Author Archive

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

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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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.

Tomorrow - ZavtraAT 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.

56th BFI London Film Festival: Andrey GryazevAT: 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.

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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.  000018_17055_TheSummit_still5_TheSummit__byRobbieRyan_2012-11-24_07-58-02AM copy

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.

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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 originallimagey 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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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, 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.

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. AT

Available on DVD and Blu-ray 8th 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.

Robert-GuediguianF: 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

This interview is subject to copyright ©

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!

Image subject to copyright ©

Over at the Southbank the BFI are preparing for an extended version of the London Film Festival that kicks off on October 11th 2012.  See my outline of what’s in store this year under Festivals.  Priority booking for members opens on Thursday 13th September 2012.

Also on release this weekend at the Southbank is Canadian maverick Guy Maddin’s extraordinary supernatural thriller Keyhole featuring the sultry siren of the silver screen Isabella Rossellini.  The Hitchcock Season continues there with Dial M for Murder although due to extreme popularity it’s practically sold out, so get on down there fast…


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And last but not least Nostalgia for the Light, Chilean director Patricio Guzman’s visually arresting poetic meditation set in the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, is still showing at The Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square.  Have fun!  Meredith

 

Still showing……

Mists, mellow fruitfulness and movies on the arthouse film scene 7-14 September 2012

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)Snows-with-Family

 

Not to be confused with the Gregory Peck “Snows” of 1953, this film was inspired by a Victor Hugo poem “Les Pauvre Gens”.  Set in writer/director Robert Guediguian’s home town of Marseilles it’s a deeply touching and human story of social realism resonating with the current mood of economic uncertainty: a far cry from the glamour of Hollywood.  It has Jean-Pierre Darroussin as Michel, who is looking forward to a new lease of life with his family after recently losing his job as a union rep in the local neighbourhood of L’Estaque.  But when he and his wife Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride) are violently robbed by an ex-colleague their love for each other and successful marriage are put to the test and they start to re-examine their working-class values of solidarity and socialist take on life.      

Guediguian regulars Jean-Pierre Darroussin and his on-screen wife Ariane Ascaride make a strong and believable couple and create some poignant moments in this involving and provocative drama which proves that life is all about the people we meet along the way.  Robert Guediguian could be France’s answer to Ken Loach.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

About Elly (2009)

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Shahab Hosseini, Taraney Alidoosti

118mins    Dramaimage001

Only last year, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s fifth feature, A Separation, won massive critical praise and wowed audiences all over the World with its complex moral tale from contemporary Iran . This year About Elly (2009) has finally been granted a UK cinema release.

It’s not quite as mind-blowing as A Separation but nevertheless offers up another moving and multi-layered tale of social mores and societal duty that’s open to discussion and debate while remaining an unremittingly bleak and deeply effecting human drama.  With some really powerful performances especially from leads Golshifteh Farahani and Shahab Hosseini, there are some early moments of fun that soon dissolve into pure hysteria but the general mood is of unleavened gloom.

In About Elly, what starts out as an light-hearted invitation soon leads to tragedy for all concerned during a weekend celebration for a group of ex-university friends on the shores of the Caspian Sea.  The men are all kitted out in sports gear, the women all carefully covered up: this is current-day middle class Tehran.  One of them Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), has recently split from his German wife so the organiser of the trip, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani ), decides to invite her kid’s teacher Elly, in the hope that Ahmad might finally settle down with a nice Iranian girl in a relaxed setting of friends.  It’s inspired matchmaking on her part but the seemingly innocuous idea soon turns out to be a really bad one.  At first Elly seems reluctant to come along but gradually she warms to the weekend celebration until an unexpected turn of events leads to her mysterious disappearance. At this point Sepideh realises how little she really knows about her friend Elly.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

Anton Corbijn: Inside Out (2012)

Director: Klaartje Quirijns

Starring: Anton Corbijn, Bono, Martin Gore

80mins             Biopic about photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you that don’t know, Anton Corbijn is a highly industrious photographer turned lauded filmmaker who, through the use of his camera, helped to create the brands we now know as U2, Lou Reed, Joy Division and Depeche Mode, amongst many others.

This mostly subtitled Dutch documentary by Klaartje Quirijns spends time with the photographer at his studio, on the set of The American with George Clooney, at his childhood home and with his immediate family; his mother, sister and brother. There are also brief interludes with the likes of Bono, Metallica, Lou Reed and Arcade Fire.

It is without doubt an in-depth, frank and open discussion held with an artist whose work must inarguably be accepted as trailblazing and iconic. He is a man driven to the exclusion of all else by his work, finding both camera and music at a young age and pursuing both thereafter as his passion; his raison d’etre.

Inside Out also dwells briefly on the two films he has made; the very excellent debut Control and the not so sublime The American, where there is a perhaps telling scene between Corbijn and his lead actress concerning the interpretation of a line in regards to her character. He is most definitely a visual man rather than a dramaturg.

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Quirijns shines a light on the hitherto hidden recesses of Corbijn’s life and life-story and Corbijn is both brave and open in his revelations; the son of a preacher man from a small Dutch village, as he is. But the story of an unhappy childhood, distance from his parents, of loneliness and the analysis of why he chooses the shots he does only serve to reduce rather than enhance the legend.

It is indeed therefore a very insightful film that reveals the man behind the myth, but actually in the end, I simply wanted to admire his many, beautiful portraits telling their thousand words and not hear Corbijn admit that the reason he chose the side of a tanker with a huge steel cable draped like a smile, was that it depicted ‘heavy metal’ for the Metallica shoot, or learn that he, like so many of us mere mortals, is still running around seeking his fathers approval and feeling incomplete as a man.  On top of this, the banality and ineloquence of various smug pop stars waxing less than lyrical over photographs of themselves only made me reflect that perhaps it’s a case here of not actually wanting to meet ones heroes… Some people or things are great because of their mystery; some pictures wonderful as much for the personal lens through which we view them. AT

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Movies, mists and mellow fruitfulness on the indie scene 7 – 14 September 2012

September ushers in a cool array of arthouse movies to enjoy now the evenings are drawing in. First up is Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ complex and involving drama that compares the loneliness of old age with the excitement of youth.  Shot in black and white it’s an achingly romantic tale of a Portuguese woman looking back on her glamorous life in Colonial Africa.

Tabu is showing at the ICA Cinema, Rio Dalston and Odeon Panton Street from Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And from the wilds of Africa to the frozen steppes of Russia comes another lovelorn glamourpuss this time in the shape of Countess Anna Karenina. Keira Knightley takes centre stage for Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of the timeless Tolstoy tome and Atonement director Joe Wright presents this glitzy merry-go-round of a movie in a theatrical setting and supported by a stellar cast of Jude Law, Matthew McFadyen and Aron Johnson. See it at the Everyman, Curzon and Clapham Picturehouse.

John Hillcoat’s drama Lawless also opens this weekend. Written for the screen by musician Nick Cave, the film is a true-crime take on a tale of thirties prohibition seen through the eyes of a band of brothers.  Gary Oldman, Tim Hardy and Shia LaBeour star.  Showing at the Everyman, Tricycle Cinema, Gate Notting Hill and Vue all over London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skyfall, the eagerly-awaited new Bond movie is coming up in October.  With Daniel Craig on his third mission as 007, Sam Mendes directs and Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench and Albert Finney take part in this 23rd adventure of the suave English spy.  It’s not strictly arthouse but everyone loves a Bond movie and this one’s set to knock your socks off.

If you you’re up for a slice of social realism, then head over to the Southbank for a chance to see Mike Leigh’s classic TV film from the seventies archives Play For Today. The main attraction here is Alison Steadman’s standout performance as a struggling middle-aged mum stuck in a loveless marriage.  It also has Ben Kingsley in one of his first appearances on film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hitchcock season continues at the Southbank with his most abstract psychological drama, The Birds. Tipi Hedren stars as a sparkling socialite who pursues her love interest to a seaside town and gets more than she bargained for.

Documentary -wise this weekend sees the release of The Queen of Versailles, a funny, sad and cautionary tale about an American Dream turned nightmare for one family.

Shut Up And Play The Hits,  is Will Lovelace’s musical portrait of reluctant rockstar James Murphy and charts the last 48 hours of his highly successful band LCD Sound System featuring the celebrated showcase showdown at Madison Square Garden in 2011.

 Meredith Taylor ©

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Tabu (2012)

Director: Miguel Gomes

Cast: Teresa Nadruga, Ana Moreira, Laura Saveral, Carloto Cotta, Henrique Esprito Santo

118mins    Portuguese with English subtitles

aurora-ventura-camaDoes anyone really live happily ever after or is old age a pale reflection of our past?  This is the universal theme that Portuguese director Miguel Gomes explores in this enigmatic and spectacularly moving feature told in two parts.  After a quirky lead-in, the first half is a desultory and amusing affair based in and around Lisbon where three women from completely different backgrounds are dealing with the loneliness of old age and their memories of the past.  Pilar (Teresa Madruga) works tirelessly for worthy causes, Santa (Isabel Cardoso) is laid -back and resigned to her work as house-keeper for an eccentric and well-off woman called Aurora (Laura Soveral).  And Aurora is the dark horse of the trio.  Stumbling around on the foothills of dementia she’s obsessed with crocodiles, voodoo and a mysterious man called Gianluca Ventura.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She also harbours a naughty slot-machine habit and a secret past that gradually comes to light as we’re transported back to the savannah of colonial Mozambique, where, in her younger days, she has a farm on the foothills of Mount Tabu.  Marrying well she is then drawn into a passionate and visceral love story with the charismatic GianLuca Ventura (Carlotto Cotta), who turns out to be a stunningly attractive and rakish friend of the family.

Shot through with exotic images of heat, lust and hedonistic decadence, this is far the most artistically imaginative strand and plays like a silent movie narrated by Ventura, combining black and white cine-style footage with a score featuring soundtracks from pop music of the era. These two different cinematic styles successfully reflect the dreams and adventurous promise of youth where everything is possible in contrast to the pedestrian mondanity and isolation of old age where fantasy is largely brought on by medication or the vagaries of mental decline.  This bravely ambitious feature has shades of Out of Africa and shows Gomes to be a filmmaker of great flair and insight.

Meredith Taylor ©

mario-macaco-varanda

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Keyhole (2012)

Director: Guy Maddin

Starring: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Keir

94mins  HorrorHyacinth-and-Manners

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin took the inspiration for this black and white thirties-style horror film from Carl Dreyer’s “Vampyr” the daddy of all horror movies.  Entirely shot on digital, it has a surreal mood and eerie soundtrack that completes that otherworldly feel.

The story goes as follows: Jason Patric’s Ulysses returns home to a mansion creeping with the ghosts of family members and tries desperately in a repetitive sequence that’s part dream part reality to reach his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) who is locked upstairs in her bedroom. He is visited by ghosts of his son and daughter as well as his wife’s lover and father and re-visits the psychological trauma of their deaths over and over again in order to reach some sort of emotional catharis.  

Guy Maddin is an acquired taste and has been widely compared to David Lynch.  Keyhole is a hypnotic film to watch, bathed in its monochrome visuals, but by the end it becomes exhausting:  Suffused with double-exposures, billowing curtains and dreamlike images that fade away into the ether, it also teeters on the edge of kinkiness in a ‘Diane Arbus’ sort of way.  If you’re not a fan, be prepared to swallow a large dose of phantasmagoria that may not go down entirely as the director intended.

Meredith Taylor ©

Lawless (2012)

Director: John Hillcoat.  Writer: Nick Cave

Cast: Shia Lebeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman.

Prohibition brought a sense of dread and restlessness to Virginia in the 1930s.  John Hillcoat’s savage tale of bootlegging gangster brothers is punctuated by short sharp shocks of brutal violence and permeated with an overriding sense of dread. With some solid performances particulary from LeBeouf, it’s a suberb study of social meltdown and sibling loyalty but as a chronicle of the era it’s as empty as an alcoholics memory of the night before.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

Anna Karenina (2012)

Director Joe Wright    Screenwriter: Tom Stoppard

Starring: Jude Law, Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Aaron Johnson

Atonement director Joe Wright has placed the writing credits of this take on Tolstoy’s timeless masterpiece in the safe hands of Tom Stoppard as Keira Knightley takes the stage, quite literally, in the leading role. Focusing on the eternal love triangle and the choice that every woman has to make between romantic love and the security of marriage and social position, this version takes place within the confines of a theatre in a railway station, an ice rink and other snowy locations.  Of the standouts, Jude Law gives a sleek and buttoned-up performance as Karenin and Matthew MacFadyen’s cheeky turn as Anna’s brother is fresh and dynamic. Be-decked with fur and diamonds and breathtakingly spectacular, the ambitious setting seems to draw the attention away from the heart of the drama which is the scandalous love story that develops between Keira Knightley’s Anna and Aaron Johnson’s dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky.  With echoes of her tearfully poignant performance in Duchess without the visceral punch, the film immediately becomes less emotionally engaging and more of a theatrical romp with pseudo rumpy-pumpy and Strictly Ballroom thrown in.  But as a piece of filmmaking it’s an intoxicating and innovative statement from a director very much at top of his game.

Meredith Taylor ©

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Twenty8K (2012)

Directed by: David Kew, Neil Thompson.  Writers: Paul Abbott, Jimmy Dowdall

Cast: Stephen Dillane, Parminder Nagra, Kaya Scodelario

106mins  Action thriller

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East London is the setting for this well-paced Britflic as riddled with stereotypes as it is with bullets.  Panoramic scenes of London locations punctuate the action revolving around a gang-related shooting that leaves young Asian teenager Vipon banged up as the main suspect.  His elder sister, Deeva, a Paris-based fashion executive played by Bend it like Beckham star Parminder Nagra flies back to town and turns detective to get her little brother, newcomer Sebastian Nanena, off the hook.

Well you’re in safe hands with Paul Abbott (State of Play) writing the screenpaly and Stephen Dillane shines out in the role of DCI Stone. It’s honest and well-acted and jogs along nicely but does it really have anything new to say and does it move you?  Well probably only in the direction of the exit doors as the closing titles roll. See this one when it comes out on DVD.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

Once in a Blue Moon on the indie film scene 31 August 2012

Tagou-Wushu-Academy-Zhengzhou-ChinaThis weekend’s Blue Moon brings sensuous delights to the silver screen with the opening of Samsara, Ron Fricke’s breathtaking visual meditation on the cycle of life.  A sequel to his highly acclaimed film “Baraka”, this extraordinary documentary takes you on a globe-trotting tour through 25 continents, all filmed in eye-popping clarity and the highest definition known to mankind in cinemas today.  The Curzon Mayfair is celebrating this release with a specially created Chili Lychee Martini.  Samsara is also showing at the Everyman, Hackney Picturehouse and Apollo West End.  You really need to see it on the big screen.

Peter Strickland’s dynamite follow-up to “Katalin Varga” is the highly original “Berberian Sound Studio” a chilling tale from Rome based on the Italian “romanzi gialli” of the sixties and seventies.  With its blood-curdling sound-track and Toby Jones’s edgy portrait of an ordinary guy slowly losing his mind, it’s my top recommendation for this weekend. See it at the Curzon, The Everyman and The Barbican.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And talking of mind games, “The Possession” may appeal to those of a psychic persuasion. Based on A S Byatt’s Booker award-winning novel, it tells the story of a little girl who becomes entranced by an antique box and shows how curiosity gets the better of her.  Dealing with themes such as OBE and mediumship, it’s not to be taken lightly but is possibly one of the better versions of “The Exorcist” currently around.  But don’t get carried away, while you’re “out of body” something else could jump in…… Showing at Vue and Cineworld cinemas from Friday 31st August.

Still with the supernatural in mind, The Everyman “Late Nights” are showing David Bowie in Jim Henson’s gothic tale of fantasy “Labyrinth”.  They are also hosting a Q&A on John Hillcoat’s upcoming “Lawless” that premiered at Cannes this year. Tickets available online at Everyman Film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Rio, Dalston, there’s another chance to see Jan Kounen’s mesmerising love story “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky” ((2009) starring Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis. It divided the critics but who could baulk at two hours of exquisitely designed interiors, sumptuous clothes, delightful music, lush photography and electric performances from two attractive actors. For those who loved “A Single Man” it will appeal.  I won’t mention the sex scenes…

 

 

 

 

 

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And last but not least is an engaging and powerful Polish political drama set in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall entitled “Yuma”. With echoes of the 1957 “3:10 to Yuma”, it’s a little bit rough round the edges, but well-directed with some strong performances particularly from the central character Zyga (Jakub Gierszal) and provides an valuable insight into the era.  If you’re interested in European history or communism then “Yuma” is for you.  Showing at the Odeon cinemas and Cineworld from Friday 31st August 2012

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Meredith Taylor ©

and still showing….

 

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Dir/Wri  Peter Strickland | Cast: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Tonia Sotiropoulou | 90mins Thriller

It’s 1976, and in a sleazy sound editing studio somewhere in Rome two monstruous egos are working on “The Equestrian Vortex” a cheap and nasty horror flick based on the “Gialli” paperback thrillers of the era. Francesco (Cosimo Fusco) is the mercurial producer and Santini (Antonio Mancino) the womanising director. Frothing with self-importance and seventies machismo, they are arrogant and faintly ridiculous. Then into the mix slips Gilderoy (Toby Jones) a timid English techie all the way from Dorking. Still living with his mother he is remarkable only for his well-honed skills at mixing and manipulating sound on analogue equipment. His unique ability at producing sounds with a variety of fruit and veg that mimic flesh and bone being crushed and severed by unknown forces and supernatural powers is matched only by his meagre financial demands to get the job done.  But no one is being paid for this gig and Gilderoy’s blokish modesty is at odds with the Italians’ smouldering sexuality.  Their snide banter, jibes and bare-faced chauvinism towards the women “screamers” in the studio creates a palpable ambiance of provocation and some minxy female characters with Bond girl Tonia Sotiropoulou standing out as the sultry and recalcitrant PA.

Gilderoy steadily works his magic on the sound effects but the toxic brew of personalities and claustrophobic interiors start to have a negative impact as he longs for soft memories of home. Losing his grasp on reality, Gilderoy sinks into a morass of auto-suggested horror echoing that of Roman Polanski’s character in “The Tenant”, strangely of the same year. There’s a a lot of early Polanski here: the lighting and sinister shadows, the misery of tortured souls and anxiousness of the outsider. It’s a subtle and finely-tuned performance from Toby Jones and Cosimo Fusco strikes just the right balance between absurdity and condescension. Peter Strickland is a director first feature Katalin Varga won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2009, his latest, a comedy entitled Flux Gourmet, was back in this year’s Berlinale Encounters strand, but came home empty-handed. MT©

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Samsara (2011)

Director: Ron Fricke                  

Writer: Mark Magidson

Documentary

Samsara is a visual tour de force that will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world or the origins of humanity.  Taking its name from the Sanskrit word for the circle of existence, Ron Fricke spent five years to putting this documentary together: the result is a crystal clear pastiche of images shot on 70mm film in the highest definition footage in available in cinema today, accompanied by a dynamic score from Lisa Gerrard who sang on the soundtrack “Gladiator”.

Samsara is certainly the most relaxing film you’ll see so far this year.  The global odyssey unfolds sensuously with eye-popping clarity and total calm, as the camera pans through five continents and twenty five countries in the form of a guided non-narrative meditation showing how the rhythms and symmetry of the natural World are mirrored in our own life cycles and creativity.  Gradually it becomes more sinister and takes a non-judgemental look at the legacy of our existence focusing on the imprint of  industry, pollution and natural disasters and leaves us to form our own conclusions. Just lie back and think of England, Burma, India, Canada, Nepal, France, Germany, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, Argentina and many more.

Meredith Taylor

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Shadow Dancer (2012)

Director/Writer: James Marsh

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen, Aidan Gillen, Brid Brennan, Gillian Anderson

101mins  Thriller

Andrea Riseborough is well cast as Colette, a mother and IRA member in 1990s Belfast who is forced to become a double agent for MI5 during an aborted bomb attempt.  Torn between her family and the political set-up she gradually falls for Clive Owen as detective Mac and they become emotionally involved in a slow-burning love affair.  Andrea Riseborough strikes just the right note of seriousness and vulnerability and Clive Owen’s subtlely nuanced performance as an MI5 professional whose credentials are called into question by his feelings is well-pitched and believable. Atmospheric visuals, authentic interiors and fine attention to the historical context make this a gripping and suspenseful feature from director and writer James Marsh who is best known for his documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim.

Meredith Taylor ©

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August Bank Holiday 2012 – Latest from the arthouse scene

Just in time for the Bank Holiday wet weekend there’s plenty to see on the big screen. The long-awaited IRA espionage thriller Shadow Dancer from Oscar-winning director James Marsh finally hits cinemas this Friday.  Starring Andrea Riseborough (Made in Dagenham), Clive Owen (Croupier) and Gillian Anderson (The X Files), it’s a gripping and atmospheric British drama that exposes the emotional fault lines of two people, an MI5 operative and an IRA informant in nineties Belfast. See review for showtimes.

 

 

77_IMP_Frederic_InterviewThe Imposter is a spin-chilling “film-experience’ and Director Bart Layton’s extraordinary debut feature.  A true-crime documentary with a noirish psychological twist, it explores the sinister aftermath of the real-life kidnapping of a young boy in San Antonio, Texas in 1994.

The Imposter is showing at the Everyman and Vue Cinemas throughout town from Friday.

The BFI continues its retrospective with F for Fake, Orson Welles’ innovative masterpiece and documentary about fraud and fakery, directed in the last decade of his life and starring himself in the leading role – who else!   Showing at the BFI and ICA London from the 24th August 2012

And finally Maryam Keshavarz debut is a forbidden love-story from Iran. “Circumstance” is a coming of age drama focusing on a lesbian relationship and won best audience award at Sundance this year.  See reviews for listings.

Shireen Arshadi and               

Nikohi Boosheri star in

Circumstance (2011)

 

 

 

 

And still showing……………….

Crossfire Hurricane (2012) ****

crossfire-hurricane-2012-001-e1350668787746Director: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    DramaLOISEAU2

Spare on dialogue but easy on the eye, this enigmatic film set around Bordeaux tells of Anne (Sandrine Kimberlain) who works as a chef although we never actually never get to see her cooking.  She is reserved with colleagues but one of them takes a fancy to her even though she resists his constant advances.  Raphael (Clement Sibony) is drop-dead gorgeous but Anne needs to be alone to process her feelings of grief over a tragic past.  The delicately emerging story, gentle camera work and subtle performances are what makes this film a really touching portrait of a woman in crisis.

Meredith Taylor c

 

Take This Waltz (2012)

Director  Sarah Polley

Seth Rogan, Michelle Williams, Jake Kirby, Sarah Silverman

117 mins      Arthouse romantic comedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After success with her debut “Away From Her” Canadian director Sarah Polley offers this colourful and unflinching portrait of Margot, a vapid twentysomething who drifts through life waiting for something to happen.  Husband and cookery writer Lou (Seth Rogan) is a stabilising influence while Margot experiments with writing and dabbles in a slow-burning flirtation with sultry neighbour Daniel (Luke Kirby) eventually coming face to face with her own emptiness.  There’s plenty of fun and frolics with her girlfriends from full frontal nudity at a cringeworthy poolside scene to threesomes with Daniel once she’s thrown in the towel. Polley’s clever script offers plenty of insights and Michelle Williams’ delicately nuanced performance makes Margot appear more interesting and multi-layered than her character actually is.  Despite all this, the arthouse vibe feels suffocating and unreal and you come away feeling nothing for the characters accept possibly Seth Rogan’s grumpily honest ‘good guy’ Lou.  Take This Waltz shows that while you can’t be loved-up every day in a marriage you do need a real life and a focus to bring to the table; not just chicken and babyish chitchat.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQTNY5yaVk

 

The Devil’s Business (2012)

Writer and Director: Sean Hogan

Billy Clarke, Jack Gordon, Jonathan Hansler, Harry Miller

75mins   Supernatural horror  Cert18

 

This edgy low-budget horror flick wanders into supernatural territory when two hit-men are sent to murder an associate of gangland boss Bruno (Harry Miller) and discover that their quarry Kist (Jonathan Hansler) is also big on devil worship.  In a similar vein to The Liability (with Tim Roth – coming up later this year), hardened hit man Pinner (Billy Clarke) finds himself working alongside Jack Gordon’s useless rookie Cully, who rapidly lets the side down. The pair are slowly sucked into a maelstrom of horrific goings-on involving Wagnerian opera, witchcraft and a wickedly sinister child from hell – think Chucky on a bad hair day.  Sean Hogan’s script builds in moments of real dread spiked with mordant humour (“If you were paid to think, you’d struggle to make the minimum wage”). A spooky soundtrack and slick performances make this a worthwhile watch.

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Meredith Taylor ©

 

I Against I (2012)

Directors  Mark Cripps, David Ellison, James Marquand

Starring: Kenny Doughty, Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, Mark Womack

82mins     Thriller

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I Against I is a half-baked noirish thriller that slips down more easily that it has a right to given its poor script and insipid central character Ian (Kenny Doughty). Ian is a night-club owner who is suspected of killing gangster boss (John Castle) together with Russian hitman (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson).  Both are then forced to kill each other by the son (Mark Womack) of the gangster boss.  None of the characters are convincing but there’s a menacing feel to the film that makes it watchable as a lightweight thriller with plenty of shouting, knifing, underground car parks and a rather good techno soundtrack.

Meredith Taylor ©

Showing at the Apollo, London W1

Still showing..

Sundance award-winning documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” opens this weekend and exposes the world of the dissident Chinese artIst best known for his Sunflower Seeds installation and the recent transformation at the Serpentine in London. Showing at the Everyman and Curzon cinemas.

 

 

Over at the Southbank the Hitchcock season continues with the restored version of an atmospheric silent film from 1926 starring Ivor Novello: “Lodger: A Story of the London Fog”.  Sight and Sound have recently voted him “best filmmaker of all time”.

 

From Albania comes “The Forgiveness of Blood” the second feature from “Maria Full of Grace” director Joshua Marston.  It tells the real life story of a contemporary family caught up in the age-old Balkan code of Law and is based on months of documentary research and interviews and employs of cast of local talent. Showing at the Curzon and Odeon.

Caught up in lottery fever is the Norwegian comedy caper “Jackpot”; another Jo Nesbo offering riding on the back of the recent Scandinavian wave of thrillers. Despite the capable of direction of Magnus Martens it fails to match the excellent “Headhunters”.  Showing at the Rio Dalston, Ritzy and Hackney Picturehouse along with the Odeon and Cineworld.

Another feature that isn’t quite on the money is Fernando Meirelles’ new film “360” starring Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law and Rachel Weisz who embark on an interconnecting series of hook-ups. Read my review to find out more about this glossy globe-trotter.   Meanwhile from the rather more earthy back-drop of the Avon countryside comes Tony Siddon’s new film In the Dark Half, a touching part ghost part sink drama.  Jessica Barden (Tamara Drew) grapples with issues surrounding teenage angst, depression and a mysterious death.  Showing at the Ritzy Brixton and Empire Leicester Square.

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And on the home entertainment front Tilda Swinton fans will be pleased to know that all time classic masterpiece Orlando is now out on Blu-ray.

httpv://www.moviemail.com/film/blu-ray/Orlando/

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

And still showing from last week, 3rd August 2012 is a fascinating film for lovers of modern art and all things American. Eames: Architect and Painter looks at the life of Charles Eames and his partner Ray who designed that famous chair in leather and chrome.  The BFI Southbank is showing Julien Temple’s dynamite documentary, London: The Modern Babylon which celebrates London’s indomitable creative spirit.  It features a stellar cast including Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton.  Rutger Hauer makes a brief appearance in Neil Jones’  Vampire Britflic “The Reverand”.  And it you’re bored of London and the Olympics then why not head down to the peaceful shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy where the 65th Locarno Film Festival is in full swing.

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Heading to the Far East, Christian Bale plays an American misionary in “The Flowers of War”, Zhang Zimou’s questionable but visually stunning take on the Japanese invasion of China, seen from the perspective of a young girl.  And, on a more mundane level, Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s “study of an ageing servant and her employer (Andy Lau) “A Simple Life” is beautifully observed and poignant.

Olympic furore takes over the capital from now until the end of August and the controversy behind Batman continues to crowd the film headlines but there’s still plenty to look forward to on the indy and arthouse scene.    If you only see one film, make it Searching for Sugar Man, an intriguing music documentary that probes the mystery behind the disappearance of ’60s musician and cult hero Sixto Rodriguez. From Barcelona comes El Bulli a foodie film that will give you a delicious taster of the fascinating world of the culinary genius and celebrated chef Ferran Adria.  Now booking for next year…

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On the South Bank, the BFI are screening Red Desert, Antonioni’s ground-breaking sixties take on spiritual isolation in the modern world.  Starring screen goddess Monica Vitti it was his fist colour film and is sure to resonate with contemporary audiences.  Fans of Anthony Quayle will enjoy the digitally remastered version of fifties love triangle Woman in a Dressing Gown.  He plays a long-suffering husband who is forced to choose between his office sweetheart (Sylvia Sims) and his slovenly wife (Yvonne Mitchell) whose only crime appears to be forgetting to take the rubbish out, permanently….

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Leos Carax with his Leopard of Honour at Locarno 2012

 

French Auteur Leos Carax has been awarded the Leopard of Honour at   Locarno Film Festival. His entire filmography is currently being screened at this year’s festival which is in full swing at its picturesque Lake Maggiore setting until 11th August:  His five features are “Boy meets Girl” 1984, “Bad Blood” 1986, “Les Amants de Pont Neuf” 1991, “Pola X” of ’99 and his latest “Holy Motors” that competed in this year’s Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Holy Motors

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

360 (2012)

Weisz-and-LawDirector: 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)

gown_8-1

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.

Meredith Taylor©

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)

Swan2Director: Andrew Kötting

Writer: Iain Sinclair

94mins     Poetic Travelogue

Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s offbeat travelogue uses poetry, song and dry humorous banter to chart a very English voyage from Sussex to Hackney….by Swan-shaped pedalo.  Boarding the pedalo beachside at Hastings, they begin a slow and silly journey shot through with magical sunsets, morning mists, lyrical interludes and down to earth exchanges with the people they meet along the way.

To complete the eccentric feel Kötting wears a beautifully tailored suit which deteriorates into a mud-soaked rag in the final stages but neither men complain or utter a cross word.  The film has a strange hypnotic power to woo you with its gentle rhythm and quirky charm.  There’s no anti-Olympic agenda as such but Sinclair has a soft dig at the games on reaching the site barriers where heavy metal chains and signage warn them to keep out.  Swandown reminds us of the real reasons to be cheerful about England and being English.  It’s a pleasure cruise.

Meredith Taylor ©

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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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arthouse releases from July 16th 2012

S835896_18-copyThis 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.

Meredith Taylor©

 

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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A Simple Life (2012)

Director  Ann Hui  Cast   Andy Lau, Deannie Yip, Sui-Man Chim

118mins    simplelife3

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 



 

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,   Dramahavana2

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Meredith Taylor © Now out on DVD and Blue Ray from 19th October 2012

 

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.

Meredith Taylor©

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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 cloclo_02

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”cloclo_09

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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other releases this week

 

 

 

Brussels Film Festival 2012

Death_For_Sale_Dounia_and_Malik

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.

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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)

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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

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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 11th edition of the BRUSSELS FILM FESTIVAL will be held from June 19th to 26th 2013 in Flagey and in Bozar. www.brusselsfilmfestival.be

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

fastgirlsIn 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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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     Comedyseeking1

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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

kosmos2You 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.kosmos1

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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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.woodyoung

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.woodyold

Meredith Taylor ©

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Cannes 2012 Review Round-up

 

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Dangerous Liaisons  (2012) Jim Ho Hur

Do we really need another film of this 17th 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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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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)

moonriseDirector: 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)

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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.

Vanessa_et_2_enfantsJean-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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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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

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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.

© Meredith Taylor

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)

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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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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Delicacy (2011) (Delicatesse)

tatouDirectors 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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Meredith Taylor©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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? 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 THE_FUTURE41.jpg_rgb1July

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

Kid

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)

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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.

Meredith Taylor ©

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MomsnmjgVYE

On general release across London from 9th March 2012

Wild Bill (2011)

willbillDirector:  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 - Carl Dreyer 1932

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

dreyer

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

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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

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7 Cajas (7 Boxes) 2012  Paraguayan directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori’s first feature

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Satellite Boy (2012 Australian director Catriona McKenzie’s fourth feature.

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MT

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

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©

NOW ON MUBI

 

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)

A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010)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 ©

NOW ON MUBI

 

 

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

[youtube id=”Ug0QqktJ5tc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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.

Meredith Taylor ©

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

EARLY_ONE_MORNING

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

NOW ON MUBI

Something to look forward to…

Shame - filmuforia reviewThere’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.

Meredith Taylor ©

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director Daniele Vicari

Chiara Caselli, Elio Germano, Valentina Lodovini Michele Riondino

**** 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 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

 

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 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

 

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 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.

Meredith Taylor©

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.

SNOWTOWN_1

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?

  1. Hunky Dory – for the sheer joy of the music and the memory of that wonderful hot summer of ’76
  2. Lawrence of Belgravia – hats off to this charismatic little film about an almost superstar – Lawrence
  3. Shame – damaged siblings feed off one another in glitzy Manhatten – nuff said!
  4. Snowtown – serial killings, sinister soundtrack. .and fab casting especially of Daniel Henshall as a sociopath
  5. Terraferma – Sensitively told Sicilian story of a changing world
  6. The Monk – mysterious misdoings in a Madrid monastery – sublime lighting: Vincent Cassel shines out
  7. The Ides of March – tight plot, dynamite performances, sizzling political thriller
  8. Drifters – (Gli Sfiorati) upbeat tragi-comedy of a really decent guy, from the novel by Sandro Veronesi
  9. Hara Kiri – Death of a Samurai – sumptuous tale of economic meltdown of a 17th century ronin
  10. Headhunters – glossy, gritty and hilarious Norwegian thriller
  11. 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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