerity is a phrase that’s bandied about liberally when talking about Britain in the late forties. What’s not often mentioned is the positive cameraderie of that generation and the positive energy tinged with poignancy that the era ushered in. And nowhere was that more in evidence than in London’s East End where on one rainy late winter Sunday in Bethnal Green the search for a runaway convict is underway.

Tommy McCallum’s escape rapidly becomes the talk of the town and it’s possible to identify London locations such as Chalk Farm, with its classic tube station, in the chase to bring this criminal to ground. It all transpires that he is in hiding in the garden of his former girlfriend Rose (Googie Withers), seen in flashback as a bubbly blond, who is now married to an older man with three children from his previous marriage. Over the course of a day we see a slice of social history within this chirpy Cockney corner with a gritty edge and sinister underbelly. MT

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES | Originally headlined a BFI celebration of Ealing studios Ealing: Light & Dark.

Elena (2011)

Dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev | Cast: Nadezhda Markina, Andrey Smimov, Elena Lyadova, Alexey Rozin | 109′ Russia | Russian with subtitles

The mystery is…why has it taken so long for this to be released in the UK? Elena won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section in 2011. With a magnificent central performance and excellent cinematography this somewhat slow film holds the attention of its audience from start to finish.

Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is married to her former patient Vladimir (Andrey Smimov) who she met 10 years previously. He is extremely wealthy and the couple, who are in their sixties, live together in harmony in his well-equipped Moscow apartment. Although they do not share a bedroom, he is still keen to invite her to bed after breakfast before he makes his way to the gym in his own car. During the day they pursue different activities.

Both have children from their previous marriages. Elena’s son, Sergey (Alexey Rozin) is lazy. He has no job and sits around at home with his wife, Tanya, and their children. His teenage son runs with a gang, but also enjoys sitting around at home playing videogames. Elena travels by bus to her son’s dilapidated flat, taking him food and money. Sergey keeps asking his mother to get money from her husband in order to pay his son’s University fees. The lad wants to go to College not because he is so keen to study, but to avoid military service. Vladimir has become estranged from his only daughter, Katerina. While not an easy man, he seems genuinely keen on Elena. He considers her son a scrounger, who does nothing to support his own family. In turn Elena believes Vladimir’s daughter has been given everything she needs, but shows no affection towards her father. When Vladimir suffers a heart attack, Elena faces a difficult decision regarding her own future and that of her son.

Everything is understated in the film, helped by the cinematography ((Michail Krichman), who manages to reveal the luxurious world Elena inhabits contrasting with the run-down block of flats where her son lives. Writer director, Andrey Zvyagintsev has complete command of the film from the casting of a look-alike son and father to the atmospheric slow, almost lyrical depiction of Elena’s emotions as she looks at herself in the mirror. Above all his choice of actors is absolutely right and the uptight Vladimir and useless Sergey are portrayed with consummate skill by Andrey Smirnov and Alexey Rozin respectively. Elena Lyadova’s interpretation of the egotistical Katerina is spot-on and the development of a kind of love between her and her father in hospital is handled with sensitivity. Nadezhda Markina gives us a luminous portrait of the plain Russian woman, Elena. Her conflicts become apparent without over dramatisation. Carlie Newman.

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ELENA IS AVAILABLE ON DVD AT AMAZON.COM

5 Broken Cameras (2011) Human Rights Watch Festival

Directors: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi | Cast: Emad Burnat and family, the village of Bil’in and Nil’in, the soldiers and residents of Israel and occupied territories | 90 mins Doc Palestine, Israel, France

In 2005, Emad Burnat, Palestinian resident of the town of Bil’in, bought a camera to document the birth of his fourth son Gibreel. Just as he did so the Israeli army moved in and took his villagers land, so he spontaneously chose to document what happened, politically, geographically, but also the impact to his villagers and the next generation growing up with the conflict.

Five Broken Cameras swept up festival awards across the world, from Sundance to Sheffield, Durban to Jerusalem. It is a film that could not have been made by anyone other than a local, living through it as it happened. The footage is amazing. There is no reconstruction, nothing staged. It is completely different to footage one might witness on the news or a news of the self-same struggle, where M16 sub-machine guns, Humvees and tear gas come up against peaceful demonstrations, orchestrated with courage, heart and even humour.

Burnat, armed with nothing more than his camera and a deluded sense that it gives him immunity from the injustice and carnage around him, continues to film in ever escalating, ever more difficult circumstances. This documentary evolved of it’s own accord, as Burnat began to think only in hindsight of the images that he had; the story that lay in the footage he had gained and at such cost.

This is an astonishing and humbling film throwing into sharp relief the everyday fortitude of a people connected for thousands of years to the land where they live in occupying Israel. There is a sense of disbelief that this can actually be happening and is allowed to continue unabated by the watching world. One cannot help but be moved by these two extraordinary, intertwined stories; that of a man trying to do the right thing under extreme provocation and with such a love for humanity in an environment devoid of so much with beside a fence where antagonism is an everyday occurrence, and death a daily possibility. If you get a chance, see it. AT

NOW ON MUBI | HUMAN RIGHTS FEST WEEK

Room 237 (2012) MUBI

Dir: Rodney Ascher | Cast: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner | US Doc, 103mins

A documentary about conspiracy theories surrounding THE SHINING (1981)

In the grand firmament of filmmakers, there’s no one director that inspires more awe, more frowning or hushed tones than the legendary Stanley Kubrick. The man. The myth. There is also nothing quite like a Kubrick standard to bring the geeks, the nerds, the conspiracists and the plain unhinged out from under their desks, their rocks and their bunkers to superimpose their own interpretation of what this film is about, confident in the knowledge that Kubrick has indeed put layers in there, and is happy to play around with an audience, giving them licence to postulate and reinterpret, ad infinitum.

Kubrick was a great director for a good many reasons: from his sheer invention with the camera; to production design; shot composition; edge of frame detail; colour; costume; editing; and with the strength of his ideas and concepts, he still allowed the actor the freedom to improvise. That is genius.

But it’s highly unlikely that he meant for The Shining to be watched literally frame by agonising frame in an attempt to uncover hidden meanings. Or, for it to be run backwards, superimposed simultaneously over itself running forwards. If you’re going to look hard enough for long enough and with any sort of allegorical agenda, you probably could find the deeply sinister in a daytime TV weather report.

Room 237 is one such endeavour, (it’s a film about genocide); it lurches from the considered through to the improbable and the downright risible, with a certain panache. Too often, the talking heads of the five various Shining experts leave Rodney Ascher with precious little to go on, so we are left perusing images from any number of, not only Kubrick’s films, but a big clutch of others.

The diverse theories begin to stream thick and fast, some start on the basis of illustratable plausibility, only to lose their way. Others starting from a point of implausibility, never even to attempt to find something resembling sanity; undoubtedly a genius then, but quite how Kubrick ‘photoshopped’ his own image into the clouds a clear ten years before Photoshop was even invented, beggars belief.

All in all, Room 237 is a befuddling and for the most part interminable exercise, albeit sprinkled with a few interesting moments. It may leave you frustrated, and looking forward to substantive insight. It will certainly make you revisit The Shining again and gain.

Room 237 is like going out for a promising evening, only to end up trapped in the corner with the comb-over, who simply won’t shut up. And therein lies the point. The Shining itself is endlessly entertaining, haunting, emotive, disturbing, unquantifiable… a true classic and should be enjoyed as such. By dissecting anything, all one does, by definition, is reduce it. Ask any frog. AT

NOW ON MUBI

Sister (2011) L’Enfant d’En Haut

Dir: Ursula Meier | Cast: Lea Seydoux, Gillian Anderson, Kacey Mottet Klein. | France, 97mins |Drama | French with subtitles

Using a swanky mountain ski resort as a setting, this robin hood story of social deprivation has Kacey Mottet Klein as a dysfunctional orphan, Simon, who steals from rich holidaymakers to feed himself and his sister, Lea Seydoux, who live in a pokey flat in the valley. But Simon doesn’t just take food, he actually trades the goods he steals and hustles for a decent profit, lying and swindling the while. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him, Meier leaves this open to interpretation but it’s also difficult not to admire him for his efforts to be the family breadwinner with certain amount of chutzpah. Unlikeable too is his tarty ungracious sister along with Gillian Anderson’s upmarket yummy mummy. Agnes Godard’s stunning Alpine locations contrast with a dystopian character study of disturbing proportions. MT

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Interview: Andrey Gryazev – Tomorrow (Zavtra)

Director Andrey Gryazev is the filmmaker behind the underground hit Tomorrow, charting the ideology and activity of the Russian movement and phenomenon known simply as ‘Voina’ (War). The film competed for The Sutherland Prize at London Film Festival 2012 and Andrew Rajan met him to talk about this ground-breaking first feature.

AT: Did you hear about the recent defacing of Rothko’s painting ‘Seagram’ at the Tate Modern by Russian Vladimir Umanets? What is your take on it?

AG Yes. It’s not art, it is terrorism. It doesn’t offer anything but destruction. There is no art behind it.

AT: What films do you aspire to make, in an ideal world?

AG One of the last films I saw, but I don’t see many as I am so busy, but I really liked Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days.

AT: I liked this film very much; it is very dark…

AG It is truthful. I like directors that come from a documentary background. They know what to film: not something made up, but something taken from real life. I don’t like fake. Documentary makers see the real issues that have arisen, not something that’s just made up. Some events in real life happen very quickly and documentary makers are able to remember these and recreate these moments, whilst still adding their own sensibilities to it.

AT: What drew you to make this film- do you sympathise with the Voina movement?

AG I just took it as it was. I didn’t judge it one way or the other as I was making it. My inner evaluation of the whole issue only came after I had filmed it. I re-lived all that had happened later, as an outside observer, as a neutral, in the edit suite.

Before making this film I have made short and medium length documentary films. They had very acute social issues- to all of them. They also had one character, the Government as a common theme. So in my next film, I wanted to find characters other than the Government, who would still be equal in depth and be able to have a conversation with the Government… So these new characters (in Tomorrow) have their own opinions, which I cannot affect or edit, as they are valid for these people. I cannot deny the fact that they have these feelings; that they act in the way that they do.

I cannot criticise them one way or the other, they have their right to make a statement, one way or the other. I didn’t have to be so much a director when capturing the shots, more just an activist, I cannot reshape the performances as they happen, as that would no longer be honest documenting, but when it came to the edit, then I wear the directors hat… and be a filmmaker.

AT: Since you started filming them, presumably, you have raised their profile worldwide; how much of an impact do you feel your work has had?

AG The performances that is depicted in the film, when they overturned the Police car, it was on the internet and on all the TV channels and in the film as well. It was everywhere. That has been my impact on their development…

With the international development, I was only involved in the videoing, but there is someone else doing the written work that accompanies the captions for the YouTube videos. But I was responsible for the caption ‘if you help the child, you help the country’.

I also came up with the concept of the child’s ball under the car, which made it a news item, rather than purely an act of criminality. For me, it was interesting to put it forward in a narrative way. All the video in the film and on the Internet was primarily shot for this film though, not the other way round.

AT To make this film, it needed to be a symbiotic relationship…

AG It was indeed very much a symbiotic relationship, as you say… I was doing my own indie film, without showing what had been captured, or what I had been up to.

But they were in turn getting everything they needed from my footage; so, I would do their EPK (Electronic Press Kit), their trailer, so that they could put that up on the Internet, for their publicity purposes. In turn, I was able to use everything and anything I filmed, for Tomorrow.

AT Before you turned up, was there any footage of the Voina movement?

AG They had a documentary maker of their own; temp workers, but it was so hard to find them. They were really afraid to shoot anything serious and anything they did film was poorly lit, shot on bad cameras and they even sometimes forgot to press record! [Laughter]

So… what is next for Voina?

AG Their next step is clearly depicted in the film… the highest radicalism possible. The dead-end of terrorism, of extremism… a very dead end. Actually, it is not possible to do anything… after I stopped filming them… it is not really possible to do anything- further. As an example, they set fire to a huge Police Prisoner Transporter, so if you follow that analogy through, the next thing will be to blow something up, but right now they are not doing anything.

Because in today’s society, things are very changed, things are happening in a completely different way. You don’t have the same boundaries as existed when I made this film, you have to come out and appeal to the simple people out there and… appeal to them in a language that they understand in order to create change.

AT: Are Voina happy with how the film has been received?

Before the film started screening in the festivals, I taped Voina watching the film and their reaction to the film. They liked the film and they laughed in the same places as any public audience.

However, they fight against everything… that is who they are, so it’s not to their advantage to be seen to be talking about the film in a positive way; the film destroys their myth.For this reason, they are acting against the film and they are also suing the President of the Berlin Film Festival; Voina decided they want to forbid the film being shown.

AT Because of the profits? They don’t want the film to be making a profit?

AG No… at first they started saying they have never seen it, that they didn’t know it was being made, then that they didn’t know the director. Then, that all the archive footage belonged to them and I had stolen it… that it was their own personal video footage.

AT Fantastic. Because it was criminal?

AG No. There is nothing criminal in the film; to prove it has actually happened.

I mean, anyone investigating has to come to me first, as I own the copyright and ask if it indeed actually happened, but no one has come to me. The Police. No one.

AT So why are they distancing themselves from the film?

AG That is their own PR, their own publicity.

And some journalists have asked, ‘honestly, is that your own combined PR trick, that you came up with together?’ Because it’s so perfect, it must have been made up.

But as the owner of all copyright, in order to forbid the film, they only need to ask me, to sue me, but they haven’t- only the Berlinale President. And against me, they would lose in court and be left with nothing. And this is why it is in their advantage to sue the Berlinale President, but in this entire past year, they have never written to me asking me not to show it.

AT Andrey, what is next for you?

AG I am now working on a narrative script, which is based on a documentary. But with the kind of topic I have in mind, I know I will never find the funding I need in Russia, this is why I am now preoccupied in finding other, new sources of finance. So, Roskino which is supporting the film here unofficially… they are helping him to find finance.

AT. I liked Tomorrow. I felt it to be one of the most important films in the festival.

AG. Thank you. I am always interested in the audience response to it. I wanted to make this film in a way, where they judge the people, before they know what they are doing. And then the story reveals itself.

AT I think it has been extremely successful at doing just that. Andrey, it’s been a pleasure, thank you very much.

AG Thank you very much.

Interview: Leonardo di Costanzo – I’Intervallo

Leonardo di Costanzo is mostly known for his documentary work directing and writing: At School (2003); Odessa (2006) and Cadenza I’Inganno (2011). He was also cinematographer on these projects.

His latest film I’Intervallo is a work of fiction and welcomes newcomers Salvatore Ruocco and Francesca Riso. The screenplay is in fluent Napolitan dialect. L’Intervallo competed at Venice this year for the Luigi De Laurentiis First Film prize and we talked to Leonardo di Constanzo about this special first feature.
AT What initially inspired this story?

LDC It didn’t come from real fact, but from when I watched my son, even from very young… playing with other kids… they just take two objects and start planning things with them. Myself with my co-writers, we did the same. We took two characters and dropped them into a situation. The children play and by purely observing this, you understand the social situation in which they live, The organisation they employ.

AT The politics…

LDC …The politics play out as you watch them. In the film, as they live in this world… we just describe the internal world and, even though we put them just in an enclosed space, they will still illustrate the external one surrounding them. My son is a similar age now to these characters. But I have watched his way of growing up and even since he was a kid I have observed the way he played.

There is a French documentary called The Interval or The Break, following these kids during their school break, which just follows them and it is amazing how much it says about humanity and the environment in which they live, just as you watch them playing together in their break time.

AT I feel the film captures so well that very fine point in adolescence, where they have a forced, adult, street-smart world-weariness, but lying just beneath the surface is always the ability still to play, as a child.

LDC Yes. Because I think that… not just the local people in Naples, but people coming from this working class background from anywhere in the world, they have to grow up too soon and here I wanted to give them back some of that time, that childhood.

AT How did you find this young cast, have they acted before?

LDC I interview more or less 200 initially.

This is the first time they have acted. I ran theatre workshops with 12 teenagers for 3 months. We didn’t work at all on the script. This way I found the girl- Francesca. But not the boy. I then interviewed a further 15 boys and found Alessio.

AT So, there was a fair amount of improvisation in this film…

LDC The film only then started to be created… the film script was translated into Neapolitan by these two young actors. They were the ones who ‘colloquiallised’ it for it to make sense to them and organic to them personally.

AT You had extended workshops prior to filming. Obviously, you weren’t going to be teaching them how to act; either the can or they can’t…

LDC Exactly. How this manifest, was that they would be allowed to read the script, but not learn it, but understand only what was to happen in a scene; that they needed to get from point A to point B, but how they got there, they could improvise within their characters.

The point is as you say, not to teach them to act. Because they were non-professional actors, they needed to find a way to solve a scene. They have no technique to build on and to repeat what they have already done, as you would expect from professionals. So, they were workshopped to learn, to understand totally their characters and then allowed to play within the scope of their characters, which worked very well.

AT What do you think you brought to fiction filmmaking from your experience in making documentaries?

LDC Curiosity. I try to bring to fiction film what I like in documentaries… the ability to be surprised by the action through the lense of my camera. Always leave room for some random elements to happen. Spontaneity. To find a way to control the situation to allow this randomness, to give the film life, to make the performances come alive. What I tried to do is put these things together and allow for there always to be this space for the unexpected to occur.

It wasn’t planned that the planes would cross the sky, so then my actress reacts to it, so what should I do? Should I follow her and include this uncontrollable element? Yes, I think I should.

AT How many takes did you like to use?

LDC On average about five or six, but usually, it was the second one that was used in the finished film. The first take, they usually learned what to do and the second one they got it perfect!

AT Do you have an idea what it is you want to do next?

LDC I have ideas about what I want to do next, but I can’t really…. Talk about it as I have nothing really formulated in my head.

AT Thankyou Leonardo, for your time.

LDC Thankyou very much.

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Almayer’s Folly (2011) La Folie Almayer | Chantal Akerman

Dir/Wri: Chantal Akerman | Cast: Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion, Zac Andrianasolo, Sakhna Oum | Drama, 127mins

An Asian crooner is murdered in a dodgy Cambodian nightclub in the opening sequence to this Far-Eastern tale loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s eponymous novel. A strange and sultry girl then takes centre stage to sing a solo slightly off-key. And that’s only the start of this hauntingly beguiling South Sea tale of intrigue centred on a merchant sailor (Stanislas Merher) and his fatherly ambition for his mixed-race daughter (Aurora Marion).

ALMAYER’S FOLLY is a fractured saga that winds its way backwards and forwards to a dark continent thousands of miles away in the psyche. Lulled by the birds, insects and echoes of an exotic soundtrack, stimulating and dreamlike but firmly rooted in a Colonial setting, its sumptuous visuals enchanting and hypnotising. Mesmerising performances from father and daughter really conjure up what Conrad originally had in mind when he wrote the story. Akerman has brought it all to life languidly and seductively in a fabulous slow-burner that sometimes lingers but always entrances like a languorous fevered dream. MT

Ginger & Rosa (2012)

Writer/Director: Sally Potter Editor: Anders Refn (father of Nicolas Winding)

Prod: Christopher Sheppard

Cinematographer: Robbie Ryan

Cast: Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Annette Bening, Alexander Nivola, Alice Englert (daughter of Jane Campion)

89mins UK Drama

Known mostly for her highly original and visually exciting concoction Orlando (1992) featuring Tilda Swinton in a exotic journey through time, the multi-talented Potter is back with this complex mood piece originally entitled Bomb for reasons that become evident as the story unfolds.

Ostensibly a coming of age drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, Ginger & Rosa explores deep-seated and unsettling truths for two broken middle class families kept together largely by the childhood friendship of their teenage girls, Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert). And at the core of the turmoil is Roland, a glib and self-righteous man who has neglected Ginger and her mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks) to pursue his own beliefs which somehow appear entirely reasonable, thanks to the charismatic acting skills of Alexander Nivola in this pivotal role. Roland poses a threat to Ginger and Rosa’s close friendship and undermines Natalie, a downtrodden but not completely believable artist, (more Mad Men here than sad housewife) causing emotional dust-ups and desperation all round.

Sally Potter choses her leads with great care and Elle Fanning, like Tilda Swinton, has a face that is so radiant you could look at it for hours. As Ginger, she is intoxicatingly good as a teenage Londoner (despite being American) with just the right amount of diffident naivety, burgeoning sexuality and wilfullness to fall for a cause like CND while remaining, at heart, a sensitive girl who writes poetry while her world is collapsing around her. She eclipses Alice Englert’s Rosa, who never really develops her character. Both despise their mothers in equal amounts and so, in some ways, do we. Aided an abetted by godfather Timothy Spall,his boyfriend Oliver Platt and their feminist friend Annette Bening, who manages to have the last word, this is an intense and compelling drama.

With Robbie’s Ryan clever cinematography it’s also stunning to watch with an eye-popping palette of rustic green, mauve and teal: at one point Ginger’s hair exactly matches the peeling wallpaper in her father’s bedsit. Potter’s script is loaded with complex meaning that when spoken, seems to convey so much more than the words on the original page and with a seductive score of sixties soundbeats from Stephane Grapelli to Dave Brubeck this is one hit not to miss. MT

On The Road (2012) MUBI

Director: Walter Salles | Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Steve Buscemi | IS Drama 124mins

Many have tried and few have succeeded in filming Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical Beat classic. Here it finally makes it to the screen courtesy of Walter Salles of Motorcycle Diaries fame. There were mixed feelings about this feature at Cannes when it premiered twelve years ago and many felt that it had failed to capture the zeitgeist despite clinging close to the novel. So desperate to be “cool” it almost fails; to my mind at least, but it has a starry cast and follows through the Beat era: a pretty long one at just over two hours – Viggo Mortensen, Sam Riley, Steve Buscemi and Kristen Stewart are there to keep you amused on the journey.MT

NOW ON MUBI

London Film Festival 2012 – Photogallery

Tomorrow (2012) Zavtra London Film Festival 2012

Director, Producer, Script: Andrey Gryazev

90min Russia Drama Documentary

The recent defacing of Rothko’s Seagram at the Tate Modern by Russian Vladimir Umanets and the resulting discussion, encompassing vandalism, art and making a statement is as good an introduction to Gryazev’s film as you are likely to get. Stylistically at least, you know what you are going to get from the start: shot on a handheld, cheap, digital camera, with no lighting beyond the torch on the nose of the lens, you are immediately thrust into a twilight world and in a very real way.

However, as the film reveals itself and the true intent of the participants, it becomes something of a revelation as you are forced to reappraise your own stance. Whatever your thoughts or leanings on the signing of the Tate’s Rothko, there is nevertheless a strong statement being made; a dialogue and Tomorrow is no different. It is well worth watching for that fact alone. I don’t think anyone can fail to be educated by the lead protagonists and what it means to live on the fringes of society and of a society to which you feel neither attachment, nor pride.

It is only when quotes of the proletariat poets Mayakowski and Mandelstam start being bandied about that unexpected layers start to emerge. This film starts with the supposition: what would you do if you felt an overwhelming need to say something, but had absolutely nothing with which to make that statement, nor to have it heard?

Adversity is the mother of invention. Tomorrow is the symbiotic coming together of an activist movement, ‘Voina’ (War) and a filmmaker, Gryazev. It is the most unexpected and surprising film I have seen at the festival. Don’t go for the film grammar, exquisite production design, or resplendent cossies, but do please go for the content. And the comedy. If you like it best served as black as a Black Russian at night with a bag over your head.

It Was The Son (2012) E Stato Il Figlio Best Cinematography Venice 2012

Director: Daniele Cipri Screenplay: Daniele Cipri/Massimo Gaudoso

Prod: Alessandra Acciai, Giorgio Magliulo

Cast: Toni Servillo, Giselda Volodi, Alfredo Castro, Fabrizio Falco, Aurora Quattrocchi

90min *** Drama from the novel by Roberto Alaimo

For this first outing without his creative partner Franco Maresco, Daniele Cipri turns to his Southern Italian roots for inspiration with a dramatic black comedy set in seaside sink estate Sicily and based on a novel by Roberto Alaimo.

At its heart is a commanding performance from Toni Servillo as Nicola, a scrap metal dealer whose own heart beats overtime when his little daughter Serenella is killed in a Camorra shoot-out, leaving him to claim government compensation via dodgy dealers and red tape bureaucracy: it may even be a scam. Aided and abetted by the lazy but likeable large family, he is forced to go further and further into debt to meet the bogus compensation ‘conditions’. And he’s the only one working.

There’s no one better to play the head of the family in this theatrical melodrama that plays out like a Greek tragedy with hand gestures; than Toni Servillo. He’s a larger than life character and a national hero in Italy. With a powerful physicality and dominant onscreen presence, he’s Famous for his tour de force performances in The Consequences of Love, Il Divo, Gorbaciof and Gomorrah to name but a few. Giselda Volodi is strong as his long-suffering wife Loredana. Aurora Quattrocchi, as his mother, comes into her own at the climax: and it’s a surprising one proving that Italy’s matriachal society is very much alive and kicking when it comes to running the family.

Daniele Cipri was awarded at Venice this year for this feature. He is cinematographer on Marco Bellocchio’s Dormant Beauty. MT

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2012

The Interval (2012) I’Intervallo London Film Festival 2012

Director: Leonardo Di Costanzo

Producer: Carlo Cresto-Dina, Tiziana Soudani

Script: Di Costanzo, Maurizio Braucci, Mariangela Barbanente

Cast: Francesca Riso, Alessio Gallo, Carmine Paternoster,

Salvatore Ruocco, Antonio Buil, Jean Yves Morard

Drama 86mins Italy

With all the fire and foreplay that goes into film festivals, one always turns up a little ragged, but always in the hope of finding some unexpected emerald in all the dirt and dust. L’Intervallo is one such experience. Already having found a hard-won spot at the top-flight Toronto and Venice Festivals, this Neapolitan set drama unfolds both deliciously and naturally. The young actors are at that pivotal stage in life where they are at once seamlessly able combine a streetwise world-weariness with the delight of a child’s unfettered imagination lying just beneath the surface and this pretty-much two-hander plays upon this dynamic to the full and greatly to its credit.

Shot entirely in Naples’s dilapidated former Leonardo Bianchi psychiatric hospital, the style and cinematography are excellent, shot as it is on 16mm by DoP Luca Bigazzi. Subsequent to extended rehearsals pre-shoot, Director and erstwhile documentary maker, Di Constanzo treads a sure-footed path with his cast. Time indeed well spent; we never disbelieve either their circumstance, nor the veracity of the protagonists and the wonderful, haunting location simply serves as a multi-faceted character in itself.

It’s amazing what can be done with so little when someone puts their mind to it. I hope and trust we will be hearing a lot more from both director and cast. AT

After Lucia (2012) Despues de Lucia

Director/Script: Michel Franco

Producers: Michel Franco, Marco Polo Constandse, Elias Menasse, Fernando Rovzar

Cast: Tessa Ia, Tamara Yazbek, Hernan Mendoza, Gonzalo Vega Sisto, Francisco Rueda, Paloma Cervantes, Juan Carlos Berruecos, Diego Canale

Mexico/France 99mins Drama

Winner in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes this year, Franco’s second feature film is a slow burner, but certainly packs a punch. Tackling similar themes to his first feature, Daniel And Ana, although very different, Franco has an unflinching and economical methodology of storytelling, which goes on to add great weight and authenticity to his films.

The central performances from Tessa Ia and Hernan Mendoza are excellent. There is a slow build up throughout the film where you may be left guessing as to what exactly the film is about; I hope you manage to dodge any reviews that give away too much of the plot. Make no mistake, this is a dark tale concerning the less attractive side of human nature, but it is delivered with such economy, truth and commitment from cast and creative alike, that it’s easy to understand why it beat off the competition at Cannes.

There is something reminiscent of Michael Haneke in the manner of Franco’s storytelling. An austerity and an attrition, which is definitely attractive to an arthouse audience tired of Hollywood wool and blurred edges. It is one of those films that is incredibly difficult and yet increasingly compelling to watch.

The characters are very finely considered and depicted with great confidence by both filmmaker and cast. The ensemble work is impeccable throughout and I believe this is some auteur at work. Nit-pickers may point to a stretching of belief that the story would unfold quite as it does, as extremely as it does, but I remain a believer. Worse stories have been thrown up in the news. Hopefully this film gets an airing beyond the festival circuit in this country. AT

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Director: Benh Zeitlin

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry

91mins Drama

In a remote part of the Bayou cut off by time and tide lives Hushpuppy a tiny Southern Belle..except her ‘big hair’ is a thatch of Afro curls and on her feet are dirty wellies. All cute and petulant, she clambers amongst the rubbish dumps and make-shift dwellings called the Bathtub, tending her garden of driftwood and her baby farmyard animals in a place where fantasy and reality seem to co-exist in a bubble.

You’re going to fall in love with her: she’s an adorable kid who doesn’t need to act; she just plays herself. her daddy Wink, a loose-limbed masculine dude who doesn’t seem to give a damn about the authorities or the tropical storms is well played by Dwight Henry. Theirs is a love hate relationship bound by blood ties and the memory of a mum who is deeply missed. The local community of lushes and lost souls is a strong and resilient one borne out of self-sufficiency: suffering but proud and resistant to chance threatened by the guys on the mainland who think they know better. Hushpuppy is played by local school girl Quvenzhane Wallis and her dad is Dwight Henry another non-actor. Based on a play by Lucy Alibar who wrote the screenplay with young director Benh Zeitlin this film is nothing short of magical. Gorgeous visuals and its imaginative setting also make a winner. It took the Sutherland prize at London zfilm Festival 2012. MT

On General release from 19th October 2012 at Everyman, Tricycle and Curzon cinemas.

Festivals and more…

What’s in store this weekend on the arthouse and indie film scene, read on….

GENERAL RELEASE

The long-awaited re-make of Nicolas Winding Refn’s 1996 gritty feature Pusher is back with Richard Coyle in the lead and Refn as executive producer. Re-makes are rarely as successful as the original movies but read our review and then decide for yourself at The Apollo and Odeon this weekend.

The Road is Jack Kerouac’s cult novel of the forties Beat generation and the film version has finally arrived with Walter Salles of Motor Cycle Diaries fame in the driving seat and Viggo Mortensen, Sam Riley and Kristin Stewart in the leading roles. See it this weekend at the Tricycle, Everyman and Vue throughout London.

Radioman is an entertaining documentary about a homeless friend to the stars. Aka Craig Castaldo he’s defied poverty by making himself a celebrity on the film circuit. Johnny Depp, George Clooney and even Meryl Streep appear to be his big buddies according to this film. See it at the Prince Charles cinema from Friday.

Following in the steps of War Horse is Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful, another Great War story but this time the action is based on sibling rivalry. It plods along with less drama and pizazz than the Spielberg epic but has some good performances from an experienced cast.

From the directors of indie hit Little Miss Sunshine comes Ruby Sparks another charming story about a writer who creates his perfect soulmate and then meets her in the flesh. Truth can be stranger than fiction so check it out at the Odeon cinemas and Vue throughout the London area.

Fans of Status Quo will be thankful to Alan G Parker for this definitive if not exhaustive (152mins) music biopic featuring the Quo’s five decades of chords and strumming as a touring and recording rock band. On Monday 22nd October they will make a special appearance at the screening in London’s Leicester Square for this fly on the wall doco. The DVD/Blu-ray – the Access All Areas Collector’s Edition is available from 29th October 2012.

The party is under way this week with a slew of exciting new releases from features to documentaries; some that may just be here for a flying visit such as Dormant Beauty from Italy, Blancanieves from Spain, Tey from Senegal and In Another Country from South Korea so catch these while you can at bfi.org.uk/lff.

Highlights from other festivals include debut features such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and My Brother The Devil; dramas such as The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen, In The House with Kristin Scott Thomas and Wadjda from Saudi Arabia, documentaries; West of Memphis a true story of multiple murder and World premiere For No Good Reason is a portrait the cartoonist Ralph Steadman by his old friend Johnny Depp. These are all screening this weekend. Check our reviews for the inside track.

LONDON GREEK FILM FESTIVAL 8-18th October 2012

The Greek Film Festival offers a meaty ten days of docs, features and world premieres such as Luck by Nikos Skoulas and Panos and Cascadia from Rob Jelley.

…and last but not least, The Rio Dalston is screening a double bill of Bertolucci’s 1970 political drama Il Conformista by Alberto Moravia starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli along with Antoniani’s Il Deserto Rosso (1964). Who would have thought that nearly 45 years later Jean-Louis Trintignant would be starring in Amour, Michael Haneke’s Palme D’Or winner at the LFF this weekend. How about that for an acting career?: that’s we call “respect”. MT

Hello Quo (2012)

Director Alan G Parker

Producer Alexa Morris

155mins UK Music Documentary

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It has to be said from the outset that anyone watching a documentary running at over two and a half hours (!) needs to pretty much be a die-hard Status Quo fan. It is exhaustive, in both senses of the word. That said, if you are indeed a Quo fan, then this film does pretty much give you all you probably want, with interviews from the band’s key members, from the original five to the current five, agents, managers and the great and the good from the Rock n Roll firmament.

It starts a little oddly, the opening sequence is very out of whack with the rest of the film and there are a few too many minutes spent watching talking heads. There is no doubt that it could also have been more judiciously cut. But Quo are undoubtedly a supergroup, having, as they do, the crown of most appearances on Top Of The Pops and over 120 million albums sold.

In the main, they are a self-effacing lot and talk openly about the trials and tribulations of being in a successful rock band and all that entails. I would have wanted more detail about exactly why band members upped and went at various points. We know they do and a vagueness towards the ‘why’, but not the actual why, which is probably because they prefer to put bygones behind them and look to the future. Towards the end though, it does all become a little tired and worn, with gimmick gigs in local pubs and guesting on Corrie but then, what do you do, if all you have ever known is being in a band and you are still writing material?

In cold terms, it’s not a great documentary, but then, if you’re a fan, perhaps it is. AT

Hello Quo the DVD/BLU-Ray – The Access All Areas Collector’s Edition is out of the 29th October 2012

Private Peaceful (2012)

Director: Pat O’Connor

Producer: Guy de Beaujeu, Simon Reade

Cast: John Lynch, Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Jack O’Connell, George Mackay

Drama UK 100mins

Based on the children’s 2003 novel by Michael Morpurgo, most famous for his blockbuster Warhorse, Private Peaceful is also set in the years running up to and during the First World War. The novel is clever in that it alters as it reads, coming through to the present by using the present tense. The film utilises a time honoured method of fracturing the narrative, putting the end of the film at the beginning, then rewinding time back to 1908, when the lead brothers were just boys, then unravelling the circumstances up to why they end up serving in the army. This device however, of showing the ending first, needs to be used very skilfully, lest it rob the audience of any suspense. Unfortunately, in this case, it isn’t. The film is laboriously slow. The early sequences with the young cast are leaden and the acting and interaction unconvincing. On the plus side are some star cameos from John Lynch and Richard Griffiths.

Audiences now are simply far more savvy and need their action to move at a much better pace. Watching it was reminiscent of watching a Sunday drama on the telly in the early Eighties. It might well have an appeal with older audiences, which is odd, considering its original demographic as a book.

The story is certainly an emotive one and I’ve not read the novel, so am unqualified to comment on it, but I can’t help feeling that this is an opportunity missed. AT

The Summit (2012)

Director/Prod Nick Ryan Screenplay: Mark Monroe Cinematography: Robbie Ryan

95min UK documentary

Documentary charting how 11 climbers died during the descent from K2

Climbing Everest is an achievement that you can brag about over dinner, according to a professional mountaineer, but climbing K2 is for the hardened professionals and not to be taken lightly, as 11 climbers discovered, to their chagrin, during one descent in Nick Ryan’s fearless documentary.

One in four climbers who reach the summit of Pakistan’s K2 will die on the descent and Nick Ryan shows us how bravado and relief can bring about a sense of disorientation and slackening of safety routines that can often prove fatal. This is what happened to a group of climbers who set out on the expedition in the Summer of 2008. Of the 18 that started out only 11 would survive. Here Nick Ryan and his crew followed in their footsteps to find out what exactly happened that fateful climb.

What starts as a jumbled affair of meeting the various teams of climbers, for there were several parties and nationalities on the mountain that July, gradually falls in to place as the different teams gather to formulate strategy. That we know the ending right from the start, doesn’t detract from the suspense and occasional moments of terror at the shear skill of some of the hair-raising shots and angles. And despite the slightly jumbled narrative thread, this remains a gripping and ultimately moving piece of filmmaking whose horrors will stay with you for quite some time after you leave the cinema. MT

Radioman (2012)

Director: Mary Kerr

Cast: Radioman

Documentary USA *** 75mins

Four years in the making, this documentary was first conceived by producer Paul Fischer, who came across the legend that is Radioman whilst working a film set in New York. Bringing in his film school partner Mary to film it, they spent quite some time getting to know the man. In interview, they describe the job as interesting, easy and difficult in equal measure. Radioman was, it turned out, very interested in talking about the famous people he knew and had worked with, but proved less than willing to open up about his own past.

The film makes almost direct reference to the point that he is the spitting image of a character that could be played by Robin Williams; a man who, whilst homeless in the Eighties, stumbled across Bruce Willis on the set of Bonfire Of The Vanities and became forever hooked on film sets and actors. The ensuing years have consisted in Radioman visiting every set in New York, getting to know the crew, meeting the stars and even getting himself involved as an extra in a few. Over 100 at the last count. A great many stars were happy to be interviewed over Radioman, who has become something of a talisman in the industry. George Clooney, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Ron Howard, among many; none of whom were backward in coming forward about Radioman.

He’s a true eccentric. A character who could so easily have slipped forgotten through the cracks in the sidewalk but now follows his own dream, working hard for what he has with a heart and an authenticity that isn’t lost on those that constantly need to combat the tsunami of Hollywood fakery. Almost by mistake, Radioman becomes a great, alternative snapshot into a seldom-seen side of the biz. You can’t help but warm to the man and wish him well. As Radioman himself says: ‘Just be yourself. Do what you have to do in life, pursue it as far as you possibly can, don’t let anyone discourage you.’ AT.

Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 (2012)

Director Stevan Riley

Producer John Battsek

138mins Doc

Everything Or Nothing (EON…) ‘The Untold Story of 007’; if I may combine two previously incongruous brands, this does exactly what it says on the tin, charting the entire story, from the origins and inspiration behind Ian Fleming’s initial concept, through to the creation of EON Productions and all the various Bond’s to the present day, five decades and 22 films later.

And it’s a story well worth the telling, not only because James Bond is so much a part of the fabric of our lives, effectively through four living generations, but because it’s a cracking good yarn. Replete with greed, desperation, rejection, human frailty, coincidence, betrayal, ego, fame, forgiveness, success, excess and an inordinate amount of money, this is a story worthy of an HBO fiction.

What also lifts it is the fact that everyone involved in interview is quite matter of fact about their participation but also candid about what was going on behind all the razzamatazz of the Bond juggernaut. Director Riley does an excellent job of working through this massive chronology, keeping his eye on the ball and telling a nimble, comprehensive story of what is the longest franchise in film history. And what a history.

There’s archive footage of the enigma that is Ian Fleming and the early producers, Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, interviews with George Lazenby (hilarious), Timothy Dalton, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig, Christopher Lee, Barbara Broccoli, directors and production designers, as well as friends and family members close to the story as it unfolds, but also surprising interjections from the likes of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

It also clears up the circumstances behind the long-running litigation battle that lead to the spin offNever Say Never Again. Interesting stories throughout for anyone, from Bond aficionado to the curious dip-in browser. It’s by turns a funny, enthralling and moving journey through something we all feel we know so well, but come to realise we know only one side of. Odd then, that no one thought to do it before. AT.

EVERYTHING OR NOTHING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF 007

13 (2010) | DVD release

Writer/Director Gela Babluani

Cast Sam Riley, Jason Statham, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent, Mickey Rourke, Ben Gazzara

87 mins 2012 US remake Suspense thriller

13 Tzameti was originally made by Georgian filmmaker Gela Babluani in 2005, starring his brother and located in his native Georgia. It went on to win World Cinema Jury Prize the following year at Sundance and also won two awards at Venice. Despite not having seen this original, one cannot but help think that it must have been far better, retaining a raw edge and energy that this poor remake lacks, to have propelled it so far, earning the attention of Hollywood.

Despite a very good performance by Sam Riley, this so-called suspense thriller lacks much suspense and is less than thrilling. The movie is chock full of testosterone, but lacks cold logic; a requisite ingredient, if one is to believe the story as it unfolds.

It also fails to divest enough of its low-budget predecessor in terms of making it big screen and not small screen; it comes across rather as a late night schlock TV movie, rather than a big screen outing.

One is constantly aware of the star turns and therefore never really enter into the world the film is trying to create, as these stars just get in the way. So one finds oneself just looking at Mickey Rourke or Ray Winstone, rather than the characters they are meant to be portraying. This of course would not have been the case with the original, where one also feels a syndicated game of Russian Roulette might also be more plausible in the first place in a desperate, twilit, Mafia-run Georgian underground.

I sincerely hope for his sake that the filmmaker Babluani hit paydirt when he got the greenlight to do this all-star remake but, as with so many remakes these days, it simply falls far short of majestic and rather begs the question ‘why?’

There was far too much showboating and a reliance on assumed ‘cool’, but in the cold light of day, I didn’t buy into the game; it was meant to be the ultimate in super-organised, high-end bet-chic, but was demonstrably wide open to sleight of hand, to cheating. Critical detail was lazy- they dish out the same type of bullet to at least five different gun types and none of the character stories really ever rang true. If you’re going to do it, at least do it properly. All of this fakery exemplified by the gun hammers clearly not having firing pins either. No wonder it failed to go off. Andrew Rajan.

NOW ON DVD and Blu-ray 8th October

Pusher (2012)

Dir: Luis Prieto | Cast: Richard Coyle, Agyness Deyn, Zlatco Buric, Neil Maskell, Bronson Webb | UK Drama 87mins

Quite why Luis Prieto decided on this remake of the far superior original remains a mystery. Usually, it is either because the previous version was in another language and the story needs must be shared to a wider audience, as in The Departed or Matchstick Men or, it’s an oldie that someone in their wisdom feels can be improved upon, such as the forthcoming Carrie and recent Total Recall.

However, in all instances, there is a substantial boost to the budget to make it all worthwhile. However, in this instance, what was originally a low-budget Danish affair becomes a low-budget British one, to no discernable improvement.

Richard Coyle is perhaps best known, in the UK at least, for his broad comedy in the sitcom Coupling. However, here he turns on the masterfully brutal and with great aplomb. He is coupled this time with erstwhile top model, Agyness Deyn, who also acquits herself very well, although one suspects that she will be hard pressed to find many lead roles; her looks I fear, will do her few favours in this industry. There are some nice turns by Zlatco Buric and Neil Maskell, but also some very ill-judged ones too and the dialogue is oddly stilted in the opening scenes. The writer, Matthew Read is Producer on a prodigious quantity of TV drama, but has written very little and it shows in his adaptation of Nicolas Winding Refn’s original script.

The original 1996 Pusher, which had real verve, energy and menace, is this time directed by relative newcomer, Luis Prieto; Refn credited solely as Executive Producer on an oddity. As intimated, it isn’t quite the same story, there are several deviations as the end credits verify, but it still doesn’t make for a better film. My favourite shot of the original is missing, as is the very real inbuilt claustrophobia and Prieto makes a great many of what one can only assume are ‘homages’ to films like Taxi Driver, Trainspotting and Requiem For A Dream.

It’s all very well borrowing from the best, but one could at least disguise, subvert, or even add to those masters that have gone before and thus create the New. The storyline; of a man needing money to pay off bad men who might otherwise do mischief with his limbs/life/girlfriend if he doesn’t find cash, like, ‘yesterday’, is a very well-trodden one, so it really needed to have something exceptional done with it to make the pay off… pay off. It hasn’t (up)dated well. AT.

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

13 (2012) DVD/BLU RAY

Writer/Director Gela Babluani

Cast: Sam Riley, Jason Statham, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent, Mickey Rourke, Ben Gazzara

87 mins US remake Suspense thriller

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Despite a very good performance by Sam Riley, star of Brit Flick Control, this so called suspense thriller lacks much suspense and is less than thrilling. The movie is chock full of testosterone, but lacks cold logic; a requisite ingredient, if one is to believe the story as it unfolds. It also fails to divest enough of its low-budget predecessor in terms of making it big screen and not small screen; it comes across rather as a late night schlock TV movie, rather than a big screen outing.

Available on DVD and Blu-ray 8^th October

Liberal Arts (2012)

Director/Producer/Writer: Josh Radnor

Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Josh Radnor, Zac Efron, Allison Janney

97mins Comedy

Liberal Arts is a coming of middle-age campus company featuring How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor as Jesse Fisher, a vapidly bookish intellectual who returns to his Ohio University for a retirement dinner. Jesse is motoring into his thirties but still seems as wet behind the ears as most of the students he hooks up with during this weekend break.

There’s Elizabeth Olsen as Zibby, a smugly precocious girlie whose sexual advances he rejects in favour of his favourite English professor (Allison Janney). She’s the only character here who’s believable but doesn’t quite cut it as a blue-stocking vamp. The others are just plain weird or, or maybe the word is “kooky”: Dean, a sullenly depressed intellectual on the verge of suicide; Zac Effron, as a strange elfin character who lives on a campus bench and speaks in riddles, and Elizabeth Reaser plays a bookish librarian who appears to be wearing a wig and false teeth. She captures Jesse’s heart on the rebound from his own angst-ridden confusion because she’s so “age appropriate” despite their glaring lack of on-screen chemistry.

Set in fine surroundings with a pleasing score, this is an earnest and light-hearted attempt at nostalgia that needs to man-up with a punchier script and be a little less pleased with itself. MT

Untouchable (Intouchables) (2011)

Director/writers Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache

Cast François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot

112mins Comedy (French) Subtitled

Based on the true life story and with the blessing and close collusion in the making of Philippe Pozzo Di Borgo and his care assistant Abdel Yasmin Sellou, this is by turns both a moving and hilarious comedy, breaking box office globally; we are infact one of the last to see it released in the UK.

If the idea had been manufactured: a black ex-crim from the Parisian projects becoming chief caregiver to a properly minted paraplegic, I can only imagine what a saccharine, clumsy hash of things Hollywood would have made of it. As it is, this delicate, perfectly poised piece, sensitively scripted and directed by Toledano and Nakache really illustrates what can be achieved when filmmaking is truly collaborative. The actors have been allowed to do what actors do; meet the people their roles are based on and develop both their characters and their relationship with each other.

This film stands or falls on the believability that these two could indeed meet and find a commonality and a deep mutual understanding and respect, despite their wildly divergent life experience and background. Both learn and are healed to some degree by the other, but not in any rote or predictable manner. This writer/director team obviously thrive on their careful method of working, which nonetheless allows for the spontaneous and the ungoverned to be captured and this translates so well onto the screen and, from the interview with both actors, they obviously thrived on it too.

Untouchable is a savvy collaboration, bringing together execs Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the producers of that other recent French comedy delight Heartbreaker and the acting chops of Cluzet, Le Ny and Sy; and it works. It So works. See it and be delighted. AT

Weird and wonderful ‘cinema du look’ from 28 September 2012

One of the highlights at Cannes this year was maverick filmmaker Leos Carax’s latest outing Holy Motors. It’s a weird, wacky and wonderfully entertaining film inspired by the night life of stretch limos: and if that sounds far-fetched just wait ’til you see the film… Leos Carax has been fêted on the festival circuit this year and been awarded a Golden Leopard at Locarno for his eccentric contribution to Cinema du look, a movement that typified a slick visual style with a focus on spectacle over narrative. See this exuberant showpiece starring Denis Lavant, Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue at the Curzon and check out their Screen Salon for a chance to hear more about his films Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and Pola X. Also showing at Everyman cinemas, and the Hackney Picturehouse.

And from Cannes to the Berlinale where Christian Petzold won best director this year for Barbara, his impeccably-crafted Cold War drama set in eighties East Germany and starring Nina Hoss in the leading role as a woman subjected to suspicion and surveillance by the Stasi police. If you’re looking for a stylish thriller, Barbara opens from Friday at the Curzon, and Odeon cinemas throughout the London area.

John Cassavetes was a pioneer of American independent film through his technique of improvisation and cinema vérité. His 1970s feature Husbands was described by Time Magazine as his finest work but this study of the emptiness of suburban life continues to divide the critics: Midlife crisis anyone? Well there’s a chance to find out at the NFT Southbank where Husbands is showing from this weekend. For a more starry take on marriage, the NFT are also showing Mr & Mrs Smith (1941) with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard. And there’s still a chance to see Strangers On A Train (1951) if you’re looking for a way out. The Hitchcock season continues until October.

Fans of Rupert Grint will be excited to hear that his World World II drama Cross of Honour (Into The White) is on a limited release at cinemas throughout London prior to the DVD release on 1st October. Don’t get too excited, it’s not his best but if you want to see it on the big screen it’s at Reel Cinemas this weekend.

And here’s a reminder that tickets for the London Film Festival went on sale this week at www.bfi.org.uk. See our full low-down on the festival here. The line-up includes 225 features of which 14 are World Premieres, including Crossfire Hurricane, a doco celebrating 50 years of the Rolling Stones.

Lovers of Spanish film will be looking forward to the eighth edition of London’s Spanish Film Festival that kicks off on Friday and this year offers a retrospective of Pedro Almodovar featuring such delights as La Flor de Mi Secreto and Todo Sobre Mi Madre. The Festival also showcases strands from Basque and Catalan directors so check it out at www.londonspanishfilmfestival.com. Showing at the Cine Lumiere SW7 from 28th September until 10th October.

One of the leading pioneers of the docudrama, Peter Watkins, is an alternative figure on the indie scene with his avant-garde take on the establishment and experimental fare. Head over to the Tate Modern for a glimpse of his work over this weekend. Since the banning of The War Game, Watkins left England and is currently working on his biography with Patrick Murphy entitled Freethinker: The Life and Work of Peter Watkins.

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And last but by no means least, the 20th Raindance Film Festival is currently underway at the Apollo cinema, Piccadilly W1. Offering a selection of gems on the indie scene it has, in its day, premiered The Blair Witch Project, Oldboy, and Memento. Shoehorned in to collide with the London Film Festival in the hope of garnering visiting talent from the international circuit, it runs from the 26th September – 7 October 2012. This year it features the World Premiere of Love Tomorrow on the 4th October – look out for our review – and Dark Hearts that it has nominated for the Best International Film award and stars Goran Visnjic (Girl With The Dragon Tattoo). Other World premieres on offer are Tetsuhiko Nono’s A Road Stained Crimson and Orania, a documentary portrait of the eponymous town founded as a social experiment in 1991 exclusively for Afrikaners in Northern Cape, South Africa. MT

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Cross of Honour (Into the White)

Director Petter Naess

Script Ole Meldgaard, Dave Mango, Petter Naess

Cast Florian Lukas, David Kross, Stig Henrik Hoff, Lachlan Nieboer, Rupert Grint

Drama Running time: 100mins

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Director Petter Naess came to prominence with his second outing, Elling in 2001. Also Known as Into The White, Cross Of Honour is Petter’s ninth feature and is described in the opening credits as being loosely based upon real events, where two dogfighting aircraft are downed over Norway in the middle of winter.

Unfortunately for all, very little of what must indeed have been an extraordinary true story remains in this clumsy, dull and unconvincing portrait of adversarial airmen forced to cohabit. All the more extraordinary then, when one considers that these roles are based upon real people, that they muster only two dimensions per character on celluloid.

The relationships feel contrived all round and, as the action takes place for the most part in a shed, it plays out like a stage-play with characters taking it in turns to open up to very little satisfaction all round. Considering this film will be heavily sold on Rupert Grint even though it is very much an ensemble piece, he has pulled up a very unconvincing Liverpudlian accent and, without the weight of the Potter Blitzkrieg behind him, there was precious little magic to speak of. His performance is misjudged; at odds with the others as well as the film as a whole.

Aside from some stellar exceptions, pieces in English directed by foreign directors have often been known to lose a wheel. Perhaps it was in the translation of nuance, either in script or in the playing of the characters. Certainly the English dialogue was leaden, the laughter forced and the audience remained firmly ahead of the action with never any threat of surprise. There never felt to be any real jeopardy at all and therefore very little drama.

It may be that this film still cuts a return from the very solid fanbase that Grint undoubtedly retains but, unless obligated by a young member of your immediate family, I would avoid…AT.

The DVD releases on the 1 October 2012

Husbands (1970) Mubi

Writer/Director John Cassavetes | Cast: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes,Jenny Runacre, Jenny Wright, Noelle Kao |US Drama 138’

It would be easy to wax lyrical about John Cassavetes and what he means to American film history for the entirety. Let’s leave it choice: he is credited with being the father of American Cinema Vérité, was Oscar nominated as a Writer, a Director and as an Actor and his facsimile graces a US stamp. Contrary to popular myth, though you could be forgiven for thinking so, his films were never simply just a filmed improvisation but improvised extremely rigorously in rehearsal to produce a finished script which was then filmed.

Regarded by some as his masterpiece, and pre-dating his better known 1976 The Killing of A Chinese Bookie and 1974 A Woman Under The Influence, Husbands is another dark

and unflinching gaze deep into the psyche; in this case, three close friends facing their own mortality through the untimely demise of their fourth musketeer.

There will always be a real sense of truth and spontaneity to Cassavetes films because of his exacting process and the great troupe of truly talented actors who went on to rule the firmament but were never better than when let loose by Cassavetes. Husbands is one such example and it remains at times just plain difficult to watch, so deep is the sense of intrusion into these men who are laid naked to the lens. I find it telling that he only appeared in Hollywood fare to fund his own projects. He died too young in 1989 aged 59, of liver cirrhosis.

Husbands received only a limited release back in the UK in 1971, so for all of you old enough then but missed it and all of you now old enough to appreciate a master at the top of his game, go and be discomfited. There’s no one like him for viewing humanity, in all its mess. AT

Nominated for Best Screenplay – Motion Picture at the 1971 Golden Globes.

MUBI RETROSPECTIVE AUGUST 2023

Barbara (2012) Mubi

Dirr/Wri: Christian Petzold | Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Block | Germany, Drama

In an East Germany of 1980, Nina Hoss gives a stunning performance as Barbara, a cool teutonic blond doctor exiled to a remote Soviet-style cottage hospital by the Stasi, leaving her lover in the West. With a fine line in sexy underwear and a reserved bedside manner that masks her exquisite vulnerability, Barbara is initially immune to her colleague Andre’s cosy but magnetic sexuality and growing interest in her that goes beyond her talents as a pediatrician.

Sumptuously shot in a palate of muted colours with fine attention to period detail by cinematographer Hans Fromm, this is an accomplished piece of cinema. It works on two levels: as a well-detailed social study of the East/West conflict, and a subtle, slow-burning love story that’s desperate to burst out of its clinical strictures but never quite does due to Barbara’s, and our own, uncertainty of Andre’s motives. Hemmed in by the tense paranoia at being monitored by a Stasi officer (Rainer Block) rifling through her drawers, Barbara escapes for clandestine meetings with her lover in West Berlin until the past and present start to close in around her. Christian Petzold won best director at Berlin with this Cold War psychodrama of a woman caught between desire and subterfuge.MT

NOW ON MUBI | Prime Video

Violence, vibrators and theatre of the absurd this weekend – 21 September 2012

We’ve got some kinky stuff for you this weekend on the indie film scene but let’s start with an uplifting French film that broke box office records across Europe last year and has finally reached our shores. Untouchable, stars Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy as characters from different sides of the social spectrum who come together and form an extraordinary bond. See Untouchable at the Everyman, Odeon and Cine Lumiere from this Friday.

Thrillers don’t come more stylish or more hard-nosed than Andrew Dominik’s latest offering Killing Them Softly. Bleak and bloody, it’s a noirish tale of hitmen and mobsters with Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell and Ray Liotta and releases this Friday at the Everyman, Hackney Picturehouse, Coronet and Odeon Cinemas throughout London. Not strictly arthouse, but it impressed me at Cannes this year so I thought I’d include it here for your viewing pleasure…

Tower Block is a beast of a different colour: set in sink estate London it’s a dark and dingy siege thriller lit up by great performances from Sheridan Smith and Jack O’Connell and served by a sassy script. Tower Block is showing at Showcase Cinemas, Cineworld and Vue this weekend.

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And from violent reality to violent fantasy comes Santa Sangre, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s luridly adventurous avant-garde tale of Fenix, a boy who grew up in a circus. Combining poetry, surrealism, humour and psycho-sexual trauma it’s a genre-busting one-off that has to be seen to be appreciated and believed. This 1989 feature was awarded best film in the Certain Regard strand at Cannes that year and has now been re-released. See it on the big screen from this weekend at the Curzon, ICA, and Hackney Picturehouse or be damned!

And talking of psycho-sexual trauma, the history of the vibrator is chronicled in Hysteria, a mildly stimulating comedy with a soft touch that rapidly runs out of power….but is salvaged, by some skilful performances from a starry cast of Hugh Dancy, Rupert Everett and Maggie Gyllenhaal, all dressed up in Victorian garb but with nowhere really to go. Hysteria is at main cinemas across London. Starting out as an arthouse flick, it was soon picked up by Sony when they realised its powerful hook for audiences everywhere; satisfaction not completely guaranteed.

We’ve all heard of Twiggy but who discovered her and brought her to prominence in the swinging sixties with the likes of Penelope Tree? It was Diana Vreeland, according to a fascinating fashion documentary that showcases her life, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel:. A leading socialite and bon viveur, she influenced many a fashion and beauty career through her high-profile role at the helm of Vogue, Harpers and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Diana Vreeland also sold lingerie to Wallis Simpson but probably not vibrators – or did she? See this stylish biopic at the Curzon, ICA and Hackney Picturehouse from tomorrow.

And last but not least there’s still a chance to see James Stewart and Doris Day in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) at BFI Southbank as part of the Genius of Hitchcock Season that continues until October when Ealing: Light & Dark takes over. This is going to be an exciting retrospective on the Ealing Studio films of the 40s and 50s. It will include some rarely seen features and kicks off with a re-mastered version of the 1947 classic It Always Rains On Sunday. Read the low-down on this sizzling season and see some of the iconic artwork that will form part of a ground-breaking exhibition of posterwork from Eric Ravilious, John Piper and Edward Bawden. MT ©

and still showing….

Killing Them Softly (2011)

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta

97mins Thriller

Tightly plotted and intensely gripping, Andrew Dominik’s take on the savage world of sub-criminals is brutal and clever with a political dimension thrown in for good measure.

Set in a recession-bound America of 2008, Brad Pitt and Sam Rockwell are the badfellas taking part in a mob betrayal story adapted from George V Higgin’s 1974 thriller Cogan’s Trade. They both give dynamite performances as stupid and ruthless psychopaths who get increasingly involved in a violent cock-up which deteriorates into mass gun killing at long range or “killing them softly” as Pitt as Coogan calls it: so he is spared the emotional fallout of his victims.

Andrew Dominik’s direction is suave and masterful with plenty of slo-mo scenes set to romantic music (“Love Letters” et al ) and slick set-pieces intercut with glimpses of American presidents on the TV news. A narrated overlay from Cogan completes the rather clunky political backstory. It’s unapologetic, bloody and smart but if you like your thrillers caustic and male-dominated, go for this one. MT

Toronto Film Festival 2012 – The Towrope (La Sirga) (2012)

Director/Writer: William Vega

Cast: Joghis Seudin Arias, Julio César Roble, Floralba Achicanoy, David Fernando Guacas, Heraldo Romero

88 mins Colombia, France, Mexico 2012

Spanish; subtitled Drama

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Filmed with a complete economy deserving of its subject matter and no small amount of mastery by writer and director William Vega, I realised from the opening frame that I was going to fall for La Sirga. There’s a relaxation that takes hold, as an audience, once it registers that it is in good hands and that all it needs do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

Alicia has travelled far, searching for her uncle and her last surviving relative, in the hope that she might find sanctuary there with him. This is one of those films that gives the viewer the impression that ‘nothing is happening’. Au contraire. Everything is happening.

The acting is understated and captivating, the camera moves minimal but entirely earned and the dialogue stripped back -almost to the point of rudeness. One key reason this film is so good is because the director is all but invisible. There are no artificial aids here, nothing to inflate the story or enhance the actors beyond the candles they hold for light and the superb, pointed, but oh-so-subtle interplay between the extraordinary cast. The only soundtrack permitted is a restless wind through long reeds, a few restrained birds chirping in the near distance and the ever-present Andean lake lapping at the doorstep. Life here is about the preparation needed for survival; making sure there’s enough wood, that the house isn’t going to fall down during inclement weather and scraping enough money from this harsh, blasted landscape to put food on the table.

The bigger picture, of political unrest, unspeakable violence and the rest of the known world going about its business happens entirely off camera and yet these things orchestrate utterly all that happens on camera in this all but perfect study of human endeavour against all the odds; Alicia reminiscent of a lily flowering on a vast lake, open to the elements. La Sirga plays out like a cross between a dense, beautiful, powerful poem of very few words and a documentary, it’s so realistic. AT

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel (2012) London Fashion Week

Dir: Lisa Immordino Vreeland | US Doc, 91′

A documentary portrait of maverick and socialite Diana Vreeland (1903-89), who through her insight, sense of style and over-riding self-belief helped to influence the world of 20th century fashion and beauty during her 50-year at the helm of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. She “discovered” Twiggy and Lauren Bacall and hung out with the likes of Cole Porter and Cecil Beaton amongst other luminaries of the last century. Directed by her niece and brought to life with a dazzling array of archive material and interviews with her family, former colleagues and key figures such as David Bailey, it keeps its wry perspective throughout never losing sight of the fickle and ephemeral nature of the fashion world that is all about attitude, trend-forecasting and self-promotion. A fascinating film for fashionistas everywhere. MT.

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Interview with Robert Guédiguian

We met Robert Guédiguian at the private apartments at the French Institute in South Kensington to talk about his latest film “Snows of Kilimanjaro” starring Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Ariane Ascaride. French portraits and provençal décor seemed a fitting background for our discussion. With his kind face and tousled hair Robert comes across as a sympathetic and relaxed person who has totally mastered his craft over the past three decades and speaks softly but with conviction in a Southern French accent. Born to a German mother and Armenian father in L’Estaque, the new port of Marseilles, he’s chosen to make his birth town a character in many of the 17 films in his directorial repertoire that started in 1981. His work has also taken him back to his father’s roots for Journey to Armenia (2006) and to Paris for his excellent poitical study, The Last Mitterand (2005) and his dazzling historical drama, Army of Crime (2009) that celebrates the resistance fighters in wartime Paris and reflects his commitment to France’s mutlicultural background.

F: I read the Victor Hugo poem, The Poor People, that gave you inspiration for Snows of Kilimanjaro. My understanding is that the story is of a fisherman away in all weathers who returns to find his wife and five children well, but their neighbour dead and her children orphaned. I understand the point, that those that work the sea are part of a brotherhood- a family, but how did you get from that story to this?

RG. I wanted only the same end to Snows as the poem, along with the poem’s social background and working the sea. That and the fact that it is a love-story. That was my starting point and the rest came from there.

F. Marseilles is obviously close to your heart and plays a character in the finished film in many of your films. Would you care to expand on that?

RG Marseilles is an exceptional theatre; young people from around the world are there and, unlike London or Paris, as a Mediterranean port, it has been multicultural for many centuries, not just a few, a great melting pot and I find this very interesting. What is extremely important is where you film – it’s what gives character, a certain character, a câchet. Where you shoot your location gives the film a visual identity, its life and colour. Yes, you could transfer the story to say Liverpool, but Marseilles has its own very particular look and feel.

F. I understand your father worked the docks… How much of your father, if anything, is in the character of Michel and indeed your mother in Marie-Claire?

RG. Always all my movies are autobiographical to some extent, however, my story, my background is also then completely bent or deformed to fit the story that I have written, that I wish to tell, so there is effectively very little of my father or mother or me in this. Even though it of course remains ‘autobiographical’.

F. What does working with the same cast give you that a new cast doesn’t?

RG. It works rather like a theatre troupe doing a repertoire of plays. In the same way that Marseilles is a theatre for me, the cast and crew are a family; there are no limits as to what they will do. There will be no nasty surprises. They are like instruments in an orchestra, ready to go. I already have a whole set of instruments there. There is now of course also a shorthand in terms of understanding. But importantly, there are no egos; no one will put their own performance above the film, they will all serve the film first.

F. I felt a strong improvised element to some scenes… is this accurate?

RG. Not at all with the actors, but only with the young children, yes. There is no text or script for them; it’s just what they bring naturally.

F. The differing viewpoints of the various characters were very strong and felt genuine. How did you write or research these?

RG. I never research as such. But on the other hand, I research all of the time. By reading every day; reading the newspaper, trying to get information all of the time and talking to people. Also my own experience as a political animal and trade unionist.

F. How long did it take to write? How long to shoot?

RG. The skeleton of a story takes the time it takes, but the actual scene writing takes maybe a month and a half after that initial process of having all the thoughts fall into place. The filming itself took eight weeks.

F. Do you rehearse a lot with the actors prior to shooting? How many takes do you tend to use on average?

RG. I never rehearse. I like being surprised by the actors first response to a scene, their first reading. I like the first reactions and the spontaneity therein. I may then redirect in terms of how fast or slow something is said, or where the actors walk, etc. I will never take more than six takes. Any more than six and the scene isn’t working and needs rewriting.

F. Why did you feel strongly enough to make this film? Is it a sentiment you feel that is running through this generation; a n ignorance of the sacrifices and the battles of their forefathers?

RG. This conflict of generations exists not just in Marseilles, but worldwide. It is the “indignant” that this film represents: the people that are demonstrating outside the banks, and so on. There is a generation of “indignant” that I am putting into this story in Marseilles, rather than the other way around. It is a universal story that I have placed in Marseilles.

F. Did you hope to achieve anything beyond simple entertainment by making this film?

RG. Yes of course. Even filmmaking that is seen as just entertainment is by its very being political, whether the filmmaker knows or acknowledges it or not. Making a film is a political act.

F. Can you expand for me the importance to you of working not only with the same actors, but the same crew? I notice you re-use the same cinematographer/editor/production designer for many films….

RG. I like to work with the same crew for the same reason as I like to use the same actors. There will be no nasty surprises and they will put the film first. I will not have an issue with a cinematographer for instance, wanting to put his ‘style’ or print on the film, he will simply serve the film.

F. You have an Armenian and German heritage – I note the humorous dig at Germans in the film!. Did it have any bearing on your childhood? What does this bring to your filmmaking and your identity as a Frenchman, if anything? There is a strong element of ‘identity’ or ‘belonging’ in this film.

RG. Growing up in L’Estaque, I never really felt to be an outsider as such. Sure, when I was very young a couple of times someone might have called me a ‘Bosch’ in derogatory fashion, but really, I felt I belonged to a very strong working class culture, encompassing many different cultures; as I grew up, my friends were Spanish, Italian, even Moroccan, but we were all brought together by this common, shared element over and above any other perceived differences.

I think what is both remarkable and sad, is a sense – not just in Marseilles – but worldwide- that this new generation does not have a solidarity, a ‘coming together and moving as one’ and therefore the collective power or sense of belonging that my generation had in order to get things done. Now it is all about the individual, but this brings with it a loneliness and this I explore in the family and circle of friends unit in the film and how supportive and nurturing it can be. I feel that has been lost to this generation; to its detriment.

F. What is next for you in terms of filmmaking?

RG. My next film, shooting next year and starring Ariane Ascaride is called ‘Au Fil d’Ariane’ a lighter film, again set in Marseilles, it is the character of Ariane that is going to be played with, the narrative concerns her character. This film is going to be like a holiday for me!

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is showing at the Cine Lumière downstairs from 14th September 2012. AT

Arthouse film for the weekend -14th September 2012

The heat may have gone out of September but there’s plenty to warm you up on the arthouse circuit this weekend. First we head down to the South of France for The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Robert Guediguian’s heart-warming social drama about love and solidarity. It features Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Ariane Ascaride and is showing at the Cine Lumiere from Friday 14th. We met Robert to talk about the film and his next project.

The long-awaited release of A Separation director Asghar Farhadi’s 2009 film About Elly opens on Friday 14th. It’s another gut-wrenching rollercoaster of a film that follows a group of Tehrani friends to the shores of the Caspian Sea for a weekend celebration that ends in tragedy for all concerned. See it at the Curzon, Soho.

And if you could use a laugh after all that wailing and gnashing of teeth then what better than Woody Allen’s latest: To Rome With Love. Set in the sun-baked city with a starry cast of Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni and, of course, Woody himself, it’ll raise a few laughs but not many….on general release from Friday.

For those of you that don’t know, Anton Corbijn is a highly industrious photographer turned filmmaker who helped to create brands we now know as U2, Lou Reed, Depêche Mode

amongst many others. His biopic Anton Corbijn: Inside Out releases this weekend at the Curzon Soho and the Lighthouse Cinema Dublin.

And at the Rio, Dalston, there’s still a chance to see the digitally-remastered Chariots of Fire starring Nigel Havers, Ben Cross, Ian Holm and John Gielgud and featuring the amazing soundtrack by Vangelis that was commissioned by Mohamed Al Fayed who also financed the original production in the eighties. Read my interview with Mohamed for some background flavour to this all time classic and for a last hurrah as the 2012 Olympics well and truly bow out..phew!

Over at the Southbank the BFI are preparing for an extended version of the London Film Festival that kicks off on October 11th 2012. See my outline of what’s in store this year under Festivals. Priority booking for members opens on Thursday 13th September 2012.

Also on release this weekend at the Southbank is Canadian maverick Guy Maddin’s extraordinary supernatural thriller Keyhole featuring the sultry siren of the silver screen Isabella Rossellini. The Hitchcock Season continues there with Dial M for Murder although due to extreme popularity it’s practically sold out, so get on down there fast…

And last but not least Nostalgia for the Light, Chilean director Patricio Guzman’s visually arresting poetic meditation set in the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, is still showing at The Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square. Have fun! Meredith

Still showing……

Mists, mellow fruitfulness and movies on the arthouse film scene 7-14 September 2012

Toronto Film Festival 2012 – 7 Boxes (7 Cajas) 2012

Directors Juan Carles Maneglia , Tana Schembori

Cast Celso Franco, Lali González, Víctor Sosa, Nico García

Script Juan Carlos Maneglia

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105 min *** Spanish-subtitled Genre: Thriller, Action

Although fleetingly reminiscent of Hollywood suspense thrillers, this lo-fi crime caper has its roots much further back. With the upcoming BFI/NFT Ealing Studios retrospective in October, it brings to mind the The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), with its bungling criminals, street-savvy kids, honour among thieves and urban setting. That and Meirelles’ sublime 2002 film City Of God. Likewise, 7 Boxes simply could not have been made on 35mm; with the imaginative, progressive choice of camera angles, some lightning set pieces not to mention the nighttime low-light location of the Asuncion outdoor market bazaar.

First-time feature filmmakers Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori should be rightly proud of their debut. They’ve worked together extensively before, but never on a feature, which Juan Carlos also wrote and edited. This accomplished calling card should do well at the festivals and, if there’s any justice, eventually break out onto the arthouse circuit in Europe and beyond.

There are a few holes for any lurking perfectionist, but certainly nothing wide or gaping enough to prevent anyone from enjoying this romp and the cast are just gorgeous: Celso Franco and Lali Gonzalez in particular are at once entertaining, convincing and, one has to say, hugely photogenic. Not a bad combination when you’re in a charming film and just 17. AT

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

Director/writer: Robert Guediguian

Cast: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Ariane Ascaride, Gerald Meylan, Maryline Canto, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet.

90mins Contemporary Drama from the Director of Army of Crime (2009)

Not to be confused with the Gregory Peck “Snows” of 1953, this film was inspired by a Victor Hugo poem “Les Pauvre Gens”. Set in writer/director Robert Guediguian’s home town of Marseilles it’s a deeply touching and human story of social realism resonating with the current mood of economic uncertainty: a far cry from the glamour of Hollywood. It has Jean-Pierre Darroussin as Michel, who is looking forward to a new lease of life with his family after recently losing his job as a union rep in the local neighbourhood of L’Estaque. But when he and his wife Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride) are violently robbed by an ex-colleague their love for each other and successful marriage are put to the test and they start to re-examine their working-class values of solidarity and socialist take on life.

Guediguian regulars Jean-Pierre Darroussin and his on-screen wife Ariane Ascaride make a strong and believable couple and create some poignant moments in this involving and provocative drama which proves that life is all about the people we meet along the way. Robert Guediguian could be France’s answer to Ken Loach.

About Elly (2009)

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Shahab Hosseini, Taraney Alidoosti

118mins Drama

Only last year, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s fifth feature, A Separation, won massive critical praise and wowed audiences all over the World with its complex moral tale from contemporary Iran . This year About Elly (2009) has finally been granted a UK cinema release.

It’s not quite as mind-blowing as A Separation but nevertheless offers up another moving and multi-layered tale of social mores and societal duty that’s open to discussion and debate while remaining an unremittingly bleak and deeply effecting human drama. With some really powerful performances especially from leads Golshifteh Farahani and Shahab Hosseini, there are some early moments of fun that soon dissolve into pure hysteria but the general mood is of unleavened gloom.

In About Elly, what starts out as an light-hearted invitation soon leads to tragedy for all concerned during a weekend celebration for a group of ex-university friends on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The men are all kitted out in sports gear, the women all carefully covered up: this is current-day middle class Tehran. One of them Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), has recently split from his German wife so the organiser of the trip, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani ), decides to invite her kid’s teacher Elly, in the hope that Ahmad might finally settle down with a nice Iranian girl in a relaxed setting of friends. It’s inspired matchmaking on her part but the seemingly innocuous idea soon turns out to be a really bad one. At first Elly seems reluctant to come along but gradually she warms to the weekend celebration until an unexpected turn of events leads to her mysterious disappearance. At this point Sepideh realises how little she really knows about her friend Elly.

To Rome With Love (2012)

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Alec Baldwin

112mins Comedy

A Woody Allen movie is like a Bond movie: you’ll see it whatever the critics say because of the eternal appeal of the man. And what’s wrong with that. It’s guaranteed pleasure for and light entertainment. After Midnight in Paris, he continues his European tour with this carefree sharp-scripted passegiata through Rome switching between four stories of locals and visitors to the city. A stellar cast ensures fab performances from Penelope Cruz, Alex Baldwin, Ellen Page, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davies and Woody himself an insecure (what else?) opera director.

Anton Corbijn: Inside Out (2012)

Director: Klaartje Quirijns

Starring: Anton Corbijn, Bono, Martin Gore

80mins Biopic about photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn

For those of you that don’t know, Anton Corbijn is a highly industrious photographer turned lauded filmmaker who, through the use of his camera, helped to create the brands we now know as U2, Lou Reed, Joy Division and Depeche Mode, amongst many others.

This mostly subtitled Dutch documentary by Klaartje Quirijns spends time with the photographer at his studio, on the set of The American with George Clooney, at his childhood home and with his immediate family; his mother, sister and brother. There are also brief interludes with the likes of Bono, Metallica, Lou Reed and Arcade Fire.

It is without doubt an in-depth, frank and open discussion held with an artist whose work must inarguably be accepted as trailblazing and iconic. He is a man driven to the exclusion of all else by his work, finding both camera and music at a young age and pursuing both thereafter as his passion; his raison d’etre.

Inside Out also dwells briefly on the two films he has made; the very excellent debut Control and the not so sublime The American, where there is a perhaps telling scene between Corbijn and his lead actress concerning the interpretation of a line in regards to her character. He is most definitely a visual man rather than a dramaturg.

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Quirijns shines a light on the hitherto hidden recesses of Corbijn’s life and life-story and Corbijn is both brave and open in his revelations; the son of a preacher man from a small Dutch village, as he is. But the story of an unhappy childhood, distance from his parents, of loneliness and the analysis of why he chooses the shots he does only serve to reduce rather than enhance the legend.

It is indeed therefore a very insightful film that reveals the man behind the myth, but actually in the end, I simply wanted to admire his many, beautiful portraits telling their thousand words and not hear Corbijn admit that the reason he chose the side of a tanker with a huge steel cable draped like a smile, was that it depicted ‘heavy metal’ for the Metallica shoot, or learn that he, like so many of us mere mortals, is still running around seeking his fathers approval and feeling incomplete as a man. On top of this, the banality and ineloquence of various smug pop stars waxing less than lyrical over photographs of themselves only made me reflect that perhaps it’s a case here of not actually wanting to meet ones heroes… Some people or things are great because of their mystery; some pictures wonderful as much for the personal lens through which we view them. AT

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Movies, mists and mellow fruitfulness on the indie scene 7 – 14 September 2012

September ushers in a cool array of arthouse movies to enjoy now the evenings are drawing in. First up is Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ complex and involving drama that compares the loneliness of old age with the excitement of youth. Shot in black and white it’s an achingly romantic tale of a Portuguese woman looking back on her glamorous life in Colonial Africa.

Tabu is showing at the ICA Cinema, Rio Dalston and Odeon Panton Street from Friday.

And from the wilds of Africa to the frozen steppes of Russia comes another lovelorn glamourpuss this time in the shape of Countess Anna Karenina. Keira Knightley takes centre stage for Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of the timeless Tolstoy tome and Atonement director Joe Wright presents this glitzy merry-go-round of a movie in a theatrical setting and supported by a stellar cast of Jude Law, Matthew McFadyen and Aron Johnson. See it at the Everyman, Curzon and Clapham Picturehouse.

John Hillcoat’s drama Lawless also opens this weekend. Written for the screen by musician Nick Cave, the film is a true-crime take on a tale of thirties prohibition seen through the eyes of a band of brothers. Gary Oldman, Tim Hardy and Shia LaBeour star. Showing at the Everyman, Tricycle Cinema, Gate Notting Hill and Vue all over London.

Skyfall, the eagerly-awaited new Bond movie is coming up in October. With Daniel Craig on his third mission as 007, Sam Mendes directs and Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench and Albert Finney take part in this 23rd adventure of the suave English spy. It’s not strictly arthouse but everyone loves a Bond movie and this one’s set to knock your socks off.

If you you’re up for a slice of social realism, then head over to the Southbank for a chance to see Mike Leigh’s classic TV film from the seventies archives Play For Today. The main attraction here is Alison Steadman’s standout performance as a struggling middle-aged mum stuck in a loveless marriage. It also has Ben Kingsley in one of his first appearances on film.

The Hitchcock season continues at the Southbank with his most abstract psychological drama, The Birds. Tipi Hedren stars as a sparkling socialite who pursues her love interest to a seaside town and gets more than she bargained for.

Documentary -wise this weekend sees the release of The Queen of Versailles, a funny, sad and cautionary tale about an American Dream turned nightmare for one family.

Shut Up And Play The Hits, is Will Lovelace’s musical portrait of reluctant rockstar James Murphy and charts the last 48 hours of his highly successful band LCD Sound System featuring the celebrated showcase showdown at Madison Square Garden in 2011.

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Tabu (2012)

Director: Miguel Gomes

Cast: Teresa Nadruga, Ana Moreira, Laura Saveral, Carloto Cotta, Henrique Esprito Santo

118mins Portuguese with English subtitles

Does anyone really live happily ever after or is old age a pale reflection of our past? This is the universal theme that Portuguese director Miguel Gomes explores in this enigmatic and spectacularly moving feature told in two parts. After a quirky lead-in, the first half is a desultory and amusing affair based in and around Lisbon where three women from completely different backgrounds are dealing with the loneliness of old age and their memories of the past. Pilar (Teresa Madruga) works tirelessly for worthy causes, Santa (Isabel Cardoso) is laid -back and resigned to her work as house-keeper for an eccentric and well-off woman called Aurora (Laura Soveral). And Aurora is the dark horse of the trio. Stumbling around on the foothills of dementia she’s obsessed with crocodiles, voodoo and a mysterious man called Gianluca Ventura.

She also harbours a naughty slot-machine habit and a secret past that gradually comes to light as we’re transported back to the savannah of colonial Mozambique, where, in her younger days, she has a farm on the foothills of Mount Tabu. Marrying well she is then drawn into a passionate and visceral love story with the charismatic GianLuca Ventura (Carlotto Cotta), who turns out to be a stunningly attractive and rakish friend of the family.

Shot through with exotic images of heat, lust and hedonistic decadence, this is far the most artistically imaginative strand and plays like a silent movie narrated by Ventura, combining black and white cine-style footage with a score featuring soundtracks from pop music of the era. These two different cinematic styles successfully reflect the dreams and adventurous promise of youth where everything is possible in contrast to the pedestrian mondanity and isolation of old age where fantasy is largely brought on by medication or the vagaries of mental decline. This bravely ambitious feature has shades of Out of Africa and shows Gomes to be a filmmaker of great flair and insight.

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Keyhole (2012)

Director: Guy Maddin

Starring: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Keir

94mins Horror

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin took the inspiration for this black and white thirties-style horror film from Carl Dreyer’s “Vampyr” the daddy of all horror movies. Entirely shot on digital, it has a surreal mood and eerie soundtrack that completes that otherworldly feel.

The story goes as follows: Jason Patric’s Ulysses returns home to a mansion creeping with the ghosts of family members and tries desperately in a repetitive sequence that’s part dream part reality to reach his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) who is locked upstairs in her bedroom. He is visited by ghosts of his son and daughter as well as his wife’s lover and father and re-visits the psychological trauma of their deaths over and over again in order to reach some sort of emotional catharis.

Guy Maddin is an acquired taste and has been widely compared to David Lynch. Keyhole is a hypnotic film to watch, bathed in its monochrome visuals, but by the end it becomes exhausting: Suffused with double-exposures, billowing curtains and dreamlike images that fade away into the ether, it also teeters on the edge of kinkiness in a ‘Diane Arbus’ sort of way. If you’re not a fan, be prepared to swallow a large dose of phantasmagoria that may not go down entirely as the director intended.

Lawless (2012)

Director: John Hillcoat. Writer: Nick Cave

Cast: Shia Lebeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman.

Prohibition brought a sense of dread and restlessness to Virginia in the 1930s. John Hillcoat’s savage tale of bootlegging gangster brothers is punctuated by short sharp shocks of brutal violence and permeated with an overriding sense of dread. With some solid performances particulary from LeBeouf, it’s a suberb study of social meltdown and sibling loyalty but as a chronicle of the era it’s as empty as an alcoholics memory of the night before.

Anna Karenina (2012)

Director Joe Wright Screenwriter: Tom Stoppard

Starring: Jude Law, Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Aaron Johnson

Atonement director Joe Wright has placed the writing credits of this take on Tolstoy’s timeless masterpiece in the safe hands of Tom Stoppard as Keira Knightley takes the stage, quite literally, in the leading role. Focusing on the eternal love triangle and the choice that every woman has to make between romantic love and the security of marriage and social position, this version takes place within the confines of a theatre in a railway station, an ice rink and other snowy locations. Of the standouts, Jude Law gives a sleek and buttoned-up performance as Karenin and Matthew MacFadyen’s cheeky turn as Anna’s brother is fresh and dynamic. Be-decked with fur and diamonds and breathtakingly spectacular, the ambitious setting seems to draw the attention away from the heart of the drama which is the scandalous love story that develops between Keira Knightley’s Anna and Aaron Johnson’s dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. With echoes of her tearfully poignant performance in Duchess without the visceral punch, the film immediately becomes less emotionally engaging and more of a theatrical romp with pseudo rumpy-pumpy and Strictly Ballroom thrown in. But as a piece of filmmaking it’s an intoxicating and innovative statement from a director very much at top of his game.

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Twenty8K (2012)

Directed by: David Kew, Neil Thompson. Writers: Paul Abbott, Jimmy Dowdall

Cast: Stephen Dillane, Parminder Nagra, Kaya Scodelario

106mins Action thriller

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East London is the setting for this well-paced Britflic as riddled with stereotypes as it is with bullets. Panoramic scenes of London locations punctuate the action revolving around a gang-related shooting that leaves young Asian teenager Vipon banged up as the main suspect. His elder sister, Deeva, a Paris-based fashion executive played by Bend it like Beckham star Parminder Nagra flies back to town and turns detective to get her little brother, newcomer Sebastian Nanena, off the hook.

Well you’re in safe hands with Paul Abbott (State of Play) writing the screenpaly and Stephen Dillane shines out in the role of DCI Stone. It’s honest and well-acted and jogs along nicely but does it really have anything new to say and does it move you? Well probably only in the direction of the exit doors as the closing titles roll. See this one when it comes out on DVD.

Once in a Blue Moon on the indie film scene 31 August 2012

This weekend’s Blue Moon brings sensuous delights to the silver screen with the opening of Samsara, Ron Fricke’s breathtaking visual meditation on the cycle of life. A sequel to his highly acclaimed film “Baraka”, this extraordinary documentary takes you on a globe-trotting tour through 25 continents, all filmed in eye-popping clarity and the highest definition known to mankind in cinemas today. The Curzon Mayfair is celebrating this release with a specially created Chili Lychee Martini. Samsara is also showing at the Everyman, Hackney Picturehouse and Apollo West End. You really need to see it on the big screen.

Peter Strickland’s dynamite follow-up to “Katalin Varga” is the highly original “Berberian Sound Studio” a chilling tale from Rome based on the Italian “romanzi gialli” of the sixties and seventies. With its blood-curdling sound-track and Toby Jones’s edgy portrait of an ordinary guy slowly losing his mind, it’s my top recommendation for this weekend. See it at the Curzon, The Everyman and The Barbican.

And talking of mind games, “The Possession” may appeal to those of a psychic persuasion. Based on A S Byatt’s Booker award-winning novel, it tells the story of a little girl who becomes entranced by an antique box and shows how curiosity gets the better of her. Dealing with themes such as OBE and mediumship, it’s not to be taken lightly but is possibly one of the better versions of “The Exorcist” currently around. But don’t get carried away, while you’re “out of body” something else could jump in…… Showing at Vue and Cineworld cinemas from Friday 31st August.

Still with the supernatural in mind, The Everyman “Late Nights” are showing David Bowie in Jim Henson’s gothic tale of fantasy “Labyrinth”. They are also hosting a Q&A on John Hillcoat’s upcoming “Lawless” that premiered at Cannes this year. Tickets available online at Everyman Film.

At the Rio, Dalston, there’s another chance to see Jan Kounen’s mesmerising love story “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky” ((2009) starring Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis. It divided the critics but who could baulk at two hours of exquisitely designed interiors, sumptuous clothes, delightful music, lush photography and electric performances from two attractive actors. For those who loved “A Single Man” it will appeal. I won’t mention the sex scenes…

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And last but not least is an engaging and powerful Polish political drama set in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall entitled “Yuma”. With echoes of the 1957 “3:10 to Yuma”, it’s a little bit rough round the edges, but well-directed with some strong performances particularly from the central character Zyga (Jakub Gierszal) and provides an valuable insight into the era. If you’re interested in European history or communism then “Yuma” is for you. Showing at the Odeon cinemas and Cineworld from Friday 31st August 2012

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and still showing….

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Dir/Wri Peter Strickland | Cast: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Tonia Sotiropoulou | 90mins Thriller

It’s 1976, and in a sleazy sound editing studio somewhere in Rome two monstruous egos are working on “The Equestrian Vortex” a cheap and nasty horror flick based on the “Gialli” paperback thrillers of the era. Francesco (Cosimo Fusco) is the mercurial producer and Santini (Antonio Mancino) the womanising director. Frothing with self-importance and seventies machismo, they are arrogant and faintly ridiculous. Then into the mix slips Gilderoy (Toby Jones) a timid English techie all the way from Dorking. Still living with his mother he is remarkable only for his well-honed skills at mixing and manipulating sound on analogue equipment. His unique ability at producing sounds with a variety of fruit and veg that mimic flesh and bone being crushed and severed by unknown forces and supernatural powers is matched only by his meagre financial demands to get the job done. But no one is being paid for this gig and Gilderoy’s blokish modesty is at odds with the Italians’ smouldering sexuality. Their snide banter, jibes and bare-faced chauvinism towards the women “screamers” in the studio creates a palpable ambiance of provocation and some minxy female characters with Bond girl Tonia Sotiropoulou standing out as the sultry and recalcitrant PA.

Gilderoy steadily works his magic on the sound effects but the toxic brew of personalities and claustrophobic interiors start to have a negative impact as he longs for soft memories of home. Losing his grasp on reality, Gilderoy sinks into a morass of auto-suggested horror echoing that of Roman Polanski’s character in “The Tenant”, strangely of the same year. There’s a a lot of early Polanski here: the lighting and sinister shadows, the misery of tortured souls and anxiousness of the outsider. It’s a subtle and finely-tuned performance from Toby Jones and Cosimo Fusco strikes just the right balance between absurdity and condescension. Peter Strickland is a director first feature Katalin Varga won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2009, his latest, a comedy entitled Flux Gourmet, was back in this year’s Berlinale Encounters strand, but came home empty-handed. MT©

ON ARROW PLAYER

Samsara (2011)

Director: Ron Fricke

Writer: Mark Magidson

Documentary

Samsara is a visual tour de force that will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world or the origins of humanity. Taking its name from the Sanskrit word for the circle of existence, Ron Fricke spent five years to putting this documentary together: the result is a crystal clear pastiche of images shot on 70mm film in the highest definition footage in available in cinema today, accompanied by a dynamic score from Lisa Gerrard who sang on the soundtrack “Gladiator”.

Samsara is certainly the most relaxing film you’ll see so far this year. The global odyssey unfolds sensuously with eye-popping clarity and total calm, as the camera pans through five continents and twenty five countries in the form of a guided non-narrative meditation showing how the rhythms and symmetry of the natural World are mirrored in our own life cycles and creativity. Gradually it becomes more sinister and takes a non-judgemental look at the legacy of our existence focusing on the imprint of industry, pollution and natural disasters and leaves us to form our own conclusions. Just lie back and think of England, Burma, India, Canada, Nepal, France, Germany, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, Argentina and many more.

Meredith Taylor

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Shadow Dancer (2012)

Director/Writer: James Marsh

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen, Aidan Gillen, Brid Brennan, Gillian Anderson

101mins Thriller

Andrea Riseborough is well cast as Colette, a mother and IRA member in 1990s Belfast who is forced to become a double agent for MI5 during an aborted bomb attempt. Torn between her family and the political set-up she gradually falls for Clive Owen as detective Mac and they become emotionally involved in a slow-burning love affair. Andrea Riseborough strikes just the right note of seriousness and vulnerability and Clive Owen’s subtlely nuanced performance as an MI5 professional whose credentials are called into question by his feelings is well-pitched and believable. Atmospheric visuals, authentic interiors and fine attention to the historical context make this a gripping and suspenseful feature from director and writer James Marsh who is best known for his documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim.

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August Bank Holiday 2012 – Latest from the arthouse scene

Just in time for the Bank Holiday wet weekend there’s plenty to see on the big screen. The long-awaited IRA espionage thriller Shadow Dancer from Oscar-winning director James Marsh finally hits cinemas this Friday. Starring Andrea Riseborough (Made in Dagenham), Clive Owen (Croupier) and Gillian Anderson (The X Files), it’s a gripping and atmospheric British drama that exposes the emotional fault lines of two people, an MI5 operative and an IRA informant in nineties Belfast. See review for showtimes.

The Imposter is a spin-chilling “film-experience’ and Director Bart Layton’s extraordinary debut feature. A true-crime documentary with a noirish psychological twist, it explores the sinister aftermath of the real-life kidnapping of a young boy in San Antonio, Texas in 1994.

The Imposter is showing at the Everyman and Vue Cinemas throughout town from Friday.

The BFI continues its retrospective with F for Fake, Orson Welles’ innovative masterpiece and documentary about fraud and fakery, directed in the last decade of his life and starring himself in the leading role – who else! Showing at the BFI and ICA London from the 24th August 2012

And finally Maryam Keshavarz debut is a forbidden love-story from Iran. “Circumstance” is a coming of age drama focusing on a lesbian relationship and won best audience award at Sundance this year. See reviews for listings.

Shireen Arshadi and

Nikohi Boosheri star in

Circumstance (2011)

And still showing……………….

Crossfire Hurricane (2012) ****

Director:Brett Morgen
Cast Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ron Wood, Bill Wyman, Mick Taylor, Brian Jones

UK/USA Documentary 115mins

Marking 50 years of The Rolling Stones, Brett Morgan interviewed the members of the band, sans camera using only sound, to garner their thoughts on their genesis and the past half century leading up to the present time.

Morgan’s voice recording creates the ideal underscore for almost two hours of archived footage and from a huge library source. And it’s well worth the trouble. Even if you aren’t a Stones fan in the slightest it’s still worth watching; they have become, like it or not, a part of the fabric of our society and a defining sound of the Twentieth Century. The fact that they are still alive is remarkable in itself.

This is an opportunity to hear, at first hand, the stories that have since gone down in folklore: The passing of Brian Jones, who was hated by the Authorities and adored in equal measure by fans; the murder of a fan at Altamont, purportedly at the hands of Hells Angels; the drugs and drug busts and prisons but very little of the women.

But then, this is a film about the band. About it coming together, about how it coped with almost instant stardom and about how it managed to stay afloat, despite absolutely everything conspiring to ensure that it didn’t. It gives a voice to those that were living it and what they thought of it all in hindsight. Not that many of them can remember all that much…

In any other documentary, we might have been furnished with nebulous stock footage of the era, a few dramatic recreations of events and even spinning newspaper clippings. But here, as they were so famous at such an early age, there is footage covering just about everything; be it on stage, backstage, in the limo, on the tour bus, or in the chartered jet. Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll never looked so good. AT

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CROSSFIRE HURRICANE IS NOW OUT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY WITH EXTRAS: DIRECTOR INTERVIEW, FEATURETTE, BONUS TRACKS.

Still showing …..Arthouse releases from 17th August 2012

If you want to feel the heat this weekend then head over to Canada where a sweltering Toronto summer is the setting for Sarah Polley’s second feature Take This Waltz: A romantic comedy with an arthouse twist, it stars the doyenne of emotional authenticity Michelle Williams and sultry Luke Kirby and is screening from Friday at the Everyman, Hackney Picturehouse, Rio and Vue cinemas.

The Curzon, Gate Cinema and ICA are showing The Bird (L’Oiseau) Yves Caumon’s compassionate tale of grief and solitude with Sandrine Kiberlain and Bruno Todeschini. The film was first shown at the London Film Festival last October.

Meanwhile the Genius of Hitchcock season continues at the BFI with all time classic The 39 Steps and his 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Nowak which topped the Sight and Sound’s critics’ poll for best film ever.

The 39 Steps

Vertigo

And back to the 21st century and coming up at the end of August is “Samsara”, Ron Fricke’s stunning visual masterpiece which takes us on a cinematic world tour from our

origins through to the destruction of the planet and even offers hope for salvation through spiritual transcendence..ooh er! Fricke uses the latest HD technology, time-lapse sequences and 70mm film to bring this 5-year mega-project to the big screen. Out on 31st August 2012.

The Bird (2011) (L’Oiseau)

Director/screenwriter: Yves Caumon

Cast: Sandrine Kimberlain, Clement Sibony, Bruno Todeschini

France. 94mins French with English subtitles Drama

Spare on dialogue but easy on the eye, this enigmatic film set around Bordeaux tells of Anne (Sandrine Kimberlain) who works as a chef although we never actually never get to see her cooking. She is reserved with colleagues but one of them takes a fancy to her even though she resists his constant advances. Raphael (Clement Sibony) is drop-dead gorgeous but Anne needs to be alone to process her feelings of grief over a tragic past. The delicately emerging story, gentle camera work and subtle performances are what makes this film a really touching portrait of a woman in crisis.

Meredith Taylor c

Take This Waltz (2012)

Director Sarah Polley

Seth Rogan, Michelle Williams, Jake Kirby, Sarah Silverman

117 mins Arthouse romantic comedy

After success with her debut “Away From Her” Canadian director Sarah Polley offers this colourful and unflinching portrait of Margot, a vapid twentysomething who drifts through life waiting for something to happen. Husband and cookery writer Lou (Seth Rogan) is a stabilising influence while Margot experiments with writing and dabbles in a slow-burning flirtation with sultry neighbour Daniel (Luke Kirby) eventually coming face to face with her own emptiness. There’s plenty of fun and frolics with her girlfriends from full frontal nudity at a cringeworthy poolside scene to threesomes with Daniel once she’s thrown in the towel. Polley’s clever script offers plenty of insights and Michelle Williams’ delicately nuanced performance makes Margot appear more interesting and multi-layered than her character actually is. Despite all this, the arthouse vibe feels suffocating and unreal and you come away feeling nothing for the characters accept possibly Seth Rogan’s grumpily honest ‘good guy’ Lou. Take This Waltz shows that while you can’t be loved-up every day in a marriage you do need a real life and a focus to bring to the table; not just chicken and babyish chitchat.

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The Devil’s Business (2012)

Writer and Director: Sean Hogan

Billy Clarke, Jack Gordon, Jonathan Hansler, Harry Miller

75mins Supernatural horror Cert18

This edgy low-budget horror flick wanders into supernatural territory when two hit-men are sent to murder an associate of gangland boss Bruno (Harry Miller) and discover that their quarry Kist (Jonathan Hansler) is also big on devil worship. In a similar vein to The Liability (with Tim Roth – coming up later this year), hardened hit man Pinner (Billy Clarke) finds himself working alongside Jack Gordon’s useless rookie Cully, who rapidly lets the side down. The pair are slowly sucked into a maelstrom of horrific goings-on involving Wagnerian opera, witchcraft and a wickedly sinister child from hell – think Chucky on a bad hair day. Sean Hogan’s script builds in moments of real dread spiked with mordant humour (“If you were paid to think, you’d struggle to make the minimum wage”). A spooky soundtrack and slick performances make this a worthwhile watch.

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I Against I (2012)

Directors Mark Cripps, David Ellison, James Marquand

Starring: Kenny Doughty, Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, Mark Womack

82mins Thriller

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I Against I is a half-baked noirish thriller that slips down more easily that it has a right to given its poor script and insipid central character Ian (Kenny Doughty). Ian is a night-club owner who is suspected of killing gangster boss (John Castle) together with Russian hitman (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson). Both are then forced to kill each other by the son (Mark Womack) of the gangster boss. None of the characters are convincing but there’s a menacing feel to the film that makes it watchable as a lightweight thriller with plenty of shouting, knifing, underground car parks and a rather good techno soundtrack.

Showing at the Apollo, London W1

Still showing..

Sundance award-winning documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” opens this weekend and exposes the world of the dissident Chinese artIst best known for his Sunflower Seeds installation and the recent transformation at the Serpentine in London. Showing at the Everyman and Curzon cinemas.

Over at the Southbank the Hitchcock season continues with the restored version of an atmospheric silent film from 1926 starring Ivor Novello: “Lodger: A Story of the London Fog”. Sight and Sound have recently voted him “best filmmaker of all time”.

From Albania comes “The Forgiveness of Blood” the second feature from “Maria Full of Grace” director Joshua Marston. It tells the real life story of a contemporary family caught up in the age-old Balkan code of Law and is based on months of documentary research and interviews and employs of cast of local talent. Showing at the Curzon and Odeon.

Caught up in lottery fever is the Norwegian comedy caper “Jackpot”; another Jo Nesbo offering riding on the back of the recent Scandinavian wave of thrillers. Despite the capable of direction of Magnus Martens it fails to match the excellent “Headhunters”. Showing at the Rio Dalston, Ritzy and Hackney Picturehouse along with the Odeon and Cineworld.

Another feature that isn’t quite on the money is Fernando Meirelles’ new film “360” starring Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law and Rachel Weisz who embark on an interconnecting series of hook-ups. Read my review to find out more about this glossy globe-trotter. Meanwhile from the rather more earthy back-drop of the Avon countryside comes Tony Siddon’s new film In the Dark Half, a touching part ghost part sink drama. Jessica Barden (Tamara Drew) grapples with issues surrounding teenage angst, depression and a mysterious death. Showing at the Ritzy Brixton and Empire Leicester Square.

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And on the home entertainment front Tilda Swinton fans will be pleased to know that all time classic masterpiece Orlando is now out on Blu-ray.

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And still showing from last week, 3rd August 2012 is a fascinating film for lovers of modern art and all things American. Eames: Architect and Painter looks at the life of Charles Eames and his partner Ray who designed that famous chair in leather and chrome. The BFI Southbank is showing Julien Temple’s dynamite documentary, London: The Modern Babylon which celebrates London’s indomitable creative spirit. It features a stellar cast including Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton. Rutger Hauer makes a brief appearance in Neil Jones’ Vampire Britflic “The Reverand”. And it you’re bored of London and the Olympics then why not head down to the peaceful shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy where the 65th Locarno Film Festival is in full swing.

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Heading to the Far East, Christian Bale plays an American misionary in “The Flowers of War”, Zhang Zimou’s questionable but visually stunning take on the Japanese invasion of China, seen from the perspective of a young girl. And, on a more mundane level, Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s “study of an ageing servant and her employer (Andy Lau) “A Simple Life” is beautifully observed and poignant.

Olympic furore takes over the capital from now until the end of August and the controversy behind Batman continues to crowd the film headlines but there’s still plenty to look forward to on the indy and arthouse scene. If you only see one film, make it Searching for Sugar Man, an intriguing music documentary that probes the mystery behind the disappearance of ’60s musician and cult hero Sixto Rodriguez. From Barcelona comes El Bulli a foodie film that will give you a delicious taster of the fascinating world of the culinary genius and celebrated chef Ferran Adria. Now booking for next year…

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On the South Bank, the BFI are screening Red Desert, Antonioni’s ground-breaking sixties take on spiritual isolation in the modern world. Starring screen goddess Monica Vitti it was his fist colour film and is sure to resonate with contemporary audiences. Fans of Anthony Quayle will enjoy the digitally remastered version of fifties love triangle Woman in a Dressing Gown. He plays a long-suffering husband who is forced to choose between his office sweetheart (Sylvia Sims) and his slovenly wife (Yvonne Mitchell) whose only crime appears to be forgetting to take the rubbish out, permanently….

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Leos Carax with his Leopard of Honour at Locarno 2012

French Auteur Leos Carax has been awarded the Leopard of Honour at Locarno Film Festival. His entire filmography is currently being screened at this year’s festival which is in full swing at its picturesque Lake Maggiore setting until 11th August: His five features are “Boy meets Girl” 1984, “Bad Blood” 1986, “Les Amants de Pont Neuf” 1991, “Pola X” of ’99 and his latest “Holy Motors” that competed in this year’s Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Holy Motors

The Forgiveness of Blood (2012)

Director Joshua Marston

Writer Joshua Marston and Andamion Murataj

Tristan Halilaj, Sindi Lacej and Refet Abazi

109mins Albanian with English subtitles

From Albania comes a tragic story of two families locked in a vendetta, trying to move forward with their lives yet deeply rooted in a feudal past dominated by male pride and female submission.

Rob Hardy has captured the bleak beauty of the landscape in and Joshua Marston has used a cast of talented newcomers and interviewed local families to lend authenticity and successfully evoke the lock-down feel of small-town society. Although the drama which occasionally packs a surprising emotional punch, it nevertheless lacks the narrative drive of Maria Full of Grace, his debut feature.

Meredith Taylor

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)

This is the story of the Chinese artist known as Ai Weiwei who is continually risking his life by publicly defying his Government with procative art installations such as the one at the Tate Modern involving thousands of hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds. He is a fascinating creative spirit who really deserves a deeper and more important treatment than this slightly lightweight fare.

360 (2012)

Director: Fernando Meirelles, Writer: Peter Morgan

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Ben Foster

118mins Drama

After success with City of God and The Constant Gardener, Fernando Meirelles’ look at contemporary hook-ups is a bit of a let-down. But how can that be with a stellar cast, glossy locations and a script written by the talented Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon and The Queen?)?

In 360, random lives cross paths in a tale of betrayal, temptation and destiny loosely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde. It’s a globe-trotting, bed-hopping, round-robin affair which kicks off in Bratislava and fetches up in London via Paris and Denver and features unfaithful husband (Judy Law) cheating wife (Rachel Weisz) and love-lorn father (Anthony Hopkins) all getting down and dirty in a formulaic story that has nothing new to write home about on contemporary love. Or maybe that’s Meirelles subtle message; that modern relationships are becoming increasingly unsatisfying due to the alienating, fast-moving, never-giving nature of the sound-bite generation?

There’s nothing wrong with the acting here and Anthony Hopkins is particularly moving as he addresses his fellow addicts at an AA meeting with a heart-rending speech. But ultimately despite the glamorous locations, the able cast never really get a chance to shine with a storyline that lacks authenticity and has more strands than travellers on an average day in Heathrow. So although the idea of interconnecting lives across the globe must have sounded a winning formula when scriptwriter Peter Morgan and Fernando Meirelles first started their journey the end result is rather a meaningless affair.

Meredith Taylor

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Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957)

Director J Lee Thompson Writer Ted Willis (The Blue Lamp)

Cast: Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms, Yvonne Mitchell,

93mins Drama

Kitchen-sink drama doesn’t come more elegant than this re-mastered version of the 1957 classic love triangle of the common man starring Anthony Quayle as a hapless husband, Sylvia Sims as his office sweetheart and Yvonne Mitchell as his long-suffering wife, Amy. Based on the TV series of the same name it ushered in the British New Wave of Social Realism and was something of a departure for director J Lee Thompson who was better known for his more robust fare of Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear. Nevertheless it went on to garner awards across the board and Yvonne Mitchell won a Silver Bear for her heart-rending potrayal of a scatty but decent woman dogged by domestic drudgery. Anthony Quayle is baby-faced and believable, Sylvia Syms is poised and poignant thanks to the expert lighting techniques of Gilbert Taylor (Dr Stangelove) and there is a touching turn by Andrew Ray as the sympathetic son. If you can’t manage to get out of your dressing gown to see it on the big screen it comes out on DVD for the first time on 13th August 2012.

Showing Curzon Cinemas from 27th July 2012

Searching for Sugarman (2012) Tribute to Sixto Rodriquez

Dir: Malik Bendjelloul | Starring: Rodriquez, Malik Bendjelloul | 87mins Music documentary UK/SWEDEN

Searching for Sugarman is the true story of little-known Mexican-American pop singer, Sexto Rodriguez, who sadly died on August 8th, 2023, aged 81.

Unfurling languorously, like the artist himself, this slow-burning and intriguing story from Malik Bendjelloul, tells how his music was likened to Bob Dylan and worked alongside some of Tamla Motown’s best known session musicians. His first album flopped when released in the early ’70s and he disappeared in a mystery suicide story. So what made Bendjelloul take this story further? Well, thousands of miles away in South Africa, Rodriquez’s sexually implicit lyrics had captured the imagination of two men living under the ultra repressive aparteid regime. Inflamed by curiosity, Stephen Segerman and his journalist friend Craig Bartholomew decided to track down the elusive troubadour whose salacious tracks were being corrupted by the censors further making him the stuff of legend. By the mid nineties Rodriquez had sold more records over there than Elvis. So Malik Bendjelloul set out to discover the real facts behind the white noise and find out what really happened to this elusive man.

Part-biopic part-detective story Benjelloul’s search smoulders with tension from the opening titles as some questions are answered and some hang in the air. It pieces together alluring visuals, archive footage and interviews with family and former Motown chairman Clarence Avant whose lips remained sealed on the question of royalties received from Rodriguez’ slimline success. But there’s little coverage of the elusive man himself. What was the secret behind his spirituality and self-effacing nature? The story is skilfully told and painstakingly documented offering an appealing insight into the nature of fame. It also features a magical soundtrack that will strike a cord with fans and music lovers of James Taylor, Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel and anyone with a yen for singer-songwriters. According to his Times Obit Rodriquez claimed “My story wasn’t rags to riches, it was rags to rags and I’m glad about that. “Where other people have lived in an artificial world, I feel I’ve lived in the real world. And nothing beats reality”.MT ©

SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN was awarded a BAFTA for Best Documentary 2013, a Dragon Award at GIFF 2013 for Best Documentary, The Special Jury and the Audience Award at SUNDANCE 2013 among many others. Now on PRIME | Sixto Rodriquez 1943-2023

Swandown (2012)

Director: Andrew Kötting

Writer: Iain Sinclair

94mins Poetic Travelogue

Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s offbeat travelogue uses poetry, song and dry humorous banter to chart a very English voyage from Sussex to Hackney….by Swan-shaped pedalo. Boarding the pedalo beachside at Hastings, they begin a slow and silly journey shot through with magical sunsets, morning mists, lyrical interludes and down to earth exchanges with the people they meet along the way.

To complete the eccentric feel Kötting wears a beautifully tailored suit which deteriorates into a mud-soaked rag in the final stages but neither men complain or utter a cross word. The film has a strange hypnotic power to woo you with its gentle rhythm and quirky charm. There’s no anti-Olympic agenda as such but Sinclair has a soft dig at the games on reaching the site barriers where heavy metal chains and signage warn them to keep out. Swandown reminds us of the real reasons to be cheerful about England and being English. It’s a pleasure cruise.

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In Your Hands (2012) Contre Toi

Director Lola Doillion

Cast: Kristen Scott Thomas, Pio Marmai, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey

Drama 81mins French with English subtitles

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Stockholm syndrome-style tale of revenge in which Kristin Scott Thomas plays Dr Anna, the terrified kidnap victim of a man who’s child she has destroyed in a fatal Caesarian.

Taut and claustrophobic, it’s nevertheless a gripping watch due to the palpable on-screen chemistry between Pio Marmai as Yann and Scott Thomas who really comes into her own in this type of well-crafted psychological thriller.

Arthouse releases from July 16th 2012

This weekend sees the re-launch of the digitally re-mastered version of the sporting epic Chariots of Fire (1981). See my exclusive interview with Mohammed Al Fayed who made the whole project possible thanks to his backing. Other indie features include “The Prey”; a glossy French thriller along the lines of Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” and Michael Mann’s “Heat”; showing at the Cine Lumiere.

A great little arthouse gem “The Soul of Flies” is well worth a watch if you’re looking for a relaxing drama set in sunny central Spain and is the debut feature of writer/filmmaker Jonathan Cenzual Burley who shot the film in just under three weeks. “Comes A Bright Day” is a Britflic heist featuring Submarine star Craig Roberts who gets caught up in a Mayfair jewellery raid and meets the girl of his dreams in the shape of the comely Imogen Poots. Also starring Timothy Spall, it’s the debut feature of successful commercials director Simon Aboud who just happens to be Paul McKartney’s son in law.

Fans of Keira Knightley may be wondering about her latest film “Seeking A Friend For the End of the World”. But be warned: it’s not her usual fare but a lightweight throw-away romcom from the director of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”. It also stars Steve Carelll as her romantic sidekick. “Detachment” is commercials director Tony Kaye’s complex and subtlely nuanced study of an emotionally dysfunctional teacher in a public school with a good central performance from Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”).

“Nostalgia for the Light” takes us to the driest place on Earth, the Atacama desert in Chile, for a poetic meditation on human existence and would be my suggestion if you’ve got no plans yet for sunday afternoon.

The Prey (2011) La Proie

Director: Eric Valette

DOP: Vincent Mathias

104mins French subtitles Action Crime Thriller

The French really know how to make a cracking good thriller and this one is a deft combo of slick prison drama and serial killer road movie. Supported by the strong script, the able and attractive cast of Albert Dupontel (Franck), Caterina Murino (his wife), and Stephane Debac (Jean-Louis Morel) further add to your viewing pleasure along with a sinister turn from Sergi Lopez (Harry He’s Here to Help) as a disfigured ex-cop thrown in for a good measure. Even the voice-over has a seductive burr. The action revolves around Franck who is completing a prison sentence for robbery and sharing a cell with soon-to-be- released suspected paedophile Jean-Louis Morel to whom he has shared the secret location of his stash. Both his wife and ex-partner have their eyes on the money but when Lopez reveals that Jean-Louis Maurel is actually a serial killer Franck effects a spectacular escape to save both his fortune, his daughter and his life. This glossy low-budgeter gets a tad bogged down in detail on the way but if you’re looking for solid Saturday night entertainment it certainly delivers the goods.

The Soul of Flies (2012) | El Alma de Las Moscas

80mins. . Spanish with English subtitles. Comedy Drama

Magical Realism describes an aesthetic style that blends fantasy elements with the real world so they seem almost natural. Woody Allen used magical elements in Alice, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Midnight In Paris. Here in his debut feature, Jonathan Cenzual Burley’s uses magical realism to great effect combining it with a faintly amusing offbeat script to create this quirky arthouse gem. With an atmospheric score from John Walter and Andrea Calabrese (who also plays Nero) it successfully conjurs up the arid planes of Castilla La Mancha where Don Quixote once strutted his stuff. And the Spanish countryside is very much a character in its own right. Dramatic sunsets, richly sun-baked landscapes, lush vegetation and ethereal cloud formations fill each frame. Clever montage set pieces made to look like reflections on a vintage mirror complete the arthouse feel. The story revolves around two half-brothers, Nero and Miguel (Javier Saez) who meet for the first time on a pilgrimage to their father’s funeral. They talk as they walk and their up-close encounters give the film an intimacy set against the vast and empty countryside. The result is a light-hearted road movie where the narrative is driven forward by their gradual discovery of each other told in epistolary style. There are no deep discussions or revelations just a natural unfolding of their personalities and their family story told through the characters they meet along the way. This upbeat first feature never takes itself too seriously and is a relaxing pleasure to watch.

Releases this weekend and screening at the following venues, so far:

16th July 18:30 Duke of York’s Brighton

18th July 20:30 Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London

01 August 20:00 The Barn Cinema, Dartington, Devon.

17- 22th August Watermans Cinema, Brentford, Greater London

20 – 21th August Gloucester Guildhall, Gloucester

Comes A Bright Day (2012)

Director: Simon Aboud

Cast: Timothy Spall, Craig Roberts, Imogen Poots, Kevin McKidd

104min Britflic heist drama UK

With all the promise of a fake Rolex and none of satisfaction of the real deal, this film about a jewellery heist from successful commercials director Simon Aboud proves that throwing money and goodwill at an idea and a decent cast doesn’t guarantee you’ll strike gold. If the script and characterisation are not watertight, the end result will always let you down; and that’s the strange alchemy of film. Timothy Spall’s role at the helm of Mayfair jeweller ‘Clara’ is stiff and stagey and although Imogen Poots does her best as a precious platinum blond vendeuse there’s no reason why she would remotely go for Craig Robert’s (Submarine) rough and not particularly attractive bellboy Sam with a strange accent, who finds himself the hapless victim of two masked gunmen when he acts on her suggestion to visit the gemstore. The whole ensemble feels abit like an student end of term project where everyone gets a mention and a prize but the audience is left disappointed. It’s not slick enough or real enough or sparkling enough to be on West End release but might work as a TV two-parter.

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A Simple Life (2012)

Director Ann Hui Cast Andy Lau, Deannie Yip, Sui-Man Chim

118mins

Hong-King director, Ann Hui’s tender and touching true story of life-time dedication between successful producer Roger Leung (Andy Lau) and his longtime housekeeper Chung Chun, who also raised him. The hidden depths and subtleties of human emotion and familial ties are revealed, at times too slowly but always with humour, eventually giving way to a reversal of roles between servant and master that blurs social barriers exposing a different kind of love. Well-acted and engaging throughout, the film also highlights the plight of old age in contemporary society without resorting to sentimentality or melodrama.

At Curzon cinemas from 3rd August 2012

Detachment (2012)

Director: Tony Kaye

Cast: Adrien Brody, Blythe Danner, Christina Hendricks, James Caan, Lucy Liu, Marcia Gaye Harden.

97mins Drama

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Stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional Long Island school where the pupils are unruly, the staff ground down, the parents irrational and the authorities uncompromising is an dynamite performance from Adrien Brody as the sensitive but emotionally detached supply teacher Henry Barthes. And nobody can lead through this valley of tears better than Adrien Brody with his soulful eyes and air of resignation. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders with a saintly expression, Henry Barthes appears permanently on the verge of tears or some emotional outburst he just manages to rein in. A dysfunctional childhood alluded to in flashbacks makes him uniquely placed to feel the pain behind the anger of the pupils he teaches and they respond. Earning respect with a draconian fist in a kid glove of understanding, he becomes father confessional for Meredith (Sami Kaye), an overweight pupil, and a young and vulnerable prostitute Erica (Sami Gayle) whom he rescues from the streets only to hand over to the authorities. There are some great turns from the staff of James Caan, Lucy Liu and Christina Hendricks who all seem to be suffering aggravated nervous breakdowns as the school system gradually disintegrates like some modern day house of Usher. But it’s to Barthes that the pupils cling like rats to a sinking ship. Drawing on literary references from Edgar Allen Poe and Albert Camus, documentary-style interviews with staff and strong visuals, Tony Kaye leads us on a moving journey through a landscape of emotional isolation and diminishing social values in this hard-hitting if at times over-melodramic drama.

Showing at Curzon, Odeon and Cineworld from 13 July 2012

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In The Dark Half (2012)

Director: Tony Siddons

Cast: Tony Curran, Lyndsey Marshal, Jessica Barden

87mins Fantasy drama

It’s difficult to make a horror story that’s rooted in plausible reality but Alastair Siddon has succeeded here with this supernatural sink drama.

It features Jessica Barden (Tamara Drew) as Marie a sensitive teenager with a vivid imagination whose mother (Lyndsey Marshal) has a penchant for paint-stripping in between bouts of black depression. Fatherless Marie develops a pseudo-sexual hang-up for Filthy (Tony Curran) the man next door whose hobby is hunting rabbits in the nearby woods. But everything turns pear-shaped when Filthy’s toddler son Sean is found dead while she’s in charge of the babysitting and Filthy’s desperation leads to a final tragic twist.

Chilling sound design and black magic imagery combine to evoke a unsettling mood to this haunting and well-acted feature which has shades of The Sixth Sense.

In the Dark Half was the first film to go into production under the umbrella of South West Screen’s iFeatures digital filmmaking scheme, the BBC Films and Bristol City Council backed ’micro-studio’ initiative with the aim of harnessing cutting-edge digital technology and low budget production methods in the Bristol area.

Seven Days in Havana (2012) Siete Dias en La Habana

Directors: Benecio del Toro/Laurent Cantet Writers: Laurent Cantet and others

Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Sulieman, Gaspar Noe, Juan Carlos Tabio, Laurent Cantet.

120mins, Drama

Seven directors offer up their cinematic snapshots of a week in the Cuban capital of Havana financed by the Havana Club International rum company.

And like most portmanteau films this one varies in quality and tone but ends up with too many overwhelming flavours and not enough food for thought. Benecio del Toro’s directorial debut plays like a touristy promo with Josh Hutcherson as a naive American looking to get laid and coming a cropper. Emir Kusturica is likeable and louche as a disengaged film director on a musical bender with his Jazz-enthusiast driver. Julio Medem’s nightclub singer is torn between love and her career while Gaspar Noé unsurprisingly veers on the dark side with a sinister sashay through the occult seen through the eyes of a teenage lesbian and has the most authentic feel. The other segments are obscure or too cliché-ridden to be meaningful after the credits have rolled.

God Bless America (2011) Mubi

Dir: Bobcat Goldthwait | Cast: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr | US Comedy Drama 104’

“My name is Frank. But that’s not important. The important question is “who are you?” America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense or decency. No sense of shame. There is no right and wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear are fine. As long as you make money doin’ it. We’ve become a nation of slogan-saying, bile-spewing hate-mongers. We’ve lost our kindness. We’ve lost our soul.”

If your idea of hell is X-Factor, inconsiderate, noisy neighbours and the down-spiralling of civilisation as we know it then this film is for you. If you sometimes want to ‘take out’ the entire queue of texting teenagers in Starbucks, or have a pot shot at a pointless, self-seeking celebrity then you’ll cheer out loud for Bobcat Goldthwait’s character Frank (Joel Murray) in his latest black comedy. If not, pass on this one or you are going to get riled or at best wonder what all the fuss is about.

With a wincingly tart screenplay and well-observed storyline God Bless America was real tonic, and arguably the least politically correct film of 2012, but as political correctness is now reaching its zenith a decade later, things have clearly moved on to an era where practically everything is out of bounds. Frank is a mild-mannered decent guy who has reached the end of his marriage and his tether with the neighbours next door. After several dispiriting incidents at home and at work, and a possible terminal illness to deal with, he decides to come out fighting and goes on the rampage with a Colt 45 and a young and spunky accomplice called Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr). This farcical ‘Bonny and Clyde’ duo vow to take down any tedious suspects crossing their path and although they lose steam in the final stages we can’t help having fun on their joyride. MT

NOW SHOWING ON MUBI

King of Devil’s Island (2012)

Director: Marius Holst

Cast: Stellen Skarsgârd, Kristoffer Joner, Benjamin Helstad, Trond Nilssen

Norwegian with Subtitles 115mins Action Drama

Nobody does sinister baddy quite like Stellen Skarsgârd drawing you in to the unknown depths of his icy stare. He gives another grimly powerful performance in this tragic saga from the annuls of Norwegian history as Hakon, head of a remand home in the snow-swept island of Bastøy. Draconian but fair in white collar and combover, he’s forced to deal with an uprising from a new offender whose arrival sparks a feeling of solidarity amongst the cowed inmates and inevitably leads to tragedy. Shot in a palate of monochrome blues, Marius Holst’s slick direction makes this a gripping and hauntingly poetic piece of cinema.

Open City Docs Festival 2012

OPEN CITY DOCS FEST WRAPS WITH RECORD AUDIENCE AND ANNOUNCES AWARD WINNERS

The second edition of London’s biggest documentary festival, Open City Docs Fest (June 21-24), sponsored by UCL, wrapped last night attracting filmmakers, media and delegates from around the world. This year’s festival recorded a 100% increase in ticket sales with nearly 5000 attendees to the 4-day event.

The festival boasted over 100 screenings and hosted popular live events ranging from rousing debate as part of ‘A Spark in Tottenham’, it’s comedy night, ‘What’s Up Doc’ and the hugely popular London Contemporary Voices rescore of Il Capo, all of which centred around the popup cinema tent in Torrington Square, W1.

Open City Docs Fest opened the festival with sold out gala screenings of Matthew Akkers’ Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present and closed last night with the international premier of Jacqui Morris’ McCullin.

The festival awards ceremony followed the Closing Night screening of McCullin, with the festival jury, chaired by director Nicolas Philibert, awarding the following prizes:

The Grand Jury Prize, presented by Nicolas Philibert, was awarded to 5 Broken Cameras, directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi (Israel/Palestine/France 2011). On the back of this award and winning the Audience prize at Sheffield Doc/Fest, New Wave Films have picked up the film for UK distribution.

The Time Out Prize, presented by Time Out’s Film Editor, Dave Calhoun, was awarded to, Insitu, directed by Antoine Vivani (France, 2011).

The UK Emerging Prize was presented by director Olly Lambert for

One More Kiss by Chris Christodoulou (UK 2012), with a Special Mention to The Betrayal by Karen Winther (UK/Norway 2012).

The International Emerging Prize was awarded to High Tech, Low Life directed by Stephen Maing (USA 2012) with a Special Mention to A Life Without Words by Adam Isenberg (Turkey, Nicaragua 2011).

The Best Short Film Prize, Presented by Austin Raywood was awarded to

The Marble Village by Ioana Dorobantu (UK 2011).

In addition, Open City Docs Fest announced and screened the winning films from the festival’s national digital filmmaking competition, My Street, where prizes of £500 cash plus Steady Wing camera equipment and one on one film consultation with filmmaker, Marc Isaacs, were presented to the following films all of whom were directed by female filmmakers:

First Prize: – On The Bench directed by Maha Taki (London)

Second Prize: – Still Life directed by Emma Barnie (London)

Third Prize: – 55 Seconds directed by Jan Cawood (Saltburn).

Dark Horse (2012)

Director: Todd Solondz

Cast: Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow, Justin Bartha, Jordan Gelber, Selma Blair

84mins Dark Comedy of social misfits

Tod Solondz’s characters have a habit of making you skirm in your seat. You’d move away from them in a train because of their rank halitosis, nervous tick or terminal b.o. They have character traits that simply make them unappealing. And particularly so is balding manchild Abe played here by Jordan Gelber. A supreme narcissist, he could do with a diet and a kick up the backside in this darkly funny tale of social inadequates that inhabit the angst-ridden edges of the Jewish community in a Los Angeles backwater. Thirty-something Abe is still living at home and harbouring a sense of misguided entitlement courtesy of his long-suffering parents Phyllis (Mia Farrow) and Jackie (Christopher Walken).

To make matters worse, his older brother (Justin Bartha) has successfully flown the nest leaving him mollycoddled at home. Festooned with the trappings of materialism, he sports the latest designer garb and drives his bright yellow SUV through a desert of multiplex cinemas and dingy diners while Alan Partridge-style pap chirps from the radio. At a wedding he befriends fellow loser Miranda (Selma Blair) and immediately proposes marriage in a desperate bid to break out of his predicament. She turns him down despite suffering a festering illness as she still holds a candle for her ex Mahmoud (Aasif Mandvi).

It’s sad to imagine these misfits really exist and even scarier to realise that they take themselves so seriously: but they do and there’s something wickedly amusing yet deeply worrying about their story. As you would imagine, events down-spiral predictably and unsatisfactorily for them both. Christopher Walken broods like a dissipated reptile. Mia Farrow’s Jewish mother is meek but machiavellian. Then into the picture pops the star turn from Donna Murphy as the bland secretary turned sexual siren and eponymous Dark Horse. At this point you’ll sit up and actually enjoy yourself. But it’s just a light-hearted interlude from Abe’s subconscious longings and fails to lighten the unsettling crux of this story; Abe is what’s happening to young guys today.

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Showing from 29 June at the Curzon, Vue and ICA

My Way (CloClo) 2012

Director: Florent Emilio Siri

Score: Alexandre Desplat

Cast: Jeremie Renier Benoit Magimel

122mins Music Biopic

You might more readily associate death by changing a lightbulb with an Irish singer rather than a French one. And unless you’re a particular fan of French pop music of the sixties and seventies it’s the only reason you may of heard of Claude Francois. But bear with me, because, joking apart, “CloClo” means as much to the French as Dana or Val Doonican do to the Irish, in the same sort of way. Some say he was their equivalent of Elvis with his sequined suits and charismatic stage presence.

And Jeremie Renier is ideal in the role of CloClo in this watchable Gallic popflic. Apart from being a dead-ringer, he embodies all that’s suavely French with his bouffant blond locks, denim blue eyes, and slightly tight trousers and he’s also a damn fine actor. Star of Potiche and much of the Dardennes brothers social realist fare (La Promesse was his screen debut), Renier features in films by Francois Ozon. He epitomises Frenchness in much the same way as Audrey Tatou, despite actually being Belgian.

His tour de force performance as Cloclo lifts this otherwise formulaic popflic into the realms of ‘pas mal du tout’ with its original footage and score by Alexandre Desplat. Enjoyably well-paced and well-scripted it flows along nicely like an afternoon in St Tropez and despite being of relatively slim interest subject matter-wise, it captures the zeitgeist of an era when it was de rigueur to turn up your shirt collar and light a Disque Bleu.

From a well-heeled expatriot childhood in Egypt, Claude Francois was catapulted back to France in 1957 due to the Suez Crisis that left his father jobless and penniless and drove his Italian mother to gambling. This tragic turn of events seems to have had a profound effect on the embrionic star and drove him into the music world with a vengeance despite the usual parental pressure to go into banking. After being offered the chance to sing at a hotel in Juan Les Pins he worked the local nightclubs along the Riviera and met a married English dancer Janet Woolcoot in 1960. Jeremie Renier conveys the relentless energy in him that seems more bred out of fear of failure than enjoyment of his talent and yet he displays little of the insecurity that dogs most creative personalities. Salesmanlike, he keeps on going with an endlessly competitive edge vying for stage-time with the likes of Jonnie Halliday. He even hits the headlines with an ‘on-stage’ collapse at one point to garner sympathy and support from fans, eventually making it as a dapper little mover with a pleasant voice and Cliff Richard-like tenacity. His big break was the signing of “Belles, Belles, Belles” a cover version of the Frankie Valli hit and he went on to spend 20 years or so in league with Paul Lederman (Benoit Magimel) captivating French fans with his unique brand of snake-hipped charisma and peaking with a performance of “My Way” (Comme d’Habitude) at the Royal Albert Hall in 1978. A touch long at just over 2 hours it’s still a worthwhile slice of Gallic social history although it hasn’t quite got the soul of “Gainsbourg”

The Cine Lumiere in South Kensington SW7 will be hosting a special screening of CloClo followed by a dress-up celebration party for £15.00 per person featuring cocktails. So get your Laboutins on and soak up the local ambience of the French community in this chicly well-heeled part of town.

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other releases this week

Brussels Film Festival 2012

The Brussels Film Festival celebrated its 10th Anniversary on the 16th June 2012 and selected Faouzi Bensaidi’s thriller DEATH FOR SALE to win this year’s Golden Iris Award. The feature also picked up the Cineuropa award from the European competition section. A female director Maja Mils won the White Iris Award for best first film for her controversial drama CLIP. The Audience Award was given to an Italian co-pro ITALY: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT by writer/director duo Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi.

The winners were selected from an eclectic mix of European titles by an official jury featuring directors Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers); Frederic Fonteyne (Une Liaison Pornographique); Edouard Molinaro (La Cage Aux Folles) and actors Tania Garbarski (Rashevski’s Tango) and Mireille Perrier (Un Monde sans Pitié).

AMONG US (Onder Ons) by Marco van Geffen (Netherlands)

BLOODY BOYS (Jävla pojkar) by Shaker K. Tahrer (Sweden)

CAN by Raşit Çelikezer (Turkey)

CLIP (Klip) by Maja Miloš (Serbia)

DEATH FOR SALE by Faouzi Bensaïdi (Belgium/France/Morocco)

KAUWBOY by Boudewijn Koole (Netherlands)

MERCY (Gnade) by Matthias Glasner (Germany/Norway/Great-Britain)

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL by Sally El Hosaini with James Floyd & Saïd Taghmaoui (UK)

NO REST FOR THE WICKED (No habrá paz para los malvados) by Enrique Urbizu (Spain)

ROSE (Róża) by Wojciech Smarzowski (Poland)

TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (Portret v sumerkakh) by Angelina Nikonova (Russia)

VOICE OF MY FATHER (Babamin Sesi) by Orhan Eskiköy & Zeynel Doğan (Turkey/Germany/France)

GOLDEN IRIS AWARD for best film

DEATH FOR SALE

by Faouzi Bensaïdi (France/Belgium/Morocco)

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Contemporary Morocco is reflected in the lives and destinies of three men who take part in a heist

WHITE IRIS AWARD for best first film

CLIP (KLIP)

by Maja Miloš (Serbia)

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This no-holds barred insight into the life of a Serbian teenager is raw and urgent

AUDIENCE AWARD

ITALY LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

by Gustav Hofer & Luca Ragazzi (Italy/Germany)

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An affectionate look at Italy past and present that asks the question: Should I leave or should stay?

This year’s festival hosted several premieres including Sophie Lellouche’s PARIS-MANHATTAN a madcap comedy starring Woody Allen as himself and TO ROME WITH LOVE, a cliche-ridden ride through the Italian capital bringing his European tour to a resounding halt on a past-laden low.

The festival featured a new section dedicated to musical documentaries. Among these were the The Libertines: There are no innocent bystanders and Vinylmania). More than 1000 people attended the Anniversary Party with a concert by The Chromatics who wrote music for the film Drive followed by dj sets by Carl Barât, Saul Williams, Sofa, Didz and a surprise-gig by the band J-Prock. An entire day was dedicated to music in cinema culminating in a speed dating session between producers, directors and film music composers – imagine all those egos jostling for position!.

Masterclasses were a particular highlight this year with offerings from Peter Greenaway (of Draughtsman’s Contract fame amongst others), Peter Aalbaek Jensen (producer of the films of Lars von Trier, Susanne Bier, Lukas Moodysson and Thomas Vinterberg), Jean-Michel Bernard (composer for Michel Gondry and for Scorcese latest film Hugo), Thomas Bidegain (screenwriter of Un prophète and De rouille et d’os by Jacques Audiard, A perdre la raison van Joachim Lafosse), Lucas Belvaux (director of Un couple épatant/Cavale/Après la vie, La Raison du plus faible, Rapt and 38 Witnesses).

The 11^th edition of the BRUSSELS FILM FESTIVAL will be held from June 19^th to 26^th 2013 in Flagey and in Bozar. www.brusselsfilmfestival.be

Fast Girls (2012)

Director: Regan Hall

Cast: Lenora Crichlow, Lily James, Rupert Graves, Bradley James, Philip Davis

91mins Sports Drama

Class and culture clash big time when streetwise Shania (Lenora Crichlow) competes with middle class Lisa (Lily James) as champion runners in this feisty Britflic timed to garner support from the upcoming Olympic whirlwind. That said, it’s a worthwhile story echoing Bend it Like Beckham and Kidulthood that raises the profile of disadvantaged but talented young women with interesting backstories and appealing personalities. The narrative is predictable but amusing and there are some moments of genuine emotion and even a frisson of love interest between Shania and her physio who’s played by Bradley James. The sports angle is well-researched and creditable and should inspire kids everywhere to go out and give it their best shot. So it’s well worth a watch; you might even find yourself shedding a tear.

In Odeon and Vue cinemas from 14th June 2012

Late September (2009)

Director: Jon Sanders

Cert15 87mins, *** Drama

Cast: Anna Mottram, Richard Vanstone, Charlotte Palmer, Bob Goody, Jan Chapell

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Love has gone for Ken and Gilly. They don’t actively hate each other but there’s nothing holding them together but the past and a couple of grown-up kids with their own loves and lives. Essentially a piece of low-budget realism, Late September has a light-hearted look at a post war generation who compromised and sacrificed everything for a family only to be left with a gnawing feeling of emptiness in late middle age. It’s not a particularly fashionable story but definitely one of contemporary relevance and deals sensitively with the anger and sad bitterness of a couple in the last knockings of marriage who feel that there could be a chance for a swansong if they get their skates on before the zimmer frames arrive. Sobering stuff..but not without insight.

With strong support from a cast of little known but experienced actors, the script is an entirely improvised affair accompanied by a good musical score from composer and pianist Douglas Finch. Jon Sanders studied film at the Slade. He has made two films, Painted Lady with Kelly McGillis and Low Tide. Late September is his third feature.

At the ICA from 14th June 2012

Other releases this week:

Polisse ****

Model/actress Maiwenn gets up close and personal with the traumatic world and internal affairs of the child protection unit in the Paris police force.

This release is out on DVD on the 29th October 2012 and has been likened to The Wire:

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Cosmopolis ***

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Cult hero David Cronenburg returns with a souless sharp-edged vision of dystopia adapted from a novel by Don DeLillo.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012)

Director: Lorene Scarferia

Cast: Keira Knightley, Steve Carell, Patton Oswalt

120mins Cert 15 Comedy

What have Keira Knightley and Steve Carell got in common? Not much. And since when does a young and dipsy boho type from Hoxton get it on with a middled-aged insurance salesman taken to wearing Val Doonican golfing sweaters ? The answer is they don’t and despite Steve Carell’s self-deprecating style and Keira’s considerable acting talents Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, apart from having a awkward title, fails on this crucial issue of characterisation. If you’re a devoted fan, don’t let me put you off this lightweight romcom road movie about the lead up to end of the World. Lorene Scaferia found success with “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” so it’s a shame that her directing debut has very few redeeming qualities other than an absolutely cracking sardonic opening. Thereafter the writing soon goes soppy and the film crashes like a misguided meteor. Sorry but I did tell you.

Releases on 13th July at Cineworld UK

Kosmos (2010)

Director/Writer: Reha Erdem Cinematography: Florent Herry

Sermet Yesil, Turku Turan, Serkan Keskin, Hakan Altuntas

122mins Fantasy Drama

You may remember Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds, a bleak and beautiful portrait of three adolescents growing up in an Anatolian village. His latest feature has the same poetic style and breathtaking cinematography shot on wide angle in a vast snowbound landscape. It centres on a stranger whose unsettling arrival in a Turkish border town has a positive and negative impact on the locals.

Battal (Yermet Kesil) is no ordinary man. He could be a psychic with healing powers or an escapee from the local mental asylum. After saving a drowning child Battal develops a weird unconsummated relationship with the boy’s mother Neptun (Turku Turan). The locals welcome him as a saviour when he goes on to cure old an man. Later he suffers from compulsive kleptomania and develops a penchant for white sugar that sends him into a frenzied state of insomnia. His healing powers are not altogether successful and eventually he falls foul of the local men suspicious of his motives and he disappears back into the bleak wasteland.

Sound and movement are the distinguishing features of this highly original feature. Against the incessant swirling of ambient winds, a constant clamour erupts from the local garrison. Sonic booms, telegraphic buzzing, gun fire and dreadful sounds emanate from an abattoir. Supernatural graphic images and time lapse sequences drive the narrative forward giving it an otherworldly feel accompanied by Battal’s philosophical insights. At one point a flaming missile falls from the sky auguring doom but life goes on and the glowing embers slowly die down.

Kosmos is not an easy film to watch but it has a mesmerising rhythm that is both unsettling and hypnotic. The resonating score by Silver Mount Zion echoes that of Snowtown. Images of astounding beauty and extreme violence are both shocking and exhilarating. This is an amazing cinematic experience.

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Showing at the ICA from 14th June 2012

Woody Allen: A Documentary Review (2012)

Robert B Weide

113mins Documentary feature

Featuring Josh Brolin, Penelupe Cruz, John Cusack, Larry David, Dick Cavett, Mariel Hemingway, Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johansson and Antonio Banderas.

If you dislike reviews swamped with fawning commentary from people you’ve never heard then you’re going to love this biopic. Not only is Woody Allen the principle commentator but we also get to hear from Josh Brolin, Penelope Cruz, John Cusack, Larry David, Mariel Hemingway, Scarlett Johansson and Diane Keaton, all stars in their own right who are warm and complimentary in their musings on the famous auteur.

That it took Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm) 20 years to persuade Woody Allen to collaborate was not only due to his secretive nature but also testament to Weide’s persistence. The quality and depth of his research into his subject matter of Allen as an artist and a man is to be commended. It sensitively tackles his affair with Allen’s adoptive daughter Soon-Yi Previn and although long-time collaborator Mia Farrow is a no-show her effect on his creative output is clearly felt and well-documented.

Starting life as Allen Konigsberg in a poor Brooklyn family emerging from the Depression, it tells how he was a sensitive but driven boy who was encouraged by his mother on to better things. Soon he was writing and producing gags for stand-up comedy and helping to support the family financially with the help of his sister Hetty who still produces his films.

It emerges that he gradually moved into directing film through screenwriting and after a disastrous time with What’s New Pussycat (1965) vowed never to lose creative control of his work again. His first resounding breakthrough as a writer/director was Take the Money and Run (1969). Moving through the ‘oeuvre’ it deals with Annie Hall, Love and Death, Bullets Over Broadway and Match Point. There’s also extensive footage of his childhood moments and his work on Radio Days, Broadway Danny Rose and Manhatten and the biggest box office success of his career so far, Midnight in Paris. Did you know that Woody Allen never uses email and that he literally had to be forced onto the stage during his days as a comedian?. These are some of the insights that Weide gives us in this enthusiastic doco.

Woody Allen’s unique brand of humour can be described as self-deprecating and tentative with a unique sense of comic timing always acutely meditative of his own mortality and the meaning of life. Fans will love this comprehensive study which gives deserved gravitas to the life of a highly modest man who never really takes his own work that seriously.

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Cannes 2012 Review Round-up

Dangerous Liaisons (2012) Jim Ho Hur

Do we really need another film of this 17^th Century French novel? Yes we do when it stars Ziyi Zhang in a sumptuously shot Chinese version filmed in romantic 1930’s Shanghai.

The Liability (2012) Craig Viveiros

A cracking little thriller that owes its success to the superlative acting skills of Tim Roth as a self-deprecating hit-man on his last trick.

Rust and Bone (2012) Jacques Audiard (in competition)

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After success with Le Prophete in 2009, Jacques Audiard hits back with an unlikely romance between a boxer and a beautiful crippled marine trainer played by Marion Cotillard (Little White Lies).

I, Anna (2012) Barnaby Southcombe

Charlotte Rampling still has a few tricks up her sleeve for Gabriel Byrne in this psychological romance set in and around The Barbican. It’s also the directorial debut of her son.

Nightfall (2012) Chow Hin Yeung Roy

So-so Noirish thriller filmed around the verdant hills of Hong Kong echoes the violence of “Oldboy” and the delicate touches of Wong Ka Wai but fails to match either in star quality.

Eames, The Architect and The Painter (2011)

Biopic of the multi-faceted romantic partnership of Charles and Ray Eames who revolutionised post-war American design. It reveals far more to this creative duo than just an iconic chair.

In Another Country – (2012) Sang-soo Hong

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Surprising funny and well-observed vehicle for Isabelle Huppert who plays three different French women in search of adventure, love and escape in a boring Korean seaside town.

La Noche Enfrente (2012) Raul Ruiz

We thought it was over with Mysteries of Lisbon but fans of the Portuguese master Raul Ruiz will thrill to this intriguing Chilean swansong filmed in delicate rose pastels and screened at the Directors’ Fortnight.

Mud (2012) Jeff Nichols

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Mississippi tale of love and redemption is well served by a decent script and two great performances from Matthew McConaughey as a misfit and Tye Sheridan as the boy who shows him how to become a man.

Life Just Is (2012) Alex Barrett

Alex Barrett’s directorial debut centres on a group of 20-somethings who discover love, friendship and themselves in this delightful coming of age story set in contemporary London.

The Angels’ Share (2012)

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Paul Brannigan, John Henshaw, Gary Maitland

121mins Comedy Drama

Ken Loach’s Cannes 2012 entry is a light-hearted tale underpinned with social reality about a young Glaswegian delinquent trying to get his life in shape ready for impending fatherhood. International audiences will be drawn to the theme of Scottish whisky distilleries and although the humour verges on the side of ‘too much information’, the Highland setting lifts the spirits in more ways than one and guarantees an entertaining watch with a gripping plotline and good performances all round. Vintage Loach territory.

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Releasing across London at the Tricycle and Everyman cinemas and main chains from 1 June 2012

At the other end of the spectrum and also opening this weekend is The Turin Horse, the long-awaited latest from Bela Tarr (The Man From London). This Hungarian minimalist’s work is very much an acquired taste where little happens for a great deal of time in a wild and mesmerising world of black and white. Every subtle nuance is open to interpretation as the story unravels over six days and features Janos Derszi and his daughter (Erika Bok) and their struggle to survive in a visceral nightmare of poverty, howling winds and a horse who refuses to eat and drink. The eponymous Turin Horse refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s experience with a cab-horse in Turin in 1889 which caused him to stop writing for over 10 years. And that’s really about all there is to say: It’s a mournful, thrilling and strangely beautiful film and supposedly his last.

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Now showing at the Curzon London

Our Children/A Perdre La Raison (2012) Cannes Film Festival 2012

Director: Joachim Lafosse

Cast: Tahir Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Emilie Duquenne

Drama French with English subtitles

A Perdre La Raison was screening in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of Cannes last year and it sent shivers through my spine to think that a story that started with so much love could have such a tragic outcome. In short, it’s a grim tale of blatant male chauvinism in 21st Century France.

We recently saw Niels Arestrup and Tahir Rahim together in Audiard’s Un Prophète and here again the partnership has sinister overtones and control freakery written all over it. Rahim plays Mounir, a Moroccan dream boat with lustruous locks and a winning smile; in short, he’s any girl’s choice for a date or possibly an affair. But after a whirlwind romance Emilie Dequenne’s Murielle makes the mistake of marrying him. There’s an palpable onscreen chemistry between these lovers and Neils Arestrup is powerful as the ‘wicked step-father’ who has an ulterior motive for the marriage.

It all seems so plausible at first, they set up home with Mounir’s surrogate father Dr Pinget (Niels Arestrup). But little does Murielle know, there’s a visa story and once pregnant she falls under the negative influence of Pinget’s power and medical ministerings. There’s a scintilla of a suggestion that Pinget may even have had a sexual background with prettily masculine Mounir although Lafosse decides not to go down that route, and it’s a wise decision because the narrative is better served following the psychological aspects of the couple’s relationship inside the Muslim family.

It’s easy to see how the fecund and exhausted Murielle is in no fit state to leave this sinister ménage à trois without the sex. Frightened and alone within the loving partnership, her chemistry with Mounir does start to flag with every new birth. It’s also unspeakable to think that the tragic denouement is as inevitable as it’s unnecessary. Sometimes we are just as trapped by our minds as we are by our gender or cultural background. MT

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Director: Wes Anderson 94mins Drama

Tilda Swinton, Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand

Moonrise Kingdom opened the 65th Cannes Fesitval. This is the first time that a Wes Anderson feature has made it into the contest.

True to type, he gives us a fey and whimsical story about a bunch of New England oddballs who go in search of a couple of pre-teen lovers de-camping from a scout camp during the summer of 1965. Well played by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Heywood they are an unappealing duo and that’s probably why they have made a love pact and scarpered for the hills but somewhere along the line the story grows more appealing.

Perhaps the reason why we start to tune into this weird adult film about children is the strong cast of Ed Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray and Bruce Willis: who’s generally associated with more mainline Hollywood fare but does very well here as the local sheriff. Tilda Swinton gives a fabulous turn as a slightly unhinged social worker on overdrive in the pursuit of the ‘youngsters’. The levity of the plot line is given ballast by bizarre happenings ranging from a brewing hurricane to the freak death of a terrier assisting in the chase. A score mixing Benjamin Britten with Hank Williams further adds to the quirky feel. This cultish director’s films are abit like marmite: you either love them or hate them. Fans will certainly welcome this one but those of you who don’t know or don’t care for his work should try out this kooky love story. It strangely manages to end with more guts and glory than it had at the outset.

Meredith Taylor

Cafe de Flore (2011)

Director: Jean-Marc Vallee

Main Cast: Kevin Parent, Vanessa Paradis, Helene Florent, Evelyne Brochu, Marin Gerrier

120mins Quebec French with English Subtitles Rated15 Fantasy Love Story

Cafe de flore is a love story and urbane fantasy from one of Canada’s most innovative filmmakers. In a leafy suburb of Montreal, Carole (Helene Florent), a mother of two girls, cherishes the idea that her successful DJ ex-husband and soulmate Antoine (Kevin Parent) will come back to her when he’s tired of having great sex with his tattooed live-in lover Rose (Evelyne Brochu). They share the custody of their two daughters.

Meanwhile fast backwards to grungy sixties Paris where gap-toothed Vanessa Paradis, as Jacqueline, lives with her cuddly Down’s Syndrome toddler Laurent (Marin Guerrier). Having left his father, she has made Laurent the centre of her world and is unable to accept his growing obsession with Véro, another Down’s kid at the nursery school. Jealousy makes her hideously obsessive as she fights for his right to remain in regular school and gradually turns abusive towards him and argumentative with Véro’s parents, who favour special needs education.

These two lives are stitched together by catchy versions of a jazz tune, the eponymous “Cafe de Flore”. One is fresh and funky, the other is more sedate but the melody punctuates the drama and forms a bond between the two families along with haunting riffs from Pink Floyd. For most of the film the parallel sagas appear to have nothing in common and at times we want to stick with one or the other and see how the action plays out but gradually a supernatural thread develops indicating a past life connection for Carole and Jacqueline that grows more intriguing with every twist and turn. The syncopated score and fractured narrative style add to the feeling of emotional tension as the camera moves around with more gusto than Antoine and Rose between sheets.

Jean-Marc Vallee’s technically savvy high-octane rollercoaster is a triumph of style and content, a gut-wrench of a movie with fabulous performances all round and set to a foot-tappingly memorable score.

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The Beloved (2011) (Les Bien-Aimés)

Director: Christophe Honoré

Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Garrel, Chiara Mastroianni, Milos Forman, Paul Schneider, Omar Ben Sellen

French with English subtitles, Cert15, Drama

Honore has assembled a fine cast of talent in the shape of Catherine Deneuve, Milos Forman, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Saignier and Paul Schneider. And the performances are certainly top rate: Catherine Deneuvre manages to project a conquettish confidence onto the deeply flawed and emotionally damaged Madeleine, a woman who can’t say “no” even into her sixties. As a young girl she is friskily played by Ludivine Saignier, falling in love with a Czech doctor , she follows him back to his homeland to discover a wife and the outbreak of War. Flirty turns flighty, as she rushes home with her baby daughter Vera, who grows into gamine-like Chiara Mastroanni . Milos Forman is also outstanding as the mature and charismatic doctor, Jaromil, mellowing with age and never quite leaving her bedside despite her dashing second husband’s undying devotion.

Vera’s life is more serious reflecting Honore’s preoccupation with more robust themes of modern love: AIDS, diverse sexuality and the drug scene. Due to her broken start in life Vera is a bundle of insecurities, striking a predatory pose with men while also being deeply needy. Certainly she’s a daddy’s girl but her relationship with childhood lover Louis Garrel is never quite enough and she’s blown off-course by a gorgeous gay musician in the shape of Paul Schneider who discovers his bisexuality with her in a subtlely nuanced turn, but is never able fully to renounce his boyfriends.

This is a really brave attempt to tackle some worthwhile subject matter it but never quite comes off. In trying to treat heavyweight topics with too much levity Honore falls between two stools and ends up misjudging the mood and giving us a hotchpotch of everything, throwing the piece off balance. He also has the slightly tedious way of having his characters burst into song in totally inappropriate moments. The camera rests for too long on Deneuve and her daughter and after the second hour you’ve really had enough of these two minxes and their antics. That said this is a worthwhile film but at 135mins be prepared for a long and arduous journey not just a light-hearted trip across the channel. Beloved is more than a love-bite: but bites off far more than it can chew.

Showing at Curzon cinemas and the Cine Lumiere from 11 May 2012

Hara-Kiri Death of a Samurai (2011)

Director: Takashi Miike

Cast: Ebizo Ichikawa, Eita, Koji Yakusho, Hikari Mitsushima

Runtime: 126 mins Action Thriller

This visually sumptuous tragedy charting the economic meltdown of an impoverished ronin and his fight for the right to commit suicide is strangely soothing to watch even though it outstays its welcome by the time most of the blood has spilt. You’ll hardly notice it’s in 3D so take the kids and relax: there’s plenty of swashbuckling to keep them amused in the closing reels.

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Angel and Tony (2010)

Angele and Tony (2010)

87 mins Cert 18 French with English subtitles Drama

Written and directed by Alix Delaporte

Principal cast: Clotilde Hesme, Gregory Gadebois, Evelyne Didi, Jerome Huguet, Antoine Couleau

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Known for her documentary work, Alix Delaporte’s second feature is a low-key but intimate drama that slowly gets more interesting due to well-pitched performances from leads Clotilde Hesme as Angele and Gregory Gadebois who plays Tony.

Angele arrives in a struggling Normandy fishing community as a beautiful stranger with a questionable past who has separated from her young son Yohan (Antoine Couleau) in suspicious circumstances suggesting domestic violence. Through the small ads she is drawn to a gruff and unappealing fisherman called Tony and the rest, as they say, is history. There’s some union argy bargy going on in the background surrounding fishermans’ rights but ultimately this is a love story. Small but perfectly formed Saturday night entertainment that won’t rock the boat unless you feel particularly strongly about EEC fishing quotas.

Screening in Odeon cinemas and at the Cine Lumiere from Friday, 5th May 2012

Lawrence of Belgravia (2011)

Dir: Paul Kelly | Biopic, UK 90mins

‘Felt’, ‘Denim’ and ‘Go-Kart Mozart’ were British alternative rock bands in the 1980s and Lawrence was their charismatic frontman. On indie labels ‘Felt’ alone released ten albums and ten singles – one for each year of that decade, and it’s difficult not to be caught up in the optimism of this quirky biopic that charts Lawrence’s rise to fame; a fame that never quite happened in the way that he hoped it would. There’s little chance that his dreams of money, mainstream success and ‘never having to ride the tube’ will ever happen but this disappointment seems secondary to Lawrence’s sheer enjoyment of his music.

From the opening titles we are drawn to this rock star manqué with his wry lyrics and air of self-deprecation. Maverick, loner and trailblazer, he admits to putting money before friendship yet there is something undeniably appealing and gentle about Lawrence that makes him likeable just the same. For most of the film he wanders around looking dishevelled with his plastic bags and wistful take on life, and never taking himself too seriously is probably his greatest asset.

Musician turned filmmaker Paul Kelly captures his essence in this idiosyncratic biopic, one of a clutch of documentary London-focused features in a career that started in 2003 with Finisterre – a psychogeographical study about the capital’s effect on the musicians who live there, namely the band members of St Etienne; This is Tomorrow (2008) a tribute to the South Bank’s cultural centre; and Monty the Lamb, a short film about Hendon Football Club narrated by its mascot Monty.

Well-edited footage encorporates witty exchanges and interviews as Lawrence goes about his business promoting the band and visiting various haunts including his childhood home in Birmingham, and Belgravia, where he currently hangs out. Fans will particularly love this oddball documentary. Even for the uninitiated this is a small cinematic gem. ©MT

A BFI SUBSCRIPTION EXCLUSIVE FROM 7 JUNE 2022

The Monk (2011)

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Director: Dominik Moll Cast: Vincent Cassel, Sergi Lopez, Deborah Francois

101mins France/Spain Historical thriller

Vincent Cassel’s magnetic allure is as strong as ever in his latest role as Father Ambrosio, a seemingly invincible monk who eventually becomes a victim of his own lust. Adapted from Matthew Lewis’s 18th century novel, Ambrosio was abandoned as a baby on the steps of a Spanish monastery. Spiritually gifted but morally naive, he takes holy orders and is soon the resident ’eminence grise’. But his faith is put to the test when a spooky masked stranger arrives at the gates looking for sanctuary and religious guidance. This ghoulish intruder obviously represents evil. Dominik Moll is good at creating unnerving characters: he did so with Sergi Lopez in “Harry He’s Here to Help” and he excels here again. Sergi Lopez gives a standout cameo as a debauched medieval paedophile .But Father Ambrosio’s gut instinct fails to kick in and he bows to religious and spiritual training and welcomes evil into his life.

Essentially a cautionary tale it’s made all the more intriguing by its medieval setting that is spiced up with dazzling imagery intended to appeal to young and adult audiences alike. Patrick Blossier’s sumptuous cinematography and lighting effects work well and make each frame into a religious masterpiece straight out of the Prado. His technique of contrasting the burning brightness of the arid Spanish landscape against the darkness of the monastery makes the stunning image of good and evil in reverse very effective.. Not one to play virtuous roles, Vincent Cassel gets more convincing as he warms, quite literally, to his inevitable demise. Despite its ambitious stylised focus none of the back-up cast makes the necessary emotional impact and we are left indifferent to the lovelorn characters of Lorenzo (Frederic Noaille) and Antonia (Josephine Japy) and phased by some gimmicky touches that seem out of place in the general context. Nevertheless it’s gripping viewing with an intriguing storyline, striking visuals and sinister overtones.

Releases 27 April 2012 in Odeon and Curzon Cinemas in the UK

Elles (2011)

Director: Malgorzata Szumowska and Tine Byrcke

Lead cast: Juliette Binoche, Joanna Kulig Anais Demoustier

Cert15 98 mins. Intelligent female drama

Fun, feisty and fabulous to watch, Margorita Szumovska’s explicit study of female sexuality is seen from a female perspective. The decision to cast Juliette Binoche in the lead is a masterstroke; Binoche’s gutsy naturalness is what makes this a success and she’s proud to stand by her performance, it’s one of her best.

She plays Anne, a journalist, wife and well-heeled mother hired to write a piece on student prostitution. It opens with her tearing through a frantic day in her gorgeous apartment, researching her article, thinking about what to cook for dinner, dealing with her truculent son; the usual stuff. The complicit exchanges with the student prostitutes she interviews are played coquettishly by Anais Demoustier and confidently by Joanna Kulig and are refreshingly revealing. Instead of being put upon, these girls actually seem empowered and liberated by having sex for money with experienced players.

The men in question are mostly in relationships, with spare cash to blow on their fantasies: abit of kinkiness here and there but also, strangely: a desire for intimacy. These guys want to talk about their lives, the girls just want money. Sucked in and strangely turned-on by the giggly chats, Anne starts to question her own sexless marriage to the ineffectual Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing). We never quite suss out whether he is playing the field although he probably is.

But sex isn’t the only focus here. Elles is also about sensuality. With stunning visuals it celebrates Anne’s visceral enjoyment of good food, music, beautiful clothes and even pleasuring herself on her chic bathroom floor. It shows how easily sex can drop from the agenda in the subtle interplay between couples when the drudgery of family life takes over. Anne is every woman who’d like to get that romance back, in between juggling workloads, running the home, managing men’s egos and keeping it all together. Does she imply that women are the superior sex for dealing with all this? It could appear so. But from another perspective, you could argue that men have the upper hand as all they do is manage their work and contract out their sexual needs. Szumovska has made a brave and successful attempt to tackle these middle-class emotive issues in a glossy entertaining way that doesn’t always show men in their best light. Elles is strictly for the birds; an überchickflic with plenty of food for thought.

In cinemas through London/UK from this weekend, 20 April 2012

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Marley (2011)

Marley releases for a special Sonic preview at the BFI on 13th April and across London/UK from the 19th April 2012.

BOB MARLEY – A TRIBUTE

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before and she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there…” – Bob Marley

MARLEY (2012 DOCUMENTARY)

Director: Kevin McDonald

Ziggy Marley, Chris Blackwell,

Cindy Breakespeare

144 mins

Musical Biopic

Kevin MacDonald’s extensive documentary captures the essence of the charismatic reggae musician combining original footage with lush images of Jamaica charting the singer’s short but successful life. There’s colourful commentary from members of the Wailers and impresario Chris Blackwell. His mother, son Ziggy Marley and lover Cindy Breakespeare (a former Miss World) all have their say. And you don’t have to be a fan. This comprehensive musical biopic entrances with its rhythmic soundtrack, if nothing else. Reading between the lines of his music and the words of his friends and colleagues it seems that Bob Marley really was a generous and intuitive soul who united his country by following the true path of spirituality.

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Delicacy (2011) (Delicatesse)

Directors David Foenkinos, Stephane Foenkinos

Cast: Audrey Tatou, Francois Amiens, Bruno Todeschini, Pio Marmai

French/English subtitles Cert12 Rom-Com from the novel “Delicatesse”

Fans of Audrey Tatou’s cutesy look will happily spend a few hours in her company as gamine hottie Nathalie married to her hunky soulmate François (Pio Marmai) in their Parisian love nest. But as a bereaved business woman mourning his tragic death she is less convincing and the trauma and sadness associated with loss are seriously underplayed particularly when she breaks into impromptu song and French-kisses her unsuspecting gap-toothed workmate Markus (Francois Damiens). The romance that blossoms with this balding weirdo is seriously far-fetched despite giving us some welcome laughs when he comments: “I could go on holiday in your hair” in a lustful moment that borders on letchery. Bruno Todeschini does his best in a ridiculous role as her jealous love-sick boss but the other characters are trite and inconsequential. Delicacy, as the name suggests, is as wafer-thin as its heroine and drifts into whimsy by the ending. It seems that even the filmmakers got bored. MT

Headhunters (2011)

Director: Marten Tyldum Cinematographer: John Andreas Andersen

Cast: Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Syonne Macody Lund

Norway 100mins Cert15 Dark Comedy

Fans of Jo Nesbo won’t be disappointed. This knockout heist affair is a slick and sophisticated Nordic cocktail with a dash of dark humour and comes from the producers of the Millennium Trilogy, for its seal of approval. We’re back in Scandinavia, Norway to be precise and womanising headhunter Roger Brown is schmoozing his wealthy clients while deftly disposing of their art works and replacing them with fakes to fund a chic lifestyle with blonde bombshell gallery-owner Diana (Lund). So far so good-ish.

It all gets complicated when former Dutch mercenary client Clas Greve takes a shine to his wife and also happens to own a valuable piece of modern art. While each is trying to lay their manicured hands on the other’s property a chain of unexpected events unleashes a cataclysmic denouement featuring gore, guts and some rather pathetic community support officers. Yes, they exist in Norway too! With knockout performances from an all round Scandinavian cast this is a well-paced and watchable piece of art. Catch it before the Hollywood remake comes to town.

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In the Tricycle and Everyman cinemas across London

Still showing: Alice Ruhrwacher’s Corpo Celeste (see review), Herzog’s Into the Abyss and Jon Shenk’s The Island President.

Le Havre (2011)

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Cast: Andre Wilmes, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Kati Outinen, Blondin Miguel, Evelyne Didi

French with English subtitles. Cert12

Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki has invented his own genre of ‘contemporary retro’ with an improbable and deadpan drama set in 1950s Le Havre. It’s a drôle French version of The Archers that doesn’t take itself too seriously. You know the kind of thing: an everyday story of gentlefolk in a close-knit community where kindly lawyer-shoe-shiner (Wilmes) is harbouring a nicely-behaved child deportee, who also happens to be black, from the clutches of absurdly buttoned-up and ineffectual Inspector Monet. Jean-Paul Darroussian gives a tongue-in-cheek turn in the style of Inspector Clouseau.

The man in question is Marcel Marx. At first he strikes an odd figure as this desiccated do-gooder, with his dog-eared existence and wife Arletty who’s seen better days. But these two are likeable and happy in their threadbare lifestyle, making ends meet with the support of local traders who expect nothing in return for their daily supplies. The grocer (Francois Monnie), the baker (Evelyne Didi) and the soigne barmaid, with her endless aperitifs ‘on the house’ are all well-cast and amusing. There’s a comforting rhythm to this bizarre harbourside harmony with no trace of rancour or, indeed, reality. Authentic and highly unlikely, but you wish life was really like this. Billed as a comedy there are dark moments when Arletty gets cancer and Darroussin goes on the prowl with a pineapple but this is downtown utopia not Les Miserables.

Kaurismäki originally had the idea to do this uplifting French tale along the lines of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, but opted only for the latter: “The other two were always too optimistic. But fraternité you can find anywhere, even in France!” And though life is sometimes gloomy in cloudy Le Havre, he makes sure that clouds have a silver lining.

Releases in the Curzon and across London from 6th April 2012

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Thursday Til Sunday (2012) *** De Jueves A Domingo

Writer/Director: Dominga Sotomayor

Cast: Santi Ahumada, Emiliano Friefeld, Paola Giannini, Francisco Perez-Bann 91mins Drama

This Chilean debut feature is a weekend road trip filled with touching moments for a family who may be together for the very last time. Don’t expect to see much scenery, apart from the occasional glimpse of an arid mountain side or a river bed, this is very much a mood piece seen through the eyes of ten-year-old Lucia and shot for the most part within the confines of the family car heading north with her brother, Manuel and parents (Paola Giannini and Francisco Perez-Bannen)

Dominga Sotomayor handles the story with gentle restraint and subtle insight as it gradually emerges that the parents are splitting up although there are no emotional outbursts or angry episodes. Seen from the perspective of the little girl played beautifully by Santi Ahumada, this lack of contrast in the narrative eventually becomes claustrophobic and drifts along with little structure or purpose. Where the film succeeds is as an intimately captured authentic family portrait with endearing poignant and, at times, funny interludes and a memorable score. By the end of the journey, we feel part of this family in this well-crafted and watchable first feature. MT

Mohammed Al Fayed (1929-2023) – Tribute

In this exclusive interview with Filmuforia, Mohammed Al Fayed – who is sadly no longer with us – talked about his favourite actors, his role in Chariots of Fire (1981) and the sort of films he was still tempted to finance.

Back in 1980, a script was collecting dust in the offices of Goldcrest. Dodi Fayed discovered it, Mohammed al Fayed believed in it and through his funding Chariots Of Fire came into being. I went along to talk to the man who made this all possible through his unique vision, commitment and fascination with the world of film.

Can you remember when you viewed your first film and where it was?

When my brothers and I were youngsters in Alexandria, we would often go to the cinema. Egypt had a very vibrant and creative film industry in the 1940’s and 1950’s with quite a few great actors such as Faten Hamama, Omar Sharif, and the well known directors Henry Barakat, Youssef Chahine and Salah Abu Seif. We also enjoyed Hollywood and British fare. I think that this early experience created my great interest in the motion picture industry. I’m sure Dodi inherited this love of film from me. During his career in the film business, he amassed a fine selection of work and helped to produce several films. At the time of his death, he was in pre-production with a new live action film of “Peter Pan”. Sadly it has never been made but I know it would have redefined J M Barrie’s wonderful story for the 21st Century.

What is your favourite movie and which genre of films do you enjoy watching now?

My taste is wide and varied. I do love films that can appeal to the whole of the family. That is why I enjoy all the James Bond films. I knew Cubby Broccoli very well and liked him immensely. He was a life force. His daughter Barbara, who produces the films in succession, practically grew up with Dodi. She loved him as a brother. Their friendship began on the set of one of the Bond films. Cubby needed an oil tanker, for a scene in which three nuclear submarines, U.S. British and Soviet, disappear and their crews are kidnapped. The submarines end up within the hold of a super tanker. I happened to own the right sort of tanker for the film and was only too pleased to loan it to Cubby for those epic scenes, shot off Sardinia. I cannot tell you which of the Bond films I like best so I shall just say the next 007. Barbara is a wonderful producer and she never creates anything but memorable films with compelling scenes and characters. But there is one other film that I am particularly fond of and it is the Burton and Taylor version of Cleopatra. When MGM came to Egypt to shoot the location scenes, I worked with the studio to provide everything they needed, from thousands of extras, to the cars for the stars and busses for the crowd. A great film came out of that monumental endeavour and it is still very entertaining 60 years later. Many of the MGM executives I met then are still my friends today.

Who are your favourite actors and actresses?

I have many close friends in the film industry and I could give you a very star-studded list, but my favourite film actor of all time is Tony Curtis. I miss him more than I can say and he was a loyal friend to me and my family. He started off as a glamour boy, a bit of a pin-up, in the 1950s and his haircut was more famous than he was! But it should never be forgotten that he was a very considerable acting talent. How male actors can claim with confidence that they starred in two of the best films of the 20th Century. Tony did: Some Like It Hot and The Sweet Smell of Success. And then there are many films, like The Defiant Ones that were epoch-making in their own way. There are so many great actresses that that’s a difficult question, I shall restrict myself to saying how much I like and admire Goldie Hawn and Sophia Loren, two women whose screen presence is unmistakable from the very first frame. They are elegant and brilliant stars and that is why I invited them both, at different times, to open the January Sale at Harrods. They both carried off that new and very specific role with elegance and charm, just as you would expect.

What caught your eye and resulted in you backing Chariots of Fire, given that the script had been lying around for so long in the offices of Goldcrest?

When Dodi brought me the script of Chariots of Fire to see if I would like to invest in the production, he told me frankly that no one would put money into the film. I was shocked. How could people be so blind? Here was the story of two men, both great athletes, who encounter prejudice and insuperable barriers to their success. Harold Abrahams was Jewish and subjected to the worst snobbery and race hatred in his attempt to win the 100 metres at the Paris Olympics. But Abrahams defied them all and won.

The other, Eric Liddell, was “The Flying Scotsman”, a man of iron principle whose religious beliefs meant that he could not and would not run on a Sunday. When pressure was applied to convince him to compromise his conscience, he resisted it, switched to another race that was not being run on a Sunday and brought home the Gold Medal anyway.

I thought they were both wonderful, inspiring stories. But not many other people did at the time. By the early 1980s, the cinemas were full of films featuring nothing but violence and gratuitous sex, car chases and bad language. In Chariots, there is no violence, no profanity, no nudity and the only chasing is on the running track. Yes, there is a love story but, in keeping with the morality of the 1920s when the story takes place, it is a chaste and decorous one. So I didn’t hesitate when Dodi asked me to finance the production.

The result was the only British film, at that time, to be awarded four Academy Awards. It was a British film but, let us be honest, it would not have been made without Egyptian money. I was glad to help. The film came out in the year of the Falklands War and even in Argentina, then at war with Britain, it was a huge hit. When cinema-goers in Buenos Aires had the scene the film the word on the street was “These British people have such strong moral characters and such courage that we may not be able to beat them in this war”. That was the effect of Chariots. It was the greatest success ever scored by Lord (David) Putnam and his production company, Goldcrest. Dodi was the Associate Producer.

I am pleased to see that a re-mastered version of the film is being released in this Olympic year for London. It is one of those films with a back story almost as intriguing as the one that appeared on the screen. The world still loves the film, more than 30 years on. Last year, The Film and Television Sports Foundation of Milan were kind enough to present me with a special award for my role in bringing the story before world audiences. That meant a lot to me, as much as the Oscars and BAFTAS, because it meant that young sports lovers throughout the world had found inspiration in the film that Dodi believed in and helped to produce. I am glad that script did not stay on that dusty shelf.

Given that your contribution to the British film industry is to be celebrated at the time of the 2012 Olympics, what sort of script, premise or actors would tempt you back into financing another film?

I am happy leave it to other people to finance the films of the future. I have made my contribution. However, if there is a story that cries out to be made, I might be tempted. It would have to be a story where humanity triumphed. The actors and directors need not be famous. Most of the people in “Chariots” were not well known before its production. But the creative team would have to bring their love and their belief and their commitment to the film. Without those magic ingredients, nothing really works in front of the camera. The camera may have only one eye but it has a way of seeing everything.

If you were a sportsman, which sport would you play?

I loved playing football when I was young. My brothers and I played whenever we had a few moments free from our homework. We played on the beach near our home in Alexandria. My younger brother, Salah, now sadly dead, was a great sportsman with a tremendous talent as a footballer. In fact he was an all-round sportsman. I was not, but I have always admired those who are supreme in their sports and also those who give everything they have got in order to succeed. Talent is the most valuable thing in the world but quite often, persistence wins.

Have you ever been approached to make a film based on your Harrods retail store or Fulham football club?

Several films have been made about Harrods. I remember a particularly good one being made for television by Desmond Wilcox, the late husband of Esther Rantzen. Harrods has featured in many of his films not least in “The Pumpkin Eater” in which Anne Bancroft suffers a memorable mental breakdown in the Food Halls. And it wasn’t because of the prices. No one has come up with a must-be-made film script about Fulham FC, but I admit it is a fascinating story. Of course, we are still living that story on a week-by-week basis so perhaps there is still time. Any script would have to have a wonderful climax. We are awaiting ours. The FA Cup’s next years? Or the Europa League Championship? We live, and we hope so.

If you could star in a movie, which role would you most like to play?

I have no desire to be a film star. I am in the grandfather business. If there was a role that meant I could spend every day on the set playing with my granddaughters, I might consider it. But the location and catering would have to be very good to tempt me to accept any role.

It has been said that investing in movies is as high risk as investing in airlines. What advice would you give a prospective investor?

The safe answer is to say “Don’t”. You should only invest in the film industry if you really know what you are doing. I suppose that goes for any sort of commercial endeavour. But in show business it is notoriously easy to make a mistake and mistakes in the film industry are by definition expensive. The best investment you can make is to buy a ticket for a film that really attracts you and then tell people how good it is, if you enjoyed it. Word of mouth is the film industry’s secret weapon. It was personal recommendation that alerted people to the merits of “Chariots of Fire”, because initially it did not have a big budget for publicity and advertising. People talk and thank goodness they do. With regard to the Government, it needs only look as far as Ireland or across the Atlantic to Canada. Both countries have prospered by offering film-makers tax breaks and other incentives. There is a great deal of talent in Britain. The Government should invest in it by creating the conditions in which talent can be creative and prosper. It is not hard to see what needs to be done but this Government seems to prefer taxing the blood out of everyone rather than providing the financial impetus that would do wonders for film and television production. The world is crying out for good content. This country provides a lot of it. But, with the right encouragement, it could do so much more.

How would you like to be remembered in rolling credits?

This question is too difficult. I wish to be remembered by my family as a husband, father and grandfather. I ask nothing else and nothing more. But anyway, I am not even thinking of any “closing credits” of a personal nature. When people come out of the cinema having seen “Chariots of Fire”, or any of the other films with which Dodi was associated (“Breaking Glass”, “Hook”, “FX-Murder By Illusion” Parts 1 & 2, “The Scarlet Letter”) I want them to feel that they have enjoyed themselves in the company of great story-tellers. That is what it is all about. We all love a good story.

I left the interview humbled by a man who has achieved so much in his life and with a story to be told for the future. I felt that there was much more to Mohamed than I’d been lead to believe by reading the headlines. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and with him you cannot help feeling that he has been blessed with foresight, not just with Chariots of Fire, but everything he touches. Even the title of the film would be a wonderful epitaph for a lesser mortal. Meredith Taylor

MOHAMMED AL FAYED 1929-2023

Vampyr (1932) 90 Anniversary Blu-ray release

Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Fantasy Horror | 83 mins

Deep, dark and undeniably disturbing Carl Dreyer’s 1932 experimental feature based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘In A Glass Darkly’ was actually financed by the main actor, Baron Gunzberg.

As young traveller Allan Grey, he comes across an old castle in the village of Courtempierre and decides to stay there, entranced by a series of weird and inexplicable events that capture his imagination or is it his imagination?: A grim figure carrying a scythe, a ghastly landlady who appears at nightfall, shadowy figures flitting across walls, revolving sculls and a nightmare where he is buried alive. Events come to a head when the elderly squire of the village voices his fears for the safety of his young daughters and gives him a strange parcel to be opened after his impending death. According to local folklore, souls of the unscrupulous haunt the village as vampires, preying upon young people in their endless thirst for blood.

Dreyer evokes an eerie and supernatural beauty to all this as the camera sweeps gracefully across luminously-lit rooms and chiaroscuro passages in the ancient castle. Curiously disembodied shadows counterbalanced by a soundtrack of strange voices, primal screams and periods of unsettling silence add to the feeling of otherwordliness. To create the curious half-light, filming took place during the early hours of misty dawn with a lens black cloth.

The performances are really strong considering the only professional involved was a household servant. Sybille Schmitz as daughter Leone, gives a bloodcurdling series of expressions when she realises her vampire fate ranging from abject fear and misery through to madness and finally menace (see clip). Grey’s burial scene is also eerily evocative as he looks up through wild and staring eyes as the lid is screwed down on his coffin and a candle is lit on the small window above and he is carried through the streets looking up at the drifting clouds and lacy treescapes on the way to his macabre interment. This is a film that stays to haunt you a long time after the Gothic titles have rolled. MT

90th Anniversary Blu-ray release through www.mastersofcinema.com

Into The Abyss : A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (2011)

Written and directed by Werner Herzog

106mins Cert15 US Documentary

Michael Perry fancied a joyride in a red Comaro owned by an elderly woman in Conroe Texas. Three people stood in his way so he killed them and got what he wanted with the help of Jason Burkett . Ten years later we meet him on death row via fascinating footage, days before his execution in 2010. This documentary forms part of Herzog’s Death Row project which incorporates a trio of shorter TV films on the same theme.

Werner Herzog uses a subtle interview technique of suggestive but non-threatening questions to coax out details and get behind the mindset of these committed criminals. In Perry he finds a nice enough guy and a deep well of vacuousness (‘destiny has dealt you a bad deck of cards, which doesn’t exonerate you and which does not mean I have to like you’). He passes no judgement. The victims’ families and those intimately involved with the killers provide context. The result is an alarming look at the pointless nature of violence and the society that breeds it and uses violence in retribution. Compelling Sunday afternoon viewing if studying sociopaths is your thing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uV1_Yc8OSw

Meredith Taylor

Across London and the Everyman cinemas from 30 March 2012

London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

About the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival

The London 2012 Cultural Olympiad is the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympic and Paralympic Movements. Spread over four years, it is designed to give everyone in the UK a chance to be part of London 2012 and inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially among young people.

The culmination of the Cultural Olympiad will be the London 2012 Festival, bringing leading artists from all over the world together from 21 June 2012 in this UK-wide festival – a chance for everyone to celebrate London 2012 through dance, music, theatre, the visual arts, film and digital innovation and leave a lasting legacy for the arts in this country. People can sign up at www.london2012.com/festival now to receive information.

Principal funders of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival are Arts Council England, Legacy Trust UK and the Olympic Lottery Distributor. BP and BT are Premier Partners of the Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival. The British Council will support the international development of London 2012 Cultural Olympiad projects. Panasonic are the presenting partner of Film Nation: Shorts.

CHARIOTS OF FIRE RE-IGNITES

Perhaps the best known film to grace this cultural Olympiad will be the new digitally remastered version of Chariots of Fire.

Collin Wellands’s script had been knocking around for years in the offices of prod-co Goldcrest. It landed on the desk of Mohamed Al Fayed and he was persuaded to read it; the story of one man who will not compromise his conscience but still wins an Olympic Gold Medal and another who overcomes anti-semitism to triumph in the 100 metres. He immediately decided to back the film. Director Hugh Hudson cast Ben Cross and Ian Charleson as the British sportsman competing in the Paris Olympics of 1924. It went on to win four Oscars at the 1981 Academy Awards, including best picture, best original screenplay, best costume design and best original music for Vangelis‘s rousing score. But none of this would have been possible without Egyptian financing and that came courtesy of Mr Al Fayed.

The digitally restored Chariots of Fire will be re-released in more than 100 UK cinemas from 13 July with £150,000 in funding from the British Film Institute. It opens two weeks ahead of the London 2012 Olympics’ opening ceremony.

Meredith Taylor

The Future (2011)

Director/screenplay Miranda July.

Cast: Hamish Linklater, Miranda July

USA/91mins Cert12

Sophie and Jason live together in a warm glow of duvet hugging and low achievement in downtown LA. Semi-fulfilled by a mindless existence of online jobs and part-time dance teaching; their only serious commitment is a plan to adopt an injured cat “PawPaw” who narrates part of the story. Their humdrum days encompass a series of offbeat characters who throw up amusing vignettes and wry exchanges in this banal but touching comedy written by July herself.

Both approaching 40 they start to question the future without reaching any real conclusions. It then emerges that the solution is man-size in the shape of local businessman and his ‘cooky’ daughter, who help bring Sophie to a dawning realisation. But it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Jason throws a curve ball just as we’re getting complacent at the outcome of this quirky but endearing comedy and its spare but catchy score. You’ll either love it or hate it.

Meredith Taylor

At the ICA on 31-March 1st April 2012

http://www.ica.org.uk/films

Kid With a Bike (2012) Le Gamin au Velo

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Cast: Cecile de France, Tomas Doret, Jeremie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione

French with English Subtitles Cert12a

The Dardenne brothers began in documentaries and still retain much of that pared-down style in this little film with a big heart about a boy, his wayward father and the woman who saves his life.

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, it’s a typical tale of family breakdown but told in such way that makes it good entertainment rather than downbeat doom. First-timer Thomas Doret gives a natural performance as Cyril, a motherless boy who lives in a care home. His father (Jeremie Renier) is a vapid character who has cleared off and works locally as a chef leaving him with just a bike. The thing that strikes you most about all this is Cyril’s sheer perseverance in trying to find his father. In some ways he emerges the stronger of the two, driving the action forward at such a frenetic pace that you can’t help feeling for him, unsentimental and unflinching in his bid to connect, brimming with self-righteous petulance.

Then local hairdresser Samantha (Cecile de France) appears on the scene and agrees to look after him at weekends. This brings out the best in both of them much to the annoyance of her boyfriend (Fabrizio Rongione); it’s quite clear where her emotions lie. The Kid with a Bike is a lovely story; well acted, simply told and beautifully filmed.

Meredith Taylor

On release across London from 23 March 2012

http://curzoncinemas.com/

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_49ZVKK2PFA

Trishna (2012)

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

Starring Frieda Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Roshan Seth

108mins English/Hindi Cert 15

Michael Winterbottom returns to Hardy with his third adaptation of the novelist, this time taking Tess of the D’Urbervilles to present day India. In this tragic tale of male and female dynamics, Frieda Pinto stars as village girl who falls for urbaine rich boy Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed) when she goes to work in his father’s luxury hotel . Jay’s real ambition lies in the film business and he persuades Trishna to follow him to Mumbai as his live-in girfriend.

And love does blossom as they frolic on the beaches and the bars of contemporary Mumbai. Jay’s friends are luvvies and media types but Trishna’s sights extend no further than being the future Mrs Singh. And while she’s cleaning the oven and planning the next meal he is out schmoozing and boozing. When Jay is called back to London events start to unravel.

Trishna is a visual feast capturing both the breathtaking beauty of rural India and the realism and burgeoning vibrancy of its commercial capital, far from the syncopated and over-stylised take of Slumdog Millionnaire. But while Michael Winterbottom is currently one of our most inventive and innovative British directors, this film has flaws as deep as the caste system when it comes to casting. Frieda Pinto looks the part but fails to capture and convey the subtle nuances of the female psyche. Riz Ahmed is also well cast physically but his transition from affectionate boyfriend to indifferent love-rat lacks depth and credibility. The result is an over-simplistic take that plays like an advert for an upmarket holiday resort rather than a deep and multi-faceted love story.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MomsnmjgVYE

On general release across London from 9th March 2012

Wild Bill (2011)

Director: Dexter Fletcher

Cast: Charlie Creed Miles, Andy Serkis, Olivia Williams, Jaime Winstone

UK *** 98mins Cert15

Long-time actor Dexter Fletcher turns writer-director with another father son relationship story out this week this time featuring a responsible dad in the shape of Charlie Creed Miles. It’s a cheeky little cockney thriller but sure-footed, well-written and featuring the best of British acting from Andy Serkis, Olivia Willams and Jaime Winstone. Catch it if you’re looking for some light-hearted fun.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo5IaRnKyFk

On general release from 23 March 2012 at Odeon and Vue

Meredith Taylor

The Passion of Carl Theodor Dreyer

Ordet (1955)

CARL THEODOR DREYER

Carl Theodor Dreyer is probably the greatest and most respected film director Denmark has ever produced.

Dreyer was the child of an illicit union between a Swedish maid, Josefina Nilsson, and a Danish landowner. Born in secret in Copenhagen, he grew up the adopted son of a Danish couple. He later went on to trace his biological Swedish family and learned about his mother’s death as a result of miscarriage while she was pregnant by another man who had no intention to marry her, either. The reason that this is so important is that it might explain why Dreyer focused so much on the suffering of women in a man’s world. He saw his life’s work as a kind of everlasting tribute to his mother, the woman he never knew.

ALL ABOUT WOMEN

At the end of his life Dreyer was working on a film about the suffering of a man called Jesus. Strangely, the project never got off the ground but, of the films he did make, the suffering of women is the really the central theme. First, in THE PRESIDENT about young women who are seduced and abandoned with tragic results. Then, in LEAVES FROM SATAN’S BOOK, Clara Wieth heroically kills herself. Later, there is the oppressed wife in MASTER IN THE HOUSE: the Jewish girl caught in a pogrom, in LOVE ONE ANOTHER, the suffering and death of JEANNE D’ARC, the young woman who falls victim to a vampire in VAMPYR, the abandoned young woman in the short GOOD MOTHERS, Anne and the old woman accused of witchcraft in DAY OF WRATH, to a lesser degree Inger who dies and comes back to life in THE WORD, and GERTRUD, whose total commitment to love makes her disappointed in men.

After the peripatetic activitity of his early life, when he directed nine films in five different countries, Dreyer’s career suffered a series of setbacks and failed projects. Dreyer not only focused on martyrdom, he himself was one of the greatest artistic martyrs in the history of film. Over the last 35 years of his career, it was tremendously difficult for him to get to make the films he wanted to make. After the privately financed sound film VAMPYR (1932) flopped, he did not get to make another feature until DAY OF WRATH in 1943. He renounced his Swedish production TWO PEOPLE (1945), and over the next 25 years or so he got to direct just two other features, ORDET and GETRUDE. His pet project, Jesus of Nazareth, never actually came into being.

VAMPYR (1932

83 mins German

Deep, dark and undeniably disturbing Carl Dreyer’s 1932 experimental feature base on Sheridan Le Fanu’s In A Glass Darkly was actually financed by the main actor, Baron Gunzberg. As young traveller Allan Grey, he comes across an old castle in the village of Courtempierre and decides to stay there, entranced by a series of weird and inexplicable events that capture his imagination or is it his imagination? A grim figure carrying a scythe, a ghastly landlady who appears at nightfall, shadowy figures flitting across walls, revolving sculls and a nightmare where he is buried alive. Events come to a head when the elderly squire of the village voices his fears for the safety of his young daughters and gives him a strange parcel to be opened after his impending death. According to local folklore, souls of the unscrupulous haunt the village as vampires, preying on young people in their endless thirst for blood.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvW2mKiLM-M

There’s an eerie and supernatural beauty to all this as the camera sweeps gracefully across luminously lit rooms and chiaroscuro passages in the ancient castle. Curiously disembodied shadows counterbalanced by a soundtrack of strange voices, primal screams and periods of unsettling silence add to the feeling of otherwordliness. To create the curious half-light, filming took place during the early hours of misty dawn with a lens black cloth.

The acting is not bad either considering the only professional was a household servant. Sybille Schmitz as daughter Leone, gives a bloodcurdling series of expressions when she realises her vampire fate ranging from abject fear and misery through to madness and finally menace (see clip). Grey’s burial scene is also eerily evocative as he looks up through wild and staring eyes as the lid is screwed down on his coffin and a candle is lit on the small window above his face. As he is carried through the streets the camera pans the drifting clouds and lacy treescapes on the way to his macabre interment. This is a film that stays and haunts you a long time after the Gothic titles have rolled.

ORDET (1955)

Cast: Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Hanne Agesen

126mins PG ***** Danish with English subtitles

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uQEPjRog84

Carl Dreyer’s masterpiece on love, passion and faith. With his unique film language Dreyer takes a simple story to an ethereal level. The breathtaking brilliance of the lighting and camera shots, the stark clarity of the compositions, the hypnotic quality of the pacing and the intensity of the performances make this a perfect film.

www.bfi.org.uk

NOW ON NETFLIX | Additional Information courtesy of the official Carl Dreyer website

Hunky Dory (2011) Prime Video

Dir: Marc Evans. Wri: Laurence Coriat | Cast. Minnie Driver, Aneurin Barnard, Hadyn Gynne, Danielle Branch, Robert Pugh | UK 2011 107mins

Marc Evans’ feelgood Brit flick is a heartfelt tribute to his Swansea schooldays and that long hot summer of ’76. A heady time when Bowie ruled the airwaves, bovver boys roamed the streets and chest freezers were the ultimate ‘mod con’.

Minnie Driver shines as feisty drama teacher Vivienne who inspires her wayward six-formers in the sweltering heat by dreaming up a futuristic musical version of The Tempest set to songs from Bowie, ELO and The Turtles. From the largely teenage cast of newcomers with great voices, Aneurin Barnard (Ironclad) stands out in a sultry turn as hormonal hearthrob cum toyboy, Davey. Bumbling Headmaster Robert Pugh adds weight to the production as Prospero.

There’s plenty of fun from sexy frolics by candlelight (weren’t the power cuts in ’73?) to high school high jinks in a warm and upbeat tale that captures the seventies vibe and has you wanting to sing along out loud. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

https://youtu.be/7_VxhrtMJCs

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God Grierson Award Winner LFF 2012

Director: Alex Gibney

Cast: Jamie Sheridan, John Slattery

104mins Documentary US HBO Documentary Films

Of all the documentaries at the London Film Festival 2012, this was the most coruscating not only for its subject matter but also for its implications for the leaders of the contemporary Catholic Church: namely the Vatican and the Pope. Did he tender his resignation this week purely on the basis of age?: one has to wonder after seeing this.

What starts as a ‘simple’ case of child abuse in a sixties Catholic Church School for deaf/mute children rapidly escalates throughout the Church system demonstrating the wide instance of abuse cases and showing how there was a continual whitewashing in the system that appears to “protect, defend, and produce sexual abusers”. The story develops into a serious outing of the organised Church not only demonstrating cracks in its organisational facade, but also garnering the involvement of well known and highly respected human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robinson QC, who is an active and prominent figure in the everyday life of Britain.

In this fascinating exposé Alex Gibney also shows us the inner workings of the Vatican. Frank in tone, it’s a watchable and well-put-together tale that presents a vast array of photographs and video footage from the Sixties right up to the present day. The phrase “a simple case of child abuse”; is in no way intended to demean the gravity of paedophilia but that the sixties were fifty years ago and one would sincerely hope that by the turn of the 21st Century the situation would have altered somewhat, so these incidences could have been eradicated by grassroots change so that this story could end on a positive note, and it does in some ways.

Mea Maxima Culpa sets out not only to bring to light new evidence but also to cristallize an argument that most of the World is already well aware of concerning cover-ups in the Catholic Church and to put it to bed – if you’ll pardon the expression – with hard evidence that cannot be debunk

Carnage (2010) ****

Director: Roman Polanski, co-writer Yasmina Reza from her play “The God of Carnage”

Cast: Kate Winslet, John C Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christoph Walz

France/Germany/Spain/Poland 79mins

No other director has Roman Polanski’s uncanny power to disturb, move and excite. And his latest film makes you uncomfortable and uneasy in a bad way. Like eavesdropping on an argument between your friend and her mother. You want to smile politely and leave but you’re having lunch together so you cringe and stay. And once a thing’s been said, it can’t be unsaid. Ghastly, inescapable, unforgettable things that embarrass everyone involved.

The premise is simple: Two kids have had a run in during school break. The parents, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz meet in Jody Foster and John C Reilly’s Manhatten apartment hoping for a reconciliation. Pleasantries are exchanged, espresso served, but then the mood turns sour. Minor disagreements are smoothed over, so out comes the homemade cake but with a touch of strychnine?. Gradually the discussion breaks down into hostility. An expensive vase of tulips ends up on the carpet. What starts as a minor issue turns global. Woman against man, wife against husband, banker against shopkeeper, class warfare and open social meltdown. No holds barred. Only Polanski can create this feeling of tension in a small space and make it feel dynamic and far-reaching. Caustic wit and biting satire laced with a dark and sinister outcome. There’s comedy here but certainly no manners. See it but squirm in your seat. ©

Toronto 2012

The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival often helps to raise the profile of small independent films and gives wider exposure to higher-profile projects that may be in the running to compete for Oscars.

[youtube id=”Mk3soSf88o” width=”600″ height=”350″]

This year the Indies did well winning some critical acclaim in the festival’s main prize sections:

Blackberry Peoples’ Award:
Silver Linings Playbook
First runner-up: Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’
Second runner-up: Eran Riklis’ ‘Zaytoun’
Documentary: Bartholomew Cubbins’ ‘Artifact’
Second runner-up: Rob Stewart’s ‘Revolution’
Midnight Madness: Martin McDonagh’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’
First runner-up: Barry Levinson’s ‘The Bay’
The prize of the international critics (Fipresci prize)
Francois Ozon for ‘Dans la maison’ in the Special Presentations category
Mikael Marcimain for ‘Call Girl’ in the Discovery Program, which spotlights feature films by new and emerging directors
The city of Toronto and Canada goose award for best Canadian feature film
Xavier Dolan’s ‘Laurence Anyways’
The Skyy Vodka Award for best Canadian first feature film
A tie between Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Antiviral’ and Jason Buxton’s ‘Blackbird’

We looked at a selection of films that seemed to be creating buzz at this year’s festival, read our reviews:

La Sirga (The Towrope) 2012 William Vega’s second feature, from Colombia

[youtube id=”jnKG52g3FSY” width=”600″ height=”350″]

7 Cajas (7 Boxes) 2012 Paraguayan directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori’s first feature

[youtube id=”I3KOBY53nXc)” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Satellite Boy (2012 Australian director Catriona McKenzie’s fourth feature.

[youtube id=”jgyHFkM6F5E” width=”600″ height=”350″]

I Am Alive (Sono Viva) (2011)

Directed by Dino and Filippo Gentili

Cast: Massimo de Santis, Guido Caprino, Giorgio Colangeli, Emanuela Gallussi

Italy 2008 87mins

This is the first feature for these two Italian scriptwriter brothers is best described as a noir thriller. The action takes place in a single night in a seventies villa near Rome.

The story is centred on Rocco (Massimo de Santis) a decent bloke and a jobbing builder who is desperately short of money. When his business partner offers him a strange gig at a plush-looking villa he really can’t refuse although it’s nothing to do with building work. For a large sum of money they are to guard the body of a young woman for one night. She is the daughter of a rich businessman. Nice work when you can get it, but is it? As Rocco waits patiently, the painful secrets of this girl’s life gradually emerge during a series of visits by friends and family.

This is a novel idea for a film and the storyline is well thought out and suspenseful with skilful use of lighting and camera-work to great effect. The problem lies in the characterisation of the main actors. Little is done to flesh out their parts and they appear as stereotype roles that rather than real people with real personalities. As a result, we feel nothing for them or for their story particularly as they are all so unappealing characters in the first place.

Flame and Citron (Flamen Citronen)

Director Ole Christian Madsen

Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Peter Mygind

2008 132 mins Cert 15

Denmark, 1944 and the Second World War is drawing to a close. Nazi troups have moved into Copenhagen and two resistance fighters are working undercover to flush out Nazi informers: they are Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen)

With superb haircuts and a great line in tailoring they are fearlessly dedicated to fighting for their country. They are also old friends, passionate romantics and capable of acts of extreme courage and skill with a wide range of firearms. In short these are real men.

Flame, so called because of his shock ginger hair, meets mysterious blond, Ketty (Stine Stengade) in a bar one night. His suspicions are aroused when she uses his codename and when they get back to her room it turns out that shes not only a brunette but also a courier for the other side .

They fall in love and Flame is then given orders to execute her as word has it that shes a double agent. Meanwhile Citron is grappling with the breakdown of his marriage, another casualty of the War.

Their freedom fighting is eventually hampered by poor intelligence information and it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is on their side.

This stylish film noir is beautiful to watch and absolutely riveting from start to finish. There are moments of shocking violence and poignant sadness especially in the dying moments of the film.

Genova (2008)

Director Michael Winterbottom

Starring Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Willa Holland, Perley Hanley-Jardine

2008 Cert 15 90 mins

From documentary to soft porn, it’s always interesting to see what Michael Winterbottom has in next in store. GENOVA is no exception especially as it stars Colin Firth as Joe, a middle class English daddy who takes his kids to Italy to recover from the tragic death of their mother in a car accident.

Taking the opportunity to teach at the University, he settles the family into a flat in the old part of town and meets up with Barbara (Catherine Keener) a friend from his days at Harvard. They settle into a routine of classes in the morning and beach in the afternoon. Pubescent Kelly (Willa Holland) discovers Italian boys. Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) is more sensitive and youngest is Perla Haney-Jardine doesn’t cope at all. The way she really misses her mother is poignantly observed.

Right from the beginning there’s the uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary drama. It’s very much a ‘ghost’ story in the modern sense. But why Genova? The old town is just the place for this creepy tale. A hand-held camera pans the narrow medieval streets as shadowy figures loom out of the darkness and give a whiff of menace that’s reminiscent of ‘Don’t Look Now’. Prostitutes haunt the shady courtyards of the Port and birds fly out of dilapidated buildings in scenes that would be difficult to come by in a modern city such as Chicago, the family’s US home.

One minute Kelly’s disappearing on the beach or zipping precariously through the streets on the back of her boyfriend’s dodgy moped, the next Mary has gone missing in a Church causing a frantic search. And all the time Colin Firth is holding things together with that nagging expression of impending doom he does so well.

Despite Marcel Zyskind’s glossy location shots, this is very much a tale of bereavement and individual reactions to it. Mary has a wild imagination and as the youngest is most candid in her expression of sadness. It’s a very natural performance from Hannah Perley Jardine as a little girl who really misses her mother. Her nightmares start to feature Hope Davis in cameo role as her mother. Kelly resents her younger sister and as a teenager, is trying to appear cool.

But ultimately this is Colin Firth’s film. He is superb as a respectable 40-something guy who’s keeping things together for his children. Continually on the verge of tears he is by turns incredibly tender and caustically abrupt; and this is the refreshing part. His performance is so subtle, so English: there is no embarrassing breakdown – just a dignified portrayal of a man who’s making a very brave attempt to carry on and succeeding despite the interference of a friend and a nubile student. Both are desperate to get it on with him but end up just getting in the way.

Michael Winterbottom has given us realistic sex in Nine Lives. This is realistic grief and is both unsentimental yet utterly moving.

The White Ribbon | Das weise Band (2009) Bfi Player

Dir: Michael Hanneke | Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, Germany, Drama 145min

Michael Hanneke’s won his first Palme D’Or at Cannes for this sombre cinematic study of social subversion in small-town Germany in the prelude to the First World War.

Hypnotic and carefully measured the drama tracks the life of a rural Protestant community many of whom are still dependent on the local Baron for their livelihoods.

As we meet the various villagers, the Doctor, the Priest – a series of random and mysterious accidents occur that lead us to realise that all is not as gemütlich as we first imagined in a community where the weak and powerless are constantly engaged in acts of petty rebellion or protest against their controlling elders.

Michael Hanneke’s vision branches out vigorously as it grows beyond the seeds of Nazism with this fascinating and visually captivating film that serves not only as a mirror on a moment in time, but also as a commentary on the parlous state of society as a whole – now more that ever – in the current crisis throughout Europe in the prelude to the First World War. MT ©

Michael Hanneke’s AMOUR, HIDDEN and THE WHITE RIBBON on BFi PLAYER

The Portuguese Nun (2009) Mubi

Director: Eugene Green | Leonor Baldaque, Adrien Michaux, Beatrix Batarda | 127min

This study of love and faith seen through the eyes of Julie, a French actress visiting Lisbon to shoot a film, is both a tribute to Portuguese cinema and an eulogy to the mist-laden Atlantic port.

Green – who also stars – manages to evoke the melancholy still silence of the city with a deft interweaving of lingering static shots over the Tagus, crumbling facades and empty courtyards, and in the mournful faces of Fado musicians whose sad songs emanate from bars as Julie wanders round exploring. Wishing you were here, or wishing I were there, is very much the message here. Julie has a chance meeting with a mysterious aristocrat who takes her out to dinner then disappears, and then with another French actor who plays her lover for a one-night stand. But her life will change forever when she comes across a gentle orphan boy called Vasco, and a Portuguese nun whose subtle appeal is quietly mesmerising MT©

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Regrets (2009)

Director: Cedric Kahn

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Yvan Attal, Arly Jover

105min

Love is the central character of Regrets or rather the passion and lust of unrequited love: Love than has never run its course and comes back to punch you in the solar plexis just when you think you’re happy enough with the everyday fondness of long-term marriage. That sudden punchdrunk love that pops up from the past and makes you realise it never really went away. If you’re a love addict or even a disillusioned romantic then Regrets is for you.

Mattieu is a shy architect, married and living in Paris. When his mother dies, he goes back to his home town (Yvan Attal) and bumps into an old girlfriend, Maya (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and finds he can’t leave her alone much to the annoyance of their respective partners. A classic French psychological drama from the masterful Cedric Kahn, which shows Attal and Bruni Tedeshi at their best in passionate performances. MT

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Bluebeard (2009)

Director: Catherine Breillat | Starring Dominique Thomas, Lola Creton, Daphne Baiwar | France 2009/80mins

Catherine Breillat’s latest film isn’t for everyone. Some may see this over-stylized and stagey costume drama of medieval misogyny as a poke in the eye for female supremacy in the boudoir. Others will find it about as exciting as an evening out with the man himself. Either way it’s certainly not the spine-chilling tale that springs to mind when Bluebeard is mentioned. You could even call it weird.

The story comes in two layers. The first features two little sisters and is set in an attic. The youngest and funniest one (Marilou Lopes-Benites) loves frightening the older by reading the story of Bluebeard with her own cheeky interpretations of marriage and love thrown in. This is actually very appealing. As she does so a series of set pieces filmed in 16-century garb plays out featuring Lola Creton as Marie-Christine, better known as Bluebeard’s last wife, or the one that got away and her recently bereaved mother and older sister. This strand is not dissimilar in setting to one of those medieval banquets with sixteen removes you may have once attended where your mother run you up an outfit in green chintz brocade, and a ‘town cryer’ kept saying Oye Oye and everyone looked slightly ridiculous.

Here Marie-Christine skilfully deals with the death of her father, impending family poverty and the realization that local bore and wife-killer Bluebeard might not be such a bad catch after all while she thinks about Plan B and saves the family from financial ruin.

After becoming his chatelaine, she niftily manages to avoid his bedchamber by claiming to be far too young for that that sort of thing but eventually has to call for backup to avoid the evil man’s dagger and her demise. BLUEBEARD is hardly scary, but it’s delicately-performed by Lola Creton and beautifully captured in a stylistic classical aesthetic. According to Breillat, we absolve ourselves of all the fears of real life by confronting them head-on in fiction. ©

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD AT AMAZON.CO.UK

Like Crazy (2011)

Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Alex Kingston.

Written and Directed by Drake Doremus

USA 2011 90mins

This sweet and schmaltzy tale of young love across a time zone is zingingly authentic and guaranteed to melt the hardest heart with its lovely visuals and playful style.

English girl Anna (Felicity Jones) and Californian boy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) meet as gawky but emotionally secure creative students in LA. Pretty soon they are dating and planning an uncertain future. Their bond is put to the test against the vagaries of US immigration and love rivals in the shape of Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley. Pitch perfect performances have an intimate yet improvised feel. Subtle but raw, with brilliant support from onscreen parents Alex Kingston and Oliver Muirhead, this genuine portrait of first love with a grown-up ending is told with insight and flair. MT

A Somewhat Gentle Man (En Ganske Snill Mann)

Directed by Hans Petter Moland

With Stellan Skarsgard, Bjorn Floberg, Jorunn Kjellsby

Norway 105 mins

This dark comedy from Norway has a feel of the Coen Brothers, an amusing and highly original script and possibly some of the worst sex scenes ever – in a good way.

Ulrik, the man in question (Stellan Skarsgard) has just come out of 12 years in prison for murder and ready to start a new life. But his former partners in crime are less keen to let him move on from the past and seem intent on helping him to gain revenge for the time he spent inside.

The strong and silent type he endures the sexual advances of his unappealing landlady and his bitter ex-wife but fails to re-kindle a relationship with his son Geir who has already told his partner that his father is dead.

Brilliant comic timing along with Skarsgard’s stoical demeanour and quiet air of resignation make this a highly entertaining drama.

Meredith Taylor

Picco (2010)

Directed by Philip Koch

With Constantin Von Jascheroffe, Joel Basman, Frederick Lau

Germany 104 mins Cert 18

Picco is the name given to new arrivals in this award-winning German film about a youth prison. And the newest kid on the block is Kevin (Constantin Von Jascheroffe). At first he tries to stick up for a couple of the weaker guys, Tommy and Juli, but he soon realises that survival is the name of the game: to stay alive you either become victim or aggressor.

Shot entirely within the prison walls using a palette of muted greens, the main appeal of this story is the developing relationships between the young men and how they gradually learn to survive or die quite literally.

It easy to understand how institutional life is responsible for the behaviour of the inmates: most of the time they are just bored stiff of themselves and of each other. Between bouts of cards, smoking in the playground or watching mindless TV they are intimidating one another and engaging in violent sexual abuse. Juli becomes so intimidated by the constant threat of sexual violence he eventually commits suicide.

When not slagging off gays or talking salaciously about their girlfriends, they are flexing their mental muscles on bullyboy tactics to reduce morale and weaken their victims.

It’s strange that the wardens seem totally clueless and care even less about what goes on. You’d be excused for thinking that they were more used to running a nunnery than a borstal for violent killers. The last 40 minutes of this film see some really brutal mental and physical violence and it’s not difficult to understand why the prison was shut down just prior to the shooting of this film.

Meredith TaylorÓ

Essential Killing (2010)

Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski | Cast: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner | 88 mins Cert 15

Jerzy Skolimowski won several awards at Venice for this stunningly atmospheric tale of a Taliban soldier captured by the Americans and sent on rendition to a snow-bound northern European country. After evading his captors he sets off against a frozen landscape in the middle of nowhere and begins a battle to stay alive.

Vincent Gallo gives an emotional performance as the man surviving against the odds made all the more intense by it being entirely wordless. Luck is continually on his side as he avoids re-capture by savage tracker dogs. He endures a fall into an ice-bound lake and a set-to with a chainsaw-wielding forester and subsists on insects and a raw fish snatched from the hand of a surprised angler.

There is no political statement here simply a tale of one man’s fight against the elements spurred on by faith and sheer desperation to survive. A suggestive romance spices up the narrative at one point, involving Emmanuelle Seigner. This is a compelling arthouse road movie that seethes with an undercurrent of steely tension. Adam Sikora’s sublime camerawork gives the piece a resonant poetic quality. Meredith Taylor ©

Americano (2011)

Director: Mathieu Demy

Cast: Mathieu Demy, Selma Hayak, Geraldine Chaplin, Carlos Bardem

France 105mins

Rites of passage drama staring Matthieu Demy, the son of Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy. In this his debut feature Demy plays Martin, traumatized by the sudden death of his mother. He sets out to tell his own life story heading back to California, where it all began. On arrival in LA, his mother’s best friend (Geraldine Chaplin) gets short shift at the airport and for a while Demy (as Martin) drifts around in a daze, mourning his mother and unable to move on with his current girlfriend (Chiara Mastroianni) back home in Paris. The bereavement seems to be the catalyst for a slow-mo emotional unravelling that takes place in Martin’s subconscious. Varda’s own cine footage is cleverly interwoven with the action to create a realistic edge to this bleak and somewhat aimless tale. A chance meeting with sultry Mexican nightclub hostess Lola (Selma Hayak) brings focus to his existence. In a mesmerising vignette, Lola dances to the music of Rufus Wainwright’s “I’m So Tired of America” and Martin is smitten.

He gradually becomes entranced with the charismatic Lola and her small son (Carlos Bardem) who turns tricks for pocket money. Their fight for survival in a seedy backwater seems to galvanise Martin into action, unleashing painful memories but bringing a decisive clarity to his life as he starts to understand himself, his past and his future.

Meredith Taylor c

A Dangerous Method (2012)

Dir: David Cronenberg | Wri: Christopher Hampton | Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel | Biopic drama 93mins

David Cronenburg is once again probing the world of the subconscious with this story about the beginnings of psychoanalysis, based on Christopher Hampton’s play “The Talking Cure”.

Michael Fassbender plays a buttoned-up Jungian shrink seduced by the challenge of experimenting with a controversial new method developed by his mentor Freud (Viggo Mortensen), while also attempting to break away from his influence. So far all very prim and proper and under control. Not. Because into the Clinic steps Keira Knightley as Fraulein Spielrein. Supremely intelligent, she’s also sexually disturbed and as highly strung as a boned corsets. Persuasive yet out of his depth (and married) Fassbender attempts to treat her in a battle between desire and rationalism. And guess which one wins? There’s also an outlandish turn by Vincent Kassel as fellow analyst and debauched expounder of free love, Otto Gross. The intricacies of psychoanalysis make for a compelling psychodrama in this high-octane romp exposing the darker impulses and inner lives of Freud’s Swiss Lakeside clinic in the early MT ©

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The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Director Wes Anderson

Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwarzman, Angelica Huston.

US 91mins Rated 15

Wes Anderson fans will welcome his latest comedy starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman as three dysfunctional brothers who head off on a spiritual journey to find each other, their long-lost mother and hopefully themselves.

The Darjeeling Limited is the train they travel on across Rajastan in this strange neurotic and at times deeply unfunny saga. It starts fairly positively with some farcical carriage scenes as the youngest (Schwarzman) beds the stewardess then goes rapidly off track with them stranded in the desert with a printer, a laminator and a supply of over the counter prescription drugs.

Oh if it had only ended there, leaving us wanting more. But it carries on very much short of steam with the real “spiritual” leg of the journey where we meet an exhausted Angelica Huston as their reluctant mother, now a Catholic nun. There are some acutely observed moments of family dysfunction, slow-motion surrealness and a marvellous bit where the camera snakes through the carriages offering vignettes from previous scenes but for most of us this is a journey we’d rather forget.

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) ****

Director Suzanne Bier

Starring Benecio del Toro, Halle Berry, David Duchovny

112 MINS USA

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Suzanne Bier’s gritty depictions of family life are always authentic and appealing. Her tenth feature centres on two damaged people. Benecio Del Toro plays Jerry, a recovering addict who is taken under the wing of his best friend Brian’s wife Audrey, (Halle Berry) is widowed by his sudden tragic death.

Audrey Brookes is no ordinary housewife: she lives a gilded existence with two gorgeous kids in a high tech-house with perfect shelving. Nothing could get better until Brian (David Duchovny) is shot dead in the street.

Compared to Brian, Jerry appears to be a complete loser. But after Brian’s funeral, Audrey wonders whether Jerry can fill the empty hole in her life and invites him to stay in the spare room on the pretext of doing him a favour. This is a cunningly-scripted piece from the debut pen of Allan Loeb. He succeeds in his authentic depiction of how the children react to the tragedy and then accept Jerry into the family: first with resentment and then a gradual acceptance. In Jerry he recognises that his former career as a lawyer has made his circumspect and savvy about how he becomes involved in the family set-up and Benecio del Toro is well-cast with just the right amout of sexual allure and reticence.

As in Brothers, director Suzanne Bier focuses on how disaster can radically change family dynamics and the emotional fallout that ensues and she’s not afraid to delve deep and expose the emotional wounds here in all their ugliness and potency. Jerry’s unconventional but he’s certainly got some qualities that Audrey hadn’t bargained for and Halle Berry gives a subtle but believable performance here. She soon she starts to envy the effect he has on the kids. But this is Benecio’s film as he projects strength with vulnerability, danger with security and a personal magnetism that’s makes this film go the extra mile.

Tuya’s Marriage (2007)

Director: Quanan Wang

Starring: Nan Yu, Bater, Sen’ge, Zhaya

86 mins

Mongolian shepherdess Tuya (Nan Yu) is forced to consider divorce when her husband is no longer able to support the family in this cute but quirky comedy that won the Golden Bear in Berlin.

It’s not that she doesn’t love her husband Bater. In Mongolia marriage is a business deal and with two kids and a herd of sheep to tend she needs physical support to carry on. But Tuya actually loves Bater.

Tuya is not short of proposals and several dodgy candidates beat a path to her smallholding. But it’s her neighbour Sen’ge who’s really got his heart set on her and is determined to succeed despite nearly killing himself in the process.

Against the feral beauty and stillness of the Mongolian Steppes, Tuya’s daily grind to keep the herd and put a meal on the table is a harsh and often dangerous one but it is not without its own weird and often tragic brand of humour, intended or otherwise. The vibrant colours of Lutz Reitemaier cinematography and genuine warmth and single-mindedness of these people desperately holding out against the advance of technology is what ultimately makes this film a winner.

The Gem (2011) (Il Gioellino)

Cast: Toni Servillo, Remo Girone

Director:Andrea Molaioli

Italy 110mins

Glossy thriller charting the fall of one of the best known Italian companies, Parmalat. Sumptuously shot and tightly scripted it features another tour de force performance by Toni Servillo (Consequences of Love, Il Divo) as the long-suffering and loyal finance director. You may not have heard of Parmalat but fraud and financial misdemeanour are very much in the news and this is a great study of how one of the biggest and most successful companies of the 20th century met its demise.

Meredith Taylor c

Terraferma

Director: Emanuele Crialese

Cast: Filippo Pucillo, Donatella Finocchiaro

Italy 88mins

La Dolce Vita turns sour on a small Italian island as the decline in fishing stocks leaves its inhabitants in crisis. Meanwhile poor immigrants arrive in droves from across the water looking for a better life.

This small effecting drama about Crialese’s island home of Linosa is a different story from that of Respiro. The landscape has altered and the World has changed but the people remain the same. With touching performances from Filippo Pucillo as the young boy and Donatella Finocchiaro as his long-suffering mother, Terraferma is the story of man’s endless search for something better.

Meredith Taylor c

Seven Acts Of Mercy (Sette Atti di Misericordia)

Directed/Written by: Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio

Cast: Roberto Herlitzka, Olimpia Melinte, Ignazio Oliva, Stefano Cassetti, Cosmin Corniciuc

Italian/Romanian 103 mins

The De Serio brothers have set out to give us an intellectual take on immigration seen through the lives of two people who have come to Italy at different times. Their paths cross and intertwine and slowly a mutual dependency develops. Roberto Herlitzka gives a sensitive turn as the old man and Olimpia Melinte is his counterpart; a poor and pregnant girl called Luminata, from Romania.

Few clues are given of their respective past and present but their daily activities are intended to play out and reflect the Catholic church’s proviso that every sinner must perform seven acts of mercy during their lifetimes. These themes are tenuously woven into this complex and slow-burning film although they remain obscure and difficult to identify throughout. A patchy narrative style and doom-laden sense of tension make this worthy story hard-going and not for the feint-hearted.

Meredith Taylor c

When The Night (2011) (Quando La Notte)

Director/Writer: Cristina Comencini with Doriana Leondeff

Cast: Claudia Pandolfi, Filippo Timi

Italy, 116mins

Cristina Comencini’s films focus on the way women deal with the domestic landscape of their lives, with flair and imagination. Adapted from her book and filmed in the Italian Alps, Comencini harnesses the power of the mountains and the bleakness of the ice and silence to provide a strong setting for two people who are both suffering the effects of loss. Marina has rented a holiday apartment from Manfred, a ski guide, and is alone with her small son. It’s not much of a break due to tantrums and broken sleep and Marina starts to suffer and unravel. Manfred’s poor appreciation of women doesn’t help given that his mother cleared off when he was a child. Something happens one night that somehow unleashes his compassion for Marina and they start to bond. An understanding gradually develops from exchanged glances, fear and mistrust into strong desire and ultimately great passion as they two are brought together through force of circumstance. We’re not drawn to these two but powerful performances and haunting scenery make this film a worthwhile experience.

Natural Selection

Director Robbie Pickering

Cast Rachael Harris, Matt O’Leary, Jon Gries, John Diehl

USA 90min

Deep in the Texan bible belt, Linda’s a gentle and devoted wife to Abe (John Diehl) and a would-be mother. But Abe won’t have sex with her anymore on the pretext that it’s just for procreation, according to his religious belief. So far she’s been infertile. A sudden stroke leaves Abe in hospital and Linda discovers he’s been secretly donating sperm for many years in a local clinic. Hurt and angry Linda decides to pursue one of his offspring, a drunken, drop-out called Raymond (Joh Gries). It’s a decision that will change her life forever. Divine intervention is put into an intriguing context in this tale that examines our unconscious ways of dealingg with the prospect of loneliness, death and terminal illmess. There’s a sincerity and touching quality to Linda played here with great emotional depth by Rachael Harris. Shot on a shoestring budget and improvised to great effect, this is a woman’s tale of triumph over adversity and of real lives touched by hope and redemption.

Meredith Taylor c

Hannah Takes The Stairs (2006) BFI Player

Dir: Joe Swanberg | Cast: Greta Gerwig, Kent Osbourne, Andrew Bajalski, Mark Duplass | US 2007 84’

Hannah wants to be a playwright. She spends a Chicago summer interning at a production company in this fly-on-the wall off-beat look at friendship, ambition and the quest for happiness.

If only all internships were all this easy. Not only is she bright, she’s also popular and spends the time hanging around chatting and falling in and out of love with her colleagues who are supposedly working on a TV comedy series.

In reality they are the independent filmmakers, Kent Osborne (Matt), Andrew Bujalski (Paul) and Mark Duplass (Mike) who worked collaboratively with director Joe Swanberg to make this film while taking part in an indie summer camp in 2006.

Hannah (Greta Gerwig) is fresh and frisky but inherently insecure and dissatisfied with her life. This warts and all portrayal of blossoming talent has plenty of fun and insight as well awkward moments although at times it verges on the self-indulgent. Meredith Taylor ©

ON BFI PLAYER FROM 10 February 2025

We Have A Pope (Habemus Papam)

Director. Nanni Morretti

Cast: Michel Piccoli, Nanni Morretti, Margherita Buy.

104mins Italy

A comedy in which the Pope suffers a massive identity crisis and goes awol during his inauguration conclave throwing the whole of Rome into a major crisis. A psychiatrist is called to help in the shape of Nanni Morretti, who turns the Vatican into an Italian basketball contest between the various cardinals.

This is a bit of an ego trip for Nanni Morretti who both stars and directs. After a great start the film veers off and rather loses direction like a badly driven popemobile. That said, the crowd scenes are very impressive and there’s something appealing about this take on the workings of the papal conclave complete with twitching curtains and hierarchical hobnobbing. Margherita Buy is superb as Morretti’s on-screen wife but the biggest treat is Michel Piccoli’s bewildered performance as the reluctant Pope.

Meredith Taylor

Early One Morning

Directed by Jean-Marc Moutout

Starring Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Valerie Dreville

91mins France

Based on a true story with skillful direction by Jean-Marc Moutout who co- wrote the script. Early One Morning has shades of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down with its themes of redundancy, loss and family crisis and a convincing performance by Jean-Darroussin. Entertaining stuff that really taps into the current vibe on financial meltdown.

Meredith Taylor c

Shame (2011)

Director. Steve McQueen/co-writer Abi Morgan | Cast. Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale | 106mins Cert 18

Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give coruscating performances as emotionally damaged siblings in this second feature from Brit director Steve McQueen (Hunger).

Set in Manhatten, the action plays out in corporate offices, cocktail haunts and Brandon’s (Fassbender) plush penthouse. In the workplace he’s a slick executive, but personally there are issues as big as his dick: Those of an avoidant male sex addict. Out of hours he’s eyeing up some new potential pick-up or erupting angrily at his needy sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) who is reluctantly given bed and board. Pretty soon both are fighting and feeding hungrily off each other’s obsession to fill an aching void. The nature of their broken past is not explored.

Visually alluring vanilla porn scenes swirl seductively before our eyes but never titillate nor distract from the gnawing emptiness of Brandon’s barren emotional landscape. Girls come and go never to return once souls are bared or feelings expressed. There’s a great vignette with Nicole Beharie as Marianne, a sparky contender for his heart who falls by the wayside when she tries to get too close. Being in constant motion enables Brandon to avoid his feelings or any any semblance of realness. At one point the camera catches an expression of sheer desperation and we realise that there’s no real pleasure in this sexual conquest, and why Fassbender won best actor for this portrayal of emptiness. James Badge Dale gives a convincing turn as Branden’s boss and side-kick on predatory evenings out. Divorced and desolate Brandon keeps on dating relentlessly without depth, because in this day and age, he can. His brief interlude with Sissy is another telling insight into the life of lost souls. Primal and urgent, voyeuristic and visceral with a taut and teasing score: this is McQueen making a great start. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012)

Dir: David Gelb | Cast: Jiro One, Yoshikazu One, Masuhiro Yamamoto, Daisuke Nakazawa, Hachiro Mizutani, Hiroki Fujita, Toichiro Iida, Akihiro Oyama, Shizuo Oyama | Doc 82′

For any self-professed sushi nut, this film is a must see. Jiro One is a legend in his own lifetime; a man devoted to the creation and serving of sushi for 75 years from the basement of a faceless Tokyo office building in a restaurant that only seats ten. The sushi is served up in specific order and you are expected to demolish it piece by piece, under his rather intimidating gaze in about 15minutes flat, shelling-out something like £300 for the privilege. That makes this one of the most expensive restaurants in the world.

What is remarkable though is the skill, dedication and thought that has gone into a meal. And the rest of the world has recognised this: Jiro’s tiny, unassuming Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi bar has garnered all three Michelin Stars and, as the makers of this film attest, global recognition.

Jiro One is one of the old school; a believer in hard work, total commitment and dedication to a chosen field, whatever it may be. To serve an apprenticeship under Jiro is to spend ten years of dedicated to the most gruelling, repetitive, thankless work in the kitchen, learning the trade. And all this against the prevailing tide of today’s theme of growing fat doing the minimum with little application or indeed mastery in any field, all the while aspiring to coin maximum cash.

The title alludes to Jiro as a young man dreaming of making not just sushi but the best sushi. This film illustrates how Jiro never believes he has arrived, and that there is always room for improvement be it in the choice of the fish, the preparation of the rice, or the serving of the sushi. In doing so it opens out the film as an allegory or lesson in life and how best to live it. But also demonstrates how hard it must be for his sons to live under the shadow of a man who has truly reached the pinnacle of his profession, even if he himself doesn’t see it as so.

Food and film often make for successful lovers and any gourmand who truly appreciates the subtleties and depth of haute cuisine will relish this one. Make sure to eat beforehand or you will find yourself scrambling to a sushi bar straight after, only to feel all but affronted that it isn’t Jiro’s hand that serves up a concerto in seafood for, hereafter, nothing else will do. AT

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Something to look forward to…

There’s plenty to get excited about film-wise this year and here’s sneak preview of the best so far. January kicks off with a psychologist’s dream in the shape of SHAME. Artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen was once awarded the Turner prize and his visual mastery comes out in this glossy tale of avoidant sex in the City…watch out for my review later this week. Another psychological thriller to look out for in February is MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, a low-budget gem with a standout performance by Elizabeth Olsen, as a young woman sucked into a strange American cult but then, aren’t they all.

Fans of Nuri Bilge Ceylan won’t be disappointed with his latest offering ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA. It’s the nearest you’ll probably get to a Turkish Western. Mysterious events surrounding a police inquiry are overshadowed by the sinister workings of the local community.

Another arthouse treat you’re really going to love is HUNKY DORY in March. This British movie from Welsh director Marc Evans, is a musical joyride through the seventies and a heartfelt study of how a young teacher in the shape of Minnie Driver, inspires her school-leavers on to great things.

If you thought a combination of extreme violence and silliness just wasn’t feasible then you’ve got to see HEADHUNTERS in April. Based on the novel by Joe Nesbo, it begins as a slick film noir and morphs into something wacky and wonderful and with more twists than a Danish pastry. Two of Scandinavia’s foremost actors, Aksel Henni (Max Manus: Man of War) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau star. Robert Redford brings the Sundance Film Festival to London this April but more about that later…

Microphone (2010) Mubi

With Khaled Abol Naga, Atef Yousef, Hany Adel, Yosra El-Lozy,| Egypt 120mins Cert12

Upbeat, fun and vibrant; Microphone is a picture postcard from the Mediterranean town of Alexandria and Ahmad Abdalla’s follow up to Heliopolis.

Khaled (lead and co-producer Khaled Abol Naga) arrives back in his native town from the States to find things aren’t what they used to be. Even his former girlfriend is moving on to study abroad. He comes across a band of young musicians and a documentary crew who want to film him. Although glad to be back home, his life is “touched with a little bit of sadness that never goes away” thanks to his unsettled love life.

Punchy, full of passion and often rather hit and miss, this film taps into the Alexandrian way of life and sheer exhuberance of Egyptian culture. Khaled’s character remains undefined. He’s a metaphor for Alexandria’s sultry dynamism, a guy reacting to events around him, and Abdalla’s visualized fascination with the city’s urban energy is a magnetic force and a delightful insight into Egypt before the Arab Spring. MT ©

The Past is a Foreign Land (2008) Il Passato e una Terra Straniera

Director Daniele Vicari

Chiara Caselli, Elio Germano, Valentina Lodovini, Michele Riondino

Italy 127 mins 15

The southern Italian city of Bari is the setting for this fast-moving thriller from documentary filmmaker Daniele Vicari. Based on a crime bestseller it adapts well to the big screen with its luxury location shots and contemporary subject matter. It’s a chalk and cheese story of two young guys from opposite ends of the social spectrum who diverge with a common interest: gambling.

Elio Germano (My Brother is an Only Child) plays Giorgio a well-heeled, quick-witted law student who hides his winnings in hard-back classics and Francesco (Michele Riondino) is just a hard-nosed card shark with a bed-ridden mother you feel he rather resents.

Kicking off as small time card tricksters in the local bars and nightclubs, the two rub shoulders with bored, society housewives and unscrupulous businessmen. Soon they develop more sophisticated scams and the big money starts to roll in. We can’t help feeling that for Giorgio’s it’s just a game. But for Francesco it’s all he has.

The action switches to the road as they expand their horizons from Bari to Barcelona and from gambling to drug dealing. From sunny seascapes and sophisticated scenarios the story takes a darker and more sinister hue as Giorgio spirals down into drug abuse from risk-taking respectability while Francesco develops full-blown misogyny in scenes of bloody-nosed violence.

This is where their characters fuse into a well of negativity but their friendship starts to fall apart. And there’s no prize for guessing who sees the light at the end of the tunnel and manages to morph his misspent youth into a respectable future.

This is a cracking thriller and there is much to be admired in Vicari’s skill as a filmmaker with his finger on the emotional pulse and his eye firmly on the action.

Director Daniele Vicari

Chiara Caselli, Elio Germano, Valentina Lodovini Michele Riondino

**** 127 mins 15

Kicking off as small time card tricksters in the local bars and nightclubs, the two rub shoulders with bored,

Society housewives and unscrupulous businessmen. Soon they develop more sophisticated scams and the big money starts to roll in. We can’t help feeling that for Giorgio’s it’s just a game. But for Francesco it’s all he has.

This is a cracking thriller and there is much to be admired in Vicari’s skill as a film-maker with his finger on the emotional pulse and his eye firmly on the action.

Director Daniele Vicari

Chiara Caselli, Elio Germano, Valentina Lodovini Michele Riondino

**** 127 mins 15

Kicking off as small time card tricksters in the local bars and nightclubs, the two rub shoulders with bored,

This is a cracking thriller and there is much to be admired in Vicari’s skill as a film-maker with his finger on the emotional pulse and his eye firmly on the action.

Director Daniele Vicari

Chiara Caselli, Elio Germano, Valentina Lodovini Michele Riondino

**** 127 mins 15

Kicking off as small time card tricksters in the local bars and nightclubs, the two rub shoulders with bored,

This is a cracking thriller and there is much to be admired in Vicari’s skill as a film-maker with his finger on the emotional pulse and his eye firmly on the action.

La Belle Personne (2008)

Director Christophe Honore

Starring Lea Seydoux, Louis Garel, Le-Prince Ringuet

French/subtitles 90 mins 12

Christophe Honore takes a seventh century novel “La Princesse de Cleves” and fast forwards it to the 21st century lycee as beautiful young things enjoy romantic encounters jumping in and out of bed with each other and that’s just the boys in this surprisingly fun French romp.

When these students are not exchanging amorous glances in the Italian class they are kissing during break or chatting up a teacher who looks like he’s walked out of the pages of French Vogue. Mr Nemours is only a few years older than his new pupil Junie (Lea Seydoux) and he can’t keep his hands off her. She smoulders and sulks but eventually goes for kind-hearted Otto (Le-Prince Ringuet) who she thinks will ultimately make a better long-term boyfriend. Nemours is trying to ditch his long-term girlfriend and flirting with a fellow teacher.

The realistic nature of this film draws us into the action and soon we’re accomplices in an illicit game: eavesdropping on conversations, hanging about in doorways, scanning facial expressions and eye contact between the loved-up and their rivals and getting quite intimate with all concerned.

Honore creates a powerful and palpable sexual tension with Junie finds herself unable to resist the tousled insouciance of Louis Garel’s Nemours. It gradually prepares us for a shocking and inevitable climax and it’s great fun to watch.

Favourite films of 2011

Well let’s look back on 2011 film-wise: was it a good year? It certainly wasn’t a bad one although let’s accentuate the positive for now and give you my personal thoughts and then you can give me yours. I’d like to hear them when you’ve got a minute..

I’ll have to start with The King’s Speech, as it would be impossible not to include it in any film list due to Colin Firth as King George. In a stellar performance he combines sensitivity with regal bearing – no mean feat – and the subtlety of his myriad facial expressions throughout are testament to his talent as one of the best actors currently working today.

Moving swiftly on let’s talk about Brighton Rock because I felt it had a raw deal and was a very nifty piece of filmmaking with great turns from Helen Mirren and Sam Riley. Roland Joffe managed to convey the sinister edginess of Graeme Greene’s original forties work by giving it a sixties setting and the jaw-dropping violence of that era worked particularly well with the storyline.

Another British film from the indie stable last year was Archipelago from director Joanna Hogg. She’s particularly good at her portrayals of middle class Englishness seen from a woman’s point of view as in “Unrelated” her first feature. Here along with a tight script and intelligent casting, she uses a wonderful sense of lighting thanks to DOp Ed Rutherford. The ambient birdsong of Tresco is the soundtrack to this stiff-upper-lipped family affair starring Tim Hiddleston.

Polish director, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing is a gorgeous film to look at. It’s an escape and survival movie set against the stark and pared-down beauty of snowy landscapes and starring Vincent Gallo as a convict on the run.

In fifth place comes a gritty little British thriller called Blitz that I actually saw in Spain and was an unexpected treat. Aidan Gillen gives a dynamite performance as a creepy serial killer of cops up against action hard man Jason Statham and Mark Rylance. This is Elliott Lester’s second feature.

Let’s include an Italian film in the mix and I was completely charmed by Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte. It’s a gently soporific saga of a goatherd living out his days in a quiet corner of Calabria set against a background of bells and goats bleating in the breeze. Real navel-gazing stuff and very thought-provoking.

It’s difficult to go wrong with John Michael McDonagh writing and now directing and The Guard was probably the most entertaining film of 2011 for me. A subversively silly crime caper starring Brendan Gleeson as a delightfully un-pc PC and Don Cheedle as his FBI sidekick, it’s another winning combination from the producers of The King’s Speech.

I think possibly my favourite film of 2011 would have to be Drive. Slick violence and sublime screenplay are a winning combination and the palpable on-screen chemistry between Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling makes them one of the most pleasurable romantic pairings of last year. I admire Nicolas Winding Refyn’s work and let’s hope he goes from strength to strength.

Tilda Swinton is probably my favourite actor de nos jours. In We Have To Talk About Kevin she’s superb as mother driven to distraction by her delinquent son. Let’s just remember here that a book’s not a film and this adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s work has to stand alone and be judged as such.

And let’s end on a dramatic note with the final film of the 2011, Snowtown. It’s not so much about the violence but the bleak emotional cruelty of this Aussie psychopath fest…. and a soundtrack like a striking cobra…

The Artist (2011)

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Cast: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, Uggie the dog

France 100mins

Hollywood 1927. Georges Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a megastar of the silver screen. An actor so convinced of his power and so proud that he refuses to move with the times and to have any truck with the ‘Talkies”. Who insists on progressing a film project that’s destined to be a flop. Whose imegawatt smile and Latin looks are no longer enough. Times are a’ changing in the world of movies and cheeky Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) is now being feted by the studio as the new star in town. Valentin discovered her and that’s a threat to his ego.

Enduring themes of pride, fame and vanity are all interwoven in this delightfully entertaining story. Who would have thought that a silent film shot in black and white, would make such a loud noise with the critics and viewers alike. In the absence of words, the story works on a purely emotional level and this is the secret of its power. This homage to Hollywood harks back to an old-fashioned era of love that is pure, yet achingly stylish. The irresistibly perky Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin give pitch perfect performances. But the Oscar goes to Uggie, his lovable dog and trusty companion, who eventually saves the day.

Meredith Taylor

Snowtown (2011) **** LFF 2011

Dir: Justin Kurzel | Cast: Lucas Pittaway, Daniel Henshall | Score: Jed Kurzel | 120mins Australia

Serial killer John Bunting is currently serving 11 life sentences for crimes that took place in Snowtown near Adelaide during the late nineties. This haunting and at times unwatchable film grips with a palpable sense of foreboding made all the more sinister by Jed Kurzel’s menacing soundtrack that heightens the tension throughout with pavlovian effect. The story plays out through the eyes of Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) He’s a sensitive teenager living with his single mum and brothers in a poor community riddled with crime, violence and suspicion and makes ideal prey for Bunting. James longs for a better life but is drawn to the controlling but charismatic father figure of Bunting.

Daniel Henshall, brilliantly cast here as Bunting, is a highly manipulative sociopath masquerading as a self-styled vigilante. Mixing freely in this sad town of social misfits from paedophiles to the mentally ill, he gains the support of Jamie by purporting to stand up for him. Other locals are gradually coralled into this social circle and take part in the killings believing that they are justified in ridding society of its evil elements. Bunting’s real agenda is to control and steal their benefits. This sinister feature is a remarkable directorial debut for Justin Kurzel and one of the most disturbing and shocking films of 2011. MT

London Film Festival 2011 – Standout films

Did I enjoy the London Film Festival this year – you bet! That said, there was very little to laugh at and a great deal to feel generally sad and downbeat about – in a good way.

Maybe this reflects the general mood of anxiety that this great city is currently feeling with all the economic woe and uncertainty – but it’s still the most vibrant place to live and strut your stuff… and I’m not the only one who feels this way..

I’ve picked out 10 films that tweaked my buttons – which ones tweaked yours?

Hunky Dory – for the sheer joy of the music and the memory of that wonderful hot summer of ’76
Lawrence of Belgravia – hats off to this charismatic little film about an almost superstar – Lawrence
Shame – damaged siblings feed off one another in glitzy Manhatten – nuff said!
Snowtown – serial killings, sinister soundtrack. .and fab casting especially of Daniel Henshall as a sociopath
Terraferma – Sensitively told Sicilian story of a changing world
The Monk – mysterious misdoings in a Madrid monastery – sublime lighting: Vincent Cassel shines out
The Ides of March – tight plot, dynamite performances, sizzling political thriller
Drifters – (Gli Sfiorati) upbeat tragi-comedy of a really decent guy, from the novel by Sandro Veronesi
Hara Kiri – Death of a Samurai – sumptuous tale of economic meltdown of a 17th century ronin
Headhunters – glossy, gritty and hilarious Norwegian thriller
We Need To Talk About Kevin – just ’cos I love Tilda and pretty much anything she lends her name to…and this is Tilda at her best as a mother in crisis.

And the boobie prize goes to:

Dragonslayer – vacuous script, repetitive footage and aimless unlikeable characters – I’m all for well-placed expletives but this was tedious fare

Losing the will to live…..

Two Years At Sea – felt like 10 years but I now some of you may appreciate the pared- down simplicity of this slow-burning study

Tulpan (2008)

Dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy | Drama | Kazakhstan | 120mins

If you thought that Borat had Kazakhstan sewn up then think again. Dvortsevoy won the Prix Un Certain Regard for this endearing picture of life on the windswept southern Steppe for a family of nomadic herders.

This film is so cute you’ll want to pick it up and cuddle it but preferably with gloves on. Apart from a touching script and great performances not least from the animals it features mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a newborn lamb and gets down and dirty with camels, a real tornado, endless sandstorms and some very grim weather indeed. Powerful wide-angled visuals combine with the cosy interiors of the yurt, the tent where the all live.

Asa, the gentle boy with a vivid imagination, has completed his navel service and wants to join his family of herders. In order to become a shepherd he must find a wife and women are thin on the ground in this part of the world. Infact the nearest one for several hundred miles is Tulpan. She doesn’t fancy Asa largely because of his ears but it may be because he talks too much. With the help of his friend Boni he tries to win her over. The alternative is a move to the city where he wouldn’t have his family’s love and support let alone a reliable job.

In contrast to the incredible hardships that the herders suffer they are entirely without anger or aggression. Their gentleness and perseverance is totally inspirational. There is no alternative but to learn to live in harmony with each other and with nature as a whole and therein lies the magic of their existence. Dvortsevoy succeeds with skill and patience in eliciting both humour and compassion in this exquisite debut feature.

WINNER | PRIX UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES 2008

The Absence of Love | Michelangelo Antonioni Retro

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only in a few cases, when they act in solidarity with others, do they have a chance to become part of something whole.

Antonioni grew up in Ferrara in the Po Valley not far from the setting of his documentary short GENTE DEL PO (1943-47). Visconti was in the throws of filming Ossessione nearby. Despite its neo-realistic moorings, this is a personal statement: an effort to interpret the world via the moving image, rather than the other way round. Antonioni’s realism is not to show anything natural, humane or dramatic, and particularly not anything like an idea, a thesis. Memory alone forms the model for his art. Memory in the form of images: photos, paintings, writing – they form the basis of his later work – an adventure, where the audience peels off the many layers, like off an onion: a painting, more than once painted over.

Antonioni was already 38 when he made his drama debut with Cronaca Du Un Amore (1950) Superficially a film noir, in the mood of Visconti’s first opus Ossessione, this expressed the overriding existential angst, loneliness and alienation that would permeate his work. Paola and Guido grew up in the same neighbourhood in Ferrara, and want to do away with Paola’s rich husband Enrico Fontana. This is no crime of passion, because Paola and Guido are unable to love, or even imagine a life together – but they both stand to profit from Fontana’s death. And the city of Milan is much more than a background: life here is a reflection of the state of mind of the conspirators: like a drug, the street life full of chaos, the neurotic atmosphere in the cafes. All this is unreal, jungle like: modern urbanity as hell, a central topic of Antonioni’s opus. And he observes his main protagonists often, when they are alone, not only in dramatic scenes. This way, he creates an elliptical structure, with two combustion points: action and echo. As Wenders said: “The strength of the American Cinema is a forward focus, European cinema paints ellipses”.

I VINTI (1952) is set in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK), and tells the stories of youthful perpetrators, who commit their crimes not out of material necessity, but just for fun. Even though the crimes are central, Antonioni is not much interested in the structure of the genre. The police work is secondary, as are the criminals themselves: Antonioni is fascinated with the daily life of his protagonists, the crimes are more and more forgotten, the investigations peter out – shades of L’ Avventura and Blow Up.

In LE AMICHE (1955) Antonioni finds the structure for his features, seemingly overpopulated with couples and friends – who are all busy, but play a secondary role to their environment, in this case Turin. Clelia who comes to Turin, to open a designer shop for clothes, falls in with four other young women, all of them much wealthier than she is. Their changing couplings with men end tragically. Set between Clelia’s arrival in Turin and her leaving for Rome, LE AMICHE is a kaleidoscope of human frailty, in which the audience is waiting for something to happen, some sort of story of boy meets girl story, but when something like it really happens, it is so secondary, so much overlaid by all the small details we have learned before, that we are as dislocated as the characters: we flounder because Antonioni does not tell a story with a beginning and an end (however much we pretend), but he tells us, that the world can exist without stories. Because there is so much more to see in the city of Turin, as there will be in Rome: Clelia is only the messenger, send out by Antonioni to be a traveller, not a story teller. In so far, she is his archetypal heroine.

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

L’AVVENTURA (1960) has four main protagonists, three of them humans, but they are dwarfed by Lisca Bianca, a rocky island in the Mediterranean See. A group of wealthy Italians visit the island but when they want to leave, the main character Anna, is missing. Her boyfriend Sandro starts the search, but is soon more interested in Claudia, Anna’s best friend. When they all leave, without having found Anna, Claudia and Sandro are ready to start a new life together. Antonioni is often compared with Brecht. Like the German playwright, he refuses the dramatization of the narrative, because it is a remnant of the bourgeois theatre. Analogue to this comparison, L’Avventura is epic cinema. Brecht’s plays are often transparent, because the actors do not identify with their roles. The audience is not drawn into the play, but left outside to observe. The same goes for Antonioni, because, as Doniol-Valcroze wrote “to direct is to organise time and environment”. Antonioni genius is, that he first introduces time scale and environment, before he develops the narrative, via the actions and words of the protagonists. The breakers on the island, are the real music of the feature. The fragility of the emotions manifests it selves mainly in the way the protagonists talk – but mostly they are on cross purpose. Yet the overall impression is not that of a modern film with sound, but of a very sad silent movie. At Cannes in 1960, the feature was mercilessly jeered at the premiere, but won the Grand Prix nevertheless – a rarity of the jury being ahead of the public.

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

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

DESERTO ROSSO (1963/4)

Guiliana: “I dreamt, I was laying in my bed, and the bed was moving. And when I looked, I saw that I was sinking in quicksand”. Guiliana’s world is threatening, everything is monstrous, the buildings of an industrious estate are unbelievable tall. The machines in the factories, the steel island in the sea, and the silhouettes of the people surrounding her are enclosing around her. We travel with her from this industrial quarter of Ravenna to Ferrara and Medicina. She is never still, only at the end she is standing still in front of a factory gate. In Deserto Rosso objects become blurred, they seem to be alive, making their way independently. The camera never leaves Guiliana during her nightmare. We see the world through Guiliana’s eyes: “It is, as if I had tears in my eyes”. In the room of his son she sees his toy robot, his eyes alight. She switches it off – but this the only activity she is allowed to master successfully. There is always fog between her and everybody else, even her lover Corrado is “on the other side”. And the fable, which she tells her son Vittorio, who cannot move, before he is suddenly running through the room, lacks anything metaphysical. Roland Barthes called Antonioni “the artist of the body, the opposite of others, who are the priests of art”. For once, Antonioni is one with the body of his protagonist: Guiliana’s body is not one of the many others, she will never get lost.

BLOW UP (1966)

A feature one should only see once – never again. Otherwise one will suffer the same as Thomas photos: Blow Up. Antonioni to Moravia: “All my films before are works of intuition, this one is a work of the head.” Everything is calculated, the incidents are planned, the story is driven by an elaborate design. The drama, which is anything but, is a drama perfectly executed. Herbie Hancock, the Yardbirds, the beat clubs, the marihuana parties, Big Ben and the sports car with radiophone, the Arabs and the nuns, the beatniks on the streets: everything is like swinging London in the 1960ies: a head idea. Blow Up is Antonioni’s most successful feature at the box office – and not one of his best.

ZABRISKIE POINT (1969/70)

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

Both, the TV feature MISTERO Di OBERWLAD (1979) nor IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA (1982) have in any way added something to Antonioni’s masterful oeuvre. The same can be said of his work after he suffered a massive stroke in 1985, leaving him without speech partly paralysation: BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), a collaboration with Wim Wenders, and Antonioni’s segment of EROS (2004). AS

A RETROSPECTIVE TAKING PLACE AT THE BFI EARLY IN 2019

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