Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

That they may face the rising sun (2023)

Dir: Pat Collins | Cast: Barry Ward, Anna Bederke, Ruth McCabe, Lalor Roddy, Sean McGinley | Ireland, Drama 111’

Pat Collins’ leisurely lyrical tale of rural Ireland forty years ago is  beautifully captured on the wide screen and in rather stagey domestic interior scenes were the local characters shoot the breeze and sometimes touch on more philosophical themes in the style of the Ambridge residents of the popular BBC series The Archers.

Based on internationally acclaimed Irish author John McGahern’s award-winning novel of the same name, the story centres on middle aged creative couple Joe, a writer, and his East European painter wife Kate respectively played by Barry Ward and Anna Bederke with a dash of bohemian charisma. Others include Lalor Roddy’s Patrick who pops in to supply the village gossip – but nothing too controversial to rock the tranquil tenor of this bucolic backwater. 

This is a gentle pastoral affair that could have been directed by the late Terence Davies, and whose main attraction is the day to day lives of Irish country folk as they go about their business and the glorious vistas of the Emerald Isle in the changing seasons luminously photographed by Richard Kendrick all accompanied by a plangent occasional score. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS FROM 26 April 2024

The Black Pirates (1954) and Massacre (1956)

Dir: Allen H Miner | Cast: Anthony Dexter, Martha Roth, Lon Chaney Jr, Robert Clarke | US Action Drama 74’

As others have observed the budget for this 18th Century yarn about buried treasure didn’t even run to a ship so the pirates of the title arrive by rowboat; what visual grandeur it possessed instead supplied by the El Salvador locations elegantly and vividly shot in Ansco Color by cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton (a process that highlighted the worldly charms of a young lady by the name of Marta Roth as a worldly serving wench whose red lipstick matches her dress and proves pretty sharp with a broken bottle).

The pirates themselves certainly are a mean and ugly bunch (aided by the presence of a leering Alfonso Bedoya), while in a film shot closer to home the scenes of bloodshed and flogging would surely have encountered greater problems with the Breen Office.

Massacre (1956)

Dir: Louis King | Cast: Martha King, Dane Clark, James Craig, Miguel Torruco | US Western 76’

Having visited El Salvador to make ‘The Black Pirates’ producer Robert Lippert’s later depiction of criminal activity moved inland (once again employing Gilbert Warrenton’s fluid Ansco Color location photography to compensate for lack of more substantial production values) to Mexico where he once again availed himself of the talents of Mexican actress Martha Roth, who unlike the glossy serving wench she played in ‘The Black Pirates’ this time superficially appears at first glance a more robust young lady, and gets to show herself quite a horsewoman; while for the cognoscenti the presence of Luis Bunuel’s Man Friday Jaime Fernandez is worth noting.

The film also marks a considerable departure from the wholesome Technicolor family entertainment usually associated with director Louis King; the cynical tone of his final film firmly established from the outset by the opening sequence depicting a funeral cortège which turns out to be carrying illicit rifles. @RichardChatten

AVAILABLE ON PRIME VIDÉO

The Ghost Train (1941)

Dir: Walter Forde | Writers: Arnold Ridley, J.O.C. Orton Val Guest | Cast: Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison | UK Comedy

Gainsborough Studios long seemed to have held a predilection for trains since they were responsible for the original silent version of Arnold Ridley’s classic play, along with Oh! Mr Porter and The Lady Vanishes (which also featured Linden Travers); while director Walter Forde’s background in comic shorts and his classic 1932 drama Rome Express made him just the man to undertake this third version as a vehicle for the egregious Arthur Askey.

Oh! Mr Porter also concerned a local legend concerning a stretch of haunted rail line (and shares a baleful Herbert Lomas with ‘Ask a Policeman’), but the plot has been brought up to date by making the baddies Nazi fifth columnists rather than IRA gun runners, with such topical references as jokes about food coupons and ration books and when Askey challenges a parrot to say ‘Heil Hitler!’ @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

L’homme au mille visages | The Man with a Thousand Faces (2024)

Dir: Sonia Kronlund | France Doc, 90′

So who is the man of a thousand faces? He introduces himself as Daniel, Alexandre or Ricardo and apparently comes from Brazil or Argentina. Sometimes he’s a surgeon, others an engineer. The women he meets and moves in with are disarmed by his looks, charisma and accomplishments. They fall in love, one even falls pregnant. Meanwhile the fantasist flits around the world juggling these various relationships, always an excuse in hand for his absence.

Documentarian and screenwriter Sonia Kronlund (The Prince of Nothingwood) is fascinated by the story and decides to investigate with the help of a private detective. We meet the women involved. They are intelligent, grounded and articulate. No histrionic outbursts just calm refections of incredulity as they gradually dissect and come to terms with their nemesis. Can they ever be the same again?. When your lover says his father has been killed in a car crash, is it churlish to reply: Really? This is the vestigial damage they are left to work through in their future relationships. Falling in love demands a certain innocence, a vulnerability. Can that ever be regained?

Kronlund knows the territory. What emerges is another tale of self-reinvention, rather like in The Prince of Nothingwood. The French filmmaker herself admits to having been duped by unsatisfactory past relationships so there’s an empathy of kindred spirits and a deep satisfaction at work here as she constructs her extraordinarily subtle expose of a pathological liar. A man unable to be straight with others – let alone himself.

Adopting a classic three act structure Kronlund gradually works her way towards the finale as she peels back the layers of this arch psychological scandal, checking her facts with a lawyer who is able to demonstrate that the man’s entire existence is based on the dissemination of images of lives which are not his – a face can be slotted into an online uniform or guise that bears no resemblance to reality. Finally we see the real ‘Ricardo’ ‘hoisted by his own petard’ in this clever piece of investigative filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Beyond the Raging Sea (2024)

Dir: Marco Orsini | Doc With Omar Nour and Omar Samra, Made in conjunction with the UN Refugee Agency | 80′

Billed as a heroic tale of rescue Marco Orsini‘s documentary Beyond the Raging Sea attempts to jump on board the current wave of sympathy for the refugee boats in chronicling how two inexperienced mariners embarked on a cross Atlantic voyage in a rowing boat – admittedly a top of range piece of kit – but what was the point of this foolhardy act of ‘derring do’?

Told in a flood of talking heads – mainly by the guys themselves – Egyptians  Omar Nour and Omar Samra – we hear how in 2017 they decided to take part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge – a sort of seabound equivalent of the Paris-Dakar race – but in rowing boats, across the Atlantic from La Gomera in the Canaries to Antigua; a 3,000-nautical-mile, 40-day undertaking.

The going was rough and the guys soon found themselves in difficulty when their vessel capsized in ferocious seas – and there’s a great deal of jaw-dropping thrashing about in the wet that gives the film a certain dramatic heft, although the fact they lived to tell the tale slightly takes away the tension. It seems the feckless duo did it out of solidarity with the refugees whose testimonies then feature in a 10-minute tacked-on coda. @MeredithTaylor

IN CINEMAS FROM 19 APRIL 2024

 

Honorary Palme d’Or for Studio Ghibli

This year’s 77th edition of Cannes Festival will award an Honorary Palme d’or for the first time to a group rather than an individual: Studio Ghibli.

Alongside the Hollywood greats, the Japanese studio embodied by two superb storytellers, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, and a host of cult characters, has unleashed a fresh wind on animated film over the past four decades the Japanese animations have brought a breath of fresh air to the genre appealing to both kids and adults with vibrant universes and sensitive, engaging stories that brings together traditional and contemporary.

The Wind Rises (2013) @StudioGhibli

 

The Festival de Cannes was an early explorer of the animated film adventure. In the early years, Walt Disney productions presented short films (1946) and the feature Dumbo (1947). In 1953, Walt Disney himself took Peter Pan to the Croisette, where René Laloux won a special Jury Prize in 1973 for his first feature, Fantastic Planet. After a long absence, animation returned to Cannes in force with Shrek (2001) and Shrek 2 (2004), Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), Persepolis (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), which all received awards in the Competition, or even Up, which opened the Festival in 2009. Many other films, such as Inside Out, Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, and more recently, Elemental, and Robot Dreams have also left their mark. Moreover, Un Certain Regard welcomed The Red Turtle (2016), Studios Ghibli’s first collaboration with a European production company.

It all began 40 years ago. The success of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 enabled him to establish Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata in 1985. Today, the films are watched by people all over the world, and draw many visitors to the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka and Ghibli Park to experience the world of our films for themselves. And although Miyazaki and Takahata are now veterans of their craft Studio Ghibli will continue to take on new challenges, led by a new generation who will carry on the spirit of the company.

Back in the day the two achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat: independently producing pure masterpieces and conquering the mass market. Producer Toshio Suzuki, a key studio member from the start and soon assuming a full time role, he managed the studio with formidable efficiency, establishing perfect complementarity between the projects of Miyazaki and Takahata, by turns producers and directors.

The tale of the Princess Kagua (2013)

In 1988, with the simultaneous release of Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbour Totoro these outstanding creative artists achieved a double success. In 1992, Studio Ghibli was able to begin financing its own feature films with Porco Rosso. In the early years, only the two founders directed their films, but gradually young auteurs such as Goro Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi distinguished themselves and joined the Studio.

In four decades and over twenty feature films, Studio Ghibli won over its audiences with works imbued with poetry and with humanistic and environmental commitments. With Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbors the Yamadas, The Wind Rises and The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, Studio Ghibli has delivered stories that are as personal as they are universal. They have won prestigious awards, including both the Golden Bear and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away, and more recently another Oscar for The Boy and the Heron.

In Europe as in the United States, these films are among the animators’ most acclaimed work, between art for art and the commercial challenges of the industry. They are true models, as much for the quality of their writing, directing and animation as for their commitment to extensive aesthetic aspirations. In 2001, the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka opened on the outskirts of Tokyo to showcase the animators’ work and rich heritage, as well as to show short films created for the museum, thus asserting the Studio’s cultural importance. In 2022, the Ghibli Park, a hybrid park facility expressing the world of Studio Ghibli, opened in Aichi Prefecture. Goro Miyazaki, the first Director of the Ghibli Museum, was appointed the Creative Development Director to oversee the park construction.

Image © Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 14 – 25 May 2024

 

Sidonie au Japon (2023)

Dir/Wri: Elise Girard | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Tsuyoshi Ihara, August Diehl | France, Drama 97′

“Writing’s all that’s left when you have nothing”

Isabelle Huppert and Tsuyoshi Ihara make an absolute dream casting in this tender tale of love, a third feature for French director and co-writer Elise Girard.

Sidonie au Japon is a wistful contemplative look at loneliness, loss and longing amidst tranquil Oriental landscapes brimming with blossoms where Huppert’s writer Sidonie has come to promote her reprinted first novel ‘L’ombre Portée’ (The Shadow Cast) inspired by her own life.

On arrival at Osaka airport the distinct foreignness of Japan and its social contrasts disarms the widowed French woman sending her dazed and confused into a state of reverie and reflection. The subtle absurdity of this culture shock also lends a delicious dash of dark humour to what is ostensibly a sober tale of mourning and transformation for Sidonie and her enigmatic Japanese publisher Kenzo Mizoguchi (Ihara), who is still married, but unhappily so. The couple embark on a series of interviews and book signings, Kenzo escorting Sidonie on an illuminating architectural tour of Kyoto with the same transcendent energy as Kogonada’s 2017 travelogue Columbus.

Japan is very much a character here: a land of haunting stillness where  everything seems hushed and deferential in contrast to Europe and the West. This ambience has an increasingly profound effect on the jaded writer enveloping her slowly in the past where she reconnects with the spirit of her dead husband (Diehl) who is revealed in luminous sequences where the two reminisce and comfort one another. These are not ghostly scenes but ones where his entity offers uplifting enlightenment bringing about a gentle but cathartic shift in her state of being as she becomes romantically drawn to Kenzo who she had initially found overbearing, particularly his habit of insisting on carrying her handbag. Their courtship is tentative and driven forward by subtle body language rather than words: “in Japan we don’t talk about those things we just do them”, says Kenzo to the disconcerted Sidonie.

Elise Girard has clearly been inspired by the lighter-hearted ghosts from David Lean’s Blithe Spirit (1945) or Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) rather than the more doom-laden presence in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017) with her characterisation of August Diehl’s Antoine and he gives a charismatic performance as the sun-kissed ghost in his hand-tailored suit and brogues. But the focus here is on the living and the interplay between Sidonie and Kenzo: a couple who somehow find each against the odds. Beautifully shot by Celine Bozon the closing scene is particularly amusing in referencing the apposite maxim ‘speech is silver, but silence is golden’. @MeredithTaylor

NOW IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE, BELGIUM

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Black (2024)

Dir: Sam Taylor-Johnson | Cast: Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, Jack O’Connell, Lesley Manville, Bronson Webb, Harley Bird, Juliet Cowan | UK Musical Biopic 122′

Star biopics stand or fall on the quality of their central performance. We generally resent the idea that anyone could step into the shoes of a beloved artiste, particularly one who is no longer here. “No one can be David Bowie,” we scoff, writing off films like “Stardust” before we’ve even seen them. It takes a lot to convince us otherwise.

So it should be said straight off that Marisa Abela’s performance as Amy Winehouse in Back to Black is astonishingly, blindingly good. She’s got the look, she’s got the strut, the attitude, the toughness, the vulnerability. But what about the voice? No one sings like Amy, right? Does Abela mime, or does she try to sing and, inevitably, blow it spectacularly?

Well, actually neither. Abela does her own singing, and she has the Amy voice down. The electric current that plugs you directly into the singer’s nervous system, the riveting delivery that won’t let your attention stray one iota from the woman at the microphone.

It doesn’t feel so much like impersonation as wholesale possession (although it’s clearly the result of great craft and technique), and I frequently forgot that I wasn’t watching the real Winehouse. But what does it say about Amy’s raw authenticity that it can be recreated so completely by another gifted performer? Maybe this irony is one reason for the aggrieved noises from some uber-fans. Maybe it’s possible to pay tribute all too well.

We probably shouldn’t go to Back to Black for a deep understanding of the motives and inner life of its protagonist. After all, we watched the unravelling in real time, on TV, splashed across tabloids, in concert, so we should have a few working theories. Amy had a stellar talent, and a rage for music’s capacity to express extreme emotions. Maybe she began to create drama in her life which she could mine for songs. Maybe she developed a taste for ever-darker material. And maybe the feedback loop span out of control and she was consumed by drama that couldn’t be controlled or reconciled.

The film shows us Amy’s family (surely too loving to be blamed for her demons?), her agents and managers (but no sighting of Mark Ronson), and Blake Fielder-Civil, the great love of her life, played with lithe physicality by Jack O’Connell. Blake starts the film as a strutting jack-the-lad, diminishes into a venal, battered toy-boy husband, and ends it struggling out of drug dependency, mumbling his prison psychiatrist’s script about toxic co-dependent relationships as he makes his final break with Amy. “You should be stronger than me,” goes the refrain of one of the early songs. But Blake obviously wasn’t.

“I’m an anachronism”, she tells him at one point, and despite the film’s stated aim to rescue and celebrate Amy – just as she wanted to restore jazz to its rightful place in pop culture – it seems to agree with the sentiment. The mercurial singer is framed in a rapidly receding world of cobbled streets, Victorian railway arches, pubs where you can still smoke, and pop performers who refuse to be moulded by their handlers.

Back to Black will stand as a monument to Amy’s London. Golders Green Crematorium, Primrose Hill, Camden Town pubs The Dublin Castle and The Good Mixer, the London Zoo and Soho Square and other landmarks make appearances, all captured in fine, muted colours. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is similarly subdued, mostly ominous drones and strings playing figures in low registers, wisely avoiding any clash with the Winehouse style.

An image of a caged canary is lingered on a few times too often – yes, we get it – but Amy teetering on crazily high pink shoes at her Glastonbury performance (itself a memorable set-piece) sums up her reckless abandon as well as anything here: flirting shamelessly with the audience, over-sharing about her private life, staying upright through sheer stubborn will and a little help from the roadies, and singing as if her life depended on it – which it probably did.

The world didn’t know it needed a torch singer with punk attitude until Amy Winehouse came along, but she thought differently. And it certainly missed her after she’d gone. @IanLong

IN UK and IRISH CINEMAS from 12 April 2024 

Ripley (2024) Netflix

Dir/Wri: Steven Zaillian | Cast: Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, Eliot Sumner, Maurizio Lombardi | US Drama series on Netflix

Tom Ripley, the raffish cad who steals through Patricia Highsmith’s psycho-thriller page-turners, gets a striking monochrome makeover in this stylish Netflix series – based on her first novel in the series The Talented Mr Ripley – and directed by Steven Zaillian who blazes a new trail for the 1960s grifter starring Andrew Scott – who is both vulnerable and venal.

Andrew Scott‘s Tom Ripley is not the suave, likeable rogue from the Texan writer’s creation ‘Deep Water’ or ‘The Cry of the Owl’. Here in this new series for Netflix he’s seen as a seedy swindler, uncomfortable with his life in a sordid bedsit in New York’s Bowery district, and certainly less self-assured than John Malkovich’s American trickster, who famously garrotted his travelling companion in Liliana Cavani’s suberb 2002 thriller Ripley’s Game. Incidentally Malkovich gets a role here as Reeves Minot.

Ripley. Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in episode of Ripley. Cr. Stefano Cristiano Montesi/Netflix © 2023

Scott is nevertheless immaculate in his re-imagination of the antihero. A glassy-eyed, high-performing psychopath desperate to rise to the occasion when Kenneth Lonergan’s brilliant Herbert Greenleaf, a shipping magnate, proffers an all-expenses-paid opportunity of a lifetime: a trip to Naples in its ‘dolce vita’ heyday to track down his son, Dickie (Flynn) a trust fund dilettante who has fled to southern Italy and re-styled himself as a playwright and painter (‘along the lines of Picasso’) with his laconic girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning makes a spectacular return).

But don’t expect a sun-drenched Italy basking in insouciance and graced with Alan Delon’s louche lounge lizard in Rene Clement’s Purple Noon (1960) – the light here is hard-edged as it stares down on jagged black & white echoing stairwells, stormy coves and chiaroscuro courtyards. Behind Ripley’s dark sunglasses lurks a calculating conman so out of his depth in Dickie’s milieu and so insecure of himself he could hit out, like Caravaggio, at any minute (the artist’s ‘Seven Acts of Mercy’ hangs in the local church). And Ripley even misjudges the soigne mood with Dickie – when he finally finds him at the top of a thousand steps in palatial splendour – by foolishly inviting a sinister stranger to drinks, bearing an ‘offer he can’t refuse’. Dickie couldn’t care less about money – these two are social worlds apart. But Dickie rubs Ripley up the wrong way too and they both part company under sullen skies.

Cinematic and compelling this is a watchable series both narrative wise and in artistic terms, Zaillian wrote and directed all eight episodes and it certainly makes for a worthwhile adaptation with its flinty humour and suggestive performances from Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning – Eliot Sumner striking the only slightly bum note as Freddie Miles. Miss Highsmith would be proud to know her creation is having another outing courtesy of this impressive series. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON NETFLIX

Black Flies (2023)

Dir: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire | Cast: Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, Mark Tyson | US Thriller 120′

Black Flies feels very much like a film you might have seen before: baby-faced paramedic rookie (Sheridan) comes up against the coalface of reality joining Sean Penn and his New York trauma team in Jean-Stephane Sauvaire”s blood-drenched docudrama of life on the streets. Meanwhile Mike Tyson is the bossman making sure they sticks to the rules.

Tye Sheridan makes it all watchable working alongside his antithesis – a less convincing Sean Penn – as a hardened medic whose integrity gradually bleeds out in the cliched finale (set to Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’), Sheridan becoming the knight in shining armour. We follow the two through their ‘casualty caseload’ of drug dealers, addicts and sex workers and we don’t care about any of them. But that’s the point. A decent thriller with a predictable outcome A pale rider alongside Martin Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 19 APRIL 2024

 

Chocolat (1988)

Dir/Wri: Claire Denis | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Isaac De Bankole, Giulia Boschi, Francois Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin | France, Drama 105′

In her intimately observed feature debut Claire Denis draws on her own experience of growing up in the twilight years of French authority in 1950s Africa exploring the social dynamics between the past and the present for men and women, black and white in pre and post colonial Africa

Isabelle Huppert is a young woman who returns to a remote outpost in West Africa where her formative years were spent in the company of Protee her family’s black ‘houseboy’ a powerful presence of dignity and intelligence played by Isaac De Bankole. The overall effect is one of resonating tranquility as we become enraptured by the daily exchanges between France and Protee as the story flows from to present that culminates in a luminous finale – that was then and this is now and we should not try to compare the two or apologise for history. @MeredithTaylor

ON 4K RESTORATION BFI BLU-RAY & DIGITAL from 29 APRIL 2024

Mother Vera (2024) Visions du Reel 2024

Dirs: Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson | UK, 2024, 91′

An ascetic life of prayer and devotion is not for everyone. But Mother Vera (birth name Olga) has chosen the path and shares her turbulent past and uncertain future in this sepia-tinted monochrome meditation that follows the ex-druggie nun through her first year in a monastery that starts in a snowbound Belarusian forest and culminates in sun-baked flatlands of the French Camargue.

After contracting HIV from her partner Oleg, Olga’s life of parties and secular pleasures came to an end and was replaced by daily prayer, devotion and animal husbandry in the remote monastery. We first meet Mother Vera prone on the stone floor of the religious establishment where she will live a life of asceticism, shoeing horses, bell ringing.

Wearing a black headdress and floor length robes, 

The monastery is also home to ex convicts – in the eyes of the Lord Christians both saints and sinners are all equal – and the nuns seem to exert a certain power over the men, who regard them with respect, the fact that ‘good and evil’ coexist in the world and in each of us – is transformative, one tempering the other, and providing the film with its spiritual message that good can conquer bad and this is acutely felt during the Easter celebrations when incense is burnt to purify the air and welcome the rebirth of spring.

Vera then goes back to her family in the wooded countryside  – two brothers and a mother along with a bevy of farm animals. Two donkeys and a sheep and later some horses and she has a particular affinity with horses – one amazing scene sees her riding through a snowy landscape on a white horse. They provide the healing that Vera needs along with close love of her mother as they go through the anxiety of her drug addition. And she repents our her sins in leading others into threat world. Love perseveres

Revealed through spellbinding visual language echoing the rigid discipline of monastic life, we enter the enclosed, shadowy spaces of a convent outside Minsk. Sound and silence submerge us in the rhythm of the community. After twenty years of monastic service and faced with a life-changing decision, Vera must confront her troubled past to find the freedom she desires.

VISIONS DU REEL | 12-21 APRIL 2024 NYON, SWITZERLAND 

The Good Teacher | Pas de vagues (2023)

Dir: Teddy Lussi-Modeste | Cast: Francois Civil, Toscane Duquesne, Shain Boumedine | France, Drama 97′

Films about the challenges of being a teacher in the 21st century should have their own sub-genre; in 2012 The Hunt set the trend and got an Oscar nomination for and in the same year Francois Ozen comedy mystery In the House, won the Golden Seashell at San Sebastián. School of Babel addressed the issue of immigrant integration in 2013. The stresses strains of working of coping with complaints are dealt with variously in A Proper Job (2023) The Teachers’ Lounge (2023) and About Dry Grasses (2023). And finallyThe Holdovers (2023) adds a welcome twist of comedy to a fraught scenario . This latest tale is from French director Teddy Lussi-Modeste based on his own experience.

Francois Civil, best known for his swashbuckling antics as D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers series, is once again impressive as Julien Keller, a teacher who is put through the mill when a teenage girl in his class accuses him of sexual abuse, totally out of the blue. Soon the allegations spread until the entire school is thrown into turmoil, with Julien fighting to clear his name, and safeguard his own sanity.

Calm and reasonable, Julien appears to be the ideal teacher. Early scenes see him taking trouble to help struggling pupils in his class and generally keeping discipline without appearing draconian – not easy in a chaotic multi-racial co-ed in a Paris banlieu where Julien soon faces mounting pressures from Leslie’s disordered brother, and fellow students who pitch in with individual views on a situation that exposes wider issues both at school and at home.

Lussi-Modeste and Audrey Diwan (Happening) avoid cliche in a layered approach to a narrative that could easily have opted for simplistic solutions. The Good Teacher shows how an isolated event can quickly escalate and get out of control in today’s ‘culture of blame’. @MeredithTaylor

THE GOOD TEACHER is on release in France and Belgium.

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Dir: Mel Gibson | Cast: Jim Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci. | Drama 127’

Lives of the founder of Christianity had been a cinematic mainstay since the Passion Play of Oberammergau was first filmed in 1897; while during the century that followed many eminent filmmakers had expressed the desire to tackle the subject. But nobody could have dreamt that a version would be directed by Mel Gibson – whose metamorphosis from the personable young actor in films by Peter Weir to a standard bearer for the Right had been deeply dispiriting to contemplate – and displays a morbid fascination with the violence of his death rather any interest in his ideas (the sheer length of time it takes the Messiah to survive in the face of sustained torture and flagellation doubtless stemming from Gibson’s desire simply to prolong the bloodshed rather than to the indomitably of his spirt).

The version depicts Jesus of Nazareth’s final hours on the days of his crucifixion in Jerusalem based on a screenplay by the American writer Benedict Fitzgerald who is also credited as ‘translator’ on the Coen brother’s comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

The status of Pasolini’s ‘Gospel According to St Matthew’ as the definitive cinematic life of Christ continues to remain unassailable; but it was certainly a canny move by Gibson to employ subtitled dialogue in Aramaic, since lines like “It’ll never catch on” when Christ demonstrates his new invention called “a table” (he’s a carpenter, geddit?) would otherwise have had audiences in fits. @RichardChatten

Priest of Love (1981)

Dir: Christopher Miles | Casr: Ian McKellen. Janet Suzman. Mabel: Ava Gardner. Tony: Jorge Rivero. Dorothy: Penelope Keith. Christopher Miles directed.

Ten years after filming D. H. Lawrence’s ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’ director Christopher Miles rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into the final years of the author himself in this pretty if garrulous combination of travelogue and period drama.

As the great man himself a relatively young Ian MacKellan resembles and occasionally sounds like a ginger Wilfrid Lawson. The supporting cast includes the inevitable John Gielgud as inquisitor-in-chief Herbert G. Muskett, while the women in his life comprise the unlikely triumvirate of Ava Gardner, Janet Suzman and Penelope Keith. @RichardChatten

NOW ON NETFLIX

There’s Still Tomorrow (2023)

Dir: Paola Cortellesi | Cast: Paola Cortellesi, Valerio Mastandrea, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Emanuela Fanelli | Italy 118mins

A downtrodden Roman housewife turns her life around in this 1940s tale of female empowerment from first time director Paola Cortellesi who also stars in her multi-award-winning first feature.

In Neo-realist black and white Cortellesi plays a modern day Anna Magnani in a stylish domestic melodrama with a relevant political message that sees Delia (Cortellesi) living in Rome just as Italy is getting back on its feet after the Second World War. American GIs are still patrolling the streets but the winds of change are blowing through the open air markets where the long-suffering wife and mother does her daily shopping often queuing for ages to feed and care for her boorish father-in-law, three children and controlling macho husband Ivano (Valerio Mastrandrea) – who greets her with a slap in the face when she wishes him ‘good morning’ in the opening scene.

Delia tiptoes around her family always being the martyr by putting them first and ignoring her own needs while life is passing her by due to the patriarchal society of the day where women appear to carry the weight of domestic responsibilities and have no agency. Cortellesi puts this all down to the Fascist regime. And the future looks more or less the same for the next generation in the shape of Marcella, her teenage daughter ((Romana Maggiora Vergano), who is not destined for a career but a good marriage: her middle-class boyfriend Giulio (Francesco Centorame) could fit the bill. Meanwhile Delia is thankful for small mercies such as sharing a bar of American chocolate with her old flame Nino (Vinicio Marchioni) – the two of them smile to reveal stained teeth, reflecting the film’s dark slick of humour and addressing the poor state of the Italian postwar health service. Delia knows that change can only come if she puts her mind to it.

This is a stylish if slightly uneven crowd-pleaser which will go down well particularly with female audiences, and the cleverly contrived finale shows Cortellesi to be a filmmaker with panache and a rare talent for storytelling. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE/BELGIUM | IN UK/IRELAND 26 APRIL 2024

The Green Deal | La Promesse Verte (2024)

Dir/Wri: Edouard Bergeon | Cast: Alexandra Lamy, Felix Moati, Sofian Khammes, Julie Chen, Antoine Bertrand, Adam Fitzgerald | France, Eco- thriller 120′

A French student travels to Indonesia to complete his thesis on the palm oil industry but finds himself on death row accused of drug trafficking in this scenic but schematic geopolitical thriller from Edouard Bergeon.

Best known for his TV fare and award-winning 2019 drama In the Name of the Land Bergeon may have had the seventies cult classic Midnight Express in mind when he set out to conflate themes of ecology, drug trafficking and parental perseverance in his latest look at our threatened environment. The Green Deal is certainly a worthy attempt to address another threat to the planet in the shape of deforestation. But the result is too conventional and not exciting enough to grab our interest for two whole hours. And while the vast jungles of Indonesia certainly look impressive in Eric Dumont’s sweeping cinematography what we get narrative-wise is a worthy painting-by-numbers procedural that fails to generate emotion or surprise.

An impressive opening sequence sees eco warrior Landreau voyaging along the vast river to the heart of Java. Here, he meets up with locals, an inspiring NGO Nila Jawad (Chen) and doctor Paul Lepage (Bertrand). But after filming compromising footage of palm oil farmers Landreau falls foul of the system and ends up being thrown into prison falsely accused of that ‘old chestnut’ drug trafficking which is always wheeled out as an excuse when corruption needs to be covered up by the authorities.

Meanwhile back in France Landreau’s mother Carole galvanises government and big business into action in a bid to save her son, and the planet. From then on the focus turns to the thorny legal and political machinations involved in the palm oil industry exposing the French government’s complicity in this damaging threat to the environment and our health. Despite some interesting plot twists and turns the outcome is predicable.

Bergeon’s message is certainly heartfelt and worthwhile in addressing the issues concerned and raising the profile of this damaging industry that is ripping up and destroying vast tracts of Indonesia’s threatened ecosystems. But the story itself is lacklustre and we feel strangely uninspired by the plight of Landreau (Félix Moati) and his desperate mother Carole (Alexandra Lamy) despite her commendable efforts to drill down on the culprits – big business in cahoots with the Indonesian and (surprisingly) French government whose ministers merely shrug their shoulders in dismay.

The Green Deal works best as an expose of palm oil which is linked to the petrochemical industry and is now found in almost every manmade foodstuff linked to an increased risk of heart disease and other chronic health conditions. Beyond the danger the commodity poses to mankind, deforestation has destroyed a critical habitat for many endanger species – including rhinos, elephants and tigers. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE & BELGIUM

 

Once More with Ealing!

 

1949 saw the release of a trio of classic British comedies that really cemented Ealing’s place in history as this country’s finest film studios: Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whiskey Galore!

75 years later, these films offer a window into the hilarious nature of British eccentricity and ingenuity, and one that shows a healthy disdain for authority coupled with a not inconsiderable dose of anarchy. Today in the world of woke these features seem as fresh, innovative and, above all, as amusing as ever.

To celebrate its 75th Anniversary Ealing’s most endearing crime caper The Lavender Hill Mob (out 29 March) gets an up-to-date restoration and a nationwide re-release. Cinemas will be offering a selection of Ealing classics, both comedy and drama, under the banner ONCE MORE WITH EALING!

Other classics to revisit include Ealing stalwart Alec Guinness and his gang of thieves undone by Katie Johnson and her parrots in gloriously restored 4k Technicolor The Ladykillers along with ground-breaking and provocative dramas such as Pool Of London and It Always Rains on Sunday the archetypal portmanteau horror championed by everyone from John Landis to Kenneth Branagh, Dead of Night, and that man Guinness again, facing off against big business as they try to quash his miracle invention in The Man in the White Suit.

Also joining these bigger Ealing names are some lesser-known gems: Jean Simmons is blackmailed by her no-good husband back from the dead in Cage of Gold, Tommy Trinder impresses in a rare dramatic role in Ealing’s wartime ode to the Auxiliary Fire Service and their vital work during the Blitz in The Bells Go Down, and Lease of Life, written by Eric Ambler and starring Robert Donat as a Vicar who delivers an impromptu sermon that sets tongues wagging in Ealing’s only treatise on religion.

EALING DARK and LIGHT | STUDIOCANAL VINTAGE CLASSICS COLLECTION APRIL 2024

Une Famille (2024)

Dir/Wri: Christine Angot | Doc, France 2024 82’

An alarming expose of family disfunction is at the heart of this unsettling ‘cri de coeur’ from award-winning French writer Christine Angot who bases her documentary debut, set in Strasbourg, on her 1999 novel L’Inceste.

Angot, 59, strikes a gamine figure in her stylish black jeans and white boots but her delicate features hide a lifetime of trauma. We meet her in leafy suburb of Strasbourg where her father, who died a few years ago, first started abusing her when she was only 13. His wife and children still live there. Angot knocks on the door and barges her way into their stylish family home confronting her father’s wife and insisting her cameraman joins for moral support in what turns out to be a challenging confrontation that will expose the raw feelings Christine still harbours as she demands to know what this middle class woman thinks about her deceased husband’s covert history of long term sexual abuse. Now a mother of teenager herself, Christine is clearly emotionally damaged and still haunted by what her father did back then and its legacy that marks her own family. A brave and fascinating reportage.

The French novelist, playwright and journalist was born Chateauroux. Her first novel “Vu du Ciel” was published in 1990. She rose to prominence in 1999 with “L’Inceste”. This was followed by titles including “Les Désaxés” and “Une part du Cœur”, both of which were awarded the Prix France Culture. Her most recently published work “Le Voyage dans l’Est” won the 2021 Medici Prize. She was made an Officer of Arts and Letters in 2013 and has been a member of the Goncourt Academy since 2023.

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | BERLINALE PREMIERE and winner of Tagesspiegel Readers’ Jury Award 2024.

 

Civil War (2024)

Dir/Wri: Alex Garland | Cast: Nick Offerman, Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Jesse Plemons, Jefferson White, Cailee Spaeny | US Drama 109′

Civil War provides UK filmmaker Alex Garland with an expanded American canvas on which to explore themes and ideas of his four earlier, more intimate, British films. This new UK/USA co-production follows the journey of a quartet of media journalists racing against time in a 4-wheel vehicle as they travel from New York through Pennsylvania onto Washington DC to record a make-or-break address to the nation by a beleaguered President of the USA. The journey itself is no joy ride as the American landscape has been ripped apart by warring communities that has paralysed the White House at the heart of American politics.

In one chilling sequence, the journalists remind a menacing ginger henchman with red glasses (played by Jesse Plemons) that ‘We’re Americans, ok?’ to which they get the reply ‘What kind of American are you?’. In another scene, Kirsten Dunst, as a world-weary war photographer journalist (named after Lee Miller the WW2 war photographer), has become the reluctant mentor for a young woman (Cailee Spaeny) who is hungry for experience without comprehending how bloody and awful is the reality of war. The older war photographer mentions she has covered the horrors of war thinking that this would be a warning to others not do so again, although she knows now that this is not the case.

In another of the most tender and telling scenes in the film, the photographer agonises over the decision to delete or retain what may be a beautiful image but also one which may exploit the death of a man she has befriended. It is in scenes like this that Garland raises moral dilemmas between what the human eye can see and the camera lens records that is at the heart of photography and the subject of Haskell Wexler’s 1968 film Medium Cool. The film also suggests the spectre of Susan Sontag’s devastating essay Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). It is within the skill of Garland’s writing that themes questioning politics, media and society can be found beneath the surface of a film fundamentally built on images linked to a physically fast flowing narrative.

Garland is added by a production team from earlier films and Rob Hardy’s use of a new small light camera (DJI Ronin 4d) is able to keep the action stable when viewed on both IMAX and smaller screens. Fast-moving action sequences benefit from off-screen input of an experienced ex-Navy Seal adding authenticity to the film’s vivid sense of physical movement with Glenn Fremantle’s soundtrack combining lush chords of stereophonic music with soundscapes. The performances are skilful and reveal the director’s sensitive understanding of women in largely maledefined environments. Kirsten Dunst brings depth to the role of the mature photographer/journalist just as much Garland centred earlier films around female characters with the sensitive performances of Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina, Natalie Portman in Annihilation, Sonoya Mizuno in Deus and Jessie Buckley in possibly his most personal and misunderstood film Men.

Civil War also fits very well alongside outsider filmmakers who have observed America at a not so cool distance and is comparable with American films made by Europeans such as Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. The film that Civil War most echoes may well be the Italian director Antonioni and his daring and ground breaking critique of America in Zabriskie Point from 1969. Civil War contains similar cinema-verité images of protest between civilians /students and military police/guards suggesting that nothing much has changed since the revolution of 1968. The UK-based filmmaker also captures images of the decay of former glories of communities crystallised by beautiful images of a damaged circus clown model, neglected rural landscapes and characters who are framed or towered over by the glass and concrete of American architecture.

Just as Antonioni questioned the breakdown of society and consumerism in 1968 there is also rich and potent post COVID/ Capitol Hill riot material here for Garland in 2024 with both films involving a journey heading towards apocalyptic finales. Civil War tackles the meltdown and threat to order by the divisive behaviour of people that is accelerated by politicians and speculates on the current fear that America is drifting towards a kind of anocracy, existing somewhere between democracy and autocracy. If Garland’s earlier films derived from intimate, dystopian and out-of-body time zone experiences his latest could be viewed as the nightmare of what becomes of paradise as envisaged by the youthful ‘trippy hippy’ but now older protagonists of Garland’s breakthrough 1996 novel The Beach.

Civil War may have rough edges linked in places to the ambitious script, although it remains a remarkable contemporary outing revealing a sensitive director with the ability to harness vivid images of death and violence from acts of warfare. @PeterHerbert

https://www.peterherbert.online

https://theartsproject1.wixsite.com/theartsproject

CIVIL WAR on release from 12 April 2024 | PREMIER IMAX London on 19/3/24 with an introduction from Alex Garland

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Dir: Cameron Cairnes/Colin Cairnes | Cast: David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss | US Comedy Horror

Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other. Unaware he is about to unleash evil into living rooms across America.

The Cairnes write and direct this entertaining and witty possession horror comedy with Dastmalchian holding it all together in a dynamite tour-de-force as Johnny Carson.

NOW in UK Cinemas

The Door in the Wall (1956)

Glenn H. Alvey Jr | | Sci-fi Drama

The cinema has employed the split screen almost since the dawn of the medium, and like devices such as irises became regarded as moribund with the introduction of sound, becoming trendy again with the nouvelle vague.

Based on a story by H. G. Wells, visual antecedents to ‘The Door in the War’ are contained in the portmanteau film ‘Dead of Night’ – which also used Wells as a source – and the Technicolor scenes depicting the garden in the otherwise monochrome ‘The Secret Garden’; while Ingmar Bergman was soon to recreate the effect in ‘Wild Strawberries’ to illustrate the longing to renter the past, and a similar mood later infused the 1960 ‘Twilight Zone’ episode ‘A Stop at Willoughby’.

As for the Independent Frame itself, it grows on you as it progresses, with the use of colour on the whole quite retrained – as in the subtle verdigris hue employed to highlight the titular door – but it heightens the impact of the exotic birds, the diaphanous green of the lady in the garden and by default the black & white photographs in a family album; and as in 3D the overall distraction is amply compensated for by the visual impact of the moments when it really comes off.

The film also recalls Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ in the laconic way the changes in the framing is achieved. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Way of a Gaucho (1952)

Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Rory Calhoun, Gene Tierney | Western Drama 97’

Jacques Tourneur arrived in Argentina to make this late addition to Hollywood’s good neighbour policy a bit too early to avail himself of CinemaScope – which would have been well suited to the vast horizontal expanse of the Argentine pampas, seen to good effect thanks to Tourneur’s elegant use of lateral tracks – while the bright red of the soldiers’ caps displays the dramatic potential of Technicolor.

Rory Calhoun – in gaucho pants that would nowadays contravene numerous health & safety regulations – and Gene Tierney in a veil aren’t obvious casting as Latinos, but Richard Boone as usual gives good value as a cavalry officer whose robust view of discipline finds expression in staking people to the ground; while its not every film in which you get to see Everett Sloane as a singing gaucho. Based on a novel by Herbert Childs, Alfred Newman as usual contributes a noisy but appropriate score. @RichardChatten

I Could Never Go Vegan (2024)

Dir: Thomas Pickering | With: Thomas Pickering, George Monbiot, Sophia Ellis, Melanie Joy, Gemma Newman, Alan Desmond, Minik Patel, Paul Youd | UK Doc 97’

There are so many reasons to go vegan according to a plausible new documentary that takes us jauntily through the long list of why eating animal protein is no longer viable according to first time feature filmmaker Thomas Pickering – who has never eaten meat.

Born in the 1980’s and raised vegetarian, before switching to a vegan diet, Tom is convinced that his way of eating it the right way for animals, his own health, and the planet. In his vehement attempts at proselytism he comes up against some reasonable claims: “vegan food is expensive”, “how d’you get your protein” and “climate change doesn’t exist” are just a few.

So Tom sets out on a quest to investigate whether veganism is justified by talking to athletes, doctors, scientists, psychologists, farmers and even chefs. He talks to a game 84-year-old taking part in his sixth ultra-marathon, and visits a factory farm where the practices are appalling to say the least in footage that is painful to watch and these scenes are to be applauded in raising animal welfare issues. Worth mentioning here is also diseases contracted from animal sources such as campobylactor  and E Coli.

Whether you are convinced or not – and there’s something extremely irritating about Pickering’s bumptious way of putting across his point of view – most of us agree that there are highly plausible reasons to choose a varied diet and that occasionally eating animal protein with its rich range of vitamins is healthy despite objecting on humane grounds to animal welfare and slaughter methods, particularly with regards to halal practices – a topic Pickering sadly fails to explore – or even mention.

Directed, edited and written by Thomas and his brother James, with support from Heather Mills (ahhh!) Peter Egan and Alicia Silverstone, I Could Never Go Vegan is decently made and researched. But when somebody bangs on about their opinion for over an hour, without any counter-argument I want to run for the hills in the opposite direction, fast. But many will find this revealing and persuasive, I’m sure. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK and IRISH CINEMAS from 19 April 2024

 

Phantom Parrot (2024)

Dir: Kate Stonehill | UK Doc

Digital surveillance is all part of being in the internet age and we go along with it while not being entirely at ease at being spied upon against our will. It’s just one of the downsides of modern life. We share the info, others use it to their own advantage.

Kate Stonehill’s documentary explores a far more sinister form of surveillance. It focuses on our mobile ‘phone use via a new state programme nicknamed “Phantom Parrot” that allows the government to plot our whereabouts at any given moment through our active handheld devices. With the nation’s increased exposure to nefarious elements at UK ports (sea, air or rail) the police have been given enhanced search powers under the 2000 Terrorism Act, and this allows them to crack down on suspects, at will, demanding PIN codes and passwords across all their devices and the further power to confine them to three months in prison, if deemed appropriate.

In 2016, Muhammad Rabbani, a director of Cage, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of Muslims held under war-on-terror laws, came under police suspicion under Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act when he travelled back to the UK from Qatar. And he was not the only one stopped. Much the same as your luggage  being randomly rifflled through when airport security staff get bored, it’s a similar situation. And nobody likes it but that’s the deal. For some unknown reason Rabbani was subject to a random check at border control and when he refused to comply with police protocol he found himself in court and threatened with prison.

Stonehill became fascinated with his case and decided to make this film with a view to ‘making the invisible world visible’. Luckily for Rabbani, Gareth Pearce, a human-rights lawyer came to his rescue. I, for one, am  glad the police are patrolling our borders. That’s what they’re paid and trained to do and we rely on them to keep us safe. @MeredithTaylor

Phantom Parrot is in UK cinemas from 15 March

 

 

 

 

 

E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea (2024)

Director: Beatrice Minger | Co-directed by Christoph Schaub | Written by Beatrice Minger in collaboration with Christoph Schaub | With: Natalie Radmall-Quirke, Alex Moustache, Charles Morillon | Switzerland 2024 | French& English w/ EN subtl., 89′.

Eileen Gray was a creative genius and the first woman to conquer the territory of architecture at a time when men controlled it all. This new film reflects on Gray’s impressive career and her avant garde house on the Cote d’Azur and will appeal to cineastes and lovers of art and design alike.

Unfolding as a stylish hybrid documentary E.1027 is a filmic journey into the emotional world of Eileen Gray, who was born into a large family in County Wexford, Ireland before before moving to London where her career languished in the shadow of her male colleagues in the world of architecture at a time when the profession was dominated by men.

In the 1920s women architects found themselves confined to designing interiors but Gray broke the mould by moving to France where she courted the art scene before moving south where she found a plot of land on the water’s edge in Roquebrune – Cap Martin and fulfilled her dream of having a modernist house on the Riviera.  A self-confessed bi-sexual she lived with her younger lover, the editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Architecture Vivante’ Jean Badovici. The two crossed paths with fellow architect Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne but Corbusier comes off the worse for wear in Swiss filmmaker Beatrice Minger’s take of events. He is seen an arrogant rather self-regarding character who muscles into Gray’s world by decorating her house with his own murals.

Eileen Grey – the house at Roquebrune – Cap St Martin

Minger’s film takes us into Gray’s inner circle, a tightly knit coterie of designers that included Fernand Lager, Corbusier and his wife Yvonne. Early on Gray counteracts Corbusier’s theory that a house is ‘a machine for living’  considering it more spiritual than that: ‘A place you surrender to, that swallows you. A place you belong to”.

Gray and Jean Badovici discovered the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin location that sits on the Côte d’Azur between Monaco and Menton. Due to its rocky, cliff-hanging location, wheelbarrows has to be used to transport materials on site. Gray named the house: E for Eileen 10 for John Badovici but left the place two years later: “I like doing things but I don’t like possessing them”. Eileen had already bought another plot of land inland and even more remote location and she left her house to ‘Bado’.

The film then broadens its focus onto Badovici and Corbusier’s relationship, with the French architect claiming Gray’s scheme for the house was copied from his own pen design. He built his own wooden Cabanon alongside a little bistro near to E.1027. But the Second World War put an end to the rivalry when Nazis occupied the Roquebrune house riddling the walls with bullets.

In the title role Natalie Radmall-Quirke smokes her way  throughout this intimate portrait of the artist who appears both victim of her emotions and driving  force behind her lover Bado – in one scene a graceful dance is testament to their feelings for each other. After leaving the house Gray was forced to contend with Corbusier’s arrogance, although he valiantly tried to find a buyer for the Roquebrune house which eventually to a Swiss art Marie Louise Shelbert who misguidedly thought he had designed it. No one came to Bado’s funeral.

Family money and her strong work ethic clearly allowed Gray to remain financially independent all through her life although there is never any mention of commissions outside her own designs although – many of her schemes never left the drawing board until later recognition saw her furniture sell for astronomical prices although  her famous house had a less illustrious ending. In a final interview Gray emerges as an appealingly decent woman without a shred of ego.

E.1027 also brings to life conflicting undercurrents in the Parisian art scene of the 1930s. A fascinating finale allows us to meet Eileen Gray in a brief interview. She comes across as modest and appealingly lacking in any ego. @MeredithTaylor .

E1027 – Murals by Corbusier

 

EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA which will celebrate its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2024 (March 13-24, 2024) in Copenhagen as part of the INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION programme.

 

The Persian Version (2023)

Dir/Wri: Maryam Keshavarz, Producers: Anne Carey, Ben Howe, Luca Borghese, Peter Block, Corey Nelson) | US Drama

Vibrant energy and a dash of humour powers Maryam Keshavaraz’  crowdpleaser forward. The Persian Version sees a large Iranian-American family gathering for the patriarch’s heart transplant. The dramatic twist is a family secret that catapults the estranged mother and daughter into an exploration of the past that flips backwards and forwards between the United States and Iran as the two discover more kinship than they first imagined.

Enlivened by exuberant dance routines to a vintage American and Iranian pop score, the highlight of the show is vivacious newcomer Layla Mohammadi whose over-the-top personality is tempered by her ‘mean mummy’ parent Shireen (Niousha Noor). Occasionally erring on the tediously overtalky this is a spirited and earnest attempt to address cross-cultural identity and bring together past and present in a ‘healing’ way. @MeredithTaylor

ON RELEASE FROM 22 MARCH 2024

Immaculate (2024)

Dir: Michael Mohan | Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Alvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli | US Horro 89’

Cecilia, a young American woman, travels to an Italian convent to pledge her life to Jesus (“what a waste!” an official sighs ruefully as he processes her through customs), joining a cadre of young nuns dedicated to helping their sick and demented elder sisters through the last phases of their journey to ‘the Lord’. Cecilia completes her vows and is welcomed into the community as its latest bride of Christ. All seems well.

Well, almost all. Sexuality is surprisingly prominent in daily life: elegantly-cut robes flatter lithe figures; one nun suggests that another’s sour demeanour is the result of “her vibrator’s batteries running down”; and, oddest of all, the building has its own well-equipped gynaecological clinic, complete with a dedicated doctor. As more warning signs accumulate, our misgivings about the convent are more than confirmed (a violent prelude has already clued us up on the extreme risks of trying to leave it).

Immaculate is the passion project of its star, Sydney Sweeney, emphasised by the prominence of her name above the film’s title. Noted for her eye-catching appearance in the video for the Rolling Stones single ‘Angry’, the actress first found fame with TV series ‘The White Lotus’ and ‘Euphoria’.

Sweeney isn’t the first actress to use the clout that comes with success to back a dark and challenging project. For instance, Olivia de Havilland was the motive force behind The Heiress (1949): selecting and securing the property, talking William Wyler into directing it, and playing a lead part at odds with her usual serene glamour.

Similarly, the narrative of Immaculate calls for Sweeney to portray a gamut of strong emotions. Cecilia begins the film cowed by the convent’s gravitas and opulence, albeit armed with a quiet, steely faith which will eventually put the institution to the test. She ends it in shrieking, blood-drenched agony, facing a poignantly fateful decision.

Immaculate is a stylish, well-made and intelligently written horror with high production values. Its vision of a malign and conspiratorial Catholicism is not new, but it manages to cast a spell (undermined at times by frequent jump-scares, heavy-handedly underlined by non-diegetic soundtrack explosions) as it builds towards a visceral climax.

The latter part of the film feels a little rushed and truncated, and some elements are under-developed: neither Cecilia’s formative near-death experience nor the existence of a sub-order of sinister, red-masked nuns are fully explored, and I’d have liked more character development for the two nuns (one supportive of Cecilia, the other stonily opposed) who gravitate to her.

But this is Sweeney’s show. The third act sees Cecilia facing her fate almost alone in the once-teeming building as she hurtles towards a starkly memorable denouement. Unlike the cold revenge enjoyed by de Havilland in The Heiress, retribution in Immaculate is served piping hot, and Sweeney throws herself into the finale with such crazed gusto that most will feel sated by her maniacal power. @IanLong @_i_a_n_l_o_n_g_

Ian Long is a writer and story consultant who teaches various aspects of screenwriting in his Deep Narrative Design workshops. ‘Stargazer’, a psychological drama feature co-written with director Christian Neuman will be released later this year, and Ian is currently developing ‘Malediction’, a supernatural feature set in southern Italy.

IMMACULATE is in UK cinemas from Friday 22 March 2024

The Golden Thread (2022) Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir: Nishtha Jain | Doc 90′

The Jute industry has been the mainstay of millions of Bengalis for hundreds of years but is now in a state of decline putting their livelihoods in jeopardy.

In artfully composed shots Nishtha Jain’s documentary exposé examines the relationship between factory and labour in an industry which has come under pressure due to the switchover to plastics. The Golden Thread transports us from the peaceful riversides of West Bengal, where the green canes of jute grow in abundance, to the two largest jute factories in the Indian region around Kolkata where the plant is woven into material. 

The Golden Thread could easily be set in the 18th century but this is modern day West Bengal. The camera follows hot on the heels of workers arriving by bike at the vast Naihati Jute Mills where the dried jute is being stored in bundles before it reaches the massive weaving looms. The frenzied din of spinning soon takes over and then cuts back to the peace and tranquility of a muddy riverside where a man in a large straw hat is cutting down green canes in preparation for drying. 

Although the heyday is over for the jute industry, Naihati is proud to announce “we manufacture environment friendly jute… which includes food grade jute products (hydrocarbon free) and geo-textiles”. State aid has kept this sustainable alternative to plastic going but the future looks bleak despite the eco potential of jute.

The challenge to survive continues for many Bengali labourers who still rely on the factory to support themselves and their families despite poor working conditions. Accidents and jammed machines are a frequent occurrence. Grievances, hopes and fears are aired and compete with the din of the whirring spinning machines. The workers’ plight is taken up by the unions who are fighting to raise pay to a minimum wage requirement of £200 a month and improve conditions in general. It’s a familiar story of quality over production that connects to a global narrative of struggling traditional industries and communities all over the world. @MeredithTaylor

SCREENING DURING BERGAMO FILM MEETING | 9 – 16 March 2024

Pendulum (1969)

Dir: George Schaefer | cast: George Peppard, Jean Seberg, Richard Kiley | US Noir Thriller 106′

A glossy, extremely well-acted film that marks the point of contact between two contrasting career arcs: George Peppard had already reached its apex in pictures, and he was soon to find his niche as unorthodox TV lawmen for which this served as something of a dry run with his pursuing a baby-faced killer who anticipates Scorpio in Dirty Harry.

For Jean Seberg it marked a brief return to Hollywood after several years in European exile – still sporting her distinctive gamine haircut – as Peppard’s wife (an actor she actively disliked which made their chilly scenes depicting a marriage gone sour all the more plausible).

Directed by TV veteran George Schafer much it resembles a movie made for TV, but both the themes tackled – with the then shocking sight of people dying with their eyes open – and the use of Washington as a backdrop lend it a certain distinction. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Close your Eyes (2023)

Dir/Wri: Victor Erice | Spain, Drama 169′

Close you Eyes screened to rapt audiences at Cannes last year. It marked the Basque director’s triumphant return to the screen after an absence of thirty odd years when his Dream of Light (1992) had followed on from El Sur (1983) and his acclaimed debut The Spirit of the beehive (1973). His fourth features unites him with Ana Torrent who was only 6 when she made her screen debut in The Spirit.  

Close your Eyes is a slow-burning drama that reflects discursively on memory and disillusionment through a story set in the 1990s. An actor called Julio Arenas (José Coronado) has disappeared from the set after filming the opening and closing scenes that bookend a film called The Farewell Gaze. The director Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo) has subsequently abandoned the project and repaired to beachside Andalusia where he has kept himself amused with his writing until an opportunity to be interviewed for a programme about Julio’s mysterious disappearance sends his mind flooding back to the past as his friendship and working relationship with the actor resurface.

Erice uses Miguel’s experience as a way to delve into the theme of loss, identity and the mystical power of cinema and its interplay with the past and present offering both fantasy and illusion. Although Miguel has tried to obliterate certain painful memories of his past, the man he thought he was is recalled through the prism of the present. So the search for his lost friend offers an opportunity to shine light into the darker recesses of his subconscious that fills in some gaps and culminates in a startling finale. Erice explores the men’s work as artists in a subtle and layered piece of filmmaking that serves as a valedictory and highly intelligent reflection on the world of cinema. @MeredithTaylor

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 APRIL 2024

Elaha (2023)

Dir/Wri: Milena Aboyan Co-Wri: Constantin Hatz | Cast: Bayan Layla
Derya Durmaz, Nazmi Kirik, Armin Wahedi, Derya Dilber, Cansu Dogan, Beritan Balci, Slavko Popadić, Hadnet Tesfai, Homa Faghiri, Rebér Ibrahims | Drama 110′

Being a woman in a Kurdish community is all about secrecy and subterfuge according to this impressive feature debut from Armenian born writer/director Milena Aboyan who shows the ongoing societal pressure for Kurdish women and girls in modern-day Germany. Men – and particularly mothers – hold sway in this ‘multicultural’ environment where ironically the women seem to be the ones enforcing age-old traditions.

Elaha, 22, is dreading her forthcoming marriage to her overbearing Kurdish boyfriend because she will have to prove she is a virgin – and she is not. Although the film explores Elaha’s options to re-instate her ‘innocence’ what it really deals with is the tremendous pressure of conforming to traditional ideals in a tight-knit, often hypocritical, set-up.

Naturally we empathise with Elaha who is thoughtfully played by newcomer Bayan Layla. But she is by no means a straightforward character who is playing her fiancé off against her ex-boyfriend to whom she feels considerable attraction, for obvious reasons. She desperately wants to conform to her family’s wishes and doesn’t want to bring shame on her mother and father but on the other hand she feels the freedom her ex boyfriend accords her is far more appealing. The overriding impression we get in the scenes with her fiancé – who is stuck in a ‘Madonna Whore’ complex – is one of fear and oppression: not the basis for a happy relationship, let alone marriage. By the same token, Elaha does not want to be ostracised from Kurdish society or lose the love and support of those she holds dear.

Aboyan and her co-writer Constantin Hatz deal sensitively with the issues involved introducing contrasting characters, in the shape of Elaha’s teacher and counsellor, who call into question these old-fashioned values. Elaha finds their opinions persuasive, although they fly in the face of her family’s traditional stance. Her teacher points out the seemingly ludicrous situation Elaha finds herself in but Aboyan never paints her mother and father as unlikeable; they are simply victims of an outmoded way of life in the context of modern day Germany. This is a visually appealing and engaging film that raises some important questions about family and society as a whole and women’s role within it. @MeredithTaylor

Elaha will also preview on International Women’s Day (8th March) at the BFI Southbank, as part of their Woman with a Movie Camera strand | In cinemas UK & Ireland on Friday 26th April 2024

 

Frida (2023)

Dir: Carla Gutiérrez | Doc 87′

This latest foray into the life of the artist Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon (1907-54) follows Ali Ray‘s chronicle of the painter’s life seen through the prism of Mexican history.

Frida, based on her own previously unseen diaries and letters, is a much more intimate and visceral view told in her own words (voiced by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero).

In troubled life full of pain and tragedy, Kahlo managed to triumph through sheer adversity and her own brand of bloody-mindedness.“Was the virgin Mary really a virgin?” she asked a priest during mass. Clearly she was en route to be a success as a paintet when she started channelling her florid fears and morbid moods onto canvas after a life-changing contretemps with a tram left her bedridden at only 18.

In keeping with its subject matter this is an artful documentary that unfolds in colour and black and white. In an inspired touch director Carla Gutiérrez has decided to animate some of Kahlo’s work so the ‘Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair’ comes alive. This seems in keeping with Kahlo’s avant-garde and subversive take on things, along with her unusual marital arrangements with her long term much older husband and lover Diego Rivera which ended in divorce and then re-marriage based on a bizarre set of conditions including Kahlo’s refusal to ever sleep with him again (they had both been unfaithful, she with Leon Trotsky – no less).

So Gutiérrez offers up a refreshingly lyrical new take on the artist that lives to her reputation as complex, vulnerable but fearless to the last. @MeredithTaylor

Frida is in UK cinemas on 8 March and on Prime Video on 14 March.

 

 

 

All Shall be Well (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir/Wri: Ray Yeung | Drama 93′

All Shall Be Well opens as if all is very well during a sequence in which a diverse range of family generations are observed sitting around a table laughing, chatting and eating from copious bowls of food. There is nothing here out of the ordinary in a sequence that evokes familiar Asian family gatherings seen in many films linking traditions of Asian filmmaking, including the great family-focused films of Yasujiro Ozu.

The film swiftly shifts tone after we have been introduced to the two older women, Angie and Pat, who are clearly longtime partners, creating a successful business partnership and lovingly referred to by the family as Aunties. Angie (played by Para Au) is seen talking in a carefree way to Pat (played by Lin-Lin Li) who is in another room when Angie becomes aware of an ominous silence. Director and screenwriter Ray Yeung delivers the first of a series of audacious edits with a cut-away to a funeral sequence. We then observe, in a series of sequences, how shattered and distraught Angie feels about the loss of her soul mate.

Hong Kong based filmmaker Ray Yeung has made previous films on subjects including male relationships linked to the fashion industry in Front Cover (2015) and Twilight Kiss (2019) which looks at the problems of an older couple of gay men. All Shall Be Well takes Leung a stage further with his delicate, more unsettling than it looks, new film. It is a masterly study of complex family relationships and less than forgiving and harsh laws in countries like Hong Kong with links to China that are not progressive with LGBT rights. The film explores how family connections can be unsettling when order and inheritance involving wealth and property surface with the rights of couples in LGBT relationships literally less than clear or white-washed out of legal frameworks.

Apart from remarkable ensemble performances in particular from Patra Au at the centre of the film there is impressive camerawork by Ming kai Leung which gently moves the camera along with the movement of characters or frames sequences with close-ups as the drama unfolds. Yeung centres a key element around the spiritual healing powers of water that anchor a clash between Pat and her brother-in-law.

The film’s denouement is one of the finest in recent cinema. A revelation provides the otherwise unanswered mystery which has bothered and troubled Angie as she calmly but resolutely refuses to accept the fate handed to her by family rights and laws that enshrine injustice. When Angie discovers the real truth about her partner the film ends on a triumphant note of calm acceptance as to how love can transcend whatever blows that life brings. A powerful thought-provoking ending brings resolve and resolution to Yeung’s film and it is not surprising that All Shall Be Well walked off with the coveted LGBT Teddy Award against considerable competition at this year’s 74th Berlin Film Festival.

A film to watch out for when it is released which is likely to find a true worldwide following along the lines of recent enlightening LGBT themed films including The Blue Caftan.

TEDDY WINNER | BEST FEATURE FILM | BERLINALE 2024

PETER HERBERT
CURATOR MANAGER
THE ARTS  PROJECT
https://www.peterherbert.online

https://theartsproject1.wixsite.com/theartsproject

 

Baltimore (2023)

Dir: Joe Lawlor, Christine Malloy | UK drama 98’

Imogen Poots is the only reason to see this faded foray into the past that seems topical merely because of the current outburst of anti-capitalist rage being expressed throughout the Western World.

In Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s character drama she plays Rose Dugdale, an aimless girl with nothing else to do but rail against a system that saw her growing up in a rural mansion in Baltimore — a village in County Cork, Ireland — where her torpid existence soon sees her drawn to the limelight – in this case the contrasting excitement of stealing her own family’s clutch of paintings, in league with the IRA.

Flashbacks show her kicking against the system from an early age in sympathising with a fox during a hunt and a Black woman in a family artwork. The heist soon gives Rose a focus and some lead in her pencil transforming her from a ‘nothing’ to a ‘something’ in her own eyes – a rebel with a cause.

Rose’s mild-mannered parents (Carrie Crowley and Simon Coury) are mystified at this transformation from ordinary teenager to political activist and dismayed when she and her boyfriend (Patrick Martins) steal from them at a fundraiser for the IRA and so its goes on as Poots steals the show with a nuanced portrait of futility and misguidedness.

With its drab visual aesthetic and lifeless characters Baltimore is a dreary trudge through Dugdale’s life and times – which eventually amounted to nothing but caused suffering to many – but for Poots’ performance it is tolerable. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 1 MARCH 2024

Black Tea (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Abderrahmane Sissako | Drama 96′

Black Tea, Abderrahmane Sissako’s first narrative feature in a decade, feels like one of those amateurish student films assembled from a series of ideas (jotted down by Sissako and his co-writer Kessen Fatoumata Tall) that doesn’t quite come together. Formally known as The Perfumed Hill it plays out like an episode from a TV soap in scenes shot and then cobbled together without any regard for tonal integrity or even dramatic content.

Is it a female empowerment story: clearly no, judging by the storyline and absurd final reveal. The whole thing relies on the flimsy chemistry between the two unlikely central characters, who nevertheless make for a stunning duo, in the shape of Chang Han as a Chinese tea trader called Cai and Nina Melo, his latest apprentice Aya, who hails from The Ivory Coast.

In a bizarre opening scene Aya says a resounding ‘no’ to her ‘husband to be’ in one of those mass registry office weddings back in her homeland. Suddenly, and inexplicably, she finds herself in Guangzhou, China speaking fluent Mandarin and brushing up on the delicate art of tea-tasting at a shop owned by Cai who is unhappily married to Ying (Wu Ke-Xi). The two have a teenage son, Li-Ben (Michael Chang) and Cai also has a girl called Eva from a previous relationship.

When the scene shifts to the Guangzhou, Aya is already ensconced in the business, judging by her glorified position as assistant to Cai. When not working she spends the day prancing around in the local shopkeeping community. There are other African immigrants (who all speak fluent Mandarin) and who indulge in trite exchanges, touch up her hairdo and smile reverentially as her as if she’s a member of royalty. It soon emerges she has jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire relationship-wise as Cai is clearly not really available. He even asks her to sit alone in his bedroom while he entertains his entire family to dinner, including a rather traditional old grandfather who makes racist comments. There’s a suggestion of a lesbian frisson with Ying and Aya, but it stays in Ying’s fantasy world. And that’s just about it.

The film clearly takes its name from Nina Simone’s eponymous song, and is beautiful to look at with DP Aymerick Pilarski’s vibrant visuals capturing colourful hillside villages and tea plantations. There are some original elements here, but the lack of a meaningful narrative arc and no real drama to speak of makes this a vacuous follow-up to the director’s stunning third feature Timbuktu (2014). @MeredithTaylor

IN COMPEITITON | BERLINALE 2024

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Pepe (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias | 122′

Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’ Pepe which unspools in the Berlinale Competition and has been described by artistic director Carlo Chatrian as its  least “classifiable” entry, which is high praise indeed when you look at the distinctive films that surround it in this year’s competition. Following on from this luminous film Cocote, which won the Signs Of Life Award at the 2017 Locarno film festival.

Very much a hybrid text that encompasses humanism, epic, essay and mythic folk tale; all told through the prism of a hippopotamus the humans call ‘Pepe’ and is adrift from the clutches of his owner: Pablo Escobar. We have been here before, of course, with numerous documentaries that have looked at the Columbian drug lord and his menagerie of wild animals that lived on his armed compound. This is a very different beast from those spurious basic works.

A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. The Latin word hippopotamus is derived from the Ancient Greek hippopótamos, from híppos ‘horse’ and potamós‘river’, together meaning ‘horse of the river’. Sometimes what is represented is not supposed to be taken as what it appears; the horse of the river is here to do some heavy lifting. In what some would call zoomorphism, what we are looking at is the climate crisis, the migrant crisis, imperialism, post colonialism and of the destruction of late capitalism and its toll on the global South.

The voice is droll and of the kind that has seen too much, but is comes post death following it’s escape and journey down the Magdalena River where he will come to a brutal end that is the narrative that fits many that are othered by a populace terrified of what they cannot understand. Pepe remains in death the quintessential romantic, condemned to the corporeal.

The film enjoys itself and takes its time, it glides through many philosophical concepts within a hermetically sealed universe. The journey through the Magdelena seems like an exercise through South American literature particularly ‘The Apprentice Tourist’ by the queer mixed-race “pope” of Brazilian modernism: Mário de Andrade, even though he focused on the Amazon, but the reference makes poetic sense if not empirical sense.

At various points the film wanders off from the kinesis of the river and partakes in various human life, from beauty pageants and the emotional violence of destructive relationships that very obliquely connect to our eponymous hero. But far from a dying and deadened milieu, the Magdalena and its environs  is in fact brimming with life. This is emphasised with a dominant binary and linear ontology around life and death. The living and the dead are not fixed in a binary but bound together in an intimate, dynamic, circling dance. Decay and regeneration are two sides of the same coin.

The long, widening rivers of South America are very much horizontal and rhizomatic. As per Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant rhizomatic identity is unlike a root which grows vertically from one place, it grows horizontally, stretching out to meet other roots.

As the oral testament continues one thinks of the acclaimed Canadian author LM Montgomery who said, “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it”. To speak is to make sense of our reality but it also shows the impulses and the limitations of existence.

It is so invigorating to see a young filmmaker who has ambition to spare: Where a lot of his contemporaries settle for shooting rabbits, he is only interested in hunting big game and the Socratic questions that come with that territory. One can only be excited for the journey where he’ll journey to next. @d_w_mault

SILVER BEAR – BEST DIRECTOR | BERLINALE 2024

Sleeping with a Tiger (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir/Wri: Anja Salomonowitz | Austria, 2024 106′

A new docudrama raises the profile of Austrian avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) considered one of the most important artists of the 20th/early 21st century.

Radical in its approach, Lassnig’s “body awareness paintings” focused on her own life as a woman. It celebrates the female body not from the traditional male gaze of beauty, but from the female experience of  being a sexual and biological force, exploring gender conflicts, pain, and even the fear of cancer. Lassnig had a special way of dealing with colour she termed “colour vision”. Unlike the often tortured images of her fellow Austrian expressionist Egon Shiele, Lassnig’s impressionistic art is on the whole rather easy on the eye with a gorgeous pastel allure despite the trauma it often depicts, highlighted with the use of red.

Modern artists are invariably depicted as tormented: van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch. Lassnig was no different according to Austrian filmmaker Anja Salomonowitz who comes to Berlinale’s Forum sidebar with her fourth film, a decade after her debut Spanien (2012). This is an impressionistic take rather than a straightforward biopic. So, although it unfolds in chronological form, interweaving acted scenes and documentary, Birgit Minichmayr (The White Rabbit) plays the central role throughout the artist’s life from a young woman until the age of 94. Lassnig emerges as a prickly, intractable but intuitive character who often feels at odds with the art world but stands by her art to the very end. Throughout Salomonowitz attempts to probe Lassnig’s core being and is keen to stress her mental state and her struggle in the male-dominated art world, which culminates in critical acclaim, the artist often seemingly rejecting her success.

From childhood, Lassnig is seen in conflict with her mother, and this troubled maternal relationship bleeds into Lassnig’s future in Vienna when she is drawn, via the capital’s Art Academy, into the local post-war art scene. Morose and strong-willed, her own body and biological state becomes a focus for her work making it highly original. Intuitively, she judges the value of her painting long before the art world makes its verdict.

Later, as an accomplished artist with her own exhibition, she is seen complaining about the hanging of her paintings (‘they are too low’)- an art in itself – and demands a rehanging, threatening to withdraw her work. The gallery assistant, claims this is the best way of to sell the paintings. But Lassnig remains faithful to her vision.

Anja Salomonowitz’s homage to the artist certainly ‘fleshes out’ the “body awareness” of Lassnig’s art but I can’t help wondering whether the film would have worked better as a straightforward documentary. Visiting Vienna for last year’s Viennale Film Festival I was captivated by Lassnig’s paintings but I left this film feeling unsettled (although not surprised) by Salomonowitz’s take on the woman herself, and her cinematic interpretation of a brave and pioneering artist whose real life was sadly tortured. Sometimes art is better left to speak for itself @MeredithTaylor

BERLINALE FORUM 2024 | 15 -25 February 2024

A Taste for Women (1964)

Dir: Jean Leon | Cast: Sophie Daumier, Guy Bedos, Grégoire Aslan | Drama 100’

The title suggests a saucy Parisian sex comedy but the knowledge that Roman Polanski collaborated on the screenplay immediately puts us on notice to expect something far darker; and since Sacha Vierny had recently made ‘Last Year at Marienbad’ look so sumptuous his ugly black & white photography for this film was presumably by design.

Guy Bedos looks understandably bewildered as he’s assailed from all sides by assorted ghouls, gangsters and members of a weird cannabalistic sect employing machine guns, blow pipes and samurai swords. Edwige Feuillere brings her usual dignity and grace to the proceedings (although even she reveals a more perverse side savouring a sadomasochistic cabaret); while Ward Swingle’s score is sometimes stridently awful but is just as likely to work beautifully. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Arcadia (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Yorgos Zois | Cast: Vangelis Mourikis, Angeliki Papoulia, Eleną Topalidou | Greece/Bulgaria/USA, 99′

One of the first changes to the Berlnale that artistic director Carlo Chatrian made when he unveiled his first edition of the festival in 2019 was a new section entitled Encounters which was very much in the vein of the programming choices at his previous job: the head of Locarno. It is in Encounters that Arcadia premieres during the 2024 edition of the Berlinale.

Arcadia is the sophomore title from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Zois whose debut Interruption premiered at Venice in 2015. Following on from that film he is continuing to look at existence through the prism of the heritage of Greek myth and Odyssian Circular journey of love, loss, sex and death.

Formally more experimental and with a tone harbouring discombobulation that feels akin to slowly sinking through quicksand, it brings to mind Churchill’s maxim of the Soviet Union: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

We open on an educated middle class couple driving through the Greek countryside in the evening and discover they are married doctors, and that the husband Yannis (Vangelis Mourikis) is en route to identify a woman’s body in the aftermath to a car crash. His wife Katerina (Angeliki Papoulia), is along for the ride – it seems.

After doing their duty at the hospital they head to a holiday home to sleep. At this point when Yannis falls asleep the film starts to slowly uncover its true self. Katerina can’t sleep and discovers a youth in one of the bedrooms in a sequence that cryptically tries to explain the couple’s reality and why they can’t take their shoes off (which becomes a motif with a delightful payoff at the close). From here we are surrounded by the essence of sex in all its disguises. Sex, in fact, will become both an aid to memory, remembering and the subject of which most people tell lies.

The youth, acting like Beatrice guiding Dante through the forest in canto 2 of ‘The Inferno’, takes Katerina to the Arcadia: a bar come garage full of naked Rubenesque bodies fucking à la Carlos Reygadas. It becomes clear we are in some sort of limbo for the dead, or what in Greek myth was the in-between state called the ‘Fields of Asphodel’ before the journey to either Elysium/Heaven or Tartarus/Hell. The denizens of Arcadia have nothing to do but strive to remember, fuck, sing and drink.

When in a place of unreality, whether that be dream space or somewhere metaphysical, there is the danger of becoming nothing more than a series of non-sequiturs. But to seek explanation in a film like this defeats the object of what it is and how it exists and creates its world. There is of course a temporal vacuum that shows how a film is joined to reality: it reaches all the way out to it, but delimits the thinkable and thereby the unthinkable.

Through Katerina’s journey we encounter guilt, dead children, relationships destroyed by selfishness and carnal greed/erotic vagrancy. She is the one that needs to be released by the living: Yannis. As Emily Dickinson put it: Parting is all we know of heaven/And all we need of hell. We are then left with the perpetual contemplation of an elusive being that teaches us the art of loving the intangible. @d_w_mault

ENCOUNTERS 2024 | BERLINALE 2024 | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Yawn (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Aliyar Rasti | Cast: Mohammad Aghebati, Amirhossein Hosseini, Saber Abar, Mahin Sadri, Mehrdad Ziaie Iran 2024 Farsi, Subtitles: English 93′ Colour World premiere | Debut film | Debut film

The motto “It’s always better to journey than to arrive” is possibly the best way to describe this engaging debut feature from Iranian filmmaker Aliyar Rasti who has made it into the Berlinale Encounters sidebar after critical acclaim with his award-winning short In Between.

Dark and deadpan humour is one of the main attractions of his offbeat road movie that sees two unlikely blokes thrown together on a difficult mission in the style of Martin Brest’s Midnight Run (1988). Although the outcome may leave some viewers perplexed, the darkly deadpan humour and gripping storyline with its valid human insight carries a low-key political message of the kind the Iranians do well. And this makes The Great Yawn compelling from the start. Visually too it’s a winner with an extraordinary, atmospheric sense of place captured creatively in Soroush Alizadeh’s inventive camerawork. Quite why this isn’t in the main competition line-up is as much of a mystery as the film itself. Perhaps the selection committee were as challenged as I was with the finale. 

After dreaming of a cave full of gold coins, Beitollah, a religious man, (Aghebati) sets up a series interviews to recruit a paid companion – preferably a loner with no religious scruples – to collect the ‘forbidden’ treasure from the cave, and so claim his half of the booty. Shoja (Hosseini), an un-prepossessing bearded type who claims ‘not to believe in anything’, is selected for the job. Absolutely skint, an amusing sequence sees him begging for a toothbrush, no one obliges.

So the two set off the next day as planned, Shoja with absolutely nothing but the clothes he stands in. The odyssey – that mirrors life and all its challenges – will take them to the farthest corners and central deserts of Iran on a arduous journey where they will sometimes come to understand one another, sometimes not, in their search for the right cave (aka ‘the universal truth’). They are continually dogged by a poor young boy on a motorbike who calls himself ‘the bastard’ but doesn’t understand how he got the name.

Shoja puts his absolute faith in Beitollah, who aids and abets him all the way in their joint mission. To get a bit of money they stay with a farmer and work in her paddy field. She tries to persuade Shoja to stay (everyone has left to work in the city), but he declines, committed to the task at hand. After various encounters they come across a Caravanserai where they stay the night. The inn’s owner decides to follow them on their search for ‘the great yawn’ aka Jacob’s cave, purportedly the location of their ‘holy grail’. Will they find the meaning of life – that’s for you to decide. Rasta’s film is all about trust, truth and human faith. It’s also highly enjoyable. @MeredithTaylor 

SPECIAL JURY AWARD EX AEQUO | ENCOUNTERS 2024 | BERLINALE 15-25 FEBRUARY 2024

 

 

Afterwar (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Birgitte Stærmose | with Gëzim Kelmendi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Shpresim Azemi, Besnik Hyseni, Luan Jaha Denmark / Kosovo / Sweden / Finland 2024 Albanian, Subtitles: English 85′ Colour World premiere | Documentary form

This feature debut from Birgitte Stærmose takes us back to Bosnia for a raw reverie of an Eastern European conflict that still reverberates in the memories of those affected back in 1999. Fifteen years in the making and created in a close artistic collaboration with the cast who stare directly at the camera their faces still childlike, even though adulthood has now hardened them. They share bitter experiences of selling ‘phone cards and cigarettes in a struggle that still goes on decades later.

Pristina, war-torn Kosovo, is a grim city emerging slowly out of the festering fog of its slushy snowbound setting. In the dingy dawn of another day, car headlights glow, a red-eyed testament to the poverty and squalor that still dogs the capital. The documentary alternates between social realism, staged performance and an existential meditation on the long-term repercussions of war. Snapshots of shattered lives show that war may be over but a different war has now begun: that of survival. @MeredithTaylor

PANORAMA | BERLINALE 2024 | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2024

 

My New Friends (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: André Téchiné | with Isabelle Huppert, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Hafsia Herzi, Romane Meunier
| France 2024 | French, Subtitles: English | 85′ | Colour | World premiere

Andre Techine was last in Berlnale with L’adieu à la nuit was screened out of competition in 2019. At that time gay sexual-awakening stories were still quite thin on the ground and his film, co-written Regis de Martin-Donos and Celine Sciamma, felt fresh and innovative.

His latest, screening in Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar, although decent  rather unremarkable as it goes over old ground although the subject matter – political activism – is still big thing in France (think ‘Gilets Jaunes’ etc). This politically-charged drama is carried by Isabelle Huppert, as Lucie, a widowed forensics detective who finds herself on the horns of a moral and ethical dilemma when a new family moves in next door.

The dramatic backdrop of the Eastern Pyrenees is once again the setting for a lowkey, human story that shows how political leanings weigh more heavily than ever before on our day-to-day relationships, threatening to disrupt even the closest of friendships. And this personal strife lies at the heart of the film.

This time around the veteran director is with his regular co-writer de Martin-Donos in a story that unfolds in the small village of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, near Perpignan, where Lucie’s growing friendship with the woman next door (Hafsia Herzi) is put under pressure when it emerges her troubled husband Yann (Pérez Biscayart) has a hefty criminal record in police anti-activism with an ongoing involvement in violent ant-capitalist demonstrations in Toulouse and Montpellier. Naturally Lucie finds herself at odds with Yann exposing potential divided loyalties with his wife.

Huppert once again channels all the angst of a rather lonely soul who is forced to be even-handed towards her neighbours while at the same time standing by her private beliefs and professional credentials. Political activism is now becoming more widespread all over Europe and this makes the film thematically relevant despite its rather underwhelming presentation. @MeredithTaylor

PANORAMA AUDIENCE AWARD COMPETITION  | BERLINALE 2024

 

 

Cu li Never Cries (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Pham Ngoc Lan | Cast: Minh Châu, Hà Phương, Xuân An, Hoàng Hà, Cao Sang Vietnam / Singapore / France / Philippines / Norway 2024 Vietnamese, Subtitles: English

This lyrical black & white drama from Vietnam explores the nation’s past and present from the intergenerational perspective of a young woman and her widowed aunt who has just returned home after living in Germany. In her luggage Auntie Cu li carries a Pygmy Slow Loris, an indigenous primate from the Vietnamese rainforest, inherited from her dead husband. One strangely touching scene sees Cu Li dancing in a bar with a waiter and the Pygmy loris, the tiny animal seems to embody the essence of this proud nation, fiercely defending itself while remaining graceful to the end. 

Cu Li’s young niece, who lives with her, is preparing for her wedding. The two argue bitterly about the usual intergenerational conflicts. Meanwhile her kids and the monkey look on, a picture of guileless vulnerability. Another contrast between the strength and vulnerability of an oriental nation that has born the brunt of many conflicts. 

“The present keeps bringing us back to the past” opines Cu li.  She quotes the 1960s communist president Ho Chi Min (1945-69) known as ‘uncle’ who said of the Black River (that runs from China to North Western Vietnam): “We must transform the water from foe into ally – our final purpose is to tame the river”. At this point Cu li is pictured scattering her husband’s ashes into the raging waters.

While the young couple anxiously ponders their uncertain future together (Cu Li’s niece is already pregnant with another child), Cu li invites the waiter to be her partner at the wedding, offering him money. The waiter is concerned about being seen as her toy boy, and the Pygmy Loris once again appears to echo all this anxiety – a tiny but potent little animal capable of killing with the toxin that spurts from its elbows when in danger, while outwardly exuding grace and innocence.

A brief running time plays to the film’s advantage along with a simple soundscape of exotic birdsong and imaginative outdoor locations captured in DoP magical monochrome camerawork. In his enchanting feature debut Pham Ngoc Lan expresses the hopes, fears and regrets of his homeland in an often surreal, understated and tender gem. @MeredithTaylor

PANORAMA COMPETITION | BERLINALE 2024

Every You Every Me (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir: Michael Fetter Nathansky | Cast: Aenne Schwarz, Carlo Ljubek, Youness Aabbaz, Sara Fazilat, Naila Schuberth | Germany / Spain 2024 | German, Subtitles: English | 108′ | Colour | World premiere

An industrial coal mining zone of Cologne provides a heavy-duty backcloth to this thematically ambitious, atmospheric slice of social realism from German filmmaker Michael Fetter Nathansky who follows the gradual implosion of a relationship through the eyes of a woman called Nadine (Schwarz).

Relationship breakdown is a heart-sinking subject but it also makes for quizzical viewing in Alle die Du Bist that sees Nadine’s partner in different guises. The opening scenes, set in some sort of institution, are confusing at first as Nadine’s partner is revealed as a bull, a small child (played by Schrein); and an adolescent (Aabbaz)?. It subsequently emerges that Paul embodies all these identities by turns, – at least in Nadine’s gaze – and we gradually learn to accommodate this unique idea. The single mother has left her home in Brandenburg at the age of 24 and met the mercurial Paul while working in an open-cast mining installation. A proud father, he is also undoubtedly a man of many faces whose male charisma has clearly set her heart on fire.

But life moves on and Nadine falls on harder times largely due to structural changes in the industry. Nathansky’s idea of casting several actors to embody one character is a brave and fanciful one, and certainly pays tribute to one woman’s efforts to make do and mend and reinvigorate her long-term emotional relationship. At the same time Nathansky’s follow up to his director debut You Tell Me (2019) requires a large leap of faith on the part of the audience. Committed performances all round.  @MeredithTaylor

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | PANORAMA AUDIENCE COMPETITION | 15 – 25 FEBRUARY 2024

 

Eureka (2023)

Dir: Lisandro Alonso | Cast: Chiara Mastroianni, Viggo Mortensen, Rafi Pitts, Viilbjork Malling Agger | Fantasy drama, Argentina147′

Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni star in this striking  that sees a man in search of his daughter journeying into the unknown.

Everyone loves a good story but storytelling is not like it used to be in the Golden Era of Hollywood and or European arthouse traditions. That said, Argentinian auteur Lisandro Alonso always manages to intoxicate us with his mesmerising fantasy drama such as Jauja that seem to hark back to a strange and exotic past celebrating the weird and wonderful. Eureka opens as a striking classically styled western.

More an art-installation than a straightforward narrative film Eureka is an off-beat, slow-burning addition to his oeuvre that starts off in gleaming back and white. Mortensen fetches up in a silent backwater in the Old West – no hint of Sergio Leone – but his gunslinging skills are a match for Clint Eastwood when told by a local innkeeper to ‘f*** off’.

Shifting to the present, in full colour, the focus is then a Native American police officer who is working through a gruelling casebook of local petty criminal offences. This sequence morphs in turn to a surreal scenario as the officer drinks a potion that transforms into a bird that flies back to the Brazilian jungle where another bizarre occurrence unfolds. Alonso quails aware from form or narrative in a seductive sensory concoction that beguiles and mesmerises, possibly getting its name from the place where gold was first discovered. A transformative experience on the big screen. Give it a go. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 16 FEBRUARY 2024

Sex (2024) Berlinale 2024

Dir/Wri: Dag Johan Haugerud | Comedy Drama, Norway 125′

“Once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten”. Anita Brookner, Look at Me

Compelling, absurd and offbeat this chilled-out Norwegian dark comedy reveals the complex dynamics of human desire in a simple parable that centres on the lives of two happily married chimney-sweeps, who just happen to be dyslexic.

Best known for his award-winning 2019 drama Barn – Dag Johan Haugerud’s latest – the first film in a trilogy to be followed by Dreams and Love – unfolds in a summery suburb of Oslo where the two heterosexual men are casually chatting over their canteen lunch. Their conversation is banal enough at first but what is soon revealed in this casual tete a tete between Feier (Jan Gunnar Roise) and Avdelingsleder (Thorbjorn Harr) will have far-reaching implications on their family relationships.

Feier admits to having had casual sex with a male stranger but Avdelingsleder’s response is revealing in its insight into modern attitudes in Norway: “Admitting you’ve had sex with a man is easier than admitting you’re Christian”.

Avdelingsleder – who reads Hannah Arendt in bed – then describes a dream where he is a woman who has sex with David Bowie. This leaves him confused and questioning how much his personality is shaped by how he appears to others. His wife (Brigitte Larsen) later points out: “homosexuality is not just an identity it’s an activity“.

Predictably, Feir’s wife (Siri Forberg) is not impressed when her partner shares his one-off sexual encounter, and his revelation will reverberate the fallout intruding into their daily lives. She wants a full and frank discussion about what exactly happened and this opens up a thorny debate between the two about physical and emotional experiences and how we all define marriage, relationships and coupledom in general. These conversations are surprisingly affecting and go to show just how fuzzy the borders are in desire and sexual attraction in a film that probes and challenges pre-conceived views on sexuality and gender roles, both for the characters and us, the audience.

Writer/Director Dag Johan Haugerud offers up an upbeat and enjoyable look at how as humans we pride ourselves on our unique ability to love and communicate verbally, although our enhanced brains also make our structured lives more complex: at the end of the day we are basically all animals, albeit human ones, but once we start to analyse our feelings that’s where our lives become complicated forcing open that universal ‘can of worms’ about infidelity and the purported differences between the male and female brains in a debate that ripples out into religious and moral norms in modern Norway.

Although the pace slackens as the film unfolds Sex is an upbeat and often moving affair that comes to a satisfying conclusion despite the couples’ differences and recriminations. At the end of day this is a candid film full of hope that offers a relaxed and positive view of coupledom: “Think of love as a choice. I’ve chosen you and you’ve chosen me”. @MeredithTaylor

BERLINALE | ENCOUNTERS – BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD 2024

Paramount on Parade (1930)

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

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

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

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

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

Rei (2024) IFFR 2024

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

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

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

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

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

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | TIGER PRIZE 2024

 

Le Bonheur est pour Demain (2024)

Dir: Brigitte Sy | Cast: Damien Bonnard, Laetitia Casta, Beatrice Dalle | France, Drama 97′

Another example of how good actors don’t make a decent film is this  limp effort to infuse a dreary sink estate drama with romance – French style. 

A warmed-up version of Henri Fabiano’s 1961 classic it stars Damien Bonnard and Laëtitia Casta who certainly create a moody head of steam as the doomed lovers Claude and Sophie at the film’s core. Both losers, he soon ends up in prison leaving her, an abused single mum, with another bun in the oven. Quelle surprise!

There are artful touches in Daniel Bevan’s production design and Frederic Serve has fun with his lenses but the narrative – which may have been shocking back in the day – is now as tired as a Sixties council block, and not even veteran actress Beatrice Dalle, as Claude’s gutsy mother, can tart it up to be anything memorable.@MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

All of Us Strangers (2023)

Dir: Andrew Haigh | Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell | UK Drama 105′

Andrew Haigh’s new film All of Us Strangers may well be this British director’s most personal and accomplished film so far. Based on a Japanese novel The Discarnates by Taichi Yamada (1934-2023) which has been filmed in 1988 by Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938 -2020) the adaptations reveal how a remarkable literary source material can provide two fertile parallel viewpoints.

The Haigh adaptation is focused on Adam, a script writer, played by Andrew Scott, suffering from not only writers’ block but the crushing weight of a lonely unhappy life as a gay man. What has caused this is gradually revealed through subconscious thoughts about the loss of his parents. These are sublimely visualised by Haigh as Adam tentatively embarks on what is his first adult real-life relationship with Harry, another lonely gay man.

Haigh reveals care and sensitivity with actors, bringing out the best in Paul Mescal (as Harry) and Jaime Bell and Claire Foy (as parents) while the core of the film rests on a remarkable central performance by Andrew Scott. He plays a loner and is in tune with Haigh’s theatrical sense of interior mise en scene that sensitively uses framing of space to capture Adam’s viewpoint. Credit here is due to the tight flawless framing of Jaimie Ramsay’s beautifully lit and textured camerawork along with the original linked-in music and sound of Emilie Levenaise-Farrouch.

Scott and Mescal are completely at ease with each other and this is deeply felt in a sequence where the two men stroke each other’s naked thigh and knees which is erotic without being any more explicit. Likewise, the way Haigh surrounds and closely follows Scott during an eventful night in a night club, as his head swims to the sound of The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, reveals a filmmaker drawing from personal experience. The handling of a mother’s suppressed homophobia and the hint of gay cruising when first encountering his father are remarkable scenes capturing nuanced undercurrents. There is only one bedtime sequence involving the parents and son that feels uneasy.

Profound connections involving the providence of love and the need for redemption are at the heart of the film, separating time zones with the idea that there is a time to love, but also a time to die. The Obayashi drama has sensitive family relationship sequences involving a man and his deceased parents and a moody relationship with a female neighbour, although the film changes course by introducing a supernatural element involving zombie horrors feeding off a life force. This is finely tuned into Japanese culture and might explain why Obayashi’s version of The Discarnates is less well known in the west. The Haigh adaptation is more romantic and there is an uncanny feeling of spirituality also found in the work of Frank Borzage, another great romantic. Haigh appears to reflect that for his two damaged men it is only through love and adversity that souls are made great

All of Us Strangers builds on Haigh’s previous films Greek Pete, Lean on Pete, Looking, 45 Years and The North Water with a similar feeling for the interior spaces of homes, rooms, a ranch and the confined space of a boat stranded in ice. London at night in All of Us Strangers feels both alienating and melancholy, with the magical lights of cranes and high-rise buildings on the horizon becoming confined and darkened spaces for Haigh’s s lost souls. The daytime scenes when Adam wanders through the suburbia of his youth in search of his deceased parents have different film grain and light aiding the director’s ability to use space to explore complex emotional relationships.

The film’s final sequence brings to a full circle how ownership of our past can be grasped, although this ethereal finale has drawn criticism and may well be divisive. The audaciousness of both the finale and the fluid anti-realist thread flowing through the film suggests a gentle reminder of the daring of Powell and Pressburger as there are Matters Of Life and Death to be discovered at the heart of All of Us Strangers.

This is a triumphantly beautiful film that after more than one viewing suggests British film culture may have the heir apparent to the late great lamented Terence Davies. Haigh has the earlier filmmaker’s interest and ability with providing literary adaptations and resonance drawn from personal experience. We may well be witnessing a new chapter in the growth of gay related British cinema to be rightly proud of. Peter Herbert

PETER HERBERT is curator manager at THE ARTS PROJECT

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS

 

 

Get Your Man (1927)

Dir: Dorothy Arzner | US Drama 63’

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

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

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

Now on YouTube

How to Have Sex (2023)

Dir/Wri: Molly Manning Walker | Cast: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Enva Lewis, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Finlay Vane Last, Guy Lewis | UK Drama 91′

What sounds like a cinematic instruction manual soon turns out to be predictable revelation about how little has changed since we were all teenagers. Giggling, dancing, getting drunk (and even throwing up) is still par for the course for the kids in Molly Manning Walker’s dynamic feature debut set on a Butlin’s-style holiday camp in the sun-drenched Greek island of Crete.

The London-born writer-director, who cut her own teeth as a cinematographer of Charlotte Regan’s film Scrapper, shows there is still the same vulnerability and uncertainty in this story about girls grasping the nettle of supreme social confidence while everything around them is still weird and unpredictable.

Tara, Skye and Em You are the teen trio at the heart of How to Have Sex. Don’t expect to see anything naughty as Nicolas Canniccioni’s rolling camera drifts more over faces and tender expressions than actual nude bodies, although these girls are certainly attractive with their bronzed limbs and complexions in the bloom of youth. Tara (a brilliant McKenna-Bruce) does form a bond with a guy called Badger (Shaun Thomas) and then she gets close to Paddy (Bottomley), but theirs is a muddled encounter that leads to disillusion rather than jubilation leaving her off kilter and bemused by that thing called love. And the same goes for her relationship with Skye (Lara Peake), Manning Walker makes the sage observation that while girls can be best buddies they can also be bitter rivals.

Tara’s needling desire to put her first sexual experience to bed drives the drama forward as she negotiates the subtle art of flirting and seducing on the day-glo dance floor, to a thrumming soundscape. Script-wise, Manning Walker opts for an intuitive aperçu of adolescent life rather than anything gripping but this acutely observed and poignant generational expose really nails the innocence, cockiness and sheer abandon of youth. @MeredithTaylor

MUBI BLU-RAY and DVD release on 12 February 2024

Argylle (2024)

Dir: Matthew Vaughn | UK Thriller 139′

Pirandello meets Philip K. Dick in this disarming piece of escapism that starts out seeming to be an ultra-glossy piece of escapist hokum but swiftly changes tack when it transfers its attention to charmingly buxom Bryce Dallas Howard as an author caught up a plot so outlandish you keep wondering if the Vaughn and his scripter Jason Fuchs are going to make it all a dream to bring it to a resolution.

The film is full of surprises (such the identity of the actor briefly seen playing her boss which early on drew from the audience the first of many doubtless intentional laughs). Vaughn displays the style and aptitude for pacing already amply evident in Layer Cake, Kingman: The Secret Service, Rocketman and Kick-Ass and creates vivid colour effects all the more effective for being sparingly employed.

Sam Rockwell makes a personable hero, but the most memorable cast member is probably Vaughan’s own cat; a strange-looking moggy seemingly unfazed by the bizarre events going on around him. @RichardChatten

IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE and the UK

Pet Shop Boys Dreamworld (2023)

David Barnard | Musical Concert film 120′

Who’d have thought a couple of English lads from Tyneside would make it to multi-millionaire status. Not only coining it, but also giving pleasure to their international fanbase for the past four decades.

David Barnard’s concert film sets the summery scene in  Copenhagen’s Royal arena last July where a jubilant Danish crowd  cheer the opening number In Suburbia kicking off the Pet Shop Boys’ latest musical extravaganza.

Enveloped in white trenches and black polos ‘The Boys’ – aka Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – soon emerge from behind their silver sci-fi masks beaming on the audience against a background of monochrome moving images – Tennant – now 69 – on vocals and Lowe on keyboards rol seamlessly through a series of singable classics – each one memorable and unique: The Streets have No Name, I love you, you pay the Rent  Why Don’t We Try. A backing band joins them for I Could Leave You. Rocking a white fez and tuxedo Tennent turns up the tempo for a bilingual single That’s the Way Life is.

Things get more jovial when Tennant shares a personal memory about a trip to the Caribbean with his long term partner Lowe. This segues into Domino Dancing, Monkey Business, New York City Boy and the tortuously poignant Jealousy.

Another change of tone and a saturnine makeover ushers in the ironically titled Love Comes Quickly, Neil moving stealthily across a moody mood-board of scarlet, indigo and vermilion.

The tone morphs again with Lowe, mysterious in a baseball cap and shades, finally takes to the vocals with his flattened-out North Eastern vowels for Maybe I didn’t Treat You. Tennant, suave in silver, steps forward for a solo sparkler Dreamland with female backing transforming the syncopated vibes into Heartbeat. How Am I gonna Get through This, Go West and It’s A Sin making the most of the rhythm.

Barnard – best known for his concert films featuring Gorillaz, Nick Cave and Eric Clapton, adds an artful touch with some impressive aerial photography, ushering in the ultimate showpiece with my personal fave West End Girls suitably sung by Tennent in a dark grey suit amid street lamps.

A finale of We Were Never Being Boring brings this heady trip down memory lane to a jubilant showdown as Tennant and Lowe continue to give delight to millions. Guaranteed to light up your January Pet Shop Boys Dreamworld is a real shot in the arm for those Winter blues. @MeredithTaylor

PET SHOP BOYS DREAMWORLD: THE GREATEST HITS LIVE AT THE ROYAL ARENA COPENHAGEN is showing in cinemas worldwide on Wednesday, January 31 & Sunday, February 4, 2024 only
SYNOPSIS:

The Green Cockatoo (1937)

Dir: William Cameron Menzies | Cast: John Mills, Rene Ray, Robert Newton, Charles Oliver | UK Crime Drama 70′

Although John Mills is technically the star, The Green Cockatoo is principally told through the big blue eyes of Miss Rene Ray as a country mouse who gets a crash course in what “a vile and wicked city London is”; while, as directed by visionary production designer William Cameron Menzies, it anticipates the feel of a forties film noir (complete with a score by Miklos Rozsa).

Old movies often provide incidental details of interest to later social historians: in this case that the phrase “a bit of a goer” was in use back in the 1930s. The film further charmingly shows its age by depicting John Mills as a song & dance man – first seen singing in a night club before briefly launching into an incredible swivel-hipped tap dance. We’re expected to believe he and Robert Newton are brothers (presumably only their mother could tell them apart) further showing just how long it was made when Mills describes him as “a good kid”. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

https://youtu.be/PtdPzBBnDMo?si=DfB3vx8kaSix46kN

Bolero (2024) IFFR 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) IFFR 2024

Wri/Dir: Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich | US Doc 74′

The French West Indies’ island of Martinique really comes alive in this evocative portrait of Suzanne Césaire (1915-66) with its sultry soundtrack from Sabine McCalla.

Writer, teacher, devotee of Afro-Surrealism and leading proponent of the Négritude movement, Césaire was also a mother of six who considered writing to be of utmost importance in her life. Typically she never promoted herself as such, and consequently seems to have slipped through the cracks of history.

American filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich has alighted on her subject in this immersive new documentary that includes a treasure trove of interviews with Césaire’s living children and family.

The Ballad is a bid to explore the writer’s career and legacy as it drifts elegantly through the past and present in an episodic and often enigmatic reverie based on the truth, and brought to life by the award-winning actor Zita Hanrot, herself a new mother, as she prepares to flesh out the character of Césaire .

Sadly – as is often the case – more is known of Suzanne’s husband Aimé, a political figure. But nonetheless Hunt-Ehlich succeeds in raising the profile of this astonishing anti-colonial activist who blazed a trail for feminism during the early part of the twentieth century. An enlightening and worthwhile documentary feature debut in this year’s Tiger Competition at Rotterdam International Film Festival. @MeredithTaylor

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | TIGER COMPETITION 2024

 

Un coup de dès | Breaking Point (2023)

Dir: Yvan Attal | Cast: Guillaume Cannet, Yvan Attal, Victor Belmondo, Maiwenn, Alma Jodorowsky, Marie-France Crozes | France, Thriller 85′

This thrilling little romantic melodrama set in Brazil, Paris and the Cote d’Azur sees two Frenchmen committed to lifelong friendship after one saves the other’s life.

Guillaume Cannet is Vincent an intrepid businessman who steps into the brink when his chum Mathieu, falls victim to a break-in at the home he shares with Juliette (Crozes) in a chic part of Paris.

Happily married to Delphine (Maiwenn) Vincent loves playing the field and Mathieu (who real life partner is Charlotte Gainsburg) is only too ready to cover for him given his past loyalty until he too falls prey to the charms of Elsa (Jodorowsky), one of Vincent’s lovers. Dark clouds soon gather over their gilded lifestyle when Elsa is found dead in a perfect storm of coincidences.

Yvan Attal, who writes, directs and stars as Mathieu, certainly knows how to create atmosphere and tension with all the classic noirish elements at his disposal including a clever plot, a solid French cast and a sweeping romantic score that spells danger. Attal has a rare gift of exuding sexiness, decency and stability, so we’re on his side all the way through.

Soigne and elegantly styled, Un coup de dès is the perfect B film to curl up with, and even better on the big screen with its lavish imagery and gorgeous settings. Wish there were more of these sophisticated yet effective modern thrillers aimed at middle-aged people who still fall in love and probably shop at Waitrose (French equivalent E.Leclerc). @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Padre Pio (2023)

Dir/Wri: Abel Ferrara | Cast: Shia LeBeouf | Asia Argento, Marco Leonardi | Drama, 104′

Abel Ferrara’s latest is a morose and brooding affair that sees the veteran director absorbed in contemplation on religion and socialism and channelling his angst through the figure of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968) a Capuchin friar and mystic who was venerated in 2002, and is played here by Shia LaBoeuf.

Pio was clearly not a happy man and the bearded and be-chausabled LaBeouf conveys this spiritual turbulence in various sequences that play out alongside the main narrative set in a small coastal town in Apulia in 1918 where soldiers are limping home from the First World War (Italy had joined Allied forces in 1915 after initially declaring neutrality).

There is much moaning and gnashing of teeth as the villagers commiserate over the death of their loved ones. Ferrara and his co-writer Maurizio Braucci reflect on the exploitation of farm workers by a glib local landowner, running for office in the elections, as the men return to their gruelling agricultural work on his land.

But change is afoot in Italy, and the socialists prevail amid threats and violence from local right-wingers. Meanwhile the stigmatised Pio is seen in vignette swearing at a young female confessor. Asia Argento gets a cameo role as ‘a man’ seeking a strange request. It’s an odd view of the Church – rather than the usual consoling, supportive religious presence, Pio is seen as an abusive figure, basking in guilt and shame, largely because he had apparently previously forged links with the fascists. So another strange and intractable film then from the accomplished director of Bad Lieutenant and Driller Killer whose Berlinale title Siberia was panned by the critics. Ferrara clearly has an axe to grind and he continues to wield it in his own artful way. @MeredithTaylor

ON DIGITAL courtesy of Dazzler Media in UK and Ireland FROM 26 JANUARY 2024 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE 2023

 

 

 

Head South (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Jonathan Ogilvie | Cast: Ed Oxenbould, Marton Csokas Roxie Mohebbi | New Zealand, Drama 98′ 2024

The Rotterdam Film Festival is traditionally a place where discoveries are made from unexpected places and this year’s opening film Head South is no exception. It manages to bypass what some have called a fool’s errand, that is ‘the opening film curse’. It does this with a meandering ode to post punk in a provincial town filled with beautiful losers with excess energy who search for belonging inside the cocoon of a lived experience.

New Zealand writer/director Jonathan Ogilvie certainly knows of what he speaks, before cinema he directed numerous music videos for legendary New Zealand record label Flying Nun, combined with that he has mined his teenage years for a cathartic and very strange gem.

Angus (Ed Oxenbould)is a teenager who it can be said is having ‘a moment’, his mother has left the family home for two weeks to ‘discover’ herself and he and his laconic father are left to have lonely dinners and some time together. His two friends are annoyed after he sells them oregano in place of marijuana, and to break his enforced solitude he receives a package from his brother who is studying in London.

Alongside a pithy postcard is a copy of Public Image’s single Public Image. Alas the vinyl is warped so heads to local record store: Middle Earth Records (No, really) where the droll proprietor Fraser reigns supreme and is the font of all musical knowledge. This is the point in a classic bildungsroman where the journey can be said to truly begin. In a matter of time he has been dared to start a band, only he is adrift, emotionally, spiritually and most importantly empirically.

At this point Ogilvie does a classic bait and switch. When we were expecting a classical quirky teenage wasters on the ‘l am in search of sex, drugs and rock n roll’ theme we start to see that the director is working on a completely different register that cleverly leaves small visual clues (a cinematic clip of Lawrence Oates often quoted line: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’) to what will become tragic and life changing.

What tends to happen a lot of time in films of this ilk is the filmmakers relying on tired and trusted tropes that verge on cliche, here though Ogilvie subverts these ideas, whether it is the longed for older woman against the obvious potential partner that the protagonist can’t see, or the first gig triumph and the deconstruction of the myth of the aspired to be cool kids. In fact it goes further in its attempt to destroy the idea of coolness being something to grasp, it instead points out it is in fact a false economy.

The film succeeds in many ways, it has a beautiful desperation that hangs around the characters and its recreation of the late 70s is perfect. It looks like the 70s, whether in the set decoration, the film stock or the sense of boredom in a small town with nothing to do (especially on a Sunday). It feels like the 70s and it probably smells like the 70s too! @d_w_mault

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | 25 January – 3 February 2024 |

Stella. A Life. (2024)

Dir: Killian Riedhof | Cast: Paula Beer, Bekim Latifi, Damian Hardung, Joel Basman | Germany Drama 121′

This horrifying wartime tragedy kicks off in good spirits. In a Berlin nightclub to dazzling strains of Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing Sing Sing’ the harried main character Stella is an aspiring jazz singer only just facing up to the unspeakable terrors of her hometown under Nazi rule.

The daytime sees her slaving away in a garment factory where the Jewish workers are one day rounded up and shot. But Stella, based on the real life of Stella Goldschlag, is determined not to end her life in Auschwitz. In fact, so determined, that she would go on to betray her fellow Jews, some of them close friends, to the Gestapo, just to salvage her own dreams.  

Looking wan and washed out for her gruelling role, Paula Beer turns in another dynamite performance as a highly suggestible woman on the brink whose life is turned upside down when she refuses to submit to the constraints of being a Jew in Nazi Germany just when her musical career is starting to take off.

Hounded, questioned and subjected to continuous scrutiny, Stella and her parents are forced into hiding where she realises the only way to survive is to play a double game. But that will have consequences for the brittle blue-eyed anti-heroine – who is both victim and perpetrator – as she tries desperately to juggle her life with various powerful protagonists in a bid to avoid deportation to Auschwitz. Sadly her story turns into a nightmarish maelstrom of torture, duplicity – and ultimately guilt.

With its febrile tone and intense pacing Stella. A Life conjures up the palpable fear and very real trauma Nazi Germany instils in its Jewish population in 1944 and shows how ordinary people are capable of evil, in certain circumstances. Some of the set pieces are truly harrowing. particularly a scene where Stella is picked up by her hair, and brutally kicked in the head during an interrogation. Riedhof certainly knows how to create atmosphere but his script suffers from an under-developed storyline, and Stella’s descent into evil is never convincingly realised in a thriller that gradually gives way to sensationalism with a series of traumatic interludes, rather than a cohesive narrative.

Stella. A Life is an effective exploration of the horrors of war and the devastating emotional and physical effects on the victims in their desperate will to survive – until guilt rears its ugly head. @MeredithTaylor 

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL WORLD PREMIERE 2023

Shoshana (2023)

Dir/Wri: MIchael Winterbottom | Cast: Irina Starshenbaum, Harry Melling, Douglas Booth, Gal Mizrav, Ian Hart, Aury Alby, Ofer Seker, Liudmyla Vasylieva | Wris: Michael Winterbottom, Laurence Coriat, Paul Viragh | 119 mins

Prolific English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom goes into thriller mode for his latest outing, 15 years years in the making, and set amidst the political movers and shakers in the run-up to Israel’s founding as a state. Palestine is still under the colonial rule of the British and this provided a favourable climate for Jews escaping from the Nazi clutches of Hitler.  

Inspired by real invents, the focus is journalist Shoshana Borochov (a feisty Irina Starshenbaum) the daughter of a Russian Socialist Zionist who held sway back in the day. Shoshana is a member of a paramilitary Zionist force and has inherited her father’s spirit as she deftly navigates the social milieu of the great and the good while working for a Hebrew-language paper, She also gives us a historical context in voiceover.

Naturally this influx of Jews gives rise to tensions amongst the existing Arab community. There are two Zionist organisations in particular – the Haganah, the paramilitary Zionist force to which Shoshana belongs, and the Irgun, a hard-core Zionist organisation focused on flushing out Arabs from the territory.

Soshana soon falls for English police officer Tom Wilkin (Douglas Booth), who is working alongside his colleague Geoffrey Morton (Melling) to capture the leader of the Irgun, Avraham Stern (Aury Alby), in order to shut it down. Morton also shares a frisson with Shoshana. Tel Aviv is a modern city complete with its new (at the time) Bauhaus buildings (although filming took place in southern Italy). Anyone who knows Tel Aviv will also appreciate what a closely-knit society it is with its social and business connections. And so Stern and Shoshana soon finds themselves connected through their many contacts.

This is an elegantly kitted-out political thriller with plenty of action between the sheets. There’s nothing like a man in a uniform – or a woman – in a uniform and silk negligee. Shoshana is also testament to the fact that nothing has really changed in the Middle East or in Europe for that matter (apart from the ‘elephant in the room’ that is Brexit). An enjoyable classically style romp that explores the way extremism and violence can force a wedge between people, forcing them to choose sides. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY

Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer (2022)

Wri/Dir: Thomas von Steinaecker | With: Werner Herzog, Chloe Zhao, Joshua Oppenheimer, Patti Smith, Robert Pattinson, Carl Weathers, Wim Wenders, Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman | Volker Schlondorff | Klaus Kinski, Lotte Eisner | Doc Germany 102′:

Sometimes a question has to be asked that brings to mind what Bernard MacLaverty called the ‘elephant in the room.’ That is – who is a documentary like this for?

If you know Werner Herzog as a writer/director you will most likely find this film a slight trifle that only skims the surface of one of the most mythologised filmmakers, who is still with us. If, on the other hand, you know Herzog from his appearances on animated series and roles in such examples of America’s Movie Industrial Complex like The Mandalorian or Jack Reacher (as fun as they are) then this documentary will be an introduction to what Socrates meant when he claimed ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ in the sense that, in the last fifteen years, Herzog has turned from an unique filmmaker who gave us visions of the imagined to a Pop Culture behemoth that at times touches on self parody; most definitely examined and lived in.

Radical Dreamer follows the 81-year-young filmmaker in LA and on a pilgrimage to the family home where he grew up. With a short running time the origin story is merely glimpsed as we focus on the stories that it seems everyone knows: the walk across Europe to save the life of Lotte Eisner (which Herzog detailed in his book Of Walking In Ice) and the lunacy of Klaus Kinski (which is better detailed in Herzog’s own 1999 documentary My Best Fiend).

One of the usual choices the director Thomas von Steinaecker makes is the selection of talking heads, half with German speakers and half with Anglo-Saxons. It is perhaps no surprise that the English speakers don’t really impart anything of interest and some of the choices are damn right bizarre, Carl Weathers, for example, who shared a scene with Herzog in The Mandalorian and the filmmaker Chloé Zhao. The German speakers have far more insight, and for that we could have stayed with them longer. They include Wim Wenders; two of Herzog’s brothers; his first wife and Volker Schlöndorff.

I think we need to look at this film as a primer, a ‘greatest hits’ package; if you will. It is certainly part of a media blitz that includes the release of his autobiography, a retrospective at the BFI Southbank and the re-issue at the cinema of some of his great films from the 70s. I do feel though that the films Herzog made in the 70s had a sense of mystery, and that he too seems an enigma: half holy fool and half the foremost example of his acclaimed ecstatic truth concept.

Back in the 70s, making those ethnographic hybrids (are they fiction, documentary or myth?) was a much younger man’s game and eventually, like all great artists, Herzog pivoted away from them and reimagined himself as a documentarian. His fiction films go to places that are undiscovered until he returns in documentary form to explore his claim that nature is uncaring and a devil’s fortress. @D_W_Mault

WERNER HERZOG: RADICAL DREAMER is in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 19 January and on BFI Player and Blu-ray on 19 February. BFI Southbank’s retrospective season, JOURNEYS INTO THE UNKNOWN – FILMS BY WERNER HERZOG, runs throughout January.

The New Look (2024) Apple TV+

Dir: Todd A Kessler | Cast Juliette Binoche, Ben Mendelssohn, John Malkovich | Drama series 2024

A slick new series on Apple sashays back to fashionable post war Paris emerging from German occupation and in need of a fashion boost

In an all star International cast Juliette Binoche is the biggest surprise. She is English speaking Coco Chanel alongside Ben Mendelssohn as Christian Dior. John Malkovich is Lelong Balmain

Bristling with intrigue the series cleverly combines wartime thriller elements with a more lightweight look at the birth of haute couture in a shocking story of how fashion icon Christian Dior and his contemporaries including Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, and Cristobal Balenciaga navigated the horrors of World War II and launched modern fashion.

The New Look is filmed exclusively in Paris by Todd A Kessler and will make its global debut on Apple TV+ with the first three episodes onWednesday 14th February 2024, followed by new episodes weekly

On Apple TV+, followed by one episode every Wednesday through April 2024

 

Steppenwolf (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov | | Kazakhstan/Russia,102′

A hyper violent civil war rages across an apocalyptic landscape where gender conventions prevail in classic Western style: the men are the killers. One traumatised woman seeks to preserve life, that of her child, predictably kidnapped by organ traffickers (a ‘nice’ modern twist).

After his exquisite 2018 feature The Gentle Indifference of Life and 2022 thriller Assault, Yerzhanov returns to a vast wilderness for another Steppe legend love story: that of a mother for her child. The intrepid Tamara is determined to sacrifice her own life and safety to safeguard that of her son. In this endeavour hires an investigator, a reformed ex-convict who goes by the name of Steppenwolf and bears a canny resemblance to the mythological character, literally the ‘wolf of the Steppes’. Complete with shaggy hair, clear blue eyes and a swaggering gait he’s not a man to be underestmated as his victims soon discover to their chagrin.

Threatening and pacifying his female companion by turns, Steppenwolf is certainly menacing but also faintly ridiculous. Committed to these endless brutal murders, tersely executed with an axe or rotary cutting device, Steppenwolf goes about his business while Tamara remains meek and submissive, reduced to a mumbling, monosyllabic communication. At one point she seems to have died, lips turning purplish, but no, this woman is the heroine of the piece, an indomitable martyr empowered to withstand endless pain and emotional suffering to achieve her aims. Stylish and formally striking, the hostile landscape mirrors the film’s bloody violence – but a little more dark humour would have been welcome. Hard-going for the faint of heart. @MeredithTaylor

PREMIERING AT ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 31  JANUARY 2024

 

The Worst Man in London (2024) IFFR 2024

Dir: Rodrigo Areias | Cast: Albano Jeronimo, Edward Ashley, Victoria Guerra, Edgar Morais, Carmen Chaplin | Portugal, Drama 122′

Charles Augustus Howell, the main character in this suggestive slow-burn drama from Portuguese director from Rodrigo Areias, was certainly a mercurial character: for some he distilled the vibrant qualities of the pre-Raphaelite era, others found him a rather a machiavellian rogue, suspecting him of blackmail and even forgery.

This is not a film about art as such, but an intriguing look at 19th century high society through a group of Victorian creatives whose aim was to see the world in a more realistic and natural light, inspired by the Italian painters of the 14th and 15th century. And while they look very Victorian through our modern day gaze, behind their often inscrutable personas, Arieas and his writer paint them as arcane, subversive and mired in intrigue in their tightly-knit, incestuous coteries, preferring to focus their attention on the allure of renaissance Italy with vibrant colours that romanticised the era, rather than on the harsh realities of industrial revolution, that was gearing up in London at the time.

Pacing-wise and with its leisurely, episodic structure The Worst Man in London recalls Eugene Green’s The Portuguese Nun. We meet the characters as if introduced to them at a cocktail party, in a series of charming vignettes and graceful set pieces, the drama glows like a jewel-box in Jorge Quintela’s imaginative camerawork.

The international cast includes Carmen Chaplin who is particularly good as Lady Posselthwaite. Edward Ashley plays Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Victoria Guerra, Lizzie Siddal and Christian Vadim (son of Catherine Deneuve) La Rothiere.

Howell, born in Portugal, was not just Ruskin and Rosetti’s agent, he also served as a model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti although he seems to have been air-brushed out of history largely due to his purported skulduggery and is brought back to life as the focus of this sumptuous period piece that unfolds as a lush and finely detailed society chronicle of the day, with Howell working his way through the ranks acquiring works and establishing relationships with the great and good. One of his celebrated coups is to persuade Rossetti to dig up and sell the works of poetry buried with his wife Lizzie Siddal. Albano Jeronimo is certainly convincing in the main role of Howell, with his elegant stature and saturnine looks. @MeredithTaylor

IFFR | WORLD PREMIERE Monday 29 January 2024

https://youtu.be/n9Ce8SucC7s?feature=shared

My French Film Festival 2024

Now in its 14th year, MyFrenchFilmFestival shines a spotlight on a new generation of French-language filmmakers and gives audiences around the world the chance to share their love of French cinema

 

JANE B. FOR AGNÈS V. (1987) directed by Agnès Varda 

In this kaleidoscopic film made of various fragments of fictions, over various seasons, Jane Birkin plays various roles, including her own, with humour. 

Watch Here 

  

JUNKYARD DOG (2023) directed by Jean-Baptiste Durand 

Childhood friends Dog and Mirales’ relationship is upended when Elsa arrives in their small village in the South of France, but as romance blossoms for Dog, jealousy eats away at Mirales. 

Watch Here 

 

POLARIS (2022) directed by Ainara Vera 

Two sisters, one an expert sailor navigating the Arctic, are compelled to overcome fate and join forces; their journey guided by the polar star. 

Watch Here 

MY SOLE DESIRE (2022) directed by Lucie Borleteau 

Have you ever been to a strip club? But you’ve already wanted to – at least once – you didn’t dare, that’s all. This film tells the story of someone who dared. 

Watch Here 

 

NO DOGS OR ITALIANS ALLOWED (2022) directed by Alain Ughetto 

Alain Ughetto’s stop-motion animation tells the autobiographical story of his family’s exile from Northern Italy at the start of the 20th century. 

Watch Here 

 

SPARE KEYS (2022) directed by Jeanne Aslan and Paul Saintillan 

Sophie, 15, jumps at the chance to get the spare keys to her wealthy friend Jade’s house. A poetic, funny, and memorable first feature. 

Watch Here 

 

STAMPEDE (2022) directed by Joelle Desjardins Paquette 

When 9-year-old Lily is taken by her father on a surprise road trip to a truck-racing rodeo in far west of Canada, she soon realises she’s on a bigger adventure than she first thought. 

Watch Here 

 

SUPER DRUNK (2023) directed by Bastien Milheau 

While rummaging through her father’s wine cellar for bottles, Janus and Sam discover a strange machine. 

Watch Here 

 

THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE (2023) directed by Patric Chiha 

From 1979 to 2004 – from disco to techno – a man and woman frequent a huge nightclub in anticipation of a mysterious event. 

Watch Here 

 

THE GREEN PERFUME (2022) directed by Nicolas Pariser 

An actor finds himself embroiled in a shadowy conspiracy in Nicolas Pariser’s stunning combination of espionage, theatre, and the graphic novel. 

Watch Here 

MY FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL | ON BFI PLAYER | January 19th – February 19th 2024

Reinas (2024) Sundance Film Festival 2024

Wri/Dir: Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro | Chile, Drama 104’

It’s summertime 1992 in crisis-ridden Chile and actor turned cab driver Carlos Molina is really fed up. His clients don’t share his love of film and even his daughters fail to recognise him when he turns up at his ex-wife’s house to deliver a birthday present to his eldest daughter Lucia

America beckons and Elena and teenagers Lucia and Aurora are off to pastures new. But a dispondent farewell with their estranged dad only adds to the girls’ feelings of regret and instability at their upcoming departure especially as Aurora (Luana Vega) not as keen on leaving Lima as her rather morose mother for reasons that soon become apparent.

This is a well-paced and endearing coming of age domestic drama from Chile’s Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro and one which refreshingly puts the focus on a father-daughter relationship with Gonzalo Molina particularly likeable as a down-on-his-luck dad trying to put a brave face on his challenging life and catch up on some quality time with his kids who are not as naive as he thinks. The titular ‘reinas’ have cottoned on to his efforts have them believe he is a ‘secret agent’. His youngest Lucia is asking him probing questions about his work, and Aurora already has a boyfriend Rony and is hiding a burning secret.

But Carlos’ relationship with ex Elena and her mother (veteran Chilean actor Susi Sanchez) is strained and he feels reticent to sign the girls’ release form – both parents must give their consent for their children to leave Chile and this quandary provides the film with its dramatic twist. Impressive visuals and retro production design add to the film’s allure. @MeredithTaylor

Grand Jury Prize | World Cinema Dramatic SUNDANCE 2024

World premiere 22 January 2024

The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023)

Dir: Nicole Newnham | With: Dakota Johnson, Shere Hite | US Doc 118′

What is in a name? Or more to the point, what is in the named title of a work of documentation. The acclaimed documentary about the academic Shere Hite comes after acclaim at numerous film festivals including Sundance where it premiered over a year ago. The Disappearance of Shere Hite is a misnomer; another example of American Exceptionalism that declares one doesn’t exist if one escapes from the hermetic puritanism that holds sway in the laughable declared “Land Of The Free”.

Documentaries of this sort exist in a state of pedagogy for the unaware, at times this can be limiting but here documentarian Nicole Newnham (director of the transgressive documentary Crip Camp) uses several devices to create a narrative that impresses and creates the possibility of a series of ‘what ifs’ and ‘could bes’, these include Dakota Johnson reading from Hite’s dairies and writings and, more movingly, a collection of oral histories comprised of the letters she received from women who had filled out her questionnaire: this became her groundbreaking and incendiary ‘The Hite Report’, which was published in 1976.

The film glides through the chronology of her life in a nonlinear fashion which adds to the sense of mystery if you approach the film without much prior knowledge of Shere Hite. She was at Grad School where she discovered the first feminist women’s groups that were starting to spring to life in New York. Paying her way through school as a model, the variety of modelling that many in the industry look down their noses at: adverts for white goods and Robert McGinnis’ famous James Bond illustrations including on the shoulder of Sean Connery for Diamonds Are Forever.

It was Socrates who claimed that “Beauty is a short lived tyranny”. Right from the start of her modelling career Hite discovered the self-evident truth in that aphorism, and started to look for an ‘out’ before the industry would crush her like so many women before her. The final straw appears to be when she was cast in an advert for Olivetti, with the tagline: “The typewriter is so smart she doesn’t have to be.” From there she started writing questionnaires to hand out to women in the hope they would fill them in and post them back to her. She felt this was more likely to get a honest response than phone or in person interviews.

When the book was released it was an instant publishing phenomenon and she was invited to do lots of media appearances. This is a time we can now look back at and see the beginning of the Culture Wars that have continued in furiosity, and where we find now ourselves adrift from an empirical reality. As so many intelligent women have discovered, holding truth to power – especially 1970s patriarchy – means you will be attacked and demeaned in numerous ways. Her detractors cast doubt on her Scientific methods and flagged-up photographs she had posed for in ‘Playboy’ while a student.

The attacks only intensified when Shere started working on a male version of ‘The Hite Report’. This provided another opportunity for male critics and academics to refuse to believe the men questioned in the report, particularly in regards to their personal feelings and claims that toxic masculinity had affected relationships with their fathers, at home, and in workplace. It has taken decades for certain men to break through these negative attitudes. Robert Gottlieb (who died recently and was featured in the documentary made by his daughter, Turn Every Page) was one of the book’s only male supporters at the time. He claimed to have been devastated by the opinions shared that those men who took part.

In the end Shere Hite did what so many US Iconoclasts are forced to do, go into exile to avoid facing public humiliation or defamation. Her escape led to a second life in England and Germany. She died after a long illness in 2020. At that point the original Hite Report was the 30th best-selling book of all time. Ironically, most contemporary American feminists are unaware who she was and how important she was, standing alongside the legendary Sexologists: Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson. @D_W_Mault

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 JANUARY 2024

Bonnard: Pierre et Marthe (2023)

Dir: Martin Provost | Cast: Cécile de France, Vincent Macaigne, Stacy Martin, Anouk Grinberg, André Marcon France. 2023. 122 mins.

Seduction follows a chance meeting in the street between impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard and Marthe Boursin (aka de Meligny) who becomes his model, muse and lover in 1893 Paris.

The coup de coeur and subsequent romantic relationship is sumptuously depicted in this lyrical latest outing from Breton writer/director Martin Provost and stars Vincent Macaigne and Cecile de France as the central couple whose turbulent mutual devotion endured until their deaths in the 1940s as Bonnard’s career flourished and Marthe became a noted artist of the day.

Captivated by her beauty Bonnard immediately puts brush to canvas painting the stunned Marthe in the nude. These avant-garde canvasses would go on to cause much chuntering in the salons. But Bonnard flatly refused to make Marthe a mother thinking it too bourgeois for his artistic lifestyle. Instead he encouraged her to paint.

The couple set up home in a rambling country villa on the banks of the Seine where Marthe swims everyday until her doctor prescribes hot baths for her asthma. Close friends Monet (Andre Marcon) and Vuillard (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) visit frequently. There’s a great deal of nude frolicking, the agile camera chasing after the passionate characters who live a life of artistic abandon in the sumptuous rural setting where summer never seems to cease in Guillaume Schiffman’s gorgeous camerawork. An incessant violin score is occasionally overbearing.

Despite her poor health, not helped by Bonnard’s infidelity with various women (played gamely by Stacy Martin as the unstable Renee Monchaty) and Anouk Grinberg as Misia Sert, his hard-edged and condescending patron), Marthe emerges the stronger more fleshed-out chactacter of the two, her fébrile intensity contrasting with Bonnard’s phlegmatic reticence to be drawn into any kind of debate that takes him away from his easel. By his own admission he apparently lacked the courage of his convictions: a creative with feet of clay.

As you might expect from the subject matter the film often ramps up the melodrama but Provost manages the tonal shifts with style in one of the most enjoyable films of his career so far. A dab hand at portraying maverick women, his 2008 film about an edgy artist Seraphine was lauded at the Césars, and Violette (2013) takes on the complex character of Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain) seen through the eyes of her close friend and mentee Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devon).

Provost somehow avoids the trap of making this biopic preachy: de France and Macaigne play a credible couple whose deep love for each other feels real despite his philandering during which he maintains a low profile while everyone affected is in complete disarray. Captivating and compulsive this is a two-hour biopic worth watching. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Hana-Bi | Fireworks (1997)

Dir: Takeshi Kitano | Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe | Japan 98′

There’s a serene stillness that takes all the horror away from the unexpected outbursts of brutal violence that are almost funny – quite apart from the deadpan humour that Takeshi Kitano fully intended in his thoughtful thriller. This makes Fireworks extremely enjoyable as we watch him play an ex-cop whose marriage slowly gets back on its feet after his wife (Kayoko Kishimoto) comes out of hospital. Hana-Bi means fireworks but the words individually mean ‘flowers’ and ‘fire’

Fireworks is an extremely likeable film. Kitano directs and also stars without a shred of sentimentality, just business as usual as he tends to his wife and dispatches the odd criminal who gets in his way in an artfully composed arthouse thriller. His character’s minimal dialogue and terse exchanges also make this a joy to watch for those who hate scrolling through dialogue in an unfamiliar language. Clocking in a just over a hour and a half it also leaves you wanting more rather than less – often the case with lengthy Japanese and South Korean fare.

Inspector Nishi (Kitano) may be a dab hand with a flick knife – which he makes liberal use of – but his sense of honour is second to none. And he feels deeply responsible when his colleague Horibe (Ren Osugi) stands in for him getting life-changing injuries after attempting to arrest a criminal.  Nishi encourages him to paint to fill the lonely hours when his wife subsequently leaves him. There’s an amusing vignette with Tetsu Watanabe as a scrap metal dealer.

The paintings are infact Kitano’s own work but provide a delicate leitmotif to the crime caper that went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice in 1997. The finale will leave you with much food for thought. @MeredithTaylor

AVAILABLE ON MUBI and PRIME VIDEO channels

Panic in Year Zero (1962)

Dir: Ray Milland Cast: Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Mary Mitchel, Frank Avalon US thriller

A remarkably unflattering depiction of the ruthlessness that Americans prided themselves on being capable of during the Cold War (described by Denis Gifford as “Ray Milland’s illustrated handbook on What to Do When the Bomb Falls”) which makes ‘The Turner Diaries’ look like a Fabian Society publication.

In this tale of survival against the odds, a family leaves Los Angeles for a camping trip in the nick of time before a bomb destroys the city. Ray Milland, inspired by a short story from Ward Moore and directing a script from John Morton and Jay Simms, vouchsafes the inconvenient truth that, in the event of an attack by The Enemy, the first people patriotic Americans would turn the guns they’ve been hoarding so lovingly on would be other Americans – and ammunition would be of greater value than money.

The film one again proves the ‘holocaust theory’ in saluting an average working stiff who when his back’s to the wall gets his way by showing a total disregard for no one but himself and his wife and kids, which earns the final admiring tribute of a pair of state troopers as “five more good ones”. @RichardChatten.

NOW ON AMAZON

Nuovo Olimpo (2023) Netflix

Dir: Ferzan Ozpetek | Cast: Luisa Ranieri, Greta Scarano, Damiano Gavino, Aurora Giovinazzo, Andrea Di Luigi, Alvise Rigo | Italy, drama, 113’

Nuovo Olimpo is the 9th feature film during three decades for the Italian/Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek. The film has been quietly slipped into the Netflix schedules and the surprise is that it brings the director full circle to his striking debut Haman. Largely set in a Turkish steam house which becomes a place for two men to secretly meet, this 1999 film is remembered for its gentle and profound feeling for humanity and the coded mysterious ways we navigate questions relating to family, relationships and gender.

There is a strong hint the true story that inspired Nuovo Olimpo provides Ozpetek with what may be his most personal film since Haman. Many of the preceding films including Fati Ignoranti! (2022), Cuore Sacro (2005) and Mine Viganti (2010) are generally romantic generic family dramas possibly aimed more at the local rather than world film market. Nuovo Olimpo may seem slight and unassuming. Looked at more closely, it reveals a confident director with an understanding of how astute and careful narrative, sensitive performances and skilful layered editing can result in a nuanced film more effortlessly complex than first appears.

The story itself is of an eternal nature in which two young bisexual men meet but are unable to build the attraction into a complete gay relationship. Enea (Damiano Gavino) is a film crew set worker and Pietro (Andrea di Luigi) a trainee medical student who first lock eyes on each other in an opening sequence that is a homage to Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes’ Gloria. This is one of Ozpetek’s many love letters to the cinema with Nuovo Olimpo both the title of the film and the name of the cinema in the film that will be a space which becomes as safe to meet for the men much as the steam room does in Hamam.

The film has four acts, set in 1988,1998 and 2015 and begins in 1978 with a chance follow-up encounter between two men in a classic arthouse repertory cinema that will be familiar to those who remember The Biograph Cinema in London’s Victoria. Ozpetek captures details of cruising in a cinema to make this comparable to sequences in Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, Clements This Angry Age and Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn. The cinema is presided over by a matronly box office fag hag woman with an astute knowledge of her male customers and Ozpetek includes clips on the cinema screen from Renato Castellani’s Nella Citta l’Inferno (1959) aka And We The Wild Women, with Magnani and Masina exuding fiery Italian passions while men in the audience cruise in auditoriums and toilets.

Ozpetek adds into the romantic tragic narrative hints of the cinema’s own ‘amour fou’ with subtle references to McCarey’s An Affair to Remember, Almodóvar’s Talk to Her and Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession. The film may also contain a fleeting reference to Ophul’s Letter from an Unknown Women with a street map containing the words: “so time and space won’t get in the way” which becomes a form of letter that returns to the men over the decades. One of the film’s most moving sequences involves the wife of one of the men who provides her husband with the key to follow his heart, much as Ang Lee centres on the women in Brokeback Mountain as the real creators of the destiny of men unable to realise a love unspoken in.

Ozpetek is aided by the delicate movement of beautiful wide screen camerawork by Gian Filippo Corticelli, both lush and restrained music, uniformly good acting including relaxed and very natural explicit nudity and sex scenes, while the cast undergo ageing over three decades.

Ultimately it is with his choice of theme that Ozpetek makes Nuovo Olimpo most satisfying. He explores how love can both envelope as well as separate, create doubt and distance between what is real as well as imagined. As if impossible loves live on longer, the film contains an exquisite sequence in which the two men are separated in space but united in time as they watch Nella Citta l’Inferno on Television screens as a reminder of time lost, but not forgotten.

The final sequence is masterly and may well be one of the most beautiful in recent cinema. As the two men face each other in an empty street and make a decision that changes both lives, Ozpetek   contemplates that if stinginess is all that heaven allows, there is also the choice to live on in the dream of an impossible love. The sequence concludes with an unbroken camera movement combining reality and a moment in time that was never to be. The film anticipates that there may be much more to come from this remarkable filmmaker. @PeterHerbert

Peter Herbert is Curator Manager at The Arts Project, 215 Weedington Road! London NW5 4PQ

https://youtu.be/NatMTfOZsl8?si=pGqSptdDGCL2nsJ9

The Coughing Horror (1924)

Dir: Fred Paul | Cast: H Agar Lyons, Fred Paul, Humberston Wright, Fred Morgan | Silent Horror 31′

I first became aware of this intriguing title as a teenager when I came across it in the chapter on British silent horror films in Denis Gifford’s ‘A Pictorial History of Horror Movies’.

Now nearly a hundred years old, it seems a good time to review The Coughing Horror, which made its first appearance in August 1924 as an episode in the series ‘Further Mysteries of Dr. Fu Manchu’.

It sees Nayland Smith coming up against the “Coughing Horror”, Dr Fu-Manchu’s servant, when commissioned by the British Government to investigate a series of murders,

The ordinary settings and lack of style – with nighttime exteriors obviously shot in daylight – give the film an almost documentary feel in our contemporary gaze. Nayland Smith takes it all rather in his stride and, in the long tradition of white actors playing Chinamen, little attempt has been made to make the doctor appear authentically oriental apart from his satanic eyebrows and affecting a kimono, while presiding over a rum collection of roughnecks including a hunchbacked dwarf.

Horror-wise, I can safely say that in half a century of watching weird films, I have never seen such a bizarre sight as what Gifford described as a “hirsute henchman” and the film itself terms “A monstrous Cynocephalyte, Half Man……Half Ape”.

At the film’s conclusion (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the good doctor simply makes off in a cab. Doubtless the world shall hear from him again. @RichardChatten

NOW AVAILABLE TO WATCH FREE IN THE UK ON BFiPLAYER.

 

Scala!!! (2024)

Dirs: Ali Catterall, Jane Giles | UK Doc with Barry Adamson, John Akomfrah, Rick Baker, Ralph Brown, Paul Burston, Adam Buxton, Caroline Catz | 96′

Cinemas are edenic places, some would describe them as palaces which to be fair they were at some point in the 20th century. But between that time of art deco grandeur and the mostly soulless multiplexes and faux art houses that blight our horizons something else existed. Something magical. 

Of all the places, the Scala is the most storied in the UK and we now have a myth-making introduction for all those that missed out. There should be a warning for those cinephiles currently hiding out in cinemas across the UK, this is what was taken from you. 

The danger with a documentary like Scala!!! is that it must skirt the chasm of describing experiences that have passed and will never be repeated and the cynical idea of nostalgia as false consciousness… Happily I can report that it never falls into that trap.

When we look and listen to the numerous talking heads, from filmmakers: John Waters, Mary Harron, Caroline Catz and John Akomfrah; musicians: Jah Wobble, Barry Adamson, Douglas Hart and Thurston Moore; critics: Kim Newman and Alan Jones, we can perhaps understand what François Truffaut meant when he claimed that ‘film lovers are sick, sick people’.

The sense of the outsider reigns supreme here, as an existential answer to an unanswered question that searches for finding a like-minded peer group. When this happens hubs are important, and the Scala was one of these. Located for the longest time in Kings Cross a good decade before it became the homogeneous gentrified experience that it now is. Difficult to explain what urban areas in the UK were like in the 80s. King Cross could be described as the relative to New York’s Time Square of legendary grindhouses before that was Disneyfied by Rudy Giuliani.

Alongside everything else that the 80s gave us we had to deal with rampant homophobia, the Scala was a safe space before the term started to have various connotations. It was very definitely a ‘Queer” space, queer in the sense that celebrates transgression in the form of visible difference from normie culture.

It has been a long process for Scala!!! to come to light, a crowd funded budget, a book and a yearly national film festival, but through it all the directors Jane Giles (former programmer at the Scala and author of the book) and Ali Catterall (film critic and author) have kept the faith and battled to bring into existence a wonderful documentary that has been acclaimed at various film festivals and will now be going on a nationwide tour to cinemas across perfidious Albion.

What we are left to ponder, after luxuriating in the text, is where we are now that everything has become homogeneous and nondescript. It is true that grubby cinemas of faded glamour very rarely exist anymore, but what have we sacrificed for the boutique cinemas and multiplexes? Comfort, security, safety and a lack of cinema cats. I certainly know where I would rather experience the 7th art. It is yet another example of the mainstream swallowing everything like an out-of-control whale. Outside of London the notion of the Rep cinema simply doesn’t exist, which is a form of cultural vandalism. One thinks of one of the defining lines in John le Carré’s ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, when Bill Hayden says, ‘it has all become so ugly.’ @DWMault

In UK and Irish cinemas from 5 January 2024. Scala!!! will be available digitally on BFI Player and released on BFI Blu-ray on 22 January 2024 | A season of the Scala’s greatest hits, Scala: Sex, drugs and rock and roll cinema, runs at BFI Southbank throughout January with selected films on BFI Player.

https://youtu.be/Oc85T_TGuxE?si=4xAO9hcFhPtyQhA1

Night Swim (2023)

Dir: Bryce McGuire | Cast: Kerry Condon, Wyatt Russell, Amelie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Jodi Long | US Horror 98′

An awarding-wing short film is sometimes worthy of the feature treatment, especially when the producers Jason Blum and James Wan were responsible for the Halloween series, M3GAN and Malignant.

Not the case in this horror outing directed by Bryce McGuire who puts endless jumps scares ahead of an emotionally affecting storyline when an average American family move into a spacious home in Minnesota that boasts, in estate agents’ parlance, a luxury swimming pool.

Unfortunately the wily agent (Nancy Lenehan) has omitted to mention a series of tragedies at the property – one involving the disappearance of a young girl called Rebecca – hence the attractive price.

An opening sequence warns us that something nasty other than dead leaves is lurking in the murky depths, and that things are not going to go swimmingly for Kerry Condon and her husband Wyatt Russell. He is Ray Waller, a baseball pro diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She is Eve, a stay-at-home mother of teenagers Izzy (Amelie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren).

And sure enough, the kids are soon frightened by a series of poolside scares largely involving a ghoul who surfaces as the waters mysteriously muddy. Strangely, Ray’s illness seems to improve, but there’s no explanation as to why. And all these events are too repetitive and drawn out, there not being enough material to really make a substantial impact to engage us for the 98 minute running time. Don’t bother to come in, the water’s not lovely. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS

The Big Country (1958)

Dir: William Wyler | Cast: Charles Bickford, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Burl Ives | US Western

Having earned his spurs as a director of ‘B’ westerns during the silent era, William Wyler strode back into town thirty years later to supercharge the genre with the help of Technicolor and Technicolor to embellish the petty squabbling that passed for a plot in ‘The Big Country’.

A New England sea captain in the 1880s arrives at his fiancée’s sprawling Texas ranch, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between two families over a valuable patch of land.

Wyler’s co.producer Gregory Peck created something of an anomaly being about as vertical an actor as you could possibly find, which probably necessitated the frequent use of longshots in the staging.

Charles Bickford and Charlton Heston bring considerable authority to relatively small supporting roles; while after the scenery the most impressive feature is probably Chuck Connors’ teeth, his provenance as Burl Ives’ proving rather hard to swallow, but his interest in the radiant Jean Simmons being only too plausible. @RichardChatten

Mr Sardonicus (1961)

Dir: William Castle | Cast: Oscar Homolka, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton | US Horror 90’

William Castle usually located his films in a very contemporary America but this time he transferred his activities to a mythical nineteenth century European country called Gorslava.

The template this time was the Hammer horrors and Roger Corman’s adaptations of Poe, with a nod towards ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, “The Man Who Laughs’ and ‘Eyes Without a Face’.

It’s full of the usual staircases, torture chambers, dungeons and graveyards but despite a much larger budget Castle was still far too stingy for colour. For fans of old movies there’s the presence of Vladimir Sokoloff as Sardonicus’s father and Oscar Homolka as a wall-eyed retainer with a penchant for leeches.

Without divulging the famous trick ending, Castle probably also pinched that too, since it bears a suspicious resemblance to the finale of ‘Casanova’s Big Night’. @MeredithTaylor

Dream Scenario (2023)

Wri/Dir: Kristoffer Borgli | Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Bird, Jessica Clement, Dylan Baker, Michael Cera | US Psychological Horror 101′

A million miles away from his crazed roles of the recent past such as Renfield and Mandy Nicolas Cage is terrific here as an introverted professor caught up in a celebrity scandal set in Ottawa, of all places.

Written and directed by Norwegian Kristopher Brogli Dream Scenario is more of a nightmare really and not for the feint-hearted. Some may leave the cinema with a feeling of overwhelming sadness and even despair at the situation Cage finds himself in as Paul Mathews, a mild-mannered – even boring – family man.

From his humdrum existence in a leafy suburbs of some provincial university, Paul, a bearded and bedraggled biology professor married with two girls, becomes an over-night sensation – in the worst possible way – when the otherwise unremarkable man – who probably wears crocs on his days off – enters the dream lives of random individuals as their ‘bete noire’.

Desperate to gain recognition with his academic work on animal camouflage, Paul sadly only finds notoriety when his students report strange dreams where he appears, first as an innocent bystander, then as an ardent lover, and finally as belligerent presence intent on wreaking havoc in their collective subconscious. Soon, his colleagues and even ex girlfriends start to surface claiming to have been affected by these bizarre nocturnal occurrences.

With his ordinary man Borgli’s horrific surrealist fantasy leads us through a ghastly real experience of modern day America embroiled in fame, celebrity, cancel culture and even AI. This is undoubtedly Cage’s best performance in years and we really feel for Paul as he desperately tries to justify his position as a decent, hard-working human being just trying to make his way through life when he is catapulted into being both the hero and then antihero of the piece. Brilliant idea that’s a little overwrought in the final stretch. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE

The Edge of the Blade (2023)

Dir: Vincent Perez | Cast: Vincent Perez, Doria Tillier, Damien Bonnard, Guillaume Galiléenne, Roschdy Zem | France, Historical drama 101′.

Vincent Perez has chosen a bold theme for his capable fourth feature, a historical drama set in 1887 about the honour of duelling. The Edge of the Blade is interesting more than gripping with its horseback sabre fighting, use of epees, firearms and other 19th century weapons.

Duelling was banned in France although armed duels still took place as a way of solving disputes and to preserve the honour of those seeking prompt justice in the higher echelons of society. The practise continued in France until the Second World War.

Best known for roles in Cyrano de Bergerac and Le Bossu, Perez also stars here as the agile but utterly charmless one dimensional antihero of the piece, Louis Berchere, who seems hellbent on dying in the name of honour – and to be honest perhaps that’s better than ending up in a care home. A ferocious combatant in the battle to preserve his honour we see him demanding a duel to the death in the film’s early part. 

Despite the masculine nature of the subject the Swiss actor turned director manages to weave in a timely side-plot about a real life suffragette style feminist called Marie-Rose Astie de Valsayre (Doris Tillier) whose left hook causes some serious damage not least to the honour of the solid French cast of Damien Bonnard, Guillaume Galiléenne – and Roschdy Zem, a swashbuckling instructor at a fencing school, who she later seduces although there’s no bodice-ripping to speak of here.

Perez and his co-writer (and wife) Karine Silla have certainly done their research; the rolling titles at the end of the film explain that Marie-Rose was a significant figure during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and is remembered for her campaign to get women the vote, and attempting to overturn legislation prohibiting women from wearing trousers.  

The men all brush up against Marie-Rose’s brazen assertiveness – it was unknown at that time for women to be other than feminine and pliant. In a surprising twist, she challenges Bonnard to a duel but he manages to delay proceedings claiming her rig-out is unsuitable, whereupon the police are seen arriving on the brow of a nearby hill.

Mostly unfolding in interior scenes there are several impressive outdoor duel sequences – one in the woods and another in an open barn in remote fields. And while there’s no real dramatic arc or complexity in the characters, Perez and his DoP Lucie Badinaud manage the fighting set pieces with verve, and the finale is spectacular both for the duellists and the horses involved. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE and BELGIUM | AUDIENCE AWARD KARLOVY VARY 2023

 

Winter Break | The Holdovers (2023)

Dir: Alexander Payne | Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph | US Comedy 133′

Paul Giamatti is the reason to watch this bittersweet comedy satire from Alexander Payne – his best since Nebraska in 2013. This time written by David Hemingson the film is already set to be a critics’ favourite for its witty acerbic observations of school life, along the lines of the Dead Poets Society back in 1989.

Giamatti is Paul, a disenchanted history professor in a private boarding school in 1970s snowbound New England where he is one of three characters forced to stay over for the holidays with nowhere else to go.

The boys are a privileged and self-entitled lot but Paul digs his heals in academically and discipline-wise in a darkly humorous drama that morphs into the ultimate buddy movie about a man who makes a sacrifice for the good of another. Hemingson’s pithy script is strewn with Latin and Greek truisms and mottos and Paul is constantly quoting them with a twinkle in his eye (“it’s the left one you have to look at”): the most appropriate here is from Cicero “Non obis solum” which apparently means: “not for ourselves alone are we born”.

Paul Giamatti | Best Male Actor in a Musical/Comedy 81st Golden Globes | Credit: Virisa Yong

Giamatti is at his best when playing these kind of philosophical roles: a disappointed disciplinarian determined to make the best of things while maintaining his strict code of conduct. And we feel for him in his attempts to remain in control and at a distance while fully aware of the potential glumness of the situation for Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a bright but awkward teenager whose mother has last-minute romantic plans for the Christmas break that don’t involve her son. Making up the motley threesome in the echoing boarding school corridors is bereaved cafeteria manager Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who son has recently been killed in Vietnam.

Paul – who suffers various ailments – wants nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy his break buried mystery novels and nice things to eat. Instead he is forced to contend with a complex emotional triangle which will play out in fraught but surprising ways: Not unlike the average Christmas for most families then.

Payne imbues this all with a bittersweet understanding of the issues involved. Mary is sensitively played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, as she bitterly reflects on her son’s death, but always with warmth and never overdoing the sentimentality. All three interact convincingly without a shred of self-pity or rancour given the situation they find themselves in, and the warmth that Giamatti gradually brings to bear on his ‘odd couple’ dynamic with his pupil Angus – who has his own tragic secret – is well-judged and subtle. Sessa manages to be cynical and vulnerable in his thoughtful feature debut. The best thing about Winter Break is that Payne never opts for trite solutions or one-dimensional characters with Paul, Angus or Mary.

With its far-reaching themes Winter Break (aka The Holdovers) is possibly the most apposite Christmas film of this season with its simple Christian message. It’s a film that works for any season, for that matter, with its wry humour and melancholy nostalgia – and not too much tinsel to make it watchable well into the New Year. @MeredithTaylor

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN ANY MOTION PICTURE | DA’VINE JOY RANDOLPH | BEST PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – MUSICAL/COMEDY PAUL GIAMATTI | 81st GOLDEN GLOBES 2024

BEST MALE ACTOR IN A MUSICAL/COMEDY 81st GOLDEN GLOBES – PAUL GIAMATTI

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

Dir: Roy Ward Baker | Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft, Richard Widmark, Donna Corcoran | UK Drama

Based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong called ‘Mischief’. If you were ever curious to see Marilyn Monroe as Blanche DuBois this stark Fox quickie cheaply entirely shot in the studio – which few people have even heard of, let alone seen – gives some idea of what her interpretation would have been like.

Ironically she’d only recently supported Bette Davis in All About Eve, who herself later starred in what director Roy Baker called “the one about the baby-sitter who just happens to be a psychopath”. Richard Widmark however jumped at the then rare opportunity to play a character who wasn’t a giggling psychopath, while it’s also notable as Anne Bancroft’s film debut. Already constantly late and unable to hit her cues; being Elisha Cook Jr.’s neice was probably already an inauspicious start in life. And like her last completed film, The Misfits, Don’t Bother to Knock is highly uncomfortable to watch since Monroe’s precarious mental state playing a girl just out of an institution is only too evident from the end result.@RichardChatten

NOW ON AMAZON

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Häxan (1922)

Dir/Wri: Benjamin Christensen | Doc, Silent, Denmark 97′

An amusing horror curio made in Denmark in 1922 that aims, in an episodic style, to tell the story of witchcraft through the ages. In conclusion director Benjamin Christensen attributes the black arts to female hysteria, as diagnosed by Freud. Some may find the lewd nude sequences a sinister representation of the occult others merely view them as the slightly crude behaviour of a bygone era. But the evocative score in some versions certainly adds to the film’s creepy allure along with the sonorous narration provided by Willian S Burroughs delivered in an offbeat style that somehow dumbs down the film’s more outlandish pretensions. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON JANUS FILMS AND YouTube or Amazon.

Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)

Dir: John Paddy Corsairs | Cast: Jean Kent, Albert Lieven, Derrick De Marney, Paul Dupuis | UK Crime drama 95′

A reminder of the days when travelling by rail actually seemed incredibly glamorous especially on the Orient Express that provides the exotic setting for this 1948 thriller that sees spies pursuing a stolen diary.

Director John Paddy Carstairs is no Walter Forde but this serviceable remake of Forde’s 1932 film based on Clifford Grey’s story looks good through the lens of cameraman Jack Hildyard.

Albert Lieven is likewise no Conrad Veidt but looks good in black tie. On the distaff side Rona Anderson receives an introducing credit while Jean Kent shows poise as his partner in crime. The only member of the original cast is Finlay Currie who originally played an American but is now an irascible Englishman; while Bonar Colleano and Michael Balfour supply the real thing. @RichardChatten

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023)

Dir: Martin Bourboulon | France, Adventure drama 115′

The second part of this spectacular sortie with our four French Musketeers opens in 1627 and this time puts Milady at the centre of the swashbuckling, bodice-ripping epic originally penned by Alexandre Dumas.

Once again Martin Bourboulon directs a script by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière. There is a brief catch-up with Part I in the opening scenes and the emphasis here is on mood and manoeuvres rather than an involving and memorable storyline – not helped by the break between films. Refer to the novel if you want a more involving experience, although the our hot heroes certainly make for this enjoyable to watch.

Eva Green is mistressful as Milady de Winter, a fictional character who features in the later part of Alexandre Dumas’ original novel. But there’s nothing timid about this tumultuous temptress who is the hired assassin of Cardinal Richelieu. In the first part we saw her throw herself from a clifftop but she survived to tell the tale and is not going to give up without a fight in seducing the sultry and tousled hair D’Artagnan – and who could blame her – but he is desperate to defend a pouty paramour of his own in the shape of Constance Bonacieux (Lyna Khoudri).

Once again England is the enemy and Milady is plotting to engage France in a complex war aimed at ridding the country of King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel really looks the part with his wig and moustache). This is cloak and dagger stuff and involves plenty of sword fights with D’Artagnan (François Civil), Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmaï) and Aramis (Romain Duris complete with eyeliner) all pulling out all the stops. There is a surprise in store for Athos who has his own romantic issues to tackle but he’s keeping his powder dry in this eventful capitulation to Part I.

Eva Green makes for a mysterious Milady. Smirking and smouldering seductively she joins a long list of actresses who have played the character on screen. Most notable are Barbara La Marr alongside Douglas Fairbanks in Fred Niblo’s 1921 production. Lana Turner vyed with Gene Kelly in George Sidney’s 1948 drama; Faye Dunaway had two goes at the role in the early seventies with a starry cast of Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch and Christopher Lee. French actress Emmanuelle Beart featured in a TV mini series in 2005, and Mila Jovovitch played her in Paul W S Anderson’s  2011 epic which was not deemed as success. @MeredithTaylor

From 15 December in French K and Irish cinemas.

The Portrait (2023)

Dir: Simon Ross | Cast: Natalia Córdova-Buckley, Ryan Kwanten, Virginia Madsen, Mark-Paul Gosselaar | US Thriller 

There’s an unnerving power behind Simon Ross’s feature debut – a Dorian Gray style psychodrama involving a damaged man and his wife who seems to be suffering from a syndrome called pathological grief. The Portrait is shrouded in secrets and unreliable memories but the characters feel cliched and bogus and never really make us care enough to uncover the truth. And that’s possibly the point: It appears that reality is a moveable feast in this saturnine mood piece, written and produced by David Griffiths (of Collateral Damage fame). 

After Alex (Ryan Kwanten) suffers life-changing injuries in a devastating accident his capable wife Sofia (Natalia Córdova-Buckley) becomes full time carer to her vicious catatonic husband. In the attic of their palatial Californian villa she uncovers a disarming painting, purportedly a self-portrait, of Alex’s great-grandfather Calvin – a dead ringer for her objectionable hubby. The sinister painting certainly spooks Sofia out and comes alive in nifty jumps scares. Maybe Sofia is just imagining all this – or is buried guilt surfacing from her subconscious?.

Two morose blond women then enter the fray attempting to flesh out the family backstory. They are Basic Instinct style lovers Esther and Mags (Virginia Madsen), a distant cousin of Alex. Virginia Madsen is a good actress but Mags is not her finest hour. And this is where The Portrait starts to feel less plausible and more flimsy as is edges into the realms of kitsch fantasy. 

With her impenetrable screen magnetism (and back muscles Mike Tyson would be proud of) Sofia holds it all together against the odds. But our credibility of her doting acceptance of the violent catatonic beast she has to put up with is stretched to breaking point, and that’s probably why she reaches out to the troubled gardener Brookes (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), a strong silent type who is also harbouring a weird secret under his overalls. The two have a brief liaison after Sofia invites him into the house for emotional support: “I’ve got vodka”. 

As a sinister soundtrack weighs down on us we gradually realise that Sofia is also hiding a secret that explains Alex’s attitude, and why his love and gentleness for his wife has somehow morphed into brutality. This enigma gives the film a driving force and an undeniable allure, powering it forward to a fierce finale. The Portrait is an interesting study in the timely  ‘war of narratives’. @MeredithTaylor

The Portrait is available on digital platforms from 11 December.

 

Along Came Love (2022)

Director: Katell Quillévéré | Cast: Anaïs Demoustier, Vincent Lacoste, Hélios Karyo, Morgan Bailey, Josse Capet, Paul Beaurepaire, Margot Ringard Oldra | France, Drama 125′

Katell Quillévére, best known for her heart-rending 2013 drama Heal the Living, really knows how to bring beauty and intense emotion to the screen without shying away from difficult themes. The opening titles of her latest film Along Came Love (Le Temps d’aimer) show archive footage of the public humiliation of French women or ‘collabos’ who engaged with German soldiers during the Second World War. Rather like the ‘tarring and feathering’ carried out by the IRA on women suspected of involvement with British forces during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland these reflect  the unspeakable face of misogyny. What follows, by contrast, is a poignant and ravishingly depicted love story starring Anaïs Demoustier and Vincent Lacoste and set in Brittany in 1947. Despite its unevenness in chronicling four decades of their life, Along Came Love will win your heart.

Demoustier is Madeleine, a collabo whose young son Daniel (Hélios Karyo) is the result of a brief affair with a German soldier. Disgraced and desperate to escape the past she is working as a waitress in a seaside restaurant where she meets François (Vincent Lacoste) a wealthy intellectual, bashful in his beret and dapper navy suit. Madeleine is decked out in Breton national costume with a starched white headdress that certainly adds to her allure. Love is in the air and Francois orders two glasses of champagne, one he offers to her.

The director and her co-writer Gilles Taurand don’t quite manage to keep us convinced of their fraught story during the film’s two hour running time. There are certainly bursts of intensity to the fractious wartime marriage but also times where melodrama takes over and leaves us confused: intellectually and sexually, the two appear to misfire – Francois is an old school academic, Madeleine a somewhat lightweight character given to a flirtatiousness that seems inconsistent with the couple’s supposed romantic bliss which sends them down the aisle and then to his spacious apartment in Paris.

Life in the capital is often turbulent and this conflict plays out during the time the couple have fled Paris and are living in Châteauroux during the 1950s, where they run a bar frequented by American GI’s from a nearby military base. Here they meet and become involved in a ‘menage a trois’ with a Black soldier named Jimmy (Morgan Bailey) who fires up their sexual fantasies with his lusty corpulence. But the affair between them feels gauche and unconvincing. In contrast Madeleine’s relationship with her son (played as a young man by Paul Beaurepaire) seems much more authentic. All in all, Demoustier and Lacoste manage to carry the film through these awkward moments and into the 1960s and 1970s where her stylish rigouts accurately reflect the times as the story builds to its devastating conclusion.

During his studies François had apparently had an illicit affair with a male student who comes back to haunt him in a dramatic turns of events involving arson and the authorities. Nobody wants to be in trouble with the French police but soon the inevitable occurs and Francois is taken away.

All this feels less authentic than Madeleine’s more reasonable backstory, based, apparently, on the life of Quillévéré’s own grandmother. With its echoes of Douglas Sirk’s 1958 outing A Time to Love and a Time to Die this arthouse melodrama from the Ivorian director is certainly a welcome addition but not one of her best. @MeredithTaylor

Perfect Days (2023)

Dir: Wim Wenders | Cast: Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, Yumi Aso | Drama 123′

Wim Wenders’ latest cinematic sortie celebrates the simple pleasures in life seen through the day to day existence of a lavatory attendant in Tokyo, where these facilities are a genuine art form kept immaculately clean by this elegant janitor.

Perfect Days has the same gentle rhythms and sympathetic quirkiness as Paris Texas but this time the main character is at peace with his modest lifestyle. Late middle age finds Hirayama satisfied with the status quo and able to embrace change when it makes a welcome appearance, and not disappointed when it goes away again. Recognise this person in yourself? Then Perfect Days is your film.

Koji Yakusho is a joy to behold and his captivating presence (as Hirayama) radiates throughout the film drawing us into a delightful fable where life just bobs along contentedly in a state of grace often called ‘flow’. Hirayama finds his happiness in music, books, food and photography.

Wim Wenders has long been fascinated by cities: and Tokyo has frequently come under his radar: his stylish1980s documentary Notebook On Cities And Clothes also ponders creative potential. And here the focus of his protagonist’s days is the lavatory: form and function. And Tokyo’s water closets are the most inventively designed, and arguably the most pristine known to mankind, largely thanks to Hirayama and the locals whose sense of awareness and civilisation is second to none, public ablutions-wise.

More a philosophical meditation than a drama Perfect Days is nonetheless mesmerising. It brings the veteran German director’s technique and lightness of touch together with a vital ingredient that makes him one of film’s geniuses. Effortless and minimalism, this is a magical concoction, a meaning-of-life feature that gets to the very heart of human existence with its sheer simplicity. It could also bore the pants off mainstream audiences with its ‘nothing-really-happens’ banality.

A typical day for Hirayama sees him waking at dawn in his spartan apartment where he shaves and sips tea before slipping into his ‘Tokyo Toilets’ overalls for the drive to work. Despite a menial job he cuts a dapper figure in his blue cotton jumpsuit and seems cheerful in his endeavour: to keep the capital’s lavatories spotless. A goofy young colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto) frets and moans about his love life and lack of money, but that ship has long sailed for Hirayama, these issues no longer concern him.

Music is his companion and we enjoy a score of iconic ’60s tunes, most significantly Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Days’, which gives the film its title, along with Van Morrison and The Rolling Stones. Lunch and dinner are enjoyed with his regular bartenders, and here Wenders conjures up a culinary essence of contemporary Tokyo. Hirayama also enjoys photography; trees are of particular interest, and he takes cuttings from root stock potting the perfect little shoots, complete with soil, with the help of a paper container kept conveniently in his wallet. After a wash in the communal baths he beds down on his futon where he reads to the light of Tokyo’s neon illuminations. His dream-life is delicately etched in black and white montages evoking the Japanese concept of ‘komorebi’ and created by the director’s wife Donata Wenders.

Alone but not lonely and totally at ease with himself, Hirayama barely utters a word throughout but engages volubly when the need arises, as with Mama (Sayuri Ishikawa), a middle-aged woman who runs a noodle bar he often visits. His niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) makes a brief appearance, providing a welcome female presence in Hirayama’s life and fleshing out a backstory that speaks volumes. He looks on with a philosophical, knowing shrug of the shoulders when her mother arrives.

Tokyo is very much a character here beautifully captured by Franz Lustig’s perfect camerawork. The final sequence of Hirayama’s facial expressions as he drives through the night provides a charismatic valediction to a memorable but slender snapshot of a satisfying life. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

East of Elephant Rock (1978)

Dir/Wri: Don Boyd John Hurt, Christopher Cazenove, Judy Bowker, Jeremy Kemp, Anton Rogers | UK Drama

Don Boyd produced some of the most ambitious but foolhardy British films of the seventies and eighties. Leonard Maltin gave this typically eccentric attempt by him at direction shot in Sri Lanka (in which he displays a bizarre penchant for slow zooms and fisheye lenses) a ‘BOMB’ rating; but it can be enjoyed in a similar spirit to a ‘Ripping Yarns’ parody of ‘The Letter’ (naturally set in a rubber plantation) full of sybaritic Brits like gruff zenophobe Jeremy Kemp, clipped Christopher Casenove as a fellow called Proudfoot and an ethereal Judi Bowker who inflames the passion of a youthful John Hurt.

The biggest surprise is the music credit for Peter Skellern, although surprise turns to horror when he actually contributes a couple of songs. @RichardChatten

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

Wonka (2023)

Dir: Paul King | Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Paterson Joseph, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Matt Lucas, Jim Carter | Musical 112’

Wonka is a charming sugar-coated candy-coloured confection fizzing with fun that reminds us that Christmastide should be a time of goodwill and joie de vivre rather than stress and family contretemps. Charming and hummable it may be but Wonka is an instantly forgettable Christmas crowdpleaser that will blow away with the tinsel once the Christmas decs are back in their boxes.

Timothee Chalamet at the 81st Golden Globes | photo credit Benny Askinas

 

Graced by a delightful cast: Timothee Chalemet is the standout with his androgynous charm and delicatesse in a surreal turn as the legendary Willy Wonka of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who, according to its creator Roald Dahl, purportedly invented the best chocolate. Of course we all know that’s Cadbury’s – but no one likes to admit it.

Johnny Depp was a big hit in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005, after Mel Stuart delivered the first cinematic sensation with Gene Wilder in the main role in 1971. But rather than opting for another version of Dahl’s 1964 classic book, Warner Bros offers up a prequel original story taking us back to Wonka’s genesis with themes of class warfare and the glass ceiling.

Wonka‘s focus is that dreams can come true and offers inspiration for today’s young entrepreneurs. It goes behind the original story to picture a youngster from modest means whose dreams, ideas and determination will make him an international superstar – aided by his best friend Noodle (Calah Lane). Every bit a story of modern times, it sees Wonka come up against the establishment of chocolatiers whose delicious fare is reserved for the rich.

Nathan Crowley’s set design is magical and Joby Talbot, the composer behind the catchy title music for the BBC’s League of Gentleman, has created a memorable original score. Listen with your eyes shut and there’s nothing captivating about Simon Farnaby and Paul King’s script, despite expectations. So just enjoy the fabulous camerawork and the entertaining cast who bring it all to life despite the messy storyline: Olivia Colman (as Mrs Scrubbit), Hugh Grant (as Oompa Loompa), Rowan Atkinson (as Father Julius) and Peterson Joseph (as Arthur Slugworth) . Wonka is certainly eye-catching but if you’re looking for a more amusing Christmas movie this yuletide, I’d go for Your Christmas or Mine 2. @MeredithTaylor

FROM 8 DECEMBER 2023

Sexy Beast (2000)

Dir: Jonathan Glazer | Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Amanda Redman, James Fox, Ian MacShane  | UK Thriller 89’

The story of professional crook called back for one last job is one of the perennial themes of the gangster film. A long way from the terseness and glamour of the classics of the thirties, the opening scene with the boulder rolling into the swimming pool establishes from the get-go that the events depicted in ‘Sexy Beast’ are as much a dream as a nightmare.

Unlike the fast-talking sharply-dressed Hollywood prototype, Ray Winstone’s gangster is an uncouth oaf who discovers the hard way he has more to fear from his associates – represented by bullet-headed troll Ben Kingsley – than the long arm of the law.

A startlingly brunette Amanda Redman makes an all-too-rare appearance on the big screen; while ‘Performance’ and ‘Villain’ are evoked by the presence of James Fox and a very saturnine Ian MacShane.

Along with Get Carter and Long Good Friday, Jonathan Glazer’s feature debut, written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, represents the best in British crime thrillers. But unlike Mike Hodges and John MacKenzie, who have sadly now left us, Glazer’s star is still in the ascendent. @RichardChatten

ON PRIME VIDEO

The Red Shoes (1948)

Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Cast: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann | Musical Drama 135′

A huge event both at the box office and in the development of Technicolour (all the better to showcase Moira Shearer’s ravishing red hair), but –  like the impresario himself – played by Anton Walbrook elegant but sorely lacking the soul of Powell & Pressburger’s earlier productions.

There’s long been a school of thought that Pressburger was the brain behind the two, but he should also take the blame for the pretension that increasingly overwhelmed their films, while Powell’s skill at organising the various elements and his smooth use of trick photography, like Busby Berkeley, creates a sumptuous experience which supposedly takes place in the world of theatre but is truly a work of cinema @RichardChatten

ON RE-RELEASE AT THE BFI LONDON SOUTHBANK | GARDEN CINEMA WI | LUMIERE CINEMAS SW7

Anselm (2023)

Dir.: Wim Wenders; Documentary with Anslem Kiefer, Daniel Kiefer, Anton Wenders; Germany 2023, 93 min.

To call Wim Wenders’ portrait of German artist Anselm Kiefer a documentary would be selling the work of both artists short. Anselm is a potted history of post war Germany, rooted in the society where both men were born, in 1945. Neither of them escaped unhurt even though Kiefer, a more confrontational character than Wenders, took the brunt of criticism.

But “Das Rauschen der Zeit” is first and foremost a chronicle of a country still not ready to face its racist past. Their output is shrouded in enigma and ambivalence. There is always confusion and reverie: Wenders’ American set films and Kiefer’s French based creations are flights of imagination. But the shadow of the Third Reich looms large, and cannot be negotiated with art or gestures.

Anselm Kiefer, represented as a young man by Daniel Kiefer and as a school boy by Anton Wenders, gained prominence in 1971 as Joseph Beuys’ master student in Dusseldorf. This was followed by a scandal in Venice, at the Biennale in 1980, when Kiefer was accused of being a neo-Nazi, with him insisting he just wanted to refer to the victims of the Holocaust, wearing his father’s Wehrmacht’s Uniform and greeting the public with the Nazi salute. In 2022 Kiefer would make a triumphant return to the city.

But by now his work output was colossal – both in yield and form: He created topographic landscapes in an old brick factory in Germany, and landscapes in the South of France. And he continues to this day with mega installations in his new studio in Croissy near Paris. There are architectural constructions, numerous pavilions, underground crypts and a gigantic, roofed amphitheatre. Everything is larger than life, and Kiefer is still at it, in a big way, always moving forward to the next project. Flame throwers are his favourite “weapons” of art, giant lift constructions lead him to the top of the world. Literally.

Then we return to the beginning with Paul Celan (1920 – 1970), holocaust survivor, poet and translator, who drowned himself in the Seine. The author Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1976) a member of the circle of artists striving for a new beginning, not another cover-up. She died in an “accidental” fire in her own bed. But they were outnumbered by the ex-Nazi supporters who went into “inner exile” while still supporting the regime, like the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who never apologised or even tried to explain. There is a moving snapshot of Celan trying to meet Heidegger – but like Richard Strauss, leader of the NSDAP “ReichsmusikKammer” (Musicians had to be Aryans to take part), Heidegger could not even be bothered to say sorry, keeping his international reputation intact.

There is brilliance on both sides of the camera, thanks to DoP Franz Lustig, and it is a credit to both artists to return to the failed new beginning, because the huge majority of Germans preferred to feel sorry for themselves and were busy with collective denial. Wenders and Kiefer are still attempting to evade the past. But try as they may, it still outruns them. @AndreSimonoveisz

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 DECEMBER 2023

Freud’s Last Session (2023)

Dir/Wri: Matthew Brown | Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode | US Drama

Sigmund Freud and C S Lewis debate the existence of God in this provocative imagined drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, and based on a play by Mark St Germain that became a hit off Broadway.

When Hopkins played the English theologian and writer in Shadowlands he reduced audiences to tears with his earnest attempt to court Debra Winger’s dying writer Joy Gresham. In Matt Brown’s two-gander Matthew Goode is dapper and indulgent as C S Lewis and Hopkins, his sparring partner, is spiky and reticent in his final years as the legendary shrink.

The American director and writer collaborates with the play’s writer decide to spice things up by incorporating flash back episodes of Lewis’ life in the trenches and this often derails the already engaging exchange of informed views, detracting from the film’s natural dramatic thrust. Sometimes linear narratives work best, and that is arguably the case here. On the other hand, the writers’ decision to probe Freud’s backstory with his daughter Anna adds an informative touch in an intelligent foray into the young woman’s Electra complex: Interestingly the theory belonged to his Swiss colleague Carl Jung. @MeredithTaylor

COMING TO UK CINEMAS IN 2024

Lost in the Night (2023)

Dir: Amat Escalante | Cast: Juan Daniel Garcia, Ester Expósito, Barbara Mori, Fernando Bonilla, Hero Medina, Vicky Araico | Thriller 120′

The rich and the poor have a Mexican standoff in this Neo western – and no prizes for guessing who wins the day. Amat Escalante first arrived on the scene with his shocking feature debut Heli. Lost in the Night is a muddled murder mystery that looks spectacular but leaves us in the dark for most its running time. A pervasive sense of uneasiness gradually gains momentum in the final stages but some questions are left unanswered in a quietly savage tale of revenge that simmers in Adrian Durazo’s widescreen landscapes of the craggy Guanajuato setting.

Juan Daniel Garcia is Emiliano, the hero of the piece. This morose Mexican macho is motivated by a keen sense of justice. He is a serious man with a mission: to shed light on the fate of his pioneering mother (Araico) who disappeared after campaigning against the sale of the local mine to foreign investors and the contingent job losses. And he soon tracks down his suspect, an effete conceptual artist called Rigoberto (Bonilla), who hangs out in this stark backwater, postering around a curious concrete lakeside villa with his steely wife Carmen (Barbara Mori) and her influencer daughter Mónica (Ester Expósito), whose speciality is fake suicide videos. The local police, headed by Jero Medina, are not fit for purpose so Emiliano makes his own investigations by offering to work undercover as the family caretaker.

Emiliano represents solid values, Rigoberto all that is spurious in this world: his most famous work conceptualises dead Mexican bodies. But Escalante’s narrative often gets bogged down in these modernising themes derailing the story from its central focus and stretching the film rather too thinly over its two hour running time. Emiliano’s female equivalent Jasmin (Mafer Osio) is a traditional Mexican ‘madonna’ who offers him tenderness but never really gets a look in. Monica throws herself at him, turned on by his strong silent earnestness. At one point he dives in and rescues her from the lake after one of her more petulant displays of narcissism. So an interesting addition to the Escalante archive but not one of his most memorable. MT

NOW IN UK Cinemas

https://youtu.be/S38sRUvJjYs

 

Sweet Sue (2023)

Dir/Wri: Leo Leigh | Cast: Maggie O’Neill, Tony Pitts, Harry Trevaldwyn, Anthony Adjekum, Anna Calder-Marshall, James Dryden | UK Comedy Drama 99′

After a shaky start with Loony in the Woods and his short documentary Fact of Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler, Leo Leigh, Alison Steadman and Mike Leigh, finally finds his feet with this confident comedy drama.

Sweet Sue makes for an amusing feature debut capturing the sardonic resentment of a bereaved English family with the same signature brand of snarky deadpan humour of his parents.

Of course Sue, a sparky Maggie O’Neill, is anything but sweet: and we soon realise why, but that’s all part of the irony. The film opens with another dating disappointment for Sue, a fifty-something singleton, whose has just been stood up in the local pub. Meanwhile, in the now familiar setting of a care home her younger brother, Pete, is in the final stages of an undignified death, comforted by his wife, (Hannah Walters) who clearly resents Sue’s continued lack of input in the matter. The two of them bicker bedside while Pete gobs uncontrollably into a tissue. The next scene sees his funeral cortege pulling out of a driveway with a ghastly floral tribute of pastel chrysanthemums bearing the name ‘Pete’ adorning the hearse. The petty bickering flares up later in the pub – this ‘close family’ is clearly far from close, Sue’s mum chunters away under her breath, and Pete’s widow once again bemoans Sue’s lack of support. Breaking away from the morose duo Sue strikes up a conversion at the bar with a tight-lipped, leather-clad biker who introduces himself as Ron. The two promptly leave, Sue preparing to ride pillion with her potential paramour, Pete’s widow objecting loudly as the two make off

The story proceeds along similar lines as we get to know them all better, Sue is assertively bubbly while Ron remains locked in his monosyllabic old-school masculinity. Anthony, his rather narcissistic son, is a thoroughly modern character, and Trevaldwyn certainly plays up his personality traits to perfection. Ron, by his very nature, remains the most enigmatic character here, and we are left wondering whether Sue will make a go of things this time: there’s clearly a sexual frisson despite their chalk and cheese differences. Sweet Sue maybe not be groundbreaking narrative wise but it certainly has a ring of truth for those familiar with the dysfunctional family territory. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS from 22 December 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Napoleon (2023)

Dir: Ridley Scott | Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Rupert Everett, Paul Rees, Ben Miles, Ludivine Sagnier, Edouard Philipponnat | UK Drama 158′

Napoleon is a rather gloomy epic that mourns its French hero in misty landscapes, robust parliamentary debates, bloody battle scenes and sorrowful domestic settings where a doomed love story plays out amid gilded trophies and treasures.

Ridley Scott creates a sprawling two and a half hour feature that is more impressive than involving although Phoenix is compelling throughout as a flawed hero and likeable rogue, despite his American delivery: a soulful and mercurial figure whose private life never quite attains the glorious success of his strategic prowess as French military leader and emperor in various campaigns. Most notable is the Siege of Toulon, where he captures the port city from the English in the film’s opening stages, to his most significant triumph at the battle of Austerlitz with its atmospheric widescreen images of soldiers and horses plunging silently into the depths of a frozen lake where their blood mingles evocatively with the icy water. Scott lists Napoleon’s less admirable achievement in the film’s final title sequence that makes for grim reading with its tragic loss of life running into thousands; and this is probably one of the reasons why French critics have condemned the film.

Josephine, an imperious Vanessa Kirby, has managed to reinvent herself as Napoleon’s witty new wife. But despite her considerable talents as a patron of the arts and their torrid sex life and genuine love for each other, Napoleon choses to divorce her in favour of his country because, Josephine, six years older than him and in her second marriage, is unable to provide him with an heir. She is banished to the murky palace of Malmaison, Rueil, where she dies of diphtheria, Napoleon arriving too late to say a final farewell. The emperor, in turn, is deemed a threat to the security of Europe, and ends his days in the remote outpost of Saint Helena after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, having previously returned from Elba.

Ambitious and informative, David Scarpa’s well-paced script straddles three decades, from the final stages of the French Revolution in 1793 until Napoleon’s death in May 1821. The guillotining of Marie Antoinette makes for a captivating opening sequence. We watch her being clamped onto the base of the guillotine before the blade is unleashed from its moorings slicing cleanly through her neck, the executioner dangling her bleeding head by the hair as the baying crowd roars.

Next comes Robespierre’s fate in parliament bringing an end to the Reign of Terror. This political instability offers Napoleon the ideal opportunity to surge up as a masterful strategist and architect of the Republic, crowning himself Emperor in 1804. At continuous loggerheads with England he tries to forge a pact with Prussia and Austria, which proves unsuccessful, and leads to heavy losses in Russia. Abdicating, he then heads for the Island of Elba, returning to France where he suffers a debilitating defeat against the Duke of Wellington’s army in alliance with Prussian Forces at Waterloo. And here Rupert Everett shines as a drole, rather foppish caricature of English aristocracy.

Stanley Kubrick would be proud of the film’s immaculate battle set pieces particularly at Waterloo, and there are some enjoyable support performances from Paul Rhys at Talleyrand, Edouard Philipponnat as Tsar Alexander, who is seen to enjoy a brief dalliance with Josephine, John Hollingworth as Marshal Ney and Richard McCabe as Lord Whitworth. But Napoleon belongs to its star Joaquin Phoenix who exudes strength and humanity despite his human flaws. @MeredithTaylor

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

The Peasants (2023)

Dirs/scr: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman. Poland/Serbia/Lithuania |  114′

Poland’s Academy Award 2024 hopeful is another animated portrait from directing duo DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman who won an Oscar nomination for their painterly drama about Vincent Van Gogh Loving Vincent.

Based on novel from Nobel prize winner Wladyslaw Reymont this is a tale of love and revenge set in a 19th century Polish village of peasant farmers. The narrative reworks themes of male dominance in that are still relevant today, a century later: women, especially good-looking ones, are expected to submit to the subconscious will of men, and are punished, psychologically or materially, if they refuse to toe the line.

The focus here is beautiful young Jagna (Kamila Urzedowska) who refuses to conform to traditional village life and finds herself increasingly at odds with women who are envious of her power and beauty, and men who are desperate to bed her. Jagna tolerates a loveless marriage to a controlling much older husband Boryna (Miroslaw Baka) by having an affair with his estranged married son Antek (Robert Gulaczyk) and escaping into a creative world of her own, representated by bird motifs.

Capturing the seasons of the year in a pre-revolutionary Poland, the directors combine pencil sketches, expressionist brush work and photographic realism, blending oil paintings from Polish 19th artists: Michal Gorstkin-Wywiorski, Ferdynand Ruszczyc and Jozef Chelmonski over live-action footage of actors to create another fluid animated drama that feels contemporary while rooted firmly in the past. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS from 8 December from Vertigo Releasing | The Peasants is Poland’s Academy submission 2024

Castaway (1986)

Dir: Nicolas Roeg | Cast: Oliver Reed, Amanda Donohoe, Georgina Hale, Frances Barber | UK drama 117’

The most striking scenes in ‘Castaway’ are the first twenty minutes depicting a drab eighties London. What follows is a pale shadow of ‘Michael Powell’s Age of Consent, which was set in Australia; although Powell’s earlier film doesn’t boast a pair of nuns in the comely form of Georgina Hale and Frances Barber (looking far tastier fully-clothed than Amanda Donohoe in the all-together).

Miss Donohoe is supposed to be a lover of old movies (she’s seen watching Peter Finch on the telly), which makes it rather surprising that she doesn’t turn tail and flee the moment she sees that her prospective companion is Olly Reed (who progressively looks more and more like a ginger Jabba the Hutt as the film develops), whose idea of a smooth come-on is “A screw and a cold beer is at the moment the summit of my ambition!”; so its hardly surprising they make such an argumentative pair (especially as she gets more turned on when he talks about food rather than sex).

Naturally as shot by Nicolas Roeg it all looks very impressive but their constant squabbling rapidly gets very monotonous. @RichardChatten 

The Taste of Things (2023)

Dir Anh Hung Tran | cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoit Magimel, Pierre Gagnaire | Drama | France, 135′

One time lovers Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel re-unite for a sumptuous feast of the senses that sees gastronomy as a conduit for a long lasting celebration. The French Vietnamese filmmaker first came to Cannes twenty years ago with his ravishing feature debut Scent of Green Papaya that won the Camera d’Or.

The Taste of Things, his seventh feature, adapted from Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel The Life And Passion of Dodin-Bouffant is set in France in the late 19th century, the film follows the life of Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) as a renownd chef living with his personal cook and lover Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). Eugénie and Dodin share a long history of gastronomy and love. While emotions remain restrained, their culinary discoveries are lavish and exquisite. The only sadness for Dodin is that Eugénie refuses to marry him. So, the food lover decides to do something he has never done before: cook for her.

This delicious romantic drama also serves as a discursive entrée into French culinary history as post prandial conversion drifts into the domaine of gastronomic greats Marie-Antoine Carême and Georges Auguste Escoffier both respected as ‘king of chefs and chef of kings’ of French haute cuisine. And their dishes are sensuously prepared by Binoche and her assistants: a mouth-watering vol au vent  – you can almost taste the cream oozing out of it – followed by tenderly poached quails and an omelette Norvégienne otherwise known more prosaically as Baked Alaska and, of course wines accompany these dishes.

We first meet Eugenie (Binoche) in her kitchen garden on a blissful summer’s morning chosing a fresh lettuce for a mouth-watering meal of lavish proportions. Dodin (Magimel) and his guests will savour at their leisure later on at lunch. Every dish is a work of art created from a basis of fresh local ingredients in season. But the film also symbolises a wider appreciation of the simple pleasures in life we often take for granted such as the intense anticipation of a tempting  dinner or the satisfying sensuality of long-lasting desire.

Eugenie luxuriates in the quiet pleasure of cooking and enjoying time spent with Dodin over the twenty years of their life together. Their epicurean partnership has gradually led to the bedroom where occasionally the two indulge in the realm of the senses that extends beyond the purely culinary.

But Dodin wants to formalise the arrangement with marriage. And is also concerned for Eugenie’s well-being and her failing health. Slowly he takes over in the kitchen preparing the food as an act of affection and appreciation he feels for her in their relationship of mutual respect and dedication. And the act of successful courtship, like the preparation of a luscious dish, requires patience and meticulous timing, a heavy-handed approach may ruin the chemistry, but he must keep the pot simmering in this delicate dance of love that is typically French. @MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL Winner Best Director | France’s Academy Award Entry 2024 | IN COMPETITION 2023

 

Bandido (1956)

Dir: Richard Fleischer | Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ursula Thiess, Gilbert Roland, Zachary Scott | US Action Drama 92’

In his memoirs director Richard Fleischer gave a harrowing account of the horrors of filming in Mexico beset with insect stings and upset stomachs. The film itself takes its lead from leading actor Robert Mitchum by being much more light-hearted than Fleischer’s account would have lead you to expect.

In its rollicking picture of Mexico as a place in which lead is constantly flying (none of it naturally hitting our Bob) it rather recalls the Harold Lloyd comedy ‘Why Worry?’; a piece of advice that Mitchum obviously took to heart.

Apart from Mitchum himself the most interesting member of the cast is probably veteran Mexican heavy Miguel Inclain, who was deeply touching in ‘Salon Mexico’ and briefly appears late in the film as a priest. @RichardChatten

May December (2023)

Dir: Todd Haynes | Cast: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Chris Tenzis, Charles Melton | US Drama 117′

May December could well be one of the masterworks about the way paedophilia impacts on relationships and family life. It is the confident latest film from Todd Haynes who began as a key figure of the 1990’s New Queer Canadian Cinema with films such as Poison, The Karen Carpenter Story, Safe and Velvet Goldmine. Working with a talented cast and crew, actor Julianne Moore and producer Christine Vachon showcase the power of a mature director in full command of his filmmaking craft.

The film is not an easy watch for those who find difficult subjects uncomfortable in an entertainment context although there is a duty for fearless artists to interrogate challenging subject matter. May December certainly does this and provides a deeply moving and affecting study of the secrets, lies and deceptions that exist even within close relationships.

The title is a play on the seasons of the year reflecting the romantic relationship between two people of different ages, and linking spring – that comes with youth – through to the eventual winter of old age. This connection with the seasons echoes Alexander Singer’s criminally undervalued 1961 film A Cold Wind in August about the relationship between an ageing stripper and a much younger man; as well as Catherine Breillet’s latest feature Last Summer (2023) that sees a married woman toy with her young stepson without serious emotional intentions.

There is a difference here. Once Haynes lifts the lid off the various themes nothing will be the same again for his wide range of players and characters. The plot is straightforward and based in reality, echoing the true 1990s story of 36-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau who left her husband and family after being convicted and jailed due to her relationship with a 13-year-old boy. On release from prison, she married the young man and formed a new family and a cosy, respectable and conventional middle-class life.

At this point in the narrative Haynes introduces melodrama. The mother (Moore) commissions an indie film that will tell her story and, hopefully, reveal honest truths about what had happened years previously. The film begins with a visit from Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) the actor chosen to play Julianne Moore’s dysfunctional character Gracie, in an attempt to understand everyone involved in this extended family life. The coming together of the first family and the children from the second marriage, during a graduation ceremony weekend, is beautifully handled with sly humour while revealing a feature of complex resonances.

The film offers a powerhouse challenge for Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman as the women involved, and recalls the work of George Cukor,  another gay filmmaker at ease working with female actors and handling themes involving women. Julianne Moore has the more grounded role as the mother/wife, enabling her to invest her character with more backstory involving childhood abuse trauma that in later life could have manifested in an arrested state of childhood as the source of her original transgressive relationship with the 13-year-old boy. Haynes heightens this with her, now adult, younger husband who is beginning to realise he has missed out on a full experience of life, and revealing that May/December relationships can bring problems later on involving missed and lost opportunities.

Natalie Portman may have the more difficult but also revealing role as Elizabeth. She has a less defined past suggestive of being mildly lonely and only moderately successful. This is all left open but heightens the contrast between both characters: Elizabeth appears to be shadowing Gracie with a form of imitation that reveals how a mix of identity issues and role-playing can be very dangerous. One sequence is particularly revealing and offers a  masterclass in skilful technique and razor-edge emotional precision: The two women face each other, seemingly stripped bare of their respective personas.

Another aspect of the film’s power involves Haynes’ well-documented understanding of the 1950s Hollywood cinema of Douglas Sirk. The visual style is mostly melancholy with muted greys and browns and none of Sirk’s expressionistic colour lighting, although there is a similar sense of framing and space involving settings and characters. Also relevant here are Sirk’s themes involving theatrical illusion, patriarchal values and forbidden love – which threaten familiar and social conventions – in a ‘let’s pretend we are all nice’ middle-class setting bringing to mind All that Heaven Allows (1955).

There are many other intriguing and poignant scenes that are best left for viewers to experience. If you are wondering why the beautiful score by Marcelo Zarvos includes sonorous chords of music in a French style, this is because the music incorporates Michel Legrand’s score for Joseph Losey’s film The Go Between. The reference may be intentional as May December is another insight into the myriad ways a child’s life can provide complex links into adult lives. @PeterHerbert

NOVEMBER 17 in cinemas and on SKY CINEMA DEC 8

PETER HERBERT is Curator Manager at THE ARTS PROJECT

Twice upon a Time (1953) Powell + Pressburger Season

Dir: Emeric Pressburger | Cast: Hugh Williams, Elizabeth Allan, Jack Hawkins, Yolande Larthe | Drama 85′

After filming wrapped in 1953 Emeric Pressburger never wanted to think about Twice Upon A Time again, so onerous was the task of making it. The same fate had befallen such cinematic Cinderellas as Hitchcock’s Waltzes from Vienna and Bergman’s It Can’t Happen Here.

Based on the novel by Erich Kastner – originally filmed in 1950 and remade by Disney eight years later as The Parent Trap – it’s a far more succinct drama that avoids the initial enmity that wasted so much time in the later film.

Michael Powell never bothered to watch Twice Upon a Time, Pressburger never mentioned it again, and it was not included in the National Film Theatre’s Powell & Pressburger retrospective of 1978. Kevin Macdonald (in his 1994 biography) declared that “Today no print of Twice Upon a Time is available” and there isn’t a single review on the IMDb. This means that the  screening at BFI Southbank on 6th November 2023 was the first in seventy years.

As for the film itself it comes as a charming surprise: Beautifully shot on location by Christopher Challis with characteristically whimsical narration by Jack Hawkins who also stars as Dr Mathews. @RichardChattten

BFI’S POWELL + PRESSBURGER SEASON | NOVEMBER 2023

Seaside Special (2022)

Dir: Jens Meurer | Germany Doc

A warm and well-balanced view of Brexit Britain is expressed by the people of Cromer, Norfolk in this delightful documentary made by a German, no less!

Famous for its seafood, especially crabs – and wonderful sandy beaches Cromer is also home to a summer end-of-the-pier show that runs for three months – to packed audiences – twice a day! And this gives Jens Meurer – whose in-laws are English – the perfect setting for a sunny expose of the most divisive political and social event in our recent island history. Meurer offers a very human story seen by the people, and for the people. Politicians or local councillors are thankfully nowhere to be seen.

Shot on 16mm and intended for big screen viewing in a collective atmosphere Seaside Special turns out to be nostalgic and surprisingly entertaining in showing English life at its best through a variety of idiosyncratic Brits who are putting their best foot forward to make both the show (and Brexit) a success in spite of their conflicting views: ‘Hoping for the best but planning for the worst’, as Boris Johnson famously once said.

It may be modest in its provincial setting but the summer variety show is no amateur dramatic affair; it certainly punches above its weight and the quality acts look and feel really professional. And what also makes this and the show so endearing is the human angle. Real people with honest, unpredictable and often refreshing views imaginatively captured in Meurer’s lens. @MeredithTaylor

Seaside Special is in UK and Irish cinemas on 10 November 2023

Fingernails (2023)

Dir; Christos Nikou | Cast: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, James Allen White | Drama

Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed are the stars of this ponderous futuristic drama from Greek director Christos Nikou who tries to nail down that ephemeral thing called love.

Chemistry-wise Anna (Buckley) and Amir (Ahmed) hit the jackpot with 100% when taking a test to prove their viability as a love match. There’s only one problem – Buckley already has a positive score with her long term partner Ryan (James Allen White), although their relationship has now lost its spark.

Fingernails is certainly intriguing premise-wise but suffers the same airless inertia that dogged Nikou’s first feature Apples – although that film swept the board on the international film festival circuit with its inventive and whimsical look at amnesia.

Nikou, who co-wrote the screenplay, at least succeeds in demonstrating that AI and computer testing are not infallible and that human chemistry and its wonders still rest in the ether. And that’s the positive takeaway, along with two more enjoyable performances from Buckley and Ahmed. @MeredithTaylor

In select cinemas, and streaming globally on Apple TV+, from November 3rd

Macbeth (1948)

Dir: Orson Welles | Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall | US Drama 107′

Unlike Orson Welles’s later unorthodox adaptations of Shakespeare shot in far flung locations abroad ‘Macbeth’ was dashed off in Hollywood in 23 days on a budget of less than $900,000 the unapologetically commercial outfit Republic (whose logo it comes as quite a shock to see at the conclusion).

The end result was murky even by Welles’s standards, full of incongruously varied accents (as you would expect from a cast that includes both Dan O’Herlihy and Roddy McDowall), not least Welles’s own. (Poor Jeanette Nolan’s Lady Macbeth has taken a lot of flack over the years, but personally I think she’s pretty effective.)

Jacques Ibert’s score is quite impressive, and appropriately manages to include bagpipes. Welles plainly knew his Eisenstein and while the sets looks if they were left over from an episode of ‘Star Trek’ John Russell lights them for maximum effect’; and in Welles himself – still quite light on his feet in those days – it of course possesses a truly formidable protagonist.@RichardChatten

 

Fanny: the other Mendelssohn (2023)

Wri/Dir: Sheila Hayman | Doc 97′

Raising the profile of yet another uncelebrated musical genius, a new documentary unveils the little known story of Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847). This could have been just another worthy study of female endeavour but BAFTA-winning filmmaker Sheila Hayman brings her great-great-great-grandmother Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel to life in an absorbing biopic that delves into the archives and crafts a juicy tale of celebrity, sibling rivalry, and hitherto undiscovered treasure.

Fanny Mendlessohn was born in Hamburg, Germany where she always took a backseat to her more famous younger brother Felix. Despite the male-dominated classical music scene of the era she still managed to compose 450 works in a life that was cut short at 42. Fanny’s masterpiece ‘The Easter Sonata’, is performed by Decca-winning pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason who enlightens us with her own challenges in the field of classical music: and it seems little has changed since the 19th century.

This lively documentary is set on location in Berlin, New York, London, Oxford and Buckingham Palace, Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn follows in the tracks of other creative female pioneers of the 19th Century: The Bronte sisters, George Sand and Berthe Morisot. All very modern women – who just happened to live several hundred years ago.@MeredithTaylor

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS

The Royal Hotel (2023)

Dir: Kitty Green | Cast: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Herbert Nordrum, Dylan River | Australia, Drama 91

Set in the rugged wilderness of the Australian outback The Royal Hotel provides a twisty new turn on a genre of cinema involving forms of exorcism. This handsome-looking thriller moves on from earlier male-dominated features in the OZ exploitation genre that are generally laced with misogyny, xenophobia and homophobia, such as Ted Kotcheff’s masterly 1971 outing Wake In Fright.

There are similar themes to be found here as two young Canadian women on an Overseas Experience in Australia start to run low on funds and secure work in a remote drinking hole hotel, having travelled to the outback to replace a couple of English girls. Both find themselves having to confront a hostile environment.

Unlike the earlier films in the genre the two women and a range of other female characters, including an indigenous aborigine, are seen to find ways of elbowing out the worst traits of male behaviour. One of the men is played by Hugo Weaving in a standout performance well beyond his Priscilla Queen of the Desert days.

The film opens in a booming underground disco with a tracking shot following a young woman who has unsuccessfully chatted up a male bartender. As she leaves this pulsating darkened room the camera follows her into the bright quiet daylight of Sydney harbour. It all feels like a curious premonition that she will also become a bartender and experience both welcome and unwelcome male attention.

Melbourne-based film director Kitty Green follows up her previous film The Assistant with many beautiful visual touches. These include the contrast of an empty swimming pool with deck chairs and a sequence of jumping into outdoor water streams that serve to refresh the claustrophobia that dry arid landscapes induce in her characters. There are striking edits involving doors that open up possibilities but also shut out the unexpected. The natural beauty of a snake contrasts with what will happen to the contents of a bottled-up glass jar.

Apparently the film is based on a documentary about the real life experiences of two Canadian backpackers travelling in the Australian outback. Although the director’s observation of the women is possibly too understated or underplayed by Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick, The Royal Hotel is more likely to be viewed as a film of measured gradual chills.

The last sequence is clearly indebted to Tony Williams’ 1982 film Next Of Kin which was co-scripted by Michael Heath and voted by Tarantino as his choice for the best OZ exploitation chiller. The film earlier involved a woman battling interior demons in a gothic house and may have had more off-the-kilter chills and zany humour, but Green draws from her film a similar sense of brooding menace.

As its female protagonists look to find a way to escape from an inferno of impending hell, The Royal Hotel also employs a striking use of fire during the finale. This is a very clear homage to the earlier film while providing within the narrative a more contemporary female focused angle.@PeterHerbert

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS

A Taste of Anatolia | Turkish Film Festival 2023

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

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

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

A TASTE OF ANATOLIA

Klimt & The Kiss (2023)

Dir: Ali Ray | UK Doc

“To every age its art, to every art its freedom” Vienna Secession.

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most recognised paintings in the world and its reproduction posters adorn student bedroom walls from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

Yet this new documentary urges us to look beyond Klimt’s often decorative style at the extraordinary motivations of the celebrated Austro-Hungarian genius whose sensual Art Nouveau creations blend ancient myths with modern eclecticism, and are more valuable today than ever before fetching top prices at international auctions. Klimt’s final painting Lady with a Fan (1918) was sold in June 2023 for £85.3 million, the highest price artwork ever sold at auction in Europe, (according to BBC News).

Klimt was one of the pioneers the ‘Jugendstil’ movement known in Vienna as the ‘secessionists’ who joined a pan-European trend of breaking away and rejecting the old school along with the British Arts and Crafts and Impressionism movements in France.

Gustav Klimt’s 19th century Vienna was a time of conflicted sexuality: in society women were corseted and buttoned up but Klimt’s louche feminine depictions are bursting with a feral sensuality that conveys women’s true nature focusing on love, desire and the cycle of life from birth to death. In his private life, Klimt clearly loved and appreciated women and often slept with his models who hung around his studio, often naked, waiting for a chance to be depicted in his iconic images, reflecting an era that was deeply misogynist.

Meanwhile his elegant portraits of wealthy society hostesses such as Adele Bloch-Bauer and Sonia Knips provided the bread and butter for his lush artistic endeavours that include prints, murals and objets d’art, often elaborated with gold leaf, silver, gilt stucco and mother of pearl. There were also symbolist paintings: Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Pallas Athene, nymphs, water serpents and mermaids. His work also included landscapes and murals such as the famous Beethoven Frieze that adorns Vienna’s Secession Building.

Women also featured heavily in his private life. The artist lived with his mother and sisters and although he never married, his long term partner, the Austrian fashion couturier and businesswoman Emilie Louise Floge, whom he also painted in 1902, shared his artistic vision and dressed in her own loosely-designed feminine creations.

Klimt developed an ornate often dreamlike style and made use of different mediums to express human truths rooted in nature, flowers and the surreal, but his sketching technique was also superb and rivals that of Picasso in its simple yet sensual marks. The impact of grief, madness, love and death on the female body provided a rich source material and formed the basis of his avantgarde work.

Filmmaker Ali Ray makes liberal use of interviews with specialists and art curators to flesh out her latest biopic for Exhibition on Film that follows on from her previous documentaries on Frida Kahlo and Mary Cassatt, the American impressionist painter (2023).

ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS from 30 OCTOBER 2023

Saltburn (2023)

Dir/Wri: Emerald Fennell | Cast: Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike, Jacob Elordi, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe | UK Thriller 122′

Emerald Fennell follows her Oscar-winner Promising Young Woman with a wicked tale that spins on two English maxims: ‘Never Complain, Never Explain’ and ‘To Thine Own Self be True’.

Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of Felix Catton (Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his family’s Oxfordshire estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.

Once again Fennell clearly knows the territory and Saltburn is an amusingly accurate account of life for an Oxford university ‘fresher’ (first termer) seen though the eyes of Oliver who is on a (state-funded) ‘full grant’. Gifted, gauche and perceptive he may be, but the star turn here is the privileged Felix who brings a refreshingly charismatic angle to the party. Felix is not only dashingly handsome, he is also empathetic and kind, extending the hand of friendship to Felix in the light of his father’s sudden death. Not so the rest of the Catton family who are the epitome of what English upper class eccentrics are supposed to be: arrogant, supercilious and hilarious. Urbaine and feigning ennui they lounge around in their magnificent pile in the country where Sir James (Grant) and self-confessed bisexual Lady Elspeth (Pike) hold sway (“I was a lesbian for a while but it was all too wet. Men are so lovely and dry”).

Richard E Grant and Rosamund Pike take to the milieu like ducks to water, along with Paul Rhys’ tight-lipped butler Duncan. The token black bohemian guest Farleigh (Madekwe) provides eclectic grist to the mix but Carey Mulligan, the star of Promising Young Woman, only makes a guest appearance as Pamela. Anthony Willis gives this all a funky twist with his original score and there’s a subversive scene where Oliver secretly watches Felix tossing himself off in the bath, ushering in his gay credentials which are never fully explored. Is he yet to come out or just a voyeur?.  

So Keoghan has a difficult, unlikable role that doesn’t convince as the middle class misfit who comes to stay fostering malign intent and latent bisexual undertones. He certainly manages a briefly sinister moment as a belligerent bisexual with feet of clay but when it turns out that Oliver is not what he seems, the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Fennell is certainly ‘a talent to amuse’, in the words of the great Noel Coward, but her plot resolution goes haywire in the final stages with a misjudged finale that feels unconvincingly shoed-in. Dreamily captured by Linus Sandgren’s inventive camerawork this cleverly observed satire is certainly worth seeing for its superb performances. MT

AMAZON MGM from 17 November 2023

The Killer (2023)

Dir: David Fincher | Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard | US Thriller 118′

David Fincher is back with another noir crime thriller that sees a philosophising hitman reflect on the meticulous precision and emotional detachment required for his day to day existence. But life is what happens when we’re making plans – as the saying goes – and this ‘gun for hire’ is quietly going round the bend.

Fresh from its world premiere at Venice Film Festival, The Killer, adapted from the French graphic novel by Alexis ‘Matz’ Nolent, stars Michael Fassbender as the hired assassin whose diurnal activities are voiced over by drole observations (“weakness is vulnerability”, “avoid empathy”) making this all the more intelligent and captivating, even when it descends into brutal violence. Even these scenes are sleekly choreographed in Fincher’s crisp direction and Andrew Kevin Walker’s lean script.

In the rooftops of Paris the unnamed killer is staking his target out, Day of the Jackal style. But too much time spent in preparation can often impact on performance. And this is one of the twists in a tale that sees the hitman running to keep still, as we soon discover: The Killer is an intellectual performance rather than a plot-driven one.

Sadly, a woman – his girlfriend (Monique Ganderton) – gets in the way of his day job after a home invasion goes wrong, and this blows our hero off course leading him on a peripatetic journey to the Caribbean, New York, Chicago, Florida and New Orleans Caribbean to unpick the mess. A gripping and highly enjoyable foray that keeps us on our toes with plenty of eye candy, thanks to DoP of the moment Erik Messerschmidt. MT

OUT TODAY IN CINEMAS | 10 November on NETFLIX

The Old Oak (2023)

Dir: Ken Loach | Wri: Paul Laverty | Cast: Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, Claire Rodgerson, Trevor Fox, Chris McGlade, Jordan Louis, Chrissie Robinson | UK Drama 117′

A far cry from his early hits Kes and Poor Cow, The Old Oak is another disingenuous sob story from Ken Loach and his pal Paul Laverty who joins him, on script duties, in eschewing a traditional narrative and rolling out the cliched pros and cons when a group of Syrian refugees are plonked into a village in County Durham. 

Naturally the locals aren’t best pleased when the busload arrives in the former mining town. Ressources are already stretched as it is and things can only get worse (which is presumably why most of the disgruntled locals voted Brexit).

That all said, Brits and Syrians gradually settle down into a modus vivendi as they get to know one another and realise everyone’s the same at the end of the day and just wants a simple life.

But what plays out is far from simplistic, and Laverty makes pleasing use of the vernacular with some seasoned old chestnuts peppered with expletives aplenty in telling the tale. And to be fair on old Ken, his latest is far and away a better film than his 2016 agitprop I, Daniel Blake. much loved and lorded by our friends abroad. This at least feels real and genuine with well-formed characters, and there’s a lovely scene set in Durham Cathedral. 

Robbie Ryan’s careful camerawork, a few laugh-out-loud gags and some naturalistic performances from a cast of newcomers – especially the two leads: Dave Turner and Ebla Mari, make The Old Oak unexpectedly moving and amusing despite the mawkish, over- protracted ending. Not a patch on Kes or Poor Cow though. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK and FRANCE

Animal Farm (1954)

Dir: Joy Bachelor, John Halas | Animation 72’’

Animal Farm suffered a fate similar to Gulliver’s Travels‘ fifteen years earlier in reaching the screen as a Technicolor treat for kiddies in a fashion that would surely have shocked their creators.

Poor George Orwell went his grave being patted on the back by Tories congratulating him for his demolition of socialism in ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’ despite it being obvious to anyone with half a brain that the subject of his ire was Stalinism rather than socialism.

Viewed purely as a film it succeeds extremely well with its attractive and fluid photography and, until the final couple of minutes, is remarkably faithful to the original with capitalism getting pretty short shrift in the portrayal of the hateful Mr Jones and his cronies. @RichardChatten

 

Abschied (1930) Powell + Pressburger Season at the Bfi

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

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

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

POWELL + PRESSBURGER SEASON AT THE BFI AUTUMN 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Dir: Martin Scorsese | Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemmons, John Lithgow | US Drama 200’

Martin Scorsese’s 26th film is a love story, a crime thriller and an epic of cultural significance. Because it’s essentially about immigrants –  the white man taking over the natives in their own country evoked by film’s lyrical title – Killers of the Flower Moon is also bound to be universal and newsworthy in its appeal. But Scorsese also makes his first Western smoulderingly beautiful with each frame a glowing masterpiece capturing the ravishing splendour of the Oklahoma countryside during the prohibition years of the 1920s when most of the western world was caught up in the first world war.

Best female actor in a motion picture – drama – 81st Golden Globes @Benny Askinas

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro are masterful as the two villains of the piece with Jesse Plemmons offering integrity as the calm and straightforward man of the Law. DiCaprio acts his socks off but newcomer Lily Gladstone steals the show as the Native American woman he falls for and marries, mostly for love but also because his uncle (De Niro) is keen to ensure her fortune passes into the family, a common practice that spread through the region like wildfire, attracting all kinds of negative elements to this peaceful community and giving the film its spiritual element so loved by Scorsese: the serpent in the  Garden of Eden 

Three and a half hours steal by engrossingly as Scorsese and his co-writer Roth craft a treacherous tale of subplots and intrigue fleshing out each character to build a rich cinematic tapestry of the times but, in contrast to his New York fare, the violence here is nuanced and restrained but the film really needs to be seen on the big screen. If this true epic doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my Stetson. MT

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – LILY GLADSTONE | 81st GOLDEN GLOBES 2024

 

Jules (2023)

Dir: Marc Turtletaub | Cast: Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, Jade Quon and Jane Curtin | US 87′

Best described as a soft sci-fi dramady Jules follows a modest man living out his days in small town Pennsylvania. Marc Turtletaub combines topical and traditional themes in his darkly amusing tongue in cheek third feature starring Ben Kingsley.

Plagued by a daughter convinced he has dementia and a couple of deeply irritating neighbours (Harris and Curtin), Milton (Kingsley) keeps himself sane by attending local council meetings where his memory loss soon becomes cause for mildly amusing alarm.

But when a spaceship lands in the back garden, crushing his prized azaleas, a whole new world opens up and Milton finds out he is no longer living alone but with a gentle soul whom he names Jules.

Jules is a breath of fresh air, extra-terrestrial-wise. Mute and kindly, he provides comfort and a listening ear in this appealing and inventive caper that sees the three neighbours find meaning and connection later in life – thanks to an unlikely stranger. MT

JULES won the Audience Award at Sonoma International Film Festival | In cinemas 23 December 2023

 

 

Made in Prague Festival 2023

The Made in Prague Festival, one of the oldest national festivals in Britain, showcases the rich tapestry of arts, cinema, music, and culture – in the broadest sense – bringing cult classics and the latest Czech releases to the UK.

The festival this year celebrates its 27th edition with a gala opening and private view of Ultra Super-Natural by Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein, an unique testimony to the fusion of various cultures and civilizations that span the globe.

The backbone of the festival will be Czech film screenings featuring many British premieres. Highlights include Il Boemo, a biopic about the little known composer Josef Mysliveček, starring Vojtěch Dyk, who will join for a Q&A

A second Gala Special will present fresh from this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Restore Point, a sci-fi neo-noir thriller about the future of humanity. The screening at IMAX of this Hollywood-style production will be joined by female lead Andrea Mohylová along with the director and producer.

The Festival will conclude with the Gala pre-release screening of One Life, a biographical drama about British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, starring among others Anthony Hopkins, capturing his efforts to save Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia.

Other films to look out for:

NIGHTSIREN

+ Q&A WITH DIRECTOR TEREZA NVOTOVÁ
Saturday 11 November, 5.30 pm / The Gate

A harrowing, yet beautiful take on patriarchy and internalised misogyny awarded by Golden Leopard at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival.

THE CRUCIFIED | Ukrizovana Dir: Boris Orlicky (1921) 

Sunday 19 November, 3.30 pm / JW3

Filmed in 1921, this classic silent Czech film offers a fascinating, if troubling, representation of Jews and antisemitism in 19th Century Europe.

VICTIM | Obet | Dir: Michal Blasko (2022)

Monday 27 November 2023 / Genesis

A universal tale about two-class societies, repressed xenophobia and racism, as well as broken hopes and dreams. The Slovak Republic’s national submission for 2023 Academy Awards. More info

ARVÉD | Dir: Vojtech Masek (2022) 

Tuesday 28 November, 6.45 pm / Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy Cinema

A fascinating insight into the life and mind of Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský, a charismatic hermeticist and occultist, who in his quest for knowledge became first a Nazi collaborator, than informer and witness in communist showtrials.

MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL 2023 | 14-24 NOVEMBER 2023

Blind Date (1959)

Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Hardy Krüger, Stanley Baker, Micheline Presle and directed by Joseph Losey.

Joseph Losey and fellow blacklistee Ben Barzman joined Stanley Baker for the first time in this stylish if talky crime film.

The scenes between Hardy Kruger and Micheline Presle as Jaqueline Cousteau who plays Losey’s habitual glacial continental actress – greeting Kruger with the come-on line “I always wondered what Holland exported apart from tulips, now I know!” – have an erotic tension Losey never achieved again; while Baker’s friction with his superiors continues his perennial obsession with Britain’s class system which came to full fruition in ‘The Servant’.

Availing himself of Britain’s best technicians Losey as usual avails himself of a classy British cameraman in the form of Christopher Challis and a snazzy jazz score. @RichardChatten

Beyond Utopia (2023)

Dir/Wri: Madeleine Gavin | US Doc 115′

This electrifying new documentary about North Korea focuses on those trying to escape the brutal regime, and won this year’s Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival. 

Filmmaker Madeleine Gavin shows how South Korean pastor Kim Seungeun has dedicated much of his life to assisting the perilous flight of many from North Korea and onwards to safety through China, often with the help of fixers. And we witness frenzied footage of one family’s courageous escape through the voyeuristic camerawork of Taylor Krauss and Lisa Rinzler.

North Korea is certainly a weird and wicked totalitarian regime that represses its citizens with torture, a spartan lifestyle and the bizarre practice of forcing them to commit their personal solid waste to government centres to be used as fertiliser.

Beyond Utopia is not an easy film to watch but it’s certainly worthwhile. Crucially, these are real situations involving real people who risk the indignities of capture, torture and even execution if they are caught defecting. And that mere fact alone certainly concentrates the tension.

Fortunately there is a positive outcome for one family but Beyond Utopia often feels terrifyingly intense as it flips between fraught interviews with those concerned, and actual footage of their flight and the aftermath. The lucky escapees soon reflect on how wrong they were to believe that North Korea could ever be a paradise. MT

BEYOND UTOPIA is out in UK cinemas 24 October 2023

 

Pulp (1972)

Dir: Mike Hodges | Cast: Michael Caine · Mickey King ; Mickey Rooney · Preston Gilbert • Lionel Stander · Ben Dinuccio ; Lizabeth Scott | UK Drama

Having used the north of England as an incongruous setting for a tale of gangland violence in ‘Get Carter’, Mike Hodges and Michael Caine – who has announced his retirement at the age of 90 – journeyed to Malta for this disarmingly inconsequential shaggy dog story with echoes of the Montessi scandal.

The film abounds in cute visual conceits like the ubiquitous election posters of Frank Cippolata, a police lineup of hitmen dressed as priests; while Caine is at his most laconic passing judgements like “two crossed coffins on the Michelin guide” on a small town.

Along the way he encounters various eccentrics, including Dennis Price in a wide-brimmed hat that earns him the nickname “the Mad Hatter”, Lionel Stander (who actually tells his driver to “take him for a ride”), Mickey Rooney as an abrasive gangster star who boats of being “killed in eighty movies” (I wonder what happened to that portrait of him in his heyday on the wall of his mansion) and most surprising of all – one for the teenagers – Miss Lizabeth Scott. @RichardChatten

Snow Leopard (2023)

Dir/scr. Pema Tseden. China. 2023. 109mins

The snow leopard is a first-class protected animal in its native Tibet but it represents different things to the local people. 

Pema Tseden, the pioneering founder of Tibetan cinema who died in May at the age of 53, rose to the international stage with his 2019 feature Balloon. With a unique cinematic vision Tseden shows how someTibetans see this legendary leopard as a vicious threat, others a mythical being.

The sharp contrasts between tradition and the present day come to life in a striking story that centres on a family disagreement in the frosty wastelands where the rare beast roams as an increasingly endangered species.

Sheep herder Jinpa and his father are caught in a bitter conflict. Jinpa wants to kill a leopard that has run riot through his sheep enclosure killing nine of his frightened herd, but his father (Losang Choepel) feels this sacred animal should to be set free. 

All this is recorded by a film crew who arrives from Qinghai province in northwest China keen on collecting newsworthy local stories. Lead reporter Dradul (Genden Phuntsok) has been tipped off by the herder’s brother, Nyima (Tseten Tashi), a monk, and the TV journalist is delighted when the situation takes on a ludicrous angle as the conflict deepens

The enraged Jinpa will only back down if he gets compensation from the government. But this entails the endorsement of a government inspector who will have to travel all the way from the administrative capital. So the crew and family hunker down in the cosy yurt for a raucous night of high altitude hospitality. When the inspector finally arrives the conflict takes on a kafkaesque quality that often crackles with caustic comedy.  Spectacular landscapes and mesmerising naturalistic performances, particularly from the leopard itself, makie this particularly memorable. MT.

SNOW LEOPARD IS SCREENING AT VIENNALE 2023

 

Doctor Jekyll (2023)

Dir: Joe Stephenson | Cast: Eddie Izzard, Scott Chambers, Lindsay Duncan, Robyn Cara | UK Horror 90′

Following on from last week’s The Exorcist: Believer comes yet another version of a classic that bears no relation to any of its predecessors; although at least Doctor Jekyll retains its original author’s name in the credits.

This modern interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, Doctor Jekyll centres on one Dr. Nina Jekyll, a recluse who finds friendship with her newly hired help, Rob, played by emerging actor Scott Chambers. They must work together to prevent Hyde from destroying her life. 

As the titular Nina Jekyll Eddie Izzard never looks like other than Eddie Izzard in drag (and serves to remind one of what a fine female impersonator Dick Emery was). What little narrative the horror outing has falls on the charmingly slender shoulders of Scott Chambers. But as a whole there’s far too much talk – punctuated by the frequent use of sledgehammer music cues – and it actually gets wordier as it gets gorier.

According to the publicity blurb, the release of Doctor Jekyll heralds a new era for Hammer, founded in 1934 and now owned by British theatre producer John Gore. As well as significant investment, Gore’s new vision for the company, fuelled by a lifelong love of all things Hammer, will lead to a string of new films bearing the iconic Hammer name, and Doctor Jekyll is, apparently, only the beginning. @RichardChatten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPUuM4COMU

Victoria the Great (1937)

Dir: Herbert Wilcox | Cast: Anna Neagle, Anton Walbrook, H B Warner, Walter Rilla | Uk Drama 1937

Dufaycolor sold a lot of film in 1937 with the attraction of filming the Coronation in colour. In ‘Victoria the Great’ Herbert Wilcox was able to lavish Technicolor on recreating Victoria’s diamond jubilee forty years earlier.

Anthony Collins’ score is often inclined to be rather twee, but Wilcox directs with a lighter touch than usual although historical figures are throughout unsubtly addressed by name – such as ‘Lord Melbourne’, ‘Sir Robert’ and ‘Lord Palmerston – as a very obvious means of identifying them.

The film makes no secret of the German roots of the Royal Family (to the extent that Wilcox got a letter from the Kaiser himself congratulating him on the portrayal of her grandmother).

Anna Neagle invests the young Victoria with spunk, but it’s greatest distinction is probably bringing Anton Walbrook to British films, although as David Shipman later dryly observed Walbrook’s performance as Albert “suggested that Albert married beneath him”.) @RichardChatten

Bernadette (2023)

Dir/Wri: Lea Domenach | Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Denis Podalydes, Sara Girardeau | France Comedy drama 90′

Behind every great man there’s an even greater woman. And Catherine Deneuve gives a laconic comedy turn in this political biopic based on Bernadette Chirac (1933-) and the final years of popular French president Jacques Chirac, who held two terms of office from the mid nineties until 2007.

Bernadette (1933-) is clearly not a woman to be trifled with and Deneuve fits the role perfectly as the deceptively savvy second fiddle to her successful spouse (played by Michel Vuillermoz).

Feeling sidelined at the Elysee Palace when her daughter (Sara Girardeau) lands a plumb job, this indomitable sixty something showstopper steps out of the sidelines and reinvents herself as a media personality playing the press – and her husband with sparky savoir faire to become a political icon in her own right.

In the semi-fictionalised drama director Lea Domenach shares script duties with Clemence Dargent. A star-studded cast is bolstered by a drole and deadpan Denis Podalydes as the First Lady’s right hand man. Lovers of Deneuve will lap up this snappy satire with its retro costumes and settings in Reims, Epernay and the Palais of Versailles itself. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE and BELGIUM

 

 

The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Dir: David Gordon Green | Cast: Leslie Odom, Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett, Olivia O’Neill and Ellen Burstyn | US Horror 111′

Exactly 50 years ago this autumn, the most terrifying horror film in history landed on screens, shocking audiences around the world. Sadly The Exorcist: Believer is not a patch on the original just an attempt to attract a ‘younger audience’ by garnering traction from William Friedkin’s far superior outing.

In this often ludicrous ‘sequel’ Angela (Lidya Jewett) plays the girl, and the single parent is Victor (Leslie Odom Jr), a photographer who refuses to allow his daughter to play with her friend Katherine (O’Neill) during downtime. And he’s not stupid, because after school the two girls secretly sneak off to the nearby woods to stage a seance in the hope of contacting Angela’s late mother. Days later they reappear having no memory of their ill-judged escapade.

David Gordon Green certainly succeeds visually, character and mood wise: his horror film is subtly sinister and supernatural in its autumn settings and all goes well until midday through when the project nosedives: it’s as if Gordon Green has taken leave of his own senses possessed by the producers to churn out yet another franchise.

Victor decides to track down the only person he knows with any experience of the previous affair, and – back for another turn – it’s Ellen Burstyn, as splendid as she was in the 1973 original. Thence the film loses its way and its new plot lines in a melodramatic maelstrom of jump scares, speeches and sentimentality. The master Friedkin will be turning in his grave.

OUT IN UK CINEMAS FROM 6 OCTOBER 2023

 

 

The Goldman Case (2023)

Dir: Cédric Kahn | Cast: Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, Nicolas Briançon, Aurélien Chaussade | France, Drama 118’

Courtroom dramas have always been popular on the big screen and the latest crop has provided solid entertainment and done well award-wise on the festival circuit. Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, won the Palme D’or at Cannes’, and Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, garnered the main prize at Venice last summer, with Santiago Mitre’s Argentina 1985 scooping the FIPRESCI prize.

Based on real events, Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case is a caustic affair redolent of the politically charged 1970s (the time of the Red Brigades and Badder-Meinhof group) and bristling with the anger and self-righteousness of its central character, the militant leftwing radical Pierre Goldman accused of murder and robbery.

As we are constantly reminded in these legal battles, the truth is irrelevant, the outcome always depends on the clever application of the law and the jury’s verdict. But as the trial gets underway, it soon emerges that this man has been falsely accused, and vehemently denies both the murder of two pharmacists and four counts of robbery. The plot turns on whether the all important jury with find him guilty as charged, or innocent.

Kahn, who wrote the script with Nathalie Hertzberg, sets the scene well, opening with a meeting in the offices of the defendant’s lawyer, Maître Kiejman (Arthur Harari). From then on we are closeted in the claustrophobic confines of the courtroom for the pithy procedural, all and sundry sweating it out in their closely tailored woollen suits as the fiery rhetoric flies backwards and forwards. And no one is more belligerent than the defendant himself – Worthalter is screen dynamite, remaining a figure of outright indignation to the very last as the falsely accused Goldman. The resentment he exudes is palpable, but whether you can stand the heat for two hours in this smouldering battle of wits inspired by his prison penned autobiography, ‘Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France’, is arguable.

Patrick Ghiringhelli does his best to make it all cinematic but this is rather a dry drama that serves to showcase the antisemitism and racism of the era, not least on the part of the police, and will certainly go down well with left wing intellectuals. It does seem extraordinary than a man could be accused and stand trial in such a high profile way without substantial proof of guilt, or indeed, any tangible witnesses. An off-duty policeman (Jeanson) – who purportedly saw the defendant at the scene of the crime – is wheeled into the witness box, and a friend of Goldman’s (Tshibangu) claims he was coerced by the police into giving evidence. Polish actor Jerzy Radziwilowicz (from Man of Marble) plays Goldman’s father, a war veteran who bolsters his son’s case from the outset, inculcating him with a strong sense of self belief from childhood that eventually led to a stint as a guerrilla in Venezuela. A strong cast also includes Nicolas Briancon as the judge Maitre Garaud. MT

IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE/BELGIUM | CANNES 2023 PREMIERE

 

D.O.A. (1949)

Dir: Rudolph Mate. | Cast: Edmond O’Brian, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Beverly Garland | US Drama 83’

With a title like that I think I’m safe in discussing this film’s plot without issuing a spoiler alert since most viewers are already well appraised of the plot in advance. A man, Frank Bigelow, has told he’s been poisoned and has only a few days to live, so he tries to find out who killed him and why. 

At the outset of Kind Hearts and Coronets Denis Price laconically observes “when a man is to be hanged in the morning it concentrates his mind wonderfully”. Edmond O’Brien undergoes a similar transformation since the knowledge he only has hours to live has completely removed the fear of death which enables him to ride roughshod through a collection of ghouls; a situation bookended by the opening when he strides into a police station to report a murder and when the sergeant asks who, replies “I was!” and in a later flashback a scientist informs him “You’ve been murdered!” (only in a noir would you you hear a line like that!).

What makes the cinema such a rich experience is that it exists in a permanent present, so even though O’Brien dies at the end he remains marvellously alive each time the film is repeated. @RichardChatten 

STREAMING ON PLEX TV

8 of the Best Musical Biopics

Amy (2015) Rent/Buy

Best known for Senna, his acclaimed 2010 on about late Formula One driver, Asif Kapadia garnered an Oscar for this bittersweet biopic introducing the Southgate-born jazz singer as a “North London Jewish girl with a lot of attitude”, who loved to write poetry and lyrics. Unearthing a treasure trove of photos, home movie footage and demos shared from over 100 interviews from those closest to her, he shows Winehouse as a witty, down to earth and “gobby” girl with a rich and velvety voice, who never wanted to be famous but whose inadvertent stardom let to her tragic death, aged 27.

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021) – Apple TV/Prime Video

Do we need another Brian Wilson documentary? I Just Wasn’t made for These Times and Love & Mercy have already told his story, but the billion or so the super-fans will always ask for more. And The Beach Boys were America’s answer to The Beatles, back in the day, they epitomised an era and their harmonies are almost as divine – so yes, we do!.

Director Brent Wilson (no relation), veteran of music docs like Streetlight Harmonies, has tried the linear angle, confronting the images of the ‘Beach Boy’ founder with today’s survivor of schizoid-affective and bi-polar disorders, who enjoys being on tour again, even though the hallucinatory voices still haunt him – and have done for the last 60 years – when he is performing, in spite of all the medication available.

‘Rolling Stone’ editor Jason Fine, a close friend of Wilson, drives the megastar composer/singer round his favourite haunts, sadly only getting monosyllabic answers to his leading questions. Brian is very much in the shell he has created to survive. And there is more that enough pain for anybody to deal with, let alone a highly-strung artist.

Music-wise there is extensive time devoted to the iconic “Pet Sounds” and SMiLE, that came into being in the mid-1960s and finished thirty years later. There are few revelations, the bitter chapter of Brian’s relationship with fellow Beach Boy Mike Love is nearly brushed out of the picture. Only once the mask of self-defence slips, when Brian tells Jason “I have not talked to a real friend in three years.”

Miles Davis : Birth of the Cool (2019) Netflix/Apple TV

Documentarian Stanley Nelson tells it all in the usual talking heads style – Frances Taylor, Greg Tate, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock and his final manager Mark Rothbaum all appear and a straightforward narrative structure enlivened by many photos and clips from the archives. The film luxuriates in its musical interludes which are enjoyable and plentiful making this possibly the definitive biopic of one of the most inventive jazz musicians of the 20th century. Stanley Nelson’s expansive documentary takes an entertaining breeze through the musical career of Miles Davis eclipsing Don Cheadle’s movie 2015 drama Miles Ahead

“All I ever wanted to do was communicate through music”. The iconic jazz trumpeter and composer developed smooth romantic vibes and invented a cool, sophisticated masculinity that came to be known as the ‘Miles Davis Mystique’. For over five decades Miles developed various jazz styles from bebop, cool jazz and jazz fusion working with Prestige, Columbia, and Warner Brothers despite a rocky personal life that was full of love but fraught by ill health and emotional instability.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017)

As fabulous now as when she was in 1979 when I first experienced her at a concert in Italy’s famous Covo di Nord Est – Grace Jones still rocks. Now at 75 her voice has mellowed, wavering occasionally, but her glamour and star power are just as potent and her aura and outrageous antics as just spectacular, if not more.

After an overture of Slave to the Rhythm where Grace performs in purple regalia and a golden sunburst mask, Fiennes cuts to an autograph session with fans fawning: “I’ve been waiting to see you for 25 years” – Grace responds “so has my mother”. Suddenly we are following her through Jamaica airport for an exuberant reunion with her mother (who looks like Aretha Franklin), son Paolo and niece Chantel, and as night falls, the camera pictures a sultry moonlight gig in the torridly tropical island, drenched in lush emerald forests.

Fiennes’ punctuates the gutsy real time footage shot in her kitchen, car and dressing room – with Grace’s mesmerising Dublin stage show, but both are beguiling and cinematic. Fiennes’ shirks the traditional documentary format – there are no photos or archive footage, making Bloodlight And Bami fresh, feisty and intriguing for longtime fans who have never really experienced the woman ‘behind the scenes’. It’s also longer than most docs at nearly 2 hours. In concert footage, Grace mesmerises with performances of Pull Up To The Bumper and more personal tracks including Williams’ Blood, This Is and Hurricane. She is s force of nature, and certainly a force to be reckoned with. MT

Stop Making Sense (David Byrne and Talking Heads (1985 re-released in 2023) AppleTV/Prime Video

Maybe not the latest look at but certainly the most iconic, this is a musical biopic in the best sense of the word. In Hollywood December 1983, French director Jonathan Demme films three concerts from Scottish maverick music maker David Byrne, rolling them out without explanation or talking heads – although Talking Heads are very much part of the scene. The bands speaks for itself and we get the best seats – on stage, up close and personal and from the back of the auditorium, even loitering in the wings. Demme’s film is an energising experience made at the climax of what would be the band’s final major tour. The show starts with the beat-driven Pyscho Killer and works its way through a classic repertoire with hits such as, Take Me to the Water to This Must be the Place that scored Paolo Sorrentino’s film of the same name in 2011 and of course, Once in a Lifetime. Byrne gradually relaxes from taut jutting-faced uncertainty to a more smiling and febrile intensity, a style icon in white plimsolls and oversized concrete-coloured suits. Hypnotic to look at, his moves are as funky, smooth and syncopated as Bing Crosby or even Elvis without the sexual magnetism: Byrne is a performer more artfully ambivalent in his erotic appeal, but none the less legendary. And he feels very much at home on his own or surrounded by his family of Talking Heads. A nostalgic, diverting, happy film. MT

Rachmaninov:The Harvest of Sorrow (1998) Rent/Buy

Tony Palmer’s extensive documentary about one of the world’s most loved composers (1873-1943) is a vibrant memoire, enlivened by musical interludes and ample archive footage of his life and times in Russia, Sweden and the United States where he finally died in 1943, unable to return to his beloved homeland: “a ghost wandering forever in the world”.

Playing out as a long autobiographical letter to his daughters Tatiana and Irina, voiced by Gielgud in slightly sardonic but wistful tone, the film covers the composer’s life until his final months in New York. But it starts at a low point, with the Rachmaninoff family leaving Russia in 1917, escaping from the Bolshevik devastation of Petrograd (soon to be Leningrad) set for musical adventures in Stockholm, and thence to America. Desperate about leaving his homeland, the composer also felt at a low ebb creatively: “Nowadays I am never satisfied with myself, I am burdened with a harvest of sorrow: I almost never feel that what I do is successful”.

Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) Netflix

Rock legend Little Richard comes alive in this new biopic from Lisa Cortes. It sees the musical icon trying to come to terms with his complex personality and explores the lack of public recognition during his lifetime. John Waters, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones – among others – help to shed light on a life so full of promise, but blighted by social reality. Sometimes verging on the hagiographic, Cortes manages a wealth of information with aplomb, a more non-linear approach might have been an alternative.

Richard Wayne Penniman (1932-2020) was born in Macon (GA) in the deep South of he USA. Black, queer and disabled he was most certainly abused in childhood. But his deep religious faith eventually led to him renouncing his gayness: “God wanted Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

The man who would create “Tutti Frutti”, ”Long Tall Sally”. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up” single-handedly invented Rock’N’ Roll – but the glory and the awards went to Elvis and Pat Boone: No wonder, he felt cheated. He was the architect of an art form and a social identity that became progressively clearer only later in his life.

ENNIO (2021) Prime Video

Ennio Morricone was one of cinema’s best loved and most prolific composers. Giuseppe Tornatore captures his complex romantic spirit in this warmly nostalgic tribute that also celebrates their own working relationship that started with Cinema Paradiso (1988) and continued for many years. In his lifetime Morricone scored over 500 movies, one year alone completing 18 films.

The biopic straddles film and musicology enriched by a treasure trove of excerpts and the stars that brought them to life praising Morricone’s charisma and single mindedness and describing their own experiences with a man whose modesty contrasted with his prodigious talent to amuse. The final half hour does feel repetitive with its endless clips of concert performances which add nothing to the party, and almost fly in the face of the composer’s lowkey sense of style. MT

 

 

 

 

 

Club Zero (2023)

Wri/Dir: Jessica Hausner | Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Sam Hoare, Camilla Rutherford, Elsa Zylberstein | UK

Jessica Hausner is back with another cold-eyed psychological drama that unfolds in an elite school where a teacher forms a sinister bond with a group of students.

A dereliction of parental duty is behind the faddish behaviour of so many kids today. Or so Jessica Hausner would have us believe in her primary-coloured feature that also highlights eating disorders through the online ‘pro-ana movement’, climate change and self control.

Mia Wasikowska heads the eclectic cast of singularly unlikeable characters as Miss Novak a nutritionist specialising in ‘zero eating’ in a modernist school billed as one of the best in Austria. The parents are rich and mostly neglectful of their kids who channel this latent disappointment and lack of real guidance by voicing a series of contemporary convictions which sound entirely laudable in the opening scenes: their love of sport, their need to impact less on to the environment. No one actually mentions a desire to be slim. Gradually Miss Novak indoctrinates her students into a cult of disfunctional eating, promoting the miraculous health and environmental benefits.

Hausner and her regular screenwriting partner Geraldine Bajard certainly make some really valid points but the stark, non-naturalistic interiors and characters are so intractable, performed by a cast of inexperienced newcomers, we do not care a jot for any of them as they fade into pasty-faced insignificance, and this, along with an irritating percussive soundscape and the relentlessly unforgiving depiction of Gen Z, makes for an arduous watch.

The exception here is school principal Sidse Babett Knudsen who lights up every scene with her amusing charisma, as Ms Dorset. Fellow auteur Ulrich Seidl is behind the production team but the film has none of his dry wit or deadpan appeal. Instead we are forced to endure a scene involving a teenage girl (Ksenia Devriendt) who eats her own vomit, echoing the ‘yuk’ factor of last year’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness. Bodily functions are a natural part of life but sound effects would have been far more effective. Sometimes what we don’t see is far more powerfu than what we do. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE and BELGIUM

The Killers (1964) BFI

Dir: Don Siegel | Cast: Angie Dickerson, Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Clu Galager | US Thriller 93’

The credits of the second version of Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 short story – in which the target is only fleetingly seen – actually reads ‘Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers’.

Don Siegel’s version actually achieves the extraordinary achievement of improving on Robert Siodmak’s 1946 classic and focuses on the two hit men rather than their mark.

Originally made for TV but deemed too violent, the  film finally made a star of Lee Marvin after a decade playing ugly heavies (Siegel begins the film with Marvin beating up a blind woman to save time establishing from the outset just what he was capable of).

The film contains the screen swan song of Ronald Reagan, a move Reagan bitterly regretted since it was the only time he played a villain; but he’s really rather good (witness his final close up at the film’s conclusion).” @RichardChatten

NOW AT BFI SOUTHBANK LONDON

LaRoy (2023)

Dir/Wri: Shane Atkinson | Cast: John Magaro, Steve Zahn, Dylan Baker, Galadriel Stineman, Matthew Del Negro, Brad Leland, Bob Clendenin, Megan Stevenson, Darcy Shean | US Comedy thriller, 110′

LaRoy is a quietly triumphant Coen-esque comedy thriller centring on a case of mistaken identity in small-town Texas. 

John Magaro plays Ray, a biddable good-looking guy living out a humdrum existence in the Texas town of LaRoy where he would do anything to make his beauty queen wife Stacy-Lynn happy. But his thoughts turn to suicide on discovering she is cheating on him with his brother Junior (Matthew Del Negro), who helps him run the family hardware business.

A chance meeting with Skip (Steve Zahn) makes Ray reconsider his options. Skip, a dangerous fantasist, takes himself far too seriously and has a random recall of reality. Posing as a private eye he acts and dresses ‘more like Howdy Doody’. But the well-meaning Ray falls in with Skip’s plan to investigate a series of small time crooks in the hope that he can raise money for Stacy-Lyn’s dream of owning a beauty salon.

Together the two men vaguely foster unrealised dreams of validating their empty lives and even making themselves local heroes. And this leads to a doomed partnership in crime with their awkward social interactions giving the film its most drole moments, after Ray is mistaken for a hit-man.

A series of showcase support characters are well-formed and believable: Dylan Baker is the sinister standout, the real hit-man Harry (and he’s not ‘here to help’); Galadriel Stineman is Angie, Skip’s feisty ex; Adam Leland (from Friday Night Lights) is a misogynist used-car salesman called LeDoux but his wife Midge (Darcy Sheen) gets the best line: in fact women certainly have the upper hand in this Texas town. 

So an understated gem of a debut from Shane Atkinson, the deadpan humour is subtle and incidental but vital to the film’s success, with memorable lines and characters that feel real and resonate long after the tragic ending. You may want to see it again for this reason, I certainly did, and will. There are certainly echoes of the Coen brothers, but Atkinson has forged his own path and seems like a filmmaker who has set out on a worthwhile journey. Let’s hope we see more of him. MT

LaRoy, Texas will be available on Digital Download from 12th April | https://www.vertigoreleasing.com 

 

 

 

 

 

King and Country (1964)

In 1963 Joseph Losey’s huge success with The Servant gave him carte blanche with his next project.

Since the following year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the First World War – an occasion celebrated by a landmark TV series of interviews with survivors – Losey took the opportunity to interrogate his perennial fascination with the British class system which resulted in one of the most raw and powerful anti-war films since ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’.

To that end he enlisted Dirk Bogarde to represent the officers and Tom Courtney the common man who plays a sacrificial lamb akin to those in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory.

 During World War I, Courtenay is Hamp, a young soldier who deserts his post, attempting to escape the relentless guns and mud and walk home. Captain Hargreaves (Bogarde), an aristocratic British Army lawyer, must defend Hamp before the army tribunal, for whom the crime of desertion carries the threat of execution. Initially, Hargreaves approaches Hamp’s case with disdain; however, upon learning that Hamp volunteered for duty on a dare, that he is the sole survivor of his unit and that his wife has been unfaithful in his absence, his efforts on Hamp’s behalf become more impassioned and earnest. In the face of cold army bureaucracy, Hargreaves’s arguments fall on deaf ears as Hamp becomes a victim of morale-boosting on the eve of the troop’s deployment into an impending bloody battle.

Even by Losey’s standards King and Country is a relentless and harrowing experience. It proved to be his final black & white film and lost its entire tiny production costs. Losey career never completely recovered and in retrospect it can now be seen as the beginning of his decline. @RichardChatten

KING AND COUNTRY on Blu-Ray or DVD now.

La Petite (2023)

Dir: Guillaume Nicloux | Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Ann Corsini, Maria Taquine | France/Belgium drama 97’| 

The medieval city of Ghent and the Belgian coastline make a handsome setting for this otherwise fraught family drama from Guillaume Nicloux (The Nun).

Based on Fanny Chesnel’s novel The Crib it stars Fabrice Lucchini as a lonely and fractious furniture restorer called Joseph whose estranged son and partner are killed in a car accident, making the old boy even more morose.

Joseph then discovers that the couple were expecting a child from a surrogate mother, so a moral responsibility rests on his shoulders, as the grandfather, to track down and befriend the surrogate, a fearsome Flemish virago called Rita Vandewaele. (Maria Taquine)

Being anti-social and uncomfortable out of his comfort zone, this is a difficult task for Joseph and the awkwardness of the situation gives rise to some mawkish humour that falls rather flat as Luchini tries his best to build a rapport with another unlikeable character. Ann Corsini is underused as the only ray of sunshine – apart from the baby – in this rather bland affair that leaves us as cold as its subject-matter. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

Visions (2023)

Dir: Yann Gozlan, Diane Kruger, Mathieu Kassovitz, Marta Nieto | France, Erotic Thriller 120′

Mediterranean seascapes, modernist villas and a mysterious ménage à trois with a mile-high club pilot. A Perfect Man director Yann Gozlan delivers it all in this glossy erotic thriller that echoes Basic Instinct without its juicy plotline. Visions is fun until it gets stuck on the runway, with Philippe Rombi’s classy score a dead ringer for Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic BI original.

Diane Kruger is perfectly cast as glacial airline pilot Estelle. Living the dream with her medic lover Guillaume (Kassovitz) in their Bandol beachside villa; she drives a Porsche, he a black BMW motorcycle. The opening scene pictures her powering her way through the waves on a morning swim in Côte d’Azur waters: but there’s a sting in the tail to this idyll: a smack of deadly jellyfish hovers nearby setting a sinister tone for this unsettling study in sexual obsession and paranoia.

Estelle’s meticulous routine soon goes awry thanks to the reappearance of former flame Ana (Marta Nieto). The two set eyes on each other in an airport lounge and the rest is history. But their lesbian lust is threatened by someone peering through the keyhole, and it looks suspiciously like Guillaume in his snazzy helmet, or maybe it’s the stray dog that roams around the beach.

When Ana goes missing Estelle’s imagination works overtime imagining her with another lover, as baleful glances and salacious stares are shared with the putative paramour, a gallery-owner called Johana (Amira Casar). Estelle is reduced to a nervous wreck: She must kick her benzo habit and return to those microbiome-friendly smoothies and stick to the original plan – a baby with the long-suffering Guillaume (a criminally underused Kassovitz). 

Coasting on its captivating camerawork and atmosphere this is a moody, erotic thriller to be enjoyed on the big screen. But no amount of visual wizardry can make up for a vehicle that cannot seem to land. Gozlan, collaborating with various other writers, has certainly hammed up on his knowledge of piloting, and that give us something to chew on in a portrait of obsession that goes badly wrong. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | GOLDEN SHELL 2023

San Sebastián Film Festival | Competition selection 2023

The San Sebastian Film Festival is Spain’s only A-list event running from 22 September until 30th in the North West Spanish town on the shores of the Atlantic, and often known by its Basque name of Donostia. This year celebrating its 71st edition, a selection of Spanish titles and international fare competes for the Golden Shell Award in venues such as the Kursaal and the Victoria Eugenia theatre. This year’s edition, honouring Victor Erice, and headed by Claire Denis as president of the Golden Shell jury, kicks off withThe Boy and The Heron and closes with James Marsh’s Dance First starring Gabriel Byrne.

THE BOY AND THE HERON – Hayao Miyazaki

A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki. Out of competition

DANCE FIRST – James Marsh

Literary genius Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his, way he was a man acutely aware of his own failings. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later,” the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon. Out of Competition

Competition films

ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT – Raven Jackson

A lyrical decades spanning exploration across a woman’s life in Mississippi, this feature debut from award-winning poet, photographer and filmmaker Raven Jackson is a haunting and richly layered ode to the generations of people that hail from the region.

A JOURNEY IN SPRING – Tzu-Hui Peng, Ping-Wen Wang

An old man with a limp, Khim-Hok, has depended on his wife over the years. They live in an old house on the urban fringe of Taipei. After his wife suddenly passes away, the man puts her into an old freezer and carries on as normal. But his long lost son and partner suddenly appears leaving Kim-Hok to face his demons.

SULTANA’S DREAM – Isabel Herguera

Taking her inspiration from a feminist sci-fi short story written in Bengal in 1905, Ines sets out on a voyage of discovery around India in search of Ladyland, the Utopian land of women.

EX-HUSBANDS – Noah Pritzker

Peter’s parents divorced after 65 years, his wife left him after 35, and his sons, Nick and Mickey, are off leading their own lives. When Peter flies to Tulum, crashing Nick’s bachelor party hosted by Mickey, he realizes he’s not the only one in crisis.

FINGERNAILS – Christos Nikos

Anna and Ryan have found true love. It’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute, and meets Amir.

GREAT ABSENCE – Key Chika-Ura 

Anna and Ryan have found true love. It’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute, and meets Amir.

KALAK – Isabella Eklof 

Jan is on the run from himself after being sexually abused by his father. Living in Greenland with his little family, he yearns to be a part of the open, collectivist culture and become a Kalak, a “dirty Greenlander”.

RED ISLAND – Robin Campillo

L’île rouge / Red Island is set in Madagascar in the early 1970s, on one of the last air bases of the French army, where military families live the last throes of colonialism. Influenced by his reading of the intrepid comic book heroine Fantômette, ten-year-old Thomas sweeps with a curious glance what surrounds him, while the world gradually opens up to a different reality.

THE PRACTICE – Martin Rejtman

Gustavo and Vanessa separate and have to redraft their projects together. Both are yoga teachers. Gustavo is Argentinian, Vanessa is Chilean. The trip to India is cancelled. Vanessa keeps the apartment and leaves the studio they shared, making Gustavo homeless. As a result of the accumulated stress, Gustavo injures his knee and replaces yoga: first with quadriceps exercises and then with the gym. But gradually he gets his life back on track and starts practising again.​

THE GREAT TEMPTATION – Xavier Legrand

Ellias Barnès, 30, is the newly-announced artistic director of a famous Parisian fashion house. But as expectations are high, he starts experiencing chest pain. Out of the blue he is called back to Montreal to organise his estranged father’s funeral and discovers that he may have inherited much worse than his father’s weak heart.

THE SUCCESSOR – Xavier LeGrand

Ellias Barnès, 30, is the newly-announced artistic director of a famous Parisian fashion house. But as expectations are high, he starts experiencing chest pain. Out of the blue he is called back to Montreal to organise his estranged father’s funeral and discovers that he may have inherited much worse than his father’s weak heart.

MMXX – Christi Pui

Oana Pfifer, a young therapist, gradually slips into the net of the questionnaire she submits to her patient. Mihai, Oana’s brother, worrying about his birthday, is stuck in a story far bigger than he can handle. Septimiu, Oana’s husband, concerned about his health, vaguely listens to a strange story his colleague was caught up in a while ago. Narcis Patranescu, an organized crime detective, deals with an unsettling dark story while interrogating a young woman at a funeral.

THE RYE HORN – Jaione Camborda

Illa de Arousa, 1971. Maria is a woman who earns a living harvesting shellfish. She is also known on the island for helping other women in childbirth with special dedication and care. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee and sets out on a dangerous journey that will make her fight for her survival. Seeking her freedom, Maria decides to cross the border by one of the smugglers’ routes between Galicia and Portugal.

PUAN – Benjamin Naishtat, Maria Alche

Illa de Arousa, 1971. Maria is a woman who earns a living harvesting shellfish. She is also known on the island for helping other women in childbirth with special dedication and care. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee and sets out on a dangerous journey that will make her fight for her survival. Seeking her freedom, Maria decides to cross the border by one of the smugglers’ routes between Galicia and Portugal.

THE ROYAL HOTEL – Kitty Green

Illa de Arousa, 1971. Maria is a woman who earns a living harvesting shellfish. She is also known on the island for helping other women in childbirth with special dedication and care. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee and sets out on a dangerous journey that will make her fight for her survival. Seeking her freedom, Maria decides to cross the border by one of the smugglers’ routes between Galicia and Portugal.

UN AMOR – Isabel Coixet

Having escaped from her stressful life in the city, 30-year-old Nat holes up in the small village of La Escapa, in deepest rural Spain. In a rundown country house, with a crochety stray dog, the young girl will try to put her life back on track. Having dealt with her landlord’s hostility and the mistrust of the village locals, Nat finds herself accepting a disturbing sexual proposal made by her neighbour Andreas. This strange and confusing encounter will give rise to an all-consuming and obsessive passion that will completely engulf Nat and make her question the kind of woman she thinks she is.

A SILENCE – JOACHIM LAFOSSE

Astrid is the wife of an acclaimed lawyer. Silenced for 25 years, her family balance suddenly collapses when her children initiate their search for justice.

Special Screenings 

THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER – Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal

A music journalist from New York sets out on a frantic investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Brazilian pianist Tenorio Jr, regular accompanist of Vinicius de Moraes, among others. This animated thriller moving to the beat of jazz and bossa nova portrays the days immediately before the Latin American continent was enshrouded by totalitarian regimes.

A PROPER JOB – Thomas Lilti

It’s a new school year. Benjamin is a PhD student without a grant. Given his lack of future prospects, he accepts a position as a contract teacher in a Parisian middle school. Without training or experience, he soon realises just how tough the teaching profession can be in an education system crippled by a chronic lack of resources. With the support and commitment of the other teachers, and a bit of luck, he will reconsider his vocation.

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL | 2023

The Killer is Loose (1956)

Dir: Bud Boetticher | Cast: Joseph Cotton, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey | US noir thriller

After a decade spent making programmers Bud Boetticher was on the verge of finding his vocation as a director of westerns.

The series of oaters Boetticher made with Randolph Scott on which his reputation rests were bookended by two very twentieth century crime dramas shot in black & white by veteran Lucien Ballard.

It’s ironic that Wendell Corey’s grievance at his wife’s death makes him the villain, since that’s often what motivates Scott. The title’s a bit of a misnomer as Corey is far from your usual psychopath and remains inscrutable to the end.

The subject would have been right up Andrew Stone’s street but displays far more ruthlessness and has a higher casualty rate (there’s a particular nasty moment with a hoe).

I was rather disappointed that far more screen time was devoted to Joseph Cotten than Corey but the conclusion proved satisfyingly tense, @RichardChatten

Carlos (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Typist Artist Pirate King (2023)

Dir.: Carol Morley; Cast: Monica Dolan, Kelly McDonald, Gina McKee; UK 2023. 108 min.

Carol Morley is best known for her debut Dream of a Life, a docudrama about a woman who suffered a lonely death in North London. The British filmmaker is now on rescue mission for UK artist Audrey Amiss (1933-2013) whose posthumous output was made over to the Welcome Trust.

Morley unearths of prodigious output that included 47 books. A passport states that the bearer is the titular ‘Typist, Artist, Pirate King’. Indeed, Amiss was born in Sunderland in the early 1933s before drifting down south where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia that put paid to her studies at London’s Royal Academy. What followed was a life of “revolving doors”, in and out of institutions.

Morley has decided to stage this as a garrulous road movie Amiss (Dolan) literally trapping her psychiatric nurse Sandra (Macdonald) in a trip from South London to Sunderland- claiming the north east as her spiritual home. The reason for the trip is an exhibition of her paintings in Sunderland – which feels much stuck in a time-warp. But Audrey enjoys the ride via car and bus much more than her long-suffering companion (“Sandra Panza”). Aubrey is shrill and aggressive, harping on about the past and those, now long gone,  who have either done her harm or abetted her against countless enemies. She finally admits her fall in a ravine was due to poor eyesight, rather than the fault of her sister Dorothy (McKee), as she had claimed all along.

Monica Dolan gives a feisty, over-the-top performance as Amiss, but it somehow works against the film’s cause: the rehabilitation of an artist who called out the advent of the UK’s consumer society, and media domination. Morley frames her protagonist as a martyr, but also an unpalatable one, largely due to the farcical comedy treatment which not only mocks Amiss but also, sadly, her affliction. Thus she emerges very much more as a pirate than a creative worthy of her cause.

Imaginatively shot by French DoP Agnes Godard, Typist triumphs despite Morley’s direction and script. Somewhere along the road, this talented filmmaker loses the reins, leaving Amiss as her worst enemy rather than a figure to be celebrated. A forthcoming biography should shed more light on the life of this worthwhile British artist. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 27 OCTOBER 2023

A Proper Job | Un métier Sérieux (2023) | San Sebastian Film Festival 2023

Dir/Wri: Thomas Lilti | Cast: Vincent Lacoste, Francois Cluzet, Louise Bourgoin, Adele Exarchopoulos, Mustapha Abourachid | France Comedy Drama 101′

Real life pals Adèle Exarchopoulos and Vincent Lacoste star in this amusing schoolroom drama – they were last seen giggling together on the Red Carpet at Cannes for the premiere of Elemental. 

A Proper Job is the latest from French writer/director Thomas Lilti whose sobering sophomore feature Hippocrates saw Lacoste as a junior doctor thrown into the deep end at the Hospital Rothschild in Paris. This time he’s Benjamin Barrois, a junior tutor with no experience – and it shows – trying to finance his PhD at a Normandy secondary school with few resources. And his first day teaching rowdy adolescents certainly gets off to a bad start when a more senior colleague mistakes him for an intern, in front of the class. This doesn’t help his cause.

True to say that many otherwise decent kids can be monsters in the classroom and that’s certainly the case here. Benjamin lurches from crisis to crisis as Lilti demonstrates in semi-documentary style the many pitfalls of being a schoolteacher nowadays. And we’ve already seen these situations in films like The Hunt (2012), Mr Backmann and His Class (2021) and most recently in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses (2023).

So when one of his pupils, an unruly kid with a troubled home-life, refuses to respect the simple code of class conduct Benjamin has a problem on his hands, then the boy files a complaint with the school head (Abourachid) that leads to a disciplinary process.

Lacoste is such a versatile actor you can’t help liking his portrayal of Benjamin: he can be serious but there’s always a cheeky glint in his eye. And when he joins a surfing break in Biarritz with other members of the staff there are moments of high tension and the camaraderie between the colleagues is really put to the test. They support each other unfailingly when the chips are down.

Lilti fleshes out the backstories of the other teachers: Pierre (Cluzet) is having marital difficulties, and single parent Meriem (Exarchopoulos) is struggling to teach her own kid while juggling her career. Another teacher Sandrine (Bourgoin) is pushed to the limit in a livid classroom confrontation.

Lilti never looks for simple solutions in his well-paced script, and the finale is spectacular. A really good cast and a sympathetic treatment of the issues involved make this another convincing feature from a much deserving director who has so far received 14 nominations but never won a prize. Let’s hope he will soon. MT

IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE | SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Calvaire (2004)

Dir: Fabrice du Welz | Belgium, Thriller 88′

Calvaire kicks off Fabrice du Welz’s ‘Ardennes’ Trilogy, a series of tortured psychological thrillers with a religious ring to them (Alleluia, Adoration) set in the remote forested region of Belgium known as Wallonia. There are clear echoes of Philippe Haim’s Barracuda 1997 and Roman Polanski’s Cul de Sac (1966) to this potent possession piece that sees a stranger veering off the beaten track to find himself in trouble.

Although Belgian, Calvaire forms part of the New French Extremity Movement, a series of intensely sensorial and violently exploitative psychodramas that featured rape, mental torture and graphic sex. Notable protagonists of the sub-genre are Philippe Grandrieux, Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noe, Lars von Trier, and Bruno Dumont. Here Du Welz and his co-writer from Alleluia craft another warped cult classic for the archives.

A travelling troubadour (Laurent Lucas) finds himself at the mercy of some bizarrre Bruegelesque characters when his van breaks down on a rainy night on the way home from a gig. After enduring an eerie encounter with a whimpering wayfarer called Boris (Jean-Luc Couchard) who appears to have lost his dog Bella, a cosy fireside welcome from inkeeper M. Bartel (Jackie Berroyer) seems like a reprieve, but soon turns into a nightmare when his perverse host, who warns him not to go near the village, has other ideas about making his guest feel at home, although this does rather outstay its welcome despite a modest running time. MT

CALVAIRE on digital platforms from 19 September 2023

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Dir: Kenneth Branagh | UK Fantasy thriller 100′

Venice, All Hallows Eve 1947, and the privations of the war are still haunting the lugubrious rain-soaked city in this morose horror-tinged thriller from Kenneth Branagh. Adapted from the Agatha Christie treasure trove: ‘Hallowe’en Party’, from 1969, this latest outing follows on from Death in the Nile. In a bid to attract a younger generation, rather than the usual ‘Archers’ demographic, the ghosts are all children. 

The po-faced Belgian sleuth (Branagh himself) has been dragged out of self-imposed retirement by an American crime writer friend Ariadne Oliver, a sparky Tina Fey who considerably lightens the mood). She wants him to come with her to a halloween seance at a penumbral palazzo haunted by dead children. The idea is to rumble a ‘fake’ physic (Michelle Yeoh) hired by the chatelaine Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) to shed light on the mysterious drowning of her daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson). True to form, Poirot has no truck with things spiritual until his scepticism is piqued when things turn nasty. Could evil forces really be at work in this sinister setting with its Tourneuresque shadow-play? Or is this merely a bid to disguise skulduggery.

The underused cast of suspects make their excuses: Rowena’s ex fiancé Maxime (Kyle Allen), the housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin); Dr Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his little son Leopold (a superb Jude Hill); a Hungarian couple (Ali Khan, Desdemona Holland). Even Piorot’s bodyguard (Richard Scammarcio) is questioned.

A Haunting is certainly a bit of fun to start with, and there are some witty one-liners largely from Tina Fey. DoP Haris Zambarloukos makes it all look spectacular, but no amount of jump scares, echoing voices, screeching parrots  – or even a projectile vomiting skeleton – can save the narrative torpor that eventually sets in as this latest outing sinks slowly into the lagoon. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

Alphaville (1965) Prime video

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard | Cast: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina | France drama 99’

In 1924 a quantum leap occurred in speculation about the future when Fritz Lang saw the Manhattan skyline at night and realised it had already arrived. Jean-Luc Godard took that idea still further by using contemporary Paris as the setting for ‘Alphaville’, the result probably being the only film by Godard to be quoted by both Monty Python and Benny Hill.

Although set in the future ‘Alphaville’ is now a film to be watched with a powerful sense of nostalgia and is a profoundly melancholy experience since we now know that Godard was on the cusp of a precipitous decline into mediocrity.

Near the conclusion of ‘Vivre sa Vie’ Anna Karina was shown writing a letter anticipating a job in a film starring Eddie Constantine. Did Godard suspect that such a film would see fruition in less that three years in the form of ‘Alphaville’? @RichardChatten

NOW ON ORIME VIDEO

Fremont (2023)

Dir: Babak Jalali | Cast: Anaita Wali Zara, Jeremy Allen White, Gregg Tarkington, Siddique Ahmed | US Drama 91′

An Afghan translator from war-torn Kabul reinvents herself as a fortune cookie writer in this succinct but memorable immigration story directed and written by award-winning filmmaker Babak Jalali and his co-writer Carolina Cavalli (Amanda) and starring Anaita Wali Zara in a stunning screen debut.

Unfolding in glowing monochrome tableaux like a neorealist drama of the 1940s this ravishing arthouse feature, lensed by Laura Valladao, takes place in present day Fremont, a suburb of San Francisco.

Simply told yet complex, captivating and thematically rich Jalali draws us into the everyday life of world-weary Donya, a young woman who finds the petty trivialities of western society completely out of sync with her fraught past in Afghanistan.

Jalali uses a clever narrative device – an impromptu consultation with psychiatrist, Dr Anthony (Turkington) – to flesh out Donya’s backstory. She went to him requesting sleeping tablets but ends up revealing how, working as a translator for the army, she financed her passage to America, and how she would have happily gone anywhere to escape her past. And so these amusing sessions get underway providing the connective tissue for Donya’s days at the handmade fortune cookie company where she endures a humdrum existence until Daniel (Robert Mitchum/ Dustin Hoffmann lookalike Jeremy Allen White) pops into the equation, and sparks fly.

Jalali exposes San Francisco’s lively immigrant population in amusing vignettes: A Chinese co-worker takes advantage of Donya selling her expensive coffee when the office machine breaks down, a Chinese lute player entertains us briefly with his soulful vibes, and various diners read aloud their fortune cookie massages giving the film context and textural richness. Fremont benefits from its sleek running time; there is nothing spare or redundant in this quirky gem. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2023

Bill Douglas – My Best Friend (2023)

Dir: Jack Archer | UK Doc 78′

Bill Douglas (1934-91) was one of Scotland’s greatest filmmakers. And no one knew him better than his companion and collaborator Peter Jewell who captures the essence of an auteur in the mould of Chris Marker or even Terence Davies in this affectionate portrait.

Directed and written by Jack Archer, Bill Dougles – My Best Friend is a documentary about a distinctive creative talent and a lifelong platonic relationship. Jewell serves as the narrator and the affable on-screen presence reminiscing over Douglas’ long career, and their life together. It was a friendship that could almost be described as love, although Jewell never actually declares it as such. And although girlfriends intervened over the years they never prized the two men apart.

Douglas was born in 1934 in the run-down mining village of Newcraighall, Scotland, where he lived with his grandmother having been abandoned by his father. Peter Jewell came on the scene in the early 1950s and the two struck up a lively friendship – Douglas always immaculately turned out in contrast to the scruffy middle class Peter, but they bonded over their love of film, a medium that allowed Douglas to escape his traumatic childhood. Soon Bill had moved in with the Jewell family in their large house in Barnstable, on the Jurassic Coast, at a time where there were still German prisoners of war stationed there, waiting to be repatriated.

The two men then gradually drifted to London, ample black and white footage showing the war-torn city of the era. Renting a small place in Soho they remained oblivious to the fleshpots so engrossed were they in making home movies which they claimed ‘were all rubbish’. It was a friendly creative neighbourhood and this is how their filmmaking started. Fever was a first film, a drama with its allusion to mental illness at a time of much social unrest, and a prescient fear of a nuclear Holocaust. Globe and Striptease were other short films the two cut their teeth on. Come Dancing followed in 1971. Rather like Terence Davies, Bill also made a trilogy about his tragic life entitled, My Childhood (1972). It was a film that showcased the poverty of his growing up, and went on to win the Best Debut film at Venice Film Festival. 

The number three would continue to feature prominently in the Douglas oeuvre, and locks were also a ‘thing’: Bill was obsessed by locks and entrances. Determined to control every aspect of the filmmaking process, Douglas gradually emerges a Chekovian figure who knew each of his scripts word by word, line by line. A favourite drama of the era was Michel Audy’s film La  Maree, that invoked a knife as a symbol of sexual fear, and the two of them watched it over and over again. For Douglas filmmaking was a constant attempt to understand his life, and montage became more and more important enabling him to visualise his feelings and ideas because he found verbal expression difficult. 

Bill Douglas was certainly a “filmmakers’ filmmaker”, and  an inspiration for many who follow in his wake including Lenny Abrahamson and Lynne Ramsay who share their thoughts to the camera. But Douglas was criminally overlooked commercially.

Director Jack Archer deliberately chose to put Peter at the centre of his film due to his influence on Douglas. Today Bill remains a huge part of his life even thirty years after his death. As Peter himself says, “Art is the only immortality”. MT

PREMIERED AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

 

 

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023)

Dir.: Stephen Kijak; Documentary; With Joe Carberry, Tim Turner, Les Garlington; UK 2023, 104 min.

US director Stephen Kijak (We are X) delves into the complex life and times of Rock Hudson (1925-1985), one of Hollywood’s most enigmatic legends, in a documentary largely seen through the eyes of his friends and collaborators.

There are too many contradictions to really call this factual but it stands as a valiant attempt to distill the essence of a charismatic screen idol into 104 minutes. A mini series could have been another way of telling his fascinating story.

Kijak first tackles Hudson’s relationship with his agent Henry Eilson, the man who made (and perhaps helped to destroy) the leading man’s career. His intervention, making Hudson marry Wilson’s secretary Phyllis Gates, misfired as a publicity coup and harmed both Gates and Hudson in the long term.

But binding the Hollywood star of the 1950s to the modern version proves a less successful task for Kijak and Hudson. Even after the Stonewell riots in 1969, Hudson remains in the closet while leading a successful life as a heterosexual star in his three features with Doris Day (Pillow Talk 1959, Lover Come Back 1961 and Send Me No Flowers (1964).

Hudson made the perfect male role model during the 1950s. His casting in Giant (56) was clearly a rebuke for the”lack of male ego” and featured his enemy James Dean. The titular Douglas Sirk title All That Heaven Allows (1955) falls into the same category – but the 1960s saw Hudson miscast in all the macho features such as Tobruk and Ice station Zebra. But Hudson soon tired on the big screen as his star rose on the TV. One of his last contributions was a guest role in the popular series Dynasty.

Kijak ends on a rather solemn note, “Hudson saved nobody, because they all died”. This morose comment reflects the epoch of the Reagan administration that ordered cut-backs in Aids support, research and individual help. In his final interview, Hudson is stoical and prepared to meet his maker: “I am not afraid of anything”.

Rock Hudson, who was forced to be a heterosexual male seducer of the 1950s, despite his true nature, never felt at home during this era. But his life long friendships with co-stars Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor bear testament to his enduring connection with the female sex. Kijak may have failed structurally in this engaging expose, but the rich archive of first-hand accounts fleshing out the actor’s life in the shadows more than makes up for it, and leaves us awestruck: Hudson was a great loss on a personal and professional level. AS

ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED will be available on Digital platforms on 23 October 2023.

 

Oh…Rosalinda (1955)

Drs: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | UK Drama 101’

Anton Walbrook and Dennis Price had both done distinguished work for Powell & Pressburger, but they sure took a bath on this one; although connoisseurs of the bizarre will relish seeing a musical with John Schlesinger and Arthur Mullard as Russian chorus boys (not to mention a delectable young Jill Ireland and the sinuous Ludmilla Tcherina in the title role).

The Archers’ first film in CinemaScope was this operatic version of ‘The Third Man’ which probably reflected the input of Pressburger more than it did Powell, although fanciful details like Walbrook’s opening breach of the third wall in the fashion of the Master of the Ceremonies in ‘Le Ronde’, the black & white newsreel and the scene where Price returns from a bender seeing double show the Powell touch.

A troubled production flawed by serious undercasting that resulted in Mel Ferrer, Anthony Quayle and Michael Redgrave playing roles originally intended for Bing Crosby, Orson Welles and Maurice Chevalier it promptly crashed and burned both critically and commercially and failed to even get a release in the States; but when over thirty years later Powell was finally persuaded by Martin Scorsese to watch it agin he actually rather enjoyed it. @RicharfChatten

The Black Pirate (1926) BFI London Film Festival 2023

Dir: Albert Parker | Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Tempe Pigott, Donald Crisp | US Action drama 88′

The Technicolor Corporation’s most ambitious undertaking to date was the only production made in what was officially known as ‘Technicolor Process #2”.

Fairbanks Sr had considered making a pirate film as early as 1923, a project he envisaged all along as the perfect subject to be tackled in colour; he’d been favourably impressed with the results Technicolor had so far achieved so he thought he would give the process a shot.

It certainly raised Technicolor’s profile, and the results (as the archive screening coming up at the London Film Festival attests) on it’s own terms survives as a most satisfying entertainment with memorable stunts (the most famous being a slide by Fairbanks down the sails of a ship and vivid uses of colour; but the victory proved Pyrrhic since making the film proved a big enough challenge, and the real headache began when they tried to repeat the effect in mass-produced prints.

So it was back to the drawing board for Technicolor while Fairbanks never tried the process again. @RichardChatten

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | 4 -15 OCTOBER 2023

Priscilla (2023) Coppa Volpi | Venice Film Festival 2023

Dir/Wri: Sofia Coppola | US Drama 110′

Picturing the early days of Elvis Presley’s career from the perspective of Priscilla, his first love, wife and mother of Lisa-Marie, Sofia Coppola plumps for a tender teenage imagining doused in pervasive melancholy. And Priscilla may not go down well with Elvis fans.

Priscilla Presley, née Beaulieu, is 14 when she falls for the 24-year-old nascent hip-swivler, who emerges a manipulative, narcissist given to angry outbursts. Coppola also portrays him as a bed-dodger, prone to spiritual fads and introspective navel-gazing, and clearly only in love with himself.

Jacob Elordi really captures this morose side of Elvis, and certainly looks the part with his rangy physicality and matinee idol sultriness. He also conveys an emotional hollowness in the singer that eventually renders him a gothic vampire-like character. With his controlling ways and sinister subterfuge, he appears to groom her, but not as a sexual Svengali, contrary to appearances. What he wants is a trophy wife to stay in the background while he enjoys the romantic attentions of his film co-stars Ann-Margret and Nancy Sinatra.

The young Elvis clings to the cutesy, doll-like, reassuring figure of Priscilla as a mother substitute. They are both Texans far from home (he is stationed in Germany doing military service, she the daughter of an army commander), and Elvis desperately misses his ‘mom’. But this is a first love affair that never matures into adulthood, and Priscilla remains physically and emotionally unfulfilled. Despite Elvis’s simmering sexuality he fails to meet her seemingly modest needs in the bedroom. And this is the film’s enlightening secret. The film is endorsed by Presley herself and adapted from her book ‘Elvis and Me’ which she co-wrote with Sandra Harmon.

The emphasis here is also Priscilla’s strict upbringing, as a schoolgirl still studying for her ‘A’ levels. Elvis invites her to Memphis where she disappears into his mansion to live out a lonely existence despite an initial welcome from his grandma ‘Dodger’. His father Vernon is a mean old man, and Elvis spends most of his time with the boys, a set of male acolytes known as the “Memphis Mafia”.

Spaeny is perfectly cast in the role of Priscilla exuding a soft sensuous charm, she is vulnerable yet canny until her joy is eventually smothered. Priscilla is a romantic drama founded on its hazy romantic atmosphere, but the adult Priscilla is never really fleshed out, the second half sadly fragments as Priscilla gradually drifts away, dissatisfied and disillusioned, which is a pity because this is a gorgeously crafted love story sumptuously detailing a young girl’s heartthrob in early sixties America. And, growing up in that era, to me it all feels so real. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | COPPA VOLPI – BEST ACTRESS | GOLDEN LION COMPETITION 2023

 

The Killer (2023) Venice Film Festival 2023

Dir: David Fincher | Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard | US Thriller 118′

David Fincher is back with another noir crime thriller that sees a philosophising hitman reflect on the meticulous precision and emotional detachment required for his day to day existence. But life is what happens when we’re making plans – as the saying goes – and  this ‘gun for hire’ is slowly going round the bend.

Premiering in competition at Venice Film Festival, The Killer, adapted from the French graphic novel by Alexis ‘Matz’ Nolent, stars Michael Fassbender as the hired assassin whose diurnal activities are voiced over by drole observations (“weakness is vulnerability”, “avoid empathy”) making this all the more intelligent and captivating, even when it descends into brutal violence. Even these scenes are sleekly choreographed in Fincher’s crisp direction and Andrew Kevin Walker’s lean script.

In the rooftops of Paris the unnamed killer is staking his target out, Day of the Jackal style. But too much time spent in preparation can often impact on performance. And this is one of the twists in a tale that sees the hitman running to keep still, as we soon discover: The Killer is an intellectual performance rather than a plot-driven one.

Sadly a woman, his girlfriend (Monique Ganderton), gets in the way of his day job after a home invasion goes wrong, And this blows him off a course leading him on a peripatetic journey to the Caribbean, New York, Chicago, Florida and New Orleans Caribbean and to unpick the mess. A gripping and highly enjoyable foray that keeps us on our toes with plenty of eye candy thanks to DoP of the moment Erik Messerschmidt. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | IN COMPETITION 2023

 

Ferrari (2023)

Dir: Michael Mann | Cast: Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Penelope Cruz, Jack O’Connell, Sarah Gadon | US Action drama 127′

Motor-racing is a dangerous business. And this slick production from Michael Mann highlights the dangers, not just for the drivers but also the general public, paying tribute to the citizens of Guidizzolo where ten spectators were mown down in a crash that also killed Spanish Ferrari driver Alfonso de Portago, and brought to a close the Mille Milia competition. The film opens with the loss of his favourite driver in a time trial, when playboy de Portago (Gabriel Leone) stepped into the breach. But his star is a doomed one.

Ferrari is not the first feature about motor-racing but it’s certainly one of the most glossy and expensive-looking. The thrill of the track was brought to life in Le Mans 66 (2019) with the focus on the famous partnership between Ford and Ferrari and their respective drivers; Mosley: It’s Complicated looked at the lawyer’s efforts to improve safety in the sport, and Darryl Goodrich’s 2017 documentary Ferrari: Race to Immortality honours the daredevil 1950s Ferrari team-mates Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn. And Collins also makes an appearance here played by Jack O’Connell.

But the spotlight here is firmly on the life of Enzo Ferrari and his entrepreneurial spirit during the perilous early days of Formula One in the Summer of 1957. Adam Driver certainly looks the part in his elegant hand-made suits and dark glasses, and is very much the driving force of this enjoyable action drama. Penelope Cruz gives a shouty, one-note performance as his embittered wife and business partner Laura. The death of their only son has destroyed the marriage and Ferrari has taken up with Linda (Woodley) the mother of his heir. Whether the boy will inherit the Ferrari name and keep the brand alive is one of the film’s main preoccupations. And the frumpy Laura is determined to put a spanner in the works with her permanent frown and maudlin disposition.

The cars often take a back seat to the family drama but there’s plenty of fun and fireworks on the track to keep fans entertained: Enzo is keen to keep speed and quality in pole position where his cars are concerned. Sadly, a great deal of backstory, including de Portago’s love story with Linda Christian (Gadon) – who famously gave him the “kiss of death’ before his final race – is glossed over to cut the running time down to just over two hours, and this in some way affects the film’s emotional ballast. We don’t really feel for any of these people, least of all Laura in her justifiable grief.

Mann incorporates plenty of original footage, early clips cleverly manipulated to show Driver at the wheel. And although some of his dialogue is decidedly creaky not so Erik Messerschmidt’s magnificent set pieces which capture the races on impressive wide screen sequences. This is solid entertainment adapted for the screen by Troy Kennedy Martin and based on the book ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine’. MT

IN UK CINEMAS from 26 DECEMBER | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 |

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Promised Land (2023)

Dir: Nicolaj Arcel | Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg, Melina Hagberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Gustav Lindh, Søren Malling, Morten Hee Andersen, Magnus Krepper, Thomas W. Gabrielsson, Laura Bilgrau Eskild-Jensen

Bastarden or The Promised Land is a handsome if doom-laden frontier drama that transports us back to 18th century Jutland, Denmark. Mads Mikkelsen is Ludvig Kahlen, a dogged but decorated military man who has risen through the ranks and now wishes to dignify his existence by transforming the ragged heathland into a lucrative farming concern, garnering the respect of the King, who owns it, and hopefully a title into the bargain.

A gruelling endeavour this farming caper may be, and many have failed before him, including the King, but if anyone can succeed it’s Mikkelsen’s Kahlen, a hard-headed, indomitable stoic with a soulful glint in his eye.

Directed by Arcel Nicolaj Arcel and co-written by Oscar-winning Anders Thomas-Jensen we are also in safe hands story-wise with a script based on Ide Jessen’s 2020 historical work The Captain and Ann Barbara.

Barstarden bristles with rock solid themes of class, race, exploitation and misogyny, and there’s even a menage-a-trois, or even ‘a-quattre’ to lighten things up. All in the best possible taste: This is hardly bodice-ripping territory given the grim nature of the Northern climes.

And Mikkelsen is a mesmerising presence with his graceful economy of movement and tight-lipped charisma. Here, he is Denmark’s answer to Clint Eastward. And he also cuts an admirable figure at court in Copenhagen, asking to be granted a spit of land so he can transform the terrain, financed with his soldier’s pension, into a worthwhile concern. And he gets the go-ahead.

But 18th century Jutland is a barren hostile territory fraught with bandits and gypsies. And Kahlen only has a meagre set-up at his disposal: a tent, a pistol, a horse and a pick – to start work with. His chosen crop is potatoes. A hardy choice but not immune to frost damage. And there’s another drawback: A violent and villainous enemy in the shape of judge and wealthy landowner Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), who claims ownership of this area of the King’s land, and has sought to enoble himself by insisting on adding the “De”, even when others don’t, and this provides the film with a flinty vein of humour.

An invitation to dinner chez “De” Schinkel unfortunately ends in tears when the two disagree over the ownership of the land. But the soldier’s unflinching stance against the caddish would-be aristocrat wins the heart of De Schinkel’s intended, who is also his cousin, the pulchritudinous but penniless Edel (Kristine Kujath Thorp), whose father is forcing her into a loveless marriage of convenience.

And so the battle of wills begins with De Schinkel disrupting Kahlen’s efforts to cultivate the land. A local parson then offers Kahlen the support of two runaway servants who have escaped De Schinkel’s household due to his violent temperament. Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen) and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) agree to work for free, along with some local outlaws and an orphaned Roma girl called Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg), a ‘darkling’ whom the Danes consider bad luck.

Bastarden soon develops into a rich character drama as the battle of wills plays. And Kahlen fights on doggedly despite the many challenges and amid much physical duress, violence and torture all round. DoP Rasmus Videbaek showcases the magnificent countryside of Northern Denmark and the splendour of its architectural heritage (actually the shooting takes place in Germany and Czechia!). Bastarden is a gripping Nordic Western that once again proves that true love is often stronger than the ultimate desire to succeed. MT

IN UK CINEMAS from 2 FEBRUARY 2024 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL premiere

El Conde (2023) Best Screenplay | Venice Film Festival 2023

Dir: Pablo Larraín | Cast: Alfredo Castro, Jaime Vadell, Antonia Zegers, Paula Luchsinger, Amparo Noguera, Gloria Munchmeyer | Chile, 115′

A vampire, all suited, booted and cloaked, flies over the rooftops of Santiago in Pablo Larrrain’s thrilling latest drama that has us believe  that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is Margaret Thatcher’s firstborn (weird as he was born before herr). It’s an outlandish idea, one many of many, in this surreal doom-laden satire that reflects, with a baleful glare, on international fascism (wokeism et al) in the 20th century.

But although Larrain his co-writer Guillermo Calderon get rather bogged down in their phantasmagorical version of Chile’s modern political history El Conde is a witty and highly inventive feast for the eyes and certainly worthy of its slot in the competition line-up at Venice Film Festival‘s 80th celebration.

Macabre, gothic and hilarious by turns – you certainly won’t go home disappointed – but the visual side far out-trumps (!) the political version of events, its lugubrious black and white set pieces are some of the most alluring and inspired committed to celluloid in recent years. An El Conde is certainly unlike anything the director has done before.

Pinochet is forced to endure a miserable existence, past his retirement in 1990 and subsequent demise in 2006, as the undead dictator grimming it out in a chilly cattle-shearing outpost in the freezing South of the country (reminiscent of Theo Court’s White on White). Here he will face his own family demons, the main concern being the financing of his brood of layabout adult offspring, dealing with his ghastly wife (Gloria Münchmeyer) who is having an affair with  his butler (the brilliant Alfredo Castro), a White Russian who will oversee the investigation into where Pinchochet has hidden his millions. For this purpose he has (bizarrely) hired a nun (Paula Luchsinger) who wears white robes, when not doing accounts in her bedroom, and in these scenes she’s a dead ringer for Maria Falconetti in Dreyer’s 1928 drama La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

But before all this Larrain briskly takes us through the dictator’s previous existence as blood-thirsty rebel ‘Pinoche’ during the French Revolution. Valiantly in allegiance to Marie Antoinette, he takes her head with him as a trophy after her execution (guillotines feature heavily throughout). He then glides Dracula-like southwards towards Chile where he signs up to the ranks in the 1973 coup. After faking his own death, the 250 year-old continues to drift around over the Chilean capital – and these airborne sequences are the most exciting  in the film. Too old to hunt for blood, his daily diet then consists of human heart ‘smoothies’ which he whisks up in the trusty blender.

El Conde is a fascinating foray then, and mostly narrated in English by the aforementioned Iron Maiden ‘Madame Pinochet’ who certainly gets it in the neck, above all the other vampiric political leaders, supposedly just for being a woman ‘Twas ever thus!. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | BEST SCREENPLAY | GOLDEN LION 2023 | COMING TO NETFLIX ON 15 SEPTEMBER

 

 

 

Passages (2023)

Dir.: Ira Sachs; Cast: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adele Exarchopoulos, Erwan Kepoa Fale; France/Germany 2023, 91 min.

A  menage-a-trois goes wrong in a big way in this cruel love story from award-winning filmmaker Ira Sachs (Love is Strange).

In Paris two Germans and a Brit finds themselves in a Douglas Sirk style melodrama with feint echoes of Eric Rohmer. Sachs puts his personal slant on the many faces of sexuality in an absorbing and often upsetting gender war.

Lovers Tomas (Rogowski) and Martin (Whishaw) have a longstanding relationship although the aggressive and manipulative Tomas, a film director, has the upper hand with Martin reluctantly putting up with the endless humiliation just to keep it all running smoothly.

We first meet Tomas on set, as unpleasant and immature upstart. But after the film’s wrap party, Tomas takes a shine to Agathe (Exarchopoulos), a primary school teacher who drops her own boyfriend like a stone, as does Tomas, moving in with Adele shortly afterwards. This is not the first time Tomas has played the field with a woman, and pretty soon the cracks appear – and when Agathe falls pregnant her parents’ arrival only makes matters worse.

The switcheroo continues with Martin now in a relationship with writer Ahmad (Fale). But this is by now means the end because Tomas wants to show his omnipotence, and is still powerfully drawn to the dependable Martin, and soon the tables change again.

Tomas is a savage, and not a noble one. His hunger for emotional support, a real neediness born out of insecurity, collides with his brash manner and outlandish lies. He is not lovable at all, but his animalistic sex drive makes both Adele and Martin believe they are his chosen one. Sachs is very open in showing the couples’ intercourse, to the point of being graphic to the extreme. But all this has a place in a bitter struggle for love, with both Adele and Martin mistaking lust for the latter. For Tomas everything has to be an exciting thrill ride, no questions asked. He is a vicious child, a sociopath in the making, a time bomb ready to implode, and Rogowski is the actor to play him with his passionate intensity.

DoP Josee Deshaies has fun with her camerawork, keeping the wild sex and bitter tantrums under control: her images are never voyeuristic, she always finds a way back to show the humanity in facial expressions. Her portrait of Paris, the city of love, is sober: an ideal  backcloth for a modern love story, even though it never feels like one. Sachs, the observer, delivers this minimalist feature with as much love as possible, taking sides only at the very end. AS

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM 1 SEPTEMBER 2023

Yurt (2023) Venice Film Festival 2023

Wri/Dir: Nehir Tuna | Doğa Karakaş, Can Bartu Arslan, Ozan Çelik, Tansu Biçer, Didem Ellialtı, Orhan Güner, Işıltı Su Alyanak | Turkey, Drama 116′

In the 1990s the social divide between religious and secular Turks is creating tensions in this artful feature debut from Nehir Tuna .

It centres on fourteen-year-old Ahmet a truculent teenager from a privileged background who finds himself holed up in a repressive Islamic institution at the behest of his recently-converted father keen to instil traditional Turkish values in his rather spoilt son.

But the atmosphere in the hostel is decidedly hostile. Ahmet’s smart clothes and urbane manners set him apart from the less fortunate pupils he is forced to mix with in the dormitory and one of them reacts by spitting at the young scholar who is far from happy with his new home.

Meeting Hakan, a street-smart kid who knows how to work the Yurt system, is the turning point for Ahmet and together the two get a sense of empowerment and confidence and they start to stand up to the draconian masculine environment of the dormitory amid scenes of quite brutal violence. Tuna gives a real sense of the spiritual but also oppressive religious strictures that shape the boys’ education. But once the two have found their sense of freedom colour floods into the picture in some appealing pastoral settings beside a lake. Together the two of them start to imagine the kind of world they want to live in.

Yurt could be any coming of age buddy movie, but what sets it apart is Florent Hery’s stylish camerawork in glowing black and white and a well-chosen occasional score of classical and folkloric songs. Tuna’s confident direction elevates this to a more resonant and memorable arthouse drama that champions a free-spirited modern Turkey, a world away from the past. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 |  HORIZONS & QUEER LION COMP

Hesitation Wound (2023) Venice Film Festival | Horizons 2023

Dir: Selman Nacar | Tulin Ozen, Ogulcan Arman Uslu, Gülçin Kultur Sahin, Vedat Erincin,Erdem Senocak | Turkey, Drama 84′

There’s nothing like a courtroom drama to keep you on the edge of your seat and there have been some really gripping legal-themed dramas of late: St Omer, Red Rooms, and Anatomy of a Fall  this. This one, from Turkish director Salman Nacar, is more moody than tense in depicting the everyday life of a young female defence barrister in Istanbul.

The director Selman Nacar won multiple awards for his feature debut Between Two Dawns, and his latest runs along similar lines: a morality tale that centres on a professional woman forced to make an impossible choice: Canan (Tulin Ozen) finds herself in a no-win situation, personally and professionally, caught between looking after her dying mother and forging ahead with her career. No wonder she’s a chain-smoker with ulcer trouble.

In the snowbound capital the camera pans in on the dour hospital confines where Canan is at odds with her sister Hopi on whether to offer her mother’s organs up for donation. Both women are pushed to the limit from all sides. Their mother, although still alive, is lying in a vegetative state on a ventilator. And it only needs one person to sign the consent form, but Canan’s sister, herself a mother, can’t put pen to paper.

Back in her offices, Canan watches out of the window as her client Musa arrives in a police van, ready to stand trial for killing his boss. She berates him for not shaving off his heavy beard, but also puts his jittery mind at rest. Musa is in the dock charged with voluntary premeditated murder. It’s a thorny case built around his threats to kill the owner of the garment factory. But Canan mounts a spirited defence, with a few tricks up her sleeve. And the murder was never witnessed.  

Cemal – a vital witness in the trial – must be there to provide an alibi for Musa’s defence. But he’s disappeared. And when Canan tracks him down he refuses to comply for complex reasons. 

So two peoples lives hang in the balance. And Canan stands between them. Then other evidence starts to emerge. Apparently the victim was having an affair with Muse’s mother and started to make threats. 

Although the ending feels rather underwhelming after such a strong build up this snapshot of modern Turkey makes for compulsive and intelligent viewing with its plausible characters, convincing performances and memorable widescreen camerawork. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | HORIZONS 2023

Manga D’Terra (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Wri/Dir: Basil da Cunha | Cast: Lucinda Brito, Nunha Gomes, Evandro Pereira | Swiss/Portuguese | Musical drama 96′

Portuguese Swiss director Basil da Cunha is back in the streets of his beloved Reboleira this time celebrating the women of this home close-knit Creole community in a lyrical musical courtesy of Eliana Rosa, Henrique Silva and Luis Firmino) who flesh out this spirited portrait of a place often down on its luck but oozing with heart and soul.

A follow-up to his award-winning second feature The End of the World, O Fim do Mundo that screened at the 2019 edition of Locarno, Manga d’Terra centres on Rosa (Eliana Rosa), 20, who has returned to the Portuguese capital from her native Cape Verde leaving her kids with her mother.

But after Cape Verde, life in the Lisbon suburb is no picnic in the park. Street violence and male aggression now make her life a daily struggle. And when she loses her job in a small restaurant (run by Nunha Gomes) reality bites for the single mother who only has her female friends for support and her strong singing voice as a way of grafting to survive. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | GOLDEN LEOPARD COMPETITION

 

 

 

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Directors Irving Pichel, Ernest B Schoedsack US Horror | Cast: Fay Wray, Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks

Based on: “The Most Dangerous Game”; 1924 story in Collier’s; by Richard Connell

Talking Pictures’ screening was prefaced with the usual disclaimer about outdated dialogue and offensive racial stereotypes, but the British should take umbrage at seeing yet again an English accent and a vocabulary equated with evil (although Count Zaroff actually describes his kinfolk as “we Cossacks”, and he has a henchman called Ivan who provides the film’s scariest moment when he smiles in greeting).

The visceral contents of Zaroff’s trophy room were cut from postCode reissues while he lascivious designs on comely brunette Fay Wray (“Kill then love. When you have known that you have known ecstasy” he gloats) is another sure sign that the film hails from the preCode era. @RichardChatten

Animal (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir: Sofia Exarchou | Greece, Drama 116′

Greek director Sofia Exarchou’s second film takes place in a family hotel in an unknown Greek Island where dancer Kalia ((Dimitra Vlagopoulou)) is doing her best to inject some fun in the rather joyless atmosphere in her capacity as an “animateur” choreographing stage shows to enthuse holiday-makers.

Looking after a young family and satisfying her partner is an exhausting business but Kalia always switches on the charm and an electric smile for the tourists and encourages her new recruits to do the same to cover versions of ‘Yes Sir I can Bougie’ and other soulless hits. But when Eva (Flomaria Papadaki) arrives Kalia sees a reflection of her younger self in the young girl’s enthusiasm and willingness to shine in a gruelling diurnal activity that feels like hard work, the muscular stresses and strains reflected in Monika Lenczewska’s close-up camerawork.

Exarchou takes a documentary approach to reflect the sheer physical grind of Kalia’s daily existence but there is dark humour too in a similar vein to Ulrich Seidl’s seaside satire Rimini .Although the Austrian filmmaker goes further down the route of lampooning his hero.

The need to be upbeat and bubbly is no mean feat when dealing with a public that is often sluggish: they’ve come on holiday for a relaxing break but also want some fun while getting fit and healthy before they return to their home environment. But Kalia too needs to get away from the forced bonhomie of her paid employment and needs to have a break of her own. And that’s when the going gets challenging in this perceptive look behind the scenes of the holiday entertainment industry. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN LEOPARD COMPETITION.

 

 

Explanation for Everything (2023) Viennale Film Festival 2023

Dir: Gabor Reisz | Cast: Gáspár Adonyi-Walsh, István Znamenák, András Rusznák, Rebeka Hatházi, Eliza Sodró, Lilla Kizlinger & Krisztina Urbanovits | Hungary, Drama

The tensions of Hungary’s polarised society come unexpectedly to the surface when a student’s exam results become the focus of a national scandal, in this slow burn sophomore feature from Hungarian filmmaker Gabor Reisz (For Some Inexplicable Reason). 

In a summery Budapest cramming for his final exams is the last thing on Abel’s mind having fallen for his studious school friend Janka who only has eyes for their happily married history teacher Jacob.

Playing in this year’s Horizons sidebar at Venice Film Festival’s 80th edition Explanation for Everything certainly takes its time in establishing the heady milieu of end of term nerves and fraught family life in the build up to the annual summer holidays. But the thrust here is the flight between tradition and the modern world in a film that contrasts the staunch, nationalistic devotion to duty, expressed by Abel’s conservative father, and Jacob’s liberal-minded take on the future with its woke overtones. Gabor Reisz creates another thematically rich and worthwhile modern classic. MT 

VIENNALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 19-30 OCTOBER 2023 | HORIZONS | BEST FILM – HORIZONS 2023 VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Paris Memories (2023)

Dir: Alice Winocour | Cast: Virginie Efira, Benoit Magimel, Gregoire Colin, Maya Sansa | France, Drama 105′

Belgian actor Virginia Efira is the star of this survival drama that thoughtfully explores the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a Paris bistro.

Belgian filmmaker Alice Winocour has already touched on the affects of trauma on the human condition, particularly for women, in her previous features Augustine, Disorder and Mustang. Paris Memories is possibly the most relatable so far in its exploration of life-changing events. The threat of terrorism surrounds us all every day.

Russian translator and journalist Mia (Efira) sees her life ripped apart while enjoying a glass of wine in a busy cafe when a terrorist strikes. Haunted by the tragedy, Mia bonds with the other survivors and soon forms a romantic attachment to Thomas (Magimel) who was badly injured in the attack, although ultimately their relationship doesn’t quite ring true. Mia also makes it her business to track down a man who helped her to safety and here the storyline widens into the scuzzy demimonde of disenfranchised workers and illegal migration.

Winocour calmly unpacks the emotional toll of the attack of Mia’s private life as she retreats from her partner Vincent (Colin) leading him to suspect an affair. But this is by no means just about Mia and touches on the broader effects of the incident and the fallout it has on everyone affected, and not always in a negative way. Paris Memories is a tribute to those lost in Bataclan in November 2015, the Louvre Museum attack in 2017, and the Charlie Head incident in 2020. A deeply affecting drama that looks for a positive message of hope.

ON RELEASE FROM 4 AUGUST 2023

Kokomo City (2023)

Dir: D Smith | US Doc 73′

If your idea of entertainment is watching a series of Black trans sex workers loudly lamenting their life, then Kokomo City is for you. More  impressive than anything though is the hyper-stylised way D Smith captures his subject. The glossy black and white images splash onto the screen at refreshingly odd angles: It all feels rather like flicking through a slick fashion magazine – maybe a trans version of Men’s Vogue or even that French erotic title NewLook (now out of publication).

Here we are in Atlanta and these women are seriously disgruntled behind their Barbie-style rigouts and fluttering black false eye lashes. Gesticulating at the camera with super sharp white painted talons and jutting chins, they offer advice about how to avoid that 5’clock shadow. But most of all they harp on about the trials and tribulations of satisfying the males that come to them for satisfaction – and how they do it better than cisgender females. There’s a raw, competitive edge to their narratives. And sometimes we feel for them. But after thirty minutes or so enough is enough. And while they rightly point out that no man wants to listen to women’s problems at the end of the day – that’s what is mostly dished up in this unique, cinematic and occasionally insightful kaleidoscope of American trans views. MT

KOKOMO CITY – IN UK & IRISH CINEMAS 4 AUGUST 2023

 

Lars Von Trier Season

The films of one of world cinema’s most renowned and daring provocateurs, Lars von Trier, will be making a comeback to the big screen this summer with a new retrospective entitled Enduring Provocations 

The retrospective looks back on von Trier’s controversial career, having courted ardent fans and enemies in equal measure during his nearly four decades as a director.

Known for his restless technical innovation and rebellious approach to the genre, von Trier has confronted the taboo subjects of the day and the eternal existential problems of the human condition with the same thorny, troubled intelligence and puckish humour.

Enduring Provocations revisits some of the director’s most incendiary works on the big screen headlined by remastered versions of Breaking the Waves, Idiots and Melancholia. The season asks whether his cinema of narcissism and self-abasement still has the power to get under our skin. Is it the on-screen violence that is hard to stomach, or those troubling questions his films ask about human suffering, morality and the disorders of society?

The retrospective will launch on the 4th of August with the newly remastered Breaking the Waves. The power of faith, love and friendship lies at the heart of this devastating drama from Danish wild-child Breaking the Waves won the 1996 Grand Jury Price in Cannes and created two stars: Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson in her raw screen debut that saw her nominated for an Oscar. Watson would never again reach these heady heights in a performance, and this was arguably Von Trier’s heartrending masterpiece, although he would go on to become the agent provocateur per excellence with a string of outrageous hits has never since reduced audiences to such a collective blithering emotional wreck.

In seven chapters and an epilogue, von Trier sets out to prove faith is stronger than any dogma. Set in the early 1970s Emily Watson is Beth McNeill (Watson) is a naïve and emotionally vulnerable young woman living in a devout Calvinist village where the residents cower in fear of being excommunicated by a coral of draconian religious ministers. Beth soon falls foul of them, marrying an ‘outsider’ in the shape of Jan Nyman (Skarsgard), an oil platform worker. Intoxicated by sexual passion she swears undying love for Jan and vows to keep him alive whatever the consequences when an accident on the rig renders him paralysed and bedridden.

Beth believes that God (whom she prays to out loud in the church) has punished her for asking Jan to return early from a contract on the rigs. Disturbed by a brain injury, Jan demands that Beth stimulate his libido by having sex with other men and recounting the details to give him hope of recovery. Beth blindly follows Jan’s wishes, sinking to the depths of sexual depravity by prostituting herself with locals and strangers, jeopardising her own well-being by visiting the occupants of a trawler (headed by a sadistic Udo Kier) declined custom by even the local prostitutes . Her blind faith in the power of divine healing is in conflict with conventional medical advice, and Beth soon turns against her stalwart friend Dorothy (the wonderful Katrin Cartlidge who won Best Supporting Actress) and Doctor Richardson (a memorable Adrian Rawlings).

Breaking is very much Jeanne D’ Arc in reverse: Virtue is replaced by sex as a way to redemption. And like for Jeanne, there is only one way for Beth: all or nothing. It is perhaps von Trier’s greatest achievement to not lose the audience at this point.

Back in 1996, there were long and heated discussions after the Cannes Palme d’Or ceremony (as in the decision to award this year’s Palme d’Or to Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall instead of the radical Zone of Interest from Jonathan Glazer). Breaking the Waves is a more daring feature than Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies (1996), with Leigh’s hyper-realistic stage approach running into difficulties. Apart from the fantastic performances and gut punch of von Trier’s mise en scene, Robbie Mueller’s handheld camera alone makes the film a winner in this tragic celebration of life and the wonderment of human love, carnal and otherwise.

ENDURING PROVOCATIONS | CURZON | AUGUST 4TH 2023

 

Brighton Rock (1948)

Dir: John Boulting | Cast: Richard Attenborough, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Harcourt Williams

You know you’re in Greeneland when Harcourt Williams appears as a down-at-heel lawyer who quotes ‘Macbeth’.

Directing duo The Boultings were fast ascending in critical status when they turned their attention to Greene’s novel and their facility with locations is demonstrated from the outset by the first twenty minutes following Alan Whitely as the il-fated Kolley Kibber through the streets of Brighton.

Despite the disclaimer blaming the activities of Pinky and his gang on the thirties it perfectly captures the shabby feel of the postwar austerity era, complete with Nigel Stock in a zoot suit and a spivvy moustache.

The ending caused controversary at the time but it seemed me a pretty neat trick because although it concentrates on Carol Marsh’s rapturous smile somebody would have promptly (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) given that record player a good swift kick.

One final thought: was it just by coincidence that Pinky’s previous victim was called Fred Kite? @RichardChatten

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Barbie (2023) Cinematic and Box Office Achievement | 81st Golden Globes 2024

Dir: Greta Gerwig | US Fantasy drama | 116′

Before an explosion of psychedelic plastic heralds the long-awaited advent of Barbie we are transported back to a prehistoric playground where Helen Mirren describes a ludic past when little girls played ‘mummy’ with their pliable baby dolls. Then Mattel entrepreneur Ruth Handler came along and decided to up the game. She gave her own daughter something more adult-like to play with – the result was Barbie.

Margot Robbie, all toned limbs and blonde, hair plays this glamour toy like the real thing. In her candy-coloured kingdom “Artificial Barbie” enjoys a sexless teenage dream of girlie get-togethers where wimpish, whingeing himbos only exist to serve to serve their female counterparts. We start to wonder how long we can put up with this prissy pastel charade. Then along comes the storyline.

Artificial Barbie encounters ‘an issue’ and has to visit the ‘real world’ where women are still being diminished by the male of the species. And, unsurprisingly, she immediately suffers an existential crisis.

In her fourth feature, Greta Gerwig shares script honours with consort Noah Baumbach. crossing into the 145 M$ super league. Co-produced by the Barbie franchise m-holders Mattel, the feature suffers a toxic overload with its multiple subplots: the gender war between Barbie (Robbie) and Ken (Gosling) is just an excuse for a tiff in the trenches of old and new feminism. The boy brigade, led by Ken (a perfectly cast Gosling), is rather less imaginative in the tussle to regain control not only of old-fashioned Barbie-land but also of reality (in this case the Hollywood suburb of Santa Monica). Gerwig/Baumbach create endless quotes to exploit their subject matter, starting with Kubrick’s 2001 styled set where sullen little girls throw their toys out of the pram, rejecting dreams and motherhood at the same time.

Barbie Team | 81st Golden Globes | photo credit Benny Askinas

Barbie is a resentful feature even when indulging in self-critique: Artificial Barbie complains about “Sexualised Capitalism” and her lack of beauty, the Helen Mirren cuts in with “Margret Robbie is the wrong actress to cast”. Well, Robbie might not be a miniature doll, but she is certainly not a push-over when it comes to Ken and his low level aggressiveness which often looks over-mannered.

But as long as Barbie channels its Busby Berkeley spectacle of song and dance routines all is well. Somewhere after the 90 minute mark Gerwig remembers she is supposed to be staging an epic masterpiece, and things go down downhill. “Irresponsible thoughts of death” and “Proustian flashbacks” have nothing to do with ‘gen Barbie Doll’, past or present.

Virtue-signalling demands the hiring of America Ferrera and Issa Rae, a Latino mother/daughter duo, who help Barbie to save and conquer the real world. Will Ferrell is brilliant as the dancing/singing/running CEO of Mattel, reprising his sublime nasty role in Elf.

But whatever Gerwig/Baumbach had in mind the profit will go to franchise holders Mattel and Ruth Handler ((cuttingly described as “a five foot Jewish woman with a double mastectomy and tax issues”) who have once again reinvented their brand. Barbie will go on living in the minds of those who – like me – just thought of her as a ‘fun doll to dress up in different outfits’: and even gave her an androgynous crop (her hair never grew back!.) The film is original, high-performing but soulless. MT

CINEMATIC and BOX OFFICE ACHIEVEMENT | 81st GOLDEN GLOBES 2024

 

 

 

 

Oppenheimer (2023) Academy Award Best Picture | Best Motion Picture: 81st Golden Globes

Dir/Wri: Christopher Nolan | Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke | 180′

A haunting vision of the future hangs over this fraught epic about the man who invented the iconic bomb that ended World War II.

English director Christopher Nolan frames his feature through a stimulating Washington based court investigation as Oppenheimer’s florid life and times flash back urgently forward to a needling score – from Cambridge to Leiden and then California and finally Los Alamos in New Mexico – providing thrilling social and political insight into the final stages of the Second World War. 

Christopher Nolan wins #GoldenGlobe Best Director 2023 photo credit: Virisa Young

Cillian Murphy is screen dynamite as Robert Oppenheimer, a Jewish scientist from New York, who was seen as a hero to many but later vilified as a threat to his country for questioning America’s arms race bravado with his learned opinions in those turbulent times. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, Murphy leads a cast who each pull their weight in this mighty masterpiece that mesmerises for over three hours, the final segment is the most riveting and allows the stern but softly spoken Murphy to expose the soulful side of this conflicted but brilliant man.

Hoyte van Hotel’s coruscating cinematography is impeccable in vivid colour and pristine black and white, the 15/70mm print showcasing Nolan’s most impressive film to date. 

Oppenheimer serves both as a densely-plotted character study and a simmering slice of history that also delves into the brutal tactics of the McCarthy era, but never at the expense of some dry humour and a wise perceptive overview from Tom Conti’s ageing Albert Einstein as the father of scientific breakthroughs. Meanwhile in the Los Alamos labs a selection of top flight theoreticians cut through the science by simply dropping marbles into jars to illustrate the difference between uranium and plutonium as fusion bomb components.

Performance-wise Downey is outstanding as Strauss, a major player in the Atomic Energy Commission and a monstrous ego; Matt Damon is masterful as Major Leslie Groves, in charge of security at the Manhattan Project; Emily Blunt (a steely Kitty) and Florence Pugh (a sensuous Tetlock) play the feisty women in Oppenheimer’s life and Jason Clarke’s Roger Robb (Special council to the AEC) could put any cross-examiner in the shade. Gary Oldman gets a surprisingly powerful cameo as President Truman “people will remember who dropped the bomb, not who built it”.

Academy Award Best Picture | Best Actor Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor Robert J Downey, Best Director Christopher Nolan Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing | Best Motion Picture – Drama | Best Director – Christopher Nolan | Best Original Score – Motion Picture | Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture – Robert Downey Jr. | 81st Golden Globes 2024 

Essential Truths of the Lake (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Lav Diaz; Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Shaima Magdayao, Hazel Orencio, Agot Isidra, Bart Guingona, Susan Africa, Reyhan Abcede; Philippines, Portugal, France, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland, UK 2023, 215 min.

Police inspector Hermes Papauran (Cruz), one of the country’s foremost investigators, is again the focus of this latest epos from Philippine auteur Lav Diaz. Essential Truths of the Lake serves as a prequel to his 2022 outing When the Waves are Gone that saw him haunted by a dark past and ready to meet his maker in a quest for the truth.

Investigating a murder case from 2005, in the last days of the bloody regime of President Duarte in 2020, Hermes is a troubled and rather destructive character who suffers occasional bouts of psoriasis and contingent physical afflictions brought on by his negative take on life.

On the banks of the titular Taal Lake, an atmospheric setting, Hermes is having a meeting with his female superior The Colonel about re-open the cold case of Esmeralda Stuart (Magdayao), a mythical beauty queen/cabaret star, who disappeared without trace in 2005. The Colonel agrees to re-open the investigation but warns Hermes about his family obligations in the face of the potentially perilous mission: “They want you back” states The Colonel, making clear that she is in control of proceedings.

Hermes interrogates the drug lord Jack Barquero (Guingona), one of the main suspects in the Stewart case, who then has him followed by his son Nick and three of his henchmen but a nearby volcano erupts, the ash destroying more clues in the case. We then return aesthetically and contents-wise to the Diaz matrix of old, and The Colonel sacks Hermes from the case, making him the prey rather than the pursuer. Meanwhile the beleaguered detective befriends Melchora (Africa) and loses a potential collaborator in his search for the truth; an old man dies of a sudden and suspicious heart attack. A cake seller – who might, or might not be connected to the original murder – is then killed by Melchora’s dog after trying to steal some of her papers, and the self-destructive Hermes is once again in the wilderness. Then Diaz comes up with a brilliant solution.

In contrast to his previous outings Diaz opts for a nuanced contemporary arthouse style, particularly in the cabaret scenes. Gone (at least for the time being) are the wild landscapes and isolated fighters that categorised his earlier works. Here we are merely spectators rather than protagonists drawn under the Diaz spell. At just 215 minutes The Lake is two films in one, the conventional opening giving way to a compelling detective thriller.

But Hermes no ordinary policeman, he soon emerges as the lonely fugitive in a self-inflicted exile, the Stuart case serving merely as a red herring in this existentialist landscape. The lake becomes a labyrinth and the detective is gradually swallowed up in a timeless vacuum created by Co-Dop Larry Manda. Diaz again captures the loneliness of his hero, circling the lake and finding nothing but volcano ashes. Hermes is clearly in need of help, and here we are invited to experience the savage jungle of his anguish – detective story or not – in this shortish feature (by Diaz standards!).

Lengthwise, there’s good news for diehard Diaz fans desperate to disappear into his lengthy epics: a twelve hour feature is now in the pipeline. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023

 

Family Portrait (2023) Locarno Film Festival 2023

Dir/Wri: Lucy Kerr | US Drama

In these unusual times of fake news and false memories, can a photo still be trusted to reflect the truth in capturing a moment in time? This is the question writer director Lucy Kerr ponders in her slim but intriguing feature debut premiering in the Filmmakers of the Present strand at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival. 

A relaxed day in the countryside unfolds as an extended family finds themselves gathered together at the start of Covid. The idea to capture the moment in a family portrait gets relaid to the back burner when a mother goes missing  and her daughter decides to investigate. 

Driven forward by a busy ambient soundscape the bosky opening scene soon gives way to the spacious wooden clad interiors of the Shaker dwelling where a salad lunch is being prepared. The conversation returns to the proposed photo but then a sudden death in the family gives rise to more endless speculation and the portrait is once again forgotten.

Is this family really as contented as they would have us believe. A needling score seems to indicate otherwise as the film moves into more unsettling territory as time and space become one big enigma turning the family portrait into a solemn rite of passage. MT

LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Jour de Fête (1949)

Dir: Jacques Tati | France Comedy

Although the films of Jacques Tati continue to enjoy great esteem and obviously inspired Benny Hill and The Two Ronnies, I must confess to something of a blind spot, admiring the meticulous care that goes into staging his sight gags but not actually finding them terribly funny. (His use of sound is also good, witness the scenes with the wasp.)

Two things in particular set Tati apart from other great screen comics: firstly his great height, since a lot of the humour comes from the contrast of his huge frame straddling his tiny bike.

The other is conceiving his films in colour years ahead of it’s time. In a spirit of national fervour Tati daringly tried to make ‘Jour de Fete’ in a native process; sadly the process promptly went bust and the film had to be released in monochrome (a format which continues be attributed to it in reference books and is how was shown on Talking Pictures) although even then he added details in colour throughout the film on a later reissue. Only after Tati was long death was the colour version restored and the film can finally be seen as it’s creator envisaged it thanks to the miracle of the DVD.

The Oscar (1966) Tribute to Tony Bennett

Dir: Russell Rouse | Cast Stephen Boyd, Tony Bennett, Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Ernest Borgnine | US Drama

On paper this film sounds like the camp classic plenty of reviewers have already described it as; but it outstays it’s welcome, feels like a TV production (although it might have worked better in black & white) and even it’s dialogue worthy of Edward D. Wood Jr. is desperately short on the genuine wit that might have forestalled some of the flack it’s taken over the years.

The surprises start with the mouth-watering title sequence: beginning with the incredible array of guest stars listed, and proceeds through the revelation that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences actually gave special permission for Oscar statuettes to be used in this freak, to the screenplay credit for Harlan Ellison. (It’s based on a novel by Richard Sale, who I’d love to know exactly who he was settling scores with, while plenty of the gems from the dialogue could have been published separately as a book in their own right.) But we never once see Frank Fane on a film set; and it could just as easily be about a politician or a businessmen, and the dialogue does rather labour what a skunk he is.

Many of the supporting performances are as good as you would expect from the excellent cast of character actors, some of them rather strangely cast in often very minor roles, some of which make more sense when you realise how many of them are former Oscar winners themselves (Ed Begley, Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan – who won three! -, Broderick Crawford and James Dunn), while Edith Head was actually nominated for her work on this. Milton Berle gives an excellent straight performance, and among the femmes Jill St.John, Eleanor Parker, Edie Adams and the girl in the green dress shaking her chassis in the opening shot of the Tijuana party sequence all make the most of the little screen time they get.

Aside from James Dunn (an Academy Award winner for ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ whose drinking wrecked his career), the most poignant piece of casting is Peter Lawford, who in 1962 had been brutally cast out of the Rat Pat by Frank Sinatra after Old Blue Eyes suffered a snub by Lawford’s brother-in-law JFK. Sinatra never spoke to him again; which makes this film’s final scene even more sardonically ironic than it already seems. (One of the film’s ‘fictitious’ nominees, Richard Burton, nominated for a Paramount Production called ‘Grapes in Winter’, later suffered a similar disappointment in reality at the 1978 Academy Awards when the Oscar for Best Actor went to “Richard… Dreyfus”.

TONY BENNETT (1926-2023)

Beat the Devil (1953)

Dir: John Huston | Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre | US Adventure Drama 89′

This light-hearted rehash of The Maltese Falcon crossed with the Road films was one of two outings (along with The Night of the Iguana) John Huston later thought he should have made in colour.

It affords the not inconsiderable pleasure of seeing a high-powered star and an important director having a little lark (it’s a good ten years in advance of the sort of thing made by the nouvelle vague).

Robert Morley plays the Fat Man, Peter Lorre returns from the earlier film looking very eccentric with his hair bleached white, Jennifer Jones is an absolute revelation as an habitual liar (Bogart just shrugs and says “let’s just say she relies upon her imagination rather that her memory”) while veteran jobbing actor Ivor Barnard has the role of his career as a vicious killer Bogart derisively nicknames ‘The Galloping Major’.

STREAMING ON PLEX and BFI online was

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis (2023)

Dir.: Anton Corbijn; Documentary with Aubrey Powell, Noel Gallagher, Roger Waters, Nick Mason; UK 2022, 101 min.

Cambridge in the early 1960s: four young men set out to make history: Syd Barnett and Roger Waters would found “Pink Floyd”, meanwhile Storm Thorgeson and Aubrey Powell were re-inventing the art of record cover design with Hipgnosis’; an English design duo who created memorable cult classic album sleeves. The images would sear into our collective unconscious as a visual record of the times. Hipgnosis would go on to devise iconic covers for the likes of T. Rex, Black Sabbath, Wishbone Ash, the Alan Parsons Project, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Yes,  AC/D and many more.

First time full-length documentary filmmaker Anton Corbijn has adapted Trish D Chetty’s script chronicling the often wild and chaotic relationship between Storm Thorgeson (nomen est omen) and Aubrey Powell (*1946), the latter contributing much of the film’s material, since “Stormzy” died in 2013. Noel Gallagher, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Roger Waters and Nick Mason give their testimony of a ground-breaking relationship.

Back in the day the HQ of “Hipgnosis” in Denmark Street (WC2) had no loo facilities – everyone used the sink, and nobody thought much of it. Then a water pipe burst in the Greek Bookshop on the ground floor below and valuable antiques were severely damaged – luckily Storm and Aubrey had insurance cover. These were just some examples of a time when art got away with blue murder.

Hipgnosis’ first cover work was for “Pink Floyd’s” 1968 album “A Saucerful of Secrets”. From then on the band would headline the Hipgnosis catalogue – together with “Led Zeppelin” . Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother” soon followed in 1970, that famous cover with “the Cow”, that resisted any attempt to be replaced by its given title. Pink Floyd’s 1973 outing “Dark Side of the Moon”, with the famous triangle glowing in a dark SF world, was so far the most ambitious attempt to elevate cover design into an artform in its own right – but it often succeeded in doing much more. Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were Here” (1975) took things a step further, avant-garde, even for those days: Few knew the stuntman risked his life in being set on fire – most people thought it was just a collage.

Hipgnosis’ 1973 cover for Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” – featuring naked children climbing on Ulster’s Giant Causeway – would never have got past the censors today. On a more playful note “Look Here (‘10cc’ 1980), pictured a lightly tranquiliised sheep on a psychiatrist’s couch – (under strict medical conditions!).

And talking of our furry friends, Pink Floyd’s “Animals” album cover (1977) featured a pink plastic pig floating over Battersea Power Station. Roger Waters considers pigs to be at the top of the social pecking order, and -in fitting tribute – the porker later broke free and ended up drifting over countryside meadows.

Perhaps much more frightening was Peter Gabriel’s cover for “Scratch” (1978), which showed the artist itching himself out of his cover cage, foreshadowing horror films to come.

When asked about Storm, all interviewed were unanimous “but he was a genius”, although Thorgeson was invariably a procrastinator – always in a bad mood and uncompromising. In 1983 things came to an end even though Peter Christopherson, also from Cambridge, had joined the duo. “Stormzy” never cared much about money, and soon the group turned their talents to producing music videos, Storm thought he was “a Hollywood director with all the money in the world to spend”. But the bank had other ideas after Powell had left. The two didn’t speak to each other for twelve years, much in the same vein as Syd Barnett and his Pink Floyd band members.

DoPs Martyn Breekhulzen and Stuart Luck give life to this tour-de-force of images. And for once, the music takes a back seat. Opening a new Vinyl and reading the lyrics printed inside the cover was a ritual for us back then. Corbijn’s overdose of nostalgia will go down a storm with fans of that magical era. Enlightening, passionate and rather sad. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 14 JULY 2023

And Then Come the Nightjars (2023)

Dir: Paul Robinson | Cast: David Fielder, Nigel Hastings | UK Drama 80′

Farm animals are having a tough time at the moment and especially dairy cows, blamed for raising the levels of methane and killing random walkers straying onto their territory when all they want to do is moo and chew in peace. But this is nothing compared to twenty years ago when the bovine population was decimated by foot and mouth disease and millions of livestock were systematically and often brutally slaughtered to control the outbreak.

This film version of Bea Roberts’ award-winning play takes place on a south Devon farm during that fateful epizootic of 2001. And although the narrative is rather slim, the summery English countryside sees the story soar above its stage origins in a colourful and genuinely moving look at male friendship with the original cast of Nigel Hastings and David Fielder terrific as the unlikely couple thrown together in crisis.

The last episode of foot and mouth disease occurred over twenty years ago but those TV images of livestock being incinerated in vast fires all over the countryside are still haunting with the farming community bearing the brunt of the crisis, psychologically and in their pockets.

Seasoned farmer Michael (Fielder) really brings all this home to us as a recent widower who had become fiercely attached to his small herd of dairy cows, naming them after members of the royal family. And we really feel for him and his animals with the demise of dairy farming threatening to be a frightening possibility: “there have cows on this farm for over 200 years and now there’s nothing” he complains bitterly.

Vet and close friend Jeffrey (Hastings) offers to help with the government enforced slaughter, ensuring humane methods, but Micheal is inconsolable and furious at this intrusion into his personal property, threatening to blow the men from the ministry away with a two-barrelled shot gun in scenes that are both pitiful and tragic (we see the flames, but not the cows in John Craine’s clever cinematography). Jeffrey’s life is not without its marital complications bringing these two lonely men closer in the absence of women. And Then Comes the Nightjars serves both as a touching tribute to that terrible time and to male friendship.

25 & 26 August | Chichester Film Festival | IN CINEMAS FROM 1 SEPTEMBER 2023  

https://youtu.be/AO1gRxZqx9Y

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Dir: Christopher McQuarrie | Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Vanessa Kirby, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss | US Actioner 163′

If you dreaded the phrase ‘to be continued’ at the end of an episode of the ‘X Files’, the words ‘Part One’ on the seventh and newest instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise may have an ominous ring but this only adds to the anticipation in this latest outing. And you certainly get your money’s worth on this peripatetic romp through Europe in search of a jewelled key to open who knows what: Tom Cruise (at 61 – occasionally raddled but reassuringly on form) pits his wits against a venal antihero Gabriel (Esai Morales), and scenery to die for – not to mention the spectacular stunts (Rebecca Ferguson performed her own after months of training).

The latest adventure sees Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team embarking on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new entity that could signal the end of the world should it fall into the wrong hands. At the same time dark forces from Ethan’s past threaten to close in unleashing this deadly race around the globe. In the face of this mysterious, omnipotent enemy Ethan is forced to accept that nothing is more important than his mission, not even the lives of those he cares for most (yes there’s romance too!).

And this latest Mission certainly delivers the goods, there are plenty of laughs (most of them I hope intentional, courtesy of Simon Pegg), the enormous budget is well-used with spectacular set pieces and an ingenious script from McQuarrie and his co-writer Erik Jendresen (based on the Bruce Geller TV series). There two terrific scenes employing Venice as a back drop, there’s an incredible climax involving a locomotive plunging off a bridge, and amidst all that testosterone boasts a fearsome foursome of femmes fatales. @Richard Chatten

Afire (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS and ON CURZON HOME CINEMA from 25 AUGUST 2023

The Damned Don’t Cry (2023)

Dir.: Fyzal Boulifa; Cast: Aicha Tebbae, Abdullah El Hajjouji, Antoine Reinartz; France/Belgium/Morocco 2022, 110 min.

A mother and son embark on an eventful odyssey across Morocco in this daring and strikingly beautiful sophomore feature from award-winning British-Moroccan writer/director Fyzal Boulifa (Lynn + Lucy).

Fatima-Zahra (Tebbae) is a 43-year-old widow and extremely alluring, although rather naive: dressing provocatively she tries to seduce a much younger man in a secluded spot near Tangier beach and is robbed off her jewellery. Her relationship with her 16-year-old son Selim (Hajjouji) swings between over-protectiveness and harsh criticism: the two are interdependent and neither of them has really grown up.

From a squalid studio accommodation in town the odd couple hitchhike a lift to relatives in the country. But they are not welcome in the midst of preparations for a wedding. We also learn that Fatima has a few skeletons in the cupboard: ostracised by local society after being raped in her twenties –  Selim was the offspring – she was forced into sex work to support her son.

Selim is eager to get back to Tangier and break free from his mother’s influence. Abdoul, a shady character, offers him a job on a building site, but really lines him up for sex with Sebastien (Reinartz), a wealthy Frenchman. The two hit it off to Salim’s surprise, and he quite takes to Sebastien who later apologises to him. The Frenchman then employs Selim on a regular basis, and Fatima tells her son she is working for a well-known brand in the fashion industry – in reality she is working for a minimum wage in a sweatshop.

Fatima meets a bus driver who wants to take her on as his second wife, his existing spouse suffering from mental problems. But Selim sabotages the planned marriage, telling the husband-to be the truth about his mother. When Sebastien’s partner from Paris arrives, Selim reacts with extreme jealousy and channelling his anger into criminal behaviour that will inadvertently separate him from his mother for the first time.

DoP Caroline Champetier follows the mother and son across the Moroccan landscape and the imposing urban backdrop of Tangier: her handheld shots scope out narrow alleys, and sordid domestic interiors that contrast with Fatima’s imaginative embellishment of reality. Tebbae and Hajjouji are brilliant as the destructive couple, driving each other further and further into the quicksand of social deprivation. A tight script helps, and Boulifa uses all his running time to push the narrative forward. An award-winning first film is always a difficult act to follow but this talented filmmaker triumphs with an even more impressive second feature. AS

IN CINEMAS AND ON CURZON HOME CINEMA | 7 JULY 2023

 

Il Boemo (2022)

Dir: Petr Vaclav. Czech Republic/Italy/Slovakia. 2022. 140 mins | Cast: Vojtěch Dyk, Barbara Ronchi, Elena Radonicich, Lana Vlady

Baroque music is at the core of this sweepingly romantic classically styled costume drama that reimagines the life and loves of a little known Czech composer who even tutored Mozart in 18th century Italy. 

Il Boemo, the Czech entry for the Academy Awards, makes fabulous use of the magical allure of its sumptuous Italian settings to tell a tale of doomed love affairs and the determination to overcome disappointment and succeed in the highly competitive arena of classical music. But behind this gilded cage lurks a squalid world of decadence and debauchery and Czech writer director Petr Vaclav reveals both sides of the palcoscenico in a drama smouldering with illicit sexual intrigue but bolstered by a bold story and prodigious musical interludes.     

The film opens in 1781 as Josef Myslivecek (b,1737) is on his death bed, poverty stricken and ravaged by syphilis, his deformity hidden by a Venetian mask. Years earlier, in 1765, he has arrived in Venice from a native Prague to seek his fortune as a musician and composer. But romance soon intervenes as Josef makes his way amongst the ‘beau monde’ and the urbane musician finds himself drawn into a love triangle with his young pupil, a well-born cellist who loses her virginity to him with disastrous consequences, and an aristocratic woman (Radonicich) whose libidinous charms capture Josef’s imagination as his reputation blossoms in all directions, and not just musically.

An exciting opportunity then takes Josef to Naples where his operas, written but hitherto unperformed, get a welcome airing. Here, as opera maestro, he enjoys a brief affair with real life diva Caterina Gabrielli (Barbara Ronchi) who agrees to sing in his debut opera but then loses her cool in a tense first night showdown in front of the fish-obsessed King of Naples (Ciccariello) who has a few unexpected habits up his sleeve. Invitations to lead illustrious orchestras soon flow including one sojourn that sees him fall for a married pianist in an affair that will prove his undoing.

Moving peripatetically around Europe, Josef finds himself back in Prague in 1768 meeting the child prodigy Mozart and instructing the precocious pianist in the rudiments of music with some new compositions which the boy picks up and embellishes like a pro in the film’s most amusing scene.

Tall, elegant and extremely graceful, Czech actor Vojtěch Dyko makes for a convincing maestro and he gives a sympathetic performance in the title role, although his pop star credentials often feel larger than life in the context of the film’s theme of struggling artist desperate for success. The divas are refreshingly idiosyncratic, and it works to the film’s advantage that Vaclav has cast delicately beguiling actors voiced by real opera singers including the famous Simona Saturova (La Gabrielli). 

Sadly, Josef falls victim to his carnal desires that often take precedence to his musical career, and this lack of perseverance and single-minded commitment is ultimately the key to his lack of endurance. Il Boemo is visually sumptuous glowing in candlelit interiors and lush landscapes, Vaclav does not stint on the music side of things with some rousing operatic episodes courtesy of contemporary Czech conductor and harpsichordist Vaclav Luks who has revived interest in his fellow countryman. This makes Il Boemo all the more enjoyable adding ballast and authenticity to the tragic story of a talented composer who somehow fell by the wayside in the chronicles of musical history. MT

PREMIERED AT SAN SEBASTIAN | NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

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Asteroid City (2023)

Dir: Wes Anderson. Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum | US Comedy drama

Wes Anderson has a dedicated following but even diehard fans were put off by his 2021 film The French Dispatch, with its over-talky, complicated structure. In contrast Asteroid City is so exuberant, nostalgic and lovely to look at the sheer dynamism is sure to endear it to even Anderson sceptics although some complained, at the Cannes press screening, it lacked an ‘involving storyline’. This is a movie that is constantly on the move with Anderson’s regular A-list cast and candy-coloured eye-popping visuals that just make you gawp in amazement for two hours in a film about a play within a TV show .

Once again the narrative unfolds through multiple framing devices with Bryan Cranston introducing the show in a black and white opening scene where we meet Conrad Earp. (Norton) He is the playwright of the 1950s story we are about to watch which then bursts on the screen in a dazzling blast of technicolour transporting us to the mythical desert location of Asteroid City famous for its massive meteor crater and observatory for stargazers eager to see the Milky Way. It’s also a military testing ground for atomic weapons, pioneered by the serene scientist Tilda Swinton. There is a textbook style alien (Jeff Goldblum) whose appearance causes Jeffrey Wright’s army commander to launch an investigation. But Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe get left on the sidelines in nondescript cameos.

But the film’s focus is Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a melancholy, pipe-smoking photographer and recent widower who arrives with his children, and his wife’s ashes, in a retro shooting-break that promptly blows a gasket. Butch mechanic Matt Dillon scratches his head unable to mend the vehicle so Augie asks his father in law Stanley (Tom Hanks) for help, meanwhile falling for Scarlett Johansson’s luminescent but lonely Hollywood star Midge, in scenes that plays out like a psychedelic version of Psycho. The nostalgia comes from the music – Rupert Friend is the crooning cowboy – the all round aesthetic and the upbeat gaiety that recalls a time when America was great and led the way in all things cutting edge, including scientific breakthroughs and space travel, but still had decency and family values at its heart. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Forever and a Day (1943)

Dirs: Victor Saville, Herbert Wilcox, Cedric Hardwick, Edmund Goulding | UK Drama

A chronicle by RKO of Britain at war from the days of Napoleon to the nights of the Blitz, this super-patriotic compendium production was made at the behest of Sir Cedric Hardwicke to raise funds for his compatriots in the depths of the war who described it as a “patriotic piece to which a multiple of people gave their talents”, Forever and a Day corralled an extraordinary array of expatriate Brits, some long established in Hollywood, ranging from Sir C. Aubrey Smith to Victor McLaglen as a doorkeeper named Archibald and others like Anna Neagle and Jesse Matthews who were just passing through.

Not exactly an entertainment but of definite curiosity value; with a tone that darkens considerably in the scenes with Claude Rains. @RichardChatten

ON TALKING PICTURES TV

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Dir: James Mangold | Cast: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Karen Allen, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones | US Action drama 154’

Admirers of Indiana Jones won’t be disappointed while those who don’t care won’t be surprised at the film franchise’s latest and probably final instalment. Jez Butterworth’s script sees the veteran archaeologist racing against time to retrieve said ‘dial of destiny’ that can purportedly change the course of history.

Harrison Ford turned 79 during production but wears it very well and much better than Karen Allen and Jonathan Rhys-Davies (whose appearance drew loud applause at tonight’s screening at Leicester Square) and the fact that he’s a wrinkled old codger (visibly rattled when his lecture on archeology is upstaged by the moonshot) makes the stunts all the more impressive; while Phoebe Waller-Bridge looks feisty in jodhpurs astride a motor-byke. She’s a modern heroine with retro appeal.

The conclusion when it finally comes would been quite satisfying if hadn’t taken such a long to get there. @RichardChatten

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Carmen (2023)

Dir: Benjamin Millepied | Cast: Paul Mescal, Rossy de Palma, Melissa Barrera | Musical Drama 116′

Spectacular to watch with its neon-enfused aesthetic, Benjamin Milllepied’s reimagining of Prosper Merimee’s Andalusian-set romance gets a Mexican makeover, but suffers an emotional bypass in the process. 

The enigmatic and strangely un-involving storyline poses more questions than it answers – to those uninitiated with the original – and the gutsy musical interludes scored by breakout composer Nicholas Britell (Succession) feel disconnected from the plot but provide much needed entertainment to carry us through the two hour running time. 

Paul Mescal is the star turn and, as ever, a magnetic presence as Aidan, tearing up a treat with his macho vulnerability but seemingly in a different film from the one starring his titular lover (Melissa Barrera) and Rossi de Palma’s Masilda. The opening sequence is one of the strongest and sees Carmen’s fiesty flamenco dancer mother gunned down by a drug gangster while strutting her stuff on a wooden platform in the dazzling deserts of Chihuahua (actually it’s New South Wales). The film returns to this tragedy in repeated flashbacks. Barrera is stunning as Carmen but can’t sing to save her life.   

After the shooting Carmen sets fire to her family home and escapes across the border to Texas where she meets ex-marine Mescal who finds himself working with the baddies to pick up illegal migrants. After a brush-up with one of the other patrolman Aidan goes on the run taking the reluctant Carmen with him. And apart from the intoxicating settings he’s the only reason to watch this. MT

NOW NATIONWIDE IN THE UK AND FRANCE

Twilight Women (1952)

Dir: Gordon Parry | Cast: Freda Jackson, Rene Ray, Lois Maxwell, Laurence Harvey | UK Crime Drama 89’

Unmarried nightclub singer, Vivanne Bruce, is suddenly along when her lover, Jerry Nolan, is arrested for murder. Searching for a place to live she eventually finds a room in a boarding-house run by the ruthless “Nellie” Alistair, who has an ulterior motive for offering unmarried mothers bed and board.

Britain’s first ‘X’ feature was this unrelenting slice of life with photography and production design that makes it resemble a silent German kammerspiele in which the unwed mothers of the title are first introduced in a series of close ups that resemble a series of mugshots.

The men are hardly seen (where was Maxwell Reed on the day they shot it?) with the egregious exception of Laurence Harvey, first seen as a crooner (obviously dubbed) in a nightclub.

Freda Jackson reprises her baby-farmer from No Room at the Inn, again answering to the appellation ‘Mrs’ although we never actually see her husband. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Rather (2023) Tribeca Film Festival 2023

Dir: Frank Marshall | US Doc 96′

A new documentary offers a straightforward snapshot of Texan journalist, news anchor and commentator Dan Rather (1931-) who became a revered household name with his spirited and engaging presence on American TV networks during the turbulent years of the 1960s and beyond.

Daniel Irvin Rather has covered virtually every major event in the world for the past 60 years but is also known for ushering in the era of fake news that led to his downfall at the respected CBS network. Rather is also credited at being the first journalist to announce the news of John F Kennedy’s death in 1963 by running with the rumour, ‘based on his instincts’ before it was fully confirmed.

Amongst many other achievements Rather stood out with his impactful style of reporting that bridged the gap between what was really happening on the ground during the Vietnam war, and the sentiment presented back home. The film outlines his fall from grace for airing documents, during a CBS broadcast in the run up to the 2004 presidential election, suggesting that George W Bush had a sketchy military record during the 1970s. The issue is still mired in controversy to this day.

Coming across as a serious man of integrity as he faces the camera as an engaging raconteur, at 91, without guile or glibness, the film pictures him from all perspectives: dutiful son, dogged marine recruit, devoted husband, deeply religious Texan. And this rounded impression is echoed by his daughter Robin who offers her admiration for a loving father who also was deeply committed to his cause. Talking heads-wise we also hear from Susan Zirinsky, his longtime colleague at CBS News, who sees him from a career angle, and not always in glowing terms.

Brimming with spectacular archive footage, news bulletins and interviews, the film darts around chronologically charting a career that began on Texas radio and graduated to TV News slots, where Rather made a name for himself covering Hurricane Carla, the Civil Rights Movement, the J F Kennedy Assassination, Watergate and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wars in Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan saw him on the battlefield dodging the bullets, and sending serial postcards back home to his family with the simple, repetitive message: “War is Hell”. At CBS and on 60 Minutes he was a revered anchor and is now prolific on Twitter appealing to a younger generation with his recalcitrant outbursts and on his own website News and Guts.

“Can you still make a difference as a journalist” Rather said at the Texas-based Moody College of Communication in 2009. “Yes, if you don’t quit”. This is a clear-eyed, informative film that refuses to dig the dirt on Dan. That’s for another documentary. MT

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL | NEW YORK 7-18 JUNE 2023

 

 

Hondo (1953) Bfi Film on Film 2023

Dir: John Farrow | Cast: John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, Michael Pate, James Arness | US 83′

Despite the obligatory shots of arrows heading straight for the camera climaxing in a rousing encirclement by injuns, Hondo, based on Louis L’Amour’s best-seller, is more a character study than a straight western and stands up perfectly well played flat.

John Wayne plays army dispatch rider Hondo Lane who finds his true place in the world when he comes across a woman and her son living in a remote homestead amongst warring Apaches.

Katherine Hepburn was reputedly intended for the role eventually played by Geraldine Page (who gets an introducing credit) reputedly selected for her homely looks, so as not to outshine Duke Wayne.

Wayne doesn’t actually get to tell her she’s beautiful when she’s mad but she frequently curls her lip in the face of his swaggering machismo. @RichardChatten

BFI Film on Film Festival (8-11 June) is the UK’s first film festival dedicated to screening works solely on celluloid with films showing on rare Nitrate, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm, dual-strip 3D and Super 8.

Barbie Nation: An Unauthorised Tour (1998)

Dir: Susan Stern | US Doc, 1998

Tall, lithe and perfectly formed with a swish of long blonde hair: the Barbie doll was the pinnacle of perfection for young girls in the 1960s. Hours were spent dressing her up in a variety of outfits with shoes that never stayed on, tiny handbags and even gloves. Barbie was a fully formed adult of 19, and later even had a boyfriend called Ken.

Susan Stern’s brief but informative documentary Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour dives deep into the story of this iconic plaything that was sexy and yet resolutely asexual in an era where women were still content to be mothers and wives. Back in the early 1960s there was never a mention of Barbie working or having career aspirations beyond being a secretary or a nurse.

Ruth Handler was an ordinary Denver wife and mother when she spotted a gap in the market that would make her one of the richest enterpreneurs of the 20th century. Her little daughter played with dolls made out of paper and Ruth, ran a small furniture business called Mattel with her husband Elliot, and his partner Matt Matson (Matt+El).

In a brilliant marketing stroke, the entrepreneurial Jewish housewife then had the idea to extend their range of furniture and picture frames to include dollhouses, and then came across the German’ Bild Lill Doll’, created by Reinhard Beuthein years earlier. The doll was based on a gold-digging comic strip sex symbol but Handler refashioned the mannequin transforming it into Barbie in 1959.

Barbie was the first adult doll on the market in the 1950s. In archive footage, Handler explains her reasons for creating an adult doll that could help girls deal with the physical changes as they went through puberty. The adult doll had breasts (but no nipples!) and was not popular with parents, but the went down a storm with their kids after Mattel devised a clever TV marketing campaign. Girls had great fun dressing the Barbie dolls, and buying different outfits each week with their pocket money. Back in the day, I remember the sheer excitement of discovering, while staying with my cousin, that Brierley’s in Peterborough were selling Barbie outfits at discount prices. We bought the whole range. Even nowadays two Barbies are sold every second somewhere in the world.

The film then explores Barbie’s evolvement as the doll was produced in a variety of different guises: there was a black Barbie, named Christie that could say: “Hello I’m Christie, let’s go shopping with Barbie” – simple words perpetuating the safe but stock idea that Sixties women were pliant emptied-headed females happy to stay in the background. Nowadays things have become more avantgarde: there is even a blood-soaked ‘Carrie Barbie’ and a ‘Frida Kahlo’ wheel-chair user. The Barbie ‘Fashionistas line’ is now available in seven skin tones, 22 eye colours and 24 hairstyles.

Naturally Barbie couldn’t stay ‘innocent’ forever. A more sinister undertone comes from two women who gave their dolls a dominatrix spin with appropriate leather accoutrements. Stern interweaves her doc with footage from original Barbie ads; a Philadelphia TV news story with the startling headline, “Is deep frying a Barbie part of a Satanic ritual?”. And this negative aspect is echoed in Handler’s own life: She was later convicted of false accounting that saw her and Elliot forced out of running the business they had started. Breast cancer followed but her indomitable entrepreneurial sprit survived when she came up with a new business called Nearly Me, the first to produce customised breast prostheses on the general market. There’s no keeping a good woman down!. MT

25th ANNIVERSARY DIRECTOR’S CUT | Available on demand from 27 June 2023

Des Mains en Or | Healing Hands (2023)

Dir: Isabelle Mergault | Cast: Lambert Wilson, Josiane Balasko, Sylvie Testud | France Comedy 91′

Lambert Wilson is the star of this light-hearted comedy drama that sees his austere arrogance melt in the face of straightforward kindness as a distinguished writer with a bad back. Wilson plays almost the same character as in his recent film Simple Things. This time he is Pierre, a debonnair  professional living in a Belle Epoque mansion in the enchanting coastal region of Calvados where he is surrounded by the trappings of success, but somehow isn’t feeling it. Clearly something is missing in his life.

An invitation to join the Academy Francaise is flattering, but chronic back pain leaves him unable to cope with the stress of this high profile existence, and the fear of not being able to meet his commitments only makes matters worse. And then along comes earth mother Martha (Balasko) with her healing hands. Whether you buy into their formulaic romance is the key to the film’s success. If not the luscious Normandy landscapes provide the eye candy in this mildly amusing crowd-pleaser. MT

NOW OUT IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

The Red Island | L’île Rouge (2023)

Dir/Wri: Robin Campillo | Cast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle | France, Drama 115′

Robin Campillo follows his frenetic activist film 120bpm with this mystical, evocative childhood recollection of growing up on the Island of Madagascar during in one of the last French military bases of the French empire. The story is seen through the eyes of his character Thomas (Vauselle) whose caped comic book hero Fantomette adds an air of surreality to this dreamy island reverie with his nighttime sorties transforming the place into a secret world of exotic and illicit liaisons.

Life in the former French protectorate of Madagascar seems like any other colonial existence for the French people living there and awaiting repatriation in 1971. For Thomas this East African outpost, where he lives with his mother, father and two brothers in a simple bungalow, is an adventure playground full of wild and exciting possibilities courtesy of his caped adventurer Fantomette.

With its sense of adventure underpinned by reality this often feels like a Tintin adventure, but the cartoon character Fantomette – created in 1961 by the French graphic artist Georges Chaulet – is the whimsical Batman-like shadow. With a black mask and red-lined cape he provides the film with a layer of fun and intrigue in ingenious animation sequences that perfectly express Thomas’ boyhood imagination and lend a mischievous air of danger, a counterpoint to the everyday life on the military base where the spirit of native insurrection is still reverberating outside the walls of the encampment.

These daily demonstrations exulting in liberation inject an air of harsh reality into the ordered but rather hedonistic vibe of expat life. In the daily round of barbecues, swimming in the sea and boozy lunches Thomas’ parents Colette (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) and Roberto (Quim Gutierrez) are fully-rounded characters enjoying a vibrant sexual chemistry their sensuality always threatening to incandesce into an explosive episode that only adds to their allure.

Campillo records all this in the three strand narrative, but always retains his sense of boyhood wonder and playfulness through the amusing vignettes featuring the masked adventurer. Colette, a warm and tender mother, runs him up a cape and mask on her sewing machine, and once lights are out, the night becomes a thrilling time to explore. The island and its wildlife, vegetation and ordinary buildings, like the church, are transformed into a strange paradise in the light of the moon. After dark, Thomas’ imagination is set free as he discovers the mysterious goings on in a world beyond everything he has known before, transported by his guise as a boyish Fantomette. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK cinemas | CURZON

Daliland (2022)

Dir: Mary Harron | Wri: John C Walsh | Cast: Sir Ben Kingsley, Christopher Briney, Barbara Sukowa, Suki Waterhouse, Rupert Graves, Andreja Pejic, and Ezra Miller | Canada Drama 97′

Ben Kingsley is sensational as Salvador Dalí, pictured in his later years in this enjoyable classically-styled biopic from Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron and her writer John C Walsh.

Set in New York and Spain in 1974, the thrust is not so much the artist’s work but his fascinating obsession with his wife and muse Gala (Sukowa) whom he describes as: “the secret within my secret”. Seen through the inexperienced eyes of the bland and pasty-faced James (Briney), the focus then shifts to this young assistant keen to make his name in the art world, who is helping the eccentric and mercurial Dalí prepare for a big gallery show, although his credentials for the post are never explained. Ultimately, the naive James feels disillusioned by the experience – but we wouldn’t expect anything else; such is the ephemeral nature of artistic genius.

The legendary surrealist often takes a backseat in favour of this far less intriguing cypher who somehow finds himself on the receiving end of all the female attention – even from Gala – who is styled as a sexually voracious virago whose profligate nature puts her marriage under strain, although the quixotic Dali remains in denial of her faults til the end.

Kingsley is perfect for the role with his dark, exotic features (he would also make a great Louis XIV). Not unexpectedly, his Dali comes across as mercurial, quaintly timid and vulnerable, but always dignified, a rather curious classical stringed score accompanying his painting interludes rather than something more avant-garde and zany. But Marcel Zyskind certainly captures the strange and whimsical quality of the artist’s nature with his deft camerawork and some magical lighting effects in a nighttime sequence on the beach in Cadaques, Catalonia.  

Dali’s other acolytes in this engaging shag-fest include Ginesta, a sinuous Suki Waterhouse, Amanda Lear (Pejic) and Rupert Graves’ Captain Moore, a financier and the voice of reason who frets over the Dalis’ extravagant lifestyle. MT

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Dir: PeterWeir | Cast: Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert, Helen Morse, Vivean Gray, Kirsty Child, Tony Llewellyn Jones | Fantasy Drama, Australia 115’

The last time I saw this adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel – a film that triumphantly realises Hitchcock’s oft-expressed desire (a desire that also informed Claude Chabrol’s ‘Le Boucher’) to locate a spine-chilling mystery against a rural backdrop in brilliant sunlight – I found the experience so unnerving that when it was over it took a major effort simply to venture out into the dark to put the bins out.

Cliff Green bases his script on a novel by Joan Lindsay that sees a group of Australian schoolgirls vanish mysteriously during an idyllic summer picnic, haunting and frustrating the people left behind. That the sole girl to return is unable to explain exactly what happened during the time of her absence is characteristic of the film’s ambiguity which strongly implies that somehow the supernatural were involved without spelling it out.

When the film came out a reporter noticed that in 1900 Valentine’s Day fell on a Wednesday not a Saturday and the tragedy wasn’t in any of the papers at the time. So he asked Joan Lindsay if it actually happened and only then did she reveal that the novel was entirely fictitious. @RichardChatten

NOW ON BLURAY COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT FILMS

Daughter of Darkness (1948)

Dir: Lance Comfort | UK Horror

Ironically – considering her best remembered film role was as the Virgin Mary in ‘King of Kings’ – Siobhan McKenna made her film debut in Victor Hanbury’s answer to ‘Nightmare Alley’, as a wide-eyed Colleen reviled by the women of the village as the Devil incarnate and lusted after by the men; which seems a little harsh as she wears a crucifix and on several occasions seeks sanctuary in a church.

Her first victim is Maxwell Reed as Battlin’ Dan, a gypsy pugilist with eyebrows like Vampira whose looks Miss McKenna soon improves by scarring his cheek.

This heady brew is done proud by Lance Comfort enhanced some lovely use of night-for-night by Stanley Pavey, taking in along the way a conflagration in a barn and a fearsome finale in a churchyard. @RichardChatten

AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

Kidnapped (2023)

Dir: Marco Bellocchio | Cast: Enea Sala, Leonardo Maltese, Paolo Pierobon, Fausto Russo Alesi, Barbara Ronchi | Italy, Drama 125′

Now in his eighties, Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio is still knocking them out and shows no intention of slowing down: he has just completed a script for the upcoming film The Life Apart. His latest outing, a classically styled melodrama, tells the little known story of the kidnapping of a Jewish boy seized from his family home in Bologna and taken to live in the Vatican in 1858. This story exposes another ugly episode of the history of the Catholic Church, this time concerning coercive conversion.

Kidnapped is a hardcore arthouse affair full of impassioned speeches, religious symbolism and magnificent set pieces with vehement style of 16th or 17th century European art in the style of Caravaggio or Valasquez, ramped up by a thundering score from Esterno Notte composer Fabio Massimo. Cast-wise it boasts a tour de force from Italian actor Paolo Pierobon as a malevolent Pope Pius IX who orders a series of forced religious conversions as his power diminishes in the wake of the newly-founded Kingdom of Italy in a climate of vicious antisemitism.

Apart from the Pope, a series of rather cardboard characters are there to serve the narrative in a film whose primary focus is the outright humiliation of a Jewish family whose little boy, 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara (played by Enea Sala, then Leonardo Maltese), is seen living happily with his wealthy parents Solomone “Momola” Mortara (Fausto Russo Alesi) and Marianna (Barbara Ronchi).

One night Edgardo is taken away from his family’s palatial home on the premise of his having been secretly baptised by the family maid. The only way for the couple to get their child back is to convert to Catholicism, which is naturally a non-starter to their own religious beliefs.

Inspired by a Daniele Scalise’s book ‘Il Caso Mortara’, Bellocchio and his co-writer Susanna Nicchiarelli chronicle Edgardo’s turbulent time in the Vatican where he undergoes intense religious instruction along with other Jewish boys. Meanwhile, back in Bologna, Momola works with the international press to raise the profile of his son’s plight through a vigorous campaign demonising the pontiff. Despite best efforts on their part, the boy reaches adulthood as an indentured servant to the church and somehow develops a year erotic zeal for Pius. In one scene his adulation causes him to knock the pontiff down and leads to him being forced to draw three signs of the cross with his tongue on the floor, as a punishment. Another sees Edgardo freeing a statue of Christ, who then comes down from the cross and walks calmly away.

Fire and brimstone and much ringing of hands follows with Ronchi channelling a typical Jewish mother – and you feel for her and her cute offspring. Rapito certainly reflects a blood-soaked era which culminated in the Papal States – and Pius himself – been eventually vanquished by the Italian army in 1870. Needless to say the Catholic Church fails to redeem itself in the film’s ending, and still has a lot to answer for even to this day, in this brutal portrait of tyranny and religious bigotry. MT

IN UK CINEMAS and on CURZON HOME CINEMA FROM 26 APRIL 2024

A Night in Casablanca (1946)

Dir: Archie Mayo | with Groucho, Harpo, Chico Marx, Charles Drake, Lois Collier | uS Comedy 85’

Although nothing else in A Night in Casablanca begins to measure up to the opening gag with Harpo holding up the building, it remains the last truly vintage film the Marx Brothers ever made; and became something of a cause celebre when Jack Warner protested at the use of ‘Casablanca’ in the title. (It even has Dan Seymour from the original.)

It follows the familiar pattern, right down to the usual bland male lead (this time it’s the turn of Charles Drake). The boys must have got a lot of satisfaction to get laughs at the expense of Nazis, especially Sig Ruman who declares that “it will sooth me to see someone in pain”, while the level of the humour can guessed from the amount of time the film devotes to him losing his toupee.@RichardChatten

NOW ON MUBI

The Other (1972)

Dir: Robert Mulligan | US Fantasy drama

Fifteen years after Tom Tryon had played the title monster in I Married a Monster from Outer Space, although the ordeal it depicted must have paled by comparison with the subsequent experience of working for Otto Preminger. He returned to films in style as executive producer on his own adaptation of his best-selling novel.

Having just created a splash with ‘Summer of ’42’ director Robert Mulligan returns to the summer of 1935 – a date driven home by an appearance of the National Review Association logo and when John Ritter is seen reading a newspaper headlining the trial of the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby – for this Hitchcockian exercise in psychological horror shot in brilliant colour by veteran cameraman Robert Surtees (there’s an eye-watering scene depicting a kid falling on to a pitchfork) which imbues Connecticut with the same inscrutable beauty as Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth.

Just as Mulligan’s earlier study of childhood during the thirties in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ had enlisted the services as narrator of Kim Stanley (a stage actress rarely seen in films), so ‘The Other’ provides an extremely rare screen record of legendary Broadway star and acting coach Uta Hagen. @RichardChatten

Reality (2023)

Dir: Tina Satter | Cast  Sydney Sweeney, Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davies | US Drama 83′

A whistleblowing psychological drama that traps us for most of its running time within the confines of a small room and other drab locations to tell the true story of Reality Winner, an American NSA contractor who in 2017 divulged confidential top secret intelligence that revealed her country’s knowledge of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections.

Satter’s impressive feature debut is based on her own stage play ‘Is This a Room’ and revolves around an interrogation between two male FBI agents and Reality, an ambitious and highly intelligent linguist multi-linguist, sensitively played Sydney Sweeney. The dialogue is actually taken from the FBI’s transcripts of what was actually said, and demonstrates just how persuasive the men become in gradually breaking down a suspect until they achieve their aims.

It all starts in 2017 when Reality (Sweeney) is doorstepped at her home by FBI agents Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis), who present a search warrant and then start a menacing interrogation. Reality readily engages with their line of questioning as her house is searched and her telephone confiscated until it gradually emerges that she is a suspect in the disclosure of highly sensitive information. At times stranger than fiction, Reality is an absorbing film that blends political thriller with fantasy drama with striking lighting effects and sound design. Sydney Sweeney is certainly a force to be reckoned with in the title role. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE from 2 June 2023 | BERLINALE PANORAMA 2023

 

The Leather Boys (1964)

Dir: Sidney Furie | Cast: Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell | Drama

‘The Leather Boys’ can still raise eyebrows for it’s pioneering depiction of a nice young lad who finds that he prefers the company of Dudley Sutton to his shrewish little wife played by Rita Tushingham..

Well before he hit the big time with ‘The Ipcress File’ Sydney J. Furie, the new boy from Canada, had already demonstrated himself a director of bewildering versatility with his work ranging from ‘X’-rated shockers like this to Cliff Richard musicals.

In the former category ‘The Leather Boys’ attracted particular notoriety when as a casualty of the industry crisis of 1963-64 it took over a year to obtain a circuit release, which earned it a place on Terence Kelly’s list of ‘martyred’ films on page 35 of his book ‘A Competitive Cinema’. All in all a perfect candidate for Talking Pictures. @RichardChatten

ALSO ON BFI PLAYER

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022)

Dir.: Nina Menkes; Documentary with Laura Mulvay, Julie Dash, Joey Soloway, Catherine Hardwicke, Rosanna Arquette; USA 2022, 107 min.

It is no an accident that British film critic Laura Mulvay leads an all-female cast of academics and filmmakers in this new documentary. Brainwashed takes a long cold look at the different ways women and men are treated, both on the screen and by the film industry. Naturally, their male counterparts were invited to contribute but declined. It proves inconclusively that patriarchy has no gender, and that Mulvay’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ is very much alive even in the most high-brow fare.

Accordingly, we are forced to take our most admired films and throw them under the bus of sexism: from Last Year at Marienbad to Vertigo, Raging Bull and Le Mepris. Even cult classics such as Blade Runner and Metropolis get the red card.

In the full frontal assault few get away unscathed. Hollywood’s early women directors Ida Lupino and Dorothy Azner are just as guilty as their contemporary counterparts, despite representing just eight percent of the filmmaking community, they have all somehow committed the ‘male gaze’ faux pas’. Even “Palme d’Or” winner Julia Ducournau, only the second female to win the award, takes the rap – for Titane, in which a young woman has sex with a car.

But what exactly is the “male gaze” and what does it consist of? It starts with the definition of the Subject/Object relationship, followed by the specific framing of female and male characters, executed in the camera movement and the lighting: Easy to see how this happens if female filmmakers and camera operators are in the minority. Women often appear naked in films whereas their male counterparts rarely so. The effect is subliminal. Yes, of course, we are all inured and conditioned to it, it’s par for the course – but how often do we actually object?

In the golden era of the studio film women’s faces were captured in 2D sheen, making them look dewy and perfect, whilst men were shot in craggy 3D, implying they had other qualities. Women were reduced to the one-dimensional stereotype of beautiful inertness. As an interesting observation: have you ever watched Raging Bull and noticed that Cathy Moriarty’s image at the swimming pool is detached from the male speakers?

Finally, let’s move on to Mandingo, a trash product directed by Richard Fleischer in 1975. The female plantation owner (Susan George) forces the black slave to have sex with her (otherwise she would accuse him of rape and he would die). His pectoral muscles are very visible, and in all other ways the table is turned too: the male body is, for once, waiting to be conquered by the powerful female.

Brainwashed is rigorous and bracing in its approach, stringent in its execution; and an eyeopener for all who thought they knew the full extent of the phenomenon known as ‘the Male Gaze’. AS

BFI Blu-ray, BFI Player Subscription, iTunes and Amazon Prime release on 17 July 2023

 

 

Book Club: the next Chapter (2023)

Dir.: Bill Holderman; Cast: Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Don Johnson, Andy Garcia, Greg T. Nelson; USA 2023, 107 min.

Bill Holderman thought he was on to a good thing when Book Club, his feature debut, hit the big screen back in 2018. This follow-up is not as funny or well-written but takes up where he left off, and with the same team of Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and their love interests Don Johnson, Andy Garcia and Greg T. Nelson. Their star power carries Book Club: the next Chapter from cover to cover.

First time around “50 Shades of Grey” was the book up for discussion. This time around “The Alchemist” provides the reading matter. But rather than reading the focus is on a trip to Italy for a last ‘hurrah’ before Vivian (Fonda) settles down with Arthur (Johnson). What could be more romantic than an Italian wedding? Well, what starts as a joyride in Rome soon turns into a catalogue of disasters.

On the plus side, Book Club: the next Chapter looks ravishing, DoP Andrew Dunn pulling all the stops out with his camerawork and plenty of frothy dialogue. But something is lacking: a spark to set it all on fire. Fonda is regal; Steenburgen mischievous; Candice Bergen sarcastic and self-deprecating and Diane Keaton hoping for a better version of Woody Allen to spar with. But the script lets these ladies down badly. Which is a shame, because so much talent deserves something brave and daring. Certainly not this orderly retreat behind bland in-jokes and telegraphed plot changes. So not much of a page-turner, just a reliable comedy blighted by the fate of all sequels. . AS

ON RELEASE FROM 12 MAY 2023

Silent Dust (1949)

Dir: Lance Comfort | UK Drama

Based on the play by both himself and his father Roland, Michael Pertwee already displays the caustic take on human nature that would characterise his later work for Mario Zampi.

During the titles, as the unmistakable strains of Georges Auric swells up, top billing goes to Sally Gray, but the film really belongs to Stephen Murray who gives a towering performance as the patriarch dismayed to discover that his son (a perfectly cast Nigel Patrick) far from being the dead hero he was mourning was actually a very much alive bouncer.

Another little gem from the still unsung Lance Comfort. Two clever scenes are one depicting a lying flashback and a subjective sequence (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) in which he visualises a scar-faced intruder with the scar – which being blind – is on the man’s wrong cheek. @RichardChatten

Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)

Dir.: Lisa Cortes; Documentary with Little Richard, Mick Jagger, John Waters, Billy Porter, Tom Jones, ; USA 2023, 98 min.

Rock legend Little Richard comes alive in this new biopic from Lisa Cortes. It sees the musical icon trying to come to terms with his complex personality and explores the lack of public recognition during his lifetime. John Waters, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones – among others – help to shed light on a life so full of promise, but blighted by social reality. Sometimes verging on the hagiographic, Cortes manages a wealth of information with aplomb, a more non-linear approach might have been an alternative.

Richard Wayne Penniman (1932-2020) was born in Macon (GA) in the deep South of he USA. Black, queer and disabled he was most certainly abused in childhood. But his deep religious faith eventually led to him renouncing his gayness: “God wanted Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

The man who would create “Tutti Frutti”, ”Long Tall Sally”. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up” single-handedly invented Rock’N’ Roll – but the glory and the awards went to Elvis and Pat Boone: No wonder, he felt cheated. He was the architect of an art form and a social identity that became progressively clearer only later in his life.  

Michael Jackson, Prince and later David Bowie (who idolised Little Richard) profited from Richard’s fight for an identity that overcome segregation, at least for part of a younger generation, after the events of 1968. But the music industry “ignored and cheated him”. ‘It was unfair’ says historian John Branca.

Academics may try to come to terms with it, citing the ‘then’ and ‘today’ comparisons, but Little Richard needs no defenders in our contemporary world, he lived through a time which was soul-crushing, and no film can gloss over this. Little Richard was overly optimistic when he claimed “My music broke down the walls of segregation”. And later he is quoted as saying “I want to change my image. I want to come out loud and gaudy as ‘the Living Fame”.

The feature makes no connection to “Flame”; it is a nod to the Pentecostal origins of the gay disco singer Sylvester. Little Richard was really re-inventing himself, even though it was not a always a linear process. But the singer’s religious ambivalence was the kicker in later years.

There are TV interviews and concert footage galore, and alone for this selection Cortes deserves credit. She may have strayed into an intellectual wilderness of a hindsight interpretation, but she keeps his music alive. The true King of Rock’N’Roll will always have the last word when he sings, breaking down our defences like no one else. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS COURTESY OF DOGWOOF

A Brighter Tomorrow (2023) Cannes Film Festival 2023

Dir: Nanni Moretti | Drama Italy/France, 95′

Since winning the Palme d’Or over two decades ago with The Son’s Room  Nanni Moretti, now nearly seventy, has been turning out self-reflective dramas about life for the Italian left-wing middle classes, and this circuitous comedy is another predictable sortie into that Roman territory and not without his signature moments of dry humour.

Like many directors of his era, Moretti keeps making the same film over and over again and this is the least involving to date. But then life tends to repeat itself so this is not such a bad thing, although you start to wonder why he is still in the main competition with so many talented filmmakers languishing in the sidebars. His last visit to Cannes with Three Stories, in 2021, was another middling drama in his repertoire where the women are usually peacemakers, the men the troublemakers, apart from Moretti himself who always good as the self-questioning man of integrity. Naturally – he’s the director.

A Brighter Future is essentially another of his films within a film, Moretti is Giovanni a neurotic novelist struggling to finish his own feature. As usual the politics are left-wing and the pace plods along placidly about the Italian Communist party objecting to the Soviets during the Hungarian invasion of 1956.

Margherita Buy – always a luminous prescence – plays his wife Paola, the film’s producer. But the is marriage going downhill and she has decided to leave him. Meanwhile Matthieu Amalric makes another febrile appearance as the film’s producer desperately trying to rustle up finance. To beef up the production Giovanni he has cast a group of Koreans who provide the funniest scene during a script meeting where their interpreter gets a ticking off for translating an intimate aside he has with Paola.

There are references to his ‘friends’: architect Renzo Piano and Martin Scorsese in a debate about violence in film. Scorsese has surely more experience and greater validity in commenting where this is concerned. The story gradually grinds to a rather pessimistic conclusion in chewing over and digesting the decadence of politics. So this is not one of his best outings but maybe a brighter future will bring a better Moretti film with it. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION 2023

 

Human Desire (1954)

Dir: Fritz Lang | Cast: Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford | US Noir 91’

Jerry Wald had so been intoxicated by those shots of trains going into tunnels he’d long wanted to do a remake of ‘La Bete Humaine’. By far the lesser of two films by Jean Renoir by Fritz Lang ‘Human Desire’ relocates a very gallic tale by Emile Zola of amour fou to the American heartland (evocatively shot in the bleakness of winter by Oscar-winning cameraman Burnett Guffey) with decidedly mixed results.

Instead of archetypical Frenchman Jean Gabin and provocative young Simone Simon we get all-American boy Glenn Ford (not exactly convincing as a sexual psychopath), while Gloria Grahame alone earns the film another as Broderick Crawford’s lawful wedded nightmare. @RichardChatten

The Conference (2022)

Dir: Matti Geschonneck | Germany, Drama, 90′

This chilling chamber piece chronicles the 1942 conference that saw a group of Nazi officials quietly enjoying brandy and cigars while signing the death warrants of eleven million European Jews. The meeting was over in ninety minutes.

The Conference is a compelling piece of filmmaking in spite of its cloistered one-room setting in a dour villa on the banks of a icebound lake in Berlin where fifteen stony-faced German attendees led by the chief of the Reich Security SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (a smirking Philip Hochmair) dispassionately perpetrated mass genocide.

Hitler and his fellow Nazis has reached the opinion that Germany’s Jewish population had become ‘too big for its boots’. The Wansee Conference took place on 24th January 1942 to discuss the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” or, in more mundane words, to discuss the total annihilation of Jews in countries under the control of the German Reich, in the quickest and most efficient way possible.

Best known for his 2017 outing In Times of Fading Light German filmmaker Matti Geschonneck directs with flair and precision a script based on the actual minutes recorded by the deadly SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (of which only one copy remains). The meeting is unobtrusively recorded by the only female member there, Ingeburg Werlemann (Lilli Fichtner who made her debut in The White Ribbon).

All present are totally committed to the macabre plan of action. There is never a scintilla of thought given to pain and suffering involved, only the inconvenience and potential side effects on the German soldiers responsible for putting the genocide into action. Once again bringing to mind those famous words: the ‘banality of evil’, Geschonneck has made a powerful and important film that examines one of world’s darkest eras and showing how easy it is for a few misguided men to change the course of history. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Harriet Craig (1950)

Dir: Vincent Sherman | US Drama

The title suggests just another Joan Crawford weepie in which she suffers in mink, but that’s only half the story.

It’s ironic that Crawford found popularity in roles in she which was noble and self-sacrificing (in reality in ‘Mildred Pierce’ she would almost certainly have had Ann Blyth for breakfast).

As one who holds the heretical view that Crawford wrecks nearly every film in which she appears, I nominate ‘Harriet Craig’ as the one glorious exception to that rule; she’s certainly a hundred times more frightening than Rosalind Russell in the 1936 version.

It’s only too believable that Mrs Craig’s staff live in terror of her; and she ain’t kidding when she comes home to find the place a mess, and her companion opines that the servants left that way, lowers her voice and snarls “they wouldn’t dare!” @RichardChatten

Lakelands (2023)

Dir.: Robert Higgins, Patrick McGivney; Cast: Eanna Hardwicke, Danielle Galligan, Lorcan Cranitch, Dafhyd Flynn, Gary Lydon; ROI 2022 100 min.

Irish films have been recently in the (Oscar) news, with The Banshees of Inisherin and The Quiet Girl featuring prominently. Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney also hail from the Emerald Isle. Their first film clearly has Lindsay Anderson’s 1983 classic This Sporting Life in mind but fails to overcome the emotional limits of its two main characters it ends up in a cul de sac of Neo realism.

Farmer Cian (Hardwicke) is the captain of the local Gaelic Football team in Granard Longford a rather drab town in the Irish countryside. In order to find the ‘bright lights’, Cian and his mates have to take a long bus ride to Cavan, where nightclubs promise girls and drugs. In a senseless brawl outside a pub Cian suffers a life-changing concussion. Unable to cope with the long-term after effects due to CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) he and his coach Bernie (Lydon) are forced to re-think his promising future.

The macho culture surrounding Irish football is partly to blame for the lack of understanding surrounding Cian’s condition, and the club’s supporters are not sympathetic: the captain of the local Minor League is not supposed to submit to such an outlandish illness. The reactions mirror Cian’s own assessment: it will go away, he has to be patient. But Cian has to face up to that fact that his career and his social standing in the community are ruined, and Cian becomes increasingly morose and downcast, not helped by his father Diarmud (Cranitch). Then hope comes along in the shape of Grace (Galligan), a nurse who will soon return to the UK. This relationship is left open, one of the flaws in the script, along with the failure to properly address the toxic male culture,  difficulties to find an ending, Higgins and McGivney flounder even more with a half-hearted compromise.

Whilst the rural background is anything but romantic as the title suggests, DoP Simon Crowe overloads the images with utter dreariness to the point of boredom. To show the landscape of having an input in the behaivior of Cian and his mates is one thing, but dragging the audience for 100 minutes of senseless repetitive images is asking simply too much. Cian and Gabrielle’s relationship, the centre of the feature, is so opaque, that it asks more question than answers.

It is very clear what LAKELANDS was aiming for, but the execution is simply too lame and uninspiring. A missing dramatic arc leaves the audience dangling in an emotionally undercooked art-house fair. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 5 MAY 2023

How to Blow up a Pipeline (2023)

Dir.: Daniel Goldhaber; Cast: Ariela Barer, Kristine Forseth, Lukas Gage, Forest Goldluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, Luje Weary, Irene Bedard; US 2022, 104 min.

With its eye-catching title How to Blow up a Pipeline is a provocative film specially given Putin’s punitive action in Russia. But this is nothing to do with the recent invasion of Ukraine, In fact Daniel Goldhaber’s film, a fascinating political thriller, takes place in Texas where a group of eco-warriors severely damage a pipeline, in two places.

Basing their film on the 2020 non-fiction book by the Swedish author Andreas Malm, who argues against climate in-activism, the American director and his co-writers Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol locate their narrative in the US. And like all good Heist movies the characters are introduced one by one, with their stories shown in flashbacks, cleverly arranged by editor Daniel Garber.

The native American bomb expert Michael (Goodluck) is fed up with the oil corporations’ misuse of the land that belongs to him and his people. The military veteran Dwayne has lost the land which was in the hands of his family for a century: the government took the land forcibly, citing corporate need. Rowan (Forseth) and Logan (Gage) are a hippy couple, much more interested in sex and drugs than ecology.

Then there are lesbians Alisha (Lawson and Theo (Lane), whose death with leukaemia was cited as the result of living near an oil refinery. Alisha, a seasoned community worker is very skeptical about the whole enterprise, but at least she can be near Theo. Shawn (Scribner) is an idealistic college student who might “have read too many books, and decided to change the world”. And there is Xochite (co-author Barer) who opens the feature which a message to the owner of the SUV she is vandalising, calling for attacks on ‘things which kill us’.

The film avoids preaching or sermonising, and the warrior are never glamorised, Goldhaber leaving the audience to make up their own minds. It goes without saying that all participants face long prison sentences or even the death penalty for their actions. And like in all good heist movies, the audience is often misdirected: with one scene showing a development that upends long-held assumptions.

DoP Tehillah de Castro shoots on 16 mm film to achieve a grainy quality to compliment the storyline which sees a crew of misfits avoiding romanticism at all costs always aiming for pragmatism however desperate their plight.

One of the most symbolic scenes pictures a warrior shooting down a drone with a single sling shot: David meeting Goliath head-on, the outcome dictated by the power structure. Courage may not prevail in this uneven battle, but the time for story-telling is over, as one documentary filmmaker has to admit in his interview with Dwayne. How to Blow up a Pipeline is unique: for once this is a documentary that really lives up to its vital message. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 21 APRIL 2023

 

Semaine de la Critique (2023)

La Semaine de la Critique will present seven feature films in the competition for its 62nd edition which runs from 17 to 26 May 2023

TIGER STRIPES

Malay director Amanda Nell Eu’s first feature film, offers a new, witty, and extravagant take on teenage metamorphosis and rebellion. A surprising and delightful fantasy film that celebrates young women’s desire to let loose in a society that aims to firmly discipline them.

SOFIA

Sofia is an athlete who dreams of reaching the top, but her dream turns into a nightmare when she finds out she is pregnant. An unwanted pregnancy that she cannot legally terminate since abortion is still illegal in Brazil. The countdown has started, and Sofia’s mind is made up. With Levante, her first feature, Brazilian director Lillah Halla stands up to conservatism that is eating away at her country with a unifying, queer outlook. One for all, and all for Sofia.

SLEEP

There’s no dozing off when watching Sleep, Korean director Jason Yu’s first feature film. Bong Joon-Ho’s former assistant director signs a sensational film as he tells the story of a struggling young couple before and after their first child is born. A closed setting: three chapters, two protagonists, one crying baby, a barking dog, and a roaming ghost: the perfect ingredients for a horrific, devilishly effective comedy.

LE RAVISSEMENT

In her film Le ravissement, French director Iris Kaltenbäck skillfully tackles the issues of a very close, intimate friendship between two women, and delivers a riveting psychological thriller. A breathtaking first film with very fine, delicately crafted writing, and a stunning cast: Hafsia Herzi, Nina Meurisse, Alexis Manenti and Younes Boucif.

LOST COUNTRY

Serbian director Vladimir Perišić’s second feature film, is an intimate and political saga set in 1996 Belgrade during the students’ demonstrations against Milosevic’s regime. A teenager is torn between his own convictions and his love for his mother, a corrupt politician. A powerful film that overhauls the canons of classical drama.

INSHALLAH, A BOY

The very first film from Jordan to be presented at La Semaine de la Critique. Amjad Al Rasheed’s first film is the deeply moving portrait of Nawal – a care worker, a widow and mother of a young girl – who is fighting like hell for her independence, played by Palestinian actress Mouna Hawa. She imbues this radiant, determined warrior with the gravitas of the greatest female heroes in the history of cinema.

IL PLEUT DANS LA MAISON

A bittersweet summer tale, Il pleut dans la maison is Belgian director Paloma Sermon-Daï’s first fiction feature. Staying clear of pathos, she tells us the unadorned story of the relationship between siblings who try to stay together with their dignity intact as their home is flooded and their bank account emptied. Two wonderful characters, beautifully written and interpreted by the young Purdey and Makenzy Lombet.

NO LOVE LOST – Closing Film

To finish with a bang, La Semaine de la Critique will present No Love Lost Erwan Le Duc’s delectable second feature. A French tragicomedy with a quirky, poetic take on relationships between parents and children. Father and daughter – Nahuel Perez Biscayart and Céleste Brunnquell – are inseparable. An irresistible duo that will make you laugh at the drop of a hat.

La Semaine de la Critique will take place in Cannes between the 17th and 25th of May.

Directors’ Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival (2023)

Discover the 55th selection of Directors’ Fortnight

Find the complete programme here

Following the Cannes Film Festival, you can watch the 2023 Selection between June 7 and 18 in about 30 arthouse cinemas in France.

Here is this year’s selection:

VALE ABRAÃO (Val Abraham / Abraham’s Valley)

de Manoel de Oliveira

Séance spéciale

 

LE PROCÈS GOLDMAN (The Goldman Case)

Cédric Kahn

Closing Film

 

AGRA

Kanu Behl

 

L’AUTRE LAURENS (The Other Laurens)

Claude Schmitz

 

BÊN TRONG VỎ KÉN VÀNG (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell)

Thien An Pham

First Film

 

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY (Merle merle mûre)

Elene Naveriani

 

BLAZH (Grace / La Grâce)

Ilya Povolotsky

First film

 

CONANN

Bertrand Mandico

 

CREATURA

Elena Martín Gimeno

 

DÉSERTS

Faouzi Bensaïdi

 

IN FLAMES

de Zarrar Kahn

Premier long métrage

 

LÉGUA

Filipa Reis & João Miller Guerra

 

LE LIVRE DES SOLUTIONS (The Book of Solutions)

Michel Gondry

 

MAMBAR PIERRETTE

de Rosine Mbakam

 

RIDDLE OF FIRE (Conte de feu)

de Weston Razooli

First Film

 

THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED

de Joanna Arnow

First Film

 

THE SWEET EAST

de Sean Price Williams

 

UN PRINCE (A Prince)

de Pierre Creton

 

XIAO BAI CHUAN (A Song Sung Blue)

de Zihan Geng

Premier long métrage

 

WOO-RI-UI-HA-RU (In Our Day)

de Hong Sang-soo

Closing Film

 

QUINZAINE DES REALISATEURS | 17-27 May 2023

A Day at the Beach (1970)

Dir: Simon Hesera | Cast: Peter Sellers, Mark Burns, Beatie Edney, Fiona Lewis, Maurice Reeves | Comedy Drama 93′

This far less glamorous version of La Feu Follet remains the joker in the pack of the careers of both producer Roman Polanski (who wrote the script and cast two veterans of Dance of the Vampires, and Peter Sellers.

Shelved for over twenty years before it finally emerged, the film is set in an incredibly bleak out of season seaside resort and filmed in Denmark. It remains to this day the most mysterious title in Peter Sellers’ filmography.

Sellers’ role (listed in the end credits as played by someone called ‘A. Queen’) is confined to a malevolent cameo alongside regular foil Graham Stark as one of a sinister pair who preside over a gift shop. The lead is actually played by a young actor called Mark Burns as a crapulent boor who spends the entire film rubbing people up the wrong way, notably Bergman veteran Eva Dahlbeck as a cafe proprietress. A young Beatie Edney steals the film in her debut billed as ‘Beatrice’. @RichardChatten

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

 

 

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Dir: Ari Aster | Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Denis Menochet, Kylie Rogers, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone | US Thriller

America has always led the world into the future, and that future has now become a present day dystopia. Or so Ari Aster would have us believe in his third feature that plays out like a cinematic version of The Scream on replay.

Joaquin Phoenix is utterly compelling as the connective tissue holding the wreckage together. Beau is Afraid is at times tragic, unwatchable and hilarious in its depiction of a wounded soul caught in the car crash of modern life. 

Petty criminals, noisy neighbours, druggies, weirdos and psychopaths inhabit this thriller that scratches at the edges of horror in showing how truly ghastly the modern world has become, and those within it. At least through the eyes of Beau Wassermann (Phoenix) a long-suffering and likeable middle-aged man traumatised and suffocated from birth by his domineering mother, and living out a hellish and lonely existence in a squalid urban dive. This often feels like Aster’s most personal film to date, and despite glints of dark humour he takes his main character’s trauma seriously: a man whose earnest attempts to please his mother are simply misinterpreted by her unassuageable need for a different kind of filial love. 

Beau, on medication and totally reliant on his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), has planned to visit his mother Mona (LuPone) but misses his flight, incurring further maternal disapproval. When he finally gets his act together she has died in a tragic accident the enigmatic circumstances of which push Beau into emotional meltdown, unleashing an epic chain of bizarre misadventures that are both beautiful and brutal by turns. And the brief moments of relief inexorably lead to more heartache or pain.

Being Jewish, Mona’s funeral has to take place promptly, and Beau has to be there as her treasured only son. But getting there proves a herculean task fraught with setbacks and ambivalent people, amongst them Grace and Roger (Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane), who save Beau from a terrible accident only to cause him further turmoil, along with their nasty teenage daughter, and Denis Menochet in a sadly underwritten part as a psychotic war veteran. An episode involving Hayley Squires as a wood nymph feels utterly redundant. Throughout, the world-weary Beau is back-footed and endlessly apologetic, even when the fault lies elsewhere.

Although overlong – at three hours – Aster handles the tonal shifts of Beau’s tortuous mental journey with precision assisted by his production designer Fiona Crombie and DoP Pawel Pogozelski who captures the shifting emotional landscape from Beau’s shabby urban apartment to the rosy pink glow of his recovery bedroom chez Grace and Roger; the Frank Lloyd Wright style bosky backwater Beau finally calls home and the momentous finale. Beau is the epic hero of today: his hopes constantly dashed after a potentially positive breakthrough in Phoenix’s intense yet subtle study of bewildered vulnerability. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition (2023)

Dir: David Bickerstaff | UK Doc, 90′

David Bickerstaff has captured the market by successfully bringing the world’s most anticipated art exhibitions to the screen, and this latest doesn’t disappoint. Vermeer is a fabulous look at the largest Johannes Vermeer Exhibition in history that opened at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in Spring 2023. This effectively means that anyone anywhere can enjoy these treasures, or relive the occasion afterwards at home.

 

 

Vermeer brings 28 of the artist’s 35 known works together in all their clarity and mastery, both from the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis in the Hague, and showcasing the Dutchman’s artistry, his artistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as the creative process behind his paintings, and his talent for storytelling through his nuanced brushwork, his technique of using blurring and light to create subtle depth, capturing the artist’s voyeuristic gaze that often gives his subject matter an enigmatic feel. Curators enrich the film and offer enlightening commentary on his most storied paintings: Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Milkmaid The Little Street, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid and Woman Holding a Balance, and many others from the Dutch Golden Age. A cinematic outing to enjoy on the big screen and view again and again. MT

IN CINEMAS IN THE UK and France from 18 April 2023

My Everest (2023)

Dir.: Carl Woods; Documentary with Max Stainton-Parfitt, Candy Stainton-Parfitt, Martha Stainton, Oscar Stainton, Andrea Shipley; UK 2922, 86 min

There’s nothing extraordinary these days about trekking to Mount Everest’s base camp, everyone seems to be doing it. But Max Stainton-Parfitt is extraordinary. He undertook the endeavour – 5364 above sea level, by foot and on horseback, the first person ever to reach base camp suffering from cerebral palsy.

His valiant trek is the focus of this debut feature documentary from British director/DoP Carl Woods who combines interviews with Max’s mother Martha and his brother Oscar who reveal how little help the family got in supporting Max’s efforts.

Max is captured on his family’s home movies, a little boy who wanted to be a fireman when he grew up. In 1993 he was diagnosed and went for treatment in Hungary and Miami. After studying at Queen Marys in London, he became an investment banker in the City and is now a father, marrying his PA Candy in 2019.

Most of the feature is dedicated to the week long trek up the mountain in 2018, with Max (and Candy) twice at the point of giving up. Sherpas were very helpful although Rocky, his horse, did throw him off on one occasion, battling snow and ice and rickety bridges on the journey towards base camp where Max and Candy were whisked off by helicopter.

Max’s arrival is a real triumph given the tortuous climb in adverse weather conditions. Nothing could have prepared him for the ordeal given his physical limitations. In an interview afterwards Candy explains how the macho adventure was really a way for Max to prove himself to his City colleagues: “as a man who could be relied on in an emergency”.

My Everest doesn’t quite match up to expectations or Max’s indomitable prowess. Flashbacks are often clumsily inserted and too much time is spent on needless repetitions during the climb. Still, this a unique and worthwhile document of a struggle against the odds. AS

IN CINEMAS 27 APRIL 2023

A Love Story (2023)

Dir/Wri: Alexis Michelik | Cast: Juliette Delacroix, Marie-Camille Soyer, Pauline Bresson, Leontine d’Onceiu | France, Drama 88′

Alex Michelik takes no time in cracking on with this formulaic lesbian love story that gradually spools out as a less convincing version of Ghost, Summertime and The Spectacular Now. So you get three films for the price of one – albeit with more plotholes than London’s Finchley Road.

The same sex affair at its core is a nice idea and, as suggested, this coup de coeur catches fire in the early scenes of A Love Story leading us to believe that Michelik, – who also stars – has something else up his sleeve for the reminding sixty odd minutes of his sophomore feature that makes the female orgasm its recurring motif.

Within twenty minutes of meeting lesbian journalist Katia Markowitz (Delacroix) and Justine (Soyer) are enjoying carnal pleasures, even though the latter has been heterosexual so far in her life. The two arrange to see each other again and are soon bosom buddies discussing Justine’s burning desire to have child. Their whirlwind romance sees them ‘getting married’ in a outdoor social gathering that allows her brother William (Michelik), a successful author, to promote his recent book before the assembled crowd.

A Spanish fertility clinic offers the women two bites of the cherry from a sperm donor but it’s Justine who falls pregnant and soon comes all broody and temperamental. And that’s when the problems start and the orgasms – thankfully- stop. Justine packs her bags without explanation, cue – a flashback to all the happy times they’ve shared together – as Katia goes into emotional meltdown. Amid footage of street riots (totally unexplained) Katia is pictured giving birth to a girl called Jeanne (d’Oncieu) feeling justifiably disgruntled that it was Justine who wanted a child in the first place. 

Fast forward a decade or so and mother Katia finds out the cancer she suffered earlier (?) has come back with a vengeance leaving her with only weeks to live, and desperate for someone to look after the pre-teen Jeanne. Well the obvious choice is her brother William who has now become an alcoholic not capable of looking after himself let alone a child: In the intervening years, a car accident has left him a widower with a severe brain injury. 

Cut a long story short (although this is a fairly short film as features go nowadays)  Jeanne moves in with William – who has an advance to write another book – and becomes his mother figure. This coupling feels way more entertaining and real than the lesbian twosome, Jeanne now posing all the relevant questions we’ve been wondering about from the film’s beginning. Meanwhile, the ghost of William’s wife (?) is following them about everywhere, dancing to the strains of Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Every Time I Say Goodbye’. The most poignant scene sees William admitting to Jeanne she’s a far better writer than he is, having read her private diary, much to her consternation. She is then left to make a decision about whether she is taken into care or stays with her ‘adopted’ father who could die any moment from a subdural hematoma. 

At this point, the lesbians surface again on a motorway service station, Justine having agreed to take a week’s holiday to their beloved Mont St Michel. This time the relationship also feels far more authentic than the fake fairytale they were living before their break up (with the obligatory shot of her on the loo, just to make it all seem real), Justine confessing she was never a lesbian anyway, but to round off it all off, we have to endure another or her orgasms with Katia very much alive and kicking. MT

A LOVE STORY IS NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023)

Dir.: Hettie Macdonald; Cast: Jim Broadbent, Penelope Wilton, UK Drama, 108′.

Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton star in this sentimental tearjerker from first time film director Hettie MacDonald, 

Broadbent is Harold Fry, in his early sixties, living in a seaside backwater in Devon with his chipper wife Maureen (Wilton). The marriage has been blighted by the death of their only son David (Cave) whose drug addiction led to suicide, and they are no longer on speaking terms. Then out of the blue comes a letter from Queenie, a former colleague  and friend. She is signing off from a hospice in Berwick-on Tweed, suffering from terminal cancer.

A chance encounter with a woman at a petrol station – called simply ‘Garage Girl’ (Singh) sends Harold off on a walking trek to the Scottish border – inspired by her bid to keep her friend Queenie spiritually alive. Needless to say the story is made up, but Harold is already on his way, gathering with him a crowd of followers, when his story captures the imagination of the press, and a stray dog. Harold befriends one time drug addict Mick (Thiara) who is soon phased out due to his relapse. When Harold arrives at the hospice he gets cold feet, and it’s Maureen’s turn to support him.

Hettie MacDonald’s first stab at a feature film is influenced by her TV work (Dr Who), this lending an episodic nature to proceedings. Some of the scenes feel contrived, particularly those with the younger Harold and Maureen (Cullinale/Jackson Smith) playing perfect family, but mature Maureen’s encounters with neighbour Rex (Mydell), who has given up on live after the death of his wife, seem much more genuine in a dramatic arc often marred by false endings, and an overgenerous running time. DoP Kate McCullogh strives for meaningful images beyond the usual road-movie fare, but it all feels visually rather bland. 

The Pilgrimage wants to be about redemption and loss, and Penelope Wilton certainly captures these emotional nuances as a woman left alone in her grief – Harold even stays outside the crematorium chapel at his son’s funeral – Maureen taking her revenge by not giving him a message from Queenie. She had taken the sack for Harold after he partly destroyed their brewery workplace.  Wilton is the perfect foil for Broadbent’s “hang dog” character, he believes that a single deed could make up for his lifelong denial of emotion. Overall, the powerful acting helps to compensate for the sometimes unfocused direction. AS

NOW ON RELEASE from 28 April in UK Cinemas

A Thousand and One (2023)

Dir: AV Rockwell | Cast: Teyana Taylor, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross, William Catlett | US Drama 117′

AV Rockwell has a strong premise for her feature debut that chronicles ten years in the life of a struggling black family set against the burgeoning gentrification of Brooklyn during the 1990s. And it looks fabulous with its inspired aesthetic sense and an evocative soundtrack. Sadly A Thousand and One is slight, overlong and underwhelming despite a confident central performance from Teyana Taylor who plays Inez, a bitter and difficult underdog whose only desire is to forge a stable family.

We first meet 22-year-old hairdresser Inez at Riker’s Island detention centre before she struts out into the big wide world in search of Terry, a six-year old child she left behind. Unfolding in a series of brief episodes the film soon establishes her difficult circumstances: grinding poverty and homelessness, Inez not exactly ingratiating herself with the foster family who have looked after Terry in the intervening years. The two are soon out on the streets of Harlem, Inez keen to start out again alone, before settling down with Lucky (Catlett), who appears to be a lover from the past. And the tale continues in this enigmatic vein, leaving us to fill in the gaps in a tonally uneven moody melodrama that aspires to be more momentous than it actually is, despite its justifiable pretensions.

Inez remains the same character over the decade while young Terry develops, played by three different actors (Atedola at 6, Courtney at 14 and Cross at 17). He is the most nuanced character growing from a hurt little boy – the film’s most meaningful scene sees him left all alone to amuse himself for the day – into a  thoughtful and intelligent adolescent, and eventually a disillusioned teenager.

Catlett’s Lucky eventually finds some soul after a prickly start in his new family, although he never really bonds with Inez (apart from in sex scenes) and the three of them somehow remain disconnected despite their fraught journey together. Taylor holds the film together with her vehemence and indomitable emotional power although her performance sometimes feels contrived: a little less attitude and a touch more vulnerability would have been welcome to make her character more relatable.

Oddly enough, One Thousand and One is at its most resonant in picturing the changing backcloth of New York’s gradual urban generation seen through a series of shifting aerial views of the city, brilliantly captured by DoP Eric Yue, along with carefully chosen archive clips from various speeches given by mayors Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg amongst others. This gives the film the ballast and integrity lacking in the story of Inez and her family. A worthwhile story then, in need of more depth script wise. MT

IN CINEMAS IN APRIL 2023.

Strange Way of Life (2023) Cannes Film Festival

Pedro Almodóvar’s short, a gay Western, STRANGE WAY OF LIFE starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, will receive its World Premiere out of competition at the festival, followed by a theatrical release in the UK later this year.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE is Almodóvar’s second work in the English language, his first being THE HUMAN VOICE starring Tilda Swinton which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020. The film is produced by El Deseo and presented by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, with all characters costumed by the company.

A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship….
The strange way of life referred in the title alludes to the famous fado by Amalia Rodrigues, whose lyrics suggest that there is no stranger existence than the one that is lived by turning your back on your own desires.

Although he has never won the coveted Palme d’Or Writer/Director Pedro Almodóvar is one of Spain’s most celebrated filmmakers with numerous accolades to his name including an Academy Award®, four BAFTAs, numerous Goyas and over 100 further wins and nominations. His credits include WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, VOLVER, PAIN AND GLORY and PARALLEL MOTHERS.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | 17-27 May 2023

Free Money (2023)

Dir.: Lauren DeFilippo, Sam Soko; Documentary with Michael Faye, John Omondi, Isaac Nyamori, Mary Anyango Songa, Jael Rael Axhieng Songa, Larry Madowo; Kenya/USA 2022, 78 min.

Kenyan director Sam Soko (Softie) and her US counterpart Lauren DeFilippo (Red Heaven) have researched the impact of fast growing Non-Profit agency GiVE DIRECTLY (GD), founded by Michael Faye and three of his fellow students from Harvard and MIT.

GD has come up with a revolutionary idea to fight poverty in eleven countries, giving participants in the scheme $22 a month for twelve years. The pilot scheme will run until 2031.

Caroline Teti, who works for GD, is aware she does not represent the emissary from the First World, promising much and delivering nothing. Near the Kenyan village of Koogutu, where GD’s recipients of UBI (Universal Basic Income) live, there are houses without roofs, financed by Kenyans who were told they could sell them for a profit after purchase, when the real estate company had installed the roofs – something that never happened.  

The men of the village are particularly sceptical, they fear that their women will grow horns and leave them – part of a satanic cult which promises money but instead takes the souls of the recipients.

Larry Madowa, a journalist with the BBC, who grew up in the area, keeps an eye on the GD activities. He is sceptical – and so is the audience, when we find out that Google is one of the the main investors in GD. Anyone in the village who is over 18 will receive the money monthly via a smart-phone transfer, itself a novelty. The directors chose to follow two participants in the scheme, John Omondi (18) and Jael Rael Achieng Songa (16). Whilst John receives the 2280 Kenyan Sterling monthly payments, Jael is the victim of a bureaucratic bungle, and is left penniless. Meanwhile her girlfriends go to school and gain an education, which will set them free. John later encounters difficulties in Nairobi, where he wants to study, but the capital is an expensive place. The villagers runs a lottery, and one day Jael is the winner, and together with help of her family she can now also start school.

At a visit at the local call centre we can see the progress the young people have made thanks to technology, after the initial shock of having to use a mobile.

There is no easy answer here. No one knows what will happen when the scheme runs out in 2031. Yes, maybe the recipients of UBI serve as guinea pigs, but GD is trying to break the charity mould, and it’s well worth a try, in spite of early pitfalls. After all, in the First World the workforce was paid to stay home during the pandemic.

Four different DoPs follow the participants in this trial and error exercise. It seems that the improvements to their homes have alone made it all worthwhile. And on the local market, UBI recipients get preferential  treatment because the traders know they will not ask for credit. AS

FREE MONEY, in cinemas and on demand, on 21st April.

Suzume (2023)

Dir.: Makoto Shinkai, Anime with the voices of Nanoka Hara, Eri Fukastu, Hokuto Matsumura, Ann Yamane; Japan 2022, 122 min.

The turbulent history of Japan comes alive in this delicately drawn and magical adventure that will resonate with a generation of young people still traumatised by the Tohoko earthquake and Tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant disaster.

Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) is a clever 17-year-old orphan who lives with her aunt in Kyushu, on Japan’s southern Island, after losing her mother. On the way to school one day she meets Souta (Hokuto Matsumura) a mysterious young man with a special ability for ‘closing out’, by way of a door, an ancient demon called the Worm who can bring havoc on Earth. Together, they set out in search of the door, tramping through ruins in the countryside, and Suzume is the first to find it, accidentally unleashing the Worm that then morphs into a kitten called Daijin, and leads them on to surreal adventure across Japan during which Souta miraculously transforms into a shape-shifting stool – of the wooden variety (!) – causing hilarious scenes – with Suzume and Souta having to wait a long time, before Daijin decides to turn Souta back into his human form.

The animation is spectacular, a mixture of 2 and 3D hand drawn animation and the use of CGI, which in the case of the red super worm is rather overdone: the worm looks tame in comparison with the rest of the Anime. Loss and decay are the main subjects of Anime director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name). The past is a dangerous place to return to, particularly for Suzume, who is able to close doors to keep the beastly worm underground, while also being afraid of what she will find behind the door leading to the house she grew up in during the first few of her life. Two scenes in particular stand out, one takes place in an ancient bath house, desolated and abandoned, and another in an old-fashioned fairground which comes eerily to life.

Suzume is a potent mixture of melancholy and hilarious fun, as the girl gradually grows up during her adventures. Suzume has an impressive confrontational scene with her aunt, accusing the woman of only adopting her to avoid an adult relationship. At a later stage, Suzume takes back her accusations, but this is as a result of her falling for Souta, as her Tom-Boy identity gradually recedes. Overall, this is a mature Anime, with Shinkai using lots of kawaii cuteness, but also referentially quoting Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service with the talking cat in the shape of Daijin. A magic round-about-movie. AS

SUZUME IN UK and IRISH CINEMAS on 14 April 2023

Jeanne du Barry to open Cannes Film Festival 2023

Jeanne du Barry, directed by Maïwenn, and starring Johnny Depp, will open the 76th Festival de Cannes and will be screened in world premiere at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, on Tuesday 16th May.

French director Maïwenn directs and stars in her sixth feature Jeanne du Barry, playing the eponymous main character alongside Johnny Depp, Benjamin Lavernhe, Melvil Poupaud, Pierre Richard, Pascal Greggory and India Hair. Recounting the life, rise and fall of the king Louis XV‘s favourite, the film will be released in French cinemas at the same time as the official world premiere.

The historical drama follows Jeanne Vaubernier, a young working-class woman hungry for culture and pleasure, who uses her nouse and allure to slither into the corridors of power where she becomes a firm favourite with King Louis XV restoring his joie de vivre. Desperately smitten, and unaware of her status as a courtesan, the King moves her into his palace of Versailles, where her arrival scandalises the court.

Director, screenwriter, actress and producer, Maïwenn directed her first feature film, Pardonnez-moi in 2006. In 2011, she won the Jury Prize at the Festival de Cannes for her first selection in Competition for Polisse. Four years later, she was back with Mon Roi,  Emmanuelle Bercot winning the Best actress award.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 16 – 27 MAY 2023

 

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan (2023)

Dir: Martin Bourboulon | Wris: Matthieu Delaporte, Alexandre de La Patelliére | Cast: Francois Civil, Vincent Cassel, Louis Garrel, Vicki Krieps, Romain Duris, Pio Marmai, Eva Green, Lyna Khoudri | France, 121′

When it comes to swashbuckling the three musketeers are certainly the men for the job. And with a smile as broad and beaming as a silver cutlass, Francois Civil leads the glittering international cast in this spritely and splendidly mounted seventeenth century French epic based on the mid nineteenth century novels of Alexandre Dumas, whose own father served as a valued general under Napoleon. 

On a rain-soaked night in 1627 a lone rider arrives at a fortress in Paris. He is Charles D’Artagnan of Gascony and he hopes to join the court of King Louis XIII as a faithful musketeer alongside the trusty Athos (Vincent Cassel), Portos (Pio Marmai) and Aramis  (Roman Duris). Martin Bourboulon is a director well used to delivering on the big screen as we saw in Eiffel, and he doesn’t disappoint here in Part I of this historical action drama with its sparkling script and elegant costumes (Part II – Milady, follows later this year).

During this era of religious turbulence France has been enjoying a stable time under Louis XIII. But the storm clouds are gathering and the Protestants are a force to be reckoned with and ever close to the King of England with their stronghold of La Rochelle. More than ever, the King needs the protection of his household guard – a triumvirate force of three main musketeers with their fire power and chivalrous swordsmanship.

There’s plenty of intrigue and some magnificent fighting scenes to keep the most exacting cineastes entertained. Louis Garrel makes for a convincing King whose brother is soon to be married. But Cardinal Richelieu (Ruf) is sceptical about celebrating when the throne should be focusing on more serious internecine matters. Not to mention court intrigue involving the French Queen, Anne of Austria (Krieps) and her romantic liaison with the Duke of Buckingham (Fortune-Lloyd). The final act turns on a secret love token she offers the Duke, and her life will depend on getting it back. This race against time provides the film with its thrilling denouement and puts D’Artagnan on his mettle in the cliffhanger finale that sets us up for part two where Eva Green’s venomous Milady will sashay into action.

So nothing extraordinary about this latest Dumas drama – just another reliably enjoyable bodice-buster that never takes itself too seriously unfolding in soft candlelight and stirring sword-fighting scenes in the lush French countryside. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

 

 

The Conquest of Everest (1953)

Dir: George Lowe | UK Doc

Marking the 70th anniversary of the historic expedition, this dazzling new restoration of the classic British documentary tells the awe-inspiring story of the first successful attempt on the peak of Mount Everest. Narrated by Meredith Edwards (A Run For Your Money) and featuring the mountaineers Sir Edmund Hillary, Wilfred Noyce and Tenzing Norgay, the documentary details the history, preparation and description of the route as well as fascinating footage of previous attempts and the social context of the achievement.

It’s a good thing the expedition was a success or all the beautiful colour footage shot before the final assault on the summit would have gone to waste! Simply bringing all that unexposed stock along with them as they climbed up Everest (and then getting it back down again afterwards) must have been quite a logistical feat in its own right, although not on a scale of that achieved by the Captain J.B.L. Noel in the 1920’s; some of whose footage is included here.

The main title carries the credit ‘Print by Technicolor’, which means the makers thankfully didn’t actually lug a three-strip Technicolor camera up Mount Everest. Fortunately they wouldn’t have been short of light surrounded by snow at that altitude (although they were lucky Technicolor didn’t insist on them going back to redo the shot where a hair was visible in the gate).

Dramatic licence is occasionally apparent in cases such as an insert of an ice-pick going into snow, but the cameramen would have had to cut most of the footage in the camera since discarding footage in the editing room would seldom have been an option; the first take usually being the one they used. @RichardChatten

AVAILABLE ON BLURAY COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL on 20 May 2023

Leonor will Never Die (2023)

Dir.: Martika Ramirez Escobar; Cast: Sheila Francisco, Bong Cabreara, Rocky Satumbides,c Anthony Falcon, Rea Molina, Dido De La Paz; Philippines 2022, 101 min.

This tongue in cheek love letter to the TV films of the 1980s comes from first time Philippine writer/director Martika Ramirez Escobar. It follows one time filmmaker Leonor (Francisco) who hasn’t worked in the industry since her heyday in late twentieth century.

A well known figure in her neighbourhood Leonor lives with her son Rudy (Cabrera) who one day finds out from the ‘ghost’ of her other son Ronwaldo (Falcon) that a competition for new screenplays is due to be launched on national TV.  Keen to get back in the saddle, Leonor dusts down an old script entitled “The Return of the Kwago”. But the re-write is curtailed when a freak accident puts Leonor in a coma. Even then, the catatonic Leonor refuses to give up. Aided and abetted by various corrupt politicians like the local mayor (De La Paz), and the helpless Isabella (Molina), and yet another son – who lost his life in one of her previous endeavours, giving the piece a macabre twist – Leonor trail-blazes her return to glory.

Escobar runs riot with her curio, switching ratios in the style of the 1980s in a series of wacky episodes set in different time frames, DoP Carlos Mauricio working miracles with the complexity of it all. Leonor will Never Die may be not be for everyone, but will go down a treat for fans of bad taste. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 7 APRIL 2023

 

The Passionate Stranger (1957) Cinema Rediscovered

Dir: Muriel Box | Cast: Margaret Leighton, Ralph Richardson, Carlo Justino | UK Drama

The Passionate Stranger (1957) centres around happily married house-wife Judith Wynter (Margaret Leighton) who keeps the fact she is a best-selling author of steamy romance novels a closely guarded secret. As her husband Roger (Ralph Richardson), recovers from a serious illness, the couple’s new driver Carlo (Carlo Justini) discovers the manuscript of Judith’s latest novel and jumps to a rather unfortunate conclusion, making life in the Wynter household very complicated indeed!

Similar in conception – and, alas, execution – to Preston Sturges’ ‘Unfaithfully Yours’. I guess it was an early attempt by future ‘Carry On’ producer Peter Rogers at a saucy comedy, but what – or who? – exactly are we supposed to be laughing at?

The middle section in pretty fifties Eastmancolor – in which Margaret Leighton, inauspiciously reunited with ‘Holly and the Ivy’ patriarch Ralph Richardson, plays Chopin in Norman Hartnell – goes on for far too long and is too broadly played, and none of it is remotely as witty as it evidently thinks it is. While Humphrey Searle’s score sledgehammers home situations that cry out for a more tongue-in-cheek treatment.

The most remarkable transformation is Patricia Dainton’s from mouse to hussy (with painted red lips to complement her emerald green dress), and is probably the single most enjoyably daft component in the film. @RichardChatten

On CINEMA REDISCOVERED BRISTOL until 30 July 2023 | BLURAY & DIGITAL for the first time in August 2023 along with RATTLE OF A SIMPLE MAN (1964) and THE TRUTH ABOUT WOMEN (1957) directed by Muriel Box 

The Cairo Conspiracy (2022)

Dir.: Tarik Saleh; Cast: Tawfeek Barhom, Fares Fares, Mohammad Bakri, MakramKhoury, Mehdi Dehbi, Ramzi Choukair, Sherwan Haji; Sweden/Finland/France 2022, 126 min.

The Cairo Conspiracy is an ambitious thriller with strong affinities to John Le Carre’s novels, telling story of an innocent “Angel”, who falls prey to unholy machinations in the Al Azhar University in Cairo, the heart of Sunni Islam, in this increasingly damning but overlong portrait of corruption in the Egyptian capital.

Adam (Barhom) is a naïve fisherman whose life changes when he is selected to join the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo. Here he crosses paths with Zico (Dehbi), who delivers an enimatic message: “Your soul is pure, but every second in this place will corrupt it”. Zico should know, he is working for State Security agent Ibrahim (the reliable Fares Fares) and dies mysteriously before he can tell Adam more.

Adam then finds himself promoted as Zico’s successor in the grand conspiracy scheme, with the secret service trying to find an appropriate replacement when the Grand Iman dies. The most popular choice is “Blind” Sheikh Negm (Khoury), who is supports the Brotherhood, in the eyes of Ibrahim and his superior General Al Sakran (Bakri) a “terrorist”. Adam is then told to infiltrate the Jihadist cell, led by Solomon (Haji). But his bid to navigate the system could be tricky and precarious if he makes the wrong move. 

The placid setting of the mosque contrasts with the mayhem of the conspiracy. Fares is an ambivalent person: he seems to genuine, almost caring towards Adam. His superior General Al Sakran is made of sterner stuff: violence for him is simply a way of life. Adam is caught in the spider web of deceit as the plot closes in on him, well aware that running away will bring shame on his family.

Visually this is a rewarding experience, even the violent scenes are shot with a degree of poetic sensitivity. Apart from the length, the only point of criticism is Saleh’s failure to take sides: and this objectivity collides with the byzantine brutality engulfing the two sides of this power struggle.

The Swedish TV director has had a run of decent big screen features of late and this follow-up to the The Nile Hilton Incident and The Contractor won him Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival 2022. AS

IN PICTUREHOUSES FROM 14 APRIL 2023

 

Kindling (2023)

Dir.: Connor O’Hara; Cast: George Somner, Conrad Khan, Wilson Radjou Pujalte, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Rory J. Saper, Geoff Bell, Tara Fitzgerald; UK 2022, 94 min.

The first feature film of English writer/director Connor O’Hara is based on his short film Infinate, dealing with premature death. O’Hara tries to strike a balance between grief and optimism, but it is up to the audience to decide if he manages to avoid a rather sentimental tearjerker.

Sid (Somner) is about to die from testicular cancer, having been given two years to live, he has managed three, but this summer will be his last, and he invites his best friends to a special celebration of his leaving the planet: Diggs (Pujalte), Dribble (Khan), Plod (Saper) and Wolfie (Zajaz) to celebrate his leaving this planet.

Sid’s parents (Bell/Fitzgerald) are long-suffering, trying not to transfer their trauma on to their son. Sid then meets Lily (McKenna-Bruce), a girl of his own age who has had her own share of trauma and is unsure what to study at university – Sid makes her promise to chose English literature. The two have an ambivalent relationship, with Sid guided by his keen interest in Astrology which inspires him to ask each of his four friends to find tokens relating to Love, Home, Family, Friends and Location. They must all come up with a symbol for these objects, which will be burned at a bonfire at the end of the summer, with Sid hoping to be granted immortality.

It seems churlish to criticise such a worthwhile undertaking as this but Kindling really lacks the sufficient narrative ballast to keep us engaged for over 90 minutes in what largely amounts to a series of episodes with the main message buried in bickering and tantrums. All Sid’s friends want to make his passing a special occasion, but they are not always mature enough to find a way to express their emotions. It is no surprise that Geoff Bell and Tara Fitzgerald are outstanding as the parents, having had the opportunity to work through their loss and survivors’ guilt. In the end, Sid’s wish to be immortal may not be fulfilled, but he has made a lasting impression on his social circle.

DoP David Wright makes evocative use of the surrounding countryside to lighten the clouds of dread hanging over proceedings. Kindling is a labour of love, a way for the writer/director to work through his own experiences, and is admirable as such. AS

KINDLING IS IN UK CINEMAS AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS from 21 APRIL 2023

Grand Expectations (2023)

Dir: Sylvain Desclous | Cast: Rebecca Marder, Benjamin Levernhe, Emmanuelle Bercot, Marc Barbe | France, Drama 105′

Benjamin Lavernhe and Rebecca Murder star as hypocritical left-wing lawyers in this ambitious but flawed film that starts in a glorious modern villa in Corsica and winds up in a prison in Lyon. 

Madeleine (Marder) is on holiday with her lover Antoine at his father’s swanky beach villa near Porto Vecchio. One morning, driving along a small deserted road, their career prospects are dashed forever when they make a fatal decision with irreversible consequences.

High hopes of this turning into a sultry seaside thriller sink without trace in Sylvain Desclous’ follow-up to his 2016 feature debut Vendeur. What starts as a pithy psychological drama with an intelligent premise and a brief tension-fuelled police procedural, soon gets bogged down in a far less promising slice of social realism  weighed down by tedious political pretensions in the style of Ken Loach. 

Ultimately Grand Expectations doesn’t know whether it wants to be a thriller or a drama centring on workers’ rights. And it ends up failing on both counts. The characters of Antoine and Madeleine are badly thought out and totally un-likeable. And they’re implausible into the bargain, showing no real warmth or compassion in relation to their aims in life: No humanist individual would behave the way Madeleine or Benjamin do, so we really don’t care what happens to either of them. Bercot is cast in another hard-faced unsympathetic role – this time as a lawyer and union representative. Isabelle Huppert made a much more sympathetic job of it in her recent film Le Syndicaliste. Madeleine’s father (Barbe) is convincing as her estranged parent who walked out on the family and gets a chance to redeem himself, providing the vital link in the film’s denouement. 

The accident and its aftermath – the most fascinating part of the feature – takes a backseat for most of the film, Madeleine hardly giving it a second thought while focusing of her career prospects, and only thinking of her own glory while pretending to champion workers’ rights. The original plot-line is then shoed in again in the final act with an unfeasible outcome for all concerned. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

The Last Seagull (2023) CPH:DOX

Dir: Tonislav Hristov | Finland, Doc with Ivan | 79′

Writer director Tonislav Hristov offers more insight into his native Bulgaria with this melancholic look at last chances and dwindling communities seen through the eyes of an ageing ‘Seagull’, a man who makes a living from escorting female tourists.

Ever since 1979 Ivan has been charming the birds on Sunny Beach on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Now, at 58, his days as a low level lothario are numbered and he is looking in the last chance saloon for a way out.

Sunny Beach is not exactly the Côte d’Azur but it’s cheerful and family-orientated with a fabulous stretch of silky white sand. For a long time the resort has offered rich pickings for Ivan in the shape of wealthy female tourists from nearby Russia or Ukraine. But the tousled-haired simian-featured chain smoker is now growing tired of the sun and endlessly parading up and down plying his trade. 

Love is simply a business deal for Ivan, a way to finance the rest of his life. And since his divorce he claims ‘to feel nothing for women’, despite his need to please them. Back in the good old days, hanging out with a ‘wealthy’ Russian or Ukrainian earned him €50 a day including board and lodging. His last relationship, with a Ukrainian, lasted three years. Now Ivan is forced to make his way working in a car wash and doing odd jobs around the local farms. The future certainly looks grim as he cuddles a kitten and a puppy back in his ramshackle house in the small rural backwater of Dervent – a place he now claims to hate.

But this social malaise is not just about Ivan. Everyone in the community is suffering the effects of transmigration. And with the young moving to the cities, the local population has dwindled in recent years. The pandemic also signalled a sea change in fortunes for the elderly ‘Don Juan’, now a grandfather, he yearns to reconnect with family and his estranged son who lives with his wife and toddler in Ukraine. 

Hard times have also made wealthy women selective: more than just ‘looks and a lay’, they want a responsible man who can hold down a ‘proper’ job. One trump card up Ivan’s sleeve is his EU status as a Bulgarian: despite being poor, he can offer Ukrainian or Russian women a passport to Europe. And a small flat of 50 square metres can be bought in the region for a mere 20,000 euros. Marriage to Ivan will give her Carte Blanche to move around Europe and ‘to much nicer countries such as Germany’. And that’s worth its weight in gold with the recent war in Ukraine, and the increasingly fraught situation in Russia.

Filmed during the pandemic and making the best of its coastal and rural settings captured in all their glory by Hristov’s regular DoP Orlin Ruevski, who filmed The Good Postman and January, this is a good-looking documentary and all the better for its tight edit and concise running time. The Last Seagull also connects with the narratives of Ulrich Seidl’s 2012 outing: Paradise: Love and Laurent Cantet’s Vers Le Sud (2005) that reflect on marriages of convenience, increasingly popular in this day and age. 

SCREENED DURING CPH:DOX 2023

One Fine Morning (2022) Un Beau Matin

Dir.: Mia Hansen-Love; Cast: Lea Seydoux, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory, Camille Leban Martins, Nicola Garcia, Fejria Deliba, Sarah Lepricard, Pierre Meunier, Sarah La Picard; France 2022, 112 min.

French writer/director Mia Hansen-Love always tries to show the extraordinary in simple terms: and One Fine Morning is another story about love and loss that unfolds without sentimentality. There is poetry, but always of the melancholy kind and small details turn out to be the harbinger of change. Nothing comes easily to her main characters who feel real and relatable, and full of human flaws. To put it all into context, Hanson Love interweaves pithy insights  into her narrative as the large picture gradually emerges in the final act in this uplifting, profound and deeply affecting story of love in all its forms.

Sandra Kingsler (Seydoux) is a widow living with her young daughter Linn (Martins) in Paris where she is coming to terms with the slow demise of her father Georg, a former professor, who is suffering from a neuro-degenerative disease. Life is literally slipping away from him: “I wait for the thing to come and it doesn’t”. A care home is the only option, and Sandra and her sister, mother of two Elodie (Picard), and their divorced mother Francoise (Garcia) are searching for a suitable place.

In the middle of this family crisis, Sandra falls for a friend of her ex-husband. Clement (Poupaud) is a cosmo-chemist caught up in his own marriage and father of one. Finally, Sandra has enough of “being his mistress” and leaves Clement to make a decision. And as other characters join the story it grows ever more complex like a richly woven tapestry, each thread dependent on the other.

Going through her father’s diaries Sandra finds out that he wanted to write his autobiography, giving the film its title. There are certainly autobiographical passages from the director’s life, but they are part of a storyline explored the ongoing collision between Sandra’s attempts for happiness, and the reality. Her father’s illness sends her also back into her ambivalent childhood: even though she now idolises her father. In some ways, One Fine Morning is the reverse telling of the Hansen-Love’s earlier feature Good-Bye First Love in which the female central figure says goodbye to her past, having stepped into an identity more suitable for the rest of her life.

Sandra reflects on her past, her husband and a father who will soon will be memories. After all these years of emotional turbulence and physical abstinence she wants a passionate relationship, and she collides with Clement who does not want to spend all day in bed making love. As a translator/interpreter, she is well aware of the importance of words, and she wants to live life to the full, not content to take a back seat like her sister or mother. But Sandra is also as dependent on Clement’s return as her father is of outside help. One Fine Morning is all about hope after all – a story about the moments that make up a life. AS

IN CINEMAS IN UK & IRELAND FROM 14 APRIL | EXCLUSIVELY ON MUBI from 16 June 2023

Air (2023)

Dir.: Ben Affleck; Cast Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Viola Davis, Julius Tennon, Matthew Maher, Damien Young; USA 2023, 112 min.

Director Ben Affleck teams up again with Matt Damon – this time to sell shoes. But this is no ordinary footwear, but the titular basket ball trainers that would kick Michael Jordan and ‘Nike’ to the top of their respective games.

It pays off that Affleck never reveals the actor who plays MJ – just a shot of the back of his head. AIR works hard to make us root for ‘Nike’, the sports shoe company that ranks third after ‘Adidas’ and ‘Converse’ in the sneaker hall of fame, the former being the favourite to sign MJ to the most lucrative deal ever – despite his rookie status.

Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro whose brief is to save Nike’s basketball division when the founder and his boss, Phil Knight (Affleck) tries to pull the plug on the whole division. Vaccaro is no sportsman and hates physical exercise, but when it comes to negotiation he is in the premier league and, in the pre-internet days of 1984 personality mattered much more than today and scriptwriter Alex Convery reflects this in some showcase scenarios for Sonny, not least with David Falk (Messina), Jordan’s agent, the villain of the piece.

One of the highlights is Sonny’s encounter with MJs mother Deloris (Davis), the only woman in this male-only talk show. There are fine performance from Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser, one of the company’s leading execs, and Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, the designer behind the famous shoes. DoP Robert Richardson does a marvellous job in the confined environment of the sports arenas, and the film gets out and about to the Jordan’s home for some fresh air. William Goldenberg’s editing is brisk, reminiscent of Argo. But there is a drawback: it’s one thing seeing American hostages escaping from post-revolutionary Iran in Argo – but watching a major company trying to outwit their competitors is hard work. And anyone familiar with the story knows how it all pans out. The good old boys of ‘Nike’ made profit-sharing for athletes possible, so it became obligatory for colleges all over the country to share the gains they made on selling sweaters with their students. But ultimately, watching shoes being sold by people with six or seven digit salaries is hard work, particularly when visual power is in short supply. AS

IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK FROM 5 APRIL 2023

Come and See (1985)

Dir: Elem Klimov | Cast: Alexei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova | USSR War epic, 149′

Once described by J G Ballard as the greatest war movie ever made, this 1943-set World War II epic, from Soviet director Elem Klimov, is certainly the most devastating serving as a metaphor for the ongoing and needless destruction wreaked by one human being on another. In this case Nazi Germany is the aggressor invading Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union.

Both poetic and realist, Klimov’s chronicle sees a fresh-faced young peasant boy reduced to an emotional wreck after he unearths a rifle on the beach and prepares, gleefully, to join the Soviet resistance movement against the occupying troops. Flyora, played by Alexei Kravchenko, is just another example of a soldier who starts out with glorious intentions and ends up broken and disillusioned in what poet Wilfred Owen described as ‘the pity of war’.

Early scenes capture a rural idyll where Flyora is pictured mucking about with his friend and then returning home to his mother and sisters before being conscripted into the resistance effort. A luminous Tarkovskian interlude in a pine forest introduces him to love in the shape Glasha (Olga Miranova) but their brief paradise turns to inferno after a rocket bombardment from a Nazi war plane bombards the couple and the crane that befriends them, deafening Flyora in the process. The two return home to find their village has been routed and the family killed, but Flyora is unable to engage with the reality of the images before him, captured on the wide-screen and in static close-ups of the boy’s increasingly incredulous expression by Sally Potter’s regular DoP Aleksey Rodionov (who would go on the photograph Orlando, The Party and Yes).

The remainder of the film follows Flyora as he struggles to survive against the odds, and depicts some of the most horrifying – and saddening – scenes ever recorded where the German soldiers inflict terrible pain on innocent farming communities and their animals. By now the boy has lost his mind in the mayhem, and is then thrust into a surreal sequence intercut with original Hitler-related footage contextualising the episode into stark reality and picturing Flyora re-united with his rifle and shooting maniacally at the German troops’ photographic trophy of the Nazi leader seen abandoned in the mud. MT

628 Belorussian villages were burnt down during the Nazi invasion 1941-44.

ON BLU-RAY | AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

Raised up West Side (2023)

Dir.: Brett A. Schwartz; Documentary with Darius Jones,Liz Abunaw, Jahmal Cole USA 2022, 86 min.

Chicago is best known for its cultural heritage of Frank Lloyd Wright and striking skyline punctuated by modern architecture and the famous Lurie Garden at Millennium Park on Lake Michigan’s shoreline.

The predominantly Black western part of the Illinois capital is the focus of this new documentary from Emmy-nominated filmmaker Brett A Schwartz who follows a group of men – some of them interviewed – whose childhood friends have long left  and whose lives now fail to match up to the city’s glittering image of prosperity.

Daily shootings and killings are the norm, sometimes babies and small children are killed in the crossfire. Offenders end up in jail and upon release have no chance on the job market. Food plays a mayor role in this social malaise: an unhealthy lifestyle and cheap junk fare contribute to mass obesity in this place of deep-seated segregation. The demise started in the late 1960s with the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968. Mass riots were commonplace, not only in Chicago. Businesses moved out, estate agents kept upwardly mobile Black families out of the districts now reserved for Whites. Raised Up West Side is a chronicle that explores positive efforts to improve this sad state of affairs.

In an effort to address both food crisis and unemployment, the Farm of Ogden, a farmers’ market in the North Lawndale neighbourhood of the Westside now co-exists with “The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest Program”. This runs a thirteen week transitional jobs programme giving ex-offenders the chance to learn a trade and secure long-time employment. The figures might not be impressive but of 212 enrolled, 152 men finished the course, and 119 found full-time jobs.

A modern aquaponics-based indoor farm, which yields fresh produce, shares the facility. Local entrepreneur Liz Abunaw, one of the leaders of the co-op, feared the Covid lockdown would lead to crisis, but instead the turnover improved because fast-food outlets shut down so people had to start cooking for themselves. Students from the ‘My Block My Hood My City’ project offer tourists a tour through the ghetto. Founder Jahmal Cole (who plans to run for Congress) is proud of the recent developments: West Side has found a new way of fighting back.

Jahmal is writing a novel about the history of the district, and has now found a full time job in a gym in Washington DC. But perhaps the story of Darius Jones is most typical for the Westside: his mother was unable to keep him away from the East Garfield Park neighbourhood, where he joined his first gang at 13, owned the first gun at 15 and was convicted age 18 for aggravated car jacking. In the Maximum Security Facility of Cook County Jail, he joined a programme to learn farming skills and this allowed him to spend some time outside jail. After his public lawyer found discrepancies in the police reports leading to Darius’ conviction he was released after only two years. Darius joined the Windy City Harvest Corps group, with life giving him a second chance.

Despite some enlightening archive clips and the worthwhile nature of the story it tells, Raised Up West Side is often let down by a scattergun approach to editing, Schwartz sometimes loses the thread of his narrative, and we do too. AS

AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS FROM 28 MARCH 2023

 

The Brothers (1947)

Dir: David MacDonald | Uk Drama

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

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

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

The Master Gardener (2023)

Dir.: Paul Schrader; Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Joel Edgerton, Quintessa Swindell; USA 2022, 107 min.

Paul Schrader follows First Reformed with another lean film noir about redemption. Starring Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton The Master Gardener is as perfect a B-Movie as you can get, this one in the Southern Gothic tradition spiced up with a contemporary twist. Full of surprises and much soul-searching it centres on a rather eclectic menage-a-trois. Schrader is still the last men standing in a Hollywood renaissance that never really happened.

Rich, arrogant and spoilt, dowager Norma Haverhill (Weaver at her most acerbic) is on the wrong side of middle age, and rules her garden empire like a plantation owner before the Civil War. She is the Law, or better still, she makes and breaks it. Her “Boy Friday”, or more of a man servant, is Marvel Roth (Edgerton) the titular horticulturalist.

Schrader gives a running VoiceOver that tools through all the fine gardens in history. Norma is not very keen on under-achievers, she even refers to her dog as  “just a veranda dog”; not fit for blood sport. And we can well imagine Norma in her younger days, riding mercilessly to hounds. Roth panders to her obediently during the preparations for the forthcoming garden show (which may be the last, as Norma is not what she was), but when Norma invites him to bed, a ritual that clearly dates back along way, we are quietly taken aback to witness his florid tattoos particularly the swastikas.

Into this idyll of tranquility and natural beauty Norma then places a time-bomb, very well aware of its explosive powers: Maya, her nineteen-year old grand-niece will help Roth and his staff to create the perfect garden. Norma did not care much for Maya’s mother – or any other relatives, for that matter – but prides herself in doing a good deed just this once. Roth, who is no spring chicken himself, immediately falls for Maya who is also has a drug problem. Her boyfriend/pimp/dealer regularly beats her up, and faces the wrath of Roth. But there a consequences, and Roth must retaliate, revealing a tawdry past – all redeemed courtesy of Miss Norma. But now he must make a choice.

DoP Alexander Dynan, who worked with Schrader on First Reformed, conjures up a rather staid and sterile picture of the gardens, historic and contemporary, and may be this is intentional. The only time they really enchant is in a surreal sequence towards the end, But his images of a broken America caught between white supremists and the immigrant underbelly feel authentic. The dying gang lords are being replaced by small time drug dealers and their scene. Schrader again quails away from judgement or sentimentality: his style is laconic and the assault is always full frontal. Master Gardener is like one of the best pulp-novels: the great Jim Thompson would have been proud. AS

ON RELEASE FROM May 2023

On the Wandering Paths | Sur les Chemins Noirs (2023)

Dir/Wri: Denis Imbert | Jean Dujardin, Josephine Japy, Amy Duperey, Jonathan Zacai | France, Drama 95′ 

A famous writer embarks on an arduous trek through France after an accident puts his life into perspective, in this reflective fourth feature from Denis Imbert. 

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” very much comes to mind in Sur les Chemins Noirs. The journey is far and away the most significant and enjoyable element of this otherwise rather underwhelming affair that sees Jean Dujardin at his most sober and pensive as Pierre: a reformed and hedonistic alcoholic who nearly lost his life after falling from a balcony while under the influence. Based on a novel by Sylvain Tesson, the subject matter was obviously crying out to be filmed on the big screen and works best as a contemplative travelogue capturing the glorious rural scenery of France from the magnificent Mercantour National Park in the Alps Maritimes to Normandy’s Cherbourg Peninsula. Although various urban locations do feature. 

The tricky terrain – not to mention the fanatic cyclists and other hill walkers – make the going tough and laborious for Pierre, who has only just recovered from a leg injuries and a concussion that has left him with a brain injury and epilepsy. But he soldiers on north through France, Imbert helpfully marking out the significant places with inter-titles, just like in the old movies, but now sadly abandoned: There is Plomb de Cantal in the Avergne; Bourganeuf in Aquitaine, and the Loire river and its chateaux stretching out before us, and the white sandy Normandy beaches crowned by Mont Saint-Michel. Along the way, local farmers provide Pierre with cheese, wine and provisions, or a bed for the night, advising him on the pitfalls of the region: such us wolves, or fast flowing rivers. And these meetings and a series of flashbacks allow Imbert and his co-writer Diasteme to flesh out Pierre’s backstory: his previous life as a celebrated author in Paris, his book-signing that leads to a brief affair with a much younger Anna (Japy) – an episode that fails to carry any emotional weight. Pierre admits that his “new mistress is solitude”. Along the way Pierre also visits various friends and family members that are once again forgettable. 

The great outdoors very much eclipses the human element here, characters paling into insignificance compared with France’s glorious landscapes, rivers and mountain peaks. Crucially this is all about the healing powers of nature, our inherent solitude in the scheme of things, and one man’s triumph over adversity and pain. Pierre has now chosen a life of independence and quietly revels in the privation and of being alone after so much excess in his previous existence. DoP Magali Silvestre de Sacy really triumphs with her impressive camerawork, the light changing from the warmth of the south to the gentle washed out colours of the Loire in this pleasant and meditative watch. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

Motherland (2023) CPH:DOX Winner Dox Award

Dir.: Hanna Badziaka, Alexander Mihalkovich; Documentary with Swetlana Korzhych; Swe/Nor/Ukraine 2023, 94 min

Belarus has been taking the rap in the media recently for the harsh regime of its dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, judging by this documentary from Hanna Badziaka and Alexander Mihalkovich, this is not fake news.

The directors followed relatives and victims of “Dedovschina”, a brutal, often deadly initiation ritual imposed by the forces, a regime that was first practised in the army of the old Soviet Union, and is still prevalent in former republics of the former Russian empire.

Two young Belarussian men, Aleksandr (“Sasha”) and Nikita had reservations about joining up. Nikita, who spends his time with his Rave circle mates, had second thoughts about serving, and even mulled over the idea of emigration or opting out on medical grounds, by pretending to be a ‘nutcase’. But his father talks him into serving, believing it will make a man out of his son. Sasha, on the other hand, blindly joins up. To his detriment, we later find out, when his mother Svetlana puts flowers on his grave. Svetlana now spends her time up and down the country trying to find justice for Sasha, and connect with other people whose sons have suffered the same fate. She never accepted the official version of “suicide”, after workers in the morgue, where her son is resting, told her about his physical wounds: bruises on his back and neck.

Sasha was the victim of said “Dedovschina” – which is literally translated as ‘Grandfathers”: old men who pull rank in the army, holding sway over new recruits. But their status will change when today’s victims become tomorrow’s perpetrators, getting their own back for all pain they have suffered in their first year in the barracks. 

A voice-over reads imagined letters from a soldier (actually written by co-director Mihalkovich, edited by Hanna Badziaka), talking about his torture at the hands of the older men, whom he had to pay on a regular basis, into the bargain. The anonymous voice describes a life of hell. 

Meanwhile Nikita has been released from service and is heavily traumatised. A shadow of his former self he regrets not having fled the country. It is August 2020, and election time in Belarus, and Lukashenko is standing again, having seized power in 1994. Had he stayed in the army, Nikita would have been forced to open fire at his friends who have joined the popular resistance movement, in a bid to keep the dictator from being re-elected. But the police and the military (as well as Vladimir Putin) have a vested interest in making sure Lukashenko stays in power, and many demonstrators are killed in the protests. In one of the letters, the author states “that after being transferred to new barracks, out of the reach of the “Grandfathers”, I enjoy the pleasure of my new powers. It has gone under my skin”.

Nikita’s friends emigrated to the Ukraine after the election, but they went ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ when Russia invaded the nation. Svetlana continues to rage against the authorities but fights a losing battle. DoP Sirhiej Kanaplianik stays close to the action with a hand held camera, capturing brutal confrontations, particularly the bloody scenes when police and plain-clothes agents join the mass slaughter. AS

NOW AT CPH:DOX 2023 | DOX AWARD WINNER | ONE WORLD INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS competition.

Main image: A riot policeman is standing next to the House of Government in Minsk amid mass protests in 2020. Credit: Siarhiej Kanaplianik

 

   

Life After Death (2022) Vilnius Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Nerijus Milerius; Cast: Juozas Budraitis, Adomas Gavenonis, Dainius Gavenonis, Rasa Samuolite; Lithuania 2022, 71 min.

Lithuanian writer/director Nerijus Milerius reflects on how death – real and fictional  – affects three generations of a family of actors in this free-flowing second documentary. The important and trivial coalesce in a meandering potpourri of musings and rather impressive images of Vilnius under siege from Covid.

Adomas, a budding film director, records his elderly grandfather Juozas Budraitis coming to terms with the end of his life. Adomas wants to have a lasting memory of the old man who lives alone with his cat. His parents, actors Rasa and Dainius, talk at length about their own experiences of death on stage and in films. Rasa is not keen on playing characters whose relatives are dying, for fear this might tempt fate. But Dainius is more pragmatic: “Life converts into death”. Juozas is swift to point out the stark reality of his own demise: “only one person will leave: relatives and/or doctors are left behind”.

Adomas talks at length about the time he played the part of young director who got killed, an older filmmaker also suffered a brutal demise in the same film, and these deaths are played out in series of harrowing clips. Benas Alexandravicius, lead singer of the rebel rock band McLOUD, then makes an appearance during a rooftop performance overlooking Vilnius. Benas is proud of his revolutionary profile, but where he fits into the film is anyone’s guess.

An often rambling attempt at authenticity, most significant for its impressive images of the Lithuanian capital undergoing urban regeneration. Bulldozers make way for luxury apartment blocks in the city centre. An oddity which needed much more work to be a success. AS

VILNIUS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023

 

Houria (2022)

Dir: Mounia Meddour | Cast: Lyna Khoudri, Rachida Brakni, Nadia Kaci, Amira Hilda Douaouda | Drama, 104′

A talented dancer is forced to re-think her life in this vibrant second feature from Mounia Meddour who continues to explore the Algerian sisterhood and their creative struggle against male oppression.

Houria (Lyna Khoudri) always dreamed of being a ballet dancer. Her friends are all in the same predicament, striving to make a success of their lives. As a trained PE teacher, Houria throws herself into often painful practice sessions, coached by her mother Sabrina (Brakni), in the hope of being accepted into a professional troupe. But she is just one of several women in this passionate and sensuously crafted drama who are desperate for personal and professional fulfilment yet thwarted by Algeria’s male-dominated set-up and blighted by tragedy.

Her best friend Sonia (Amira Hilda Douaouda), also a gym teacher, has organised an illegal boat passage to Spain. Having saved the money to buy a car by betting on ram baiting fights – in scenes that are grossly overplayed and distressing but aim to convey a testosterone fuelled male environment – Houria is then attacked by a convicted criminal who remains at large, due to sloppy policing, and left with a broken ankle and post-traumatic mutism, her hopes of a dancing career dashed. Once again the sisterhood comes to the rescue, and these scenes are evocatively played by the film’s talented cast, and beautifully captured in Leo Lefevre’s spectacular close-up camerawork that focuses on faces and body language. During her rehabilitation Houria volunteers on a rehabilitation project with aurally and vocally challenged women and together they find common ground and a way forward.

Houria – a name meaning ‘freedom in Arabic – often feels like a series of spirited episodes in the lives of these unfortunate women who have triumphed against adversity and made their way forward creatively despite considerable sadness, pain and regret. There’s a great deal of passion here but not much of a dramatic arc until the final stages when all the plotlines eventually come together. Despite formal flaws this is heartfelt filmmaking. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | PREMIERED AT CAIRO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

Outsiders and Exiles: Jerzy Skolimowski | Bfi

OUTSIDERS AND EXILES: THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

In collaboration with the BFI and this year’s London-based Polish film festival Kinoteka will also present Outsiders and Exiles: The Films of Jerzy Skolimowski, a month-long retrospective screening at BFI Southbank. This is a rare opportunity to see the work of one of the world’s most remarkable filmmakers. Skolimowski’s latest sensation EO (2022), inspired by Bresson’s 1966 drama Au Hasard Balthazar, has garnered critical acclaim across the world since its premiere at Cannes, culminating with the film’s recent Academy Award nomination.

The season will include early Polish features like Identification Marks: None (1964) and Hands Up! (1967/1981), both of which will also be released on BFI Blu-ray on 24 April, British-made classics such as Deep End (1970) and The Shout (1978), and later career highlights including Essential Killing (2011) and 11 Minutes (2015). A number of the films in the season will also be available to watch online on BFI Player. MT

NOW AT BFI SOUTHBANK | LONDON 2023

 

Remember to Blink (2023) Vilnius Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Austeja Urbaite; Cast: Doville Kundrotaite, Anne Azoulay, Arthur Igual, Inesa Sionova, AgusAntarnacius; Lithuania 2023, 109 min.

Women have the upper hand in this provocative and harrowing study of jealousy, obsession and cultural division, a feature debut for Lithuanian writer/director Austeja Urbaite, screening at this year’s Vilnius International Film Festival. 

The glorious countryside of Northern France provides a bosky backdrop to turbulent family politics when French couple – Jacqueline (Azoulay) and Leon (Igual) – decide to adopt Lithuanian siblings Karolin (Sionova) and Rytis (Antarnacius). They have hired a Lithuanian nanny to help the children settle in after leaving the orphanage back home where they have clearly been traumatised, and Karolin given sleeping pills.

Medical student Gabrielle is easy-going and plays imaginative games with the children but Jacqueline is dominating and controlling, pushing for discipline. In an insensitive move she also changes the kids’ names to Caroline and Romain, in honour of the writer Romain Gary, who was of Lithuanian heritage. When they all get wet during playtime, their mother-to-be complains to Gabi “You are not a child any more!”. Leon, a painter and designer, takes the line of least resistance but secretly agrees with Gabi. His wife has a dark secret: she gave birth to a son, Sebastian, at the age of sixteen and the boy later left home never to be seen again.

Gabi re-plays the “Gorgon” sage with the children – obviously Jacqueline features as the titular villain. But the nanny is increasingly concerned for the kids’ welfare and gets in contact with their birthmother in Lithuania. One night Leon storms off after a big row  with his wife and Gabi decides to escape back home with her charges, having poisoned the family dog. 

Language and its use and misuse plays a central role in this psychological thriller: Gabi tries to keep the children’s motherland alive, but Jacqueline wants them   to integrate into the French way of life. Leon stays neutral but is a weak character compared with both women. What’s fascinating here is the director’s decision to portray her own gender as manipulative and machiavellian through the characters of Gabi, Jacqueline and Karolin in this mature and inspired debut. AS

VILNIUS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 16-26 MARCH 2023

 

Never Forget Tibet: the untold story of the Dalai Lama (2023)

Dir.: Jean-Paul Mertinez; Documentary with Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama, Har Mander Singh, Rani Singh, Nithin Coca, Leslie Dirusso, Dr Lobsang Sangay, Rinchen Khandro Choegyal narrated by Hugh Bonneville; UK 2022, 94 min.

This fulsome portrait of the 14th Dalai Lama, narrated by Hugh Bonneville, is anything but untold and brings nothing new to the table. And what’s more the editing is sloppy, jumping from one interviewee to the next in a scattergun approach that will nonetheless provide cinematic catnip for the luminary’s devoted followers.

The film opens with an introduction of sorts to the Dalai Lama (*1935), Leslie Dirusso. This includes a “Limited Edition of the Heinrich Harrar Collecton” of photos of the young Dalai Lama in Lhasa, shot in the late 1930, and developed decades later. The spiritual leader’s brother and sister-in-law talk about their admiration for the spiritual leader, and journalist Nithin Coca reiterates the regional threat from the current Chinese government inherent in their water dam policy of which has led to droughts in India, Thailand and Bangladesh. Dr. Lobsang Sangay, president of the Central Administration of Tibet, talk at length about China’s current discrimination towards the nation. To prevent Tibetans from emigrating to India, the Chinese government tries to control the population in a digital way, using drones and tracking devices.

Rinchen Khandro Choegyal, founding director of the Tibetan Nuns project, explains how those subjected to rape and torture in Chinese prisons have been offered a brighter future. Today women have the same access to education as men, and equal opportunities in the professions. Before women were restricted to cooking and cleaning.

The highlight is the meeting between His Holiness and Har Mander Singh, an Indian officer who helped to save the Dalai Lama’s life, guiding him in his 1959 escape from the Chinese soldiers who were guarding him. Singh led a small team, over snowy mountains and glaciers to South India. He died in 2020.

Singh’s daughter Rani, a journalist, is given the privilege of an one-to-one interview with the Dalai Lama who surprisingly admits to mulling over the idea of joining the Chinese Communist Party when he befriended chairman Mao. He was talked out of it by a friend, who told him to wait. In 1950, China invaded Tibet.

The Dalai Lama is today a near-mythical personality, an ‘influencer’ who focuses his attention on the younger generation encouraging them to fight for a more equal world, and save the planet from extinction. Compassion is his watch word. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 30 MARCH 2023

Fantastic Machine (2023) CPH:DOX

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

‘An image tells a thousand words’ 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCREENING AT CPH:DOX 2023

 

The Wayward Bus (1957)

Dir: Victor Vicas | US Drama 87’

Neo-realism comes to Hollywood in this remarkable onscreen teaming of fifties icons Joan Collins (as a tippling, money-hungry little drab with a husband inevitably named ‘Johnny’) and Jayne Mansfield as a blonde movie star travelling incognito proving that not every film they made was glossy Technicolor nonsense (the full title actually being ‘John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus’); the old guard being represented by Dan Dailey, Larry Keating and Will Wright.

Produced by Billy Wilder’s former partner Brackett and directed by continental import Victor Vicas, it vividly evokes in widescreen an era when cops rode in helicopters but roadside cafes were still equipped with candlestick phones and aspiring actors looked up to Robert Wagner and MarlonBrando.@RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Sage Homme (2023)

Dir: Jennifer Devoldere | Cast: Karin Viard, Melvin Boomer, Steve Tientcheu, Tracy Gotoas | France Drama 104′

French filmmaker Jennifer Devoldere makes a comeback after more than a decade  with this didactic rather uneven comedy drama that explores the world of childbirth through the eyes of young male midwife, played by Melvin Boomer in his feature debut.

After failing the entrance exam to become a doctor, Léopold (Boomer) is relegated to midwifery, rather a come-down from his perspective, and it shows. Clearly, delivering babies is a challenging profession for a young man who comes from a hyper male background of three younger brothers and a macho father, and gets a baptism of fire in a world dominated by women, and particularly his boss Nathalie, played by Karin Viard who carries the film from start to finish. From their first meeting, when Leo makes a fuss about wearing the obligatory pink overalls, Nathalie will knock him into shape by the sheer force of her experience and personality, and challenge his misconceptions about childbirth and what it takes to bring the next generation into the world – in graphic detail – these scenes providing the film with considerable emotional freight.

Boomer gives a decent first performance but his backstory, set in the council blocks of Nancy, feels completely eclipsed by that of Viard and her patients. And the other characters: his father (Tientcheu), brothers, and girlfriend (Gotoas) seem totally irrelevant to the far more gripping and meaningful hospital scenes, dominated by Nathalie doing her vital work, while Leopold looks on as the truculent trainee – although he does in the end redeem himself.  

Devoldere covers all the birth bases: the complicated cases, the tragic ones and, ultimately, the legal ones, which gives the film its final sting. We learn a lot about being midwife and why working in the professional can be so controversial, yet so totally reliant on people who care and are prepared to give it their all. People like Nathalie, with Viard managing to ooze sensuality while being up to her elbows in blood and gore. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale celebrates 70 years

2023 marks the seventieth anniversary of the publication by Jonathan Cape of the first of what became a long-running series of novels by Ian Fleming detailing the adventures of a latter-day Bulldog Drummond called James Bond. Fleming redefined spy fiction forever with his creation that would go on to spawn numerous film adaptions spanning six decades, from Terence Young’s Dr No (1962) to No Time to Die (2021) with another outing in the pipeline for 2025/26.

I actually this book over forty years ago. I remember silently groaning when it became apparent that the climax involved following a card game. It’s testament to Fleming’s that I actually found utterly engrossing.

This earlier adaptation explains the failure of Saltzman & Broccoli to make there own version. The rights instead fell into the hands of Charles Feldman who threw in everything but the kitchen sink to distract viewers from the fact of the absence of Sea Connery. The result (which had several directors, including John Huston, who also played ‘M”) who inevitably a shambles.

Quentin Tarantino frequently expressed a desire to get back to basics with a version set in period, but when it finally reached the screen in 2006 it marked the dawn of a new era with the emergence of Daniel Craig.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Dir.: Brandon Cronenberg; Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lesbert; Canada/Croatia/Hungary 2023, 117 min.

The new sub-genre “Eat the Rich” gets another addition with Brandon Cronenberg’s latest – an overblown potboiler that sees the filthy avoid a chance for redemption. Overlong, with a nearly two-hour running time, Infinity Pool oozes bodily fluids, and a proper sex-orgy – but alas, fails miserably when it comes to the plotting.

Suffering from longterm writers’ block, author James Foster (Skarsgard) takes his wife Em (Coleman), who happens to be the daughter of Foster’s publisher, on a luxury holiday to the impoverished fictional island of Latoka, where the wealthy live it up in a gated paradise. Em and James meet Gabi (Goth) and her husband Alban (Lesbert), the latter couching his vacuous personality in a shroud of enigma. In contrast Gabi is a blood-thirsty seductress who decides to torture the miserable James. On an expedition outside their gilded cage Gabi’s dangerous driving kills a local farmer. Unfortunately, the draconian ‘zero tolerance’ laws of Latoka make provision for the man’s relative to enforce – and enact – the death penalty.

But an inventive loophole allows for the Chief of the Police to line his pockets by offering to clone the perpetrators, allowing them to escape scot-free before the relatives get to exact their bloody revenge on their stand-ins. As such, James sees his “body double’ being slaughtered before his very eyes by the farmer’s son. From then on everything happens in overdrive, with Gabi and the rest of the cloned un-dead tormenting James. Voyeurism and the male gaze triumphs in the tame and disappointing plot resolution. James and Gabi are convincing, but the rest of the characters are predictable in a sensationalist and empty narrative which telegraphs every development taking away the suspense.

Half-way through, “Daddy Issues” are mentioned, possibly in reference to Brandon Cronenberg (43) being one of the “Nepo-Babies”, forced to fight for recognition in the shadow of an over-baring parent: in his case his father David.

DoP Karim Hussain, who worked on Possessor, tries hard to find an original angle on the aesthetics – not easy because Infinity Pool feels rather old hat despite a promising premise. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 24 MARCH 2023

Q Planes (1939)

Dir: Tim Whelan | Cast: Laurence Olivier, Valerie Hobson, Ralph Richardson, George Curzon | UK Drama

Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson make a dashing pair back in the days when Olivier was still cast as a handsome hunk.

Although the use of biplanes locates the action in the frivolous thirties (as exemplified by Olivier calling Valerie Hobson as “Miss Fleet Street of 1938”), the storyline about disappearing high-speed bombers looks ahead to the coming war in Europe.

Olivier is officially the star but Richardson has the showier part as a deceptively vague, bowler-hatred, brolly-wielding moustached secret agent – who insouciantly breaches the fourth wall at the film’s conclusion – cheerfully acknowledged by Patrick MacNee as the inspiration for John Steed. @RichardChatten

The Other Profile (2023) CHP:DOX 2023

Dir.: Armel Hostiou, Cremix Onana Genda Cristo; Documentary with Areml Hostiou, Cremix Onanna Cristo, Peter Olela, Sarah Ndele, David Kapay; France 2022, 82 min.

Ever wondered about those fake profiles on social media?. A revealing new documentary travels from France to the Republic of Congo to track one down.

French filmmaker Armel Hostiou one day made a startling discovery. A Facebook Profile with his name existed in Kinshasa. The Other Profile is a road movie about his search for his double. It is also an essay on the meaning of authenticity.

When Hostiou arrived in Kinshasa, the capital of the Republic of Congo, locals Sarah and Peter offered to ferry him round in the search for his enigmatic double. Many of their friends supported the endeavour, many of them Hackers. One of the leads, David Kapay, a set designer, claimed to know many young women who went for auditions as the filmmaker’s double, and were charged ten Dollars for the privilege of an appearance .

Needless to say, the ‘film projects’ never saw the light of day. To liven things up, everybody seems to have a pet dog in the circle Peter and Sarah frequented, one was called ‘Donald Trump’. After a meeting with a lawyer proved unsuccessful, Hostiou’s visit to a local ‘Maribou’ was also a failure, since Peter explained to him later, that the Shaman had a helper in the next room.

Finally, the three of them staged an audition of their own, trying to get the “casting director” David Kapay, to lure the elusive ‘doppelganger’ out of hiding. It soon turned out that many of the young women were desperate, and only too ready to stump up money they couldn’t afford – and even resort to the casting couch – to landing a part in a film which was supposed to be shot by a French director.

Finally, on the day of a heavy rainstorm, Hostiou made a breakthrough, but the results were surprising, and not at all what he expected. Hostiou had only been picked because of his youth “You are the star of tomorrow”. It seemed a right little racket leading Hostiou to the realisation this was just a small drop in an ocean of lies and deception.

The Other Profile is certainly not like any other feature documentary: filmmaking, or better, faithfulness in producing films, is the overriding theme. In this day and age of fake news and profiles, people are never what they seem to be. In the end Hostiou gives up his identity to co-direct the documentary with his other half. DoPs Armel Hostiou and Elie Mbansing stay close to the characters in this adventure about identity and belonging. AS

PREMIERING AT CPH:DOX 2023

Lynx Man (2023) CPH:DOX special mention Nordic:Dox award 2023

Dir: Juha Suonpaa | Doc, Finland 80′

Until fairly recently the wild lynx was in danger of extinction. This astonishing cinematic documentary follows Hannu (Hannibal) Rantala whose interest in the elusive animal came about as an accident, quite literally. A time of convalescence forced him to stay indoors and now on his farm in the West of Finland he discovers the healing properties of nature in an environment home to all kinds of wildlife – including the Eurasian lynx.

Finding a dead lynx by the side of the road, Hannu bonded with the graceful creature and came to the realisation that the lynx, who lived in the area during his childhood, had made a comeback.

Hanno cuts an eccentric figure, to say the least with his long beard and shoulder-length hair. In some ways he’s just an ordinary Finn: taking saunas, playing his accordion and looking at FaceBook. But when we see him walking around naked and crouching in the snow with just a hat on, we start to wonder if he is half-man half-beast. Roaming around with a lynx mask Hannu is actually lying in wait to capture the enigmatic lynx in an undercover operation to record footage on a specially concealed camera covered in feathers. Soon twenty three such devices are in place for the project: “it’s not about resembling the bird, but about movement and such” says Hannu, who also makes use of a mirror to assist the process – with some startling results. Pheasants and a moose are spooked out by their reflections as their peer unwittingly into to mirror. Eventually Hannu identifies two females, calling them ‘Spot’ and ‘Grumpy Girl’ and a male ‘Joseph’. 

Grumpy Girl eventually turns up, supple and lithe, the large feline has pointy ears, long powerful legs and hindquarters, a short tail dipped in black, spotted caramel-coloured fur with a white underbelly and eyes as big as headlights. Two cubs follow her, purring like cats. There are five cubs in total, protected from predators (foxes and wolves) by the father Joseph’s scent which he sprays liberally round their territory. But a skin disease, robbing the lynx of their fur, can also be life-threatening, sadly Joseph catches it, leaving him bare against the cold. Man is a predator too as we will discover in the final act of this enlightening eco-documentary that premiers at this year’s CPH:DOX, following on from Suonpaa’s 2013 outing Wolf Man.

Mixing black and white footage with colour Juha Suonpaa captures the enchanting early Spring landscapes of this remote part of the world, showing foxes, deer, moose and wild geese, among others, and finally the lynx whose enormous eyes are specially adapted to hunt at night.

In 2021 Hannibal and his friends launched a complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland. The precedent states that lynx population management in Finland does not meet the directive requirements and is therefore illegal.

SPECIAL MENTION – NORDIC:DOX AWARD  AT CPH:DOX | COPENHAGEN 2023

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2023

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival Presents 10 Award-Winning Films
in the London Edition, 16-26 March 2023

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, now in its 27th year in London, presents a line-up of 10 award-winning, international documentary films in partnership with Barbican Cinema, and generously supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

The festival programme, presented in person at the Barbican from 16-24 March, includes in-depth Q&As and panel discussions with filmmakers, film participants, activists and Human Rights Watch researchers following all screenings. The films will also be available to catch up digitally across the UK and Ireland on the festival website from 20-26 March. This year’s edition opens with the London premiere of Delikado:

DELIKADO directed by Karl Malakunus

Documentary focussing on three environmental defenders who are risking their lives to stop corporations and governments seeking to steal the increasingly valuable natural resources of their home, Palawan, an island in the Philippines. With its rich biodiversity and natural beauty, Palawan is one of Asia’s most visited tourist destinations, but for a small network of environmental crusaders, it is more akin to a battlefield. The battles fought by these climate activists are shared by allies worldwide – but the abusive regime of former President Rodrigo Duterte adds urgency to this deepening human rights crisis. The filmmaker and journalist Karl Malakunas, who has been based in Asia for two decades, will attend the festival.

THEATRE OF VIOLENCE  (UK Premiere)

Lukasz Konopa and Emily Langballe will attend the festival to present their closing film Theatre of Violence that raises complex questions about new forms of colonialism and definitions of justice in the landmark International Criminal Court trial of Daniel Ongwen. The former Ugandan child soldier, Ongwen was abducted as a child – as were an estimated more than 20,000 other children – by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Intimidated and indoctrinated, he quickly learned to kill or be killed. In the unfolding debate his defence lawyer, Krispus Ayena, grapples with questions of accountability when someone is both victim and perpetrator, and the underlying issue of what justice looks like when being conducted in an international court, far away from key cultural and historical context.

NO U-TURN (London Premiere)

In his debut documentary the celebrated filmmaker Ike Nnaebue takes viewers on a journey with fellow Nigerian citizens leaving their country, travelling north through Africa and beyond, in search of work and the opportunity to build a future in Europe, despite the known and unknown challenges lying ahead. As he retraces his own stalled journey, made over 20 years ago, this self-reflective travelogue is overlaid with a powerful poetic commentary and insight into the impact of a colonial past, to unpack the deep longing of an entire generation in search of opportunities.

CATEGORY: WOMAN (European Premiere)

Written and directed by a former Olympian, Phyllis Ellis, Woman focuses on four female athletes from the Global South who are targeted and forced out of competition by regulations imposed by World Athletes, stirring relentless debates on their “legitimacy” as athletes and as women. Using women’s naturally varying androgen levels to evaluate their performance advantages, the sporting institution creates new rules, declaring that certain female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies to compete in their sport. The film exposes an industry that puts women’s lives at risk, and raises issues of racism, sexism, and the right to determine another persons’ biological sex.

I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE  (London Premiere),

As a person with a disability navigating the world from a wheelchair, the filmmaker Reid Davenport is often either the subject of unwanted gaze — gawked at by strangers — or paradoxically left invisible, ignored, or dismissed by society. In I Didn’t See You There (London Premiere), Davenport sets out to make a film about how he sees the world without having to be seen himself, capturing indelible images informed by his disability. This is a personal, political, and unflinching account – offering a perspective and stylistic approach rarely seen in film. I Didn’t See You There will have two relaxed screenings at the festival, which are open to all audience members.

KOROMOUSSO, BIG SISTER (European Premiere)

With candour, humour and courage, a group of African-Canadian women challenge cultural taboos, and build a road to individual and collective healing in Koromousso, Big Sister (European Premiere). Working with co-director Jim Donovan, Habibata Ouarme combines her own experience of female genital mutilation (FGM) with personal accounts from some of her friends, to begin a journey of personal discovery, with discussions on the importance of female pleasure and the complexity of the female anatomy, while working to shed long-held feelings of shame and loneliness. While finding strength and joy in their own frank and intimate conversations together, Habibata and her friends continue to advocate for wider access to restorative surgery and facilitate community conversations in Canada and worldwide.

SEVEN WINTERS IN TEHRAN (UK Premiere)

Seven Winters in Tehran (UK Premiere), directed by Steffi Niederzoll, explores the case of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a young Iranian woman who became a symbol of resistance and women’s rights worldwide. In 2007, Reyhaneh, 19, is sentenced to death in Iran for the murder of a man who tried to rape her. Using secretly recorded videos provided by her family, their testimony, and the beautiful, lyrical letters she wrote from prison, voiced by Holy Spider actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Seven Winters in Tehran opens a window into the many ways women are oppressed and silenced in Iran, and the immense risks taken by those who defend and support them.

IF THE STREETS WERE ON FIRE (London Premiere)

If The Streets Were On Fire (London Premiere) introduces BikeStormz, a movement of young cyclists that attempts to offer a safe and welcoming space for youth in London. Starting as a protest against violent crime with the slogan “knives down, bikes up,” BikeStormz, founded by a social activist, Mac Ferrari-Guy, has grown into a movement and safe space for young people around London to freely express themselves. The filmmaker Alice Russell beautifully captures groups of young people as they glide through the city, doing wheelies, tricks, and acrobatics and cheering each other on as they travel through the postcode-neutral space of central London. Yet as they come together and find liberation through cycling, they are threatened with arrest and accused of anti-social behaviour.

SILENT LOVE (UK Premiere)

Marek Kozakiewicz’s Silent Love (UK Premiere) is a coming-of-age and a coming-out story about embracing new roles and redefining old ones. Aga, 35, is legally adopting her teenage brother, Milosz, after their mother’s death – a process that probes into her life choices. However, there’s something she can’t share in their conservative Polish village: her long-term relationship with her girlfriend, Maja. Aga has always hidden her relationship from friends and family, and must continue to hide it from the social workers for fear of losing her case for Milosz. Silent Love delicately captures this trio’s discreet struggle as they begin to live as a family, against the prejudices of an ultra-conservative and viscerally homophobic society.

WHEN SPRING CAME TO BUCHA (UK Premiere)

The impact of war on the day-to-day lives of citizens of a small town in Ukraine is profiled in When Spring Came to Bucha (UK Premiere), which poignantly captures how a small community continues with life amid trauma and loss, while war rages on close by. After a month of intense fighting, the Russian army withdrew, leaving the town destroyed in its wake. Yet in the midst of suffering, a young couple gets married, and life must go on. This heart-rending yet empowering documentary tells stories of loss, hope, and resistance, as the spring flowers of Bucha begin to bloom.

Details about the screenings and discussions can be found HERE

 

The Pilgrim (2022)

Dir.: Joshua Benson; Cast: Jeff Worden, Rachel Colwell, Julie Oliver-Touchstone, Rebeka Stein, Lou Llobell, Emerald Clarke; USA 2012, 96 min.

First time filmmaker Joshua Benson has adapted George Killock’s short story about a visit to the West of America which turns into a homecoming – of sorts. Will (Worden) has it made. Now a successful architect in London he loves his work and the glittering city buildings, but puts his subordinates down, and neglects his girlfriend Claire (Llobell).

Then comes a phone call from the American West – South Dakota border with Wyoming, to be precise – his sister Jeannie( Billy for short) informing him about the death of his estranged mother. Will jets immediately over the pond, only to be told by Billy that the funeral has already taken place. She has a task for him: to sprinkle their mother’s ashes on the mountains near the family home where their sister Kay (Oliver-Touchstone) still lives.

This is not a close family – for an unnamed reasons – so Will is reluctant to fill the requested task but does so in order to put the past behind him. What follows involves a series of minor disasters with people he meets on the way: A blonde All-American-Beauty and a hitch-hiker Alva (Colwell) who is building oil rigs with her brother, Will’s mood deteriorating rapidly until he finally leaves his car behind and continues his odyssey, travelling light with a back bag.

As an idea, the feature works beautifully, all Wenders and “Weltschmerz”. But in reality there are too many questions left unanswered: Will’s family has fallen out in a big way, but we never find out why. The Wild West which Will re-visits is just a fata-morgana, as is the London world of sky-scrapers, introduced with a heavy Beethoven score. Everything Will falls for is a product of his longing for the past. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. What gradually emerges is Will’s inability to be a team player: he has to have the leading role – no matter which country. His so-called feelings are just projections of something he will never really possess: he is a runner by nature. Worden leads an impressive cast and DoP’s Alex Grigora’s panoramic images of the West are equally beguiling. But Benson’s script is like a first draft, ideas held together by excellent production values. AS

THE PILGRIM is available to rent or own on North American digital HD internet and satellite platforms on March 14, 2023 through Freestyle Digital Media

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPwrXj8BBvI

The Blaze | En Plein Fer (2023)

Dir: Quentin Reynaud | Cast: Andre Dussollier, Alex Lutz | France Thriller, 85′

There have been a number of good films about the ecological disaster of wildfires in the past few years, perhaps the most memorable being Fire Will Come. Sadly, Quentin Reynaud’s feature debut feels rather underwhelming considering the dramatic potential of its subject and exciting plot elements: a forest fire that rages out of control through the Landes region in South Western France killing animals and terrifying the human population. And a father and son hoping for reconciliation.

On the plus side Quentin Reynaud uses the topical tragedy to reflect the troubled backstory of a grieving man (Alex Lutz) who is keen to reconnect with his father (the reliable Andre Dussollier). But unlike the fierce forest fire that gets The Blaze off to a tense and exhilarating start, powered forward by convincing CGI effects and a nerve-needling score, the film soon fizzles out in the glowing embers of enigma without a satisfying conclusion leaving us high and dry on the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. Reynaud had a great cast and some really strong plot elements to work with, he just needed to develop his script more. MT.

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE + BELGIUM

 

 

The Fox | Der Fuchs (2023)

Dir: Adrian Goiginger | Cast: Simon Morzé, Karl Markovics, Hana Geißendörfer, Marko Kerezovic, Joseph Stoisits, Pit Bukowski, Stanislaus Steinbichler, Adriane Gradzie | Austia, Drama 117′

A boy brings meaning to his life after a tragic childhood rejection in this enchanting Austrian wartime Heimatfilm that harks back to the cinema of Leni Riefenstahl, with its academy ratio and suberb visual allure.

The Fox is a sophomore feature for the Austrian director Adrian Goiginger who was inspired by the true story of his great-grandfather Franz Steitberger, who grew up in a farm on the Pinzgau mountains in Austria.

In the early 1930s rural life was still unmechanised and little Franz is forced to work hard in the farm until he is forcibly removed from his father, Karl Markovics in a cameo role, and taken away. The story then jumps forwards several years to 1937 when Franz (Morze) is conscripted into the army during the Second World War, when Austria became part of Nazi Germany during the Anschluss.

The harsh reality of war leaves the introverted young soldier traumatised but wandering in the woods one day he finds solace in the discovery of a baby fox separated from his family after the death of its mother. The two become inseparable, the fox travelling with Franz in his sidecar as a dispatch driver from Poland to France and towards the Eastern Front.

Despite its rather unsatisfactory plot resolution, this is a slim but beautifully told and deeply affecting wartime drama that once again emphasises how animals can often replace the human element offering comfort and emotional security in times of crisis. MT

Adrian Goiginger and lead actor Simon Morze will attend the screening and take part in a Q&A as part of watchAUT Austrian Film Festival that opens in London on 23 March 2023 

 

The Damned (1961)

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

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

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

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

The Fabelmans (2022)

Dir: Steven Spielberg | Cast: Michelle Williams, Gabriel LaBelle, Paul Dano | US Biopic Drama 151′

Steven Spielberg’s own family story unfolds in this delightfully tender look back at his childhood seen through the eyes of his fictional alter ego Sammy (played as an adolescent by Gabriel LaBelle).

The Fabelmans is also tribute to the wonder of cinema and the American Dream, the nostalgia for the days of our own childhood, and a rose-tinted reverie about a fractured family that feels convincing and (justifiably) sentimental rather than bitter. This is a story than envelopes you in its warmth and heartfelt conviction – you get a palpable sense of this pragmatic young storyteller who would eventually, through conviction and perseverance, become one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers.

There’s also a whimsical quality that makes The Fabelmans such a joy to watch through Janusz Kaminski’s softly-lensed visuals. And that’s largely because Spielberg has such emotional intelligence and pours it all into a brilliant script with his co-writer Tony Kushner. Casting-wise the film is also a triumph: Paul Dano and Gabriel LaBelle are undeniably watchable as a father and son who are worlds apart – Burt a scientist, Sammy an artist – but eventually come to understand one another, without violence or rancour. Michelle Williams is sublime as Mitzi, the blond, pixie-haired Jewish princess of a mother of four, who could have been a concert pianist but settled down as a traditional postwar matriach and feels frustrated and unfulfilled, but is still worshiped by her decent, loving husband (who won’t admit there is anything wrong) and accommodated by her giving son (who discretely unveils his mother’s treachery on the medium of cine-film). And this generosity of spirit and tolerance makes for a satisfying family story with a happy-ish ending.

The tale begins in one of those snowy Hollywood-style Christmases in 1952 where the Fabelmans are celebrating Chanukah in their expansive home in New Jersey – with candles rather than fairy lights and Santas. Burt, an outstanding computer engineer, and Mitzi, a homemaker, take Sammy to his first movie: Cecil B DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, which is shocking and transformative for the wide-eyed little Sammy (played by Mateo Zoryon). Burt’s brilliant career then takes them all to Arizona where there is plenty of scope for family fire-side barbecues and singing with Mitzi, the dynamo at the centre of it all, and where her subversive relationship with demon seed ‘Uncle’ Bennie (Rogen) strikes a subtle note of caution, although Burt’s mother Hadassah (Jeannie Berlin) has been hinting at this all along. And this episode is fleshed out when the family finally move to California.

For Sammy filming is his saving grace and a way of escape from all these traumas. It also, amusingly, comes it handy as a ‘babe magnet’ when Sammy falls foul of antisemitism in his California high school where he comes up trumps despite a variety of hateful stock characters. There is also an entertaining visit from Mitzi’s wayward Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) who offers Sammy valuable career advice:, “Art will tear your heart out.” MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN THE UK and France.

Damn the Defiant (1962)

Dir: Lewis Gilbert | cast: Dirk Bogarde, Alex Guinness, Anthony Quayle, Murray Melvin , Victor Madden | UK Drama

Following hard on the heels of his brave performance in ‘Victim’ Dirk Bogarde’s determination to trash his pretty boy image continued apace taking second billing to Alec Guinness in what the late David Shipman described as “another subtle study in nastiness” as a head card-carrying swine who personally takes part in press gangs, carries a rope and smirks with quiet satisfaction when watching floggings.

Scripted by Nigel Kneale and Edmund North, filmed in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor in Spain by Christopher Challis and commencing at Spithead in 1797 in the days when two dozen lashes denoted a soft captain and edited by Peter Hunt (soon to make his name on the James Bond franchise) with a cast that spans the generations from Walter Fitzgerald to James Bolam. @RichardChatten

 

Creed III (2023)

Dir.: Michael B. Jordan; Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors, Phylicia Rashad, Mila Davis-Kent; USA 2023, 116 min.

With Creed III nearly 50 years of Hollywood’s boxing history has been relegated to the back burner. What started in 1976 with Sylvester Stalone’s rollocking Rocky Bilbao is now in the hands of titular star and debut director Michael B. Jordan and veteran producer Irwin Winkler (Goodfellas, The Irishman). And it shows.

Avenging his father to become World Heavy Weight champion, Adonis Creed (Jordan) has settled down as a family man and boxing promoter residing in a super posh penthouse above the Hollywood Hills. His wife, the singer Bianca (Thompson), has given birth to baby daughter Amara (Davis Kent), super cute, but prone to violence in the Kindergarten. The past then rears its ugly head in the shape of Damian (Majors) who rocks up after 18 years behind bars to face his old school mate Adonis in the ring. The face off between the two egos is going to be interesting.

Creed III is pure melodrama with family relationships taking centre stage rather than the fighting, which is now reduced to an art form unfolding in a series of dazzling set pieces, rather than brutal set-tos. Creed III has been neutered, with Damian as the pantomime villain rather than a menacing hero. There is too much talk, and not really enough trousers, not to mention some really bad parenting, with Bianca letting Amara watch Dad fight in the ring.

The production values are on top form with DoP Kramar Morgenthau conjuring up some impressive fight scenes, panorama shots and stunning luxury apartments: but what ever happened to the raw Rocky of the ring?. Creed III is too slick for its own good, a triumph of consumer dreams. AS

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS FROM 3 March 2023

Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman (2023)

Dir: Ali Ray, Writer: Phil Grabsky | Biopic, 74′

Mary Cassatt is often described as the most misunderstood of all the Impressionist artists but her work, and particularly her print-making was groundbreaking in showing 19th women actively engaged in their lives rather than merely as passive or decorative figures. Her radical images showed them to be intellectual, feminine and real, which was a major shift in the way women generally appeared in art during the 19th century. Part of the Exhibition of Screen series this new documentary biopic is directed by Ali Ray (Frida Kahlo) and written by Phil Grabsky (Hopper). 

In 1844, Cassatt was born into a privileged and well-connected family in Allegheny  near Pittsburgh which was then one of the largest cities in America. Beginning her career in the early 1860s, she, like other women artists, were not allowed to work from nude models so she honed her figurative painting by copying from plaster-castes. After the American civil war ended, she went to Paris where she found a stimulating art scene and studied under Jean-Leon Jerome, visiting the Louvre each day to gain inspiration and socialise with other artists of the day.

In 1867 she headed to Northern France to join an art colony in the town of Ecouen. Here she painted The Mandolin Player 1868, her first work to be accepted in a Paris salon, later returning back home, during the Franco Prussian War. But success eluded her on the home front, and she came to the realisation that her future lay in Europe where she was later welcomed into an artistic community in Parma, and then to Spain in 1872 where she settled in Seville and came under the influence of Hispanic painters and local styles.

Back in Paris, the rebuilding after the war provided a boost of creative energy and  Cassatt met Edgar Degas who had seen her work at the Academy des Beaux Arts and invited her to exhibit with the more radical Impressionists, after some false starts with the Salon des Refusés.

By 1878 she was collaborating with Degas. And the arrival of her parents and her sister Lydia provided her with support for socialising freely and making new connections. It was during this time she began working as a printmaker – a process involving etchings transferred onto a coated copper plate. With this distinctive style, she made a name for herself in works like The Lamp, so by age of 42 she was ready to show independently.

Cassatt’s career eventually encompassed not only painting and print-making but using the sale of her work to support the Women’s Suffrage Campaign. And by her sixties she had also become invaluable as an art advisor encouraging her fellow Americans on how to purchase French Impressionist paintings and build collections. Her successful career came to a close in 1914.

The world’s most eminent Cassatt curators enlighten this story of social and cultural change; a time when women were fighting for their rights, with the language of art being completely re-written. Mary Cassatt and her modern women were at the heart of it all. Sadly there is no mention here the outstanding female Impressionist, her French colleague Berthe Morisot.

In UK cinemas to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8th 2023.

Between Revolutions (2023) Berlinale 2023

Dir.: Vlad Petri; Documentary with the voices of Ilianka Hanrnut, Victoria Stoiciu; Romania/Qatar/ Iran/Croatia 2023, 67 min.

Two women separated by political revolutions in Iran and Romania share their respective experiences of trauma through a semi-fictional series of letters in this fascinating documentary from Romanian director Vlad Petri.

Petri has plundered the Secret Police archives and pieced together images from TV and film documents to create a semi-fictional correspondence between the two women who studied Medicine together at Bucharest University during the 1970s,            

Zarah came originally from Tehran to Bucharest to study medicine and formed a close friendship with fellow student Maria, who grew up in Bucharest. Around the same time, revolution is breaking out in Iran, and Zarah, in her last year of studies, joins her father in the effort to bring down the Shah’s regime, but in her first letters after the return of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, express fear rather than joy. It appears that social progress has been perverted by a the clerics who seek instead to repress women, and make the hijab obligatory.

Zarah’s father’s organisation is shut down, and he vanishes without a trace, and she is told to stop looking for him. Over in Romania, Maria is told by her father, to stop writing to Zarah, and start a family. By now, the two women’s correspondence  becoming more poetic, Maria urging Zarah “We used to be one, let us be together again”. In Iran, the war with Iraq results in many deaths on both sides, Zarah complaining in her letters to Maria “ I have no voice in the matter of my 15-year old nephew going to war, because I am not a mother. If he is killed, we will be the ‘family of a martyr’”.

After Khomeini’s death in 1989, a new wave of repression breaks out, and Zarah’s flat is ransacked, her books and photo albums strewn all over the place. Maria, her graduation completed, has been transferred to a small village hospital where she feels trapped. A return to Bucharest seems impossible, and Zahar’s letters seem to dwindle. Maria has been finally granted a return to Bucharest, and she has acquiesced to her parent’s wishes and married Marius, a colleague from the hospital.

The Secret police are on her tail, in their long coats they look identical to those in Iran. Maria is active in the uprising against Ceausescu, but her husband stays at home. She continues her correspondence with Zarah, telling her all about the fall of the dictato which will have dire consequences, including widespread poverty from the devaluation of the currency: “We are supposed to be free now. But I know from you, that victories can be confiscated”. A year later, Marius has left the hospital and is selling contraband cigarettes and other goods from Turkey. Maria is desperate: “I wish we could start all over again. We are fading together”.

Vlad Petri has crafted a melancholic essay film about dashed hopes and stolen futures, that underlines the perils of fighting for change. In the end, Zarah’s fate is left open, with Maria fighting to keep their past and their friendship alive. Short, but utterly devastating in its harsh conclusions, Between Revolutions is a testament to lost lives and shattered dreams – with political and personal defeat going hand in hand. AS

BERLINALE 2023

 

The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo (2023)

Dir.: Fatmir Koci; Cast: Alex Seitaj, Donald Shebu, Enisa Hysa, Jorida Meta, Amos MujiZaharia, Xhona Karaj, Petrit Malaj, Samuel Vargu; Albania 2022, 119 min.

Fatmir Koci’s amusing drama takes place in Albania, at the height of the Cold War when Stalinist functionaries, banal but powerful, tried to stay in their jobs against a tide of permanent change. The film is based on Dritero Agollis’ 1973 satirical novel of the same name, adapted for the screen by co-writer Mike Downey. 

The Soviet bureaucrats’ incompetence is highlighted by the plight of aspiring author Demka (Shehu), who has given up his own writing to churn out speeches for his superiors in the Cultural Department. The main benefactor of Demka’s output is the Zylo (Seitaj), whose ‘follies de grandeur’ are bolstered by his other half Adila (Hysa), while his oldest son Diogenio (Vargu) is a “Wunderkind” composer, in reality, just a fraud like his father. Zylo and his wife are friends with the playwright Adam Adashi (Zaharia)) and his wife Cleopatra (Meta). Another character called Zenepja (Karaj) cannot deal with his bitterness about his own literary career manque – or his neglect of her – and orders him to quit his job.

Adashi’s play “The Storm is defeated” leads to a fall-out between Zylo and other members of his department: some are keen, others condemn the work, and Zylo is left trying to guess which side his boss Comrade Q (Malaj) will come down on. Meanwhile he complains that Demka is too slow in his speech writing – largely because the poor man is bogged down with Zylo’s endless re-writes. Adila is in love with her husband’s literary output, unaware that another man is actually penning them, namely Demka, who she flirts with at a reception for an old-fashioned Albanian folklore band.

Some scenes are particularly farcical: Zylo’s obsession with the idea of bringing Socialism to West Africa. He, Demka and Cleopatra visit the dark continent, but their meetings with government officials are non-events due to it being ‘harvest time’. During their trip Demka senses there is something going on between his boss and Cleopatra, and he is not far wrong. On another occasion, Zylo takes Demka on a visit to the countryside where he wants to impress the local leaders with his cultural plans, but he ends up getting drunk and frightening his guests with a revolver. But dark clouds are gathering over Zylo, who also happens to be a sleepwalker. 

DoP Marek Wesolowski showcases the protagonists in Ozu-style medium shots, and turns to black-and-white when describing Demka’s dreams of a better life. But despite Koci’s enthusiasm for the subject, there are just too many one-dimensional characters involved in a self-indulgent drama highlighted by its absurdist humour. AS

Pearl (2023)

Dir.: Ti West; Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew  Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell; USA/New Zeland/Canada 2022, 103 min.

Going into the cinema and expecting the worst excesses from slasher movies makes Pearl a satisfying surprise. This neo-classical noir is a sister feature for John M. Stahl’s Leave her to Heaven (1945) where the brilliant Gene Tierney played a twisted socialite with a fetish for killing. Director and co-writer Ti West (X) takes a leaf from Stahl with this refreshing new creation.

Pearl – whose aesthetic of garish candy colours also channels Stahl’s feature – sees the titular young woman (Goth, also the co-writer), living on a homestead in the American countryside with her parents. The First World War is on its way out and Pearl is expecting the return of her husband Howard (Sewell) in the big city. But her repressive German Mother (Wright) hates the idea of her daughter having any fun and envious because Pearl’s father (Sunderland) is an invalid: mute and wheelchair bound.

It soon emerges that Pearl has a penchant for killing their farm animals and feeding them to her pet alligator in the lake. The beast appears like a faithful dog on Pearl’s command while her real pet canine has already fallen victim to a compensatory killing spree. Out of frustration, Pearl has taken to humping a scarecrow and also fancies herself as a dancer, and when Mitsy (Jenkins-Purro), Howard’s sister, gets wind of a local dance competition, with the best selected to entertain the soldiers, Pearl is only to keen to join up, supremely confident she will prevail.

But first there is the uncomfortable matter of Pearl’s affair with the local projectionist (Corenswet), who promises to take her to Europe. When the visit is not forthcoming, she uses a pitchfork to drive her message of disappointment home in a fit of pique that knows no bounds involving a variety of vicious weapons and victims. After accidentally setting Mum on fire and smothering Daddy, the last person standing is Mitsy, who bears the brunt of Pearl’s anger after losing out on the dance competition. An axe comes in handy and finally Pearl can sit down to dinner. But hold your horses: Howard is on his way home.

The humour is deliciously deadpan There is even a moving scene near the end when Pearl is cuddling up to Mum, listening in her mind to an old German lullaby from back in the day.  Pearl combines originality and past values of the horror/noir genre with an antiheroine who gradually finds a place in our hearts with her relatable revenge campaign – after all, most of us are occasionally tempted to follow her example. The difference here is that Pearl has lost her inhibitor reflexes which prevent ordinary people from running amok. DoP Eliot Rockett ensures the grisly deeds are as understated as possible in this highly entertaining shocker. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE from 17th March 2023

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Dir: F. W. Murnau | Cast: George O’Brian, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston | US Silent, 87′

Lured to Hollywood by producer William Fox, German Expressionist F.W. Murnau created one of the silent cinema’s last and most luminous masterpieces. Having already made a name for himself on the continent, Sunrise – a tale of two country mice overwhelmed by the temptations of the city after the husband is seduced by a sophisticated urbanite – represented an auspicious Hollywood debut that promised much, but tragically produced little. The recipient at the very first Academy Awards, in 1928, of a special award as the “most unique and artistic production” of the year, Murnau failed to build on its great success and after two more ill-fated Hollywood silents the German director went to Tahiti to recharge his batteries on Tabu.

Posterity alas will never see what impact Murnau would have on the classic era of the thirties because he tragically died in a car accident at the shockingly early age of 42. Richard  Chatten

SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (1927) directed by F.W. Murnau. now screening courtesy of the BFI player subscription from 6 March 2023

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Simple Things | Les Choses Simples (2023)

Dir/Wri: Eric Besnard | Cast: Gregory Gadebois, Lambert Wilson, Marie Gillain | France, Drama 97′

Gregory Gadebois, Lambert Wilson and a frisky french bulldog are in fine comic form in this odd couple buddy movie. Simple Things is far from simple totally subverting expectations in a comedy drama that is actually quite subtle and complex. 

Set in the heady landscapes of the Auvergne Alps an evocative opening sequence reminds us how stressful modern life has become in the big city. And this is where the uber chic eco entrepreneur Vincent (Wilson) is heading when his sports breaks down on a lush mountain highway. Plump country bumpkin Pierre (Gadebois) just happens to riding by and offers him a offers him a lift on his motorcycle.

This being the rural life Pierre – not a man to be trifled with, or hurried – insists on cooking an delicious omelette and taking a siesta before the two finally set off for the big smoke, Vincent offering Pierre dinner for his kindness. But spying an angry yuppie complaining of Vincent’s late arrival Gadebois speeds off into the distance.  

In the thick of the boardroom it dawns on Vincent how fed up he is of the fast lane. But before he has time to reflect on his frayed mental state the meeting is in full swing, but he is clearly coming apart at the seams. Back at the ranch Pierre is feeding the chickens when Vincent reappears on the pretence of losing his Mont Blanc pen, but really to ask Pierre if he can stay awhile and the disdainful loner offers him a meagre straw mattress in his nearby rustic cabin. Next morning Wilson makes an offer Gad immediately – and angrily refuses – that of offering to finance his friends existence as part of an eco project.  Deeply insulted that anyone should try and patronise his modest way of life as if it were somehow quaint rather than real on every way, Pierre sends the smug ‘cool guy’ packing.

The subtle interplay between Wilson’s trendy entrepreneur and Pierre’s disdainful mountain hermit provides the film with its rich vein of humour but the romance between Pierre and his cousin’s widow Camille (Gillian) sounds a bum note in this otherwise engaging comedy drama. Bernard and his co-writer Anne Wermeligere cook up a clever script which ticks all the zeitgeisty boxes and there’s a terrific car chase and an evocative score too not to mention some eye-catching mountain scenery. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Creature (2023)

Dir.: Asif Kapadia; Ballet choegraphed by Aksam Khan with Jeffrey Cirio, Stina Quagebeur, Fabian Reimair, Erina Takahashi, Ken Saruhashi; UK 2022, 87 min.

Asif Kapadia has drastically shortened Aksam Khan’s titular ballet from 120 to 87 minutes. One should not forget, that the original Ballet reviews were not too positive, and one point often mentioned was the running time, seen as overly self-indulgent. Kapadia’s version is not only streamlined, but concentrates on the main themes of the production: existential loneliness and revenge.

Georg Büchner’s unfinished play “Woyzek” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” are the cornerstones of the ballet. With Khan having changed the repressive small town atmosphere of “Woyzek” to the arctic laboratory, Kapadia can stage the ballet more or less in one place: the scientists/soldiers’ wooden hut which later on partially collapses.

The Creature (Cirio) is very much in love with his wife Marie (Takahashi), but she is drawn to the loudmouth Drum Major (Reimair). Whilst the Creature tries to gain entrance into society, he exists merely to serve as a test object for the group of scientists/soldiers who are keen to find out how long their specimen can withstand the deadly hypothermia. At the same time  scientists and soldiers are seen as a compatible unit and that the female camp doctor (Quagebeur) is a comic copy of Dr. Mengele, whose horrific medical tests were responsible for many deaths at Auschwitz/Birkenau. On the middle level of the ruling hierarchy, the captain (Saruhashu), uses the Creature to provide for his daily comfort.

Repeated tape recordings of the conversation president Nixon had with the astronauts of the moon landing on 20.7.1969 play out through the film, Nixon calling them –  rather derogatively by their first names – Neill and Buzz. Andy Serkis lends his voice to some computer-voiced commentary, but neither of these elements particularly enhance the ballet feature.

DoP Daniel Landin keeps the light arctic dark, with the protagonists looking like shadows of themselves. Symbolically, and in line with his prototype status, the Creature is stripped of any form of warm clothing and treated like a wild animal, rather than a human. The minimalist wooden set is constructed like a fortress in the white arctic landscape, with the Creature enduring endless tests to measure his resistance to ice and snow. But his personal battle with the Major for the soul of Marie is even more inhumane, since he is not even granted the status of a combattant. The Major and The Doctor head up the oppressive regime, science and military might working hand in hand. This central theme connects the ballet with Shelley’s Frankenstein: the creature being led loose into a world bent on destroying him while his once proud creator stands by helpless.

Creature is a brutal and unforgiving ballet of sorrow and alienation, both physical and psychological. A true horror feature, set like a spartan Western film, with the main protagonist literally stripped of everything. AS

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY

A Happy Man | Un Homme heureux (2023)

Dir: Tristan Seguela | France, Comedy 97′

A mayor finds out his wife wants to be a man but is more concerned about re-election than his marriage in this perky outing from French director Tristan Seguela.

Sexual transitioning is a tricky subject to tackle and one that could easily be maudlin, misconstrued or even cringeworthy. But Seguela and his writers successfully pull it off, opting for a wafer-light, tongue-in-cheek treatment for this amusing contemporary comedy that treads gently through classic Chabrol country: a conventional Northern French town with its shuttered windows, family-run shops and bars where the locals tend to be conservative, and are not going to take kindly to an LGBTQ+ council. It’s hardly Paris.

Fabrice Lucchini is perfect for the role of Jean Leroy: first incredulous and then gently scandalised in an ‘oh la la’ way when his wife declares, over the pig’s trotters, that she feels like a man, and always has done throughout their 40-year marriage and three children, although, is still in love with him and, in deference,  agrees to transition after his election campaign.

Catherine Frot clearly relishes the role of Edith, now Eddy. Soon the hormones are kicking in, and she’s sporting an incipient beard and moustache, not to mention a tweed jacket and sensible shoes. She even tells the daily to stop calling her ‘Madame’, and enlists in support groups where she meets other transexuals..

Philippe Katerine provides an ironic foil for Lucchini’s mayor, a little bit suggestive, never judging him, and always ready to provide a sympathetic listening ear even when the going gets tough and Leroy goes into meltdown behind the scenes. And especially when he is caught on a traffic camera, his wife embracing him in full drag in a video that naturally goes viral threatening to destabilise his “Forward as Before” campaign trail on social media. Tristan Séguéla offers up a mature, entertaining and insightful comedy drama where the watchwords are understanding, kindness and tolerance, ensuring a happy – almost moving – ending. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Berserk (1967)

Dir: Jim O’Connolly | Cast: Joan Crawford, Diana Dors, Ty Hardin, Robert Hardy, Michael Gough | US Drama 97’

If you didn’t think that Joan Crawford could sink any lower than William Castle see what happened when he fell into the clammy embrace of Herman Cohen.

Crawford obviously wasn’t bothered about the quality of the script as long as she got the star treatment (the fabulous outfits she wears were probably the biggest part of the budget; I wonder if she was allowed to keep them?).

Crawford is a woman after Cohen’s own heart playing a queen bee who thinks the deaths are good for business lusts after Ty Hardin and still looks fabulous in tights, as do Diana Dors and Judy Geeson (we even get to see Dors wrestle Marianne Stone).

The ludicrous ending comes as no surprise to anyone who seen Crawford’s earlier film ‘Strait-Jacket. @RichardChatten

Marlowe (2022)

Dir: Neil Jordan | Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Colm Meaney, Daniela Melchior, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Seana Kerslake, Francois Arnaud, Ian Hart | Noir thriller, 95′

Liam Neeson stars as Marlowe in this often vicious noir thriller that transports us back to late 1930s Bay City, California with vague echoes of Polanski’s Chinatown, but there the similarity ends.

Raymond Chandler’s classic character Marlowe was most successfully evoked by the craggy-faced icon Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1974) but Neeson adds a certain warm soulfulness to the role as the private detective based on the book by John Banville.

In the capable hands of Neil Jordan’s direction Marlowe certainly looks decent and boasts a strong international cast and some witty dialogue but too many characters and subplots overload a story that loses its way in the complexity of it all. Essentially Marlowe boils down to a series of starry vignettes held together by a circuitous storyline, written for the screen by William Monahan. 

Philip Marlowe is looking into a missing persons ‘cold’ – or rather – tepid case involving a certain Hollywood film exec Nico Peterson (Arnaud) who has slipped away from his married lover’s embrace, a hard-edged blonde called Clare Cavendish (Kruger tries – and fails – to channel Dunaway) who is keen on Marlowe keeping her amused while she employs him to track down the much younger man who is normally between her sheets.

Neeson gets some good lines in the witty and often virtue-signalling dialogues: “Is your husband a homo”.? he asks Clare: “No he’s not remotely that interesting”. But there’s no gay twist here just an old-fashioned story of jealous women and men chasing the dollar. Fedora in place, Marlowe makes his rounds in the area and this brings in some car chase scenes and leads to an upmarket private establishment called the Corbeta club where louche lounge lizards and moneyed widows wile away the warm evenings in what is actually Barcelona rather than the US West Coast.

Here he comes across Clare’s mother, a charismatic blonde called Dorothy Quincannon (Lange oozes style unlike her spiteful daughter) who claims to have seen Peterson despite reports of him fetching up dead, the victim of a ‘hit and run’. But Hollywood studio head Floyd Hanson, played by Danny Huston (whose stock in trade nowadays is playing debonair gentlemen of questionable intent) is keen to quash the rumour, and will go to violent lengths to keep Peterson’s disappearance a mystery. Huston is really effective as the suave but saturnine film exec, his father John was even more memorable in Chinatown. 

Other characters woven into the convoluted narrative add padding but feel entirely irrelevant. There is Alan Cummings’ mean and seedy nightclub owner who has dealings in Mexico, and police detectives Colm Meaney and Ian Hart. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje adds ballast as a uniformed chauffeur who gives Marlowe back-up when he needs it. Marlowe looks authentic with its swaying palm trees, sleek automobiles and elegant costumes but somehow never grips or moves us despite being enjoyable while it lasts. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | US and other territories.

 

High Noon (1952)

Dir: Fred Zimmerman | US Western

Although it received widespread acclaim and four Academy Awards John Wayne was so affronted by the attack on American values this film constituted he made ‘Rio Bravo’ with Howard Hawks to rebut it.

The film has been cited by those on both the left and the right to support their own specific political agendas (the film itself has it’s own internal contradictions embodied in the fact that the writer was blacklisted and that it stars Gary Cooper – a very friendly witness).

A once in a lifetime supporting cast ranges from Lon Chaney Jr. To Thomas Mitchell; while the presence of Lee Van Cleef bridges the gap between the classic Hollywood western and Sergio Leone. @RichardChatten

Last Night of Amore (2023) Berlinale | Special Gala 2023

Dir: Andrea Di Stefano | Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Katia Mironova, Linda Caridi | Italy, Crime Thriller 124′

Italian ‘man of the moment’ Pierfrancesco Favino stars alongside his Nostalgia sidekick Francesco Di Leva in this ‘al dente’ heist thriller with a Chinese twist from talented writer/director Andrea di Stefano (The Informant).

A magnificent nighttime opening sequence transports us over the rooftops of Milan from the Duomo and beyond finally zooming down on a soirée in full swing through the windows of an apartment. A little boy looks down on a man in the street below. Yes, it’s Favino as super clean detective Franco Amore on his way home from a jog to meet another colleague Cosimo (Gerardi) at a surprise party in celebration retirement the following day. The evening has been organised by his suave and savvy stiletto-heeled wife, Viviana (Caridi) who has hair as glossy as a freshly cracked chestnut and a décolletage to match in a crime thriller that is gripping and emotionally intelligent.

Di Stefano goes to great lengths to establish Franco’s probity as a policeman but also shows how important Viviana is in bolstering his career, underlining the strength of their relationship and their complicity. Crucially, Viviana feels responsible for limiting Franco’s career progression due to her links with the mob via her distant relative Cosimo (Gerardi).

After making a brief appearance at the gathering to enforce his soulful and squeaky clean image, Last Night then gets down to business when Franco is called away  by his boss Sarno to discover his best friend and longtime colleague Dino (Di Leva) has been shot dead on the highway while moonlighting ‘off duty’ on a diamond heist. The action then flashes back ten days to show how Franco had saved the life of a Chinese Mafia boss Mr Zhang whose son-in-law is working behind the scenes to undermine him in a diamond deal.

Things have certainly moved on from the days of Italian Mafia and male dominance in Italian detective thrillers, and thoughts of Franco’s imminent retirement are soon on the back burner when Zhang’s son-in-law presents the honest cop with a final gig before retiring, and a financial boost to his pension he could have only dreamed on, if he agrees to drive an accomplice Fei Fei and the precious booty of African diamonds to a given destination in the capital. 

Franco gets Dino (Di Leva) on board and they set off with Fei Fei and her boyfriend along Milan’s Carugate freeway but the vehicle gets a puncture. Fei Fei refuses to let Franco stop, but an officious policewoman pulls them over and in the shootout that follows Dino, the Chinese couple and the policewoman take the bullets. Suffering an existential crisis, Franco then stages a crime scene to cover his tracks, throwing the jewels in the river. He then calls Viviana to the crime scene for backup, refusing to fess up on his moonlighting activities.  At this point, it certainly looks like his retirement plans – and his marriage – are over. But all is not lost. Viviana is not a just pretty face, she’s a woman with an eye to the end game, and considerable perseverance, who is willing to get her hands dirty – quite literally – and will come up trumps in this inventive Robin Hood style thriller’s tense finale. Shot with brilliant bravura by DoP Guido Michelotti Last Night of Amore is a classic thriller of lost souls that feels entirely contemporary in its scripting, breathtaking yet relevant and emotionally engaging. MT

BERLINALE SPECIAL GALA | BERLINALE 2023

God’s Creatures (2023)

Dir.: Saela Davis, Anna Rose Holmer; Cast: Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, Aisling Franciosi, Declan Conlon, Toni O’Rourke, Lalor Roddy, O’Dwyer); USA/UK/ROI, 100 min.

An ambitious murder story unfolds in the style of a fishy Greek tragedy in this Ireland-set thriller from Brooklyn-based filmmakers Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer.

In a dour and windswept fishing village a mother called Mary (O’Dwyer) is crying over the body of her drowned son, while another, Aileen O’Hara (Watson) is celebrating the return from Australia of her own offspring, Bryan (the ubiquitous Paul Mescal). Aileen’s husband Con (Conlon) and daughter Erin (O’Rourke) are less keen to see Bryan who was a tear-away in his youth. Grandfather Pat (Roddy), who spends his days napping, gets on best with Bryan, the two singing old seafarer songs.

Bryan has come back in the hope of reviving his father’s defunct oyster farm, but that’s not his only mission in life. With an eye for the girls he sees every female in the village as a potential paramour but soon comes a cropper with a less pescatarian catch in the shape of Sarah (Franciosi), whose delicate features belie a stern personality when challenged. But Bryan’s ‘way with woman’ fails to make the oysters thrive and soon the plant has to stop working full time due to fungal contamination. Meanwhile Emily Watson, as mesmerising as ever as Aisleen, has more fish to fry that normal grafting in a fish processing plan and dealing with her son’s slimy reputation. She will soon be forced her to make a decision that will destroy everything she has worked for. As that’s not all, the local fishermen soon start complaining about missing catches.

The scope of the production is very much like a TV play, with action scenes covering up for the sparse emotional content: there is no slow dramatic build up, just sudden outbursts of violence, and the motivations are only too obvious. Most members of the O’Hara clan seem rather one-dimensional making this a rather predictable story held together by solid performances, Mescal playing against his usual cuddly casting in Normal People and Aftersun. DoP Chayse Irvin does a great job with his panorama shots of this coastal backwater, and his images in the food procession plant show the terrible working conditions in this seething study of mother love gone wrong. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS FROM 31 MARCH 2023

 

Cidade Rabat (2023)

Dir: Susana Nobre | Raquel Castro, Paula Barcia, Laura Afonso | Drama 101

Portuguese director Susana Nobre won the prestigious La Femis Scholars’ Award with her short film Provas, Exorcismos. She is back in the Berlinale with Cidade Ribat a follow-up to her unusual feature No Táxi do Jack, a part-road movie part-ethnological portrait of small-town rural Portugal.

Grief and the unsuspecting consequence of mourning are the focus of this laconic drama that centres on 40 year old Helena (Castro), a typical 21st century ‘everywoman’ who seems to take life in her stride, juggling a lover, an ex-husband, a daughter, and her elderly mother – who we meet briefly in an early vignette – and whose death is viewed as just another daily task to be dealt with: we watch her choosing a casket with her sister. Yet, despite her obvious sadness the death provides an unexpected relief for Helena who has been so weighed down with her responsibilities and can now finally let her hair down, and she does.

With its limpid colours and artful compositions Cidade Ribat is quotidian yet thematically rich as a study of just how much 21st century women have to deal with and accomplish in their seemingly mundane everyday lives. Cidade Ribat is testament to how the world has moved on for women since the days of Jeanne Dealmann, yet this liberation and freedom has brought with it infinite complications. MT

IN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS | BERLINALE 2023 | FORUM

 

After the Fox (1966) Tribute to Burt Bacharach

Dir: Vittorio De Sica | Cast: Peter Sellers, Victor Mature, Britt Ekland, Martin Balsam | Comedy Drama

It’s not every day you see a film scripted by Neil Simon and directed by Vittorio De Sica, and this certainly will never be regarded as a highlight in any of the participants’ careers (with the possible exception of Victor Mature).

De Sica himself contributes an amusing cameo as himself (and probably had fun pillaring the critic who has to be bodily carried out of court) while Peter Sellers adopted the accent and mannerisms of the late Mario Zampi for the part of the bogus director claiming to be making a film called ‘The Gold of Cairo’.

Akim Tamiroff in a fez as usual makes Sellers look like a follower of The Method, while poor Martin Balsam looks as if he wandered off a different set. Once heard Burt Bacharach’s title song is never forgotten. @RichardChatten

La Montagne (2022)

Dir: Thomas Salvador | Cast: Thomas Salvador, Louise Bourgoin, Martine Chevallier, Laurent Poitrenaux | France, 113′

Not since Julian Polsler’s visionary Austrian drama Der Wand (2012) has there been such an imaginative eco-thriller, set this time in the French Alps. La Montagne successfully blends mountaineering and sci-fi into a lowkey love story that explores the mysterious kinetic qualities of the Alps.

Expect to see some really spectacular special effects along with superior widescreen panoramas of the mountains in the early Spring thaw. But also a sense of danger that slowly builds when the introspective main character Pierre – played by the director himself – is seen walking across a glacier in crampons and later enduring ferocious winds in his small bivouac pitched on the ascent to the summit of the Aiguille du Midi near Chamonix Mont Blanc.

Salvador, who won the SACD award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for this enigmatic sophomore feature, adopts a docudrama style with some impressive Alpine set pieces, and adds authenticity to this intimate story with some serious technical detail during Pierre’s meeting with his climbing pal Marc (Poitrenaux) that sees them take on a complex bit of rock climbing and offers impressive views of the peaks as well as emotionally charged moments when Pierre slips on the ice. 

In a mountainside restaurant Pierre then strikes up a conversation with Lea (Bourgoin) on the pretence of asking her to pop a card in the post. This leads to a meeting with his family at the base of Chamonix where he argues with his brother who is not happy about Pierre’s laissez-faire attitude to keeping in contact with the rest of them.

Pierre crosses paths with Lea again and a romantic frisson develops when she offers a handy tip on how to tie non-slip laces on his boots. Smoke from a distant landslide then grabs Pierre’s attention as the tone changes gear with a more sinister undertow as Pierre goes to investigate and discovers a mysterious light glowing out of the rock-face, the luminosity intensifying as night gradually falls on the hostile terrain.

On closer examination Pierre discovers what appears to be a sparkling globular mass that travels around the rock-face like the glowing embers of volcano magma. But before Pierre can investigate further his attempts are thwarted by an unexpected turn of events in this intriguing mountain adventure that splices the surreal with a serendipitous story of modern love. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Mal Viver (2023) Silver Bear Jury Prize | Berlinale 2023

Dir: João Canijo | Cast: Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, Vera Barreto Portugal / France 2023 Competition | World premiere Drama, Portugal

An inheritance proves to be a poisoned challis and one that will flush out memories and deep-seated resentments brewing between five members of a close family in this immersive drama from Portuguese auteur João Canijo.

The property has seen better days. Once a lavishly appointed architect-designed Sixties hotel boasting extensive grounds a generous kidney-shaped swimming pool – that still provides the women with a regenerative backwater and a break from each other – the place is now in need of extensive refurbishment and the staff have resorted to using bleach and fly spray just to keep the place clean.

Conijo’s female-centric narrative provides fertile ground for a richly discursive and contemplative slow-burn drama whose languid pacing often bristles with insight and delicate observations in mulling over the women’s collective past together, and seemingly futile future touching on domestic themes of cooking, child-rearing and the inevitability of ageing, as well as wider issues that allude to the social malaise in modern day Portugal.

Other scenes focus on trivial squabbles that often flare up from nowhere between mother and daughter as they try on shoes, or compare haircuts. Often there is intrigue or enigma surrounding what is said – as much as unsaid – as we piece together the past and present of these relatable interlocking characters.

Many of the conversations take place offscreen and focus on the central character Piedade (Moreira) whose desperate cries for help fall on the deaf ears of her mother (Blanco), daughter (Almeida) and extended family who are too consumed with their own trivial lives to focus on her subtle call for help.

Pietade is often seen eavesdropping on her mother Sara while trying to keep her snappy emotional support dog from squeaking or barking, other desultory conversations unfold in the peace and quiet of this tranquil rural location.

DoP Leonor Teles choses a a vibrant aesthetic and a variety of camera angles to keep us involved: often viewing the characters from above or at waist level, or on the widescreen and in intimate closeup while a quietly triumphant score of Elgar’s Nimrod at one point plays in the background.

The ending comes as no surprise to those tuned in to Piedade’s particularly middle-aged female sense of futility – yet it provides a perfect conclusion to this mature and artfully framed family drama playing this year in the Berlinale main competition  

BERLINALE 2023| 15 -26 February 2023

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023)

Dir.: Steven Soderbergh; Cast: Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek Pinault, Ayub Khan Din, JemiliaGeorge, Juliette Motamed; USA 2023, 112 min.

When Steven Soderbergh burst onto the film scene with Sex, Lies and Videotape the world was aghast at this shiny new talent. Decades later his final part of a trilogy that started in 2012 is tame and overloaded with characters and sub-plots. And by the end nobody really cares what happens. 

Last Dance centres on a wealthy soon-to-be-divorced couple – Maxandra Mendoza (Hayek Pinault) and ex-male stripper Mike Lane (Tatum). After their furniture business goes bust Mike meets his friendly creditors via Zoom. The couple then spend an evening of wild passion (no sex – mind) and Mike re-arranges Maxandra’s flat in Miami. She offers him an opportunity in the theatre business – having inherited London’s “The Rattigan” in the divorce settlement. There, a tedious costume drama is soon abandoned for a night out with male strippers who run riot under Mike’s direction (minus their g-strings). 

The whole saga is narrated by Maxandra’s teenage daughter Zadie (George) who is a mixture of “Alexa” and Wikipedia, and even finds time to write a novel in the ensuing chaos. Meanwhile Max’s chauffeur/confidante Victor (Din) tries in vain to keep his mistress from making any more mischief. A motley selection of half-baked characters join in the farce including Max’s soon-to-be-divorced husband and the local council chief-administrator who wants to close the theatre but is persuaded otherwise by a visit of the stripper ensemble in the bus (!). The focus here is really on Mike and Max: will they, or won’t they do it?

Brilliant production values nearly save the day but cannot make up for  an underwhelming and unfocused production that overstays its welcome at  nearly two hours. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 10 FEBRUARY 2023

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Dir: M Night Shyamalan | Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird | US Thriller

A magical cabin in the woods becomes a scene of horror in this latest ‘apocalypse’ from M Night Shyamalan. Little Wen (Cui) and her parents Eric (Groff) and Andrew (Aldridge) are enjoying a family holiday when their rustic idyll is interrupted by four complete strangers with seemingly evil intent – judging by their weapons – although they profess otherwise, in this unusual home invasion thriller.

On of the interlopers, the meat-headed Dave Bautista, has already befriended Win in the film’s opening scene but we know he is not to be trusted. And pretty soon Dave make the bizarre request that the family sacrifice one of their members in order to save to rest of humanity.

Adapted from a novel by Paul Tremblay, the film’s initially intriguing premise soon gives way to some doom laden scenes of destruction, violence and existential menace. Saved – only just – by a solid and persuasive cast Knock in the Cabin is just another example of doom-laden fare we really could do without in the negative world we live in. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Amanda (2023)

Dir: Carolina Cavalli; Cast: Benedetta Percaroli, Galatea Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Margherita Maccapani Missoni, Monica Nappo, Michele Bravi; Italy/France 2022, 93 min.

Amanda is the anti-social but wickedly amusing daughter of one of Italy’s rich industrialist families in this impressive first feature from Carolina Cavalli who celebrates female friendship.

The sardonic 24-year-old (Benedetta Percaroli) is back in her home town of Turin after spending some time in Paris. In a bid to put distance between her and her family, who have no time for her whims and capricious behaviour, she opts to stay in a hotel but makes a regular appearance at the family dinner table and seems to have hit it off with her niece, much to the consternation of Amanda’s older sister Marina (Missoni).

Amanda’s first object of desire is a regular visitor to the Cinematheque – a place of magic for Amanda – but neither of them makes any contact. The “Dude” (Bravi) is next in line, but after it transpires he only wants to distribute free condoms – instead of drugs – he bites the dust as potential bestie number two.

Then a blast from the past arrives in the shape of Rebecca (Bellugi), her best friend from primary school. After a long stand-off – Rebecca suffers from claustrophobia – the two manage to connect, but a horse will be the vital link in cementing the women’s friendship.

Although Amanda is not very lovable Cavalli’s clever writing skills make her an irresistible force of nature: she can be witty, but her comments often cut to the quick. All this scathing comedy and a string of amusing plot lines make the film whizz by leaving us wanting more. Cavalli – unlike her feminine creation – adopts a restrained approach to the storyline that – at just over 90 minutes – is well worth watching. AS

NOW ON CURZON From 2 June 2023

Battle of the Sexes (1960)

Dir: Charles Crichton | Cast: Peter Sellers, Robert Morley, Constance Cummings, Jameson Clark, Donald Pleasence | UK Comedy 90′

Despite the vaguely saucy title and brash opening narration by Sam Wanamaker this is actually a very gentle comedy made by veterans of Ealing Studios such as director Charles Crichton.

Made in the days when Peter Sellars was still a character actor rather than a personality he thoroughly immerses himself in the surprisingly self-effacing role of a mild mannered wage slave who rather recalls his drunken projectionist in The Smallest Show on Earth.

Shot in Edinburgh – the remotest location Constance Cummings’ superiors could think of to send her – the sombre mood is well served by Freddie Francis’ low-key photography allied to skilful use of sound plausibly evoking a clothing company so traditional that use of the word ‘synthetic’ makes grown men faint and even a pen with a squeaky nib seems intrusive. @RichardChatten

 

The Whale (2022)

Dir.: Darren Aronofsky, Cast: Brendan Fraser, Hong Chan, Ty Simkins, Samantha Morton, Sadie Sink; USA 2022, 117 min.

The Whale never breaks free from its claustrophobic stage origins, adapted for the screen by Samual D Hunter and based on his 2012 play. In contrast to his usual fare Darren Aronofsky’s direction is restrained, by his own admission, in a feature that deals with the ‘elephant in the room’ in the 21st century: Obesity. Brendan Fraser beefs up for a gargantuan performance as the fated fatty Charlie, traumatised by his partner’s suicide and wallowing towards an early grave in a dour Idaho backwater where he teaches creative writing via Zoom.

Charlie has no desire to be hospitalised and his ample finances provide for nurse Liz (Chau) to look after him, his estranged wife Mary (Morton) and daughter Ellie (Sink) – putting in appearances for obvious reasons – but they are angry and shouty in contrast to the benign and philosophical Charlie who feel for increasingly  as he tries to put past to rights. Christian cult member Elder Thomas (Simkins) brings an innocuous twist to the plot, completing the quintet of depressive truth-seekers.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE IN UK + FRANCE

 

The Apartment (1960)

Dir/Wri: Billy Wilder | Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston | US Drama 125’

As he handed Billy Wilder the Academy Award for Best Picture (the last to go to a black & white movie until ‘Schindler’s List’) Moss Hart wryly remarked to him “Better quit now, Billy. It’s not going to get any better than this!”.

Appropriately paired on BBC2 this afternoon (although in the wrong order) with Brief Encounter which contained the scene with Valentine Dyall that inspired it; when I first saw The Apartment half a century ago at the age of 13 even then I found it as melancholy as it was funny.

It was a sign of the times that Best Picture went to such a gown-up film; and ironically Hope Holiday (now 91), who played Margie MacDougall, has just revealed that soon after making this was sexually harassed by Jerry Lewis. The line “that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise” has become one of the most memorable lines in comedy cinema history. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO MGM

Women Talking (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2023

 

Empire (2023) Gothenburg Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Frederikke Aspock; Cast: Anna Neye, Sara Fanta Traore, Claus Riis Ostergaard, Jesper Groth, Tyler Erroll Murray, James Sampson, Cherie Celeste Malone; Denmark 2022, 92 min.

This lively costume drama from Danish director Frederikke Aspock satirises racism with an outwardly light ironic tone, but behind the brightly coloured sets and costumes there lurk some hard facts about colonialism during the mid nineteenth century.

Back in 1848 the Danish West Indies comprised the island of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix (sold to the US in 1917). The story follows Anna Heegaard (Neye), a ‘free coloured’ woman who owns her own slaves and is living in the State House Mansion with the Danish Governor General Peter von Schotten (Ostergaard) who has a wife and family back home in Denmark.

Anna runs the place with a rod of iron, subjecting her black staff members to her draconian power games while pretending to be their friends. Her Maid of Honour, Petrine (Traore), who lives ‘in house’ with her young son Frederik (Murray), gets the brunt of Anna’s methods, but behind the scenes the slaves are starting to contemplate revolt.

The plot turns on Anna’s dominating attitude which extends beyond mere household matters and into the governor’s affairs of state. Gradually she becomes embroiled on both sides of the fence after a visit from Admiral Irminger (Groth) requesting that von Schottten plead the King for military support against the Obeah rebels. Anna overrides the Governor’s agenda, writing her own letter to the King, forging von Schotten’s handwriting, and asking for military support to be prepared in the event of a rebel uprising – something von Schotten has no intention of doing – with tragic consequences.

Beyond the light-hearted voice-over this is a cruel feature with episodes of brutal violence that point to moral decay on all sides, led by the Danish authorities, who will later be instrumental in selling the colony to the Americans, without asking the inhabitants. DoP Linda Wassberg captures the resplendent colours of the island setting, but is equally apt in showing the fatalities in a tour-de-force of human evil. AS

GOTHENBURG FILM FESTIVAL 2023

 

We are Next of Kin (2022) Rotterdam Film Festival 2023

Dir: Hans Christian Schmid | Cast: Cast: Claude Heinrich, Adina Vetter, Justus von Dohnanyi, Hans Low, Yorck Dippe, Enno Trebs, Fabian Hinrichs, Philipp Hauss | Drama 118’

The aftermath of an abduction is seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy unimpressed by the bungled attempts of those entrusted to bring his father back in this sober domestic-centred drama from seasoned German director Hans Christian Schmid.

Jan Philipp Reemtsma was kidnapped in 1996, and the film is based on his son Johann Scheerer’s autobiographical novel that views the world through his burgeoning adolescent experience of adults in authority struggling to cope with their own infallibilities.

Johann (Claude Heinrich) is clearly in awe but also resentful of his father (Philipp Hauss), an accomplished academic who is clearly disappointed in his unruly teenage son. The opening scenes of We Are Next of Kin picture a typical scenario with a father trying to drum some sense into a boy who is more keen on playing in a band that focusing on his schoolwork.

Jan’s subsequent kidnapping is a subdued off-screen affair and Johann then witnesses his mother Kathrin (a steely Adina Vetter) and the family solicitor Schwenn (Justus von Dohnanyi) putting their heads together to work out what do in the face of the large ransom demanded by the abductors. Their efforts are supported when two special branch detectives Vera (Yorck Dippe) and Nickel (Enno Trebs) come on board with their ‘specialist’ negotiating skills.

From then on the drama turns on the fraught psychological and strategic aspects of the kidnapping with the focus on human error rather than the event itself, Jan’s whereabouts and circumstances remaining rather shady in a abduction that took place before the advent of the internet and today’s technological advances.

There’s a traditional feel to proceedings with old-fashioned ransom notes and letters being the kidnap ‘currency’ rather than mobile ‘phone messages and texts. Although there are some tense scenes, the film’s measured pacing reflects the often stark reality of the kidnap situation for the family and their advisors left to suffer the quietly devastating emotional toll of being controlled and menaced by an unknown outside force and to endure interminable delays while progress is made, or not.

Gradually Johann sees his father transform from a doughty figure of authority to a vulnerable human being desperate for help in this unusual kidnapping and rights of passage drama. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | 2023 | LIMELIGHT STRAND

 

 

 

 

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Cast: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Denis Price, John Sweet | UK Drama 124’

Described by Basil Wright as “the kinkiest film of the war” and recalled with distaste by the reviewers of Peeping Tom,  Michael Powell’s taste for the fanciful (the dialogue actually mentions marijuana) was already manifesting itself in the antics of the glueman and the use of Edmond Knight in three quite distinct roles.

The extraordinary resemblance of the early cut from the kestrel to the spitfire to the much-vaunted equivalent in ‘2001’ is almost certainly attributable purely to coincidence since until the late seventies the film had long languished in obscurity and it’s highly unlikely Kubrick had seen when he embarked on his own film in 1964.

Powell was born in Canterbury himself so the choice of the locale was evidently a deeply personal one. His eye for talent is well demonstrated by his casting the hitherto unknown Denis Price and the engaging American non-professional John Sweet. @RichardChatten

Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953)

Dir: Delmer Davies | Cast: Cornel Wilde, Constance Smith, Anne Bancroft, Finlay Currie, Walter Hampden | US Drama 93’

Delmer Daves couldn’t make a dull film if his life depended on it but he had a jolly good try with this glossy Technicolor remake of Son of Fury with Cornel Wilde in Tyrone Power’s role of an illiterate stable lad who goes out into the big wide world to make his fortune in Guatemala with the aid of a treasure map.

George Macready memorably plays his usual sanctimonious villain, and this is the only film I recall where he personally engages in fisticuffs himself. Finlay Currie in a tam-o-shanter does his usual Scotts thing, while the women include Fay Wray and Anne Bancroft (the latter in the role played in the original by Frances Farmer).

Officially Alfred Newman wrote the music, but the resemblance of a couple of musical cues to ‘North by Northwest’ serves as a reminder that Bernard Herrmann was then under contract to Fox. @RichardChatten

The Flying Scotsman (1929)

Dir: Castleton Knight | Cast: Ray Milland, Gordon Harker, Moore Marriott, Pauline Johnson | Uk Drama 50’

Castleton Knight anticipated his work in documentaries with the climax on location in this rollicking thriller which marks the unique interaction of Moore Marriott and Ray Milland.

Marriott was only 44 but already looks much older, while Milland (here already exhibiting the superciliousness that later became his trademark) already looks like he did in his Hollywood heyday. Even then Marriott looks more like the heroine’s grandfather than her father.

This marked the lovely Pauline Johnson’s penultimate film. She actually survived the scene where she (SPOILER COMING:) clings to the outside of the train in high heels – which rather resembles the climax of ‘Oh! Mr Porter’ – giving up films to marry and move to Australia. @RichardChatten

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968)

Dir: Clive Donner | Cast: Barry Evans, Judy Geeson, Angela Scoular, Adrienne Poster, Vanessa Howard | UK Drama

On the way to school back in the seventies I used every morning to go through Sheffield Botanical Gardens and pass a genuine Mulberry Bush planted in 1968 by Judy Geeson to promote this film (it now resembles a small tree rather than a bush).

Four years earlier Clive Donner had depicted in ‘Nothing But the Best’ the upwardly mobile career of a Jack the Lad played by Alan Bates. This time it’s the turn of Barry Evans (later best known on TV for ‘Doctor in the House’ and ‘Mind Your Language’), who like the delightful Angela Scoular met an untimely and tragic end.

Both films have in common the wonderful Denholm Elliot representing the establishment, while it’s a measure of the film’s dubious sexual politics that the great height of Sally Avery as Cathy is bizarrely assumed to denote plainness, even down to perceptibly dubbing her voice to make her seem even coarser. @RichardChatten

Kavur (2023) Rotterdam Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Firat Ozeler; Documentary with the voices of Cem Yilmaz, Funda Eryigit; Turkey 2023, 89 min.

A new documentary from Turkey’s Firat Ozeler pays homage to filmmaker Omer Kavur (1944-2005) who directed fourteen feature between 1974 and 2003 before his tragic death from lymphoma. His films were shown in Cannes and Venice, but, rarely – if ever – made it to the UK. The only English speaking retrospective was held at the Harvard Film Archive in 2001, where five features were shown. The film is both a biopic and a travelogue, narrated by Funda Eryigit, it visits the many places Kavur touched during his struggle to build a career. Cam Yilmaz voices Kavur’s own perspective of his life. 

Born in Istanbul in 1944 to wealthy parents who moved in all the right circles but whose marriage eventually broke down, Kavur was sent to a Swiss finishing school to be groomed for success. Clearly he had plenty of love but no home. Paris was the next step where the budding filmmaker studied in the daytime, and worked in a hotel at night. His 1987 feature Motherland Hotel (Anayurt Oteli) is a testament to his three year stint as a night porter – anything to reduce his debt.

An unidentified lover tells about the sadness which engulfed Kavur even in those days: “He was not a happy person”. His return to Istanbul saw the city transformed by  bulldozers and the developers. The old buildings were gone replaced by apartment blocks. Turkish cinema had moved on too and Kavur was dismayed to discover an industry which thrived on porn features. The Sex Life of a Belly Dancer, was a case in point.

Kavur’s own first films were not successful at the box office, and he became withdrawn and reclusive eventually leaving the city of his birth, blaming himself: “I should have adapted, and did what was expected from me”. He was critical of the socialist films of the era, calling them ‘trendy’. His travels next took him to a small Baltic town where the theme of rememberance became an important focus of his maturing style of filmmaking. 

Ozeler makes use of ample archive footage, clips of Kavur’s final feature, Karsilasma shot in 2003, and a video showing him as a deeply troubled man obsessed by death and decay. Plagued by dreams that transported him back to his childhood, Kavur seemed to be continually trying to escape the trauma. The film’s final act sees him reciting a poem with the unnamed woman. When death finally caught up with Kavur, he had come to terms with his life and discovered a certain tranquility, despite being exhausted from illness and therapy. It was like coming home again.

In his debut feature premiering at Rotterdam’s International Film Festival, Ozeler has caught the overriding melancholy of Kavur’s life as an artist who never felt at ease with himself after being sent away from his homeland at an early age. A motif running through his work shows him knocking at doors that will be forever closed, like in Kafka’s “The Castle”. Kavur certainly had his time in the sun as a director on the festival circuit, but he never quite moved with the times. Ozeler portrays his subject with skill and empathy, the travel rumination making an evocative backcloth to the tortured mind of this celebrated Turkish filmmaker. AS

SCREENING AT ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | CINEMA REGAINED |

Plane (2023)

Dir.: Jean-Francois Richet; Cast: Gerald Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Daniela Pinada, Tony Goldwyn;, Evan Dane Taylor, UK/US 2023, 107 min.

With a title like Plane we are not expecting anything special – and while this airborne thriller doesn’t break any new ground, it will satisfy its “Boys-Only” brigade audience who like things ‘retro’. Plane is an 80s throw-back to films like Under Siege and the Cannon Group vehicles who even made it onto the ‘Red Carpet’ in Cannes back in the day. So let’s not pretend we never saw the like of it before.

Like all Action Man features, Plane relies on a leading man at the helm, and Gerard Butler, 53, still fits the bill. Now the older statesman of the “Save the World” Brigade his hang-dog pilot Brodie Torrence (widowed, with a daughter waiting for Daddy to return for New Year’s Eve) pilots his jet with just 14 (!) passengers from New York to Tokyo. One of them, Louis Garpare (Colter), is a murderer being accompanied by an FBI agent to his new prison home. Alas, an electric storm puts an end to all communication equipment on board, and Torrence has to land the plane on a small island in the Philippines. Needless to say, his troubles have only just started.

The corporate leadership, whose penny-pinching dictates are responsible for the catastrophe in the first place, want to let Torrence and his acolytes fight it out. But ex-military commander Scarsdale (Goldwyn), who has taken a liking to Torrence (having watched a video of him putting a passenger into a headlock), alerts his ex-buddies from the Special Forces to help ‘unlikely lads’ Torrence and Colter contain the local guerrillas under the leadership of a certain wild-eyed Jummar ((Taylor), so Torrence can get his plane into the air again, in time for New Year and his daughter.

Popular spy-thriller writer Charles Cumming wrote the script with J.P. Davies, and they are as politically incorrect as possible in an outing that sees simpering women watching the men folk get on with the   business of killing – by hand, sledgehammer and rocket launchers. DoP Brendan Galvin does his level best to indulge us with close-ups and impressive panorama shots. Butler suffers multiple bullet wounds but still remains dignified, ably supported by his Korean co-pilot Dale (An). Maybe not Batman and Robin, but another successful buddy relationship. Who says men can’t bond? AS

PLANE IS IN UK CINEMAS from 27 JANUARY 2023

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Munch (2023)

Dir/Wri: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken | Cast: Alfred Ekker Strande, Mattis Herman Nyquist, Ola G. Furuseth, Anne Krigsvoll, Arthur Berning, Lisa Carlehed, Thea Lambrechts Vaulen | Drama, 104′

Munch is a brave and ambitious biopic evocatively reflecting the many faces of Norway’s most internationally famous expressionist artist whose tortured painting ‘The Scream’ has come to represent humanity’s collective cry of pain and isolation.

Seasoned Norwegian auteur Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken clearly understands his confused countryman whom we first meet in his final months, at 80 (played by Anne Krigvoll, in an inspired casting), a reclusive and cantankerous creative worn down by years of being misinterpreted, and emotionally abused by his friends and associates.

Seen from the artist’s own perspective this sumptuously impressionistic drama then plays out in concurrent strands that picture his troubled life – at 21 (played by Ekker Strande), 30 (Herman Nyquist) and 45 (Faruseth) – to explore the confusion and loneliness that inspired the tortured sketches and canvasses that came to represent an outpouring of grief.

‘The Scream’ could be attributed to the time his entire Berlin exhibition was deemed ‘unfinished’ or ‘too moody’ for the German style at the time, and was abruptly cancelled on the night of the vernissage. We see Munch crying out in pain at the sheer perplexity of it all, although he would later become a figure of great notoriety for breaking his avant-garde style. During this time he meets August Strindberg (another female casting – Lisa Carlehed). 

Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken is not the first to attempt a film about the artist (1863-1944) – 1974 TV outing Edvard Munch was a grim affair – but he is certainly the most successful in showing Munch as a highly sensitive soul who gradually became disillusioned by a life overshadowed by illness and bereavement (of both his mother and sister, and his own near death), his father’s overbearing nature, and a series of unsatisfactory encounters, most notably in an romantic episode in Vesthold, eastern Norway where, at 21, his father takes him to spend the summer in the lush countryside to encourage his talent. Plagued by mosquitoes, he falls for married society girl Milly Thaulow (Lambrechts Vaulen) who then rejects him cruelly, adding to his emotional confusion. Later in his forties he is admitted to a private Copenhagen clinic for a psychiatric disturbance. And so begins his retreat into a world of isolation.

This is not a film flooded in abject negativity and Dahlsbakken does his best not to dwell on the dour nature of Munch’s life, and this is what makes the drama enjoyable. Despite the tragedies in Munch’s personal life, the overwhelming impression Dahlsbakken creates is one of melancholy beauty and poignance for man misunderstood.

Munch experimented wildly and eventually chose to reject the outside world, but his backstory is imaginatively fleshed out here, Dahlsbakken cleverly reflecting the descent with four different actors – all convincingly played. Acting as his own production designer in variety of styles, the well chosen episodes are captured in pristine black & white and a painterly colour palette by DoPs Pal Ulvik Rokseth and Oskar Dalhsbakken. An accomplished and impressive arthouse drama despite its often confusing narrative structure. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS IN FRANCE and UK | MUNCH OPENED THE ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Phaedra (1962)

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/JQVbuCbpZ_c

Mon Crime – The Crime is Mine (2023)

Dir: Francois Ozon | Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Dany Boon, Andre Dussollier, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Edouard Sulpice | France, Drama 102′

Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Lucchini star in this cheeky little chamber piece. Fast moving and frothing with fun and his signature mischievous humour Francois Ozon’s latest is a 1930s-set feminist whodunnit that pushes all the buttons on today’s #metoo polemic while recalling the absurdist boulevard style of its original stage play, adapted by his regular co-writer Philippe Piazzo and driven forward by a jaunty, noirish score.

In 1930s Paris, two young women have a field day getting their own back on men in the style of the famous ‘Papin sisters’. After her boyfriend leaves her for an heiress, pretty but talentless young actress Madeleine Verdier (Tereszkiewicz) finds herself implicated in the murder of a famous producer after a tussle on the casting couch, but is acquitted with the help of her lawyer friend Pauline (Marder), on the grounds of self-defence. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth finally comes out.

Ozon litters his production with throwbacks to the era: Danielle Darrieux is playing in Billy Wilder’s Bad Seed at the local picture house. And there’s an inspired guillotine scene just for good measure. Huppert makes her grand entrance an hour into the production – as the veteran star of the silent screen (and erstwhile casting couch victim) Odette Chaumette – but gracefully without stealing the show from her fellow divas who make a picaresque comedy duo. Andre Dussollier and Dany Boon are also there to entertain. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

The Nothingness Club (2023) Rotterdam Film Festival 2023

Dir: Edgar Pêra | Cast: Victoria Guerra, Miguel Nunes, Albano Jeronimo, Miguel Borges | Portugal Fantasy Drama, 92′

Edgar Pera fans will recognise the Portuguese auteur’s baleful character sketches (O Barao from the IFFR 2019 retrospective) in this stylish psychological thriller that dives into the deranged world of one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, the Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), here played by Miguel Borges.

The Nothingness Club is possibly Pera’s most substantial and relatable film to date, a noirish mannered thriller that plunders the emotional vulnerabilities and vicissitudes of the creative psyche in exploring the many faces of Pessoa’s heteronyms, the three main being Ricardo Reis (Correia), Alvaro Campos (Jeronimo) and Alberto Caeiro (Nunes). At the poet’s literary salon the eponymous ‘Nothingness Club’, they argue, debate and spar with each other and with the poet himself, and Campos even engages with his only attested lover Ophelia (Guerra) who joins in, in her guise as a femme fatale. Highly entertaining for his devotees and enlightening for arthouse enthusiasts. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2023 | BIG SCREEN AWARD

Five Fingers (1952)

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

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

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

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

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

Endless Borders (2023) IFFR 2023

Dir.: Abbas Amini; Cast: Pouria Rahimi Sam, Mino Sharifi, Behafarid Ghaffarian, Naser Sajjadi Hosseini, Ghalem Sakhi Nazari | Iran/Czech Republic/Germany 2023, 111 min.

Iranian writer/director Abbas Amini (The Slaughterhouse) explores personal and political struggles in this complex drama set in a remote village in Balochistan near the Iranian-Afghanistan border. Shifting alliances dominate, with the main protagonist having to face a truth he had denied for a long time.

Ahmad Vaezi (Sam) has been exiled from his native Iran for political reasons. Now living in a small Afghan community that comes under regular scrutiny from the border forces he serves as both teacher and doctor. But Ahmad has got off lightly. His partner Nilofar (Sharifi) has just been released on probation after a two-year imprisonment, accused of similar offences. Clearly the separation has put their relationship under strain and they struggle to contact one another.

A fresh wave of controversy confronts Ahmad one day when sixteen-year old Hasebah (Ghaffarian) desperately asks him for help to escape the village with Balaj (Hosseini), a local young man who has fallen in love with her. She also reveals that, on account of her father’s bankruptcy, she was forced to marry the village elder – who Ahmad had always assumed to be her father. To complicate matters further, family honour dictates that the elder’s son will kill Hasebah if she is caught trying to leave.

Despite the danger, Ahmad and the two lovers flee to Tehran where the teacher’s life becomes even more complicated when he is accused by Nilofar’s father of putting her life at risk due to his actions. The father has, meanwhile, given his house as security for Nilofar’s bail. This puts further pressure on Ahmad and his partner, and they decide, along with Balaj and Hasebah to continue their onward journey to freedom in Turkey, via a perilous trafficking arrangement, Ahmad insists to the reluctant Nilofar that he only joined the political resistance group out of love for her. At a dangerous river-crossing they are ambushed by the border patrol, and Ahmad is forced to make a life defining decision.                       

Religious affiliations seem to loom large in this fraught environment where once again it causes most of the conflict, not only socially but personally. The villagers are against the Taliban, not so much for their treatment of women, but because they follow another religious law. At the height of the couples’ dramatic escape into Turkey, Balaj refuses to even wear clothes that are associated with another Islamic group, even when his life is in danger. 

DoP Saman Lotfian follows the action with his handheld camera, focusing on middle distance shots or close-ups. Ahmad is a complex main character who belies his ‘holier that thou’ persona in a mature and analytical feature full of contradictions and unexpected twists. AS

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | BIG SCREEN COMPETITION 2023 | VPRO Big Screen Award 2023.

La Guerre des Lulus (2023)

Dir: Yann Samuell | Cast: Isabelle Carre, Didier Bourdon, Francois Damiens, Alex Lutz, Ahmed Sylla, Paloma Labeaut, Leonard Fauquet, Mathys Gros, Tom Castaing, Loup Pinard, Luc Shiltz | France/Luxembourg, Drama 109′

Four kids embark on a boys’ own adventure in this upbeat coming-of-age drama that sees them evacuated to a religious school in Picardie at outbreak of the First World War.

During the time away from their parents the boys, of varying ages, will meet with a series of brief but challenging encounters that will make real men of them, when the time comes. French president Emmanuel Macron is now considering re-introducing compulsory military service, and this film seems to reflect its benefits, especially for young men.

In Yann Samuell’s well-paced drama, Ludwig (Fauquet) is a timid intellectual and an avid reader of Jules Verne’s novels – especially the one his mother left him with as a parting gift. He soon gets the support of Francois Damiens, in a serious role as the Abbot, and a schoolmaster (Lutz) who is then forced to leave for the front. Lucas (Castaing) is hardly out of nappies when he finds himself far away from home. Luigi (Gros) is the strongest boy, and pre-teen Lucien (Loup Picard) will soon discover the tender pleasures of first love when Luce (Labeaut) appears on the scene, as the only girl.

Isabelle Carre plays a feisty farmer’s wife who gradually takes on the role of the boy’s matron before she too faces tragedy. The scenes in her cosy farmhouse glow like a painting by Arthur Rackham, deep in the lush countryside where the war is never far away. The enemy forces are gaining ground, and one day the school building is bombed, nearly get killing them all. The advancing German troops are soon seen off by the farmer’s wife.

Escaping the village, the boys run into a German soldier called Hans who has defected from the army and hopes to join his wife back home. Hans befriends the boys and teaches them German. But dark clouds soon loom when Hans (Schiltz) tries to take them all across the border to safety in Switzerland. Thrilling scenes see them in the thick of trench warfare during the First Battle of Picardie in September 1914. A chance meeting with a French officer called Moussa (Sylla) comes just at the right time, but not before more they are surrounded by another enemy onslaught.

Shot in studio Babelsberg with some stunning visuals, and driven forward by Mathieu Lamboley’s terrific original score. There are some extraordinary performances from a cast so young, particularly Didier Fauquet as Ludwig. La Guerre des Lulus, is a  wonderfully rousing film that navigates some dramatic highs and lows. Samuell shows how kids, unlike adults, can often often trust and connect across barriers, untainted by prejudice or dogma. And that some adults: here a teacher, a soldier, a mother, and a maverick, can really inspire young people to greatness by mentoring and supportive companionship. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE.

The Juniper Tree (1990)

Dir: Nietzchka Keene | Cast: Bjork, Bryndis Petra Bragadottir, Valdimar Orn Flygenring, Guorun Gisladottir | Fantasy Drama, 78′

Iceland is a magical setting for this enchanting medieval black and white adaptation of a 1812 Grimm’s fairytale that sees two sisters forced to flee the homeland after their mother is stoned to death for practising witchcraft.

Filmed and entirely funded by American writer and director Nietzchka Keene (1952-2004) and her co-producer Alison Powell, the film eventually premiered at Sundance 1991 nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic. Keene’s career was cut short but her final film, another female centric story, Barefoot to Jerusalem, was completed after her death, in 2008.

Icelandic singer Björk, in her feature debut, makes for a perfect heroine as Margit with her feral looks and delicate diction so evocative of this Grimm’s inspired fantasy with its horrific undertones. The German brothers themselves had been captivated by the painter Philipp Otto Runge’s original adaptation of The Juniper Tree. Hailed as Germany’s answer to our own visionary poet and printmaker William Blake, his mysticism and symbolism seem to fit well with the English artist’s. And although the Grimms dialled up the darkness with their themes of cannibalism and child abuse, Keene reflects this in her own lyrical version with its violent misogyny and witch-burning while at the same time questioning its moral code in an ascetic spiritual ambiance straight out of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet or even Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. 

Margit and her sister Katla (a softly spoken Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) are wandering around stunned and looking for shelter after their mother has met her terrible death. Their recourse to witchcraft will be the only practical way of surviving in this bleak terrain where anonymity serves to their advantage, until they meet a widower called Johann (Flygenring) who has lost his wife, and been left with his only son Jonas (Pormar). Katla casts a spell on him and the foursome continue as rather unsatisfactory bedfellows, Johan deeply resenting Margit’s attempts to replace his mother by giving her weird and whimsical incantations short shrift with the sobering words: “she was better than you”.

Some may find the film too enigmatic even at only 78 minutes, but Bjork’s innovative presence gives a freshness that keeps The Juniper Tree otherworldly and radical rather than rooted in the distant past, and is this unique curio is definitely worth visiting. MT

BFI BLU-RAY RELEASE 23 JANUARY 2023

 

Girl (2023) Sundance Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Adura Onashile; Cast: Deborah Lukumuena. Le Shantey Bonsu, Liana Turner, Danny Sapani; UK 2023, 87 min.

Two Congolese asylum seekers find out their Glasgow council estate is not quite the bed roses they imagined after escaping their war-torn country in this debut feature from Adura Onashile.

Girl, premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is another coming-of-age drama, almost a carbon copy of Caterina Mona’s 2022, Zurich-set feature Semret that premiered at last year’s Locarno Film Festival. It follows the lives of Grace, 24, and her teenage daughter who could even be her sister at 13 years old. Their new life in Scotland is easy up to a point, but the changes they both need to adjust to are going to be difficult in the long run. 

Grace, played by French actor Deborah Lukumuena in her first English-speaking role, carries the baggage of a traumatic past in the Congolese Civil War. Like many parents these days she is over-protective of her daughter Ama (Bonsu), for good reason, but filling her head with horror stories about the war back home and barricading the windows with cardboard is not good way to bring up your daughter. And Ama has grown into a bit of a rebel, sneaking out onto the balcony to watch the real world go by. Social Services have be involved and the school headmistress has complained about Ama’s attendance. Grace resists any attempt to socialise her daughter who soon befriends Fiona (Turner) who serves as her conduit the outside world, introducing her to all the modern teenage trends. Grace has found a job but is struggling to cope with Counting OCD, a condition impelling the sufferer to count to high numbers in a bid to ward off negativity. Grace also hyperventilates. Fellow employee Danny (Sapani) is the first man to break through Grace’ defences. 

Although this is no sink estate drama DoP Tasha Back captures the reality of life  there, and the comfortable home Grace has created in contrast to the harsh world outside. French actor Deborah Lukumuena, who won a “Cesar” for Divines, gives an imposing performance in a film that avoids sentimentality and polemics, with a focus on the women’s eventual liberation from their tragic past. AS

PREMIERING AT SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 19 -27 JANUARY 2023 | also playing at the opening film at this year’s GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Holy Spider (2022)

Dir: Ali Abassi | Cast: Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Hedi Bejastani, Arash Ashtiani | Thriller 114′

Border was a surreal gender bender fantasy set in Sweden. This time around Ali Abassi returns to his native Iran blending true crime and salient social comment with a scuzzy serial killer thriller that unfolds in the Islamic pilgrimage town of Mashhad, where millions come to worship at the shrine of Imam Reza .

This is where middle-aged Saeed Hanaei (Bajestani), a dedicated family man and construction worker, murdered sex workers at the turn of this century, before being trapped by a tenacious female journalist who nearly lost her own life in the process as she wades through the mire of a chauvinistic society fighting off advances from an incredulous policeman to convince an unscrupulous judge.

Holy Spider sets off in the sordid backstreets of the city (filmed in Amman) where it follows ex Iran-Iraq war veteran Saeed as he picks off his victims on a motorcycle, riding them back to a squalid basement where he strangles the women with their own hijabs, earning him the name of ‘Spider Killer’.

Tehran-based journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), arrives in town determined to track Saeed down, and will stop at nothing, not least the misogyny of the police and local authorities, who undervalue women – and particularly ‘loose’ women – to bring him to justice. And her ongoing investigation exposes the wider implications of these murders in a society that holds men and marriage in high regard. And Saeed truly believes he is doing a service to Islam in ridding his community of these ‘low life’ women who are seen as no more than vermin on the streets of the city.

Border was mesmerising in its zinging Nordic setting but Holy Spider plays out as an exotic neon nightmare, Nadim Carlsen’s intimate close-ups gripping us by the throat in experiencing the strangulations for ourselves: the twisted purple lips, the bloodshot eyes, and bruised bodies, the sordid salaciousness of it all. A droning electronic soundscape from Lajos Wienkamp-Marques escalates the tension, feeding every fear engendered by the wickedness of this anti-female annihilation.

As Rahimi pursues the murderer she is beset on every side by negative forces aiming to discredit her in a narrative that persuades us that this task is a not just about exposing the truth but managing the lies and the wide-held belief, amongst Saeed’s family and supporters, that he is righteous in his crusade to wipe out junkies and prostitutes. And the suspense needles on until the final horrifying moments. MT

BEST ACTRESS WINNER (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) | CANNES 2022 | IN UK and IRISH cinemas from 20 JANUARY 2023

Iron Butterflies (2023) Sundance Film Festival 2023

Dir: Roman Liubyi | Doc with Bridget Fiske, Sofiya Gakh, Anton Ovhcinnikov, Joseph Lau | 84′

In his documentary debut, Director Roman Liubyi plunders the archives for clips and real life interviews that present a convincing expose of an act of genocide that changed the course of recent history for all of us. The film bears testament to the recent corrosive trend for questioning incontrovertible truths.

A case in point is the focus of Iron Butterflies. On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by Russian forces over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. The reality of this attack, and its possible ramifications for the then-ongoing war in Donbas and the West’s relationship with Russia, was immediately questioned by the Russian government and media which chose to spin the evidence and change the goal posts, presenting a different ‘truth’ – also known as ‘lies’ – to the one the rest of the world had accepted.

Gradually, the film pieces together ample evidence of what really happened – the title referring to butterfly-shaped items of shrapnel that were found in the bodies of the pilots. As the evidence gradually piles up Liubyi shows that denying what really happened eventually becomes more outlandish and incredible.

In a world where violence can only be defended by lies, and lies only maintained by violence, Iron Butterflies presents the truth of what happened to MH17, but also what was at stake by not confronting it.

SCREENING DURING SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 19-29 JANUARY 2023 | WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION.

When it Melts (2023) Sundance Film Festival 2023

Dir.: Veerle Baetens; Cast: Charlotte De Bruyne, Rosa Marchant, Amber Metdeppeningen, Femkevan der Steen, Naomi Velissariou, Sebastian Dewaele, Matthijs Meertens, Chrlotte van der Eecken, Simon van Buyten,Anthony Vyt; Belgium/ Netherlands 2023, 111 min.

Family conflict is at the heart of this provocative drama about a troubled teenager from first time Belgian director Veerle Baetens.  

Now an adult, Eva (De Bruyne) has clearly not recovered from the past. Out of quiet desperation, we see her (in flashback) deliberately breaking a gift rejected by another girl called Elisa (Van Der Eecken) who she tried to befriend when she was younger (played by Marchant). And desperation is a good way to describe her current existence in a Belgium city where she now lives, people around her clearly picking up on her angst. The truth will gradually emerge in a series of flashbacks fleshing out her childhood showing a happier time in the countryside where she grew up.

When It Melts sees Eva returning to the village many years after a sweltering summer where everything seemed to go wrong, leaving her scarred and emotionally fragile. This time, Eva has taken a block of ice in the back of her car, but not in preparation for the summer heat, as we soon discover as the tragedy unfolds. Her old friend Laurens (Van Buyten) is happy to see her. His mother – the local butcher – always seemed warm and protective, unlike her own parents who were dismissive and distant. Tim is still suffering from the death of hs brother Jan, who fell into a cesspit. His parents clearly would have preferred him to die instead. 

In the past Elisa (Van der Eecken), was always more mature and sophisticated than the others. Her Dad gave her a horse as compensation for his frequent absence. Elisa, out of boredom, hung out with Eva, giving her make-up lessons and lending some of her clothes. Eva saw this as true friendship, introducing Elisa to Laurens and Tim. But their relationship ends when Eva accidentally kills Elisa’s horse by feeding it poisonous flowers. Sex inevitably becomes another complication between the girls and the boys, in a game of truth or dare that goes seriously wrong. Graphic violence and cruelty takes place off scene, the sheer brutality of these encounters is clearly harrowing – but very much in line with the characters committing them.

When it Melts avoids sensationalism, but is once again testament to how far ordinary teenagers will go to fulfil their darkest desires. Strong performances across the board make this heart-rending and convincing, Baetens’ debut will stay with the audience for a long time after they leave the cinema. AS

SPECIAL JURY AWARD, WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC : BEST PERFORMANCE ROSA MARCHANT | SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

 

 

Babylon (2023)

Dir.: Damien Chazelle; Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calvas, Jean Smart, Olivia Wilde. Spike Jonze, Li Jun Li, Jovan Adepo. Max Minghella; USA 2022, 190 min.

Damien Chazelle (La La Land) is not the first filmmaker to depict the extravagance and outsized egos of the Hollywood years between talkies and sound. Before Chazelle came along there was Sunset Boulevard and Robert Altman’s 1992 The Player (among many others) but none resort to the dreary hyperbole of Babylon or its needless financial outlay that Chazelle burns through with boyish glee, greedily biting off far more than he can chew in this mouthful of mediocrity.

The extraordinary running time is also a nod to the director’s inflated ego: like it or lump it, we are stuck with this overblown ‘Director’s Cut’ that sees him unable to control himself in a homage to Hollywood’s Golden Era in a cartoonish version of what really went on. Glossy moving images glide meaninglessly over a depthless void, giving lip service to reality without ever engaging with it, and leaving out references to the “Hays Code” of 1934, and the influencing contribution of European directors like Chaplin, Lang, Curtis, Litvak and Siodmak. Chazelle turns a blind eye to cinematographic history.

Three main protagonists lead us through the Hollywood jungle in 1926 with the advent of the talkies. Matinee idol Jack Conrad (Pitt) works his way through the women and is only too aware of losing out to the talkies. On the phone to a mighty producer he complains: “this script for his new feature stinks, and the studio will blame him for the result”. But he soldiers on until self-disgust and disappointment drives him to tragedy.

Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy, the “wild girl” with the New Jersey squawk and a penchant for drugs and gambling, is a born star before she even sets foot in a studio. Based on Clara Bow (the original ‘It’ girl`) Nellie gets her chance to act when the female lead is killed in the opening orgy scene. The body is smuggled out of the building while an elephant makes a grand entrance, grabbing the camera’s attention. Nellie is also a showstopper, but her scenes are raucous and obscene, and later she has difficulties with the sound system that sounds her death knell. Alas, Nellie’s type is superfluous to requirements, and she is written out of the narrative.

Mexican American “Manny” (Diego Calva), her counterpart, is dazzled by stardom, starting at the bottom and rising to the top, only to crash down to reality, and a 1952 epilogue where he is still in love with her despite her ruinous gambling addiction. She leaves him at the bottom where they first met.

Animals are treated with unbridled neglect and even cruelty. Manny, amongst other feats, is forced to manoeuvre said elephant up a steep hill where the poor beast becomes frightening and incontinent spraying everyone in sight. Another spectacular episode in the desert sees Conrad take on a rattle snake desperate to escape his clutches. It is finally slayed by the sinuous Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) after Nelly’s attempts to kill by swirling it round in mid air.

There are (too) many cameos: Jean Smart’s gossip columnist is the only voice of reason, telling Conrad he shouldn’t grumble, at the end. “because fifty years from now some kid will stumble over your image.” Max Minghella is suitably tyrannical as an elegant Irving Thalberg, and Jazz musician Sidney Palmer (Adepo) is given a box of charred cork to blacken his face, so he can fit in with the rest of the band.

Chazelle’s regular DoP Linus Sandren holds it all together image-wise lending a visual unity that is lacking in the script. On a positive note, Chazelle occasionally shows sparks of real panache and humour, and succeeds in bringing cinema back as one of many attractions in the fairground. AS

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 20 JANUARY 2023

Two Tickets to Greece | Les Cyclades (2022)

Dir: Marc Fitoussi | Cast: Laure Calamy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Olivia Cote, Alexandre Desrousseaux, Panis Koronie | France, Comedy 109′

Laure Calamy turns her talents to comedy and Kristin Scott Thomas lets her hair down in Marc Fitoussi’s uplifting French drama that navigates the highs and lows of female cameraderie and lifelong friendship. With humour, insight and maturity Fitoussi shows you never really know someone ’til you go on holiday with them.

Blandine and Magalie were inseparable as naughty teenagers growing up in Paris and then went their separate ways. Meeting up again decades later their lives have changed completely: Blandine (Cote) is a downbeat divorcee and mother to Benjamin Desrousseaux), bubbly ’80s disco fan Magalie (Calamy) is freelancing in the music business, with free being the operative word for broke.

On a whim they decide to embark on a trip to the Greek Islands, but their conflicting personalities soon see them coming to blows, Magalie is feisty and flirts with the reality – and every man she meets, always seeing the glass half full; Blandine works with cancer patients but has lost her bedside manner where love is concerned.

The trip gets off to a bad start when the two get thrown off the ferry, Magalie having brought the wrong tickets, they are forced to bed down in cramped conditions on a barren island with a group of SAGA holidaymakers. The next day gets off to a promising start – for Magalie, at least – when they meet some hunky surfers, but any hope of romance soon hits the rocks, despite Magalie regaling all with her song and dance routine, and nightfall sees them back in the same bedroom together.

When they finally get to Mykonos, Magalie’s old friend Bijou (Kristen Scott Thomas rocking flowing grey tresses) it ready to welcome them into her Greek idyll with her artist  boyfriend (Koronis). This is where Blandine shines, bonding with breast-cancer sufferer Bijou who is anxiously awaiting the results of a recent biopsy.

Les Cyclades brims with tears, recriminations and laughter – and Calamy is genuinely hilarious, Cote complimenting her spunky confidence with a sober sensitivity. As a comedy duo they chanel the same comedy dynamic as Alison Steadman and Harriet Reynolds in the TV outing ‘Abigail’s Party’. Meanwhile Kristin Scott Thomas’ Bijou – straight out of the swinging sixties – provides a fun and stabilising influence as a successful woman grounded by the feel-good influence of love. MT

NOW IN FRENCH CINEMAS

https://youtu.be/xbIsRbyrhJQ

 

 

Goodbye Happiness | Au revoir le bonheur (2023)

Dir: Ken Scott | Cast: Francois Arnaud, Antoine Bertrand, Louis Morisette, Patrice Robitaille, Julie LeBreton, Charlotte Aubin | France/Canada Comedy Drama 107′

Serious themes are given the simplistic treatment in this lightweight comedy that bobs along pointlessly in Canada’s Ken Scott one-note direction.

When their father dies, four adult brothers return to their childhood home in Canada’s picturesque Magdalen Islands, only to discover the housekeeper has turned it into a fully occupied b&b. But much worse is to follow at the reading of the Will, forcing the men – and their families – to completely reassess the future.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing authentic in about any of these main characters who are merely cyphers representing their individual personality flaws: Nicolas (Arnaud) is unfaithfulness personified: we see him mindlessly bonking Camille (Aubin) in the opening scenes, and then inviting her to join the trip. “With your family?” she splutters, incredulous, and soon fades into the background. Charles-Alexandre (Morisette) is greed personified, a bland financier who spends the film working out how to extract his inheritance. Then there is William, a writer unable to string two words together for a new novel. But perhaps the saddest of the foursome is Thomas (Bertrand), an overweight loser who cannot move on from the past and spends the whole time whingeing. The performances here are as flaccid as the various subplots that fail to resolve convincingly in a mawkish scenario held together by saccharine interludes picturing this happy extended family romping around the countryside never disagreeing despite justifiable reasons to do so considering the tragic issues that confront them. This is just abnormal, even comedy needs tonal nuance.

By the end we are supposed to feel happy and relieved for them but we really couldn’t care less. The only saving grace in this comedy without any laughs is Norayr Kasper’s stunning photography that puts this gorgeous part of Canada on the screen for all to enjoy. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

Beat Girl (1960)

Dir: Edmond T. Greville | Cast: Gillian Hills, Christopher Lee, David Farrar, Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field, Oliver Reed, Peter McEnery, Nigel Green | UK Drama 89′

Gillian Hills is the teenage star of this 1960s classic from Nice-born director Edmond T. Greville, who trained under Ewald Andre Dupont, and who also made the horror cult classic The Hands of Orlac the same year.

Anybody in any doubt as to who really created the distinctive sound of 007 need look no further than the opening sequence featuring the John Barry Seven that starts this extraordinary meeting of talent from different places and different eras; ranging from the veteran French director himself to Christopher Lee, Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field and a debuting Oliver Reed absurdly gyrating about in a loud plaid shirt anticipating the wally he’d ultimately end up as.

Based on Greville’s own story adapted for the screen by English scriptwriter Dail Ambler, the characterisation is far more nuanced than in the hippy era, as exemplified by the pouting Gillian Hills in the title role, far removed from the vapid bimbo with whom David Hemmings romped with purple paper in Blowup. She would later go on to secure the part of Sonietta in Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971). @RichardChatten

The Old Way (2023)

Dir: Brett Donowho | Cast: Nicolas Cage, Clint Howard, Abraham Benrubi, Ryan Kiera Armstrong | US, 95′

Nicolas Cage is back to his old way of starring in second rate material, like this pale rider of a western that rather puts the genre to shame despite is stunning settings in Wyoming. Modern day westerns really need to have another string to their bow beyond just a passable script and solid production values to compete with the multitude of titles flooding our film screens from Netflix to Amazon Prime and beyond.

During the past decade or so filmmakers have revitalised the western genre updating the original concept with refreshing stories that still remain tethered in the past: arthouse chiller The Power of the Dog (2020), the sheer dynamism of The Revenant (2015) and Oscar-winning Django Unchained (2012) have earned their place in the pantheon offering innovative twists to style that was originally defined by the AFI as ‘set in the American West embodying the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier’.

The Old Way may tick the boxes but its torpid direction and formulaic revenge theme fails to set the campfires burning entertainment-wise, and Cage, who turns in a reasonable performance as a craggy gunslinger facing up to past misdemeanours, is certainly is no Clint Eastwood. Another also ran. MT

Copenhagen Cowboy (2023)

Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn | Cast: Angela Bundalovic, Andreas Lykke Jorgensen, Li li Zhang, Jason Hendil-Fors, Zlatko Buric, Fleur Frilund, Valentina Dejanovic, Maria Erwolter | Denmark, TV Series

A visionary woman from another planet is at the heart of this spellbinding 6-parter (Netflix), the latest from the maverick Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, scripted by a clutch of imaginative female writers and limned by glowering compositions and neon-soaked visual effects from award-winning Magnus Nordenhof Jonck (Bridgend, A War).

Back in his native Denmark for the first time since 2005, the arthouse auteur not only stars here but embellishes the film with previous themes from Neon Demon, Only God Forgives and Pusher in a lurid miniseries that is so edgy and aesthetically breathtaking you can forgive its minor narrative flaws.

Copenhagen Cowboy swoops down on the dystopian underbelly of the modern capital where vicious gangs hold sway fed by an evil influx of Eastern immigrants  vying for power in the drug trade. Miu (Bundalovic) is the connective tissue between them, an outwardly vulnerable faith healer with a mysterious provenance. This mistress of the martial arts is naturally misunderstood by the misogynist menfolk in her midst who are deeply fearful of her ability to rapidly switch allegiances, cast a spell – or kill with a stroke of her hand. The limpid-eyed Miu is also a miracle worker, a lithe ‘living lucky charm’ decked out in a Prussian blue ‘William Jacket’ tracksuit, for ease of movement.

The film’s casting is superb: Pernille Lembecke and Astrid Faarup have rounded up a compelling cache of actors who not only look surreal but also embody pure evil. As Miu, Angela Bundalovic exudes a laconic remoteness not unlike Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Female’ in Under the Skin. Andreas Lykke Jorgensen is supremely scary as a snarling Danish prince of darkness, and his mother, a vampish blond with chiselled cheekbones, is straight out of a Helmut Newton photo. Then there is Zlatko Buric’s slobbering Slavonic lawyer, a criminal fixer who inhabits one of the city’s stylish skyscrapers, and later emerges as Miu’s negligent relative. A deluded Serbian housewife (Dejanovic) and her vicious axe-wielding pimp of a brother make for nefarious siblings early on in proceedings. Winding Refn also gets a wordless look-in, Hitchcock-style, in a subplot involving the design of a supercharged prosthetic penis. There are also killer pigs whose maniacle squealing provides the soundtrack for one particularly gruesome episode involving the tattooed Aryan prince of darkness in an imagined Danepack-style factory.

These vibrant characters will captivate diehard fans during the many haunting longueurs, and keep us glued to the screen for fear of missing some vital clue or visual flourish. The novelty here is the use of a 360-degree camera that revolves round the set like a southern cassowary scanning for prey.

Refn plays fast and lose with the plot-lines, but who cares with so much visual mastery at play; performances that zing with originality, not to mention Winding Refn’s penchant for avantgarde synth-pop soundscapes – one by Cliff Martinez, another by Julian Winding, complete the spell. Refn’s time with Netflix has ensured the worldwide exposure of his unique brand of talent but word has it that he is returning to the big screen with another bizarre offering. Bring it on soon. MT

NOW on NETFLIX

 

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel (2023)

Dir.: Amelie van Elmbt, Maya Duverdier; Documentary with Merle Lister, Rose Cory, Steve Willis, Bettina Grossmann, Nicholas Pappas, Larry Rivers, Stanley Baird; USA 2022, 76 min.

Dreaming Walls tells the story of one of the most iconic hotels of America and its transformation into a bland ‘luxury’ hotel eradicating a glorious and decadent history of one of the final haunts of New York’s vibrant bohemian society.

Belgian filmmakers Amelie van Elmbt and debutant Maya Duverdier visit the current Chelsea Hotel, where the last of New York’s libertine literati still hold sway trapped between unaffordable rent rises, renovation chaos and nostalgia.

The story artist Steve Willis laments the downsizing of his former one-bedroom flat to a studio, gone is the bathroom where Janis Joplin’s toothbrush holder once reigned as a witness to her short romance with Leonard Cohen, inspiring his “Chelsea Hotel No. Two”.

Photos of Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas Marylin Monroe, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs – to name only a few – light up the walls, in homage to another former resident, the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas who was the first to brake away from screen projection.

And Andy Warhol, whose Chelsea Girls (1966) immortalised the residents during the hotel’s heyday. Languishing like ghosts from a bygone era these tantalising images are a poignant reminder of the rip-roaring yesteryear gradually being eradicated by the gruelling renovation – now in its tenth year.

Yet there’s a comfort in the building works; clinging on in grim solidarity and herded together onto the first floor by the management, some sitting tenants secretly hope the renovations will go on forever, fearing the inevitable rent rises will drive them out when the makeover morphs into just another piece of property porn riding on its former glory, to accommodate a flush but vacuous nouveau riche. but only attracting those who can pay the exorbitant price.

Decay and violent has always featured heavily at the Chelsea Hotel – according to former manager Stanley Baird the Sid Vicious/Nancy Spungen affair in 1978 was a case in point, quoting artist and performer Rose Cory: “the Chelsea was a place for love, divorce, drugs and creativity. It’s a powerful location”.

Merle Lister, once a famous choreographer, tries to befriend the construction workers, but they give her short shrift – like the old ghosts of the past. Some of them actually die during filming: Bettina Grossmann (1927-2021), a conceptual artist, was the hotel’s longest resident. Wild flowers and fauna have now taken over the balconies, and a poster proclaiming “Help me, I am being killed”.

Joachim Philippe and Virginie Surdej have stuck to the concept make Dreaming Walls a night ride into the past with their evocative camerawork, as the past collides uncomfortably with present reality. Dylan Thomas provides the symbolic epitaph: “Do not go gently into the night”, along with a fitting tribute : “TO ALL WHO ONCE STAYED IN THE CHELSEA, AND THEIR DREAMS”. Dreaming Walls is an ode to a New York that was artistic, experimental and untamed. AS

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 20 JANUARY 2023

ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS FROM 20 JANUARY 2023

The Cat and the Canary (1978)

Dir: Radley Metzger | Cast: Wilfrid Hyde-White, Honor Blackman, Olivia Hussey, Edward Fox | US Drama

While John Willard’s original play was produced in 1922, this version updates the action to 1934 (which still predates the Bob Hope classic by five years).

Whereas the mansion in the earller films had been dark and covered in cobwebs, here it is vast but tinny, hopelessly overlit and decked out in what Honor Blackman sardonically describes as “my favourite period, early Devil’s Island!”

But as seventies remakes go however it could be a lot worse, and making Lawyer Crosbie a woman is a bright idea (especially as she’s played by Wendy Hiller). Beatrix Lehman makes a memorably spooky housekeeper as the ironically named Mrs Pleasant, while the depiction of mean old millionaire Wilfred Hyde White at the film’s conclusion makes a novel use of colour. @RichardChatten

Tár (2022)

Dir: Todd Field | Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss | US Biopic Drama 158′

Cate Blanchett is sheer dynamite – allegedly mastering fluent German – as a world famous musician foisted by her own petard in this hefty near three hour biopic from US director Todd Field.

Field, in his first film since Little Children (2006), firmly establishes the gravitas of Lydia Tár’s prestigious position as head conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in the prodigious opening scenes of a feature which luxuriates in its endlessly fascinating main character; her peripatetic high-net-worth lifestyle amongst the Berlin’s musical luminaries, her pioneering grit and perseverance in accomplishing her multiple worthy achievements: now at the zenith of her career she is a pianist, composer, conductor and successful family woman who has adopted a Syrian refugee with lover Sharon Goodnow (the ever luminous Nina Hoss) and is seemingly in-eclipsible, or so it would seem. But then allegations of impropriety surface – as they always seems to these days – leading to a down-spiralling in professional and homelife. Is she a narcissist? or simply a perfectionist unwilling to accept second best from her fellows, or herself – Field leaves you to make the final decision.

Slow-burning towards a coruscating crescendo after a languorous, immersive overture, Tár’s denouement is decidedly gut-punching. Certainly a film for cineastes or fans of classical music, this is heavyweight yet compelling entertainment, that keeps us engaged throughout its running time. A magnum opus for Field and a tour de force par excellence for Blanchett. Let’s hope she wins the Oscar – she certainly deserves to. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 13 JANUARY 2023 | Copa Volpi Award for Best Actress Cate Blanchett | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

Empire of Light (2022)

Dir.: Sam Mendes; Cast: Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Hannah Onslow, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke; UK 2022, 119 min.

This noble tribute to the golden days of the picture palace and the power of human connection is underwhelming despite the deep humanity of its intentions. A brilliant British cast of Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Tom Brooke and Toby Jones are the motley crew of characters trying to keep their cinema afloat in the seaside town of Margate, where the chance to show a regional premiere of Chariots of Fire gives hope to a movie theatre that is well past its glory days. Director and first time script writer Sam Mendes certainly offers a flawless visual portrait of provincial England at the beginning of the 1980s but his script lets him down, lurching between lethargic melancholy and over intense melodrama unfolding in a series of episodes rather than a cohesive and flowing feature.

The Empire is a cinema on Margate beachfront where troubled employee Hilary (Colman) has suffered a breakdown and is barely coping with the unwelcome sexual advances of unhappily married cinema manager Donald (Firth), and a much younger addition to the team, Stephen (Ward), who falls for her as the two begin a torrid affair. But after getting close to Hilary, Stephen, who is black, rekindles his relationship with his first girlfriend Ruby, destabilising Hilary’s fragile stage of mind. Hilary is somehow in thrall to Donald and their conflict comes to head on the cinema’s first night screening of Chariots of Fire, when she then trounces him by reading an Auden poem, before spilling the beans.

During a National Front rally, the mob then storms the cinema, seriously injuring Stephen and landing him in hospital. The other three main members of the cinema staff: the sensitive ticket manager Neil (Brooke), cranky projectionist Norman (Jones) and usherette Janine (Onslow) in her “Rocky Horror Show” outfit, barely get a look in as characters, despite the rich tapestry of the storyline and its exciting potential.

Instead, Mendes concentrates far two much on nostalgic detail and the negative aspects of Hilary’s condition which robs the film of momentum and the chance for the other characters to play a real part. Strangely Roger Deakins’ rapturous camerawork becomes the focus of Mendes’ mournful semi-autobiographical recollection, upstaging even Colman’s soulful performance and the support of the underused and talented cast who struggle with their underwritten parts. What could have been a landmark film about the healing nature of cinema, music and community ends up as another decent, but rather unbalanced production where politics instead of people takes centre stage. AS

EMPIRE OF LIGHT in UK and IRISH CINEMAS from 9 January 2023

Piggy (2022)

Dir.: Carlota Pereda; Cast: Laura Galan, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Julian Valcarcel, Irene Ferreiro, Camilla Aguilar, Jose Pastor, Claudia Salas; Spain/France 2021, 99 min.

Always original – surreal even – Piggy is a vibrant coming-of-age psychological revenge thriller from Spanish director Carlota Pereda, developed from her 2019 short film of the same name, that shows how in some European countries obesity is still socially unacceptable.

The opening shot sees the main character Sara (Galan) standing in her parents’ butcher shop in small-town Extramadura, her homework soaked in pig’s blood. Outside, three girlfriends Claudia (Ferreiro), Roci (Aguilar) and Maca (Salas) are about to go swimming with the local boys. Sara is not only over-weight she is downright obese. And her parents have made things worse by favouring a younger brother. What follows is a disturbing but all too common look at teenage bullying that can lead to emotional trauma.

When Sara eventually gets to the pool her girlfriends try to drown her with a lacrosse stick in an extreme act of bullying, stealing her clothes in the process. Waddling home in her bikini, the tables are soon when she is accosted by car carrying her screaming friends, driven by The Stranger (Holmes). In a supreme act of revenge Sara ignores their desperate pleas for help, and heads back to the village where more horror unfolds when a video featuring her being bullied by her pals has been circulated by Claudia’s boyfriend Pedro, who has deleted it “out of pity”.

Scenes of graphic horror unfold in the revenge spree, not only in her parent’s house but also in a  slaughterhouse in the nearby countryside, where Sara gets her own back on the entire village. And this being Spain, a bull –  in this case an escaped prize fighter – also colludes with The Stranger in the ensuing bloodbath. In her clever script Pereda clearly implies that he might also have been a victim of bullying like Sara. Far from being just a slasher, Piggy is a startling and intelligent look at teenage angst, complete with a complex blood-soaked narrative. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY

 

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Dir: Robert Wise | US Sci-fi 92′

A key work of fifties science fiction recently awarded the accolade of yet another unnecessary remake, The Day the Earth Stood Still remains one the sadly few contributions to the genre made with grown-ups in mind.

Robert Wise’s classic hits the ground running with a terrific title sequence and a tingling theramin score by Bernard Herrmann (one of the few genuinely original scores ever written for a sci-fi movie) dovetailing into a still unsurpassed depiction of a flying saucer sweeping across the Washington skyline before gracefully settling in the centre of the Washington Mall.

Michael Rennie had the role of his career as the tall, personable, well-spoken Klaatu (writer Edmond North later admitted to Klaatu’s use of ‘Carpenter’ as an alias and his resurrection as conscious references to Christ). His nine-foot robot Gort was played by Lock Martin, the doorman at Grauman’s Chinese Restaurant, the tallest man in Hollywood.

Klaatu in the words of Peter Biskind is “not one of those diffident aliens who land on a farm somewhere in Iowa and takes years to make their way to Washington or Los Angeles. Klaatu means business and goes right to the top.” At the height of the Cold War Rennie’s testy remark “I’m not concerned with your petty squabbles!” is an extraordinary thing to hear in a mainstream Hollywood movie; while Albert Einstein – obviously the model for the wise Professor Barnhardt –  was also at that time a controversial figure. @RichardChatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES

The Minute you Wake Up Dead (2022)

Dir: Michael Mailer | Cast: Morgan Freeman, Cole Hauser, Jaimie Alexander | US Crime Thriller

Why Morgan Freeman went for this clunky cliched ‘neo-noir’ whodunnit is anyone’s guess. The only other mystery is how such a poor script got a budget to be made in the first place. Set in deepest Mississippi it sees a group of honest but deeply uninteresting people emerge as suspects in a story so far-fetched and implausible even Freeman fails to gain credibility as the local sheriff investigating the case. It all starts with Russ (Hauser), a financially successful broker, enjoying drink in his local after trousering a fortune on the city’s stock markets. Tongues start to wag when he is confronted by an angry punter lamenting the loss of his life savings. It appears Russ has duped the locals in an ill-thought out insurance scam, and they are not best pleased at losing their money. Russ then gets a series of anonymous phone-calls announcing: “Where will you be the minute you wake up dead?” Do we really care? Russ’s next door neighbour Delaine (Alexander) does, and she temps him round to her place to enjoy ‘the best beef stew in the neighbourhood”, according to her daddy (Dahlgren) who survives the stew but then gets shot dead. This is the first in a series of murders, Morgan Freeman losing the will to live as gradually bodies and plot-holes pile up. MT

ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS from 9 JANUARY 2023.

 

A Man Called Otto (2022)

Dir.: Marc Forster; Cast: Tom Hanks, Mariana Trevino, Mario Garcia-Rullo, Truman Hanks, Rachel Keller, Cameron Britton, Peter Lawson, Anita Jennings; USA 2022, 126 min.

This lightweight user-friendly remake of Hannes Holm’s dour original A Man Called Ove (2015) is styled for the American market, based on a bestseller by Fredrik Backman. It stars Tom Hanks as Otto, a lonely pensioner suffering from the recent death of his beloved wheelchair bound wife Sonja (Keller).

On a condominium outside Pittsburgh, Otto is Pennsylvania’s answer to Victor Meldrew, a miserable old buffer hellbent on bringing rule-breakers to task, particularly parking offenders and neighbours who put their rubbish in the wrong container – there are so many to choose from. In flashback we see a much happier Otto (Hank’s son Truman), courting the bookworm Sonja in his petrolhead days when speed was his main thing.

Tragedy strikes on the way back from a day out at Niagara Falls when the two are involved in a road accident killing Sonja’s unborn child and condemning her to life in a wheelchair. An office tantrum soon sees Otto edged out of his long-term job, and a place on the condominium Administration Board. Otto then comes to blows with his  best friend and neighbour Rueben (Lawson) who buys a Japanese car, an act of treachery in Otto’s opinion.

But all is not lost – the very start of the film has already predicted a return to grace for grumpy old Otto who is seen buying a rope that leads to a botched suicide attempt. Otto now has new neighbours, the do-gooding twosome Marisol (Trevino) and Tommy (Garcia-Rullo). Marisol is pregnant again, and Otto offers her driving lessons and becomes a reliable babysitter. He also offers sanctuary to teenager Malcolm – now transgender rather than gay – after the boy’s father throws him out.

Hanks’ easy charm and bountiful bonhomie is the key to his casting, he can never be seen in a negative light – for long at least – so the rest of the film is bland and predictable. Gone is the quirky indie feel of the Swedish original and we are left with a feel-good story of schmaltz and saccharine, just saved by the production values and an humanising Tom Hanks. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2023

The Wicked Lady (1946)

Dir: Leslie Arliss | Cast: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc | UK Drama

Described by the late David Shipman as a “junk classic”, and Margaret Lockwood as a “calculating husband-stealing murderous bitch” (surrounded by decor and wearing costumes that must have consuming half the budget) who relieves her boredom by moonlighting as a footpad and enjoying a sado-masochistic relationship with a very saturnine young James Mason (who calls her a “green-eyed devil”).

Critics absolutely hated this film, but it went to become the top-earning British film of 1946. Like all the best melodramas the women call the shots (and if anything Lockwood particularly enjoys rubbing her own sex up the wrong way concentrating on their jewellery and devoting much of the film tussling with them like a prizefighter).

The ladies in the audience obviously derived considerable pleasure from the sight of Lockwood plunging ever deeper into sin while rooting for Patricia Roc – who gets to slap Lockwood’s face – and gone home well satisfied when she dies (SPOILER COMING:) with a bang followed by a whimper. It’s even rumoured that Queen Mary used to regularly watch it at Marlborough House. @RichardChatten

Rimini (2022)

Dir: Ullrich Seidl Wris: Ullrich Seidl, Veronika Franz | Cast: Michael Thomas, Tessa Gottlicher, Hans Michael Rehberg, Ibrahim Isiktas | Austria, Drama 116′

Rimini is a comedy of the most tragic kind. Accurately reflecting the tawdry reality of life in a washed-out seaside town in winter where lost souls come together disillusioned by lives that turned out to be shadows of their hopes and dreams it pictures the sleety coalface of the 21st century as it really is for many, warts and all.

Fans of Austrian auteur Ullrich Seidl will welcome another addition to the archive. Rimini is less horrific than his gruesome Safari. More long the lines of Paradise: Faith, and Paradise: Love this latest is less poetic, infinitely more grotesque and quietly brilliant in its acute observations. A muted colour palette and exquisite compositions offer some visual redemption but for the most part Rimini is a heart-sinking film to watch.

The first and only laugh comes near the beginning when the main character, ageing nightclub singer Richie Bravo (Thomas), swaggers back home to Austria from his squallid apartment in Rimini to attend his mother’s funeral, during which his dementia-ridden father (beautifully played by Hans-Michael Rehberg) shouts out “who’s dead?” It’s an all too familiar situation for many and Rehberg (who died in 2017 shortly after filming) will also provide the film with its devastating finale that conveys the pity and poetry of this ghastly yet deeply affecting drama.

But when Richie later beds down in his single-bedded teenage room after the funeral, the sad truth emerges: his life has never really moved on from leaving home, to a failed relationship that inadvertently bore him a neglected daughter Tessa (Tessa Göttlicher). But more of that later.

Off-season Rimini is a tacky retirement backwater where the raddled paunchy figure of Richie Bravo returns. After the sobering events of the funeral, his sweaty leather trousers and bleach-blond looks still seem to cut the mustard with the budget crown of Austrian/German holidaymakers who are prepared to pay for a few awkward ‘senior’ moments between the sheets, despite the usual sexual accoutrements,  although passion has long left the bedroom for both parties.

The louche lounge lizard zips himself up and heads back for another grotesque stage appearance eking out strident cover versions from the past. And then home to confront Tessa who has suddenly fetched up in Rimini to reveal her pregnancy with a Muslim refugee (Isiktas) and is demanding bed and board along with his entourage of religiously observant pals. Tessa’s indomitable appearance provides the touchstone to reality that will bring Richie full circle to the present and a future of deeply-felt pain and financial hardship that will lead to his descent into venality. MT

ON RELEASE in the UK early in 2023

 

Caravaggio’s Shadow (2022)

Dir: Michele Placido | Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, Lolita Chammah, Micaela Ramazzotti | Drama 120′

Riccardo Scamarcio hogs the limelight as the painter Caravaggio, aka Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), in this visceral epic that glows like one of the painter’s original masterpieces in this imagined drama from Michele Placido.

Accused of murder in 1609 the maverick painter flees the depraved bacchanalian world of 17th century Rome but is unable to escape the clutches of Louis Garrel’s inquisitorial Catholic investigator Ombra (a fictitious character) or the lustful advances of Isabelle’s Huppert’s Marchesa Costanza Sforza Colonna whose family offers him sanctuary in Naples while urging the Pope to offer clemency until Caravaggio’s suspicious death in Porto Ercole the following year.

Scamarcio gives an incendiary performance as the legendary ‘bad boy’ who purportedly loved young boys as much as beautiful women, and whose talent for taking outcasts and sinners and transforming them on the canvas into saints and madonnas is almost eclipsed by his salacious lifestyle.  

Caravaggio has long captured the imagination of art lovers and world specialists – such as Andrew Graham Dixon – and Placido’s ambitious art thriller certainly evokes the savage mystery of the era with stunning set pieces, an emotive original score and Michele D’Attanasio’s painterly camerawork although it often feels like the script, co-written with Sandro Petraglia and Fidel Signorile, overelaborates the sensationalism at the expense of historical facts.

Caravaggio’s talent as the era’s most spectacular painter elevates him into the realms of superstardom while he himself remains a grounded character despite his undeniable genius. Scamarcio really brings out the humanity in the painter and his vulnerability as an artist and convinces us of his efforts and his subsequent failure to rise above the negative impact of the nefarious characters surrounding him. This thrilling expose of the life and times of a legendary and revolutionary artist is lusciously mounted entertainment on a grand scale. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE and in the UK later in 2023 | ROME FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE

 

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Dir: Bob Clark | US Horror

A bunch of hippies learn the hard way to sow some respect for the dead in this cross between an episode of ‘Scooby Doo’ and The Blair Witch Project played for laughs with the production values of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This no-budget lark shot in Florida directed by ‘Benjamin’ (as he was then billed) Clark sure delivers the goods. The atonal score by Carl Zittrer frequently sounds more like sound effects than music and art director David Trimble (not that one, I hope) adds to the levity by putting his surname on a tombstone.

The usual bunch of hippies are an engaging bunch, particularly feisty Valerie Mamches and wide-eyed Anya Ormsby. The climax when it finally comes doesn’t disappoint you when it erupts (SPOILER COMING:) into a wondrous pastiche of Night of the Living Dead.

NOW ON YOUTUBE AND PLEX

Paris Blues (1961)

Dir: Martin Ritt | Joanne Woodward, Sydney Poitier, Paul Newman | US Drama 98’

The cinematic legacy of the Beat Generation has always been far more interesting than that of the hippies. Graced by the black & photography of Christian Matras this film creates a Paris far removed from the early work of Godard then being made.

A testament to the days when cool dudes wore suits and ties, of whom none were cooler than Paul Newman and Sydney Poitier in their pristine youth (the former playing a bad boy in a role originally meant for Brando is seen perusing a copy of the New York Herald Tribune carrying a picture of Kennedy’s inauguration on the front page).

Like most films about jazz it’s far too in awe of itself and everyone talks too much (it’s at it’s most self-satisfied in the musical duel between Newman and Satchmo); and Duke Ellington’s noisy score makes no attempt to complement the action.

The performance that gives the film real soul is that of Joanne Woodward, who when she herself gets to tickle the ivory ironically plays a few bars of the ‘Blue Danube’. @RichardChatten

Speed (1994) Prime video

Dir: Jan De Boni | Cast: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, Joe Morton | US Action thriller 116′

An exemplary piece of high concept filmmaking that provides plenty of bang for your buck. Director Jan De Bont does a lovely job martially the components with results that really look as dangerous as they’re supposed to with none of that obvious CGI and wobbly steadicam that makes watching modern action films such a trial; and there’s none of that glee in indiscriminate death on a vast scale that disfigures the Die Hard films.

Keanu Reeves is a charmingly dedicated hero, and Sandra Bullock gives the performance that made her a star (her distress when she thinks she’s hit a child’s perambulator is genuinely touching).

Dennis Hopper is obviously having the time of his life playing “an encyclopaedia of bombs” whose line “Poor people are crazy. I’m eccentric” is worthy of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

You Resemble Me (2022)

Dir.: Dina Amer; Cast: Lorenza Grimando, Illona Grimando, Mouna Soualem, Sabrina Cuazani, Dina Amer, Alexandre Gonin, Gregoire Colim, Agnes de Tissandier, Zinadine Soualem; US/France/Egypt 2021, 90 min.

Who was Hasna Ali Boulahcen?. Mistakenly known as “the first European woman suicide bomber” by the media, after a series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks that rocked Paris on Friday 13 November 2015, it later turned out that her only ‘crime’ was to flee the building where the terrorists were hiding. A male accomplice detonated Hasna’s suicide vest, bringing to an end her tragic life, and inspiring American-Egyptian journalist Dina Amer to make this passionate feature debut that plays out like a slowly detonating bomb.

The film follows Hasna (9) and Mariam (7), who are played by real life sisters Lorenza and Illona Grimando, growing up in a rough part of Paris where they often steal to survive with their Maghrebi parents: an abusive mother, and a father who is hardly ever there forcing Hasna to take responsibility for her little sister. The social services place them with different foster families and their religious dietary requirements are totally ignored: foster parents (Colim/Tissandier) have no idea that Hasna cannot eat pork. As an adult, Hasna is played by three actors with the help of Deepfake technology: the “party girl” (drugs and sex) is Mouna Soualem, the “assimilated pretty-girl” identity by Sabrina Ouazani. Amer lends her face to the now radicalised freedom fighter.

Mariam is astonished when she sees her cousin Abdel Hamid (Gonin) on TV, talking about joining the fight against the “infidels”. Hasna always dreamt of joining the French Army – but, like many radicalised people – becomes bitter after being rejected by a recruitment officer (Soualem), who is more French than the French themselves. After the “Charlie Hebdo” and “Bataclan” shootings, Hasna calls the French protesters ‘a mindless mass’, setting up the gruesome finale to her life.

Amer finally turns the camera away from Hasna and onto her family with the usual  interviews that express deep sadness. But somehow Hasna as a person still eludes the audience, although she emerges a deeply damaged person. There are simply too many contradictions in the life of a young woman caught up the culture war currently fracturing French society. Hansa emerges an innocent by-stander, driven into hands of male chauvinists who killed her before she could get away.

DoP/co-writer Omar Mullick uses his handheld camera to great effect, tracking the tears of Hasna’s terrible life. You Resemble Me is anything but perfect, but at least it’s authentic, a tragedy that truly reflects life finally becoming more positive as the story unfolds. AS

IN CINEMAS 3 February 2023

The Grand Bolero (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

The Big Freeze

With temperatures this Christmas dipping to -18 in parts of Scotland, Richard Chatten reflects back on Britain’s Big Freeze of 1963 and the films that were on in the cinema back in the day.

 

Sixty years ago in December this country was hit by months of sub-zero temperatures and actually made it into the Guinness Book of Records for one of the coldest UK winters ever.

Britain was covered in a thick blanket of snow long enough for it also to leave an indelible mark on the British cinema, through which its progress can actually be charted.

Perhaps the earliest film of The Big Freeze was Stanley Goulder’s The Silent Playground, a drama shot set in South London during which the snow obviously first fell, playing havoc with the film’s continuity, since it comes and goes scene from scene.

The snow was firmly established by the time of the two classic Pinter adaptations The Caretaker and The Servant, the cold being so bitter that Joseph Losey was hospitalised with pneumonia, and Dirk Bogarde had to take over the latter as director for several days.

Val Guest’s 80,000 Suspects, starring Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom, depicted the attempts to control an outbreak of smallpox in a Bath covered in snow, and became a metaphor for generalised crisis, although people were hardier back then having been through one, and some of them even two, World Wars. Several Edgar Wallace mysteries (notably John Moxey’s Ricochet) are also shrouded in snow along with Calculated Risk, a heist thriller with music by George Martin.

Nightmare

By the time of Wolf Rilla’s The World Ten Times Over the snow had visibly turned into slush. Probably the last film that appeared during the frosty weather was Hammer Film’s Nightmare, a psychological thriller marking the film debut of Jennie Linden. It hit cinemas in the chilly April of 1964.

The only feature depicting The Great Freeze in colour appears to have been Snow, a British Transport Films short shot by the veteran cameraman Wolfgang Suschitsky which portrays British Rail making light weather (if you’ll pardon the pun) of the snow. The Great Train Robbers sensibly waited till the following summer. @RichardChatten.

THE BIG FREEZE | DECEMBER 2022

 

 

 

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2022)

Dir.: Pawo Choyning Dorji; Cast: Sherab Dorji, Ugyen Norbu, Keiden Lhamo, Kunzeng Wangdi, Tshering Dorji, Sonam Tashi, Pem Zam, Tsheri Zom; Bhutan 2019, 109 min.

A delightful story from Bhutan that sees a vain and self-centred young man deciding to leave his close knit community to forge a career as a singer in Australia.

Ugyen Dorji (S. Dorji) feels misunderstood by his friends and family for wanting to emigrate to Australia, particularly as his job as a teacher is much valued in his hometown of Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. During his fifth and final year of the mandatory government service, Dorji’s boss sends him to the remote mountain village of Lunana, eight days by foot and horse from Thimphu, to teach a class of nine primary children.

During the journey Dorji remains detached and hostile towards Michen ((Lhendup), a guide who leads him all the way up the mountains: he never takes his headphones off (until the signal gives out), and is generally unapproachable, refusing to give a ritual offering to the Gods. In the village, he is incensed to discover the outside loos and primitive conditions, and immediately asks to be taken back, but changes his mind, when 12-year old Pem Zam (her real name) the “School Captain” reminds him of his commitments.

Pem Zam’s father is an alcoholic, and her niece Saidon (Gurung) a singer of traditional songs, given as offering to the Gods. Dorji soon becomes a favourite with the children and Asha (Jinpa (Wangdi), the village elder, starts singing again for the first time after the death of his wife. Dorji is enchanted by Saidon who teaches him a melancholic song “Yak Lebi Lhadar”, about a yak herder who mourns the loss of his favourite animal. Saidon also gives Dorji the titular yak named Norbu who takes up residence in the class room. Even though Dorji has given up on the internet, he is adamant to leave the village before winter sets in, telling the villagers that he will not return, but fulfil his dream of a singing career in Sidney, where we watch him performing to a totally disenchanted audience.

In his director debut Pawo Choyning Dorji borrows a reverse storyline from Andrei Konchalovsky’s second feature The first Teacher (1965) that follows a teacher sent from Moscow to a Muslim village where, contrary to Dorji’s experience, the villagers greet him with hostility.

We expect Dorji’s heart to melt – but no such luck. He is fixated on a goal which he has “imported’ from the internet: his dislocation in Australia is just the outcome of a collision between the TV images Dorji has internalised and the reality. Like many others, he is chasing a dream which does not exist.

DoP Jigmet T. Tenzing takes full advantage of the breath-taking beauty of the mountain world, threatened by extinction due to Global Warming – a term the villagers have not heard yet, but are fully aware of the dramatic consequences of climate change. Tenzing, like the director, avoids any sentimentality: although Dorji is a prime example of a person who has buttoned themselves down emotionally to avoid dealing with long term trauma from the past, and possibly the future

When Dorji asks his students the classic question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” one boy tells him his chosen profession is to be a teacher because “he reaches towards the future”. AS

Lunana was shortlisted for the Foreign Feature Films Category of the “Oscars” and had its world premiere at the LFF 2019 in London. Director Pawo Choyning Dorji has since finished his second feature Four Day to the Full Moon in 2022.

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom – In cinemas and digital 10th March

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975)

Dir.: Chantal Akerman; Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Yves Bicat; Belgium/France 1975, 202 min.

Ironic that Chantal Akerman’s epic of female loneliness has replaced Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo as the “Greatest Film of all Time” according to the “Sight and Sound Magazine’s 2022 Critics’ poll”. Hitchcock, the leading perpetrator of the male gaze, has finally been ousted by Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman: a rigorous chronical of visual storytelling.

On the other hand it is no co-incidence that the iconic British director has found countless imitators over the years: ‘Hitchcockian’ is now a commonplace adjective in film parlance. Meanwhile Akerman’s disciples – Kelly Reinhardt and Gus van Sant – are still grafting away at the coalface of arthouse film; celebrated by cineastes, but certainly not the mainstream.

Chantal Anne Akerman was born Brussels in 1950 to the holocaust survivor Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, whose family perished in a concentration camp. Chantal had a sister, Sylvaine, but Nelly would be her guiding light, encouraging Chantal to forge her own career rather than marrying young, as her mother had done. But Chantal still saw life from her mother’s perspective, despite a radical relationship with Sonja Wieder-Atherton, and a job as a university lecturer in New York. Akerman’s final feature No Home Movie (2015) captures Nelly’s final months. Akerman would take her own life the same year, in Paris.

Jean Dielman was shot in five weeks with a modest grant from the Belgium government of around 20,000 euros (in today’s money). Anchored by a luminous performance from Delphine Seyrig, one of the day’s foremost film stars in France and Belgium, Seyrig was also one of the first feminist filmmakers whose Be Pretty and Shut Up (Sois belle et tais toi) 1981 ruffled quite a few feathers in the male-dominated French-speaking cinema world at the time. Seyrig carries the feature, haunting every frame with her elegant obduracy. She is fragile – yet always capable and in charge – until blind-sided by an event she had never anticipated.

Jeanne Dielman lives a modest existence with her teenage son Sylvain (Decorte) in a tiny flat in Brussels. A widow trying to keep up appearances on reduced circumstances, she leaves nothing to chance. Daily-life plays out in a repetitive timetable over the course of three days. The relationship with her son could best be described as detached, the closest they ever get to closeness is when competing for the most accurate pronunciation of a word from his Flemish-speaking school. Even a letter from her sister in Canada is viewed with formality rather than sibling affection, and this style sets the tone for the rest of the film.

Incessant washing, cleaning and cooking form the basis for the meticulous monotony of Jeanne’s daily life. And there’s a comfort in the quotidian, punctuated by brief errands, or to replenish the larder. Whenever Jeanne leaves a room, she switches off the light. Relief comes as a poisoned chalice when her neighbour’s baby arrives in a portable cot, driving her to distraction with its endless mewling, all beyond her control. The afternoon sees Jeanne receiving clients (Storck, Doniol-Valcroze, Bical), who pay for her bedroom services, and keep the wolf from the door.

The first signs of mental disorder erupt in highly controlled emotional meltdown over an incident involving potatoes. Jeanne then forgets to put the lid on the tureen, a hiding place for her hard-earned cash, and is afterwards seen frantically going round the shops in search of a button missing from a coat. The following day will see Jeanne pushed to the limits, the formal minimalism morphing into a melodrama that is implied but never shown. Under a mantle of discrete ecstasy Jeanne’s world spins out of control when a client dares to threaten her stability, challenging her control and exposing feelings that can be never be realised or properly acknowledged in her life of emotional asceticism.

DoP Babette Mangolte shoots in colour but her images owe much more to black and white. Jeanne is always in charge, and always busily involved in a world of repetitive housekeeping. Her casual outings take us into a world of stasis – the roads and pavements bereft of movement, make Jeanne happy, because they submit to her orderly sense of self. At the end she is almost catatonic, and somehow purged of her inner angst, for a while at least. Akerman’s triumphant study of displacement activity is almost a horror story, a psychological thriller that sees Jeanne forced to keep herself engaged in a mindless, male-enforced rigorous ritual to avoid a loss of control and its contingent breakdown that would expose the gaping emotional void in her life.

BFI will screen JEANNE DIELMAN as part of the full 100 Greatest Films of All Times in JANUARY, FEBRUARY and MARCH 2023.

Broker (2022)

Dir.: Hirokazu Kore-eda; Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, Joo-young, Lee Ji-eun, Park Ji-young, Im seung-soo; South Korea 2022, 129′.

Surrogacy is given an upbeat comedy treatment in this touching crowd pleaser from Japanese humanist Hirokazu Kore-eda, his first to take place in Korea.

Broker is very much in the same vein as his Cannes winner Shoplifters, proving once again his talent for turning melodrama into social realism, even though the film is rather too fluffy in its near formalistic conclusion. It all starts in film noir mode: the rain is pelting down on the South Korean city of Busan where distraught mother Moon So-young (Ji-eun) has just given birth to a child she cannot afford to keep. There is a baby hatch in a nearby religious charity building, and she puts baby Woo-sung (Ji-yong) in front of the hatch and disappears into the night. Following hot on her heels are two baby trafficking detectives – Soo-Jin (Dona) and Lee (Joo-young).

The day after, So-young has a change of heart – even though she had put a note into the baby-basket promising that she would return she confronts a pair of kidnappers Ha Sang hyon (Kang-ho) and Dong soo (Dong Gang-dong-won) who are actually stealing her baby for a money-making scam. When So-young threatens the two men with the police, they admit their crime, but offer So-young a part in the “sale” of her baby: it’s always better to have the biological mother present. The detectives are puzzled when So-young gets into the spirit of things, refusing to lower her asking price, even though the adopting couple lower their offer claiming “the baby isn’t as cute as in the photos”.

Broker occasionally risks turning into a farce, but Kore-eda cleverly avoids it. The same going for the role playing changes with the two detectives seemingly are the only ones, who want the baby to be sold, just to solve their case. DoP Hong Kyung-pyo shows off his love of small details, and Song Kang-Ho, who won “Best Actor” in Cannes, perfectly pitches his melancholic take on proceedings. Broker is certainly not Kore-eda’s best, but it may be his warmest, most humanistic and passionate statement, moving the audience without spilling into sentimentality. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 2023

 

In his first Korean-set film unfurls itself into another touching, wryly funny tale of surrogate families. It’s not quite on a par with his Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters – what is? – but it’s a crowd-pleaser and a gentle joy, with a standout performance from Parasite’s Song Kang-ho.

Broker opens with a young woman, So-young (K-pop star Ji-eun Lee), leaving her new-born son at one of Busan’s so-called baby boxes. They’re a real-life mechanism to enable struggling parents to ensure unwanted children find their way into care. But they come with social judgment – ‘You threw your baby away’, So-young will be told on more than one occasion – and in Broker’s world, at least, they’re ripe for exploitation. Sure enough, two adoption brokers, Sang-hyun (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), steal the baby and begin touting him around on their network of wealthy wannabe parents, using their laundrette as a front for their criminal enterprise.

It’s an unlikely scenario – even before So-young, wanted for murder and being trailed by two cops, forms an unlikely alliance with the two baby traffickers – but Koreeda’s warmth and wit make it easy to let it slide. He wants to take you on a journey with a burgeoning family of misfits that’s soon swelled by another young orphan. The quartet, and the young moppet, travel around in a battered van full of dry cleaning from one lot of potential parents to another. It reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine in its easy charm, and there are similar dynamics are at play here: touching bonds slowly forming, life lessons being learnt and some big laughs.

The thieves-with-a-heart-of-gold trope is reinvigorated by Song Kang-ho’s Basset Hound charms
The hackneyed thieves-with-a-heart-of-gold trope is reinvigorated by the sharpness of the writing and Song’s Basset Hound charms. While Broker occasionally gets close to cloying, especially in its neat ending and jaunty score, Koreeda keeps it the right side of cutesy. It’s best enjoyed as a modern-day fairy tale – only, one where the abandoned baby sparks nothing but enchantment.

 

Anonymous Club (2021)

Dir.: Danny Cohen; Documentary with Courtney Barnett; Australia 2021, 83 min.

Australian filmmaker Danny Cohen takes full control in this musical biopic about the singer/songwriter and ‘anti-influencer’ Courtney Barnett, who sprung to fame with her witty deadpan lyrics in an album called “I’ve got a friend called Emily Ferris”.

The whole point about Barnett is that she became a sensation not through a glossy image of self-promotion but because of a reclusive style that makes a virtue of her tortured inner conflict and deems her to be a powerful feminist voice for audiences all over the world, and a ‘mega-star in the making’. That may make her sound like a female version of Morrissey, but time will only tell if her talent matches up to the iconic 1980s superstar of the Smiths who is still going strong in his sixties.

Cohen gained access to Barnett through their many music-video collaborations, and paints an intimate picture of the 35-year-old Sydney born singer who is not afraid to admit to deep-seated low-self-image issues and occasional bouts of depression. But somehow Cohen is too overcome by the artist’s persona, and allows the feature to turn into a sort of self-help therapy session.

The film’s title is taken from Barnett’s 2013 song, which we never hear, even though her world tour (without backing band) offers ample opportunity. Starting in 2018, when Cohen told Barnett to use her dictaphone for an ongoing commentary – later used in the feature – the singer had just split up with girlfriend and musician Jen Cloher, who had taken an active part in the creative works. “Tell me, how you really feel” is a proper break-up album, words not being minced: “Tell me when you are getting bored//And I leave//I’m not the one who put the chain around four feet//I am sorry for all my insecurities// But it’s just part of me//”.

The tour takes Barnett on the road to places like Bloomington (Indiana), Oslo and Berlin, but the focus is firmly on the singer herself, and Cohen never lets her escape: “I am not your mother//I am not your bitch” she rages, shouting so loudly during performances, that she loses her voice. Barrnett is often passive-aggressive: “Sometimes I sit and think//and sometimes I just sit”. And: “You know it’s ok to have a bad day”.

When somebody new enters her life, Barnett calms down a bit, but the film’s overriding impression does not compute with the ‘girl next door image’ concocted by the networks and her PR. This would have been fine had the director left his safe spot of chronicler and admirer and posed a few direct questions. Yes, it is absolutely normal to be insecure in the music industry where dog eats dog and the other way round – but  nowadays we are all living on the edge of a precipice in a climate we have helped to create.

Barnett still has a voice – literally and figuratively speaking – but most ordinary people do not. Nobody wants to take the cuddle blanket away from her, millions are clearly waiting to buy her records. But please, save us from long shots with purring cats listening to her guitar songs: this is not a therapy session open to all. In her mid-thirties, Barnett still has the right to feel insecure, but Cohen is obliged to shoot some straight, even awkward, questions. By negligence, he is derailing his project by finishing with another version of “Courtney is just like you and me”. She is not, and the star and her chronicler know that only too well. Therapy might be free, at least in this case – but not much else. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Mr Bachmann and His Class (2021)

Dir: Maria Speth | Doc, Germany 217′

A weighty documentary Fred Wiseman would be proud of takes an in-depth look at the life of dedicated German teacher, Dieter Bachmann, and his teenage class in Stadtallendorf near Marburg.

Germany has learnt a long lesson in the aftermath to the Second World War, and the atrocities of Nazism are still drilled into  pupils, particularly here in a city infamous for its history as a munitions centre that made use of forced labour in the local factory, now buried by its roof covering of trees.

Of course nowadays the class is also made up of immigrant communities from Turkey, Bulgaria and Russia who see the world from a different perspective: ‘the war’ has another meaning for them, but they have all suffered crisis back home and find themselves adjusting to another country, and a diverse set of rules.

Laid-back and placid, Bachmann strikes a jovial figure in his youthful garb of jeans and tee-shirt, despite nearing retirement. His speciality is music and art, along with the classic curriculum of German and Maths, and his comforting phrase “Wir schaffen das” (“We’ll handle it”) makes him a popular teacher and mentor all round. The length of the film allows us to get to know the man himself and appreciate his methods and the enormity and subtlety of the task at hand – not only instructing the next generation, but making them into culturally sensitive, compassionate individuals.

Away from the didactic sounding title, the film unfolds as an enlightening and immersive study of classroom multiculturalism along the lines of Laurent Cantet’s 2008 docudrama Entre les Murs (The Class) and Nicolas Philibert’s classic Etre et Avoir (2002) with Bachmann being the German equivalent of the film’s Georges Lopez. A Hollywood equivalent Dangerous Minds, where Michelle Pfeiffer takes on a monumental task as a retired marine turned teacher in a deprived and racially divided community in California, shows just how challenging teaching can be. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 9 DECEMBER 2022

 

January (2022)

Dir.: Andrey Paounov; Cast: Samuel Finzi, Iossif Surchadzhiev, Zahary Baharov, Svetoslav Stoyanov, Leonid Yovchev, Malin Krastev; Bulgaria,/Luxembourg/ Portugal 2021, 108 min.

A first feature for Bulgarian director Andrey Paounov, who honed his craft as a documentarian,   January sees two men and a bird trapped facing an existential crisis in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere.

January is the coldest month in Bulgaria, and no-one in their right mind would venture outside, particularly into the woods, where wolves and vampires lurk in a ghostly white wilderness.

Borrowing from Beckett and Lynch and based on a play by Yordan Radichkov, Paounov and his English co-writer Alex Barrett (best known for City Symphony) drench their evocative icebound thriller in post-socialist gloom, aesthetically it is close to the “Dybuk” features set in Eastern Europe in the late 1930s.

In a small hut next to an old industrial building, the guard (Finzi) and an old man (Surchadzhiew) are bored, trying to master the crossword. They are waiting for a certain Peter Matorow, who went out early in the morning with his sled and gun to drive to the nearby city. Matorow seems to be in charge, and able to find a solution for the current impasse. Soon twins (Baharov/Stoyanov) arrive, wanting to know about the whereabouts of said Matorov. They are threatening, and the guard tries to pacify them. Finally, Moratow’sled arrives, but the horse carries just his gun and a wolf frozen to death.

The arrival of a priest (Yovchev),makes everything even more enigmatic, and the ritual of the horse returning only with a gun and a frozen wolf is repeated four times – without any hope for the return of Matorov. After dark, a group of vampire hunters arrives, accusing the old man of being dead for a long time. But they leave in the sled with the now customary outcome. In a brilliant scene towards the end – shot in glittering colour in contrast to the sombre black-and-white of the rest of the feature – the guard, by now contemplating suicide, visits a 1950 night club, where the bartender (Krastev) treats him like an old friend.

DoP Vasco Viana composes images of a prison like existence, where the two men live in the shadow of the plant next door, whilst they are reduced to opening walnuts with a self-built apparatus. It is clear, that the huge building next door represents communisms, old photos of their leaders are laying around, decaying like the building itself. On the other hand, the modern oligarchs, who are ruling the country now, are not much better, the twins just want to participate in the exploitation of their home country. The Guard is trying to keep the vampires at bay, and save something of the past for himself and the old man, before becoming more and more suicidal. Symbolically, the crow kept in an cage and suspected to drink the local brew of rakia, is uncertain to leave its cage after given the chance to fly away.

JANUARY is compelling first feature , but the running time doesn’t  legitimsed by the rather thin narrative..

AS
***1/2

White Noise (2022) Netflix

Dir.; Noah Baumbach, Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy; USA 2022, 136 min.

The curse of the festival opener was alive and kicking at Venice when this feature has its world premiere: Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, an adaption of Don de Lillo’s 1985 novel, is simply an embarrassment. In New York, Jack Glasdney (Driver) and Babette (Gerwig) have a brood of kids to look after from their own fraught marriage and earlier relationships. And they fail miserably: the toddler and younger children are a drain on their energy and, the older ones – including teenager Denise (Cassidy) seem more mature than their parents. Then an ecological disaster comes to town, and Jack is caught in the fallout. Mysticism and graphic violence ensues, but no plot resolution of any kind. DoP Lol Crawley does his best to keep the frantic tempo going, but it’s all empty noise.AS

ON RELEASE on NETFLIX FROM 9 DECEMBER 2022

Tori and Lokita (2022)

Dir.: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; Cast: Pablo Schils, Joely Mbundu, Alban Ukaj, TijmenGovaerts, Charlotte Bruyne, Nadege Quedrago,Marc Zinga; Belgium/France 2022, 88 min.  

With Tori and Lokita Belgium writers, directors and producers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have found their way back to the brilliance of Rosetta and L’Enfant – both Palme d’Or winners – with their angriest feature yet. Winning the 75th Anniversary award in Cannes 2022 was also recognition of their continued commitment to shining a light on those at the outer margins of society in films that were neither sentimental soap operas nor Ken Loach-style agitprops: Tori and Lokita is a tragedy, a drama and a poetic love story of a different kind.

Back in the Dardennes’ old stamping ground of Liège and the industrial suburb of Seraing we first meet eleven year old Tori (Schils) and his sixteen-year old sister Lokita (Mbundu) during a committee hearing to establish her status as bona-fide emigrant. It later emerges the two are not related but met on the boat to Italy, Tori having been forced to leave Cameroon purportedly as the child of a sorcerer. So the two of them cooked up a story to increase their chances of getting refugee status for Lokita. But the authorities only grant Tori leave to remain, and Lokita is threatened with deportation.

The two are meanwhile under extreme pressure not only to provide financial assistance for the education of Lokita’s brothers back home in Cameroon, but also to take into account the restaurant Chef Betim (Ukaj) and the people smugglers Firmin (Zinga) and Justine (Quedrago) who got them into Belgium – at a steep price. Betim uses them in his drug trading activities, and when it becomes clear that Lorita will not get a resident visa, Betim promises to get her papers if she tends a hash plant for three months. Lokita agrees, even though Betim is sexually abusing her. Tori hatches a plan which will seem like a victory for the two of them, but turns into a tragedy of epic proportions.

DoP Benoit Dervaux’ handheld camera catches the full range of emotions etched across the faces of these two desperate people struggling to be accepted. Much the same as every visa system, the Belgium one is arbitrary, and laced with an undercurrent of xenophobia. Lokita is fiercely protective of Tori: she is his mother, sister, and companion: always encouraging him to go to school so that he can realise his ambitions. Lokita herself wants to become a home help, if granted refuge status. Somehow, the Italian song Tori picked up in Italy becomes ‘their song’, a theme tune Tori sings to cheer Lokita forward, through thick and thin. Their loving interdependency is the beating heart of this tender tragedy.

Tori and Lokita is a stark reminder for parents all over the world who may be ignorant of the dangers of people trafficking. The Dardenne brothers keep their distance, never judging the youngsters, always trying to see things from their perspective in a humane and passionate story of our times. AS

Released exclusively in cinemas on 2 December 2022 | Picturehouse Entertainment

   

More than Ever (2022)

Dir: Emily Atef | Cast: Vicky Krieps, Gaspard Ulliel, Bjørn Floberg | France, Drama 123′

Taking control is a powerful part of dealing with terminal illness. And choice is at the heart of this romantic drama from French filmmaker Emily Atef. The film follows Helene (Krieps) a bright young woman madly in love with her husband, Mathieu (Ulliel), and overwhelmed by feelings of loss and isolation at the thought of dying, just as her friends are looking forward to the future.

Anxious not to be defined by her incurable condition Helene is naturally depressed, not least at contemplating the end while those around her are beginning their married lives and looking forward to having children – one is already pregnant, the usual pictures of the growing baby are passed round the dinner table, where Helene becomes a figure of pity, people not knowing quite what to say as she struggles on alone.

Naturally Mathieu is keen to find a cure for her illness, but Helene feels shut out by his own desperate need to keep her alive, against the odds. And forcing her to be positive when a new treatment offers hope. Even her mother imposes her own feelings of self-pity, breaking down in tears rather than giving Helene strength and the time to talk and express herself.

Atef clearly understands the situation. There is nothing more normal than wanting to get away from the wave of pity and silence that descends on us when we face challenging situations, such as life-limiting illness, or the curse of infertility. And Helene also realises that her lover will go on to have a full life and a family with somebody else.

Feeling lost and isolated she seeks solace on the internet and gets to know a terminally ill man (Bjørn Floberg) living in the pristine paradise of the Norway’s fjords, and feels comfort and solidarity from reading his daily blog. Off she goes to meet him, without Mathieu, who wants her to stay in France in case a suitable lung donor becomes available. The peace and solitude, and the spartan surroundings of a boathouse adjoining the man’s property provides distance and a chance to rediscover herself and take control of her illness. Atef does not look for easy exits or a sentimental treatment for her dying heroine. And Helene is not always a sympathetic character, but she is vulnerable, and we feel for her – it’s a monumental performance from Krieps, and from Ulliel, who ironically would die suddenly in an accident, months after filming wrapped.

The stunning cinematic setting of the Norwegian countryside in early Spring offers a bracing backcloth to a tragedy that could happen to any of us facing certain death or contemplating the final days of a loved one. And More than Ever offers an upbeat message of hope, not just unmitigated doom. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE and in the UK from early 2023.

 

 

 

It was a Sunday evening in November (2022) Turin International Film Festival 2022

Dir: Lina Wertmüller | Doc, TV 120′

It went almost unnoticed outside Italy that earthquake that struck the southern Irpinia region on a Sunday evening in November 1981.

But filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, who blazed a trail through Italian cinema during the Seventies with hits like Swept Away, was there with her camera recording human tragedy in a nation continually rocked by seismic disaster. And this was just another incident that would go down in history. More lives lost. A government repeating that lessons would be learnt. But they never were.

Just a year after her death Italian Television pays tribute to the pioneering director with a restoration of the made for TV documentary: È una domenica sera di novembre which aired a year later on RAI TV2 and during Turin International Film Festival 2022

The Roman-born filmmaker said at the time: “This poor South captivates me, stimulates me, land of wolves and kings, where I feel planted perhaps because of an Irpinian grandmother. This deep South, the part with the least, left behind. Alone, that always feels at disadvantage from the others. This unknown South that everybody think they know, and therefore feel entitled to define, judge, maybe condemn and when a catastrophe like the earthquake brings it up again, you realise that you know nothing at all about that South, that it is a continent as distant as the Third World, but with the space and nature of other third worlds”.

As the cameras roll over the scene of total devastation during that tragic Sunday night, a woman’s voice echoes from deep in a crater, another pitiful old lady talks of five such earthquakes in her lifetime alone. Mangled bodies are pulled from the wreckage and wrapped in white shrouds amid tangled debris, broken glass and exposed masonry. A helicopter glides over the region giving us a bird’s eye view of the area involved: churches and buildings lie in ruins most look almost beyond repair.

The South has always been forgotten and marginalised in the scheme of things. The regions of Campania, Apulia, Abruzzo, Basilicata, Molise, Calabria and Sicilia seem like a different country from the industrial powerhouse of the wealthier northern regions. There are clearly parallels here with the recent floods in the southern states of America – the voyeuristic TV cameras are there to offer an armchair view of human misery, but the government seems largely to have turned its back, although prime minister of the time Amintore Fanfani makes a sheepish appearance in dark glasses, and is then driven away in his limousine. Public support from the richer industrial north of the country was certainly offered, but coordination was clearly lacking and politicians’ empty words fell on deaf ears.

What starts as a reportage of the unfolding catastrophe and the subsequent proposals for reparations soon broadens out into an in-depth ethnographical portrait of local traditions, folklore, religious devotion and time-honoured customs. All this is interwoven with Wertmüller and Piera degli Esposti’s readings of the comments on the South made by literary luminaries Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi, Furio Colombo, Alberto Ronchey, Giampaolo Pansa and enriched with passages taken from the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Pliny the Younger, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Giacomo Leopardi. The documentary ends with a final interview with Martin Scorsese who is still very active in promoting the wider cinema world beyond his own focus on Italian American features.

With this glowing digital restoration, Lina Wertmüller’s documentary does what it set out to do: bear witness to an ongoing Italian tragedy: “It is my dream that everyone should be made aware of what’s happening in Italy. No just today, when the events are unfolding, but for posterity. In short, let us remember that the future is ancient”.

TURIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | 25 November – 3 December 2022

Lina Wertmuller courtesy of Torino International Film Festival

 

 

Driving Mum (2022)

Wri|Dir: Hilmar Oddsson

Hilmar Oddsson offers up another tale of Icelandic family strife and dysfunction, a black comedy very much along the lines of his fellow countryman Grímur Hákonarson’s dour and determined tale of sibling rivalry set in a farming community, Rams.

Although here the drift is towards melancholic fantasy, it’s a brave and bracingly impressive feature proving Icelandic cinema to be one of the most offbeat and ingenious in the magnetic north.

Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson cuts a dismal figure as A son whose existence is diminished by the maternal force that gave him life – and we feel for him. His indomitable mother (Kristbjörg Kjeld) is the classic monster matriarch – feared and yet revered in equal measure and he finds himself trapped by her influence.

This son, his dog and his deceased mother – the ultimate back seat driver – take to the road in a final surreal cross-country journey. Sardonic is the watchword as long-discussed funeral plans are finally put in motion in a grim valedictory voyage. Although dead, mother still dominates from beyond the grave as a gaunt and ghoulish physical presence to ensure her wishes are followed to a tee.

Óttar Guðnason creates a saturnine sense of place with his stark black and white cinematography providing a bleak and baleful backcloth to Jon’s rumination on an unfulfilled existence and his lonely life. Revenants from his past include a solitary female figure, a group of karaoke revellers and a recurring carnival motif.

Reality occasionally rears its head in the understandable queries he receives from people he meets along the way, and this contrast between the mundane and the ephemeral provides the piece with its vein of tragi-comedy.

Although his dead mother remains tight lipped and stoical, her wishes become real-time in-car conversations that really need no voice; they are seared into Jon’s unconscious like some macabre maternal spell that bizarrely echoes from the other side. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 1 MARCH | GRAND PRIX winner at Tallinn International Film Festival 2022

She Said (2022)

 

Dir: Maria Shrader | Cast: Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Angela Yeoh, Zach Grenier, Ashley Judd, Samantha Morton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angela Yeoh | US Drama 129′

Maria Shrader’s worthy trudge through the Weinstein saga sees women tearing up at the slightest provocation – even those who never met him – but there’s one consolation: Carey Mulligan.

She plays Megan Twohey, one of a pair of New York Times journalists, along with Joe Kazan’s Jodi Kantor, who wrote a harrowing Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the prolific sexual crimes committed by Hollywood mega-mogul Harvey Weinstein back in 2017, when the scandal finally broke.

The City of London was my domain for nearly fourteen years, and so no stranger to sexual shenanigans on the trading floor. I was once asked to keep a Norwegian shipping magnate ‘happy’ after a night out with fellow brokers. Naturally I froze in anger and disbelief back in the day as a twenty something graduate used to more respectful behaviour from the opposite sex. But hey – you faced up to them, or moved on, or got over it. It was very much the territory for working women in a man’s world, particularly attractive ones.

Nowadays we have the #MeToo brigade who – quite rightly – objected to their big bosses’ beastly behaviour. Not just a slap and a tickle but hard core sex. One of them, Rowena Chiu (Yeoh), complains Weinstein asked for ‘just one thrust’. The whole idea is faintly ridiculous.

She Said is sober, well-acted but terribly dull because we know what’s going to happen as the torpid narrative, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, trundles along solemnly with the two tracking down rumours and substantiating the umpteen financial settlements that allowed Weinstein to avoid legal proceedings in preying on actresses and assistants for decades. Nearly 90 people would eventually agree to share their stories about Weinstein – who we never see – although we do hear his stentorious voice during a telephone call. The women affected included Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Ashley Judd (who plays herself).

The reporters work would also spawn a book: She Said. And that literary tome provides the basis for this earnest but bland account of the take-down of the most powerful man in the movies who is now serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault.

Mulligan saves the day as a pre-possessed and powerful reporter, softened by motherhood, but still ‘having none of it’; Kazan’s Jodi feels she’d be more at home running a knitting class, but her sympathetic face seems to do the trick in getting the information out of run-down mothers and film execs who were clearly devastated by their casting couch experiences. The rest of the cast is supportive: Samantha Morton’s Zelda Perkins stands out as the most grounded, philosophical and convincing victim, Patricia Clarkson is solid and reliable as the NYT editor who guided some of the era’s most seismic investigations. Shame then that the real villain of the piece is nowhere to be seen. Who would play him? MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

Enys Men (2022)

Dir.: Mark Jenkin; Cast: Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe, Flo Crowe, John Woodvine; UK 2022, 91 min.

Enys Men is a surreal leap forward for Cornish auteur Mark Jenkin after his striking 2018 debut Bait. Once again we’re back on the Cornish coast with another unorthodox feature and Jenkin taking full control of the artistic process: from directing and writing to creating the soundscape. The setting, a small island off the Cornish coast, plays the lead role in the mystery and we, the audience, join the human cast in groping the way through a maze where a beast is waiting in prey.

Mary Woodvine is the red mackintosh wearing ‘Volunteer’ – a sort of caretaker and biologist. And that red Mac strikes fear into our hearts – a pavlovian response from Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Mary’s lonely days are spent documenting the genesis of lichen on six experimental flowers with distinctive red stamens. Nightfall sees her tucked up in bed with Edward Goldsmith’s 1972 bestseller “A Blueprint for Survival”.

From her flower diary we know the year is 1973, and the month is April, and the film is drenched in this seventies atmosphere. The colours produced by the 16mm camera reflect the bleached out and grainy look of the era. A radio – Mary’s only contact with the world beyond crackles away, a live wire of conflicting channels zinging with static, just like wirelesses did back then. But this wireless is the only way of communicating with the outside world, apart from sporadic visits from a boatsman (Rowe) who offers provisions and carnal delights for the lady of the house. The forth protagonist, an ecclisastic (J. Woodvine), is straight out of Wicker Man, and, together with the pagan statue on the island, creates a menacing ambiance of mounting dread and expectancy for the plantswoman. Her younger ‘Alter Ego’ (Crowe) occasionally rears  her head to remind us of a history suggestive of violence, and the scar on the woman’s stomach is testament to some kind of past brutality .

All this minimalism brings to mind Bresson, but a certain opaqueness very much echoes Resnais. Repressed love and terror mingle with images of angelic children all dressed in white suggesting some kind of pagan ritual. Enys Men scratches at the edges of horror and the tropes are all there along with the evocative soundscape that signals a change in the emotional atmosphere. The past has taken its victims, and the future is unpredictable. The missing minotaur is always just hiding beyond the next rock, ready to pounce.

ENYS MEN is pure cinema, constantly catching the audience by surprise. As we search for visual clues it soon becomes clear there is nothing to understand in this enigma open to individual interpretation. Although the lack of a concrete conclusion may frustrate many audiences, Enys Men sees Jenkin developing his visual style and language as an unique auteur. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 23 JANUARY 2023

My Neighbour Adolf (2022)

Dir: Leon Prudovsky. Israel/Poland/Colombia. 2022. 96 mins.

Udo Kier adds a certain twinkly allure to this rather saccharine tragicomedy about a concentration camp survivor who suspects his neighbour of being a war criminal – Adolf Hitler, no less.

Israeli director/co-writer Leon Prudovsky clearly thought it was a good idea to make an upbeat film about the Holocaust after so many understandable tragedies. A shame then that My Neighbour Adolf comes across as a tonal misfire that could have worked better as a sinister thriller or a wacky comedy – some may indeed find the glib 1960s set feature rather tasteless. On the plus side it’s got Udo Kier as the offending ‘man next door’.

Somewhere in South America – possibly Colombia – the grumpy old Polsky (Hayman) is the sole survivor of a family that purportedly perished during the Holocaust leaving him to live out a placid existence tending his black roses transported from the homeland.

When not playing chess or chatting to the postman Polsky is puzzled by his new German neighbour Mr Herzog – a dead ringer for the infamous Nazi leader. But his efforts to probe the man’s background come across as clunky and insubstantial, and are drawn out right until the finale, Kier stealing the show as a cantankerous old bugger whose vulnerability occasionally adds a certain charm. But David Hayman gets most of the screen time with his curious accent – leaning towards Scots rather than Eastern European – forced to compete with the insistent, irritating score. MT 

IN UK CINEMAS from 4 NOVEMBER and DIGITAL PLATFORMS from 14 NOVEMBER 2022

Bones and All (2022)

Dir: Luca Guadagnino | Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothee Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Mark Rylance | Romantic Drama, 130’

Ten years ago Let the Right One In told a coming of age story about teen vampires. Bones and All turns the spotlight on cannibalism in a tale that is both tasty and tender thanks to the troubled twosome at its heart, Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet. Luca Guadagnino brings his talents to the table for the third time with writer David Kajganich.

Lee and Maren are two cupid-struck cannibals who drift across America in a blood-spattered blue Chevrolet from Virgina to Nebraska. Slowly falling for each other in a western-style romantic drama Bones occasionally veers into gore and visceral thrills but not nearly as much as in Raw. This is a sympathetic celebration of young love, freedom and self-realisation laced with a strumming score of country tunes. Arseni Khachaturian’s lushly lensed locations are loosely inspired by Edward Hopper’s cold-edged canvasses and a Camille DeAngelis 1980s novel.

But unlike the source material Maren is looking for the mother she never knew. She developed a taste for human flesh after nibbling a friend’s finger, and then cut her teeth with a menacing man-eater in the shape of Sully (a menacing Mark Rylance) who prefers his flesh cold. Then she falls for Lee, a grifter of sorts with a penchant for gay-mey meat despite being straight. And although they gorge themselves endlessly on love and lean meat there’s a hollowness here that is very 21st century. Can they reconcile their individual weirdness and make a go of it? Deep down they’re just like everyone else. MT

NOW in CINEMAS | Best Director Award | Venice Film Festival 2022

 

Westerns are Back in Town | Turin International Film Festival 2022

Turin Film Festival has long been synonymous with westerns. A favourite genre of artistic director Steve Della Casa, the tradition goes back to the turn of the 21st century when the festival paid tribute to those venerable veterans of the Wild West: Howard Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann and John Ford.

 

Terror in a Texas Town

 

Steve Della Casa has spent the past two decades focusing on a fistful of lesser known films from the era. Delving into the archives of the more niche directors like Ray Enright, Lesley Selander, Randolph Scott and Sterling Hayden, he has presented a clutch of cult classics championed by critics and western lovers like Bertrand Tavernier or Phil Hardy, films that celebrate an eclectic variety of characters, tones and styles – and some curios such as Sam Newfield’s 1938 outing THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN, starring dwarf actor Billy Curtis, and his 1937 hit HARLEM IN THE PRAIRIE with its African-American cast. Wacky, eccentric characters are the name of the game in FOUR GUNS TO THE BORDER (1954), actor Richard Carlson’s first film as director, adapted from Louis L’Amour’s novel, showcasing the simmering sensuality of its leading star Colleen Miller.

The Terror of Tiny Town

 

TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN (1958) was one of four acclaimed B-movies that brought Joseph H. Lewis’ cinematographic career to a close, a dynamic duel between the black-clad gunslinger and striking sailor Sterling Hayden, armed with just a whaler’s harpoon – is one of the most memorable scenes in western history. The American Civil War made its mark on the lives of western heroes, staging scenarios that were as divisive and irreconcilable as the war itself – and reverberate even today.

Four Faces West

 

In Roy Rowland’s 1947 outing THE ROMANCE OF ROSY RIDGE (1947) these conflicts take on a poetic and lyrical tone. FOUR FACES WEST (1948) is, by contrast, peaceable by western standards with hardly a shot fired – ironically it was a box office flop – and SHOTGUN (1955), the jewel in the crown of Lesley Selander’s prodigious 100-feature output – is a taut revenge western, filmed in blazing Technicolor. Worth a mention is also CORONER CREEK (1948) which was shot in the more economical Cinecolor by Ray Enright, a film that would lead Randolph Scott – one of western’s most popular stars – to his long and fruitful collaboration with Budd Boetticher.

The Romance of Rosy Ridge

 

And where would be without a psychological western, a sub-genre very much in vogue from the late 1940s onwards: the choice fell on Harry Keller’s SEVEN WAYS FROM SUNDOWN from 1960 (it is the most recent of the eight films in the review), featuring another western pioneer, and hero of the World War II: Audie Murphy. Sometimes these Hollywood classics give a nod to more successful models, occasionally they anticipate them. See them all on the big screen at this year’s Turin Film Festival. MT

TURIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 25 NOVEMBER – 2 DECEMBER 2022

The Punishment (2022) Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2022

Dir: Matias Bize | Wri: Coral Cruz | Cast: Antonia Zegers, Nestor Cantillana | Drama 85′

A small child turns the tables on his parents in this taut and discursive two-handed drama from the accomplished Chilean director Matias Bize and his screenwriter Coral Cruz.

Ana and Mateo have stopped their car in the woods on their way to visit Ana’s parents for dinner. But a heated argument soon absorbs their attention and seven-year-old Lucas is left to fend for himself. When they are ready to leave, the boy is nowhere to be seen.

Both blaming each other for his disappearance, uncomfortable truths start to surface as the couple question their failure as parents. Ana sternly calls out to Lucas, threatening him with all sorts of privations for his bad behaviour, before eventually ‘phoning the police. It’s a fraught scenario that rings alarm bells for every parent, anything could happen in this bosky backwater, and the camera roves through trees and undergrowth during one tense take.

Zegers’ Ana is ‘mean-mummy’ with her hard-faced disciplinarian approach to dealing with Lucas, and our sympathies lie with her son and his more tolerant father (Cantillana) who, at least, tries to come up with solutions. But then it emerges that Lucas is a bit of a rebel, and not easy to manage, his teachers suspect he is suffering from ADHD.

Gradually Zegers’ wins us over with her plausible confession that eventually brings the drama to its satisfying conclusion, persuading us that motherhood is no picnic; much of the time it is frustrating, gruelling and thankless.

The Punishment is a well-crafted but dour drama that could have worked better as a radio play given the monotonous confines of its setting. Zegers and Cantillana do their best to make Ana and Mateo feel authentic and relatable in a drama that proves, once again, that we are always toughest on the ones we love. MT

TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL | IN COMPETITION 2022

A Letter from Helga (2022) Tallinn Film Festival 2022

Dir/Co-Wri: Așa Hjorleifsdottir | Romantic Drama | Iceland, Netherlands, Estonia | 118′

The wild and windswept fjords and mountains of Iceland are the setting for this visually resplendent romantic drama that sees a poet fall hopelessly in love with his neighbour. A Letter from Helga is based on a novella by Bergsveinn Birgisson who co-scripts.

Așa Hjorleifsdottir follows her first feature The Swan with another lyrical and more accomplished look at how nature and Iceland’s rural and folkloric heritage shapes the emotions of the inhabitants of this extraordinary scenic island in the Northern hemisphere.

For Helga (Hera Hilmar) and Bjarni (Thor Kristjansson) loves comes like a lightening bolt although they are both – unhappily – married, Helga has two young kids with Hallgrimur (Bjorn Thors), Barni and Unnur (Anita Briem) are locked in childless misery. Forbidden fruit is always more tantalising, and the lovers secret trysts grow more passionate as they reflect on their stale marriages, in heart-rending flashbacks. And yet changing their lives seems impossible in the disproving social set-up.

The story is simple with its themes of infidelity, jealousy and bitter regret, but embellished with such poetic poignancy and passion and leads Hera Hilmar and Thor Kristjansson really feel real in their romantic adventure. Hjorleifsdottir scores the intimate scenes and teasing tete-a-tetes with a sweeping score from Kristin Anna Valtysdottir that often tingles with its icy top notes and strident strings, riffing on local ballads and dances. Dreams of starting a new life in Reykjavik hint of a promising future that can never be but seems so possible in the brave new world after the War. MT

WORLD PREMIERE | TALLINN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | BALTIC COMPETITION 2022

 

Nostalgia (2022)

Dir: Mario Martone | Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno, Aurora Quattrocchi | Italy, Drama 117′

Mario Martone’s moody reflective thriller Nostalgia, adapted from the novel by Ermanno Rea, sees a man returning to his past in Naples having made his mark in the Middle East. But this attempt to turn back time and is not greeted with the warmth he had hoped for in all quarters.

Martone floods the screen with the faded glory of the southern Italian seaport in a lush and classically styled rumination that contrasts the positive outlook of his central character Felice Lasco (Favino) with the bitter resentments he finds back home. His moribund mother Teresa (Quattrocchi) is overjoyed to see him but his attempts to reconnect with an old sparring partner, the infamous gangland ‘Badman’ Oreste Spasiano (Ragno), are less successful to say the least. Their nefarious past is pictured in flashbacks – and he is warned to keep away from the crumbling neglected backwater of Rione Sanita where Oreste now hangs out under the protection of his acolytes.

But although Felice is determined to gloss over the ups and downs of his complex relationship with Oreste, who tears up at their reunion, an unresolved incident from the past is still a sticking point between the two men: one who has found personal and professional success, the other failure and a life of crime. Naples is very much a character here and the simple but satisfying plot works to the film’s advantage allowing Martone to embellish his local characters, the most memorable is the local priest Don Luigi Rega (Francesco Di Leva) who still provides a spiritual touchstone to the community from his base in the vast cathedral. Buzzing around on a motorbike in full ecclesiastical regalia he is a comforting but commanding figure, his steadfast moral compass providing the guiding light. But Felice is ultimately a tragic figure, trapped by his determination to heal the past and his inability to face the truth. MT

NOW IN CURZON HOME CINEMA

Emily the Criminal (2022) Prime Video

Dir/Wri: John Patterson Ford | Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Jonathan Avigdori, Gina Gershon, Kim Yarborough | US Thriller 93′

Best known for her dead pan comedy dramas Aubrey Plaza puts out her claws as Emily the star turn in this slick urban thriller from John Patterson Ford.

Emily is a woman at the end of her tether: broke, jobless and desperate to clear a mountain of student debt. An opportunity to make easy cash turns out to be illegal – but needs must when the Devil drives. Unsure, at first, of her criminal credentials she soon gets the hang of it, and as the scams get more serious, Emily finds an inner strength. This diffident damsel in distress turns feisty feminist felon, beating the men at their own game.

But things get more complicated when she joins forces with her charismatic conman boss (Theo Rossi) forcing her into deeper water than she ever thought possible. Emily turns the table on the criminal underworld coming up trumps into the bargain. 

Good production values, moody lighting and a pounding score from Nathan Halpern sets the scene for Patterson Ford’s watchable first feature showcasing Plaza’s cool and compelling screen presence as a modern-day Nikita. MT 

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME

Silent House (2022) IDFA 2022

Dir.: Farnaz Jurabchian, Mohammadreza Jurabchian; Documentary with Nassrin Mirsadeghi, Houssein Mirsadeghi, Mohammad Mirsadeghi; Iran/France/Canada/Philippines/ Qatar 2022, 100 min.

A striking Art Deco villa in Tehran becomes ‘silent witness’ to four decades of Iranian history in a revealing new documentary from the sibling filmmakers who grew up there during the Islamic revolution and beyond.

Farnaz and Mohammadreza Jurabchian spent nearly their whole lives in a palace once owned by Esmat Dowlatshahi, the fourth and final wife of Reza Shah Pahlavi (although the marriage was never officially recognised). The property came into the family when their grandfather, a local trader, decided he had to possess it. His own passion for photography was soon shared by his daughter Nassrin, and later by his grandchildren who would eventually become independent filmmakers, honing their craft in and around their impressive family home.

Silent House unfolds entirely within the confines of the villa, its proximity to the Shah’s official residence, the Sa’dabad Palace, restricted the cameras from roaming further afield. But the family story speaks volumes painting a colourful picture about their life and times. Enriched with personal reflections and archive material from TV and film, the doc provides a potted political and social history of post 1979 revolutionary Iran across three generations.

Their grandmother made her home comfortably on one floor of the building surrounded by gardens and a brood of cats. Growing up the daughter of a wealthy and religious family, she was married off at only thirteen to a much older, middle class, man who put an end to her studies and ballet lessons: “He was mean and treated me like dirt. He beat up any man who looked at me – and he was unfaithful”. But the couple lived there together for fifty years and had six children.

Her daughter Nassrin is an enterprising, over-achiever. But her own husband’s sudden death in the north of Iran forced her to become a single parent. Undeterred, she was soon finding ways to keep the family coffers replenished by turning the tennis courts into a country club. But despite her industriousness, her own mother wanted her younger brother Hossein to take over the running of the house until Nassrin found herself back in control after he was conscripted into the Iran-Iraq war. Hossein came back shell-shocked and suffering from severe PTS and soon cloistered himself in a cottage in the garden, where he later died.

Nassrin had meanwhile joined the 1979 revolution, even taking baby Farnaz with her to meetings where she wore army fatigues and taught her to sing revolutionary songs. Many houses were confiscated by the regime, and Farnaz’ grandfather had to buy back his house for the second time, forcing him into bankruptcy. He died shortly afterwards, of grief.

Nassrin had by now turned herself into a filmmaker and bequeathed a camera to her children. Her father’s funeral, a stately affair attended by all the local traders, is her personal cinematographical tribute to the family’s history. The house then underwent extensive renovations and Nassrin turned it into a film studio – with the fixtures and fittings providing the props. It made a perfect set for many feature films, with the family appearing in bit parts – “everyone in the house became part of the film set”. In 2005 it provided the location for Masud Kimiai’s feature The Command and later Ziaeddin Dorri’s The Pahlavi Hat series. The siblings then started to make their own short films.

Ever ambitious, Nassrin moved on to education, becoming director of the PBO Kindergarten in charge of 144 children and over 2000 employees. During the Iran-Iraq war, Nassrin had banned TV for her children, preferring them to watch light-hearted dramas such as The Sound of Music. Soon they were real cineastes. And while their mother was developing an interest in running for President during the 2009 elections, civil was breaking out, and Farnaz was encouraged to leave Iran.

 

In Montreal, Farnaz decided to enrol in film school rather than study engineering. “But whenever I wanted to shoot something, I had visions of home”. Meanwhile Mohammadreza had stayed in Tehran and was studying  photography. The siblings (and their cameras) were re-united in the villa when their mother’s eldest brother Mohammad arrived. He had left Iran forty years previously to live in the UK.

A family wedding is the last hurrah for the palace, their grandmother died shortly afterwards in her late eighties. The siblings film her non-stop during the last days of her life; “that was all we could do for her”. During her funeral, the cats roamed freely throughout the property, finally making a home for themselves in the house. Nassrin gives in to the demand of the rest of the family to sell. And prospective buyers are filmed, looking round a house where in 1943 Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin once carved up the world.

DoP Mohammadreza Jurabchian’s camerawork certainly improves during the long Gestalt period. Personal and political events interweave seamlessly, the mood is melancholic in this unique combination of social history and personal tragedy, as well as happy times.

The authorities in Tehran felt so threatened by the feature they refused to allow the directors and producers to attend the screening at the IDFA in Amsterdam on its world premiere. Another case of Iranian censorship taking the country backwards rather than forwards into the 21st century. AS

IDFA | INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 2022

Armageddon Time (2022)

Dir: James Gray | Cast: Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong, Domenick Lombardozzi | US Thriller, 115′

Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway star in this coming of age story about growing up in Queens in the 1980s. Armageddon is a solid but rather bland, sentimental drama that feels overlong and underwhelming, from the director who made his first New York-based drama Little Odessa – about a family of Soviet Jews – at the tender age of 25.

Armageddon Time returns to the same territory with another working class Jewish family trying to fit in. And there are some spirited outbursts both at home and in the classroom, although for the most part it’s a toned down rather docile affair. The plot lines are predictable, and references to the Holocaust are a hollow echo of much more moving dramas on the subject of antisemitism. The oblique references to the local influential Trump family feel like cheap point-scoring with intentionally unlikeable cameo roles from John Diehl as Donald Trump’s father Fred, and Jessica Chastain as the hard-faced US judge Maryanne Trump, along with the fact that the Graff family hail originally from Ukraine.

The youngest boy Paul (Banks Repeta) is possibly an autobiographical portrait of the young James Grey – unruly, artistic and at odds with the rest of the striving family, particularly his hot-headed father (Jeremy Strong). He only really connects with his grandfather Aaron (Hopkins) who will finance his private education after the subversive troublemaker gets a bad name for himself at his local ‘comprehensive’, with his black friend Johnny ending up taking the rap. Celebrated cinematographer Darius Khondji tries to lift Armageddon out of the torpid settings but, all and all, this brings nothing new to the party in contrast with Gray’s later more avantgarde sci-fi outing feature, the space-hopping Ad Astra (2019). MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 18/11 |  CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Million Dollar Pigeons (2022)

Dir: Gavin Fitzgerald | US Doc 98′

Whoever thought there was money to be made from a pervasive variety of bird that many regard as a pest? Well – as its title suggests – there’s millions to be made from the common or garden pigeon. Award-winning Irish filmmaker Gavin Fitzgerald takes a sympathetic look into the lucrative sport in his latest documentary Million Dollar Pigeons.

Pigeon fanciers from all over the world – from Thailand to America – enter their feathered friends in a high stakes competition – a sort of avian Tour de France – where the winners – from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds -stand to make millions of dollars from the humble and mostly unwanted winged athlete.

Fitzgerald’s skill as a director and cinematographer make this visual appealing as well as fascinating as another study of human exploitation of the animal kingdom. The birds become a unifying force for good in creating meaning in people’s lives; a blank canvas for their hopes and dreams – rather like we saw in Dark Horse and the recent Middle Eastern doc Kash Kash: Without Feathers We Can’t Live. But the modest birds can also have a negative impact on lives, when they become a divisive tool in race to make money. Fitzgerald explores the sport in general and probes the lives of a handful of fanciers competing in the sport. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 26 NOVEMBER

 

Turin International Film Festival headlines with The Beatles

Celebrating its 40th year anniversary, The Torino Film Festival – Italy’s second largest after Venice – looks sets to be a really glitzy affair with a musical and visual extravaganza showcasing two of the world’s best known bands – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Themed on their links with film legends Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard and scouser Malcolm MacDowell – who remembers the Liverpool band when they were still the Silver Beatles back in their ‘Cavern’ days – this year’s festival comprises an international Competion and two retrospectives amongst other events – and takes place from 25 November until 3 December 2022.

‘Help’ courtesy of Torino Film Festival

 

On the opening night of 25th November, Turin’s historic Teatro Regio will play host to a musical and cinematic evening that captures the imagination of the Swinging Sixties, divised by the festival’s artistic director and critic Steve Della Casa, and broadcast nationwide. Most people know Turin as the headquarters of the famous FIAT motor company; this year’s 40th Anniversary celebrates the city’s baroque credentials with the initiative Casa Festival a film ‘citadel’ set in Turin’s World Heritage Site the ‘Cavallerizza Reale’ (Royal Horsewoman) a baroque 1740 building designed by the First Royal architect Benedetto Alfieri to carry out equestrian activities.

Malcolm McDowell courtesy of Torino Film Festival

 

The 40th Anniversary line-up presents films from well-established directors and exciting new talent. Expect to see 81 world premieres along with award-winning releases from this year’s festival circuit, cult classics and sophomore features. Charlotte Le Bon’s coming-of-age drama Falcon Lake, Nicaraguan filmmaker Laura Baumeister’s magic realist tale Daughter of Rage Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s fantasy thriller Pamfir and Lola Quivoron’s provocative revenge thriller Rodeo about a feminist motorcyclist in a world of macho man.

Also in the programme are Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale  Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland and Lav Diaz’s latest epic look back at his nation’s chequered history A Tale of Filipino Violence.

There will be also be a chance to meet the talent in platform masterclasses with world famous Italian stars and directors Mario Martone, Paolo Sorrentino, and Toni Servillo.

TURIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 25 NOVEMBER-3 DECEMBER 2022

 

Paradise (2022) IDFA 2022

Dir/Wri: Alexander Abaturov | DoP Paul Guilhaume | France, Doc, 91′

When it comes to wildfires the spectacle of a roaring blaze in the middle of a snowy landscape does not normally spring to mind. But climate change has recently played havoc in the northern hemisphere, as filmmaker Alexander Abaturov discovers in his cinematic ethnological portrait of Siberia where sweltering heatwaves and drought are a new phenomenon.

Paradise opens with a smoozy rather seductive opening sequence as the camera glides softly over frosty rooftops and sweeps down onto a reflective scene picturing a little girl saying her prayers with the words: “Tell me, Sacred Mountain, do you see the whole Earth from here?”.

In 2021 alone, fires burned 19 million hectares in Russia, and for first time ever ashes blew to the North Pole.  Back down to earth in the heart of the ‘taiga’ lies the village of Shologon where and the natives are adopting a zen approach to dealing with the exceptional circumstances. By nature a peaceful people their calm collaboration contrasts with the – hardly surprising – inflammatory reaction we have come to expect from the recent outbreaks, but the Siberian stance is certainly novel, and makes for a reflective and contemplative look at how these chilly lands are fighting fire – not with fire – but with collaborative calm. 

In the distance billowing smoke heralds the incendiary arrival of trouble. A group of firefighters make their way on open trucks to the root of the problem through sparse woodland. There is no blaze to speak of, just a smouldering scarlet-tinged landscape and the locals name it ‘the dragon’ as they quickly retreat back to base to report their findings and regroup.

Without a formal fire service or governmental aid they are forced to rely on mutual and community support.  Helicopters supply water to assist in quelling the outbreak and the final scenes, filmed in slow-burn close-up, take us right to the centre of the blaze creeping like a seething living carpet of flames through the undergrowth.

What impresses here is the way the firefighters work serenely and methodically to put out the blaze. Making use of an evocative soundscape scored by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Abaturov’s sophomore documentary morphs into a surreal and dreamlike meditation as humans battle the elements, almost beyond them, and ‘The Dragon’ is tackled and finally laid to rest. MT

IN COMPETITION | INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 2022 | 9 – 20 November 2022

 

Hopper (2022)

Dir: Phil Grabsky | UK Doc, 90′

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is probably the best known American painter in the world. Mysterious, ephemeral – and despite their bright colours – airless; his depictions of bleak backdrops and isolated people tell a story that allows us to connect on some deep level despite the enigma of the artist himself. Hopper’s work influenced the likes of Rothko, Banksy, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and even The Simpsons for the unique way it captured 20th century America.

Edward Hopper (1903) Self-portrait

 

Of his urban landscapes the 1942 painting Nighthawks (main pic) has come to represent loneliness and big city isolation – but that’s not what Hopper had in mind, as we later discover. In this latest art documentary Phil Grabsky uncovers the detached and reclusive artist through his relationships and his life.

Hopper is possibly one of Grabsky’s most immersive biopics to date. The director and photographer combines fascinating archive footage, expert interviews and the artist’s personal diaries to reveal an informative visual reflection of American life in the first half of the 20th century. Refreshingly, Hopper is his own art movement, his work sits entirely on its alone although it is classified as realist, Neo-realist and even impressionist, amongst others. By nature a loner Hopper never tried to connect with any artistic movement, he simply followed his own style, studying art in New York at a time when the US was responding to European avant-garde:. ‘The big painter always has something to say.’

Early Sunday Morning (1930) Edward Hopper

 

Born into a well-to-do cultured family open to new ideas, the young Hopper was encouraged to be creative, and given the materials to do so, growing up in the riverside town of Nyack (NY). Described as bookish he underwent a growth spurt which made him the subject of bullying when he grew to 6 foot 4′ in his early teens.

Hopper dreamed of being a naval architect, and his interest in the built environment, light and shadow, would dominate his work. But out of economic necessity a career as an illustrator proved lucrative at the turn of the 20th century. And after a ten-year fruitless infatuation with a fellow painter he fell for Josephine Nivison (1883-1967) who gave up her own promising art career to be his manager. They would marry in 1924. Through her we gain so much insight into the private man behind the brush. Together they painted their way through a marriage that wasn’t always emotionally fulfilling for Josephine, but gave the buttoned-down Hopper the buffer he needed from the outside world. She often supported him when he only painted two or three canvasses a year, and a painting could take him months to complete even though the subject was quotidian; such was his intellectual process in telling ‘the story’.

Compartment C, Car 293 (1938) Edward Hopper

 

A jazzy music score heralds Hopper’s 1913 move to New York’s Washington Square in Greenwich Village where in 1920 he would paint one of his most controversial canvases: Soir Bleu criticised for its misogynist theme. But unlike George Bellows’ exuberant often chaotic NY scenes, Hopper’s paintings here were devoid of noise. Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, claims Hopper followed his own unique vision in these depopulated landscapes. Deputy director of Washington’s National Gallery, Franklin Kelly, describes how Hopper depicted NY as an isolating city. Yet it was this sense of isolation that was a natural part of the human condition, according to the Whitney’s Kim Conaty, and Hopper wanted to articulate that.

His 1927 Automat painting features a woman on her own in a cafe. But far from lonely, it seems she was actually enjoying a break from the hubbub of the capital’s streets. Yet this stillness seems to be interpreted – often by the critics – as loneliness. Hopper – in an archival interview – clearly states he never thought of it that way. And even though he had no interest in capturing the zeitgeist, his work inadvertently took on a socio-political angle: it charted change. The Great Depression of the 1930s saw women joining the workforce and becoming financially  independent. Yet his pictures of the simple low rise buildings and empty streets of New York in the 1930s – such as Early Sunday Morning – convey an enigmatic emptiness that contradicts the hustle and bustle of the time – but therein lies the contradiction in Hopper’s unique view of his world.

Mansard Roof (1923) Edward Hopper

 

A move to Gloucester Connecticut saw Hopper’s love of buildings and architecture coming to the fore. His most joyous canvas Mansard Roof (1923) was the first painting sold since 1913, when he had hoped the sale of Sailing (1911) would rapidly lead to more. But this ‘mansard’ phase took off with Hopper’s love of light and shadow being the focus of a series of energetic depictions of local buildings providing a pictorial digest of the small seaside town during that time. Lighthouse Hill (1927) would later capture Hitchcock’s imagination for the Neo-Gothic house in Psycho. This interest in film works both way, often inspiring Hopper, as his work influenced other creatives, as in Shirley, Visions of Reality : he also claimed to have felt a deep affinity with Delbert Mann’s noir character Marty (1955). There’s certainly a noirish quality to his Compartment C, Car 293 1938

In the early 1930s in seaside village of South Truro, Massechusetts. became the couple’s new home and ushered in a more prolific phase for Hopper. The couple built a house – that still stands today – on isolated sandy road. Together they started to travel backwards and forthwards across the States looking for painting locations where he could explore light and contrast, best seen in Morning Sun (1952) and the much later Sun in an Empty Room (1963). And although these seem to tell troubled stories – Hopper had no interest in revealing himself, or explaining his motives. One of his most devastating pictures is arguably the ironically titled Summer Interior (1909) which appears to show a woman in emotional crisis. But, like the artist himself, her story remains a closed book. MT

Released to coincide with the major Hopper exhibition (Edward Hopper’s New York) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Oct 22 – Mar 23).

Frames of Mind | Peter Greenaway Retrospective 2022

The BFI celebrates Peter Greenaway‘s 80th birthday with a retrospective and the premiere of his new feature Walking in Paris. And here Andre Simonoveisz reflects on his career to date

The Welsh born director, writer, artist and painter Peter Greenaway is certainly one of the most controversial contemporary filmmakers, and to this day his films are an acquired taste. The jury is still out on whether Greenaway wants to be an arthouse filmmaker, or merely a trained artist who uses the big screen as a canvas for his painterly creations, and the fact that his films lack any formal narrative structure seems to point to the latter: Greenaway’s features often have a stilted feel, unfolding in a series of formal set pieces rather than in flowing storytelling.

 

Composition, lighting and costumes are always the most significant elements in a Greenaway film. And yes, the aesthetics are wonderful to look at, but they are only as alive as Greenaway allows them to be. The artist/painter Greenaway is always in control of the filmmaking process: and rather like Robert Bresson before him, the actors are merely pawns in the process, with the camera as a paintbrush. The rest is amateur philosophy and a total reliance on art history, Renaissance, Baroque and Flemish predominating. On his way to visual perfection, second-hand or otherwise, Greenaway chanced upon film as his medium, and has used it as an intermediate step.

This is perhaps too critical of his work, but let’s go back to the beginning of his feature film career with The Falls (1980) an avantgarde sci-fi mockumentary that looks at the 92 victims of a phenomenon known as VUE (Violent unknown events) and whose names begin with the word ‘Fall’. Just over three hours long, this an etude, a whimsical compendium of surreal and bizarre circumstances explores just how far away from his creation the filmmaker was – or pretended to be. Can we ever be an objective observer of death? Or was the result proof, that the highbrow ‘intellectual’ Greenaway was above all the parochial issues of real life – and death.

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) was a bracingly beautiful piece of work scored by Michael Nyman’s minimalist soundscape which carried the narrative forward and is more memorable than its contrived murder story. The dapper draughtsman, Mr. Neville (Higgins) is foisted by his own elegant petard and falsely accused of murder after a series of sexual dalliances with the aristocratic ladies Mrs. Herbert (Suzman) and her daughter Mrs. Talman (Lambert). But the ‘story’ pales into insignificance in comparison with its magnificent surroundings, and what we remember is the bucolic backdrop, the feudal mansion, the immaculate costumes and the way Mr. Neville plays the director whilst he re-arranges life to suit his drawings. Many Greenaway films are about sexual obsession and The Draughtsman is no exception, it is a remote object of desire rather than an involving comedy of manners; sex, after all, is just another construct for the filmmaker to exploit.

The Cook, the Thief his Wife and her Lover (1989) is considered Greenaway’s most mature feature. From here he could have taken another route: instead of being obsessed by numbers or esoteric subjects, he could have really embraced the meaning of life, but instead his feature once again mirrors art, quite literally, recreating the 1616 painting by Flemish baroque artist Frans Hals. Michael Gambon is the churlish and sadistic thief Albert Spica, who owns a French restaurant in London where he entertains his cronies, amongst them is a young Tim Roth. His wife Georgina (Mirren) is appalled, and soon finds herself a suitable lover, Michael (Howard), a bookseller. They have to be careful, and conduct their romance in all sorts of seedy settings. Albert wises up and tortures Michael by force-feeding him. Georgina exacts her revenge in an equally disgusting way before she shoots him. This sounds ghastlier than it actually is – but crucially the takeaway is once again the aesthetic rather than the storyline – which is entirely unreliable. Jean-Paul Gaulthier designed the 17th century costumes and camerawork by DoP Sacha Vierny reflects the airless grandeur. Dutch producer Kes Kasander would stay with Greenaway for more tilts at artistic perfection. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 1989, The Cook was shown “Out of Competition”. When asked why he decided not to enter Greenaway’s film “In Competition” festival director Guglielmo Biraghi explained that loved the work of Greenaway, but “it his films are not really like others.”

What followed were highs like Prospero, The Baby of Macon and total flops including the soulless series of The Tulse Luper Suitcases. Somehow, the world decided to move on. AS

THE BFI CELEBRATES PETER GREENAWAY IN HIS 80TH YEAR. 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

Dir.: Laura Poitras; Cast: Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Marina Berio; USA 2022, 117 min.

US photographer and activist Nan Goldin (1953-) captures her own life from behind the camera of this documentary directed by Laura Poitras, best known for her 2016 biopic Risk that centred on Julian Assange. The film is in part tribute to Nan’s battle with opiod addiction that came about after a wrist injury. And she holds the wealthy Sackler responsible for bringing about ‘an unfathomable death toll’ with their opiod drugs.

Certainly less idolatrous than Poitras’ look at the Australian Wikileaks editor this novel but flawed ‘interview’ style structure works – up to a point – and went on to win her the Golden Lion at Venice 2022 on account of its timely subject matter, rather than the film itself.

Goldin comes across as straightforward and pragmatic in an outing that often feels like  two films rolled into one, told in seven chronological chapters starting with the Washington born Goldin’s early years in a well-to-do but dysfunctional Boston-based family whose ethos reflected the sexual repression of the Eisenhower era.

It emerges Nan’s older sister Barbara was influenced by the suppressive regime and spent her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals before committing suicide at the age of eighteen and leaving her younger sister traumatised for the rest of her life. The film takes its title from a quote in Barbara’s’ diary. Nan was placed in foster care by the Social Services but ended up being evicted.

New beginnings came with Art-School, and then Nan joined the underground community in New York where films by Bette Gordon and Vivienne Dick bore testament to a wild but creative scene. Velvet Underground, James Brown, Nina Simone and Charles Aznavour were regulars, and Nan was influenced by the work of Cookie Mueller and and David Wojnarowicz, both victims of the Aids Epidemic. A breakthrough came with “The Ballade of Sexual Dependency”, which started life as day-in-the-life slide-show for its subjects. A year later, in 1986, the work appeared as a celebrated photo book showcasing the love life of New York’s Bowery neighbourhood, starting in 1979.

All the Beauty then flips to March 10th 2018 in the then “Sackler Rooms” of the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art where Nan and her con-activists demanding an end to the “Temple of Money’ financed by the Sackler family by staging a ‘die-in’ on the flat. Later the same group “PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) launches more protests in Museums all over the world, including the Louvre in Paris, which became the first gallery to remove the “Sackler” label from its exhibitions. The “National Portrait Gallery” in London soon followed, rejecting a gift of £100,0000.00 from the Sackler family, after Goldin threatened to take her exhibits out of the show. Today, many large Museums worldwide have taken her cause on board.

Goldin’s lead of the campaign is very personal, like everything about her work. After being trolled by Sackler employees, the family settled with PAIN for a hefty figure of six billion dollars, which later escalated to ten million, in compensation for the victims. Three members of the disgraced family are interrogated by Goldin and her co-activists as part of the settlement. The Zoom meeting shows them rather sheepishly grinning into the camera, words fail them.

Nan Goldin is not only hard on the ‘greedy’ corporates, she also admits to working as a sex worker, and shows videos of the wounds received from a boyfriend. Nan Goldin is still fighting the battle, her sister Barbara lost. AS

ON RELEASE EARLY IN 2023 | VENICE GOLDEN LION AWARD |  VENICE 2022

Incubus (1966)

Dir; Leslie Stevens | Cast: William Shatner, Allyson Amers Kia, Eloise Hardt | US Fantasy thriller 78’

Leslie Stevens blew the considerable capital he’d made from ‘The Outer Limits’ on this almost wilfully uncommercial folly. Aided by a tingling score by Dominic Frontiere, fellow ‘Outer Limits’ veteran cameraman Conrad Hall (who does a lovely job) later recalled it as ‘ten days shooting, great fun’, ruefully admitting “I don’t what it means but I love it”.

The decision to shoot it in Esperanto – deliberately intended to make the film hard to follow – Leonard Maltin laconically observed “sort of limits its appeal”, which is one of the reasons so few people have heard of it, let alone seen it.

If the thing wasn’t already weird enough there’s even the sight of William Shatner speaking his dialogue with English subtitles.@RichardChatten

Living (2022)

Dir: Oliver Hermanus | Cast: Bill Nighy, Tom Burke, Alex Sharp, Aimee Lou Wood | UK. 102 mins

The English middle class world of the 1950s is gracefully captured here in a sombre but sonorous drama about a dying civil servant. What makes it particularly interesting is that the director is South African Oliver Hermanus and the screenwriter is the Japanese born novelist and Nobel prize winner Kazoo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go) whose story of discrete mid 20th sensibilities was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru (To Live).

Quintessential English maxims like ‘keep calm and carry on’ and ‘never explain, never complain’ immediately spring to mind with reference to Living‘s noble main character Mr Williams who is the embodiment of a dissipated but dignified gentleman of a certain age – and played wistfully by Bill Nighy – whose world is rocked by the revelation that he is suffering from terminal cancer. But life goes on in the corridored confines of his Civil Service offices where he heads a department dedicated to planning applications, staffed by his young assistant Mr Wakeling (a thoughtful Alex Sharp), who guides us through the film, and secretary Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood of Netflix’ Sex Education) who could best described as gently ‘petillant’, rather than ‘bubbly’ – a quality normally ascribed to female typists in the small ads, back in the day.

Moving but never sentimental, one of the more touching scenes pictures Mr Williams at home and desperately rehearsing the words to explain his diagnosis to his son and daughter-in-law who are unaware of his presence in their unlit sitting room, and at the same time, talking amongst themselves about asking him to move on, And this tragic event sets in motion Mr Williams’ determination to start living before he dies.

In Brighton, regarded as a louche seaside setting back in the 1950s, Mr Williams comes across Mr Sutherland (Tom Burke) a writer of questionable origins, and engages on a night of excess that unleashes in Mr Williams an impressionistic reverie of nostalgic thoughts and ideas as he reflects back on his life. These scenes take on a dreamlike quality expressed by vibrant juxtaposed images, in contrast to the crisply formal daily procedural he has grown accustomed to in the offices the Civil Service in County Hall.

Returning to London he encounters Margaret and decides to invite her to join him in his final ‘hurrah’. At this point he also takes to singing a plangent Scottish folk song as he swings in the children’s playground at dusk. The final act briefly explores Mr Williams’  last planning project and labour of love – a children’s playground built on a former bomb site in the East End. And this provides the film with a whiff of internecine controversy amongst his staff who claim the iniative as their own. The final scenes are slightly underwhelming but nevertheless provide a satisfying finale to this elegant and rather lovely look back in time. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE.

Come Come Come Upward (1989) London Korean Film Festival 2022

Dir:Im Kwon-taek | Cast: Kang Soo-yeo, Jin Yeong-mi, Yu In-chon, Han Ji-il, Chon Moo-song | 120 mins | 1989 | South Korea

South Korean director Im Kwon-taek, now nearly ninety, is possibly best known outside  Korea for his ground-breaking documentary Mandala, (1981) arguably the finest film ever made about Buddhism as part of human society. In Come Come Come Upward a young woman makes her way to a mountain convent where she undergoes a demanding initiation programme in an environment best described as challenging – both physically and spiritually – not helped by aloofness erring on hostility from the other young nuns, and the almost draconian convent elder – yet none of this seems able to put her off. Flashbacks allow a glimpse of her motivations for leaving the world behind. However, the world, in the strange form of one broken yet determined man, pursues Soon-nyeo/sister Chung-hwa right to her refuge.

LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL | Sun 06 Nov, 2:30pm, ICA LONDON 

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Dir/Co-Wri: Edward Berger | Germany, War thriller. 147′

A century after the ‘Great War’ (1914-18) took its toll on 17 million lives,  Erich Maria Remarque’s classic German language novel ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ finally comes to the big screen in this elegant arthouse adaption from Edward Berger (Jack). Previous Hollywood versions pale into insignificance alongside this passionate and quietly devastating epic, seen from the unique perspective of a German soldier.

Like many teenagers throughout Europe Paul (Felix Kammerer) is thrilled at the chance for adventure and joins the ‘glorious’ war effort along with his school-friends after a rousing call to arms. Little did they know the fate that awaited them.

The war was well under way when the chums Müller (Moritz Klaus), Kropp (Aaron Hilmer), Tjaden (Edin Hasanović) and the slightly older professional soldier Katczinsky  or “Kat” – (Albrecht Schuch) finally arrive at the front expecting an exciting run of it before finally marching to victory as German heroes. Just like the Allied forces of Tommies and ‘Poilus’ were hoping for on the other side.

Berger and his co-writer stay reasonably close to the original telling their harrowing story in a thrilling and lyrical anti-war action drama that captures the spirit of English war poet Wilfred Owen’s famous ‘Strange Meeting’ without ever stinting on the brutal reality of tday-to-day violence and terrible bloodshed. Some mean feat. And yet the film remains compulsive for well over two hours.

Paul and his fresh-faced comrades at arms spend their days lurching from the screaming horrors of trench warfare to the hysterical joy of ‘downtime’ when they steal a goose and roast it, or catch sight of some nubile French girls in a distant meadow. Experiences that see them desperately longing to be back home, away from the nightmare that is their daily reality, and one that foreshadows a doomed future made all the more poignant because only we know the truth.

Rather than confusing us with complex military strategics, Berger fills his film with the mundane yet fascinating detail of the wartime experience: blood-soaked uniforms of the dead are routinely collected from the battlefield and washed in steaming vats before being recycled on to the next eager soldier, name tags of the dead still attached; a body hangs naked and legless from a tree, its uniform blown off by the sheer force of a shell; intimate letters are read aloud revealing an unspeakable tragedy from back home.

Meanwhile German officers enjoy opera music while they dine in splendour, or munch on crisp croissants in a railway carriage at Compiègne begging the French for an armistice through their learned politician Matthias Erztberger (Daniel Bruhl). But Thibault de Montalembert’s Marshal Foch says, decidedly: “Non”.

After the truce is eventually signed – without compromise – a German general informs his emotionally broken troops – only Paul is still fighting – that they have one last chance to save the nation’s honour before the war officially ends at the 11 hour of the 11th day (November 1918). For once, a literary adaption worthy of the original.

Netflix’s German-language adaptation broke BAFTA history with a record-breaking 14 nominations and seven wins, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX | All Quiet on the Western Front won numerous awards including 4 Oscars, one for BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM and several BAFTA awards.

 

 

The Blood of Jesus (1941) Black History

Dir: Spencer Williams | Cast: Cathryn Caviness, Spencer Williams, Juanita Riley, Reather Hardeman, Rogenia Goldthwaite | US Drama 57’

A remarkable film located between Green Pastures and Cabin in the Sky, made all the more remarkable because it centred on the experience of a woman.

At the end the possibility lingers that the whole thing was a hallucination and the marked disparity in style between individual scenes was swiftly confirmed by a quick search of Wikipedia which reveals that the scenes of heaven were actually lifted from an Italian film made twenty years earlier.

The silent influence can also be discerned by imagery like the angel wearing a huge pair of wings which suddenly appears in a fashion reminiscent of Melies; which also has the advantage of making the contrast with the documentary-style footage of urban black nightlife over eighty years ago doubly striking. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

 

Never Let Go (1960)

Dir: John Guillermin | Cast: Richard Todd, Peter Sellers, Elizabeth Sellars, Adam Faith, Carol White, Mervyn Johns | UK Drama 90’

This meaner, uglier British version of Bicycle Thieves was a key film both in Peter Sellers’ development as an actor and as a human being, it being his first attempt at a heavy and also because he took the role home with him each night, which placed a terrible strain on his marriage for reasons only too obvious if you watch it.

Modern audiences probably don’t even know what a Ford Anglia was, but the moment when Sellars’ boot comes crashing down on a terrapin it still elicits gasps from people who’ve unflinchingly sat through Peckinpah.

Henchman David Lodge seems suspiciously loyal to Sellers’ character (always addressing him as ‘Lionel’). Kubrick at the time was a huge fan of Sellars so he almost certainly saw this film; is it merely coincidence that both this and ‘Dr Strangelove’ employ ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ on the soundtrack? @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

Cette Maison (2021) Viennale 2022

Dir.: Miryam Charles; Cast: Florence Blain Mbaye, Schelby Jean-Baptiste; Canada 2022, 75 min.

Time, space and identity are disconnected in this enigmatic debut feature that looks at the mysterious death of a fourteen year old Haitian girl. First suicide was suspected, but it soon turns out that Tessa was murdered.

Best known for her award-winning short films This House is a highly personal project for Quebecois Miryam Charles because Tessa was her niece. The two-handed narrative of displacement plays out on three time lines: the past, the present and the future. The first segment sees Tessa (Mbaye) trying to comfort her mother Valeska (Jean-Baptiste) who is still grieving ten years after her daughter’s death. Valeska’s voice-over shifts between her guilt at having taken her daughter to Connecticut – instead of their home in Haiti – and a conversation with Tessa that brings some consolation to both of them.

Valeska glides through the rooms of the titular house where the brutal crime was committed. Intercut are some scenes of the women’s Haitian family who are shown celebrating a victory in the 1995 referendum that would have given independence to Quebec, but was narrowly defeated. Tessa is seen complaining and asking the adults to change channel. Another scene sees Tessa and Valeska sitting at a table groaning with Haitian fare, the mother warning her daughter about the spicy delicacies. Equally down to earth are Tessa’s ruminations about a future she was robbed of, in the lush landscapes of Haiti.

But there are some disturbing scenes: Tessa in her coffin, giving a running commentary while her bereaved family looks down on her body shrouded in white. Deeply affecting is also a scene where social workers ask Valeska how she is coping with her bereavement, and mistaking her apparent composure for complacency. Valeska and Tessa clearly had issues to deal with; the mother’s guilt and the daughter’s ghostly appearance are often at odds with their communication – and even though the teenager tries to console her mother, her anxiety about the future is palpable.

DoP Isabelle Stachtchnko underlines the Proustian atmosphere with hazy visual allure, the light filtering through the Venetian blinds giving the couple an eerie almost ghostly appearance. Some may find the enigmatic treatment annoying, but somehow Charles overcomes this in an otherworldly gem that never outstays its welcome. AS

SCREENING AT VIENNALE 20 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER 2022 | ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 4 NOVEMBER 2022

The Innocent (2021)

Wri/Dir: Louis Garrel | Cast: Louis Garrel, Noemie Merland, Roschdy Zem, Anouk Grinberg | France, Romcom, 100′ 

At a loose end emotionally after his wife dies a young man becomes obsessed with his mother’s new lover who has just come out of prison.

The Innocent is Garrel’s most enjoyable outing since turning director. It takes a frivolous idea and spins it into a witty and soulful story that also works as a love letter to Lyon and its gourmet reputation and an homage to the French comedy capers of the sixties with noirish undertones primped by a lively original score from prolific composer Gregoire Hetzel (Incendies). With a starry cast of Noemie Merlant, Roschdy Zem and Garrel himself, this is an entertaining romp.

Abel (Garrel) certainly has mixed emotions about Michel (Roschdy Zem), convinced that his mum Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg) will end up a victim – again – when her new lover returns to his life of crime, although the couple’s marriage certainly seems like a bed of roses. And when they start a new floristry business in Lyon’s trendy Corbas district Abel, who works in the local aquarium, is appalled to hear them having raunchy sex in the stockroom. Sylvie’s romance reminds him how much he misses his own lost love and he is driven to tears laying flowers on her grave in the shadow of Lyon’s famous Notre Dame de Fourviere, a scene that gives the film its tender touch of melancholy.

But Abel certainly has mixed emotions about Michel – and some of them are downright hostile. So with his spunky new girlfriend Clemence (Merlant) Abel hatches a mischievous plan to spy on Michel at work, and this neurotic quest to dig the dirt on his father in law provides the film with its rich vein of humour. But Michel is no fool and calls their bluff with embarrassing results as we start to wonder whether he really is a reformed character. 

But, true to form, Michel is soon back to his old tricks while fronting as a delivery guy for the furniture shop ‘Conforama’. Abel soon finds himself inveigled into the robbery involving caviar as the movie moves into heist mode, with Clemence saving the day. Garrel skilfully navigates the tonal shifts between comedy crime caper and soulful romcom in a film that ends with mixed emotions of a different kind as the romantic tables are turned. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 25 AUGUST 2023

Lynch/Oz (2022)

Dir.: Alexandre O. Philippe; Documentary with Amy Nicholson, Rodney Asher, John Waters, Karyn Kusama, David Lowery, Justin Benson, Aaron Morehead; USA, 108′

Swiss born director Alexandre O. Philippe has created a niche for himself with a clutch of informative film essays exploring late twentieth century American Horror cinema in Memory: The origins of Alien, Hitchcock’s shower scene in 78/52 and Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist. With LYNCH/OZ he takes a look at David Lynch, arguably the world’s most enigmatic living director, with the help of seven filmmakers and one film critic.

Told In six chapters the film goes back through the annuls with extensive clips from The Wizard of Oz and comes to a definitive conclusion: That David Lynch is completely obsessed by this “Dada picture” of Hollywood, directed by Fleming in 1939, the same year he finished Gone with the Wind.

David Lynch is well-known for not wanting to discuss any of his films. But when asked if Wizard influenced him – he replies: “Not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Wizard of Oz“.

Billowing curtains feature heavily in the Lynch archive, so it seems appropriate that each segment of Philippe’s documentary opens and closes with plush green drapes. Critic Amy Nicholson kicks off proceedings which her chapter entitled “Wind”, highlighting the many connections between Wizard and the Lynch oeuvre. There are the ruby slippers (Blue Velvet and the Twin Peak series); the man behind the curtains who (re)appears in Mulholland Drive; Dorothy (sic) Vallens in Blue Velvet and the wind – which captions this chapter – in Eraserhead.

But the focus is on two worlds where the Lynchian protagonists alongside Dorothy and her re-incarnations exist side in a parallel universe: reality and fantasy. Like Lolita, who was forced to live in two disconnected hemispheres: that of the schoolgirl and the mature man’s lover, Mullholland Drive is perhaps he best example of this dichotomy. We watch an ingénue grow into a mature woman and actor, but at the same time, the traumata brought on by the chaos that surrounds her, prevents Lolita from really growing, forcing her to adjust to an alien world of grown-ups in the film business. Meanwhile her friends’ delusions are a state of induced schizophrenia.

David Lowery, in chapter V (“Judy”), wants to save Dorothy and Judy Garland, one of the many doppelgängers that inhabit the Lynchian universe. Garland’s personal tragedy being pre-played in Wizard. In chapter IV (“Maltitudes”), director Karyn Kusama discusses reality and transformation, seen when The Yellow Brick Road morphs into Lynch’s Lost Highway. John Waters is his usual sardonic self, talking about his friendship with Lynch and their parallel careers in chapter III (“Kindred”). And Rodney Asher (“Membranes”, Chapter II), is still fixating on his feature Room 237 and its relationship to Kubrick’s The Shining, trying to expound his thesis of original and remake in general discussion.

The Peter Pan syndrome is mentioned, both in connection with Lynch himself and the Dorothy character. And the evil witch in Wizard is compared to Kurtz in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, him being both wizard and witch, his own destructive doppelgänger.

Some try to make Wizard into a film noir, but it is all genres rolled into one: Musical, thriller, comedy, horror and Sci-fi. Corruption couched in suburban perfection is the overriding theme in the Lynch cycle, and best showcased in the Twin Peaks series. Lynch tries to liberate Dorothy in Twin Peaks:The Return. But Garland was an unhappy Wendy in the adult world of her Peter Pan universe, crushed by the Neverland pirates of the film industry. A happy home-coming only happens in the movies.

DoP Robert Muratore and editor David Lawrence manage the treasure trove of clips and material seamlessly. LYNCH/OZ is a labour of love, and a gratifying compendium of film history. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 2 DECEMBER 2022

She is Love (2022)

31Wri/Dir: Jamie Adams | US Drama 83′

Ever wondered what happened to Sam Riley after his breakout role as frontman Ian Curtis in the much-acclaimed biopic Joy Division? He plays Idris in this perky romcom that sees a long divorced couple revisiting their past in a bid to salvage the good times. Idris is now in a new relationship with Louise (Marisa Abela) and running a hotel in Cornwall where Patricia (Haley Bennett) checks in for a few day’s holiday. Clearly still very fond of each other their awkwardness at suddenly meeting up again soon gives way to a fun-filled vibe touched with soulfulness as they reminisce, write songs and share the odd tear. Although She is Love treads familiar ground and brings nothing new to the party it provides light-hearted entertainment for just over an hour. MT

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 3 FEBRUARY 2023

https://youtu.be/GMZCckgI-wY

 

 

 

 

 

Utama (2022)

Dir: Alejandro Loayza Grisi | Bolivia, Doc 87′

All over the world small rural communities are struggling to survive amid the inexorable march of progress particularly in the light of climate change and economic crisis. In his first feature Bolivian filmmaker Alejandro Loayza Grisi transforms this gruelling struggle into a quietly stunning drama with avant-garde vision, working with a cast of local non-pros.

In the arid Bolivian highlands, UTAMA follows an elderly Quechua couple determined to stay in their remote smallholding surrounded by the magnificent highlands of Bolivia hundreds of miles south of La Paz. And who would blame them? Virginio and Sisi have been living the same daily routine for years tending their flock of llamas whose pink-ribboned ears marks them out in one of the film’s inspired and endearing touches.

But this year’s drought has cast a long shadow over their traditional way of life forcing them to reconsider the future and potentially move with family members in the city, particularly in the light of Virginio’s worsening health. The arrival of their teenage grandson accentuates the widening gulf between the hardworking old couple and leisure-driven younger generation. Sisa must decide whether to stay and maintain their traditional way of life or admit defeat. Harnessing the brilliant light of this ethereal part of the world, 3500 meters above sea level, award-winning cinematographer Barbara Alvarez makes each frame a visual masterpiece. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE 25 NOVEMBER 2022 | UK PREMIERE BFI LFF 2022

 

 

A Date in Minsk (2022) Winner Best Film Doclisboa 2022

Dir.: Nikita Lavretksi; Cast: Volha Kavaliova, Nikita Lavretski; Belarus 2021, Drama, 88 min.

Belarus director/producer Nikita Lavretksi is best known as the pioneer of Belarus’ mumblecore, an independent style of filmmaking pioneering by Mark and Jay Duplass, A Date in Minsk is an existential and personal portrait of a couple of filmmakers who try to figure why their relationship failed by pretending to meet each other for the first time.

Lavretski and Volha Kavakiova indulged in “a toxic, interdependent relationship” for eight years continually coming to blows in their personal and professional lives. Shot by DoP Yalia Shatun in one take – no mean feat – the couple first meet first in a rundown billiard hall where it becomes obvious Volha has no idea of how to master the game. With Nikita forced into instructor mode the relationship re-boot gets off to a poor start as they both re-hash the other’s past misdemeanours which are manifold.

Nikita sometimes adopts a self-critical attitude, admitting to his “new friend” that he laughed when his ex fell over on a skiing holiday, landing arse about face in the snow.  During this “first date”, it also emerges that Volha is a games developer, and Nikita used to teach maths, and is now an independent filmmaker pioneering a radical new style.

As the date wears on Nikita becomes more and more contrite: “I am bearing the weight of being a terrible person”. They more they distance themselves from their failed relationship the happier they become; discussing their favourite comics, which, in Volha’s case is James Acaster.  She is also fond of the UK TV series “Peep Show”. Although the dump of a pool hall is anything but stimulating it was better than meeting in a cinema, they both agree as they circle each other like two Western duellists in a Mexican standoff. Shatun’s camera is as shaky as the couple’s faltering morale. Little inserts of the couple’s former life echo Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, and after the two leave the pool hall, the film’s title appears.

On their way to the tube station, Nikita and Volha wax philosophical: do they really belong in Belarus now many of their friends have emigrated. It seems that Nikita is trying to prolong the meet-up for a long as possible, making the most of every minute.  His insecurity is palpable but Volha has already moved on with her life and left the relationship behind.

This is filmmaking as therapy, and we can clearly imagine JL Godard and Anna Karina in the place of Volha and Nikita. Radical but passionate, this is an emotional tour-de-force with improvised dialogue. It leaves Nikita like Orpheus back at the closing doors of the tube station. A Date in Minsk won ‘Best FILM’ at the ‘DocLisboa International Competition’ 2022. An inspired and refreshing choice. AS

City of Lisbon Award for Best International Competition Film. | DOCLISBOA 2022 | OCTOBER 6-16

Marrakech Film Festival | Programme Highlights 2022

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

Here is the festival line-up:

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GALA SCREENINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLARIS
by Ainara Vera / France
Documentary

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

REWIND & PLAY
by Alain Gomis / Senegal
Documentary

MARRAKECH FILM FESTIVAL | 11 -20 NOVEMBER 2022

All is Vanity (2022) London Film Festival 2022

Wir/Dir: Marcos Mereles | UK Drama 72′

Made on a shoestring and none the worse for it Marcos Mereles’ watchable little indie drama imagines what really happens from the perspective of the crew and cast when a fashion shoot in a London warehouse goes off the rails. Naturally the egos and idiosyncrasies of the entire crew soon surface and have to be taken into consideration when the production – and the film itself – goes into meltdown, never to return.

Sid Phoenix brings a touch of Alan Partridge to proceedings as ‘the photographer’ taking control of the team. His drole and offbeat tongue-in-cheek performance is the best thing about this slim feature debut that often feels like a graduation film. The rest of the team lack originality character-wise despite some decent performances: his volunteer assistant (Yaseen Aroussi) is keen but clueless, the make-up artist (Rosie Steel) disappears during the shoot, and the model (Isabelle Bontrer) is bored to tears. Mereles clearly has good ideas and needs to focus on bringing structure and a more engaging dramatic arc to his next production.  MT

ALL IS VANITY ON CINEMA AND DIGITAL RELEASE in UK and IRELAND FROM 14 OCTOBER

Made in Prague Festival 2022

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

This year’s highlights feature:

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

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

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

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

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

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

MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL 2022

Occupation | Okupace (2021) Made in Prague Festival 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCREENING DURING MADE IN PRAGUE FESTIVAL | LONDON 2022

Charlotte (2022)

Dir.: Èric Warin, Tahir Rana; Animated feature with the voices of Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, Sam Clafin, Eddie Marsan, Sophie Okonedo, Mark Strong; Canada/Belgium/France 2021; 92 min.

The soapy main image may lead you to believe that Charlotte is just another children’s animation. Quite the contrary. Èric Warin and Tahir Rana’s film is a film of substantial gravitas in the style of Studio Ghibli, a lyrical storybook based on the life of German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) whose autobiographical work entitled “Life? or Theatre?, depicting her own life, may very well constitute the first graphic novel.

Charlotte, voiced by Keira Knightley, would be blighted by tragedy. Growing up in Berlin where she studied art prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, her mother Franziska committed suicide when she was only eight, although Charlotte was under the impression that the death was due to influenza. Charlotte grew up fearing she would meet the same fate, as suicide was common in a family who suffered from poor mental health. Her father, a surgeon, had then married her mother’s sister, the opera singer Paula Salomon Lindberg.

A love affair with the much older, married, Alfred Wolfson (Strong) coloured Charlotte’s years at art school. But after the “Kristall Nacht” tragedy of 1938, she moved to the South of France where her depressive grandmother (Blethyn) was under the care of her  grandfather Ludwig Grünwald (Broadbent), and would take her own life, like Charlotte’s mother had done years earlier.  In the early 1940s, Charlotte found refuge with American Ottile Moore (Okonedo), who helped many Jewish refugees. Charlotte would entrust her prolific creative output of over seven hundred works to local doctor George Morrides who was able to present Charlotte’s father with the paintings in 1947. He had survived with Paula in hiding in Amsterdam.

Charlotte’s 35-page confession was published in 2015. It emerged that she had poisoned her grandfather after he insisted on her sharing his bed, and threatened to call the police, as Charlotte was only given leave to remain in France as his carer. She sent the confession to Wolfson, but he never received it. Brief happiness came with her marriage to Alexander Nagler (Clafin) in 1943. The couple were expecting a child when she was deported to the camp in Drancy, and Nagler to a forced labour camp where he died the following year. Charlotte Salomon arrived in Auschwitz on 10. October 1943, and was killed the same day, aged 26, and five months pregnant.

Quite why the filmmakers chose to set this tragic tour-de-force in soft-focused pastels remains unclear. Perhaps they had in mind the Studio Ghibli style of a narrative open to two-way interpretation: light and dark. But there is nothing light-hearted about Charlotte’s story and Keira Knightley’s “little-girl” voice puts a trivial spin on epic art work that unfolded in the midst of genocide.

Salomon’s oeuvre is now exhibited at the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. Charlotte is a dubious undertaking but if it helps to raise awareness of Salomon’s prolific output and attracts new admirers it has fulfilled its purpose. AS

CHARLOTTE IS DUE FOR GENERAL RELEASE IN EARLY DECEMBER 2022 AND DURING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Little Axel (2021) Raindance Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Fabien Greenberg, Bard Kjøge Rønning; Documentary with Axel Joachim Jensen, Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Nick Broomfield, Axel B. Jensen; Norway 2021, 57′

A new and heart-breaking documentary about Axel Joachim Jensen (*1960), who has spent more than forty years in Oslo’s Gaustadt Psychiatric Hospital, being treated with anti-psychotic drugs. Best known for being the son of Norwegian writer Axel Buchardt Jensen (1932-2003), aka the Norwegian Jack Keouac, and Marianne Ihlen, muse of Leonard Cohen, who both died a few months apart in 2016, his life has been tragic, to say the least.

In the 1960s, the Greek island of Hydra was a paradise for sex, alcohol and drugs and haven where artists and would-be artists had the time of their lives. When Marianne Ihlen and her new-born son Axel Joachim Jensen arrived on the island, Marianne presumed that Axel sr would be there to raise his son. But the author had already left with another female admirer leaving Marianne and Axel in the lurch. Enter Canadian writer and poet Leonard Cohen, who would for over twenty years be Axel’s more or less caring father. Cohen paid Alex’s eduction at the anti-authoritarian Summerhill in Suffolk, and later in a much stricter Swiss boarding school.

But Axel, like many children in the artist colony, roamed free from an early age. Kids were present at the parties, and the partner changes, and Axel started smoking when he was seven. Later he turned to hashish and, when he met his biological father Axel sr for the first and last time as a young teenager, Axel sr then introduced him to LSD, profoundly affecting his emotional development.

When Axel jr was nine, he and a friend of his – just three years older – travelled 260 km around Greece without any supervision. India was his next traumatic playground, at the tender age of fifteen. By his late teens he was institutionalised in Gaustadt after spending time with Cohen in New York where the international star spent the nights at the famous Chelsea Hotel. His relationship with Ihlen had ended after eight years, but the two remained friends ’til the end of their lives.

Filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who directed Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love, is one of many witnesses interpreting the environment where Axel jr and other children grew up. But the main reason why Axel went off the rails was his father, author Axel. B Jensen, whose comments on marriage and child-rearing are bizarre to say the least. He was a patient of the anti-establishment psychiatrist David Cooper, who rated his mental state as borderline.

As for Axel Jensen’s legal guardian, who encouraged his ‘participation’ in the documentary, one can only guess for motives: Axel comes across as a shell of a person, after being prescribed forty years (and counting) of mind-altering drugs. His mother was the only person who regularly visited him in Graustadt, but she too had a new family to look after.

Little Axel’s childhood may have had an enviable childhood but his personality was simply too sensitive to withstand the abrupt changes his life took. This is one of most depressing documentaries for a long time exploring unintentional childhood neglect leading to lifelong psychiatric care. Poor Axel was well-nourished and provided for materially but deprived of the stable and unconditional love he deserved. AS

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Robe of Gems (2022)

Dir/scr: Natalia López Gallardo. Mexico/Argentina/US. 2022. 118 mins

A visually striking, thought-provoking and disquieting feature debut from Natalia López Gallardo who joins a talented array of female filmmakers such as Tatiana Huezo (Prayers for the Stolen)and Fernanda Valadez (Identifying Features) in bringing more intriguing stories from Latin America.

Isabel (Nailea Norvind) and her family live with her mother (Monica Poggio) in a rambling estancia where the threat of gang violence seems a million miles away from their languorous existence, although for their housekeeper, Maria (Antonia Olivares), it is very real and possibly the reason for the recent disappearance of her sister. Isabel is going through some kind of emotional trauma of her own after a potential marital disagreement. At a loose end and in empathy with Maria, she decides to make some discrete but ultimately ill-advised inquiries of her own.

In a bid to be enigmatic Robe of Gems loses its impact drifting around nebulously between a police thriller and a stylistic arthouse drama until finally gaining some shape in the second hour. The connections between the characters are never fully explained, their lives gradually fading into view in the woozy heat of a Mexican summer, the focus on mid-shots and close-ups only adding to the air of mystery in a drama where a great deal happens off-camera, in a series of episodes. Beyond the artistic flourishes though, few clues are given to enable understanding or feeling for the rather buttoned-up characters. That all said, López Gallardo must be applauded for telling a sinister story with such a lightness of touch and without resorting to violence; the final scene is quietly devastating. MT

BFI London Film Festival 2022 | SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE WINNER | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

Two films by Wendy Toye | British Directors

Born in London on 1 May 1917, Wendy Toye made her stage debut at the age of three when she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall as a member of a juvenile dance troupe. Her solo turn as part of the act brought her considerable publicity, and Toye began to perform in music halls and charity shows with many of the day’s top stage stars. By the age of nine, she appeared at the Palladium in a ballet she had choreographed herself, entitled The Japanese Legend of the Rainbow. Toye was soon in much demand as a choreographer and was invited to perform with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, where she met the film-maker/artist Jean Cocteau.

In 1931, she made her first film appearance, appearing in Anthony Asquith’s Dance Pretty Lady, but was more interested in the technical process of filmmaking than in acting. By 1942 she was arranging the dances for The Young Mr Pitt (where she was befriended by director Carol Reed, editor David Lean, cameraman Ronald Neame and actors Robert Morley and Richard Attenborough) and in 1946, she served as choreographer on Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle’s Piccadilly Incident. During this period, Wendy’s talents as a stage director meant she was in increasingly high demand.

On meeting the British producer George K. Arthur, Toye expressed interest in directing a short, The Stranger Left No Card (1953), for him. Made on a budget of £3,000, the film was a delightfully sinister parable which won the best short film award at The Cannes Film Festival and impressed Alexander Korda sufficiently for him to offer Toye a contract.

Toye directed the ‘In the Picture’ episode of Three Cases of Murder (co-d. David Eady, George More O’Ferrall, 1953), The Teckman Mystery (1954) and the domestic comedy, Raising A Riot (1955) for Korda until his sudden death in 1956 saw her contract shifted to Rank. There, she made All for Mary (1955) and the nautical comedy True as a Turtle (1957). Both films did well at the box office, but Toye had to wait until 1962 for her next film assignment, We Joined The Navy; another seagoing comedy. Toye’s last theatrical film was a short entitled The King’s Breakfast (1963), after which she turned to directing television drama, as well as continuing to be celebrated for her extensive work in the theatre.

Although Wendy Toye complained that Rank refused to support her desire to direct projects more ambitious than her comedies, she took pride in the fact that she never went over budget, and that her responsible example paved the way for other women to enter the field. She continued directing stage comedies until the mid 1990s, when she retired, with a lifetime of work in the theatre and film to her considerable credit.

THE TECKMAN MYSTERY

Toye directs a thriller by Francis Durbridge that sees a writer fall in love with the sister of a pilot missing during during a test flight. Despite being superficially set against a backdrop of Cold War intrigue, nobody seems to be taking an ambling anecdote about a missing pilot terribly seriously. It might well have worked better as a B movie, still with the same supporting cast, of whom the most entertaining by far is Duncan Lamont as a sardonic detective involved in the case.@RichardChatten

WE JOINED THE NAVY

It’s not every day you see a film starring Kenneth More, Lloyd Nolan and Mischa Auer (the latter playing a double role)! Directed by a woman, scripted under a pseudonym by a blacklistee from a 1959 novel by John Winton that vouchsafed a few home truths about Naval Intelligence, set against the backdrop of a revolution abroad and released the month after the Cuban missile crisis.

It it all sounds fascinating on paper, but evidently wasn’t considered any threat by the authorities since the makers were permitted the use of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and had the money to lavish upon widescreen & colour location work in Villefranche-sur-Mer. @RichardChatten

ON BLU-RAY & DIGITAL FOR THE FIRST TIME FROM NOVEMBER 21 

 

Nocebo (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

ON RELEASE in early DECEMBER 2022

Pamfir (2022)

Wri/Dir.: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk; Cast: Oleksandre Yatsentyuk, Stanislaw Potiak, Solomiia Kyrylova, Yelena Khoknahlatkina, Miroslav Makoviychuk, Ivan Sharan, Oleksandr Yarema; Ukraine/France/Poland/Chile/ Germany/Luxembourg 2022, 102 min.

Pamfir may look like the typical gangster movie, but it turns out to be quite different from any other genre outing: a noirish fairytale Western where the Indians have been replaced by wild beasts from the past. It all unfolds during the folkloric Malanka festival in the wild and inhospitable western part of Ukraine’s Romanian borderlands around where the director grew up, .

Leonid (Yatsentyuk), also known as Pamfir – which means stone returns home to his village after a stint in Poland. His wife Olena (Kyrylova) and teenage son Nazar (Potiak) have really missed him and their re-union is emotional. But not so with his father Pamfir’s (Makoviychuk), who lost an eye after a fight with his son. Victor’s grandmother (Khoknahlatkina) tries, with the help of her younger son Victor (Sharan), to bring the feuding men together, but the feud continues.

It soon turns out the whole family have been involved in smuggling contraband to Romania, with Pamfir as the ringleader, earning the nickname of “Godfather”. He now wants to go straight but his attempt to reintegrate into mainstream society are scuppered when his son Nazar burns down the local church, destroying not only Pamfir’s documents bit making his father liable to pay compensation. Working with his sidekick , “The Rat”, he continues his illegal trading with Romania unnaware of being watched by another gangster who goes by the name of Oletsa (Yarema) and his men. Oletsa not only runs the smuggling operations, but also the church. Oletsa’s men attack Pamfir, asking the crimelord to do “one last run” to pay back his debts. But, as usual, there is a snag: the tunnel, leading to Romania is narrow, and only Nazar will be able to get through.

The focus then turns to Olena whose back-breaking job at her father in law’s factory, keeping the family afloat, also contributed to the loss of her first child. She now becomes more and more instrumental in ending Pamfir’s smuggling career once and for all.

DoP Nikita Kuzmenko’s heightens the atmosphere of terror that propels Pamfir in primal almost poetic journey. The camera is constantly on the prowl in long tracking shots through foggy woods encompassing vast widescreen landscapes and ancient forests that belong in a fairytale. And this is exactly what the director is aiming for: the villagers’ straw costumes during the carnival celebrations; their wooden masks, garishly painted, bring to mind the ghastly ritual of pagan festivals and the fear generated by The Wicker Man. The ghastly brutality of this atavistic festival resurges through Pamfir’s effort to liberate himself from the violence of the modern day. Gorgeous to watch, full of twisty revelations, PAMFIR is a stunning feature debut. AS

In Cinemas 5 May 2023 |

Winners (2022)

Dir/Wri: Hassan Nazer. UK. 2022. 85 mins.

Cinema Paradiso comes to mind and is actually mentioned in this sunny tribute to cinema and the Iranian directors past and present from award-winning filmmaker Hassan Nazer. It follows the adventures of a young film fan who comes across a shiny Oscar like statuette in the dusty wasteland surrounding his village in the remote desert of Kavir, and decides to trace its owner. The film also stars Mohammad Naji from Majid Majidi’s 2007 Song of Sparrows another delightful drama that also charmed the birds off the trees.

Iranians love their cinema so much so that there are no less than three newspapers dedicated entirely to the subject. And this delicate lyrical fable echoes with the spirit of Iranian cinema and filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi , Majid Majidi, and many who languish in prison. Hassan Nazer made the film in Scotland where he arrived as a refugee two decades ago.

It opens when keen cineaste and Afghan refugee Yahya (Parsa Maghami) watching Jafar Panahi’s 2015 Golden Bear-winning Taxi while his widowed mother is imploring him to go to bed. During the day he works for Nasser Khan (Naji hiding from the authorities) on one of Tehran’s scrapyards for a minimum wage. In the dusty rubble he then discovers the statuette which has already had a colourful history of its own, that started in the back of a taxi and finished in the middle of the road via the local post office. Nazer packs a great deal into his charismatic feature and the joie de vivre it generates makes it a success. MT

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE from 16 March 2023 | RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 26 OCTOBER – 5 NOVEMBER 2022

1976 (2022)

Dir.: Manuela Martelli; Cast: Aline Kuppenheim, Nicolas Sepulveda, Hugo Medina, Alejandro Goic, Carmen Gloria Martinez, Gabriel Urzua; Vilma Verdejo, Yasna Ríos; Chile 2022, 97 min.

Another classically styled arthouse drama taking us back to the turbulent 1970s in Latin America seen through the eyes of a well to do Santiago woman, under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

1976 is a first feature for Chilean director/co-writer Manuela Martelli who works with a predominantly female crew and seasoned actress Aline Kuppenheim (A Fantastic Woman) who gives a sensitive performance in this lowkey but thematically vibrant domestic drama as 49 year old Carmen.

Carmen is redecorating the family’s holiday home near the beach in time for the season. As she chooses paint for the walls the sound of gunshot is clearly audible in the nearby street. Back at the house, she meets the local priest Father Sanchez (Medina) who has been involving her in various charity efforts, and his latest suggestion is that she takes in a young homeless man called Elias (Sepulveda).

Elias has been classified as a fugitive from Pinochet’s ‘Secret Police’, and is currently sheltering in one of the out-houses. He seems mild-mannered enough although in need of medical attention for a bullet in his thigh. Carmen always wanted to be a doctor but her father would not allow her to follow in his path, but somehow Elias brings out her caring side, and her recent Red Cross stint certainly comes in handy to took after the young man.

Father Sanchez later reveals that Elias was put in charge of two children after the Pinochet putsch, but that he panicked and became traumatised when they were later murdered. Carmen’s three grandchildren arrive with their mother and the rest of the family, the kids complaining that their favourite TV programme has been interrupted by a broadcast from Pinochet, adds further context. During all this, Carmen looks after Elias, tending to his bullet wound, soon finding herself assisting Elias is some of his underground work. She meets Silvia (Ríos), a fellow conspirator who gives her the code name “Cleopatra”, and sets up a meeting with another link in the resistance chain, who want to spirit Elias away.

Carmen’s husband Miguel, a doctor in Santiago, arrives at the house, much more interested in his college Osvaldo, who has chosen Miguel (Goic) to “re-organise” the hospital where one of the doctors has already fled the country. But when a young girl is found dead near the beach, and the writing is on the wall. Carmen’s next rendezvous with a parish priest does not go according to plan, and she is followed in her car which is later ransacked. Carmen knows she is living on borrowed time, and her maid Julita (Verdejo) soon confirms Carmen worst fears in a rather spooky scene at dusk. Will Carmen’s status and marriage save her?

The main thrust of the story is the developing relationship between Elias and Carmen. Keeping her distance at first and seeing Elias as just another charge to take care of for father Sanchez, the memory of her thwarted career and the negligence and nagging by her husband (who sees her as a ‘trophy’ to show her off to family and friends) changes the dynamic between them.

The tipping point for Carmen is another dig by Miguel, due to her wearing a dress showing off her figure: Carmen cuts the dress into pieces, but also ends all emotional ties to her status. She asks Elias, jokingly, if she will be remembered after the downfall of the Pinochet regime, and he claims a hospital will be named after her. But Elias is also aware of the danger for Carmen: “Tell them you never saw me, that you did not know my name. They will believe you”.

DoP Yarará Rodgriguez lets the camera glide over the beautiful coastal landscape, but his close-ups of Carmen are equally impressive, highlighting her personal transformation. She is anything but a dutiful member of the underground: thanks to Father Sanchez, she has stumbled into something much more dangerous than she can imagine, but she also has a point to prove: her rebellion is personal, disobeying her husband and all he believes in has become her tool for resistance. Aline Kuppenheim is brilliant as Carmen, supporting by an impressive cast. 1976 is a small gem, made on a shoestring it brings together the personal and the political in a subversive way. Maria Portugal’s mournful score very much underlines the lyrical narrative. AS

NOW ON BFI PLAYER RENTALS | BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | CANNES PREMIERES 2022

Confetti (2021)

Dir.: Ann Hu; Cast: Harmonie He, Zhu Zhu, Amy Irving, Helen Slater, Li Ya Nan; USA/China 2021, 97 min.

Dyslexia is a common condition that bears no relation to intelligence. In CONFETTI Chinese-American writer/director Ann Hu presents an engaging, humanistic drama about the struggle for adequate education for dyslexic students in two vastly different cultures and countries namely China and the USA.

In China where dyslexia is barely recognised, Mei Mei (He), daughter of Lan (Zhu Zhu) and Lao Chen (Ya Nan) is teased and bullied at her small-town primary school. Lan, who is illiterate, fears her daughter will ostracised by society, having to do a menial job as a cleaner, like her illiterate mother. When Thomas, an American teacher, meets Mei Mei, he immediately suspects she is dyslexic: his sister displayed the same symptoms, but still went on to enjoy an academic career. Lan discusses the educational offering for dyslexic students in the USA and proposes she and Mei Mei emigrate there to benefit from these schools.

In New York Lan and Mei Mei stay with Thomas’ friend Helen McCellan (Irving), a wheelchair-bound writer who has lost her close family in a car crash, and is just in the process of finishing her book. The search for a suitable school gets underway in a much more positive way than in China where the authorities were blatantly ill-informed and unhelpful. But in the US money is the key to accessing schools and social services. Eventually, Lan and Helen come across ‘Horizon’, an institution catering for students with all kinds of special needs who are prepared to consider taking Mei Mei providing the child gets a neuro-psychological evaluation from a registered psychiatrist. And this does not come cheaply. But this means that Helen can connect personally with Dr. Wurmer (Slater), head of the ‘Horizon’; but Lan’s patience has run out, and she want to fly home to China.

As always in Hu’s feature, details play a big role; and culture clash is not just linguistic but brought about by very different expectations between the two countries, Hu letting sentimentality creep into a narrative whose structure does not leave much room for  ambiguity. Still, Confetti – named after the colourful paper rain symbolising Mei Mei’s attempt to deal with language – is a worthwhile feature, but not one of her most intriguing as a director. AS

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 21 OCTOBER 2022 | IN SUPPORT OF THE BRITISH DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION

Beyond the White (2021)

Dir: Evgeny Kalachikhin | Wri: Anastasia Gorokhova | USSR, Doc, 90′

If your idea of heaven is vast open seascapes and silence then Beyond the White is a documentary that may appeal

Cut off from civilisation the Northern Russian villages of the Kola Peninsula are scattered along the shores of the White Sea a southern inlet of the Berents Sea. Here on the Tersky coast wild white horses roam freely, rather like in the Camargue, and bring to mind Andrey Konchalovskiy’s award-winning film The Postman’s White Nights (2014).

In this remote location the twenty or thirty inhabitants live in traditional blue painted wooden houses surrounded by water, forests, and sand. Most have now moved to the larger cities and the major port of Arkhangelskaya. The weather-beaten inhabitants that remain live in blue-painted wooden houses and survive from dwindling fish stocks -mostly herring – home-baked bread and pies that are cooked in kiln-like ovens built into the chimney.

The focus is a fire that has been burning across the flat steppe like-terrain providing cause for concern reflected in Alessandra Medianikova’s incendiary images. But Anastasia Gorokhova avoids a traditional narrative relying instead on the stunning landscapes themselves and an often epic soundscape to paint a vivid panoramic picture of the locals and their animals – including mosquitoes- living in communion with nature in the wild beauty of the primitive elements at the end of the world. MT

ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | NOW AVAILABLE AT TRUESTORY.FILM

 

 

No Bears (2022)

Dir: Jafar Panahi | Cast: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Kavani, Narjes Delaram, Reza Heydari | Iran, 104’

Two love stories intercept in this latest from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. No Bears sees him play arbiter and remote filmmaker – from a laptop in exile in his own country – in a deceptively simple political docudrama set on the Turkish border with Iran: Borders being the major thematic concern.

The gulf between tradition and modernity, city and countryside, fact and superstition is expounded and questioned with dark humour and a lightness of touch as the director tries to get on with shooting his film amid dodgy wifi connections. It follows Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Penjei) who are hoping to find freedom in Europe. In the process of securing fake passports, Zara makes it clear that they must leave together – or the deal is off. So much for love!.

From a remote village just over the border in Iran, Panahi is monitoring proceedings from his laptop with the help of Ghanbar (Vahid Mobaseri), his earnest assistant director who suddenly leaves to attend a wedding ceremony. Panahi asks him to film the ceremony involving a couple who have been betrothed since the cutting of the newborn bride to be’s umbilical cord. But another man has become involved with the bride and she has jumped at the opportunity to go him to Tehran causing much concern for the traditional local community who have resorted to smuggling, as farming no longer makes any money since the drought.

While desperately trying to keep a low profile from the authorities Panahi finds himself drawn into village politics with the local sheriff (Hashemi) claiming the director has taken a photo of the two putative elopers – witnessed by a little boy. Although Panahi is adamant to the contrary, giving his photo-card as proof, he gradually finds himself ‘persona non grata’ amongst the locals. And as the tone grows progressively more urgent for the troubled lovers Panahi ponders not only freedom of movement but also creative and intellectual liberty in his beleaguered nation, and further afield. No Bears is no great shakes from a visual point of view but carries a potent sociopolitical message. MT

No Bears BFI London Film Festival 2022 | October 5-16 in cinemas and on BFI Player On general release nationwide from Friday, November 11.

 

Live Now Pay Later (1962)

Dir: Jay Lewis | UK Drama 104’

One of the most grievous tragedies of British film preservation was the wiping by the BBC of the original TV version of David Mercer’s ‘A Suitable Case for Treatment’, but a good idea of what Ian Hendry’s performance was like can be gained from this long-forgotten gem described by Raymond Durgnat as “a key film, a worthy harbinger of Joan Littlewood’s ‘Sparrows Can’t Sing’.

Hendry was nominated for a BAFTA for most promising newcomer in a leading role, but soon after swiftly declined into alcoholism before the sixties seriously got under way. Knowing this adds further poignancy to this reminder of the era when Harold MacMillan was telling the public that “most of you have never had it so good” and £14.09d was a sun large enough to be worth sending bailiffs in to recover.

The script by Jack Trevor Story contains cynical lines like Hendry’s admission that he preys upon people “I con into buying things they don’t need and can’t afford”; notably Liz Fraser as one of his victims whose misfortunes culminate in a truly harrowing scene when men come to repossess her furniture while her husband is in the middle of impressing the chairman of the local golf club. @RichardChatten

NOW ON TPTV

Copenhagen Architecture Film Festival 2022

Copenhagen Architecture Festival x 2022 presents its most comprehensive edition to date: more than 100 events throughout the Danish capital will offer the opportunity to contemplate and explore what ‘Sense of Place’ means for architecture and the built environment today in films, exhibitions and debates with a host of international guests.

Film highlights include Claire Denis VENDREDI SOIR (2002) that sees Vincent Lindon and Valerie Lamercier star as strangers drawn to each other in an erotically-charged encounter on one of the hottest nights of the summer in Paris. The streets are jammed with traffic but a balmy limbo descends on the couple who are like ships that gently collide in the starry night. Claire Denis uses her unique recording and detailed cinematic language to tell a very sensual story.

The film is presented by Mathias Ruthner, film editor at Øjets Bibliotek. (Introduction in Danish)

Vendredi Soir / Claire Denis, 2002 / France / French with English subtitles / 90 min. + introduction

Vendredi Soir (2002)

 

THE STREET FILM STRAND

Allowing hostile and friendly encounters, the street is the bedrock of modern society; a motif so deeply engrained in the narratives and images of culture and a centuries-old engine of Western architectural and modernist theory.

6/10 The Dangerous Street I: MEAN STREETS by Martin Scorsese

7/10 The erotic street: FRIDAY NIGHT  by Claire Denis

10/10 The Dangerous Street II: MANILA IN THE CLAWS OF LIGHT by Lino Brocka

15/10 The Social Street: DO THE RIGHT THING by Spike Lee

16/10 The anti-social street: NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS by Kleber Mendonca Filho

16/10 The Dilapidated Street: BEHIND THE MASK OF JOY by Georg Pabst

COPENHAGEN ARCHITECTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

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Emily (2022)

Dir.: Frances O’Connor; Cast: Emma Mackey, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Adrian Dunbar; UK/US 2022, 130 min.

This big screen imagining of Emily Bronte’s life is a wild affair that will offend scholars but delight cinema audiences. Emma Mackey is dynamite as the 18th century poet and novelist who dares to have sex with a curate and revolts against patriarchy and her two sisters, who are only too happy to conform.

Emily is a rebel with a cause: the early death of her mother has seen two of her Brontë sisters Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Anne (Gething) cow-towing to their stern, rather blustery father Patrick (Dunbar), who regularly hammers home the word of God from the pulpit. His Byronesque son Branwell (Whitehead) will become a role model for Emily: she copies his tattoos proclaiming ‘freedom of mind’ and turns a blind eye to his opium habit which will be his undoing.

The new curate William Weightman (Jackson-Cohen) is handsome beyond belief but deeply wedded to God. All her sisters swoon over William, but only Emily takes action: their affair is passionate and sweepingly romantic, firing up her senses and sublimating real life into her poems and famous, and only, novel ‘Wuthering Heights’.

Alas, William gets cold feet, the fear of God and Patrick, his stand-in on Earth, plays on his conscience, driving him to terminate their affair. But on the eve of Emily’s departure with Charlotte to Brussels, the curate rues his decision, and gives a letter to Branwell, begging Emily to stay and be his love. The remainder of the drama plays out in this mood of utter devastation of mind and body, before the final triumph of ‘Wuthering Heights’.

The plot turns on the letter episode: O’Connor does not go with the submissive suffering of the three women – she hurtles headlong into Thomas Hardy territory and ‘Jude the Obscure’. But although Branwell is a less evil creature than Hardy’s Arabella, he still plays God to the detriment of the lovers.

DoP Nanu Segal makes nature as foreboding as the lovers’ souls with the English countryside blossoming in tune with the lovers’ springtime emotions and brooding in the murkiest of winter hues, as the camera exploring the ghostly atmosphere of the moors in gloomy tracking shots. Haworth, the village, where Emily is seen as an outsider, is shown as a bastion of local traders and shopkeepers.

Abel Korzenioski’s Gothic score ramps up the romance but the self-defeating story perseveres with its passionate tale of woe. The only slight drawback in this gut-wrenching tale about a woman colliding with a world run by men is the self-indulgent running time that takes away the sting of the bitter male/female confrontations. Although O’Connor plays fast and lose with a few literary facts this is no place for anaemic scholarly retrospection – Emily is a drama seen through the prism of female emancipation; a vivid re-imagining of what could have been. AS

ON RELEASE FROM OCTOBER 14 2022

The Lost King (2022)

Director: Stephen Frears| Cast: Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry Lloyd, James Fleet, Jessica Hardwick, Robert Jack, John-Paul Hurley, Sinead MacInnes | UK Drama, 108′

Sally Hawkins plays the researcher who discovered the remains of Richard III in this low-key drama from director Stephen Frears. The result is entirely watchable but ultimately a little uneven, as if it can’t quite decide which story it wants to tell.

Hawkins plays Philippa Langley, a divorced mother of two young teenage boys, who’s passed over at work possibly due to suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. When she takes one of her sons to see a production of Richard III, she feels an instant kinship with the King (played by Harry Lloyd) and is compelled to learn more about his life.

After becoming a member of the Richard III Society and doing some diligent detective work, Philippa becomes convinced Richard’s remains are buried beneath a car park in Leicester. However, she meets continual resistance from various Leicester authorities, who are then only too pleased to take all the credit once Philippa’s hunch turns out to be correct.

Understandably, given the similar based-on-a-true-story premise, Frears has reunited a significant number of the creative team behind his 2013 hit Philomena, including co-writers Steve Coogan (who has a token support role as Philippa’s supportive ex-husband) and Jeff Pope. Also on board is Philomena’s composer, Alexandre Desplat, who opens the film with a bizarre pastiche of Bernard Herrmann’s theme for Psycho, setting entirely the wrong tone.

That tonal inconsistency continues throughout the film, as the script cycles between several different story aspects seemingly unable to settle on whether it wants to be a fantasy-tinged tale of self-discovery, a symbolic battle against the establishment (men) and injustice, or a heart-warming, lightly comedic family drama. In the end, in trying to be all three elements at once, it fails to fully satisfy in any of them.

Hawkins is on her usual excellent form as Philippa, but it frequently feels like she’s only been given one note to play. On top of that, the conceit of having her essentially haunted by Richard III (Lloyd appears by her side repeatedly, with very little dialogue) largely backfires because she starts to look crazy, especially when passers-by observe her talking to herself in the street.

The script’s most compelling element is the way it addresses how history is written – Philippa isn’t just exhuming Richard’s remains, she’s also restoring his maligned reputation, compounded through the ages by Shakespeare’s play. The film attempts a parallel in the way it suggests the establishment tried to write Philippa out of her own story, but it ultimately comes off as clumsy, something that isn’t helped by a misjudged ending that’s almost laughably sanctimonious and fails to ring true. Matthew Turner

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE from FRIDAY

 

The Oil Machine (2022)

Dir.: Emma Davie; Documentary with Holly Gillibrand, Kevin Anderson, Emeka Emembolu, James Marriott, Mikhaela Loach, Steve Waygood, Sir David King; UK 2022, 82 min.

Taking on the oil industry is no mean feat but Emma Davie tackles it bravely in her first single outing as a director in a father naive feature documentary that explores the implications “the death of oil” would have in the UK. Whilst this is an activist’s s film first and foremost, Davie does not shrink away from questions that challenge our perception of the issues involved. There are no easy options when it comes to the desperate need to reduce our reliance on this energy source which is reeking havoc on the environment with the increase in world water levels – destroying – among others – large parts of Bangladesh and Vietnam  and the loss of life and displacement of around 15 million people, but also on the the destruction of  parts of Vietnam along the Mekong Delta , the largest rice producing region in the world that feeds millions.

Closer to home, the UK is financially reliant on its North Sea for a long time to come and the cost of dismantling the oil industry cannot be put into figures. economic structures such as the stock market are linked to the Pension Funds radically affected by a downturn in industries such as ship building that provide a vital source of employment. Never mind the everyday products that we rely on such as plastic.

So it comes as no surprise to hear that the new licensing of the Cambo oil field off the coast of Shetland is in direct contradiction to the Paris Climate Agreement to which the UK is a signatory member. The reason is not only the North Sea Oil lobby, which has the ear of the government, but that technological breakthroughs like Carbon Capture are unlikely to guarantee the Net Zero ambitions (and promises) of the industry for a long time. So, like it or not, “our future rests on a future no one wants”, says Steve Waygood from Aviva Investors.

Holly Gillibrand, also known as “Scotland’s Greta”, can be as adamant as she likes in asking for an end to fossil fuel culture because the results would be catastrophic and cause irreversible damage to the planet over the next 30 years. And the question “how quick can we do it” is actually hindered by all those participants, not least the investors and entire regions who rely on North Sea Oil.

It is right for former Chief Scientific Officer Sir David King to claim, “there were thousands of years of history without the use of gas and oil – until the 1970s, when drilling began in the North Sea.” But the world is now a far more complex place and the cost of dismantling a whole industry still seems too daunting to be realised more or less ad hoc.

Davie soon finds herself on a slippery slope putting forward questions she does not really want to ask. The result is what is called a balanced view: in this case, the gulf between what is needed and what is possible is simply too wide; King Oil will go on reigning to the detriment of the planet and everything that breathes. AS

THE OIL MACHINE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 11 OCTOBER 2022

 

The Shadow of Goya (2022)

Dir: Jose Luis Lopez-Linares | Writers: Jean-Claude Carriere, Cristina Otero Roth | With Julian Schnabel | Doc, 90′

Jean-Claude Carriere’s final visit to Spain informs this new documentary on the nation’s most outstanding 18th century artist whose output reflected all aspects of life from the beautiful to the bestial, and beyond.

The French writer – who died months after his trip – wanted to look at how Goya – often called ‘the father of modern art” – influenced other painters such as Picasso, Salvador Dali, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and even the filmmaker Luis Bunuel (with whom Carriere also collaborated). Artist Julian Schnabel (who appears in a white overall, slit to the waist) claims Goya’s broad brush strokes have a distinctly modern look that would have a great impact on impressionism and even surrealism. In the light of this, The Shadows of Goya soon widens out into a compendium culture trip suffused with cinema, art and creativity, also taking in a visit to the major retrospective on Goya currently happening Basel, Switzerland. 

By way of background, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, born in Zaragoza in 1746, had already felt the first rumblings of revolution that would go on to loosen the Spanish nation from its colonies throughout the 19th century, and this turbulence echoes through the dark clouds of his early landscapes and engravings with his large canvasses depicting full blown conflict: ‘The Disasters of War’ and ‘The Third of May 1808’. ‘Los Caprichos’, his eighty or so engravings, mercilessly satirised the failings of Spanish society of the day; from religious fanaticism to professional incompetence and even The Spanish Inquisition. Goya even lampooned doctors after they failed to help him when he grew deaf from a debilitating illness, depicting them as donkeys famously in  ‘Tu Que no Puedes”. But he always made his titles ambiguous so as not to offend his bread and butter clients from high society and the aristocracy whom he charged extra for painting hands, but not feet.

Carriere waxes lyrical on his subject, showing us round Goya’s various haunts and explains how the artist was intrigued by his fellow men and gave them equal exposure in his work as he did his wealthy clients and most famously in ‘The Burial of the Sardine’, a tribute to an exuberant crowd celebrating on the first day of Lent. We also hear about his famous ‘Black Paintings’, often portrayed on the walls of his home ‘La Quinta del Sordo’ (literally “Deaf Man’s Manor”). These fourteen works depict the base aspects of humanity: madness and deformity features largely in these works, and in the ‘Dos Mujeres’ that sees two ugly old women almost mocking the artist for painting them.  The ‘Black Works’ also incorporated Goya’s famous use of symbolism echoing his desire to get beyond the visual and into a spiritual domain, brilliantly portrayed in ‘Saturn Devouring his Son’. He even painted a dog – ‘El Perro’ – who seems to be drowning or in distress. All these pictures are open to interpretation.

Bunuel and Goya both came from Aragon and we get to see various clips from the surrealist filmmaker’s That Obscure Object of Desire, as well as Schnabel’s biopic At Eternity’s Gate to show how Van Gogh’s intense style echoed the Goya’s detailed ‘Caprichos’ engravings.

The film also gets out and about to show Goya’s frescoes in Cadiz and Zaragoza cathedral, and the captures the flowing landscapes of Aragon and ancient villages, some untouched since the Civil War. For some reason Carriere decides to break into Spanish at regular intervals and seems particularly obsessed by a reclining female nude and her clothed counterpart in Madrid’s Prado Museum (‘La Maja Nesnuda/Vestida’) the film is given valuable context from historians, specialists and curators: Antonio Gonzales Marin, Antonio Gascon, and Charlotte Castel-Rousseau from the Prado in Madrid. 

So a lively and informative look at this eclectic Spanish artist who eventually died in Bordeaux after becoming completely deaf, reflected in surrealist sequences by the award-winning director and documentarian Lopez-Linares (Bosch: The Garden of Dreams) and his DoP Andres Recio Illan. And an enlightening valedictory offering from Carriere. MT

SCREENING AT VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

Inland (2022)

Dir.: Fridtjof Ryder; Cast: Rory Alexander, Mark Rylance, Katherine Hunter, Eleanor Holiday, Shaun Dingwall, Neil Williams; UK 2022, 82 min.

Fridtjof Ryder makes a striking but saturnine first feature, borrowing heavily from Nicolas Roeg and David Lynch, as implied by the film’s title. Ryder wrote the script before he was twenty, but filming was delayed for several years due to the pandemic.

Essentially a two hander, the film follows a young man (Alexander) whose disturbed mental state lies at the heart of the narrative and will dictate the course of his life even after longterm psychiatric treatment. One relationship in particular looms large; with garage owner Dunleavy (a saturnine Mark Rylance) who offers him board and employment in the West Country city of Gloucester (the director’s hometown). The two will circle each other like fish in an aquarium: the implications are not promising, but their interaction is never really explored. This young man has obvious lived through abandonment issues and has difficulty integrating, a flyer shows the photo of his mother, who has gone missing.

Donleavy remains the only fully fleshed out character here but his relationship with his employee is never developed beyond the surface. Alexander’s young man remains enigmatic, ephemeral even, never emerging as someone substantial. There are nods to his mother’s Romani background – but Inland asks more questions than it answers.

DoP Ravi Doubleday lets the camera roam in the dark woods and poorly-lit streets of Gloucester in a pervasive atmosphere of gloom. Dunleavy’s little house looks lost in the dark forest. Rylance tries hard to fill out his character, but struggles with the avoidance of anything factual. Alexander walks in a landscape he is supposed to know, but childhood and present always mingle, giving him no foothold in reality. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 16 JUNE 2023

 

 

See How They Run (2022)

Dir: Tom George | Cast: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, David Oyelowo, Charlie Cooper, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Pearl Chanda, Sian Clifford, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd | UK Drama 98′

Agatha Christie’s long-running play The Mousetrap finally gets a film version of sorts in this character-laden farce carried by a brilliant comedy performance from Saoirse Ronan.

On a snowy night in London’s Soho, 1953, she is police constable Stalker, called in to investigate the murder of the director hired ‘to make the film version less boring than the play’, after its 100th staging.

The dead man turns out to be accident-prone Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody in Wes Andersen mode) a friendless American who sees an opportunity to reinvent the play for Hollywood, with his philandering producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith). Obviously that’s not going to happen, but what comes next is a cosy re-imagining of the good old days of post war whodunnits positively bristling with roaring fires, red herrings and a starry cast, although none shines as brightly as Ronan whose perfect timing lights up every scene.

Not so her boss Sam Rockwell (Inspector Stoppard) whose shifty behaviour and muffled attempt at a cockney accent strike a bum note in this amusing, if confusing, comedy caper (too much editing, Ed). And this is a glaring plothole because writer Mark Chapell has him as one of the main characters in his dawdling script, but from Stoppard’s shifty demeanour it starts to feel like he may actually be a suspect. Or is that just another red herring?.

Harris Dickinson plays The Mousetrap’s dapper lead Richard Attenborough and Pearl Chanda his wife, Sheila Sim. Ruth Wilson shines as the glossy but tight-fisted impresario Petula Spencer. Shirley Henderson is magnificent as a crusty old Agatha Christie in what turns out to be a rather entertaining cameo role – shame there wasn’t more of her – and David Oyelowo is the pompous writer Mervyn Cocker-Norris, let’s forget about his preposterous Latin lover Gio (Fortune-Lloyd).

See How They Run is all a bit hit and miss but the silliness is half the fun, and it really does look rather super, especially the scene where they all arrive, after receiving a mysterious invite, at Christie’s stately mansion in deepest Berkshire.

The Mousetrap is one of theatre land’s most iconic plays and started life as Agatha Christie’s 1947 radio play called Three Blind Mice. Later adapted into a TV film, and then a short story before taking to the stage in October 1952, it’s still going strong at St Martin’s Theatre seven decades later. Sadly See How They Run will probably soon be a distant memory. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN THE UK AND NATIONWIDE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

Dir.: Olivia Wilde; Cast: Florence Pugh, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine, Harry Stiles, Gemma Chan, Kiki Layne, Douglas Smith; US 2022, 122 min.

Not even three three publicity stunts could elevate Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to her debut feature Booksmart at the Venice Festival this year where the film written by Katie Silberman, Shane and Carey Van Dyke was screened Out of Competition.

Was Shia LaBeouf really fired and replaced by Harry Stiles? And did Styles really spit at Chris Pine? And what about Florence Pugh. Did she cut down on press work because she was miffed by Wilde?

Don’t Worry Darling turns out to be a pale imitation of Stepford Wives, The Truman Show and Pleasantville rolled into one. In the southern Californian desert a model community called ‘Victory’ has been set up very much along the lines of Pleasant Living, with the wives cleaning and cooking while their menfolk put their minds to the top secret ‘Victory’ project, all kitted out in dapper 1950s suits and driving souped-up retro cars.

In this empty-headed utopian Eldorado Alice (Pugh) are Jack (Styles) are always hard at it – even on the kitchen table – cutlery and plates flying all over the place. Frank (Pine) and his wife Shelley (Chan) are meanwhile the leaders of the clean living brigade. Frank is not only the boss at work, he is the spiritual guru who keeps everything together like a scout master. Bunny (Wilde) and Bill (Smith) are trying hard to fit in with the set-up; the only one having doubts is Margaret (Layne).

One day a toy airplane lands in her lap and soon afterwards Alice sees a full size version falling from the sky and detonating in the desert. After Margaret commits suicide on the roof of her house, Alice takes matters into her own hands. But instead of offering insight into why these female characters are being gas-lit, Wilde opts for a car chase.

PD Katie Byron and Aronofsky’s regular DoP Matthew Libatique keep the production values up, mustard and pistachio dominating in the desert sand and the cloudless sky. Vacuous and totally humourless, Don’t Worry Darling is a void, held together by Pugh who struggles desperately to bring something fresh to the production. A first class actor in a lousy imitation game, she has all the right to be angry at Wilde – never mind the rumour mill. AS

VENICE REVIEW | ON RELEASE IN THE UK FROM 23 SEPTEMBER

Juniper (2022)

Dir/Wri: Matthew Saville | Cast: Charlotte Rampling, George Ferrier, Marton Csokas, Edith Poor | Drama, 95′

Charlotte Rampling steals every scene in this poignant if predictable drama from debut director Matthew Savile. Light-hearted and upbeat Juniper also showcases the verdant landscapes of Auckland captured on the widescreen by Marty Williams.

Ruth (Rampling) is a prickly English wartime correspondent convalescing in her son Robert’s (Csokas) country house in New Zealand where she has wised up to his ulterior motives – a need for financial support and to act as a rudder for his unruly teenage son Sam (Ferrier). Sam has no wish to look after a cantankerous old woman and is furious about her sleeping in his late mother’s bedroom.

A keen battle of wits develops as Ruth and Sam find common ground as intergenerational tearaways with the same rebellious take on life, although Ruth has the edge in this amusing character drama that shares certain similarities with Justin Kurzel’s recent hit Nitram, without the incendiary power and implications of that thriller.

Rampling brings out the humanity in Ruth whose eloquent resolve is unaffected by her regularly hitting the gin bottle and calling a spade a spade without ever losing her cool determination not to be outwitted by a petulant grandson who has recently lost his mother and been expelled from school, and eventually uses him to achieve her own benevolent ends.

Avoiding sentimentality and astute in his observation that age and infirmity have no bearing on a person’s innate character drives, Juniper is a witty and well-written debut taking its clever title from the Juniper berry that goes into making gin. Ruth is a courageous woman whose desires are undimmed by her increasing years bringing to mind Dylan Thomas well worn poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light”. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2022

 

All that Breathes (2022) Grierson Award BFI London Film Festival

Dir: Shaunak Sen | India, Doc, 91′

In New Delhi nature is adapting far more intuitively to pollution than humans according to this visionary documentary that embodies the stealth of the animal kingdom.

All That Breathes works on three levels: as a melancholic, dreamlike meditation on the vital synergy that exists between all living creatures; as an eco-doc exploring the worsening effects of pollution and climate change in India; or simply, as a human story about two brothers working together to make the world kinder and more humane.

Living in an increasingly violent and overpopulated capital city, Mohammed, Nadeem and their friend/co-worker Salik dedicate their spare time to a home-based mostly self-funded organisation called Wildlife Rescue. For the past two decades they have rehabilitated kites and other birds of prey in the cramped conditions of a makeshift clinic. Key to the relevance of kites is that Muslims believe feeding them will bring some kind of religious reward or sawab.  Since the brothers started the clinic in 2003 the situation has got worse and their patient list is constantly growing, consuming more of the brothers’ time and impacting on their own family wellbeing.

Director Sen creates an evocative portrait from the opening scenes that see ants, mice and rats scurrying around under the neon-lit night skies of Delhi oblivious to the looming violence and public unrest that rages, on a daily level, in the background. Meanwhile, landfill sites are invading the landscape, rivers are drying up and monsoons are worsening causing flooding that brings sewerage out into the open. “Delhi is an open wound, and we are tiny a band-aid” says Nadeem.

The air is becoming so heavy with chemical pollution and smog that birds are tumbling from the skies and often literally crash into one another as they hover over landfill sites, scavenging for food. Crucially, many chemicals are not fully tested for their environmental impact and these birds act as a monitor for toxicity – rather like the famous ‘canary in the coal mine’ back in the Industrial Age. But the brothers have no time for chemical testing and analysis as they face a growing list of avian patients. Cinematographer Ben Bernhard creates a woozy poetic bird’s eye view of a city intoxicated by its own chemical brew. His camera also allows us intimate close-ups of the kites, vulnerable but beady-eyed on the operating table.

Swooping between the real and the surreal Shaunak Sen invites us to gaze at the beauty of the animal kingdom and the ugliness caused by humans, in this decadent apocalyptic world, and draw our own conclusions. MT

Everybody Loves Jeanne (2022)

Dir/Wri: Celine Devaux | Cast: Blanche Gardin, Laurent Lafitte, Maxence Tual, Nuno Lopez, Marthe Keller | France, Drama 95′

Jeanne founded an ecological startup to save the world from plastic. Now on the verge of bankruptcy she has some tough decisions to make about her future in this cross between a screwball comedy and a reflective romantic drama.

First time director and illustrator Celine Devaux opts for a jokey narrative device featuring animated inserts of a female version of ‘Mr Blobby’ voicing Jeanne’s worst fears, hopes and melancholy musings. These illustrations actually interrupt the narrative flow making you wish the director would just get on with a story powerful enough to carry a drama that gets more and more enjoyable as it finds its groove, although the message it finally delivers is a bit of a cop out feminist-wise. Not sure whether this was what Devaux originally intended. 

Fortunately Jeanne happens to have inherited her mother’s place in Lisbon where she grew up with her brother Simon (Tual). So off she heads to the sun to clear her debts with the sale.  On the way she meets old school friend Jean (Lafitte on top form as a pain in the arse) and spends the flight wondering whether she fancies, or finds him deeply irritating. This dilemma is soon resolved when Jean is met by his wife and little daughter, and also turns out to be loaded – in a withering twist on Jeanne’s own financial failure. She, by contrast, is met by her ex Victor (Lopez) who is also now a father, and married into the bargain, although she re-kindles secret desires to bed him. And it’s these amusing insights that make the film entertaining and Jeanne so appealing as a character who everyone can relate to: a woman who is not afraid to be disliked but also wants to be perceived as doing something worthwhile, while suffering the secret need to be loved – a tough call but one that Blanche Gardin pulls off successfully in this impressive feature debut.

In Lisbon she sees her mother everywhere in the flat – a hoarder who nagged about her never calling. So clearing out the flat is the last thing on her mind. Gradually slumping into a low level depression she escapes into the sandy beaches and mellow sunsets of the Portuguese capital until the unexpected arrives in a soft-pedalling finale. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | CAMERA D’OR 2022

 

The Tiger and the President (2022)

Dir: Jean-Marc Peyrefitte | Cast: Andre Dusollier, Jacques Gamblin, Anna Mouglalis, Astrid Whettnall, Laura Benson | France, Drama 108′

Jacques Gamblin is the star of this jaunty political drama inspired by on real events surrounding an almost forgotten French president Paul Deschanel (1855-1922).

Paris in the roaring 1920s and a transformational time for French politics in the wake of the Third Republic. President Georges Clemenceau (Dussollier) aka ‘The Tiger’ for his contribution to the Allied Victory, has just been ousted from office by a forward-thinking and sharp-witted successor Paul Deschanel (Gamblin) a radical reformer and inspired orator. Deschanel realises his task is to transform the post world war lives of the French people whose battle cry is: “you won the war, now let us win the peace”. Meanwhile the Treaty of Versailles is being signed, with Germany the last to put ink to paper. On his victory the new president launches into a raft of sweeping reforms including the vote for women – poopoo-ed by Clemenceau – ridding France of the nightshift in factories, along with the death penalty – were amongst his most positive social changes.

In his first feature French director and writer Jean-Marc Peyrefitte freely admits to embellishing the storyline co-written by Marc Syrigas, ramping up the sparring between Clemenceau and Deschanel to give the film its comedy elements and adding a picaresque even whimsical quality to an often poignant drama about a man whose fervent desire was to better his country recovering from the First World War. But this humanist side of his character also gave rise to deep anxiety, and to remedy this his doctor prescribed a controversial barbiturate called Veronal – later withdrawn from use – that led to a famous episode of him sleepwalking off the back of train, during a presidential visit which culminates in a painterly stay in the French countryside with a family of yokels. Anna Mouglalis offers a shoulder to cry on and much valued pillow talk to both men who apparently shared the same ‘Salon’.

Peyreftte cleverly dovetails both presidents into news highlights from the 1920s archives. And these along with stylish Art Deco settings and a score of appropriate musical hits from the era add to the allure of this intelligent and jaunty interwar drama about a man slowly losing his mind. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

 

 

 

Kompromat (2022)

Dir: Jerome Salle | Cast: Gilles Lellouche, Joanna Kulig, Louis-Do de Lenquesaing, Michael Gor | France, Action thriller 122′

Gilles Lellouche brings some much needed Gallic charm to this chilly political espionage outing co-written and directed by Jerome Salle and based on real events.  

Kompromat is a story that couldn’t get much grimmer if it tried in shadowing the current state of affairs in Russia. Lellouche plays affable French diplomat Mathieu Roussel who is thrown into jail in subzero Siberia on a flimsy charge of child pornography. In reality he is being framed by the FSB in a ‘no-win’ situation known as a ‘Kompromat’. But Matthieu is mystified as to why, in a plot that only goes to underline just how impossible his situation is when up against the Ruskies.

You can’t help feeling sorry for Mathieu when it later emerges his marriage to French wife Alice (Lasowski) is is also doomed. They are briefly seen in a lukewarm exchange before the authorities arrive to arrest him in a violent incursion. Later Alice returns to France with Rose, but not before filing a complaint about him to the authorities.

So begins a Kafkaesque nightmare of epic proportions as Mathieu takes on the authorities from a weakened position. Friendless and down on his luck, he turns to a mirthless Russian lawyer called Borodin (Godunov) who manages to get him released on an electronic tag. Then there is Louis-Do de Lenquesaing’s sharp-suited French ambassador, who briefly swings into action but to no avail. A Russian woman called Svetlana (Kulig) – whose marriage is also in trouble – supplies a frost-bitten romantic frisson. The two had briefly danced together at a work do, and she enables his bid to escape by supplying a mobile phone. But can he really trust her as he makes his way across the frozen wastelands in this dour but watchable thriller. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRENCH CINEMAS | 12 SEPTEMBER 2022 

Blonde (2022) Venice Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Andrew Dominik; Cast: Ana de Amas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Julianne Nicholson, Lilly Fisher; USA 2022, 166 min.

Australian director Andrew Dominik adapts Joyce Carol Oates Monroe’s novel – all 738 pages – by the look of it, for this Golden Lion hopeful. Worth mentioning this because the feature is, like the book, a work of fiction; an imagined drama. Dominik is dealing with a myth, and the way he does it certainly raises questions of exploitation and voyeurism.

In the opening scenes a seven-year-old Norma Jean Mortenson (Fisher) is told by her single mother Gladys (Nicholson) that her father is a movie-star. A black-and-white photo is all the ‘proof’ she is given – and from that moment onwards Norma Jean, who will become the legendary Marilyn Monroe, will look for her Daddy in most men she meets. The real Marilyn believed Clark Gable was her father – ironically both starred in Monroe’s last feature Misfits (1961). During shooting Marilyn’s husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (Brody), fell in love with set photographer Inge Morath, and married her soon afterwards. Nothing of this found its way into Blonde, nor is there any mention that Monroe supported Miller in his legal battle with the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) – a move that could have ruined both their careers. Instead we get a choppily edited, slapstick parody of a three-some with Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. Robinson Jr. This symbolises the director’s salacious choices: the more scandalous, the better.

Suffice to show Monroe being raped by studio boss Daryl Zanuck at the start of her movie career, but Dominik decides to spice up his narrative with a full frontal display of her tumultuous time at the hands of JFK. Her comments: “that she felt like meat being delivered” only adds grist to this shameless ‘expose’.

Billy Wilder gets off far too lightly, into the bargain. Dominik still thinks the infamous scene in Seven Year Itch, when Monroe’s skirt is blown up around her ears by the passing subway, is ‘funny’, and not a provocation for Monroe’s newly wed husband Joe Di Maggio (Cannavale). The marriage, unsurprisingly, did not last long. Wilder also wrote a horrible monologue for Monroe in Some like it Hot, showing her off as the typical scatter-brained blonde and to underline the point Ana de Armas (as Marilyn) runs around semi-naked for no apparent reason other than titillation.

DoP Chayse Irvin uses all tricks in the book to get the bandwagon rolling: hopping from old-fashioned colour to pristine black-and-white, and using slow-motion sequences to accentuate what appears to be history. It is not.

Netflx, as the producers, as well as Dominik, can be sure that the kaleidoscopic mayhem will find a willing audience. It will no doubt sell like hot cakes in cinemas, where, after a brief run, it moves on to the beleaguered streaming platform.

But the real culprit is Alberto Barbera, director of the Mostra. Nobody held a gun to his head to make him chose Blonde. He just went for the glory, never mind a possible scandal. The result is at best a feature filmed for the voyeuristic male gaze, at worst pornography masquerading as an art form. @Andre Simonoveisz.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 2022 | IN COMPETITION.

It Is In Us All (2022)

Dir/Wri: Antonia Campbell-Hughes | Cast: Cosmo Jarvis, Rhys Mannion, Claes Bang | Drama

This enigmatically titled thriller is the confident feature debut of seasoned actor Antonia Campbell Hughes who certainly knows how to create atmosphere even if her writing needs some fine-tuning.

Cosmo Jarvis leads in a pent-up performance as Hamish Considine a nihilistic young man whose past comes back to bite him with tragic consequences after a motorway accident unleashes a lifetime of suppressed emotional baggage.

Campbell Hughes creates a terrific sense of place in the rain-lashed countryside of Ireland, And it’s here where Hamish returns to visit the grave of his Irish-born aunt and deal her estate – a desolate house – on behalf of his pragmatic father, an expat businessman (a bearded Claes Bang who we only see on zoom). Outwardly blasé and self-assured Hamish soon turns out to be anything but after his car collides with another vehicle setting in course a cataclysmic chain of events as he pieces together his childhood to makes sense of the present.

The crash has destabilised Hamish physically and mentally but he shrugs it off stoically discharging himself from hospital too early with a severe concussion. When the only survivor of the other vehicle – a 17 year old livewire called Evan (a brilliant Mannion) – drops round to the house the two develop an almost surreal bond as Hamish is sucked into his mother’s homeland, feeling a palpable connection with the locals who share their own experiences of growing up with her and her sister.

A humble cow in Evan’s family farm becomes the symbol of this cherished motherhood and the fear of her being slaughtered in the abattoir nearby has Hamish reliving the devastation of losing his own mother when he was only a boy. Evan’s volatile personality comes to represent a seething life-force for Hamish drawing him inexorably to the past until he realises there is no going back and no way forward. It Is In Us All is not much of a thriller, in the traditional sense, but certainly a spellbinding look at how places create emotional memories that bind us eternally to the past. MT

UK AND IRISH CINEMA AND DIGITAL RELEASE DATE 23 SEPTEMBER 2022

 

 

Beyond the Wall (2022) Venice Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Vahid Jalivand, Cast: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi, Amir Aghaei, Iran 2022, 123 min.

This nightmarish siege drama with a tentative love story at its heart is one of the most accomplished features competing for this year’s Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival. Iranian films can be weak on the cinematic front despite their gripping storylines but Beyond the Wall is full of spectacular action scenes and tender close-ups. For once content and aesthetics come together in truly unique form.

Told in a series of flashbacks the sinuous thriller takes place in an apartment block where Leila (Habibi) is looking for her 4 year old son after evading the police during a workers’ protest. Meanwhile, one of the occupants, a blind man called Ali ((Mohammadzadeh) is attempting suicide but only succeeds in dislodging some hot water pipes when he is interrupted by the concierge of the building with the news that a hostage is somewhere in the building. Ali soon realises that Leila is actually hiding in his flat and becomes obsessed with trying to help her, escaping his own personal trauma and disappearing into a fantasy world with the unknown woman. Why is Ali so adamant to help Leila? The flashbacks gradually reveal the disturbing answer, and the brutal finale will have you cowering in your seats. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | GOLDEN LION

 

The Son (2022)

Dir.: Florian Zeller, Cats: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Zen McGrath, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Hopkins, USA/UK/France 2022, 123 min.

The Son is a glib and one-note second feature for director Florian Zeller after his Oscar-winning debut The Father took the film world by storm with its emotional clout and authenticity. The Son is too verbose, and too monotone to be engaging despite its slick production values, never escaping its stagey origins in a screenplay adapted by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s play.

Anthony Hopkins again stars as a father, this time to successful lawyer Peter (Jackman) who is on the verge of a potential White House association and has left his wife Kate (Dern) for a much younger trophy wife Beth (Kirby). The couple have just had a baby son but Kate contacts him about taking on board their own teenager Nicholas (an underwhelming McGrath ) who has obvious mental problems, self-harming and playing truant from school. Peter’s relationship with his stern father Anthony (Hopkins) has not helped him bond with Nicholas and after a suicide attempt, Nicholas is sectioned in a psychiatric ward turning his parents’ world upside down. Performance wise the standout is once again Hopkins who is commanding as a tough pragmatist, against Jackman’s dignified but hamstrung lawyer, with the female characters more or less brushed aside. The Son feels too redactive in contrast to its successful predecessor, with Zeller stranded in the middle between a film and a theatrical production. The upshot is a depressing psychodrama. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 17 FEBRUARY 2023 | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE  | GOLDEN LION 2022

 

 

Saint Omer (2022)

Dir.: Alice Diop; Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valerie Dreville, Aurelia Petit; France 2022, 123 min.

This gripping feature debut from award-winning documentarian Alice Diop is a courtroom drama of a special kind. Saint Omer is a quest for a seemingly unobtainable truth in contemporary France.

Isolation and loneliness are felt particularly keenly by the main character Rama (Kagame), a Paris-based university lecturer who arrives in Saint Omer to cover the case of Laurence (Malanga), a mother on trial for killing her own daughter after a suffering the shame of being ostracised by her much older white husband.

The French-Senegalese director and co-writer is already a successful documentarian  and won the Silver Lion (Grand Prix) and the “Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future Award” for best first feature at Venice Film Festival.

Diop could have hardly chosen a more incendiary subject based on the case of Fabienne Kabou, who killed her 15-month old daughter by drowning her in the sea off Northern France then going back to Paris as if nothing had happened. Diop used the trial documents as a basis for her heart-wrenching tale of the re-telling of the ‘Medea’ myth.

Rama – Diop’s Alter Ego in the film – is also pregnant but does not want to tell her family, since she has a dysfunctional relationship with her own, abusive, mother Odile (Kamate) shown in flashback. She’s also keen to collect collect information for her forthcoming book on Medea. During the trial, Rama finds more and more personal parallels to the life of the accused, Laurence Coly (Malanga), who was studying for a PHD in philosophy even though – like everything else in her CV – this is not really a given. Coly had hidden the birth of her daughter from nearly everyone, including her mother whom Rama meets during the breaks in the court proceedings. The two women wander through the streets of the small city, with Odile being really proud of her daughter’s academic style of conversation.

These encounters raise more questions than answers for Rama who has doubts about her ability to be a good mother. Her partner Adrian (De Pourquery) comes down from Paris and tries to puts her mind at rest. Rama’s partner is the exact antithesis of Luc Dumontet (Maly), the father of little Elise, who is 30 years older than Laurence. He too helped to hide Elise’ existence from the world by not registering her birth.

The Judge (Dreville) tries hard to find out what drove Coly to her desperate deed, and Coly seems equally confused about her motives throughout the trial. She mentions witchcraft, but has no proof. She is adamant about not wanting to hide the truth, and has a high IQ and proud of the fact. Laurence grew up in Dakar in a wealthy Catholic family and always achieved high academic results. But her personality remains an enigma throughout the trial and she is stubbornly closed to the help offered.

Saint Omer opens with an archive extract from the liberation of France in 1944: women collaborators are punished by having their hair cut off publicly. Are they victims, are they heroes? Diop insists throughout her film that she is not interested in easy solutions, wanting to question the objective as well as the subjective. Which brings us to Marguerite Duras. Rama is also a novelist and lectures on Duras (again shown in  flashback) and this certainly raises the question of how much she wanted to gain inspiration from the case. But the Laurence case unsettles her in a way she had not bargained for.

DoP Claire Mathon frames Laurence in the style of a Velasquez portrait, putting her firmly in the limelight. The close-ups clearly borrow from Ozu, the camera travelling slowly upwards – or downwards when it comes to Rama, who is hemmed into the rows of spectators. The light is sometimes diffuse, reflecting Laurence’ state of mind.

At the end, there are mostly women left: the protagonists of the legal proceedings, the crowd on the spectator benches. The same goes for the film crew.

Austere and fragmented, Saint Omer is not looking for solution but leaves us to make up our own minds, almost like an offscreen jury. Nowadays it seems as if the truth is becoming a moveable, mutating feast. AS

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL WINNER | SILVER LION | SAINT OMER IS FRANCE’S ACADEMY AWARD ENTRY 2023

 

Other People’s Children (2022) Venice Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Rebecca Zlotowski, Virginie Efira, Callie Ferreira-Goncales, Roschdy Zem, Louana Yamee, Fred Wiseman, Chiara Mastroiani, France 2022, 104 min.

Rebecca Zlotowski (Planetarium) explores a woman’s desire to have children when she bonds with her boyfriend’s daughter. Hitting forty and changing her mind about becoming a parent, Rachel (Efira) decides to go for it with the help of her gynaecologist (Fred Wiseman!) and hunky Ali (Zem), who she falls for just in time. But there is a hitch: Ali is already a father but his cute daughter Leila (Ferreira-Goncales) wins Rachel’s heart. Leila’s mother Alice (Mastroiani) seems happy with Rachel getting involved and a holiday in the Camargue is the highpoint leading to a joyful epilogue. But somehow Rachel seems empty. Virginie Efira storms through the streets of Paris like a tornado in another pragmatic performance in a sunny snapshot that somehow lacks bite.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | GOLDEN LION 2022

 

World War III (2022) Venice Film Festival | Horizons 2022

Dir: Houman Sayeddi | Drama, Iran

A sardonic streak of deadpan humour lights up Houman Sayyedi’s pitch black parable that sees a humble labourer’s life transformed when he lands the star role in a film.

Deep in the Iranian countryside on a rain-lashed building site Shakib (Tanabandeh) is homeless and alone in the world after losing his wife and son in an earthquake. Things  looks up when the modest drifter is offered lodging and a bit part in a feature film about Hitler’s atrocities, shooting nearby – the only condition: no friends or family can stay. So Shakib’s death mute girlfriend Ladan must make herself scarce.

The days on set are hectic with Shakib rushing around in crowd scenes dressed up as a concentration camp detainee – striped pyjamas and all. In another stroke of luck, he then lands the role of Hitler – a man whom he has never heard of – and a swanky new pad in the prefab that houses the main crew. But Ladan puts her foot down, a plan to smuggle her into his comfortable billet will have unimaginable consequences, potentially ruining his big break. Then her violent guardian appears on the scene demanding cash to the tune of 20k from the new “film star”. This is the least of Shakib’s problems in a morose and meandering morality tale like only the Iranians can tell.  

Sayyedi had Hannah Arendt in mind when crafting World War III, and her words certainly ring true : “Societies ruled by totalitarian regimes are the most effective creators of anarchists”. With a whip-smart script the director and his writers strike just the right balance between dark humour, tragedy and melodrama, although melodrama slightly wins out in the cataclysmic finale where poor Shakib – a decent man driven to distraction and brilliantly played by Mohsen Tanabandeh – will fight tooth and nail for what really matters most. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | HORIZONS AWARD WINNER 2022

The Wandering Princess (1960)

Dir: Kinuyo Tanaka | Japan, Drama 102′

Kinuyo Tanaka moved up several gears after a five-year hiatus as a director with this ambitious blockbuster for Daiei based on Saga Hiro’s 1959 best-selling memoir made in colour & ‘scope with Oscar-winning Machiko Kyo and superlative production values.


The Wandering Princess is based on the autobiography of Aishinkakura Hiro, who lived a turbulent life as the consort of Fuketsu, the younger brother of Emperor Puyi of Manchukuo.

Full of spectacle and drama it chronicles the war years from 1941 to 1945, the sight of all those uniforms marking an extraordinary departure for a director associated with woman-based intimate drama. It was huge hit ranked 27th in the ‘Cinema junpo’ poll for best films of 1960, despite – or perhaps because – it perpetuates the myth that remains popular in Japan that the Land of the Rising Sun’s participation was solely as a victim.@RichardChatten

AT BFI LONDON

Casa Susanna (2022) Venice Film Festival 2022

Dir/Wri: Sebastian Lifshitz | France, Doc 97′

In the open scenes of this well made gay interest film an American broadcaster talks to four dolled up women who turn out to be men. Shock horror probe. But that was back in the Sixties, Nowadays cross-dressing is par for the course thanks to ‘Full Personality Expression’ that allows people to wear whatever they want, wherever they go.

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s this underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men were forced to find refuge at a modest house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to live for a few days as they had always dreamed—dressed as women – without fear of being incarcerated or institutionalised for doing so. Told through the memories of those whose visits to the house would change their lives, the film looks back at a secret world where the persecuted and frightened found freedom, acceptance and, often, the courage to live their lives out of the shadows. 

Award-winning documentarian Sebastian Lipshitz enlivens his expose with wonderful photos of New York in the 1960s along with archive footage of Danish cross-dresser Christine Jorgensen, who became an overnight celebrity, and others who joined in. Another woman remembers her father paying visits to the Casa where he enjoyed wearing women’s clothing and only felt comfortable wearing a female nightie in bed. And although the doc slightly overstays its welcome in driving home the point repetitively, it certainly provides a unique and valuable insight for those interested or affected by the issues concerned. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | 31 AUGUST – 1 SEPTEMBER 2022

 

Blackbird (2022)

Dir/Wri: Michael Flatley | Drama, 97′

Michael Flatley’s self-financed spy thriller has a checkered history, premiering briefly four years ago, and now back in cinemas in the UK and Ireland.

The Riverdance supremo directs and also stars as a James Bond style spy turned luxury hotel owner, retired to Barbados for some peace and quiet after his fiancée is killed in a mission. But the past comes back to haunt him when another old flame (Nicole Evans) reappears on the arm of an arch villain (Eric Roberts) whose game plan is not unlike Hitler’s idea of exterminating the Jews. 

Flatley has certainly splashed out budget-wise in a story that flips between lush Irish countryside, rainy London and beachside Barbados, but although his moves may be slick on the dance floor Flatley’s directing skills are less so. Blackbird is certainly a watchable if rather predictable little thriller with its heart in the right place. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 2 SEPTEMBER

Burial (2022)

Wri/Dir: Ben Parker | Cast: Harriet Walter, Tom Felton, Charlotte Vega, Barry Ward, Bill Milner, Dan Renton Skinner, Niall Murphy | UK Drama 95′

Christmas Day 1992 and the Red Flag has fallen with Gorbachev’s resignation bringing an end to seventy years of Communist rule in Russia. Anna Marshall (Harriet Walter) is watching the BBC News from the comfort of her country home in a domestic vignette that bookends this ambitious historical drama from English director Ben Parker. 

But when her dog Gulliver is let out for a nighttime sniff he gets a nasty surprise in the shape of a masked intruder demanding retribution for the past. Anna is a feisty and highly intelligent Jewish bird, and a one time officer in the Russian army, who refuses to be taken for a ride by the foul-mouthed Nazi sympathiser Lukasz (Felton). And after chaining him to the fireplace she launches into her version of what really happened when she was Brana Vasileva, one of an elite group of Soviet soldiers tasked with taking Hitler’s remains back to Stalin’s Moscow, as proof of his death. Many theories have circulated about what became of the Nazi leader’s body after he committed suicide. Ben Walker’s narrative offers one plausible suggestion.

The story then transports us back to rural post war Germany (actually Estonia) where Charlotte Vega takes up the role of Vasileva (aka Anna Marshall as her younger self). Shortly after setting off on their mission the group heads into deep forests and comes under attack from what appears to be a pack of werewolves carrying a load that suggests there are some supernatural powers at work in this remote bosky backwater. It soon emerges they are actually German ‘Wehrwolf’ partisans, using guerrilla tactics and hallucinogenic gas to disorientate their enemies. In a bid to keep their leader’s secret buried forever, the Germans go hell for leather in a bloody and brutal fight against the Russian contingent doing anything in their power to thwart the Soviet mission of returning the Nazi’s leader’s remains to Russia.

Burial is written and directed by Ben Parker whose feature debut The Chamber garnered critical acclaim back in 2016. This latest, an ambitious and lavishly styled historical drama, really comes alive in the brilliant camerawork of Estonian DoP Rein Kotov who often works from an aerial perspective suggestive of prey being tracked by an unknown force of some kind. All credit to Parker for his ingenious idea and for casting an indomitable Harriet Walter to play the feisty Soviet veteran, her counterpart Vega having a difficult act to follow as the younger heroine, leading a cast that also fails to distinguish itself on this occasion. So despite some tense and brutal action set pieces the rest of the feature doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the opening, but Burial is nevertheless a watchable take on a mystery that has haunted many in the intervening years since the fall of Nazism and its arch villain Hitler. As a footnote, whoever did the subtitles should be taken out and shot at dawn: Bolsheviks is translated as ‘Bastards’ and Berlin, ‘Violin’. Fortunately these are autogenerated by Vimeo, but certainly do a disservice to the aurally challenged. 

BURIAL PREMIERES AT FRIGHTFEST 2022 | On digital from 26th from 101 Films. On Sky, iTunes and Amazon from 12th September 2022

 

 

Valeria is Getting Married (2022)

Dir: Michal Vinik | 78′

Michal Vinik’s gripping and artfully filmed sophomore feature sees two Ukrainian sisters trying to make the best of things in Israel. It reflects a reality for many women who have been conditioned to suppress their real desires in order to meet traditional societal values when their own security is threatened. But they soon discover that Israeli men are tough but fair in a situation that is far more complex than it initially appears.

Valeria (Dasha Tvoronovich) is met at the airport by her sister Christina (Lena Fraifeld) where a marriage has already been arranged, but life in Bat Yam seems super stressful even by comparison with the turmoil she has left behind.

Christina (Fraifeld) is newly married to an attractive Israeli man Michael (Yacov Zada Daniel) but already the pressure to get everything right is felt through a series of panicky telephone calls from Michael to his mother, Christina trying to smooth over her sister’s nervousness with broad smiles and reassurances.

After a treatment at the local beauty salon, Valeria (Dasha Tvoronovich) go back to the flat where she is introduced to her intended, a likeable but rather goofy vegetarian called Eitan (Avraham Shalom Levi). The guy is clearly strung out and starts blabbering about his nervousness and her need learn Hebrew at the Ulpan, presenting her with a brand new mobile phone loaded up with apps. You immediately get the impression that Valeria is less than keen about her future husband, and as the dinner proceeds the conversation is stilted and Eitan makes a series of social faux pas as a palpable tension descends on this cosy dinner for four.

It soon emerges that Christina and her husband are going to need to access state fertility treatment which can only start when she becomes a legal Israeli citizen. But clearly she is playing this down so as not to emasculate her husband. Valeria listens patiently and then asks her sister a simple question that speaks volumes: “Do you love him?”. Christina responds “it’s not like in the movies, but I have everything I need”. The couple live in a spacious modern flat in the seaside city just south of Tel Aviv.

Unfortunately Valeria behaves rather childishly refusing to come out of the bathroom to discuss her feelings like an adult with the others who are sympathetic and open to suggestions including having her own separate bedroom in Eitan’s place. After all he has paid 5,000 dollars to find a suitable bride. But it gradually descends into farce as they two sisters giggle behind the bathroom door, throwing the key out of the window. So they all go back to drawing room of this brilliantly acted and compulsive domestic drama that gradually descends into farce as the various plot strands coalesce to a satisfying conclusion. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL | HORIZONS EXTRA STRAND 2022 | SPECIAL JURY AWARD WINNER – INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION | ANTALYA FILM FESTIVAL |

 

 

 

Hilma (2022)

Wri/Dir: Lasse Hallstrom | Cast: Lena Olin, Tora Hallström, Catherine Chalk, Jazzy De Lisser, Lily Cole, Rebecca Calder, Maeve Dermody, Tom Wlaschiha, Anna Björk, Clare Holman, Adam Lundgren, Jens Hultén, Emmi Tjernström, Martin Wallström, Lukas Loughran | Sweden, Biopic Drama, 113′

In this artful family affair Lasse Hallström casts his daughter Tora and wife Lena Olin as the pioneering avant-garde Swedish painter and mystic Hilma at Klint (1862-1944) recognised as being one of the first and foremost abstract painters, before Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian.

The elegant painterly styling certainly suits this English language biopic drama about a creative spirit who was developing her ideas sexually and artistically in upmarket Stockholm at a time of rapid artistic change at the turn of the 20th century. The European creative community in general was embarking on a quest for psychological truth and exploring the unconscious through their work, and Hallstrom reflects on Hilma’s evolving modernist style and spiritual leanings in his inspired direction and Ragna Jorming’s floating images and fluid camerawork that echo Hilma’s radical progression from her student days to accomplishment as a full-fledged artist. The focus here is the spiritual inspiration that drives Hilma’s creativity, and her turbulent relationship with the landscape artist Anna Cassel (Chalk).

The film opens with the death of her little sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernström). Their deep spiritual bond would go on to be an inspiration throughout Hilma’s working life. Born into a noble but not wealthy family Hilma’s mother stresses the need for her daughter to find a husband rather than dabble in the dilettante world of art, where only men were considered painters, and even enjoyed an exclusive entrance to the Royal Academy in Stockholm where Hilma studied classical drawing and painting techniques.

Hilma then struggles against a tide of negativity due to the very nature of her radical style and makes no bones about revealing how the spirits inspired her to paint, an approach considered outré and highly questionable back in the day. And to be fair, she does bang on about it almost evangelistically rather than play it down as a subtle and enigmatic adjunct to her talent. She is obsessed with the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and shares her spiritual ideas with him to little avail despite his admitting to receiving messages from the soul through the medium of colour.

Lasse Hallström’s well-crafted film will certainly appeal to art-lovers. Although Hilma herself remains an acquired taste, brilliantly portrayed in an impressive double act by Tora Hallstrom and Lina Olin who trace the artist’s life from her early twenties to her late middle age. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 28 OCTOBER 2022

 

 

The Damned Don’t Cry (2022) Venice Film Festival

Dir.: Fyzal Boulifa; Cast: Aicha Tebbae, Abdullah El Hajjouji, Antoine Reinartz; France/Belgium/Morocco 2022, 110 min.

A mother and son embark on an eventful odyssey across Morocco in this daring and strikingly beautiful sophomore feature from award-winning British-Moroccan writer/director Fyzal Boulifa (Lynn + Lucy).

Fatima-Zahra (Tebbae) is a 43-year-old widow and extremely alluring, although rather naive: dressing provocatively she tries to seduce a much younger man in a secluded spot near Tangier beach and is robbed off her jewellery. Her relationship with her 16-year-old son Selim (Hajjouji) swings between over-protectiveness and harsh criticism: the two are interdependent and neither of them has really grown up.

From squalid studio accommodation in town, the odd couple hitchhike a lift to relatives in the country. But they are not welcome in the midst of preparations for a wedding. We also learn that Fatima has a few skeletons in the cupboard: ostracised by local society after being raped in her twenties –  Selim was the offspring – she was forced into sex work to support her son.

Selim is eager to get back to Tangier and break free from his mother’s influence. Abdoul, a shady character, offers him a job on a building site, but really lines him up for sex with Sebastien (Reinartz), a wealthy Frenchman. The two hit it off to Salim’s surprise, and he quite takes to Sebastien who later apologises to him. The Frenchman later employs Selim on a regular basis, and Fatima tells her son she is working for a well-known brand in the fashion industry – in reality she is working for a minimum wage in a sweatshop.

Later she meets a bus driver who wants to take her on as his second wife, his existing spouse suffering from mental problems. But Selim sabotages the planned marriage, telling the husband-to be the truth about his mother. When Sebastien’s partner from Paris arrives, Selim reacts with extreme jealousy and channelling his anger into criminal behaviour that will inadvertently separate him from his mother for the first time.

DoP Caroline Champetier follows the odd couple with sweeping camera moves across the Moroccan landscape and the imposing urban backdrop of Tangier: her handheld shots in the narrow alleys, and the sordid domestic interiors contrast with Fatima’s imaginative embellishment of reality. Tebbae and Hajjouji are brilliant as the destructive couple, driving each other further and further into the quicksand of social deprivation. A tight script helps, and Boulifa uses all his running time to push the narrative forward. An award-winning first film is always a difficult act to follow but this talented filmmaker triumphs with an even more impressive second feature.

SCREENING DURING VENICE DAYS | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Nezouh (2022) | Woman With a Movie Camera Preview  Bfi

Dir: Saudade Kaadan | Cast: Hala Zein, Kinda Alloush, Hala Zein, Nizar Alani | Syria, Drama, 104′

Syrian filmmaker Saudade Kadan follows her Venice Best Debut award for The Day I Lost My Shadow with this lyrical coming of age drama set in war-torn Damascus and seen from the confines of a spacious family home where traditional values still hold sway in the 21st century.

If ever there was a female-penned love letter to hope and female empowerment it is this enchanting and painterly portrayed domestic drama about a Syrian family of three surrounded by gunfire, mortar attack – and the elements – in their shelled out and crumbling tenement flat in the centre of this sprawling, ancient city.

Fourteen-year-old Zeina (Zein) and her family are amongst the few remaining inhabitants of their besieged hometown. After building a generator by candlelight, her father Mutaz (al Masri) is ecstatic when it finally fires into action, and Zeina and her mother Hala (Alloush) jump for joy. But their happiness is short-lived when the generator rapidly grinds to a halt. A missile then rips a giant hole in their home, exposing them to the outside world and drenching in a summer storm. Zeina and her mother cover the gaping holes with delicately patterned sheets and old curtains adding a subtle pastel hue to the dusty interiors of their airy and well-proportioned home. Then a rope is mysteriously lowered into the hole in the roof, and Zeina gets her first taste of freedom, in a way that would never have been possible before the conflict, as gradually an illicit friendship develops with another teenager Amer (Alani). But her traditional father suspects the worst and Zeina will have to fight for her future in an upbeat drama that always sees the glass half full.

Kadan’s lyrical look at female emancipation gently unfurls in a world where clearly men still wear the trousers, the director making use of magic realism to transport her heroine into a world of semi-fantasy, as the determined teenager struggles to cope with the trauma of a city in conflict. As the violence outside escalates, the family is pressured to evacuate, but Mutaz insists they stay put, refusing to flee into the unknown world of danger. Faced with a life or death dilemma, Zeina and Hala, her mother, must make a difficult choice but they do so with courage and grace. MT

NEZOUH (Soudade Kaadan, 2022) + Q&A with director Soudade Kaadan 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

 

Queen of Glory (2021)

Dir.: Nana Mensah; Cast: Nana Mensah, Meeko Gattuso, Oberon K.A. Adjepong, Adam Leon, Christie Mensah, Madeleine Weinstein; USA 2021, 78 min

A first time feature for American Ghanian filmmaker Nana Mensah who directs and stars in this lively female empowerment drama, short-changed by her rather uneven script.

In “Little Ghana”, New York’s Bronx, we meet Mensah’s Sarah Obeng studying for a PhD on Molecular Neuro-Oncology at Columbia University. She has a married boyfriend, Lyle (Leon), who works in the same department, and has promised Sarah he will leave his family and move with her to Ohio. We know how this will turn out.

But then tragedy suddenly enters the picture: Sarah’s mother Grace dies of an aneurism, leaving her with a house in Accra, and a shop selling kitsch Christian merchandise run by Pitt (Gattuso), an ex-convict, whose whole body is covered in tattoos. Sarah’s estranger father Godwin (Adjepong) soon fetches up from Accra, angling for a part of the inheritance. Thwarted, he slaps Sarah and treats her like a servant, asking her to follow him to Ghana, but Sarah hits back.

Life in Ghana is very much a family affair. Sarah is sucked into back into domestic scene and has to dress accordingly, her aunts hoping she will soon produce a child. Faced with the appalling misogyny amongst the menfolk, Sarah ends up running the Cult shop with Pitt.

In an interview with ‘Vogue’, the director made it clear she had intended Sarah to be a cis-woman. But this doesn’t quite work with the acceptance of her marginal existence for Sarah – working in the shop, instead of pursuing her scientific career. Going to Ohio State, just to be with her lover was bad enough – exchanging the prestigious Columbia University for an academic backwater – but giving up her profession altogether is a bridge too far.

DoP Cybel Martin underlines the realism of the script, her images brilliantly evoke the choice facing Sarah with the “Tracey Towers” block in Pelham Parkway, Bronx, and the university atmosphere of an environment dominated by academia.

Mensah’s protagonists are cyphers rather than fully-fleshed out personalities: Lyle remains sullen and tight-lipped, and even Gattuso’s Pitt is just a caricature of a semi-reformed convict. Mensah is a committed director and a convincing actor, but even with a running time of 78 minutes and a few laughs, the reductive characters lack authenticity. AS

RELEASED IN THE UK ON 26 AUGUST 2022

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Wri/Dir: Martin McDonagh | Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, David Pearse, Pat Shortt | Ireland, Drama, 109′

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star in this big screen bittersweet dramady that reunites them with In Bruges director Martin McDonagh completing his “Aran islands Trilogy” of plays set in the early 1920s during civil war. The first two stage outings: “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” had been a great success in theatres McDonagh opted for a   film version for this final part that never quite escapes its stage bound origins, although the drole deadpan humour saves the day along with the natural beauty of the emerald island landscapes of Inishmore.

Colm (Gleason) and Pádraic (Farrell) have always been the best of buddies. But one day, out of the blue, Colm calls time on their friendship for no apparent reason apart from wanting to spend the rest of his life with his fiddle and his border Collie. There is no place for Pádraic any more. End of story. And the last straw is an incident with Jenny, Pádraic’s mini donkey.

But Pádraic is having none of it and gets his sister Siobhan (Condon), and Barry Keoghan (Kearney), the unstable son of the hated village policeman, to beg Colm to reconsider.  It all comes down to Colm threatening to cut off one finger at a time if Pádraic ever speaks to him again. Siobhan takes in these wider implications brought on by the battle raging on the mainland, but the men go, as men do, for all out victory – or nothing.

The allegory of civil war is clear, but the hostilities always take a back seat in Banshees. The focus here is on personal relationships , and about how friendship can often turn to hatred overnight, usually rippling out from a petty slight or disagreement, the fault line for deep-seated resentment, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or this case the donkey’s. McDonagh gradually fleshes out his three main characters but never enough to explain the war of attrition between them. Regret, sadness or a simple lack of fulfilment is channelled out into the open, into hurting the nearest and dearest, and the injured party is left bewildered and bereft.

The Banshees of Inisherin met with critical success and an award for Colin Farrell and “Best script” for McDonagh in Venice 2022. The pointlessness of war comes home on a human level through the sheer inanity of the broken friendship. It’s silly, childish and without real grounding. And McDonagh showcases this vacuity through the solemnity of his drama that unfolds like a procession without any core belief. The formal brilliance of the confrontation is based on trivial home-spun philosophy. Underneath the smouldering fractures, there is a vacuum – and that is the pity of war.

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Fall (2022)

Dir: Scott Mann | UK Action Thriller, 107′

British director Scott Mann Takes a shoe string budget and turns it into one of the best action thrillers of the summer with ‘a feel the fear and do it anyway’ premise.

Totally far-fetched and ludicrous it may be but certainly effectlve (and aimed at the GenZ generation) it all starts with accident when experienced climber Dan (Mason Gooding) falls to his death from a vertiginous mountain face leaving his wife Becky (Grace Fulton) and her and best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) stranded thousands of feet above ground level, and then left to cope with his tragic loss.

Becky is still drowning her sorrows a year later when Hunter, now a unfeasibly fearless extreme sports fanatic with a massive online following, suggests they scatter Dan’s ashes in style, rather than moping around mourning his death. But what Hunter actually has in mind actually beggars belief: the two will climb 2,000 feet to the top of a rusty old pylon support – the same height as the Eiffel Tower – for the ceremony, it’s the stuff of nightmares.

Mann and his DoP MacGregor and team make terrific use of cutting edge visual effects to make us believe the girls are really up there in the skies where its searingly hot and scorching) but what’s beyond belief and most impressive is their clear-eyed vision and steely resolve to survive once things start to go wrong. Admittedly Becky is hard-nosed and cruel as we’ve already discovered in an earlier scene where she leaves a coyote to be eaten alive by vultures, relaying the spectacle to her followers, she also admits to feeling hungry when the smell of a BBQ drifts up to the skimpy metal platform they are standing on (surely the last thing on your mind on the brink of death). With its simple but effective plot-line Fall is a buddy survival movie that never outstays its welcome in delivering watchable, stylishly artful thrills – in contrast to the summer’s overblown blockbusters such as Nope and Bullet Train.

Fall is out in the UK on 2 September

 

https://youtu.be/Y1hIzSPajYE

Black Mail (2022)

Dir.: Obi Emelonye; Cast: O.C Ukeje, Allesssandro Babalola, Julia Holden. Nikolay Shulik, Natalia N, Tony Richardson, Emma Fletcher, Mladen Petrov, Jelena Borovskaya; UK 202, 98 min.

UK writer/director/producer Obi Emelonye (Badamasi) puts lots of punch into this London based crime drama, centred around a Russian blackmail ring trying to destroy – among others – the life of film star Ray Chinda (O.C Ukeje).

Emelonye handles the insecurities of his hero with great sensitivity although Ray Chinda is not best suited for a role that somehow diminishes his physical presence. His wife Nikki (Holden), a well known immigration lawyer, is dragging him to “Relate”, and the two real live children of the director, Kosi (Luchy E.) and Zorba (Richy E.) are playing up, because they are not getting enough attention from their workaholic parents.

Things get much worse when Ray gets an email from a Russian blackmail ring informing him they have salacious footage of him reacting to porn on the net. The first amount they are asking for is reasonable, but, as Ray’s friend Ruben (Rabalola) tells the actor, the next figure will be higher. We soon encounter the Russian Mafia at work: Igor (Shulik) works for bar owner Alexei (Petrov), but is also in charge of the blackmailing scheme. He treats Ivana (Natalia N) with contempt and forces her to have sex with him. But he also has a softer side: caring for his sick daughter Jelena and wife Kathryn.

Unfortunately, Alexei finds out that Igor has embezzled 200 000 sterling from the night club business, and is about to be sent back to St. Petersburg to face the music of the senior Mafiosi. Igor is keen to finish the ‘business’ with Ray, but Ivana’s attacks him viciously before committing suicide. Petra, another member of the night club’s women, who have been forced into prostitution, spills the beans to the police, while Ray is on his way to a final show down with Igor, who is ready to die. Will the force arrive in time to prevent a bloodbath?

Ukeje is convincing as the guilt-driven antihero: his glamorous status for the outside world is nowhere near the reality he experiences in his private life. The black mail episode is the final straw that brings on a TIA (Mini-Stroke). He seems unable to get his two identities together, coming closer and closer to a total breakdown. DoP Robert Ford captures contemporary London – will all its glitter and dirt – even though some multi frames are superfluous. Overall, Black Mail is high octane drama that spills over into sentimentality. A genre feature with some noir elements and a very broken hero. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 26 AUGUST 2022

Akilla’s Escape (2021)

Dir.: Charles Officer; Cast: Saul Williams, Thamela, Mpumlwana, Donish Rita Claire Prendergast, Mensa Prince, Ronnie Rowe, Olunike Adesiyi, Theresa Tova; Canada/USA 2021, 90 min.

Jamaican-Canadian filmmaker Charles Officer has spent most of his working life in TV gradually breaking into cinema most notably with his 2018 biopic Invisible Essence: The Little Prince that shed light on the life and legacy of Eugene de Saint-Exupery. 

After a short black-and-white introduction to Jamaican history – reggae, gangs, drugs, politics and class war fare – the focus is New York in the mid nineties. Fifteen-year old Akilla is interrogated by police, having witnessed the violent death of his father Clinton (Rowe), a member of the Jamaican Garrison Army gang. Twenty five years later, the story shifts to Toronto where Akilla (Saul Williams was also involved in the score) is dreaming of retirement having joined his father, a drug gang kingpin.

By this time, the Canadian government has legalised Marihuana – and taken a slice of the profits. But just before the proverbial ‘last heist’, his operation falls victim to a brutal machete attack by a rival gang. Akkila overpowers 15-year old Sheppard (Mpumlwana, who also plays  the young Akkila)) but instead of feeding him to his boss, Akkila hides the young man. Meanwhile, Sheppard’s aunt Faye (Prendergast) is as helpless as Akkila’s mother Thetis (Adesiyi) was way back in Jamaica: both are victims of toxic masculinity.

Officer weaves quotes from Homer’s Iliad and James Baldwin into this genre piece, and just as anti-war films always end up glorifying the conflict, drug heist movies can never escape from explicit violence. Akilla sees Sheppard as a ghost from the past, trying to destroy what’s left of him after his mother’s death. We see what Officer had in mind: a requiem for two – but there is only one way out for Akilla, and this becomes more and more obvious as the story plays out with hypnotic night scenes from DoP Maya Bankovic whose close-ups during the heist sequences give everyone a human face. One wants to like Akilla more than the film deserves, because Officer has tried so hard to overcome the limits of the genre both aesthetically and narrative wise. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 26 AUGUST 2022

Loving Highsmith (2022)

Dir/Wri: Eva Vitija | Doc, 73′

“I shall travel the world and still feel lonely: I am the forever-seeking”. Patricia Highsmith

The American novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) is seen through the prism of her sexuality and personal life in this engaging documentary written and directed by Swiss filmmaker Eva Vitija, based on the author’s diaries and journals, and voiced by Gwendoline Christie giving an illusion of remarkable intimacy with Highsmith herself.

Patricia Highsmith is well known for her stealthily-plotted psychological novels and their various film adaptations such as Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr Ripley raising her profile to international status. But she also blazed a smouldering trail as a pioneering writer of gay literature, most notably in The Price of Salt, that found its way onto the big screen in Tod Haynes’ glossy, award-winning drama Carol. Ironically the films garnered more financial successful than her literature.

Vitija’s film reveals a sad childhood in Forth Worth Texas and New York where Highsmith was rejected by her emotionally distant mother Mary and grew up as a darkly attractive woman much admired for her stylish looks in the discrete lesbian bars of 1950s New York, yet held back by her mother’s hurtful comments about her appearance: “Why don’t you dress like a woman?”, and oppressive attempts to interest her in potential husbands.

Despite her homosexuality Highsmith was far from liberal in her outlook, veering towards racism and even antisemitism, although three of her lovers were infact Jewish. In common with many writers, Highsmith kept herself to herself, preferring the company of cats – even snails – to people, although she had several enduring relationships, most notably with Marijane Meaker, a friend, lover and biographer who is one of the film’s most enlightening ‘talking heads’. The two shared a house with their five cats in Pennsylvania at a time when women living together were assumed to be simply pooling their resources rather than satisfying their romantic needs. Highsmith’s complex dual identity is further fleshed out as Vitija explores the author’s other former lovers including Tabea Blumenschein, Marion Aboudaram and Monique Buffet.

Highsmith’s main protagonists were men, and she once claimed: “Women want to read about men and men want to read about men”. Meeker comments: “even though her mother had a career and was strong and independent, Highsmith maintained women in general still see themselves in terms of their relationships with men. Vitija puts forward the idea that the misanthropist character Tom Ripley, the protagonist of five of her books, was actually based on the author herself.

Relatives from her Texan family, on her mother’s side, talk at length about the need for women to be ultra feminine in an era dominated by masculine men. And this male prerogative is backed up by footage of rodeos and ranches that featured heavily in Highsmith’s early life, forcing the author on to an endless quest for identity. Even at the height of her international career she was eclipsed by her radio announcer cousin, back home in Forth Worth.

Highsmith also resided for a time in England where she bought a house to be near a woman only described as Caroline. But the affair ended in bitter rejection re-enforcing the self-internalised feelings of negativity projected onto her by her mother, and Highsmith later took refuge in France where gardening became an absorbing pastime providing solace for her disillusionment with love. The author would end her days in Switzerland where an architect was commissioned to design her a low level modernist house in Locarno where this biopic premiered at the 75th Locarno Film Festival.

Enriched with plentiful photographs, cine-film footage of Highsmith herself, and clips from Carol, Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, the film provides intimate access to the inner life of a highly complex writer who always considered interviews a “profound indignity”. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 7 APRIL 2023 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Nope (2022)

Dir.: Jordan Peele; Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Keith David, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Steven Yeun; USA 2022, 131 min.

Best known for his much acclaimed feature debut Get Out, the mantle of ‘cult director’ is now sitting comfortably on Jordan Peele’s shoulders with this latest, rather confused epic, an accomplished B-movie that runs at over two hours. His backers, who budgeted a quarter of a billion dollars on his first two flics, are waiting with baited breath to see if Peele can score a hatrick with Nope – (yes, seems the answer could be there).

OJ (Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Palmer) live on a ranch in the Californian desert where they train horses for Hollywood productions, after their father Otis Sr (David) was killed in a freak accident when metallic UFOs rained down from the sky.

Divided into chapters named after the ranch’s horses, OJ and Em are alarmed by ‘phone and electricity black-outs, and spot some saucer-like apparitions in the night sky. Emerging from a cloud, the creatures resemble birds caught in the mist, but soon morph into a manta ray or a peculiar form of octopus. OJ treats them like animals and avoids starring at them, hoping to keep them at bay.

Meanwhile the siblings see a chance of making it big in Hollywood, and team up with a salesman (Perea) and cameraman Antlers Holst (Wincott) in the hope of capturing images of the entities with his advanced equipment.

In an unrelated plot-line, OJ sells some of the horses to Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park (Yeung), who runs a tacky Western show in the valley. Jupe has a weird backstory: he has been traumatised for life after playing a boy called Jupiter in the 1990 sitcom Gordy. In one of the episodes, a chimpanzee suddenly runs riot, killing all human cast members apart from Park.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that the Gordy massacre was telegraphed by a bible quote from ‘Nahum’ Chapter three, in which the citizens of Nineveh are threatened with punishment: “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle”. Peele somehow connects the quote with the massacre, having the chimp pull off his garish birthday hat off and throws it to the ground. He certainly had enough.

This is certainly a Hollywood spectacle, but too far-fetched to give it much credit – it’s not even on par with the overrated Once upon a Time in Hollywood – without the historical underpinnings. There are gaps in the narrative, and some sort of structure would have helped. What makes it really worthwhile are DoP Hoyte van Hoytema’s brilliant 65 mm images (Ratio 1:2.39), unfortunately only available in Imax theatres.

Overall, NOPE is certainly a bit of fun, but the lack of depth – despite some allusions to history and politics – reduces its impact to just another fairground attraction. AS

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 12 AUGUST 2022

Il Pataffio (2022) Locarno Film Festival

Dir.: Francesco Lagi; Lino Musella, Viviana Cangiano, Giorgio Tirabassi, Giovanni Ludeno, Vincenzo Nemolato, Allesandro Gassmann, Valerio Mastandrea, Italy 2022, 117 min.

When Francesco Lagi took on Luigi Malerba’s 1978 novel he clearly had ambitions for a  screen epic along the lines of Branca Leone by the great, late Mario Monicelli. But in trying to sex up this historical fable, all we get is coarse gags and rambunctiousness in a protracted medieval adventure that lacks the master’s irony and finesse.

Marconte Berlocchio (Musella) and his motley group of courtiers really have their work cut out in taking possession of the remote fiefdom of Tripleball handed to him by the King, and the father of his new bride Bernarda (Cangiano). After a long uphill struggle Berlocchio soon realises they have reached Castlebad rather than Tripleball, far away on the other side of the mountain range.

But the nightmare continues in Tripleball: the castle is in ruins; the villagers are nowhere to be seen; and worst of all – the farm stock and horses have made off with all the food. To add to his woes, Bernarda is pressurising him to consummate the marriage, and while Frate Cappucio (Gassmann) tries to placate her, she turns to one of his monks – with disastrous results.

Meanwhile Berlocchio leads his troops into a battle against the enemies of Castlebad, but they are routed and he eventually finds himself face to face with the King who has come to claim back his property. There are naturally twists and turns in this flawed and drawn out narrative but to reveal them would spoil all the ‘fun’. DoP’s Diego Romero Suarez Llanos’ hyper realistic images are often far too provocative for the historical fable in a feature that would have Malerba turning in his grave. AS

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | 2022

Official Competition (2021)

Dir.: Mariano Cohn, Gaston Duprat; Cast: Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Oscar Martinez, Jose Luiz Gomez, Irene Escolar; Spain 2021, 115 min.

Argentine directors/co-writers Mariano Cohen and Gaston Duprat made an uproarious comedy satire The Distinguished Citizen which never got a decent showing in Britain. So it’s a shame that their ludicrous latest outing is now on general release, and not even Oscar Martinez, the star of the 2016 film, can save it. Films about movie making schemes are notoriously prone to disappoint – and this is no exception. Even the premise feels phoney.

Super-rich entrepreneur Humberto Suarez (Gomez) wants to be remembered as an art lover. So to celebrate his 80th birthday he gets eccentric director Lola Cuevas (Cruz) to adapt a best seller for the big screen with his daughter Diane (Escolar) bagging a role in a drama starring Hollywood duo Felix Rivero (Banderas) and theatre-loving pseudo intellectual Ivan Torres (Martinez) as feuding brothers, who hate each other on and off set.

Cuevas has all her hands full from the get go. The gags are not particularly promising: a rock made of cardboard dangling over the actors’ heads is mistaken for a real boulder. Rivero pretends at one point to have pancreatic cancer, and Torres, testing his rival, tries to make Rivero believe he is a serious actor. Meanwhile lesbian Cuevas sets up a kissing contest between the two men, and ends up doing the most convincing job and leaving Diane gasping for more, the two of them rolling around on the floor to the horror of Suarez senior. Finally, Rivero goads Torres into attacking him, but ends up falling down several floors with tragic consequences.

Official Competition is all glitter and glam with its loud and confrontational characters and a predicable plot-lines. Sometimes the self-parody actually succeeds in spite of itself. DoP Arnau Valis Colomer does his best to conjure up a chaotic ambiance which would make Cecil B. DeMille proud – but this is a tawdry Tinseltown project, not Ben Hur. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE IN CINEMAS AND EXCLUSIVELY ON CURZON HOME CINEMA FROM FRIDAY, 26 AUGUST 2022

 

Fledglings (2022) Locarno Film Festival 2022

 

Dir.: Lidia Duda; Documentary with Zosia, Oskar, Kinga; Poland 2022, 82 min.

A specialist boarding school in Poland explores how blind and visually impaired the children gain strength and confidence from supporting each other in Lidia Duda’s surprisingly stylish first feature that serves as a warm tribute to both staff and patients.

Zosia, Oskar and Kinga are barely out of nappies when they find themselves separated from their parents and in the care of Ewa, a strict but gentle nurse who is only satisfied when they do their best to interact in the new surroundings. Oskar is learning to play the piano but Zosia is still finding her feet away from the family home. On a speaker-phone she listens to her mother wishing her ‘sweet deams’. Sensitive to noise, Zosia finds the other kids challenging, particularly Oskar who shouts a lot.

Surrounded by toys and learning aids – the swings turn out to be difficult to master – the children also use a sort of typewriter with buttons for every letter, to learn to write. Zosia is more concerned with her mother who: “has to work, she could not come to visit, she has to earn money”. Zosia pleads with Oskar not to clap “you can clap after school, but otherwise you’ll get us expelled. You have to learn not to sleep in class”. Suddenly, Zosia is alone with no friends to play with: “I need a hug”. she cries. But despite Oskar pushing her Zosia admits that she does like him.

In this religious institution the children are taught that “God loves us all”. Oskar seems to respond, telling Zosia he loves her, but she is not so sure of him and really just wants to see her parents, desperate for them to visit: “I am in a bad mood today. I miss Kinga and Dad”. At a meeting for the whole school, Zosia is chosen to recite a poem by a well-known author. The results are impressive. But the day after her uncle and aunt finally managed to visit, Zosia complains: “Yesterday I had a bad day, a really tough day.”

Zosia finally learns to play the piano, and she and Oskar enjoy a role-play with teddy bears, the kids pretend to be doctors curing them. One bear is told he has to stay in bed for three years (!). After recovering from a emergency visit to hospital, Kinga’s birthday provides a welcome break for the kids with Oskar accompanying the celebrations on the piano, Zosia touching his shoulder gently as he turns to stroke her face.

These children are forced to grow up early – and relying on verbal communication has made them advanced for their age where speech is concerned in a world that will remain a mystery to them forever, in many ways. As a result their role-plays become very complex and mature. With sensitive black-and-white images from DoPs Wojciech Staron and Zuzanna Zachara, Fledgings is endearing but never sentimental in showing that the struggle for a non-visual identity is tough but enormously satisfying. An impressive first feature and a special achievement in every way. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE LOCARNO 2022 

A Perfect Day for Caribou (2022) Locarno Film Festival 2022

 

 

Dir.: Jeff Rutherford; Cast: Charlie Plummer, Jeb Berrier, Oellis Levine, Connor Brenes; USA 2022, 95 min.

A father and son come together to mull over their failing relationship in this meditative rather inconclusive first feature from US filmmaker Jeff Rutherford’s. Partly Nebraska, partly Beckett, A Perfect Day is also eye candy: the gleaming black-and-white images of DoP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, masterfully transferred on a 4:3 format ratio, are a joy to behold.

Herman (Berrier), a man in his early sixties, has come to the end of the road, and has decided to end things, but not before leaving a message for his estranged son Nate (Plummer), at which point the phone rings and Nate asks to see him. The two, both unemployed, meet with Nate’s seven- year old son Ralph (Levine) in one of those large US cemeteries that stretch out endlessly. It has emerged, from the now abandoned message, that Herman’s father died in a drowning accident and Herman’s brother jumped to his death from a bridge. Herman’s partner Tracey has recently left him, and Nate is disenchanted with his wife Sandy, having recently discovered that Ralph is not his biological son. In short, both men feel let down by the women in their life.

Meanwhile, Ralph – “who is not right in the head” – according to his father, wanders off into the surrounding countryside, and, suddenly aware of his disappearance the two men panic and an organised search gets underway during which time Herman narrowly avoids being shot by a woman with a gun. Nate starts a confessional monologue revealing how he would like to see both Sandy and Ralph dead. Not that he wants Ralph to suffer, but he feels more animosity towards Sandy for the way she diminishes him with her derisory comments: “She always laughs about my plans, even when I say I want to be a “weatherman”. Quick insert of Nate trying his hand at forecasting on the TV.

Plummer and Berrier are outstanding as the odd couple – they are clearly meant for each other, even though Nate makes a big deal of telling his father “I am different from you”. Nate is emotionally intelligent and fully aware of his marital shortcomings: “Sandy and me are bad versions of ourselves”. With the wild landscape playing the part of the third main character, A Perfect Day for Caribou is a sombre reminder of how male self-pity can often lead to violence against women and children. The dry humour barely conceals the serious implications. A  commendable debut. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | Concorso Cineasti del Presente

Flux Gourmet (2022)

Dir/Wri: Peter Strickland | Cast: Asa Butterfield, Gwendoline Christie, Ariane Labed, Fatma Mohamed, Makis Papadimitriou | UK Comedy Horror, 110′

Blending elements from his previous offerings Peter Strickland concocts a mind-boggling soup of style over content. You will either relish Flux Gourmet – or retch into your popcorn.

The soundtrack has echoes of Berberian Sound Studio, but the look is distinctly In Fabric in style with its garishly macabre 19th mitteleuropaïschen overtones. There is the same teasing quality of The Duke of Burgundy but the narrative is precarious and difficult to pin down. The humour – if you can call it that – is deadpan and lavatorial rather than witty or amusing. The performances are generally engaging, Strickland working with his core team of Gwendoline Christie and Fatma Mohamed Asa Butterrfield, Ariane Labed and Makis Papadimitriou boosting an eclectic cast. 

This is Strickland’s most self-indulgent and unrelatable film to date. Some may find it laborious – I certainly did. There is a feeling the auteurish filmmaker just wants to mock his audience with a piss-taking pot-pourri of outlandish ideas that somehow fail to make sense, let alone entertain.  

In an old English country house, Christie’s Jan Stevens runs residential courses in “sonic cooking” that boil down to a series of creative experimental events taking place with a live audience egging the team on. Participants are selected for their inspired ideas in preparing food, and invited to present their efforts during a series of workshops that culminate in a showcase showdown on the final evening. The sound element is provided by microphones placed strategically into the food that sometimes consists of whipped up terapins or pigs’ ears, and ultimately of those taking part, with ghastly results.

To add to the film’s bizarre nature, there is part-narration in Greek by flatulent commentator Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) who has the job of interviewing the attendees for an in-house journal. Stones is forced to share a dormitory with the rest of the team: tousle-haired Billy (Butterfield), the chain-smoking Lamina (Labed) and Elle (Mohamed). During the small hours, Stones makes frequent trips to the ensuite bathroom to fart ferociously and empty his bowels, and this malaise forces him to seek medical advice from Dr Glock (Bremmer) who takes delight in prolonging his agony with a battery of invasive tests, some of them staged for the live audience.

Meanwhile Billy has a fetish for eggs that somehow leads him into an erotic clinch with the voluptuous Jan Stevens (sporting a ‘Jester’ style nightcap). There are feint connotations to Marco Ferreri’s 1973 curio La Grande Bouffe but that was a film with heart and emotion. Flux Gourmet will no doubt go down in history as a “cult classic”, a label it does not really deserve. There is a visceral emptiness here that leaves you with a feeling of gut-churning disgust. But there again it may be ‘bread and meat’ to some. MT

ON RELEASE from 30 SEPTEMBER 2022  | BERLINALE 2022 PREMIERE.

 

The Harder they Come (1972)

Dir.: Perry Hanzell; Cast: Jimmy Cliff, Janet Bartley, Carl Bradshaw, Ras Daniel Hartman Bobby Charlton, Basil Keene, Winston Stona; Jamaica 1972, 104 min.

When Jamaican director/co-writer Perry Hanzell (1946-2006) came to Venice Film Festival fifty years ago, not many people watched his debut, the first Jamaican feature The Harder they Come. Only select screenings, away from the Lido, led press to the discovery of a US distributor in shape of Roger Corman’s New World Film. And while time has not always best served this singular movie, it is still a monumental achievement. There is a raw quality which can only be appreciated by Jamaica’s post-colonial status, just ten years after Independence.

Ivan (Cliff) arrives in Kingston from the countryside hoping to make a career as a singer and songwriter. Taking a job with the local preacher (Keene), he soon falls out with him after talking his ward Elsa (Bartley) into letting him use the church for a recording session. When Ivan tries to claim a bicycle from his successor, as the preacher’s handyman, the man denies his claim, and the two end up in a brall. Instead of prison, Ivan is sentenced to eight lashes – a public humiliation he will never forget. Ivan is finally manages to record a single, but his promoter only pays him twenty dollars. Desperate for cash, Ivan calls on his friend Jose (Bradshaw) who lntroduces him to a police protected drug ring involved in moving hash from the countryside to the city.

Although the law usually gives Ivan a wide berth on his drug-running tours, one day he panics and kills a police officer who flags him down on his motor cycle. Ivan is now a wanted man, and what’s worse, he shoots three more policemen. Pedro (Hartman) helps Ivan to hide, but detective Jones (Stona), the ringleader, shuts the operation down, until such time as Ivan is killed or handed over to him. In a wild last reel, Ivan tries to escape to Cuba but is too weak to swim to the rescue vessel. On the beach, imagining he is the hero of an Italo-Western he watched soon after arriving in Kingston, Ivan is attacked by the whole police force, But his record is great hit, making a fortune for the record producer.

The second line of the title reads “They harder they fall” and this is very much true for Ivan. His one-man assault of everyone in power has to end badly. But he takes it like a man: mixing cinema and life, and is only to grateful to get some  when applause, even at the end. Ivan is the archetypal loner, a ‘Django’ without the skills to survive. Furious and uncontrolled in the style of this iconic feature, Ivan loves his life on the fast lane – whatever the cost. The Harder they Come is a sledgehammer, its blows still rain down today. AS

BACK IN CINEMAS ON 5 AUGUST 2022

Piaffe (2022) Locarno Film Festival 2022

 

 

Dir: Ann Oren | Cast: Simone Bucio, Sebastian Rudolph | Germany, drama 86′

A game of willpower and discipline sees a young women transform herself – with alarming results – in this stylish arthouse drama from German director and visual artist Ann Oren, competing for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film festival 2022.

Sharing script duties with Thais Guisasola, Oren brings her skill as a visual artist to bear in  this unique piece of filmmaking driven forward by its distinctive soundscape and pristine cinematic allure captured by Carlos Vasquez’ camerawork.

The shy main character Eva (Bucio) is forced to take on her sister Zara’s job as a Foley artist when she suffers some sort of nervous collapse. Replicating the accurate sound of horse hooves trotting on the spot in the famous “Piaffe” manoeuvre – along with those recreating  training and dressage positions – is no mean feat, and physically quite exhausting for Eva as she struggles to make the soundtrack for a commercial featuring a horse. But then something weird happens: Eva actually starts growing a horse tail – complete with coarse, dark hair – that luckily matches her own shade of chestnut. And somehow her newfound excrescence gives her considerable agency, allowing her to turn her love life around.

Oren has certainly created a curio: her inspired plot line and acute attention to detail is laudable, certainly qualifying her for a pole position as one of this year’s most original and intriguing arthouse features in the main competition. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | GOLDEN LEOPARD

Paris, Texas (1984)

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

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

Wim Wenders in Cannes | Debussy Cinema @Meredith Taylor copyright

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ON RE-RELEASE AT Picturehouses | Curzon Cinemas | from 29th July 2022

Fire – Both Sides of the Blade (2022)

Dir: Claire Denis | Cast: Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin, Issa Perica, Bulle Ogier, Mati Diop | France Drama 116′

Claire Denis explores the intense dynamics of a love triangle in this coruscating character drama that reunites her regular cast of Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Gregoire Colin and Bruno Podalydes.

Sara (Binoche) and Jean (Lindon) have been in love for nearly a decade living together in a stylish penthouse in Paris where she runs a radio station while Jean, a former professional rugby player, is getting back to normal after serving time. Despite his impulsiveness and potent physicality, Jean offers warmth and stability to Sara who can be controlling and neurotic, rather like his demanding mother Nelly (Ogier) now confined to the family home in the suburb Vitry where she barely manages his troubled teenage son Marcus (Perica) who is slowly going off the rails.

The opening sets the tone for this torridly sensual romantic drama with its elegantly ecstatic sex scenes: Jean and Sara are pictured cavorting in the sea on a winter break. Back in Paris grey skies call time on their idyllic romance when Sara’s saturnine former lover Francois comes back on the scene, offering Jean a new start as a talent coach in his rugby start-up. Sara has certainly found contentment with Jean but catching sight of Francois for the first time in ages leaves her breathless and ready for another dose of the intoxicating chemistry they once shared. Caught in the emotional crossfire between the two men in her life, she probes Jean obsessively for details about Francois and the new venture. But Jean keeps her in the dark while he processes his own feelings, fully aware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Cleverly adapting Christine Angot’s novel, Un tournant de la Vie, for the screen, Denis keeps the camera close and intimate but retains her distance, avoiding sentimentality in charting the emotional volatility and shifting moods with laser sharp intensity as a baleful score hints at turmoil and heartache for the star-crossed lovers. At this point ad libbing takes over between Lindon and Binoche as their onscreen relationship starts to falter and fall apart amid scenes of barely controlled hysteria as powerful emotions surface. Sara, in denial, tries to contain her turbulent thoughts and real motives, becoming defensive: Jean gives her tenderness and security but it is Francois who really sends her wild with his mercurial charm. Jean knows this love is out of control and he prepares to leave only just suppressing the hurt and fury he really feels inside.

The final scenes of enduring love imploding on the rocky shores of passion are revealing and compulsive to watch. Denis keeps us guessing right up to the devastating denouement which is left open to interpretation, satisfying in its ambiguity. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 9 SEPTEMBER | SILVER BEAR | BEST DIRECTOR | BERLINALE 2022

Tommy Guns (2022) Locarno Film Festival

 

 

Dir.: Carlos Conceicao; Cast: Joao Arrais, Anabela Moreira; Gustavo Sumpta, Leonor Silvera, Ule Balde, Meiriulo Mendes; Portugal/Angola/France; 120 min.

Angolan writer/director Carlos Conceicao delves into the bitter Colonial history of his country in this magic realist feature set in 1974, during the final year of Portuguese rule in Angola. With enchanting camerawork from DoP Vasco Viana, Conceicao lulls us into an alluring rhythm of seductive serenity despite the gruelling nature of the subject matter.

The struggle for freedom has been a painful and long-fought battle, particularly for the innocent bystanders caught up in civil war. Conceicao establishes the violent ambience in the opening scenes set in a small village where an Angolan tribal girl Tchissola (Balde) is given an amulet depicting the Virgin Mary by a Portuguese nun (Silveira). In return Tchissola sets out to bring repay her kindness in a journey curtailed by a Portuguese soldier who prays before making love to her, only to shoot her in a seemingly motiveless attack. Meanwhile, the nun is set upon by rebels, shooting into the air with their titular guns.

The action then shifts to a walled encampment where seven disgruntled soldiers are barracked along with their presiding sadistic colonel (Sumpta) who has fostered a hostile atmosphere amongst the men by ordering one of the group, Ze (Arrais) to shoot Prata (Mendes), the cook and food provider of the camp, suspecting him of being a traitor. Ze gains promotion and is granted a wish. Asking to visit his mother again but we later find out that he does not even known her name and is possibly the victim of abduction, his request an attempt to escape.

The young soldiers are bored and frustrated with being cooped up in the confines of the camp so they swim out into the lake where they find a picture of a young blonde woman, which they hang up in one of the dilapidated buildings. Wising up the mood of frustration the Colonel brings Apolonia (Moreira) a sex worker into the camp, but when Ze is too rough with her the woman tries to escape with tragic consequences for all concerned in the surrealist finale.

The irony of the conflict sequences often collides with the grim reality, but Conceicao handles these contradictions with consummate ease managing to keen the audience on tenterhooks throughout the film’s generous running time. Boosted by brilliant performances from its ensemble cast Tommy Guns is a unique and impressive film reflecting a horrifying episode from Angola’s turbulent past. AS

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022

The Shuroo Process aka The Shuroo Retreat (2021)

Dir.: Emrhys Cooper; Cast: Fiona Dourif, Donal Brophy, Emrhys Cooper; USA 2021, 95 min.

This first feature film by British director/co-writer Emrhys Cooper is an unstructured, freewheeling comedy bent on creating dramatic confrontations – seemingly just for the sake of it.

NYC based Journalist Parker Schafer (F. Dourif) is at a crossroads – emotionally and career wise – having just lost her lover and a job at “Rogue” Magazine after a shambolic TV award appearance. In desperation she turns to Guru Shuroo (Brophy), also known as Declan, hoping that a weekend at his summer retreat in the Catskill mountains will turn things around.  Ironically, this turns out to be the case, but not the way the guru had in mind. There are some embarrassingly clumsy “solutions” for all concerned: a gay coming-out and childhood sex abuse among them, Schafer admitting to guilt surrounding her brother’s death after introducing him to cocaine. The guru adopts a ‘one size fits all’ approach to healing his patients, and clearly the cast enjoyed themselves judging by those attending the press screening. Cooper and his co-writer Donal Brophy go all out for laughs in a film that has nothing really to say, leaving the audience scratching their heads in amazement. AS

THE SHUROO RETREAT out on demand from 25 July 2022

 

 

Fairytale | Skaska (2022) Locarno Film Festival 2022

 

 

Dir.: Alexandr Sokurov; Cast: Igor Gromov, Vakhtang Kuchava, Lothar Deeg, Tim Ettelt, Fabio Mastrangelo, Alexander Sagabashi, Muchael Gibson, Pascal Slivansky; Russia/Belgium 2022, 78 min.

“You strangled Satan, passion bearer, with the godly strings of your suffering” M22 K, 4-4

Russian writer/director Alexandr Sokurov has been a thorn in the side of the Stalinist authorities throughout his film career that started in the early 1970s and is still raging on with this latest opus, a compelling curio competing in the main competition at this year’s 75th celebration of Locarno International Film festival. Fairy Tale was originally due to be shown at Cannes in May 2022 after ducking the boycott on Russian directors, but Sokurov later changed his mind. Apparently the organisers “could not handle a feature uncommon in the world”, which is “far more complicated than some festivals need”. Sokurov also is quoted as saying: “the organisers in Cannes are afraid to show such things”. Others claim the master was miffed that A Bird Searches for a Cage (directed by his protégé Malika Musaeva) had not made it into this year’s competition on the French Riviera.

Fairy Tale opens with a New Testament quote: “You strangled Satan, passion bearer, with the godly strings of your suffering”. What follows is as enigmatic as it is opaque. Against a black & white backcloth, specially designed by Sokurov, animated figures of Churchill (Sagabashi, Gibson), Hitler (Deeg, Ettelt), Mussolini (Mastrangelo) and Stalin (Kuchava) meander along in a landscape – which could be hell or heaven – the Supreme Force (Gromov) directing proceedings to a certain degree, whilst Napoleon Bonaparte (Slivansky) makes a guest appearance.

Some of these world leaders seem preoccupied with the scent of their peers; Hitler, sniffing Stalin, asks “Are you a Caucasian Jew?” Hitler goes on grumbling, “even here, in paradise, they pummel Germans”. Napoleon makes an appearance, and Hitler tries to deceive the assemble, claiming he had conquered Moscow and lived in the Kremlin. Churchill is convinced “Mussolini is sort of an oddball”. Later we will see the Duce’s body, along with that of his lover Clara Petacci, in rather gruesome circumstances. Hitler is angry with himself: “Why did I not burn down Paris?”. He also reflects on his possible marriage to Wagner’s niece. Churchill meanwhile talks of resistance, we see the image of a Lamborghini. Stalin advises Hitler, “you should join the Bolsheviks, we will knock some sense in you.” Hitler then grows sentimental “I love you all”. Churchill remarks “You can Google me”. Churchill is also happy “that he talked to God alone”.

In a colour sequence we witness the masses passing the Moscow grandstands at the fabled First of May parade, set to the tones of Strauss. Churchill again meets God and tells him “I will try. They should all be coming soon”. Mussolini wails: “Where is my Clara?”. Hitler quails in his boots when Jesus reappears. Churchill tells Hitler to forget about Wagner’s niece, “Eva is still better”. Hitler promised everyone that the best is still to come, claiming he didn’t make a bad start (!). Stalin sees lilacs everywhere, but Churchill rebukes him “Communists are blind and deaf.” Churchill has another pop at Stalin: “You did not go to your mother’s funeral”. Stalin meekly responds: “I was away”.

Following Moloch, Taurus and The Sun, biopics of Lenin, Hitler and Hirohito and his 2015 feature Francofonia , Sokurov applies the same individual treatment for the leaders of WWII. They are reduced to ordinary citizens, complaining and trying to be correct their misjudgments in hindsight. But there is nothing heroic about any of them, on the contrary, they are petty and vengeful. Reduced to an everyman status, they have lost all the grandeur of their historical status. Now they are ready to be put out to grass.

The production design is awesome, eclipsing even Sokurov’s Faust, black & white somehow adding to the film’s phantasmagorical allure, the elusive characters fusing with the fog, like ghosts reduced to deceptive legends, their heroic personas diminished by the mists of time. Fairy Tale takes no prisoners: there is no middle-ground, and Sokoruv is a brilliant provocateur – his inventiveness never fails to beguiled and bewilder. AS

COMPETING FOR THE GOLDEN LEOPARD AT 75th LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2022. 

 

 

Only in Theatres (2022)

Dir.: Raphael Sbarge; Documentary with Greg Laemmle, Tish Laemmle, Robert Laemmle, James Ivory, Roberta Grossman, Cameron Crowe; USA 2021, 95 min.

Arthouse cinemas are facing tough competition from the likes of streaming platforms Netflix and Amazon Prime. But one Los Angeles chain is still thriving after thanks to the pioneering spirit of its owners, the Laemmle family.

US director Raphael Sbarge chronicles its fight for survival against the odds for the new  generation of Laemmles, who (still) own the much-loved 84-year-old chain in Los Angeles. Founded by German-Jewish emigrants Max and Kurt Laemmle in 1938 – they were nephews of Hollywood tycoon Carl Laemmle – the cinema chain fought off the threat of closure from dwindling audiences during the Covid-19 epidemic.

Founders Max and Kurt followed their uncle Carl from New Jersey to California after Thomas Edison insisted on all film production companies using his patent. Any producers who refused had cameras and other film-making equipment smashed to pieces; the police were unable to intervene. Capitalism was tough, it was the survival of the fittest.

Today’s Laemmles: CEO Greg, his father Robert (the president), Greg’s wife Tish and their triplet sons Gabriel, Nadav and Ezra, are fighting a different battle of survival. Since the early 1950s the various outlets, headed up by their marquee theatre “Royal”, has specialised in European Arthouse fare from Bergman, Resnais and Godard. The Laemmles enjoyed a certain monopoly on the foreign market as Hollywood productions dominated the LA cinema scene.

Streaming started to take great chunks out of audiences, and the profits; rather like the advent of TV seventy years ago. Laptops and iPads threatened the very existence of the Arthouse scene. Director James Ivory, one of many filmmakers, critics and film historians – among them Roberta Grossman and Cameron Crowe – is adamant in not wanting his films to be streamed: “If anyone told me they’d seen my films online, I would say ‘Oh no!'”

For months during the second half of 2019, CEO Greg Laemmle mulled over the possibility of selling the family business. His father Robert and wife Tish watched him getting more and more depressed. But finally, on Christmas Day, Greg told a delighted audience he had decided against selling. A few months later Covid-10 led to the closure of all cinemas in the state of California. The doors would not open again until March 2021. Greg and Tish had to sell their LA house and move to Seattle, Washington. They were also forced to put two cinemas up for sale to finance the remainder of their outlets, This ‘victory’ has certainly taken its toll on Greg – the responsibility to carry on the family tradition is a tall order for anybody who values quality above the profit margin, particularly in the materialistic world of the United States.

Only in Theatres is passionate but never sentimental. The battle of art versus commerce is fought out in the open with DoP Matt Kubas’ handheld camera being a witness to this war for the ‘soul of cinema’. A informative piece of living film history. AS

ONLY IN THEATRES PREMIERED AT THE GALWAY FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Rifkin’s Festival (2020)

Dir/Wri: Woody Allen | Cast: Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Christoph Waltz, Louis Garrel, Elena Anaya, Sergi López | US comedy 92′

Woody Allen’s latest addition to the archive needed more oomph. The weary reverie tinged with wistful melancholy reflecting on the golden age of arthouse cinema and the nature of longterm love is let down by dreary characters.

The annual San Sebastián Film Festival is in full swing and jaded novelist, the shrew-like Mort Rifkin (Shawn), is there with his hard-faced publicist wife Sue (Gershon). But their marriage is in trouble. Super busy Sue is handling press for a breakout hit directed by popular French filmmaker Philippe (Garrel) who who will inadvertently seduce her with his signature brand of self-obsessed seriousness while hot-footing it from interview to press conference.

The Basque capital positively glows in the gilded tints of Autumn (captured by Woody’s regular cinematographer Vittorio Storaro) but this drama feels dour and decidedly lacklustre, largely due to a charmless set of one-dimensional characters. Mort and Sue seem a mismatched couple from the start – hard to imagine they ever had much in common. Her lack of empathy sends his hypochondria into overdrive, and heart palpitations soon see him in the arms of local cardiologist Jo Rojas (Anaya) whose marriage to the cartoonish creative Paco (Lopez) is also on the rocks. Dreams of a putative future together and a trip round the scenic coastline provide us with cinematic relief, but all Mort needs is another neurotic – and Jo is certainly no picnic in the park – falling asleep through sheer emotional exhaustion after finding Paco in bed with another woman.

Rifkin’s Festival is certainly a highly intelligent film full of insight and spirited humour largely lost . Woody takes scenes from his own film favourites: Citizen Kane to Jules et Jim and The Seventh Seal (Christophe Waltz the standout as the grim reaper) re-staging and re-shooting them as black & white parodies representing Mort’s own experiences. The trouble is, we feel nothing for any of these people and their turgid marriages and lifeless new love affairs despite the very real and relatable nature of their problems. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

 

 

 

A Tale of Filipino Violence (2022)

Dir.: Lav Diaz; Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Hazel Morenci, Shaina Magddayao, Agot Isidro , Charo Santos-Concio, Josef Nanding, Bart Goingona, Alsajir Puno, Earl Ignazio, Gio Gahom; Philippines, 2021, 409 min.

Filipino director, co-writer, co-DoP, designer and editor Lav Diaz once again delves into his country’s rich history from Spanish colonisation to present-day feudalism in an epic drama with touchstones to the present, based on Ricardo Lee’s short story and screen play “Servando Magdamag”.

As the title suggests – this is a blood-soaked ballad of brutal confrontations tracing the life and times of an infamous Filipino dynasty, the violence mostly happening off-screen in the director’s signature slow-burn style that envelopes us into the action. After seven hours we are very much part of his world, and the family feud at its core.

A Tale – shot once again in velvety black & white – takes place in the early days of the dictatorship of Fernando Marcos (1917-1989). Elected President in 1965 he declared Martial Law in 1972 so as to avoid calling an election shortly before the end of his second term, the regime gradually becoming more entrenched. Ironically, his son Marcos jun (Bong Bong) has just been elected president of his country in a landslide victory paving the way for his mother Imelda to return to the presidential palace. She would flee the country with her family in February 1986.

Servando Monzon VI (an impressive John Lloyd Cruz) proves to be a somewhat unreliable narrator, reading from the journal of his ancestor Servando Monzon I who was born in Spain but deported to the Philippines in 1979 after killing his lover, stabbing her 52 times. The founder of the family fortune used slavery to establish the huge and profitable ‘Hacienda’. In one of the early scenes the violent heir Tres Monzon III (Goingoa) is delivered back to his Villa in the Hacienda by ambulance. Suffering from pancreatic cancer, he only has a month to live, but he has been fortunate: family money has saved him from a long prison sentence for his crimes of rape and murder. But his comes uppence has finally arrived, fate delivering the final blow.

Servando is married to Belinda (Orenzio, who is also the film’s co-producer and assistant director). The university educated Belinda sympathises with her brother Delio (Gahom) who is an active part of the NPA forces operating in the vicinity of the Hacienda. Belinda is also taking care of Tya Dencia (Isodro) who has witnessed the 1945 murder of many of the Monzon clan and their women by Japanese forces. One of them, Dolores, gave birth to three children after being repeatedly raped. Dencia suffers from schizophrenia and has fled into her childhood, playing with dolls and singing sad songs. Delio is captured and interrogated by Captain Andres (Ignazio), who later promises a fellow guerrilla that he will be freed if he kills Delio. In the end we hear three shots, suggesting Andres did not keep his word. What follows is a catalogue of killing and corruption – leaving many maimed, murdered and damaged for life – meted out by the Monzons not only to their adversaries but also their own close family in a story that sees Diaz eventually turning the tables to show who Servando really is.

Diaz has made a serial version of the film in colour, and a cinema version in black & white. Crucially, he has chosen to classify A Tale as a cine-novela because, like many of other historical epics, the feature is structured rather like a long novel. The reader – rather like the film’s audience – gets slowly embedded into the narrative. There are no rush cuts, long static shots allow the audience to become at one with place and protagonist. The Hacienda villa, like a theatre set, is filled with sinister foreboding and gloomy shadows, not least because Tres is on his death bed. Diaz avoids any shock effects in a story that always retains an element of surprise. Rather like the doom-laden family mansion of the House of Usher, Servando’s house is tainted by the past. Marcos speaks on the radio while real history is unfolding, and it feels like a real and integrated part of the feature.

Strangely the atmosphere of the pandemic still pervades the film. The immediacy of the moment helps to explain the effect it will have on the audience: a sort of ‘dance on a volcano’ sensation with the same long shot techniques employed by the Lumiere Brothers to surprise their audiences. The poetry and songs (composed by Diaz) bring to mind Melancholia in their ritual function.

And one last point: Diaz’s features should be approached in the same slow, episodic, patient way as a Henry James’ novel, not read in one go. Diaz plans to create a three-part cinema version – the complexities are often hidden in James’ half-page sentences, while Diaz’ films hide their power behind the non-dramatic developments; as with the prolonged death of Tres, who becomes a main protagonist by simply dying, igniting the demise of the Monzon clan and, at the same time, immersing us in this house of death where we simply languish like all the other protagonists.

Patience is the key to entering Diaz’ world, where every little detail is painstakingly viewed from different angles, showing the characters caught in a magnificent spider’s web.AS

FID MARSEILLE | 5-12 JULY 2022

The Good Boss (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Amsterdam (1959) TPTV

Dir/Wri: Michael McCarthy | Cast: Peter Finch, Eva Bartok, Tony Britton, John Le Mesurier, Alexander Knox | UK Thriller 104′

A harsh wartime drama with plenty of action and gunplay about infiltrating occupied Holland to obtain industrial diamonds. Vigorously directed by the late Michael McCarthy, augmented by Reg Wyer’s usual vivid photography and second unit work by Stanley Hayers; and lent class by the presence of Peter Finch and Alexander Knox in lead roles, with the usual entertaining supporting cast of familiar British faces such as John Le Mesurier.

The film’s biggest liability is Philip Green’s eccentric score, sometimes noisily percussive and full of drumrolls and sometimes attempting to convince us that this is all taking place in Amsterdam (perhaps to take our minds off the frequent process work both indoors and outdoors which show that much of it was actually shot at Pinewood! @RichardChatten

NOW ON TPTVENCORE.com 

Robust (2022)

Dir.: Constance Meyer; Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Deborah Lukumuena, Lucas Mortier, Megan Northam, Florence Janas, Steve Tientchen; Belgium/France 2021, 95 min.

A short synopsis of Swiss director/co-writer Constance Meyer’s first feature film Robust might read like a second version of Untouchables, but luckily it is far superior. Starring Gerard Depardieu, also the leading man in Meyer’s two award-winning short films, this is a subtle comedy of growing-up pains – particularly where adults are concerned.

Pampered and terribly overweight, actor Georges (Depardieu) is playing the spoilt child who craves attention at all costs. Enter Aissa (Lukumuena), security guard – but also a talented wrestler. Aissa is charged by her boss Lalou (Tientchen) to look after Georges, who is on the verge of starring in a new film, a feudal drama set in 1847. Fond of his motorcycle, but crashing it during his nighttime forays, he lives in a posh Paris district where his home is dominated by a huge aquarium, the tropical fish gliding around in total darkness, and somehow assuring the hypochondriac George’s peace of mind.

Aissa not only has to deal with Georges, but also his family and friends: and his four-year old son Gabriel plus a new dog becomes also becomes his responsibility. Sofia, George’s ex-wife and Gabriel’s wants constants updates on the ‘phone, constantly wanting to know if all is well, not that she really cares either way.

One day Georges goes astray in the middle of the night and is set upon by eco-freaks who are easy meat for the well-trained Aissa, who may be the same weight as Georges, but also packs a mean punch. Her on/off boyfriend Eddie (Mortier) is a work college; but Aissa’s real roots are in a high rise block in the 20th arrondissment, where she lives with her little sister and mother. There is just one really ugly scene when Georges pesters Eddie and Aissa enjoying a Chinese meal: the actor makes his (imagined) superiority count: pulling rank on Aissa, and forgetting that she had comforted him hours before, when he had one of his panic attacks.

The running gags are the dialogues from the forthcoming feature film which Georges rehearses with Aissa. “Look at me now, deflated, timid and enslaved like a child”. Kids they may be, but Aissa is relaxed and in charge: soon becoming a team leader and taking on the protection of an important politician. Georges begs Aissa to stay – but Lalou will provide him with a new child minder.

DoP Simon Beaufils make use of an expressive colour palette, giving the narrative a distinct visual appeal. Depardieu and Lukumuena are both subtle and understated in their roles, even though the French star sometimes struggles to stay within “a mere human range”. Robust makes a welcome addition to the sub-genre of “odd couple” features in a humanistic and entertaining observation of human frailties. AS

ON RELEASE DIGITALLY FROM 22 JULY 2022

Ithaka (2021)

Dir.: Ben Lawrence; Documentary with John Shipton, Stella Moris, Ai Weiwei, Vivienne Westwood, John Pilger, Nils Melzer; Australia/UK 2021, 104 min.

The contraversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (*1971) is the subject of this new documentary that takes the first lines of the titular 1911 poem by Greek writer Constantine Cavafy as its motto: As you set out for Ithaca /hope that your journey is a long one/full of adventure, full of discovery”.

Assange could not have asked for more: his discoveries are the stuff of nightmares, and the revenge of the governments he exposed has landed him in Britain’s High Security prison Belmarsh where he has languished for the last three years, actually managing to marry while in captivity: quite a feat for most people, particularly those accused of rape. Anyone who saw Laura Poitras’ hagiographic biopic Risk (2016/7) will have made up their minds about Assange’s persuasive powers where women are concerned, but Lawrence casts no judgement here, keeping his distance. An extradition order from the USA is pending, with British home secretary Priti Patel only too willing to oblige.

We meet Assange’s wife, the lawyer Stella Moris, at the unveiling of a statue of her husband in Geneva in November 2021. “I am here to remind you that Julian isn’t a name, he isn’t a symbol, he is a man and he is suffering”.

The couple have two young children, both conceived at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange stayed between 2012 and 2019. There is CCTV footage from the embassy, showing Assange and Moris, the former skate-boarding in his room. A guard warned Moris that the footage was to be sent to the US secret service every fortnight – Moris stopped visiting Assange. She also learned there were plans to poison her husband. The UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Melzer said “Torture is a tool used as a warning to others. It’s most effective when inflicted in public. In Julian’s case it’s about intimidating everyone else”. In this particular case it was Chelsea Manning, ex-US officer, who blew the whistle on Afghan war crimes by the US Army, and went to prison, to avoid talking about Assange’s part in the operation after she found out that Assange was depressed, and suffered a ‘mini’ stroke in Belmarsh Prison.

The time at the embassy coincides more or less with the Swedish Justice system accusing Assange of sexual assault, a charge bought forward by two Swedish women in 2010. In 2019 the case was dismissed, due to the long intervening period since the original accusation.

Besides Moris, Assange’s main defender is his father John Shipton (76), who travels the world in search of a positive solution to the case, neglecting his own five-year old daughter in Australia. John stepped out of Julian’s live when he letter was three, but re-entered when John was in his early twenties. John is tired, so much time is lost for him and his daughter Severine. He likens Lawrence to “Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor”. “He keeps burrowing away”.

On January 10th 2022, the UK High Court ruled Assange could be extradited to the USA, overturning a Lower Court ruling from 2021. On March 3rd of this year, the High Court refused Assange permission to appeal. On June 17th 2022 Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary, approved the extradition order. Two weeks later Assange and his team appealed against the extradition order. The war in the Ukraine has led to strong statements in the western media. It is perhaps helpful to remember that one of the WikiLeaks posted on 12.7.2007 concerned the killing of journalist Namir Noor-Eidsen and Saeed Chmagh, who were shot dead from the air by a US helicopter.

A strong score by Brian Eno helps to round off this passionate plea for a man who, according to Melzer, “never wanted to be in the spotlight”. AS

ON ITV on 21 May 2023

Death of a Ladies Man (2020)

Dir/Wri: Matt Bissonnette | Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Pare, Brian Gleeson, Suzanne Clement, Antoine Olivier Pilor, Karelle Tremblay | US Drama, 100′

To the dulcet tones of Leonard Cohen this familiar but feisty love story sizzles with mischievous humour courtesy of veteran Irish star Gabriel Byrne. 

Poetry professor Samuel O’Shea (Byrne) is one of those men who feels the need to chat up every woman he meets – in a well-intentioned way that inevitably leads to love and romance. Now past his prime and feeling dejected due to his wife’s infidelity and a recent cancer diagnosis he takes refuge in the bottle and decides to devote more of his time to his two adult children Layton (Pilor) and Josee (Tremblay) who are both facing difficult choices. But despite all this Samuel will soon embark on yet another flirtation, with another much young woman (Jessica Pare). Once again, falling in love – rather than facing his demons – is his default position.

Writer-director Matthew Bissonnette sets a melancholic tone with a score of memorable hits by Leonard Cohen that works well with the film’s Montreal and Dublin settings. The script is insightful and full of witty one-liners with its reflections on modern life and the generational divide but there are some rather odd interludes where Bissonnette attempts to liven things up with impromptu dance sequences involving the entire cast. Byrne is a charismatic class act perfectly capable of carrying a film without the additional dramatic device of casting a much younger actor as his old dad back from the grave to provide advice and insight from the past, although Brian Gleeson offers sanguine support as the father in question. MT

OUT ON THE 22 JULY 2022

McEnroe (2022)

Dir.: Barney Douglas; Documentary with John McEnroe, Björn Borg, Billie Jean King, Patty Smyth; US/UK 2022, 104 min.

This new documentary about sporting (anti)hero John McEnroe overcomes the limitations of the genre in the same way as breakout hits Senna and Amy. US Writer/director Barney Douglas certainly mines the incendiary potential of his subject matter tennis icon John McEnroe (*1959) who never needs an excuse for his tirades and tantrums on and off court. Old age eventually mellows the star of Centre Court, after 37 psychiatrists, cocaine and countless affairs failed to do so.

John McEnroe won his first Grand Slam at the US Open in New York in 1979, age twenty, by defeating fellow New Yorker and best friend Vitus Gerulaitis; only five years later he would win his last and seventh Grand Slam title on the same ground, beating Ivan Lendl. He retired in 1992 from playing singles, but the question is: what happened in the intervening eight years.

The answer is not an easy one, even though McEnroe confesses: “I may be slightly on the spectrum”. Yes, he was one of the many high-functioning autism cases, always looking for perfection – for himself and others. And when both fell short, he exploded. But there is more to it: namely his relationship with his father John Patrick senior, who was for a long time his manager. When McEnroe junior wanted (needed) a father more than a manager, however successful, he sacked him, creating a lifelong rift. John senior was one of many fathers of his generation who proclaimed truthfully to love their offspring – but were totally unable to show it. Towards the end this father vs son struggle became bitter, with John junior blaming his father for the early death of his mother Katherine (of cancer in 2017); death also claiming her husband in the same year.

John’s marriage with Tatum O’Neal (1986-1994) did not help either – John was not prepared to take second place when it came to their media attention. Gaining custody of the three children from the marriage, his daughter sided with her mother. His 1997 marriage to vocalist Patty Smyth is more peaceful and produced two daughters, Ann and Ava, who also contribute their version of their father’s troubled existence. Björn Borg, who became a close friend after both men retired, and Billie Jean King, tell the story from a sporting point of view. After his retirement in 1992, John pursued the career of a musician, something he had planned with Gerulaitis, who died of carbon-monoxide poising at the age of forty, leaving a big hole in John’s life.

At the end of the day, there are many reasons why John McEnroe did not achieve the long lasting success of Federer, Nadal or Djokovic, who all are still winning at the wrong end of thirty: so far 20+ single titles. Even Pete Sampras has doubled John McEnroe’s record with fourteen grand slams titles; McEnroe not even ranking among the first fifteen of the all time Winners’ List.

DoP Lucas Tucknott really excels in the nighttime visuals in Queens where McEnroe stalks his old stamping grounds, asking and answering some of the questions that still haunt him. Rather like the ‘Flying Dutchman’  he will never really find a peaceful harbour from life’s emotional trials. McENROE, very much an American tragedy: gruelling competition, failed parenthood and the loneliness of a life so long without any real emotional awareness. “My greatest failing – my lack of empathy”, he confesses in the dark shadows of Queens.AS

OUT ON 15 JULY 2022

The Black Phone (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

NOW ON RELEASE IN NATIONWIDE

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Dir: Martin Scorsese | US Drama

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

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

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

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

NOW OUT ON QUALITY DIGITAL PLATFORMS

 

Incredible But True (2022)

Dir/Wri: Quentin Dupieux | 
Cast: Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker, Benoît Magimel, Anaïs Demoustier, Stéphane Pezerat
i | France, Comedy 74′

The age of electronic penises has finally arrived according french filmmaker Quentin Dupieux whose latest high-concept absurdist comedy sees two suburban couples trying to turn back the clock and pursue the dream of eternal youth with hilarious and disastrous consequences.

Middle-aged house-hunters Alain (Alain Chabat) and Marie (Léa Drucker) are captivated by a modernist villas in a leafy location near Paris and immediately move in. The house has a life-changing feature in the shape of a trapdoor to the basement: enter and you take three days off your life, while moving 12 hours forward. Marie is sceptical but soon becomes obsessed with going through the trapdoor and gradually the rejuvenating effects are noticeable. Alain struggles on with a difficult client, hoping not to lose his wife to a younger man. Meanwhile his boss and close friend Gérard (a paunchy Benoît Magimel) has an intriguing new toy to play with of his own. Invited chez Alain and Marie with his much younger girlfriend Jeanne (Anaïs Demoustier in bleach blonde mode), the two are desperate to share their cheeky secret about his new Japanese “electronic penis”, remotely operated by an iPhone.

Dupieux – also known as his DJ alter ego Mr Oiseau – certainly has a vivid imagination and his films get weirder and wackier with each passing year, Deerskin and Mandibles being recent examples. But although his ideas are plausible this blend of surreal and lowkey sci-fi feels out of place with the second-rate suburban settings and pedestrian characters, and the punchy plot lines are never full realised as they are for example in comedy sci fi outings such as Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man or the Korean comedy Miss Granny. Incredible But True is light-hearted fun that never takes itself seriously with a few laughs along the way thanks to some strong comedy performances before resorting to ludicrous back-to-back montage sequences in a rushed final showdown. MT

NOW ON MUBI | Berlinale premiere

 

My Old School (2021)

Dir.: Jono McLeod; Cast: Alan Cumming, Clare Grogan, Lulu; UK 2022, 104 min.

Alan Cumming stars in this unconventional documentary about identity and belonging and a man who pretended to be someone else, named the martial arts legend Brandon Lee. Structured in to phases by first time Scottish filmmaker Jono McLeod who revisits his schooldays in an interview with his former classmates and teachers from Bearsden Academy in Glasgow, the 5Cof 1993. The centre of attention is a certain student: Brandon Lee, whose celebrity namesake met his death on set in Hollywood.

This Brandon joined the class late: his mother, an opera singer, had just been killed in Canada in a car accident and Brandon was under the care of his grandmother in Glasgow. Bearsden Academy was as close to a fee paying school as you can get. Little proof of Brandon’s identity was asked required to join the school: just the testaments of private Canadian tutors. But a birth certificate was missing. Headmaster Norman McCloud and his deputy Mrs. Holmes were obviously satisfied. And Brandon’s academic progress gave everyone reason to be happy. He would end up with five straight As, his knowledge of anatomy was so astonishing his biology teacher exclaimed “Brandon teaches me”. Brandon also helped to integrate other students and kept bullies at bay. Even more sensational was his acting, singing – and yes kissing – in the school’s production of “South Pacific”. He was admitted to read Medicine at Dundee University. A fight on a holiday trip with his fellow undergraduated brought the charade to an end: the police found an additional passport on Brandon Lee in the name of Brian MacKinnan. The latter had left Bearsden Academy for Glasgow University to study medicine in 1975.

It turned out Brian, to give him his proper name, had never been to Canada. His mother, posing as his grandmother, had been the motivation for his quest to become a doctor at all costs. After the death of his father – Brian used the family bereavement to skip a tricky physics test – Brian and his mother had plotted even harder to make his second chance a success: In Glasgow, he had been released for lack of progress in his first year.

After all this came to light Dundee expelled him, and he knew no university would take him on as by now he was over thirty, the cut off point for medical students in the UK. Now 58, Brian is not so keen on publicity; he requested that the actor Alan Cumming should lip read his answers to McLeod’s questions.

The most interesting aspect of MyOld School are the interviews with the anti-hero’s former class mates, the range of opinions differing very strongly. His co-lead in “South Pacific” finds it rather “icky” to learn that as a sixteen-year old she had been kissed by a man of thirty-two in public.

DoP George Geddes combines interviews, TV archive material and animation (Rory Lowe, Scott Morris) into a very lively watch. McLeod has skilfully assembled a study about time, memory and the way we are all unreliable narrators when our past is concerned. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 19 August 2022

We Are Russia (2022)

Dir.: Alexandra Dalsbaek; Documentary; France/USA/Russia 2019/21, 77 min.

The first feature length documentary by Russian-French director/co-writer, DoP and co-editor Alexandra Dalsbaek, is a study of a Moscow student group, protesting against the re-election of President Putin in 2018. Very much shot ad-hoc, but still able to catch the arrest of opposition leader Navalny (twice), this feels very much like a work in progress, even though it is the long version, shown at the DOCNYC in 2021, sixteen minutes longer than he original version from 2019.

The action revolves around Milena K. almost playfully leading her group in anti-Putin and pro-Navalny activities. Milena poses with provocative placards in front of the Duma building and the Lubyanka – as well as other residences of state power. “Sell your villas, and build roads”, is one of her slogans attacking Putin and his oligarchs. But the resonance of the mostly elderly public is is anonymous and negative: “What have you even done for your country” is one of the answers that echoes back to Milena and her agitator friends. For the older generation Putin is still considered the saviour of Russia. Milena’s boutique owner mother is afraid for her daughter and tries to persuade her to limit her activism. Milena’s friend Alexander, who works in Navalny’s election office, is beaten up over night by the police, and fined 400 Roubles after a court hearing. Kostya S is arrested with Navalny in January 2019, after he was “disqualified” from standing in the election, and had called for a boycott of the state controlled proceedings. Whilst Navalny was eventually poisoned and re-arrested after his return from Germany, Kostya is sentenced to three year’s house arrest. But in the end, the ‘election’ goes ahead and Milena makes a final attempt to show the proceedings are rigged by walking into a polling station, and claiming rigged ballots: the voting cards are not counted and just stuffed into mailing bags. Finally, at a major demonstration, Milena is arrested, along with over 16 000 others, but released after 48 hours.

The narrative’s lack of structure is compensated for by its sheer  sheer panache. Milena could well be the alter ego of the director, enjoying the political fight and sweeping away the restrictions of the past . WE ARE RUSSIA begs the question, has Russian youth stopped demonstrating since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Looks like the state forces could well have cracked down on insurrection. While Navalny languishes  colony what has become of Milena and her cause. AS

WE ARE RUSSIA on July 15 will also be playing for a week at the Bertha DocHouse cinema.

Paloma’s Wedding (2022) Munich Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Marcelo Gomes; Cast: Kika Sena, Ridson Rice, Ze Maria, Suzy Lopes, Samya De Lavor, Anita Souza Macedo, Ana Marinho; Brazil/Portugal 2022, 104 min.

Brazilian director/co-writer Marcelo Gomes (Waiting for the Carnival) combines the classical South American melodrama with a modern twist: In a remote village best known as Brazil’s capital of jeans, Paloma, a transgender woman with a daughter, wants to marry the love of her life in church. The tension finally erupts from all directions.

Paloma (Sena) works as a hairdresser and harvest mangoes the nearby fields. José (‘Ze’) (Rice) is very much in love with his motorcycle, but his commitment to Paloma is sometimes shaky. He tries to talk her out of wanting to marry in church but Paloma asks the local priest to perform the marriage ceremony. Jose is adamant that only the Pope can change the rules around church marriages where only a man and woman can be united in holy matrimony.

But Paloma’s not for turning and digs her heels in with a letter to the Pope, expecting a positive answer. When the priest reads the pontiff’s reply giving Paloma the bum’s rush, Paloma indulges in a one-night-stand with Ivanzilo, the driver who ferries the workers from the village to the mango fields.

Meeting up with old friends in the town of Saloa, one of them, Rikely, reminds Paloma of the wild times they used to have. Despite varies setback Paloma doesn’t lose sight of her goal and soon the local media gets hold of the story, causing more drama.

DoP Pierre De Kerchove creates vibrant images on the widescreen and in intimate closeup, the sex scenes are provocative and despite the darkness they have a poetic quality. Kika Sena’s Paloma is a brilliant portrait of a vulnerable person taking on the whole community while bringing up a child in challenging circumstances.

There is a very subtle scene featuring casual racism at a hotel swimming pool and Gomes never lets up: Paloma is always on the move, trying to fix problems – but never forgetting the dream of a church wedding. Few features have packed in so many diverse conflicts in a running time of just over a hundred minutes. Passionate and emotionally charged, Paloma is an ambiguous heroine, who wants all what heaven allows – and more. AS

PREMIERING AT MUNICH FILM FESTIVAL | 24 June 2022

Wayfinder (2021)

Dir: Larry Achiampong; Cast: Perside Rodgrigues; UK 2022, 83 min.

Wayfinder is British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong’s first feature, a more poetic and languid version of an unfinished project, based on series of apocalyptic cartoons where isolated figures walked through a torrid landscape, breathing filtered air.

In Wayfinder the wanderer is called Perside (Rodrigues) and she crosses England from Hadrian’s Wall to Margate, the freewheeling narrative touching on cultural heritage, exclusion and displacement, with regional aspects replacing a nationwide view of conflicts, current and historical. On her journey Perside visits a housing estate in Wolverhampton, a cafe in Bethnal Green, the National Gallery at night, and a fun fair in Margate. In Bethnal Green pays her last respects to a friend, and discovers that the longest surviving building is a funeral parlour, dating back some 200 years. Letting agencies and health food shops have replaced the old-fashioned outlets of her youth. Back then the Blair mirage of “Education, Education” was paramount and when she finished university with her siblings the three of them went straight to the local job Centre after the graduation ceremony. Their mother had bought a flat, hoping that her children would be able to pay off the mortgage. In reality it was bought by a wealthy man for his daughter who was studying from abroad. And while home pays and important element in all the segments, ambiguity overlays any identification. This is a Britain which is not only punished by the epidemic. Achiampong’s visionary outlook catches all the small details without losing the overview. AS

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 1 JULY 2022

Elvis (2022)

Dir.: Baz Luhrmann; Cast: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Kodi Smit McPhee, Richard Roxburgh; US/Australia 2022, 159 min.

Elvis Aaron Presley (1935-1977) was – and still is – the most successful recording artist on this planet, so hiring Baz Luhrmann, well known for his baroque output, to make a film of the entertainer’s life, and turn in a handsome profit seemed like a brilliant idea.

But casting Tom Hanks as the singer’s gambling, cheating and lying manager Colonel Tom Parker put Austin Butler’s Presley at a glaring disadvantage. Parker, who voices the linear narrative, is also a rather unreliable witness to the story; Butler is certainly entertaining and charismatic as the titular hero, but does he do a convincing job as the hip-swivelling legend? Let’s just say few performers would have fared better opposite a behemoth like Hanks. Olivia DeJonge, as Elvis’ wife Priscilla, is even more short-changed: she brings up their daughter and suffers in silence, while her husband shags and devours pills like candies. And no mention is made of her being a teen bride; Priscilla was fourteen when she met the twenty-four-year-old Elvis for the first time in 1959.

The writers offer no real explanation as to why Elvis left for the army as a rebel in 1958, only to return two years later his bad boy instincts buttoned down. Amateur psychology is used to lay the blame on the shady Parker and his greed – we are led to believe the scrupulous manager of dubious Dutch origins had a hold over Elvis using the star as a cash cow to payoff his own mounting debts. Presley’s father Vernon (Roxburgh) was a weak role model and ended up in jail. Elvis’ actress mother Gladys (Thomson) is also just an underwritten sketch.

Luhrmann dishes up the legend’s mammoth musical history in all its glittering details weaving in a strand about his formative musical associations with the  segregated black artists Little Richard and Mahalia Jackson who lend vibrance to the story. DoP Mandy Walker, who worked with Luhrmann on Australia, pulls out all the stops in a biopic that runs for nearly three hours. Rather than zero-in on a pivotal era of the star’s career, Luhrmann merely touches on his entire life, and any depth or resonance is lost in the cacophony of flashing lights and noise.

Behind the cinematic showcase lies a hollow heart. Luhrmann, an obsessive showman himself, again goes overboard with his obsession for split screens in another sparkling montage that will satisfy the lowest common denominator. But having spent all his budget on appearances there’s nothing left for the script. The story is a classic but the straightforward chronicle approach takes away the element of surprise leaving us with an ‘all singing all dancing’ cabaret showpiece that ends in tears; a burnished biopic to please the investors rather than arthouse enthusiasts with discerning minds. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM JUNE 24TH 2022

It Snows in Benidorm (2021)

Dir/Wri: Isabelle Coixet | Cast: Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Carmen Machi, Pedro Casablanc | Spain Drama, 117′

Lost souls are marooned in an artificial ‘paradise’ in this meandering drama from Catalan writer director Isabelle Coixet.

The best thing about It Snows in Benidorm is Timothy Spall who carries the film with a permanently perplexed and world weary expression as Peter Riordan, a kindly but disillusioned bank clerk given early retirement when his ethics fall out of favour with the bank’s modern approach to lending.

Peter, also a keen meteorologist, heads off to Spain to visit his brother Daniel who he hasn’t seen for years, and who never appears either, providing the first in a long list of unanswered questions in this overlong and often farcical feature with its stagey internal scenes set against the towering skyscrapers of its panoramic backdrop of the Costa Blanca. Benidorm emerges a touristy retirement backwater for garishly dressed hysterical pensioners on their second lease of life; a sunny place for shady Spaniards, as Somerset Maugham who say, where people regularly disappear into its criminal underworld.

The dispeptic Peter does find love of sorts in burlesque dancer Sarita Choudhury who fails to bring out the humanity in the lonely ‘Pearl’ resigned to a life of displacement after a questionable past. Peter discovers his brother was embroiled in dodgy dealings in the property market, and ends up in a phoney kidnap attempt courtesy of Daniel’s business partner Esteban Campos (Casablanc) a longtime lamb butcher hellbent on making a killing of a different kind. There’s also a part for Almodovar regular Carmen Machi as the spunky seaside police chief: an awkward scene involving a tryst with her muscled young lover feels ridiculous.

Coixet has had some successes in her long career but with Snows it looks like she made a list of socially relevant themes to be incorporated into her storyline, and they crop up in offbeat scenes that sit incoherently alongside the main thrust of the narrative – the search for Daniel – robbing the piece of a much needed dramatic tension, rather like the adverts on TV. Whether It Snows in Benidorm is meant to be a dark comedy, or a comedy of manners, is unclear but it doesn’t succeed as either. And as the story draws to its cryptic conclusion we are left as uninspired and perplexed as Peter himself. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 23 `June 2022.

 

 

 

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A Love Song (2022) Sundance 2022

Dir.: Max Walker-Silverman; Cast: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi; USA 2022, 81 min.

Ten minutes into Max Walker-Silverman’s first feature, and not a word has been spoken. A long, languid opening scene sees a woman waiting in a trailer in the midst of a fabulous, wild landscape in Colorado. The tale told is that of a past with no regrets and the hope of something to be shared in the future.

The woman’s name is Faye (Dickey), her trailer, hitched to a pick-up truck, is about fifty years old and we learn a lot about her: she has a bait-trap and catches crayfish, she makes coffee in the mornings, and enjoys Radio ‘Longines Symphonette’, where a twist of the dial offers a song suited to her mood. The wireless is about as old as the trailer – and functions perfectly. The same can be said about Faye, widowed a couple of years ago. She lives on campsite No. 7, not far from the place where she spent her childhood.

Chance encounters are her social contacts: a lesbian couple who live on campsite No.2 encourage Faye to shoot the breeze about love. A young girl arrives with four monosyllabic  brothers, their truck having given up the ghost. Faye lends them her car engine and gets the lease of a canoe for “Recreation and romantic excursions”. We see her paddling alone on the nearby lake.

Finally, about half-way trough, we meet the object of Faye’s patient affections: Lito (Studi), a childhood friend, Lito arrives with a bunch of yellow wild flowers and a docile black dog. They shared a forbidden kiss in summer camp, and more recently, the loneliness of being widowed. Their re-union is almost wordless. They play their guitars, exchange a few thoughts on their dead partners. Faye shows Lito the magic of the radio, lets him dial the perfect song. Two words, not even a sentence, will decide their future. Reticent as always, Faye takes care of the present.

DoP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo supports the slow flow of what is visible on the outside with long travelling shots. The inner workings of both characters are mirrored in the mountains, the woods and the lake. Not idyllic, but real, and enduring like the people who inhabit this weathered landscape.

In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Emma Thompson’s Nancy tries to pays her way out of loneliness in a feature with its broken promise of something wild. Walker-Silverman’s debut takes the road of internalisation, offering so much more than the sum of its parts. Faye is a distant cousin of Fern from Nomadland. Not by chance, Dan Janvey is a co-producer for both features. Welcome to a film shot from the heart. AS

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

The Princess (2022)

Dir.: Ed Perkins; Documentary about Princess Diana; UK 2022, 106 min.

Hot on the heels of Spencer, The Crown and the musical Diana, THE PRINCESS does not promise or deliver any new insight into the life and tragic death of our much loved, Princess of Wales. Instead Ed Perkins pieces together a documentary made up exclusively of television news footage and public records, once again showing the Diana we have seen in the media and watched on TV for over 40 years – 25 of them after her death in a Parisian car crash. This is a digest of what was fed to the general public – rather than a feast of new information revealing the truth what really happened.

When the TV camera spotlight first fell on Lady Diana Spencer, it was 1981, she was an innocent twenty year old nursery teacher;  Prince Charles a well-travelled, sophisticated 32 year old prince. They harding knew each other, let alone loved each other, as the first TV interview shows. The media version of what happened next was “The Fairy Story”. In the midst of social and political turbulence, a fairy story was badly needed. But the fairy tale ended when Prince Charles, even after the birth of his first son William, continued to lead the life of a bachelor – including his adulterous affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, who was also married and a mother of two.

Much later, in the scandalous TV interview with Martin Bashir,  Diana spilt the beans: her own romantic affairs; the self harm; Bulimia; and a suicide attempt. Now the second phase, a “Soap Opera” was to begin. A collision between the royal family, representing traditional values, and Diana’s 20th Century lifestyle was played out before a public. A Disney movie perhaps, but nothing to do with the fact that the couple had never been in love in the first place. The so-called heart-break was the base the relationship was built on. Once again the British media drove the narrative forward, as it still does today, serving the public with what it thought they wanted, rather than the real truth of the matter.

Writer/director Ed Perkins (Tell me, who I am) and his editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira have certainly cobbled together a hoard of information but for whose benefit? Certainly not the ones who have worshipped “the princess of the people”, who was clearly at the cash cow for everyone who benefitted from her tragic story. Perhaps the best use of this documentary is as material for media students – as an example of reality television of the worst kind. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 30 JUNE 2022 FOR A SPECIAL ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT ACROSS THE UK/IRELAND

 

Fire of Love (2022)

Dir.: Sara Dosa; Cast: Documentary with Maurice Krafft, Katia Krafft; narrator Miranda July; Canada/USA 2022, 93 min.

French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft are the focus of this new documentary cum love story that records a life-changing visit to the island of Stromboli that would see them developing early warning systems for volcano eruptions from the early 1970s and lead to a worldwide research project that ended abruptly in June 1991, when they were killed, with 41 others, by a pyroclastic flow at Mount Unzen in Japan.

Sara Dosa (The Seer and the Unseen) bases her film on on a script by Shane Boris, Erin Caspar and Jocelyne Chaput that tells how the couple had met in Strasbourg and decided to devote their life to the beauty – and danger – of volcanos. Maurice maintained that rather than having “a long, monotonous life he would rather have a short, exciting one, dicing with danger in getting his legs burnt in boiling mud and risking life and limb to cross a lake in a rubber dingy containing sulphuric acid, making Katia, a chemist, incensed. Meanwhile she was famous for wearing metal helmets and walking along the edge of active volcano craters, captured in stunning camerawork by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa along with stunning images of the volcano Krakatoa, situated between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

Dosa and her writers flesh out the personal side of the couples’ obsession – just like Werner Herzog in A Fire within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft – yet their immense scientific oeuvre of over twenty publications is not even mentioned once which is a shame since the Kraffts warned the filipino president Cory Aquino about the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, allowing for the area to be evacuated. One of the Kraffts’ final publications before their death was “Understanding Volcanic Hazards and reducing volcanic risks”. In their own words, they “may have lived kamikaze existence”, but they contributed enormously to an arcane science. And like veritable pioneers they also paid the price. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE | SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL LONDON JUNE 2022

Richard’s Things (1980)

Dir: Anthony Harvey | Cast: Liv Ullmann, Amanda Redman, Tim Pigott-Smith | UK Drama, 108’

Despite the fact that Liv Ullmann is the older woman in this psychodrama about a recently widowed woman’s relationship with her late husband’s mistress, she looks pretty much as one is used to seeing her in her films with Bergman. Amanda Redman as the mistress, however, is so much younger than we are used to seeing her (complete with an “introducing” credit) – as well as being a brunette – it’s like watching a different actress in this virtual two-hander between the two of them. The other reminder throughout of the age of this film is the distinctively touching sound of the late Georges Delerue on the soundtrack.

Adapted for the screen by Frederic Raphael from his book, the story pans out in so many unexpected ways I’ll avoid discussing what follows other than to say that despite the handsome photography by Freddie Young in and around parts of London that would probably now be prohibitively expensive for the people living there (as usual the women are all elegantly dressed and nobody seems to have any money worries) the number of scenes simply depicting two characters earnestly chattering immediately marks it out as a TV production. @RichardChatten

 

Bowery (2022) Tribeca Film Festival

Dir.: Mike Mintz, Irad Straus; Documentary with Richard ‘Dolla’ Thomas, Jaime ‘Rubia’ Gonzales. Steve Miller, Andrew Harris, Charlie ‘Sarge’ Duffy, Fifty; USA 2022, 100 min.

Bowery takes the spotlight for a year in the life of one of New York’s poorest neighbourhoods, located in the south of Manhattan, where life revolves round the subway station of the same name.

Capturing the Covid-19 epidemic and the BLM demonstrations first time filmmakers Irad Straus Mike Mintz (who also serves at DoP) and certainly see the place at its lowest ebb, Richard ‘Dolla’ Thomas is about sixty, sitting in his wheelchair, and ‘directing’ the traffic at the Delancey intersection. Hustling for a few dollars a day, he collects his ‘income’ in paper cup, all he can offer drivers is a traffic update to help them on their way. And his little ‘job’ serves as a kind of bereavement therapy since he lost his wife two years ago.

Another local character Rubia, forty-one, sometimes pretends to be his daughter; her drug habit has certainly addled her brain and she sprays the number ‘6’ three times on one of the pillars in the subway station, she is looking for work but will soon leave for New Jersey to be with her son. Fifty, in his late twenties, had previously held down a job as a courier where the money is decent. But he soon gets lost in New York, using his mobile as a Satnav, and is late for most of his deliveries, his employers disciplining him with a hefty wage cut of 90%.

Then comes the pandemic and empties the streets. Steve Miller and Andrew Harris, both in their mid-twenties, are drug dependent. They are looking for a hostel, but want to avoid the over-crowded ones. Rubia meanwhile, has spent her birthday in the launderette; and takes a break in the basket with her washing, well hidden in the shrubberies. On May 25th 2020, Geroge Floyd is killed by police officers. The first BLM marches erupt spontaneously. Police and demonstrators clash and Richard exclaims “I can’t believe I am seeing this.” We follow Charlie into a church where he begs God to help him back on his feet. He just can’t do it anymore. The last word goes to Richard: “I know, I am a survivor”.

The freewheeling lack of structure is for once just right, reflecting the lives of the protagonists struggling to stay alive and spontaneously doing what they believe can alleviate their situation. Drugs are the main problem, but hygiene and food are a close second. Bowery is certainly a tribute to human survival, faced with poverty and now the pandemic, the number of ambulances carrying the dying multiplying, this is just a question of keeping on, keeping on. Bowery is not an easy watch in its depiction of hard core realism,  but it certainly documents an important place in time.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Men (2021)

Dir: Alex Garland | Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinear, Paapa Essiedu | US Fantasy horror

English director Alex Garland (Annihilation) dices with horror and comedy in his weird and wonderful hybrid set in a picturesque village in the depths of the English countryside where the male of the species appears in various guises – none of them favourable.

A secluded English country house with manicured gardens should be the perfect place to recuperate for a woman whose ex husband (Essiedu) has just committed suicide. But the Herefordshire hideaway where Harper (Buckley) seeks solace is more akin to the sinister Cornish village of The Wicker Man , and the owner, Geoffrey (Kinnear), an uppercrust oddball, is a dead ringer for TVs Harry Enfield complete with buck teeth and dandruff and a penchant for cavorting stark naked in the grounds. Other incarnations in his repertoire include the famous ‘loadsa money’ lookalike; a leery, misogynist vicar; and a schoolboy who looks like Anthony’s Hopkins’ puppet Corky from Magic.

Clearly Garland had a big budget to throw at this production that takes a tokenistic swipe at toxic masculinity, and gives lip service to domestic violence. But it does no favours for Jessie Buckley who is left incredulously hung out to dry with her character, a ballsy career woman who feels completely out of place in this meaningless ‘Midsomer Murders’ style charade, she seems to be in a different film.

For a time Buckley lends credibility to the film’s initial shock value but then our patience wears thin as Kinnear gets the more gratifying job of pulling different disguises out of his pantomime box of tricks. The overriding comedy element soon punches a hole in any vestigial tension the film has tried to instil, leaving Harper’s tragic backstory somehow diminished by the garish absurdity of the rest of the antics, and leaving us not sure whether to laugh or scream. A bizarre but watchable film. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 3 JUNE 2022 

 

There are No Saints (2021)

Dir.: Alonso Pineda Ulloa | Wri: Paul Schrader |  Cast: Jose Maria Yazpik, Shannyn Sossamon, Paz Vega, Keidrich Sellati, Neal McDnough, Ron Pearlman, Tim Roth; USA/Mexico 2022, 104 min.

There Are No Saints has that same sober nihilism that has ruled Paul Schrader’s last few films, such as First Reformed but is directed here by Alonso Pineda Ulloa, best known for his TV fare. Nihilism is the right choice for this hard-hitting genre feature, a revenge blood bath with an all star cast of Brian Cox, Tim Roth and Paz Vega.

Schrader (who also the exec produced) is the archangel who has fallen from grace in mainstream Hollywood; but he still packs a heavy punch. Arthouse it may not be, but few can come up with a tour-de-force like this.

Sadistic hit-man Neto Niente ‘The Jesuit’ (Yazpik) escapes death row after taking the rap for a ghastly crime he did not commit. But when his wife Nadia (Paz) and son Julio (Sellati), are murdered, he finds himself implicated in their deaths. There are no Saints is a visually stylish thriller in the same mould as Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way. Niente is constantly on the move amid escalating violence in a world run by criminals who are all successful businessmen of one sort of the other. Schrader’s is as powerful as his writing skills: in many ways, There are No Saints is Seventies nostalgia in a modern world where ‘everything but violence is fake’. Not for the faint hearted, but Jim Thompson would have loved it. AS

VOD FROM 27 MAY 2022

The Green Perfume (2022) Cannes Film Festival

Dir.: Nicolas Pariser; Cast: Sandrine Kimberlain, Vincent Lacoste, Rüdiger Vogler, Léonie Simaga, Arie Worthalter, Jenna Thiam, Pascal Rénéric, Thomas Chabrol; France 2022, 104 min.

A really seductive title that fails to live up to expectations, Le Parfum Vert tries hard, perhaps too hard, to revive Hitchcock mysteries in the style of Jacques Rivette. And while the French New Wave master would be delighted with the central pairing – two Jewish oddballs – along with the theatre setting; Nicolas Pariser is less successful when it comes to the modern version of Hitchcock: the plot is, to say the least, weak, setting aside the simplistic political plotline.

Martin (Lacoste), an actor, is witness to the onstage murder of his friend Vlad (Rénéric) during Anton Chekhov’s play ‘Ivanov’. In his last breath Vlad implicates the Green Perfume group. Martin, always the hypochondriac, freaks out when it turns out he is the main suspect. Fellow actor Caroline (Thiam) tries to calm him down but Martin is then abducted by a right-wing group with links to Russia, led by the sinister Hartz (Vogler), a cartoonish Austrian. Martin is then released the following morning, and running away from the police, led by detective inspector Louise (Simaga), meets Claire (Kimberlain), a cartoonist and owner of a bookshop, who is hounded by her sister and mother, phoning her in the middle of the night with a link to a Jewish dating agency.

Claire has spent a long time in Israel, she dislikes the snobby French but has to admit Israel is not European any more. Martin, who also spent time in Jewish summer camps, is more obsessed with his health and lack of love in his relationships: he is in the middle of a divorce and as self-obsessed as his new partner. Somehow, Louise catches up with the pair on Martin’s next engagement in Budapest where Corneille’s ”L’Illusion Comique” is on the programme. The Hartz Group will try to get hold of a super disinformation system. The clue to its whereabouts will be triggered by one of the actors who will use the wrong cue – the play is in French, the audience has a Hungarian translation. To find the traitor Claire follows Martin in the hunt, in spite of a bullet wound in her leg, before she too is abducted by Harzt and his men in the Budapest theatre.

Forget the farcical plot, The Green Parfum succeeds largely due to the compelling chemistry of the leads – both lonely and out of luck in love. A Jewish identity gets you only so far, and both have not really grown up and still hankers after ideas which are now on the scrap heap. Like Hansel and Gretel, they have lost their way home, only existing only in their imagination. Unaware of the danger of the real conspiracy, they save themselves by falling in love.

DoP Sebastien Buchmann pictures Paris and Budapest in a nostalgic glow. The chase scenes in the theatre are lively, but Buchmann is (like Pariser) most convincing, when it comes to small details, like the observations on the train when the two chases their pursuers – or find a corpse. Every day life is much more exciting than the wildest political plots – particularly when poorly executed. AS

THE GREEN PERFUME | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

R.M.N. (2022)

Dir/Wri: Cristian Mungiu | Cast: Marin Grigore, Judith State, Macrina Baladeanu, Orolya Moldovan, Andrei Finti, Mark Blenyesi, Ovidiu Crisan | Drama 125′

A young Romanian boy has a nasty experience in the woods on his way to school one morning echoing the seething sense of social unrest in the Romanian village where he lives with his family.

Not quite as richly satisfying as his earlier fare, Cristian Mungiu unloads a truckload of issues in his latest, a dour drama that unfolds in the multicultural region of Transylvania, once home to Dracula but now to the equally unsetting evil of racial tension and political dysfunction, both at home and further afield.  .

R.M.N is another time indulgent drama – and there are quite a few around at the moment. It casts a slow-burn gaze over one of the last countries to join the EU through a group of diverse characters trying to make the best of things. Amongst them is the intractable Matthias (Marin Grigore) whose bad time in Germany has brought him back to the family fold in his birthplace of Recia, where he joins his estranged wife Ana (Baladeanu), young son Rudi ((Blenyesi), who has not spoken since the forest interlude, and an ageing father Papa Otto (Fini). Matthias is also attempting to rekindle a relationship with Hungarian-speaking Csilla (Judith State), a musician who runs the local bakery where she is managing two new employees from Sri Lanka whose arrival has caused ructions in the local community, along with Matthias’ reappearance in town, in the run up to Christmas. Yes, it’s a complex plot-line!

Once again the mountains provide a dour but scenic backdrop and this allows for many scenes to play out uncut including one revealing scene where the locals air their racial musings in one uninterrupted static sequence. An impromptu concert provides a welcome burst of Christmas spirit that adds light relief to the simmering tensions of village life. Once again Mungiu provides an engaging contemporary snapshot of his changing homeland but it feels like a film we have already seen before. MT

NOW IN UK CINEMAS | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL premiere 2022

The Night of the 12th (2022)

Dir: Dominik Moll | Cast: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Théo Cholbi, Johann Dionnet, Thibaut Evrard, Julien Frison, Paul Jeanson, Mouna Soulam, Pauline Serieys, Anouk Grinberg, Lula Cotton Frapier | Thriller 114′

Dominik Moll’s memorable arthouse drama goes to intriguing places with a realistic and richly crafted narrative more focused on the moods and motivations of its authentic characters that the whodunnit at its core. Even though The Night of the 12th is an inconclusive crime drama it leaves you with a feeling of calm satisfaction rather than jangled nerves.

On the way home from a girls’ get together Clara (Lula Cotton Frapier) is.torched to death in an otherwise peaceful village in the suburbs of Grenoble. An extensive police investigation fails to flush out her murderer but in the process we are introduced to the local French detectives Bastien Bouillon (Yohan) and Bouli Lanners (Marceau) playing a rookie and hardened duo whose personal lives add valuable insight to the police procedural by exploring the wider implications of this violent murder in the context of contemporary attitudes towards women in France.

Moll and his regular co-writer Gilles Marchand base their script on a section of Pauline Guéna’s essay novel “18.3 – Une année à la PJ, Paris” that deals with this real crime but translocates the action to southeastern France. The remoteness of the mountain setting thrusts our focus onto the intense exchanges between Marceau and Yohan, and adds a scenic allure to the internal scenes of the police procedural with its acerbic macho observations of modern life and the eternal ongoing conflict between the sexes.

Marceau, whose wife has just left him, is increasingly disenchanted by the modern world; the lack of romanticism and culture amongst the young, and their glib attitude towards relationships. This spills over into his dealings with the various suspects, and he eventually retires from the case. But Yohan is the most mesmerising of the two; a deep thinker quietly fascinated by his work and the people he comes into contact with, especially his new colleague Nadia (Soualem) who brings her female gaze to the investigation:”men are often the perpetrators and women the targets” and the local judiciary judge, Anouk Grinberg, sublime in a cameo role. MT

NOW ON BFI SUBSCRIPTION | VOTED BEST FILM BEST DIRECTOR, BEST FILM, BEST NEWCOMER, BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, BEST SOUND+ BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY | CESAR AWARDS |

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plan 75 (2022)

Dir: Chie Hayakawa | Japan, drama 115′

In a world rapidly filling up with an ageing population, have the young any right to ask them to politely move on?

That’s the premise of this first feature from Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, whose old people look more in their nineties than their seventies but conceal a latent anger with the usual Japanese decorum as they share food in a clinical looking care home, forced smiles painted on their wrinkly faces.

The Plan 75 in question is a state initiative to offer a financial incentive to prompt mid-septuagenarians plus to shuffle off their mortal coil. And there’s a lot to be said about it. Why waste time financing your life while friends die around you, bodily functions start to fail and aches and pains only get worse. Particularly if family has ceased to become a concern. As the director points out: there’s always been an honour in death the Japanese way (Hari Kari anyone?).

A slow-burning and thought-provoking contemplation that proceeds with measured dignity. The veteran actress Chieko Baisho is Michi, a woman with no next of kin who opts for the plan, but then there’s a plot twist as two interweaving narrative strands come into play involving a Plan 75 salesman (Hayato Isomura) and a Filipino worker, contrasting the various pro cons. A well thought out and chewy debut to mull over but no great surprises on the mise en scene front. MT

IN CINEMAS AND ON CURZON HOME CINEMA FROM | 12 MAY 2023 | 

 

Tchaikovsky’s Wife (2022)

Dir: Kirill Serebrennikov | Cast: Alyona Mikhailova, Odin Lund Biron, Yuliya Org, Miron Federov | Biopic Drama 143′

Best known for his multi-award winning feature debut The Student, the exiled Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov continues to blaze a trail with another inspired biopic drama – a first to explore the turbulent, sexless relationship between the 19th century Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky seen from the perspective of his wife Antonina Miliukova in Moscow in the late 1870s.

Tchaikovsky was homosexual and his innocent wife to be was oblivious to the fact: in her diaries she supposedly wrote: “Thank God he belongs to me and no-one else. Now he is my husband and no-one can take him away from me”. But, according to this version of events, Tchaikovsky cannot tolerate life ‘a deux’, and especially with a woman whose quite normal nubile demands eventually drive him away from his willing partner. And although our sympathies are with Antonina we are not oblivious to her faults which clearly go beyond religious insistence and eventually become tiresome in this dour and melodramatic storyline.

Those expecting a sweeping epic filled with vast tracks of the composer’s romantic music will be disappointed. True to its title Tchaikovsky’s Wife is first and foremost a lavish and lyrical but often cold-eyed portrait of a married woman’s obsessional and misguided love, it also touches on the prickliness of an artist trying to develop his talent, but this strand is less developed and takes a back seat to Antonina’s mental anguish.

Enriched by modern dance sequences, inventive camera angles and occasional flashes of Tarkovsky, each frame is a painterly portrait straight out of Manet or Berthe Morisot with the delicate detailing of an Ingres painting before the tone grows more sombre and louche with scuzzy naked sequences featuring well-hung studs, inspired by Tom of Finland staged in a rather misogynist attempt to excite the young woman and lure her away from her husband.

We first meet Antonina Miliukova in 1877 as a tender lady of fortune tentatively seeking a husband and lovestruck by her first sighting of the struggling composer. Fifteen years later she is reduced to a poverty-ridden emotional wreck unable to accept that her marriage has irretrievably broken down and her affair with the divorce lawyer has turned abusive.

What starts as hopeful story of triumph over expectation, after the couple’s marriage of convenience, soon descends into a tragedy of melodramatic proportions when Miliukova’s promise of family wealth comes to nothing: Tchaikovsky is unable to countenance a relationship with anyone but his own genius, and a few acolytes who pander to his talent.

The final scenes play out as a tragedy Miliukova having become a caricature of herself with the loss of her three children but determined not to relinquish the unique status of being the wife of a man who would eventually become one of the world’s most legendary composers. MT

AT THE ICA LONDON on 22 December 20

The Eight Mountains (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE 12 MAY 2023  | D

 

 

 

 

The Blue Caftan (2022)

Dir/Wri: Maryam Touzani | Cast: Saleh Bakri, Lubna Azabal, Ayoub Messioui | Drama 118′

The ancient craft of caftan styling is at the heart of Maryam Touzani’s sophomore feature, a slow-burning sensuous Magrebi menage a trois competing in the this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes Film Festival. 

Halim (Bakri) and Mina (Azabal) run a traditional caftan atelier in one of Morocco’s oldest medinas. Fashions are constantly changing and the married couple are aware of a need to cater for a more demanding clientele. But their decision to take on a new apprentice (Messioui) will have intriguing consequences for the business and their own relationship. Saleh Bakri and Lubna Azabal have a mesmerising chemistry as the couple at the centre of the story, but Messioui is also captivating in his feature debut performance as the gifted but impetuous young apprentice very much in tune with modern sensibilities.

The Blue Caftan is a drama as indulgent and intricately woven as the silky garments themselves. Touzani’s first feature Adam focused on love in a Casablanca bakery and this is another domestic tale of local craftsman that speaks to tradition while keeping pace with the modern world. Esentially a three-handed chamber piece the film occasionally ventures out into the sunbaked streets and hazy hammams of its coastal location, Touzani delicately teasing out her layered character study that will reveal a subtle love story that works both as a gay awakening piece and a testament to enduring marital love. And apart from the meticulous lensing the clever premise is why this sumptuous drama is so enjoyable, albeit a little over-wrought – like the old-fashioned caftans themselves – in the final heart-rending scenes. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS FROM 5 MAY 2023 |

Harka (2022)

Dir: Lofty Nathan | Cast: Adam Bessa, Najib Allagui, Salima Maatoug, Iqbal Harbi | 90′

French Tunisian actor Adam Bessa gives a powerful performances as a young man dreaming of a better life but ground down by frustration and poverty in a Tunisia still down on its knees in the aftermath to the Arab Spring.

Harka is the feature debut of US Egyptian filmmaker Lofty Nathan (12 O’Clock Boys) who won the Red Sea Souk Award at Saudi Arabia’s inaugural Red Sea Film Festival in December 2021.

Ali is making a pittance by selling gasoline, when his dreams of migrating to Europe are shattered by the news of his estranged father’s death from cancer. His two younger sisters are now entirely his responsible as his elder brother has since moved his own family to the tourist resort of Hammamet to run a restaurant. But there’s a sting in the tail when he discovers his father’s unpaid debts will mean losing the family home. 

The dust, heat and grime are potently palpable elements here along with police corruption and government bureaucracy, making it hard for the poor and semi illiterate Ali to make a living from anything but hand to mouth grifting with his illegal contraband activities. Ali fails in an attempt to take up his father’s old job at the local government offices. He then tries his hand at another black market endeavour that proves highly lucrative until the police catch up with him. Nathan keeps us engaged in a well-paced arthouse gem that plays out like a thriller with a strong dramatic arc, and although Ali is not a particularly likeable character, we feel for him in his plight. 

With his mental health at rock bottom Ali is prone to violent outbursts, darting hostile glances of savage mistrust at anyone close to him but (like the Kray Twins) reserving a tacit respect for his sisters whom he still cherishes, even buying the youngest a puppy in scenes that provide tender relief from the gritty social realism of a film that dwells on the social and political ills of a North African nation divided by wealth and abject poverty, the current affairs overhead in the coffee bars as men gather to shoot the breeze. But despite the overarching tone of anxiety and often brutal violence Tunisia’s arid landscape, vibrant colours and break-taking coastlines captured in Maximilian Pinter’s artful framing and camerawork make this a striking and emotionally moving first feature. MT

NOW in Cinemas

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

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

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

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

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

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES | PRIME VIDEO

Dalva (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOW IN UK CINEMAS

Luzzu (2021)

Dir/Wri: Alex Camilleri | Cast: Jesmark Scicluna, Marlene Schranz, David Scicluna, Marta Vella | Drama 94′

Fisherman all over the world are under pressure in what is surely one of the most honourable professions since the time of Jesus: bringing home the catch.

Maltese American filmmaker Alex Camilleri backed by award-winning screenwriter Ramin Bahrani casts a real working fisherman (Jesmark Scicluna) in his intelligent debut feature that plays out like an agonising arthouse thriller set in a fishing Mediterranean community struggling to survive. Jesmark is one of a long line of locals making (or not making) their living from the sea. Each days he sets sails in his colourful painted luzzu – a traditional man-made wooden boat – hoping to support his newborn son who needs medical treatment. The alternative is to decommission his vessel for an EU payout and possibly getting tied up in EU red tape, or go on the black market with the island’s criminal underclass. Seemingly a no-win situation. Interestingly Malta joined the European Union in 2004 and their exotic language sounds like a cross between Sicilian and North African Arabic.

So the odds are really stacked against Jesmark who manages to look resentful, hurt and bewildered in a convincing performance that won him Best Acting award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Meanwhile, his wife Denise (Michela Farrugia) manages to make everything look like his fault, along with his mother in law. And to makes matters worse he now has to rely on a friend (David Scicluna) to help him.

Their daily catch yields a mixture of sea bream, mullet and bass, but they are forced to throw a lucrative swordfish back in the sea, although the fish is already dead,  because it contravenes EU regulations, and this is a tense moment for Jesmark who clearly feels back-footed and diminished. Clearly this is not working. So he joins forces with the unscrupulous Uday (Uday Maclean) in a soulless (!) foray that goes his integrity. This black market option requires him to go back on his tracks after dark and collect the leftover fish which can then be sold on to restaurants.

With disappointment and anger etched on his weatherbeaten face Jesmark is the embodiment of male failure. Luzzu serves a vibrant snapshot of this ancient Southern European archipelago with its age-old traditions and tightknit community dogged by global economic turndown and EU restrictions. MT

SUNDANCE SPECIAL JURY AWARD – ACTING | OUT ON 27 MAY 2022

Cannes – Un Certain Regard 2022

The Cannes Film Festival competition sidebar known for auteur driven features and alluring visual storytelling rather than star-strewn casts.

 

LES PIRES Lise AKOKA, Romane GUERET 1st film

First time directors Lisa Akoka and Romane Gueret take the brave step of making a film with teenage cast from the same neighbourhood, during the summer break.

KURAK GÜNLER (BURNING DAYS) Emin ALPER

Best known for his atmospheric widescreen thrillers Beyond the Hill and Frenzy and rural parable A Tale of Three Sisters, Alper’s latest feature – and his first time in competition at Cannes – takes him back to the Turkish countryside for a tale of smalltown political intrigue.

METRONOM Alexandru BELC 1st film

The doomed days of first love in Romania, 1972, are depicted in this feature debut from Alexandra Belc and starring Vlad Ivanov (The Whistlers).

SICK OF MYSELF Kristoffer BORGLI

A toxic relationship takes a turn for the worst in a darkly comic tale of oneupmanship from Norwegian filmmaker Borgli.

ALL THE PEOPLE I’LL NEVER BE Davy CHOU

An adopted French woman’s attempts to rediscover her biological roots in South Korea are not as she imagines in this sophomore feature from French Cambodian director Davy Chou.

DOMINGO Y LA NIEBLA (DOMINGO AND THE MIST) Ariel ESCALANTE MEZA

Unscrupulous property developers uncover a mysterious past and a surreal present when they threaten to take over a rural village in Mexico in this sophomore feature.

PLAN 75 HAYAKAWA Chie 1st film

Eugenics provide the haunting subject matter for this timely debut drama set in the Philippines.

UNTITLED PINE RIDGE PROJECT Riley KEOUGH, Gina GAMMELL 1st film

Actress turned filmmaker Riley Keough joins Gina Gammell behind the camera for this first feature that follows two Lakota boys as they grow up in Pine Ridge Reservation.

CORSAGE Marie KREUTZER (main image)

After winning various awards at Berlinale, Austrian auteur Marie Kreutzer tackles the thorny subject of ageing and feminine allure taking a regal example as her main character. Empress Elisabeth of Austria was known for her sartorial elegance and the film explores her desire to keep up appearances as she turns 40, considered ‘old’ in 1877. Vicky Krieps stars.

BACHENNYA METELYKA (BUTTERFLY VISION) Maksim NAKONECHNYI 1st film

In an incendiary subject for this year’s Cannes line-up, Maksim Nakonechnyi’s first feature explores rape and unwanted pregnancy from the perspective a POW returning home from active service on the Ukrainian front.

 

VANSKABTE LAND / VOLAÐA LAND (GODLAND) Hlynur PÁLMASON

This Islandic filmmaker has won multiple awards for his distinctively dour and beguiling beautiful dramas such as Winter Brothers and A White, White Day. This latest is a moral fable that follows a pioneering 19th century Danish priest with a noble mission to found a church in Iceland. The deeper he travels into the remote wilderness the more he loses his way, literally and metaphorically.

RODEO Lola QUIVORON 1st film

So many ideas here been done before – the misfit angle, the woman in a man’s world who struggles against the odds after further setbacks – let’s see if first time filmmaker Quivoron can bring something new to the party.

JOYLAND Saim SADIQ 1st film

Pakistani LBGT filmmaker Saim Sadiq has won awards for blazing a queer trail in his shorts Nice Talking to You and Darling. His first feature film centres on a patriarchal family back in Pakistan and is certainly crammed with ideas, but can he put them together in a meaningful way for mainstream audiences?

THE SILENT TWINS Agnieszka SMOCZYNSKA

The inexplicable bond between twins provides the intriguing heart of this latest feature from Polish director Smocynkska whose distinctive fantasy drama The Lure caused quite a stir at Locarno 6 years ago.

THE STRANGER Thomas M WRIGHT

Along with ‘The Promise’, The Stranger is possibly the most over-used title for a film – a brief glance at imdb alone provides no fewer than five films with the title. But this Adelaide-set crime thriller from actor turned director Thomas M Wright – whose Acute Misfortune was described by Hollywood Reporter’s Neil Young as “one of the most striking and accomplished directorial debuts of 2018”. Plus it has a strong cast of Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton – so what could go wrong? Watch this space.

UN CERTAIN REGARD | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 17 – 28 MAY 2022

 

 

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Dir: Nicholas Ray | Cast: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan | US Thriller 82′

Robert Ryan commences in full psycho mode in this further step up in the ascending career of Nicholas Ray. Filmed under the title Mad with Much Heart, it begins as a very noir noir before relocating to Colorado to become a snowswept rural drama, the two halves held together by George Diskant’s photography and by a superlative score by Bernard Herrmann (his personal favourite) which anticipates his later work for North by Northwest.

The presence in the early scenes on the mean streets of Charles Kemper, already dead eighteen months when it finally hit screens in February 1952, shows that like many other RKO productions of the time it spent months on the shelf at RKO while the studio’s new owner Howard Hughes dithered over when finally to release it. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Cannes Classics – 2022 restorations

This year’s Cannes Classics strand opens with Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore in celebrating of its restoration 50 years after shooting began in 1972. The mammoth undertaking runs for over three hours and would later go on to win the Grand de Jury presided by Ingrid Bergmann, and the Prix de la Critique, causing riots back in the 1973. A full retrospective of the director’s work will in slated for 2023 in French cinemas.

Sciuscià | Vittorio de Sica | 1946, 1h33, Italy

Presented by The Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Restored in 4K by The Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Orium S.A. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation

Thamp (The Circus Tent) | Aravindan Govindan | 1978, 2h09, India

A presentation of Film Heritage Foundation, India. Restored by Film Heritage Foundation, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Cineteca di Bologna at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post – Studios, Chennai, and L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, and in association with General Pictures, National Film Archive of India and the family of Aravindan Govindan. Funding provided by Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd. and Film Heritage Foundation.

The Trial  | Orson Welles | 1962, 2h, France / Germany / Italy

This restoration was produced in 2022 by STUDIOCANAL and the Cinémathèque Française. The image and sound restoration were done at the Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory (Paris-Bologne), using the original 35mm negative. This project was supervised by STUDIOCANAL, Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Boiget. The restoration was funded thanks to the patronage of Chanel.

If I Were a Spy… | Bertrand Blier | 1967, 1h34, France

Presented by Pathé. 4k restoration, done scanning the original negative film. A project undertaken by the Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory (Paris-Bologne). Restoration funded by the Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée (CNC).

Poil de Carotte | Julien Duvivier | 1932, 1h31, France

A TF1 presentation. New 4K restoration done by TF1 studios, with the backing of CNC, using the original nitrate negative and a combined dupe negative on non-flammable film. Digital and photochemical work done in 2021 by the Hiventy laboratory.

The Last Waltz | Martin Scorsese | 1978, 1h57, USA

MGM Studios’ The Last Waltz (1978) is presented by Park Circus thanks to a new 4K digital restoration from the Criterion Collection, approved by director Martin Scorsese.

Itim | Mike De Leon | 1976, 1h45, Philippines

A Mike De Leon presentation, distributed in France by Carlotta Films. Restoration done using the original 35mm negative and optical soundtrack, stored at the British Film Institute. This presentation is a preview of the French release of Mike De Leon’s entire restored body of work, slated 2022-2023.

Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol | Glauber Rocha  | 1964, 2h, Brazil

Presented by Metropoles.com and Paloma Cinematográfica. Restored from the original 35mm negative preserved at Cinemateca Brasileira and with a brand new 4K restoration by Estudios Cinecolor and Estudios JLS, Cinematographer Luis Abramo/Rogerio Moraes and with the supervision of Rodrigo Mercês.

Sedmikrásky (Daisies)  | Vera Chytilová | 1966, 1h14, Czech Republic

Digital restoration of this film funded by the donation of Mrs. Milada Kučerová and Mr. Eduard Kučera was carried out by Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in collaboration with the Národní filmový archiv, Prague and the Czech Film Fund in UPP and Soundsquare.

Viva la muerte  | Fernando Arrabal | 1971, 1h30, France / Tunisia

Viva la Muerte! was scanned and restored in 4K by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse using the original 35mm image negative, the original 35mm sound negative of the French version, and a 35mm interpositive element containing the end credits missing from the original negative.

Documentaries

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman by Ethan Hawke The Last Movie Stars
Ethan Hawke, episodes 3 and 4 | 1h47, USA

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodwind enjoyed one of the most enduring relationships in Hollywood. Actor, director and producer Ethan Hawke and executive producer Martin Scorsese explore their lives and careers in a captivating, intellectual, and moving documentary. Divided into six chapters the film features Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney and Sam Rockwell, with archive interviews of Elia Kazan, Sydney Pollock, Paul Newman, who discuss the iconic couple and American cinema. Screened in the presence of Ethan Hawke and Clea Newman Soderlund

Romy, A Free Woman | written by Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Déroudille, Dir: Lucie Cariès | 1h31, France

Romy Schneider was a regular in Competition at Cannes, starting in 1957 with Sissi, and notably with Claude Sautet’s Les Choses de la Vie. This exceptional documentary recounts her illustrious career with passion and dedication.
Screening in the presence of Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Deroudille

Jane Campion, Cinema Woman | Dir: Julie Bertuccelli | 1h38, France

Director Julie Bertuccelli paints Jane Campion’s portrait with great sensitivity, humour and admiration, telling the tale of the first-ever woman to win the Palme d’Or in 1993.
Screening in the presence of Julie Bertuccelli.

Gérard Philipe, le dernier hiver du Cid Dir: Patrick Jeudy, 1h06, France

An adaptation of Jérôme Garcin’s novel Le dernier hiver du cid, this documentary built exclusively on archive footage and a delicate storytelling style celebrates the 100th anniversary of Cannois Gerard Philipe. His memory will flood back to the Croisette through a screening of Fanfan la tulipe.
Screening in the presence of Patrick Jeudy, Jérôme Garcin and Anne-Marie Philipe.

Patrick Dewaere, mon héros (Patrick Dewaere, My Hero) | Dir: Alexandre Moix, 1h30, France

The actress Lola Dewaere chronicles the film career and traumatic life of celebrated actor Patrick Dewaere, the father she never knew, under the watchful eye of director Alexandre Moix.
Screening in the presence of Alexandre Moix and Lola Dewaere.

Hommage d’une fille à son père Dir: Fatou Cissé, 1h11, Mali

Fatou Cissé accompanies her father, Malien director Souleymane Cissé, in a trip through his film career, painting an intimate and poetic picture of one of Africa’s most celebrated actors. Screening in the presence of Fatou Cissé and Souleymane Cissé.

L’Ombre de Goya par Jean-Claude Carrière | Dir:José Luis Lopez-Linares, 1h30, France

A restoration that rediscovers the magical language of the late screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, as he researches the painter Goya. An incredible trip through culture, emotion, cinema, painting and Spain. A French-Hispanic-Portugese coproduction: Screening in the presence of José Luis Lopez Linares.

Tres en la deriva del acto creativo (Three in the Drift of the Creative Act) Fernando Solanas | 1h36, Argentina

Last homage to the great director Fernando Solanas who came many times to the Festival En Competition and two times to Cannes Classics.  .

Screening in the presence of Victoria and Juan Solanas, and Gaspar Noé.

CANNES CLASSICS  | 17-28 May 2022

I Am a Camera (1955)

Dir: Henry Cornelius | Cast: Julie Harris, Laurence Harvey, Shelley Winters, Ron Randell | drama, 108’

I Am A Camera is based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and John Van Druten’s 1951 Broadway play adaptation but somehow never escapes the confines of the stage in this chamber piece evoking Weimar Berlin in the early 1930s. South African director Henry Cornelius travelled to Europe where he made five memorable features and this fourth one has Julie Harris as one of Broadway’s greatest nightclub chanteuses Sally Bowles who finds herself sharing a tiny room with Laurence Harvey’s Isherwood. John Collier’s waspish script certainly nails down the animated exchanges between the flatmates but is less successful in capturing the social and political zeitgeist of pre-war Berlin than the novel which although more authentic than the Oscar winning musical Cabaret (1972) will always eclipse it entertainment wise.

Bowles is a simpering, irrepressible diva down on her luck recalled by Isherwood (in voiceover) in the film’s Bloomsbury-set opening sequence at his book launch, with the action flashes back to a wintery 1931 Berlin where she charms the earnest and unsuspecting intellectual into a doomed arrangement, playing on his better nature and ultimately leaving him exasperated when his half-hearted attempt at seducing her goes pear-shaped: “A puritan all of a sudden, or just where I’m concerned”.

The film is most entertaining when Bowles drags the penniless Isherwood into a cocktail bar where they meet moneyed American Clive (Randell) and Patrick McGoohan’s hydro-therapist, although Shelley Winters and Anton Diffring are less convincing as the Jewish lovers Fritz and Natalia who are haunted by the growing threat of Nazism.

Obviously there are no allusions to Isherwood’s sexuality it being the 1950s, this is played as a purely platonic relationship where Isherwood (and the audience) is gradually more and more irritated by Bowles’s flirty behaviour. MT

OUT ON 23 MAY 2022 | Bluray, DVD and Digital

 

 

This Happy Breed (1944)

Dir: David Lean | Cast: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Kay Walsh, Amy Veness, Stanley Holloway | UK Drama 115′

Unfazed by the complexities of filming in Technicolor in wartime Britain, David Lean commences with a graceful glide in through a window (probably pinched by Hitchcock for the opening shot of Psycho) movingly reversed in the final shot twenty years later.

Not just unusual for its realistic colour the opening scene the feature also uses sound to convincingly evoke the emptiness of the house the family have just arrived in, with the effect repeated as the house is emptied when they prepare to move out at the end. Likewise the camera moves across the sitting room when the parents receive catastrophic news offscreen, while all you hear is jaunty music on the radio in another exemplary combination of image and sound. A shot that, by the way, required Lean’s crew to commandeer every arc light in the studio to facilitate – in colour – the depth of focus required. @RichardChatten

Casablanca Beats (2021)

Dir/Wri.: Nabil Ayouch, Cast: Anas Basbousi, Ismail Adouab, Amina Kannan, Meriem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif, Zineb Boujemaa, Samah Barigou, Abdelilah Basbousi, Maha Menan, Mehdi Razzouk, Marwa Kniniche, Soufiane Belali, Zineb Boujemaa; Morocco/France 2021, 101 min.

French-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch is no stranger to controversy: His feature Much Loved about prostitution in his home country was banned, and Horses of God is a sober fictionalisation of the the suicide bombing that killed 33 people in Sidi Moumen, a deprived neighbourhood in Casablanca.

Ayoch has returned to Sidi Moumen with CASABLANCA BEATS, the first Moroccan feature in competition at Cannes since 1962. An uplifting story of local teenagers, uses rap and hip hop to hit back at the male-dominated set-up, and the religious bigotry that condones it. All actors are playing out their own lives with Anas Basbousi being the central character. Basbousi is a rapper, who founded the ‘Positive School’ in a cultural centre in Sidi Moumen where he clashes with the leader who feels his progressive style of music will alienate the centre from the rest of the community. In real life, Ayouch was instrumental in setting up the cultural Centre ‘Les Etoiles’ in Sidi Moumen back in 2014, together with author Mahi Binebine, on whose novel ‘Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen’ Horses of God was based.

“Hip hop is an art form”, exclaims Anas, but not everyone shares his enthusiasm. It certainly proves to be a divisive art form, particularly for the parents of teenager Maha Menan who protest “Not for us”, as they drag their daughter out of the centre. Meriem Nekkach’s brother even tries to prevent her visits. But her counter attack makes things clear: “For you, women are slaves/It makes me sick/For you, being a man, means dominating us/look at our mother in chains/never had a voice, and never complained. While all this is happening the male religious enforcers (known at The “Beards”) patrol the streets extolling the teachings of the Quran: “Everything that lures us from God’s path is a sin”.

But the dance craze is refusing to back down. More centres along the lines of the Sidi Moumen “Positive School”, have now been stablished in Morocco, and Casablanca Beats’ main dancers, Ismail and Mehdi have now turned semi-professional. The film comes to a head with the long anticipated ‘big concert’, which should have won over hearts and minds – but ends in a violent confrontation with the “Beards” and their supporters, leaving Anas’ future in the balance.

This effervescent feature fizzes with fun thanks to the lively camerawork of Amine Messadi and Virginie Surdej. Casablanca Beats is not simply a North African version of the Bronx or Paris sub-culture, but an indigenous approach to rap/hip hop artists, defined by the fighting spirit of a youth rising up against a repressive and often violent parental and authoritarian regime. In true Middle Eastern style Casablanca Beats is a feisty but fervent hymn to music, life and love. AS

IN CINEMAS AND ON CURZON HOME  FROM FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2022

Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022)

Dir: Margy Kinmonth | UK Doc, 87′

“I find it hard to say what it is to be English, but Ravilious is part of it” says writer Alan Bennett in a new film on the artist.

Eric Ravilious by the British architect Serge Chermayeff @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was one of Britain’s most iconic creative forces defining the English landscape in the British pastoral tradition with his unique engravings and prints. What other wartime painter has captured Englishness with such gentle passion. And although his short life was touched by joy and tragedy his paintings, engravings and lithographs are accessible and so easy to like. His softly nostalgic subject: the countryside during wartime, the soft rolling hills of the South Downs; the chalky fields of the Chilterns and white cliffs of Dover. But his work would soon document the war effort with fishing boats, barage balloons and a painting entitled ‘Rendering mines safe: “He’s so loved and appreciated but somehow remains a shared secret”. says Alan Bennett, one of the talking heads in this new film by the Bafta-winning director Margy Kinmonth, along with Grayson Perry and Eric’s daughter Anne Ullmann and granddaughter  Profoundly serene yet profoundly disturbing, the documentary also serves as a visual record of war.

Born in 1903 into a family that fell on hard times after the Great War Ravilious won a scholarship to the RCA where he met his mentor the artist Paul Nash. He developed his own precise but elegiac style while sharing a house in Great Bardfield in Essex with the fellow artist Eric Bawden, who he met at Morley College. Inspiration came from the nature surrounding them and was chosen for its documentary quality, the two brought watercolours back into fashion as both Eric and Bawden detested oils (too much like toothpaste).

HMS Glorious in the Arctic @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

A satirical first project in 1930 offered the opportunity of meeting his wife, fellow artist Tirza Garwood and the two started painting a mural of a seascape with parachutes raining down from the sky, an undertaking that financed the first four years of their marriage. Times were hard but Tirza made an income from marbling paper for walls while Eric combined teaching in London with his design work. Anne Ullmann explains how his boyish good looks, wit and infectious sense of fun soon led to several affairs during which time his paintings became freer and more colourful. But Tirza’s first child John arrived with a marital reconciliation and she would keep the home fires burning alone with the children for most of their married life, although Eric wrote often and affectionately, and some of his letters are interweaved into the linear narrative along with ample illustrations and personal photographs from the family collection.

What drew Ravilious to work for the War Office was the chance of excitement but also the responsibility. It gave him a salary which was welcome after struggling financially for so long. War also gave him tremendous scope to broaden his horizons, painting things he would have never dreamt of had it not been for the conflict, although much of his work was destroyed when Morley College was bombed.

Submarine Dream @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

In April 1940 Ravilious was stationed in Norway on HMS Glorious which was later to be destroyed. Ready to fight as a soldier he was also trying to paint British battleships and Germans U-boats in the deep fjords and raging seas. From then on he travelled far and wide documenting wartime in Scotland and Iceland where he found himself painting warplanes that helped to inform today’s pilots. In Newhaven his drawings were censored on the grounds of them being ‘too informative for the enemy’.

HMS Arc Royal in action @copyright Foxtrot Films

 

Two years later in 1942 Tirza’s ill health brought Eric back down to earth and he was posted at RAF Sawbridgeworth (now defunct) in Hertfordshire, where he produced a series of watercolours providing a flavour of everyday life, from the types of aircraft to the activities that took place in the interior of the airfield’s ‘mobile operations room’. He wrote to Tirza: “the weather gets finer all the time but I feel bored of pictures of planes on the ground and want to go flying”.

Eric’s affection for the watercolours of Francis Towner took him next to RAF Kaldadarnes in Iceland where he would capture ice and snow and crater scenery. In August 30th 1942 Eric went missing, aged 39, in his plane on a royal marine Air Sea Rescue patrol. These imaginative scenes are hazily recreated showing him floating down through the heavens to a watery grave surrounded by leaves from his sketch book. “From the artistic side his loss is deplorable and he will be quite impossible to replace”. Tirzah would die nine years later of cancer leaving their children orphaned.

Eric Ravilious was the first Britist artist to die on active service in the Second World War. His paintings were forgotten for 40 years until they were discovered under Edward Bawden’s bed, by Eric’s children James, John and Anne. Now how romantic is that? MT

ERIC RAVILIOUS: DRAWN TO WAR | in cinemas 1st July 2022

https://youtu.be/OBHPszoi2so

Atabai (2021)

Dir.: Niki Karimi; Cast: Hadi Hejazifar, Sahar Dolatshahi, Javaad Ezzati, Danial Noorvash, Yousefali Daryadel, Mahlagha Meynoosh, Masoumeh Robaninia; Iran 2020, 106 min.

The Iranian countryside is the setting for this visually vibrantly but brooding feature that sees modern and traditional values colliding for Kazem (co-writer Had Hejazifar) a middle-aged man who left university without completing his architecture studies, and is now designing holidays villas for the rich and powerful who he desperately resents.

Kazem often resorts to physical violence, his secretive past seems more meaningful to than the present and he has not moved emotionally after an unhappy relationship during his student years, although he has changed his name from Atabai. He has never forgotten Sima, the most attractive woman on campus, and has not been able to have another relationship since their break-up.

Kazem’s emotional centre is his nephew Aydin (Noorvash), but he is unaware of  repressing the teenager, who has internalised his uncle as a Super Ego. Aydin has grown fond of Jeyran (Robaninia), but  is much more interested in the much older Kazem: “Marry me and get me out of this village” she implores Kazem,  Kazem’s relationship with his own father (Daryadel) is fraught to say the least. It will get even worse, when Kazem learns, that his father has sold an orchard to the realtor Parviz, whom Kazem blames for the death of his sister Farokhlagha, who set fire to herself at the age of fifteen. Kazem explodes, blaming his father for “selling” his daughter to a man of his own age, to pay for his opium habit. Parviz has two daughters, Sima (Dolatshahi) and the much younger Simin (Meynoosh), who are on a visit to the orchard. Aydin falls for Sima, but ends up at the wrong end of Kazem’s violent tantrums: “You have disgraced the family, this man murdered my sister”. But then, the wife of Yahya (Ezzati) dies, and Kazem and the bereaved husband, best friends for a long time, have the first serious talk for years. We learn, that Yahya had a relationship with Farokhlagha, with Kazem making sure, that the two could meet in secret. When Yahya told Farokhlagha, that he would marry his cousin, she told him, that she would commit suicide by setting fire to herself; with everybody believing, that she killed herself it to escape Parviz. Both men have much soul searching to do, particularly Kazem, who is falling in love with Sima, who by coincidence, shares the first name with Kazem’s great love. But will he be able to care more for the present than the past?

DoP Saman Lotfian has created a wide-ranging palette of colours for the outside action, whilst his close-ups of the the heavy emotional battles are set against the background of a landscape, which is never idealised. Somehow, the two go together, and Kazem finds no solace in being home – still hankering for Tehran. Karimi is very self assured regarding the aesthetically choices, but she is overloading the feature with too man conflicts; ATABAI does not always flow easily, and one has the feeling of an overly constructed structure. Still, it is a well worth a watch. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 6 MAY 2022

https://youtu.be/MH-12ucYM5I

Happening (2021)

Dir.: Audrey Diwan; Cast: Anamaria Vartolomei, Luana Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquero, Sandrine Bonnaire, Eric Verdin, Anna Mouglalis, Pio Marmaï, Kacey Mottet Klein | France 2021, 99 min.

It was bold of the Jury at Venice 2021 to award the Golden Lion to Happening, a fervent drama exposing the mental and physical cruelty aimed at women when abortion was illegal in France.

Based on Annie Ernaux’s 2001 semi-biographical novel Audrey Diwan’s sophomore feature is a powerful, uncompromising plea for women to be in charge of their reproductive rights at a time when the pro-choice movement is being pushed back; and not only in Catholic strongholds such as Poland and Republican controlled states in the USA. Carried by a brilliant cast, the harsh realism of DoP’s Laurent Tangy’s often handheld camera makes certain scenes in the final reel nearly unwatchable – but this is a past many male politicians want to recreate.

In Angoulême 1963, Anne Duchesme (Vartolomei), 23, is a dedicated student making her way successfully out of the rut lower-middle class women were condemned to. She is forced to tolerate insults from more well to do co-students who call her “a slut”. Anne is best friends with Helene (Bazrami) and Brigitte (Orry-Diquero); the three talk a lot about sex, imagining what the real thing would look like – all fun and games – but sex is taboo.

But when it finally happens at a party with Jean (Mottet Klein) a student from another college, Anne feels underwhelmed by the experience. Her world collapses when the doctor confirms her pregnancy during a routine check-up. Jean is unimpressed by the news – believing is to be her responsibility. And none of her friends, however caring, want to get involved. Abortion is a punishable offence for all involved, including the medical establishment.

At home, her parents (Sandrine Bonnaire/Eric Verdin) are proud of their daughter being the first person in the family to go to university. Anne cannot bring herself to tell them the truth, not wanting to destroy their illusions. Even her university tutor (Pio Marmaï) notices her mind is not on her studies. 

For Anne/Ernaux the choice is still clear: reproductive choice means the same nowadays as it did back then: “to have the illness that turns French women into house-wives”. Anne contemplates her own situation: “I’d like a child one day. But not instead of a life of my own”.

The feature’s rawness is underlined by the 4:3 format, conveying Anne’s isolation from her friends, and society as a whole. A minimalist score by Sacha and Evgueni Galperine, just piano and violins, also focuses on 12 weeks of hell,  Anne going from one humiliation to another. Abortion became legal in France in 1975. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Lost City (2022)

 

Dir: Aaron Nee | Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe | US Action drama | 112′

A scanty storyline that still took five screenwriters to cobble together is dragged even further into the mud by the film’s total denigration of its female lead – ‘reclusive’ novelist Loretta (Bullock) – who is forced, during her book tour, to jump astride a tiny bar stool in a skimpy sequinned jumpsuit and stilettos and then walk through sand without spraining her ankle. The whole thing ends in tears when her ‘cover model’ (Tatum) falls off a collapsing stage after catching his blond wig in her Big Ben sized watch. Not funny, or  ‘ironic’, just awkward and degrading for them both. A surprise kidnapping attempt then sees them involved in a ‘jungle adventure’ busting through the mammoth budget, together with the cameo for a beefed up Brad Pitt. When film adverts appear on the side of a bus you know what to expect: Nul points for this dull blockbuster whose stars are to be pitied rather than praised. MT

NOW ON RELEASE

 

Cannes Film Festival 2022 – Programme additions

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL will celebrate its 75th Anniversary with a line-up featuring four previous Palme d’Or winning directors, three features by women, and nothing – one again – from the United Kingdom. That said, it’s a glittering programme featuring all the usual suspects plus a few new faces on the block. Tehran born Ali Abbasi was last in Cannes with his darkly dystopian troll fantasy Border, his latest Holy Spider is an Iranian-set religious-themed crime thriller, the detail is still under wraps.

Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi always turns up trumps – either behind the camera or infront of it – here she has her first shot at the main competition directing a drama about the trials and tribulations of pioneering a creative path in life seen through the prism of Nanterre’s famous acting school Les Amandiers. Canada’s David Cronenberg has never won the main prize but bagged the Special Jury prize back in 2004 with his contraversial 1996 thriller Crash. Crimes of the Future, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart, will see him return to the Cannes line-up for the 7th time.

The Belgian Dardennes Brothers are now a legend in their own lunchtime with their left-leaning politically charged social dramas and Tori and Lokita is the latest in a long line of Cannes winners that started with Rosetta and The Child winning the main prize in 1999 and 2005 respectively. Claire Denis is arguably one of France’s most successful women filmmakers with a long career spanning back to her first short film in 1971 and continued with stylish arthouse fare such as Beau Travail and more recently sci-fi hit High Life. and comedy Let the Sunshine In both with Juliette Binoche. She has already bagged a Silver Bear at Berlinale this year for her love triangle drama Fire. The Stars at Noon based on a novel by Denis Johnson, is another romantic drama this time set during Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution where Margot Qualley and Joe Alwyn play the leading roles.

Arnaud Desplechin is a classical veteran of CANNES FILM FESTIVAL and made the competition line-up with Deception in 2021 and again with Oh Mercy in 2019. His latest feature will be his seventh attempt to win the coveted Golden Palme: Brother and Sister stars Marion Cotillard and Melville Poupard in a domestic drama that sees the two siblings brought together again at the death of their parents, after a long-standing feud.

A drama about a ballet dancer catapulted Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont to the international recognition as the Camera d’Or winner in 2018. Girl won three awards at Cannes for its delicate depiction of teenage gender dysphoria while Close centres on an intense friendship between two teenage boys. The sparkling Brooklyn set ’80’s thriller We Own the Night was James Grey’s first foray into the competition back in 2007. His fourth entry Armageddon Time takes him back again to New York of the era, and stars Anne Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins in a coming of age story about growing up in Queens.

Broker is another child-centred story from Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-Eda (Like Father, Like Son) his sensitive domestic dramas deal with the intricacies of family dynamics where kids are concerned. Now competing in Cannes for the eighth time, Hirokazu won the Palme d’Or in 2018 for his darkly amusing satire Shoplifters. South Korean star Bae Doona leads in this unusual story that centres on a ‘baby box’ facility where passers by can leave their unwanted children.

Nostalgia, Mario Martone’s follow-up to his biopic of Neopolitan theatre legend Eduardo Scarpetta, is another project co-written by his wife Ippolita Di Majo. He previously competed at Cannes with l‘Amore Molesto back in 1995, based on another novel by Elena Ferrante of The Lost Daughter fame.

Cristian Mungiu – in competition this year with RMN – is known for his hardcore social realist dramas: his 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days tackled illegal abortion in 1980s Romania, he took a more nuanced approach to a lesbian relationship between two nuns in a convent in Beyond the Hills which won Best Screenplay in 2012.  Contrary to its title, director Ruben Ostlund’s latest Cannes hopeful, Triangle of Sadness, (below) is a dark comedy that sees two models at the crossroads of their career. The Swedish director divided Cannes critics with his ambivalent satire Force Majeure that scooped the Jury Prize at Un Certain Regard in 2015, and the Palme d’Or for The Square two years later. Starring Woody Harrelson and Oliver Ford Davies this promises to be another off-field outing for the provactive filmmaker.

South Korean maverick Park Chan-wook scandalised Cannes audiences with his rebarbative revenge thriller Old Boy seizing the Grand Jury prize back in 2004. He stormed back five years later with a stylish vampire outing Thirst grabbing another Jury Prize. The sensually sumptuous Handmaiden followed in 2016. And this year he is back again going for the jugular (?) with Decision to Leave a detective mystery thriller set in the mountains of South Korea.

2022 is set to be American auteuse Kelly Reichardt’s defining moment: with a feature Showing Up in the main competition line-up – her fourth collaboration with Michelle Williams – and a Special Tribute at this summer’s Locarno Film Festival she is one of the most individual of directors with her richly resonant fare. Set in Portland, Oregon her follow up to First Cow centres on an artist preparing for a life-changing exhibition. Iranian director Saeed Roustaee rose to fame in 2016 with his award-winning debut Life and a Day. His first film in competition is Leila’s Brothers.

Fares Fares (The Nile Hilton Incident) and Mohammad Bakri are the stars of Boy from Heaven Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Salee’s Cannes Festival debut, it sees the death of the main Imam in Cairo’s prestigious university lead to a bitter battle for overall control. Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov won the Francois Chalais award for his impressive 2016 feature The Student  Two years later he was prevented from attending Cannes with Leto, a musical paean to the Leningrad Rock scene of the 1980s that would win the Best Soundtrack Award 2018, and Petrov’s Flu followed in 2021. Abandoning his disgraced homeland, Serebreninikov is now living in Berlin where he wrote and directed his latest lyrical drama Tchaïkovski’s Wife. 

This year’s festival welcomes Polish Greats director Jerzy Skolimovski back into the competition line-up with the enigmatically titled EO. His comedy King, Queen and Knave was in the competition line-up back in 1972, he then took the Grand Jury Prize with Alan Bates starrer The Shout six years later, and won Best Screenplay for Moonlighting in 1982. Success is the Best Revenge went home empty- handed from the competition in 1984, as did his Torrents of Spring five years later. His latest feature, a contemporary adaptation of Robert Bresson’s 1966 cult classic Au hasard Balthazar a road movie that begins in a Polish circus and ends in a slaughter house for its tragic star, a donkey. EO is described in the blurb as “a panopticon of human behaviour towards a defenceless animal, a suggestive picture of social relations and cultural exchanges taking place in the modern world”. We wish him the best of luck!

There are three late additions to the programme announced on 14th April. Catalan auteur Albert Serra is known for his audacious often provocative highly individual but always sublime fare. His latest feature follows on the heels of the exquisitely niche drama Liberte that bagged the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2019. Starring Benoit Magimel and Sergi Lopez (Harry He’s Here to Help) Torment on the Isles sees politics clash with a coup de foudre for a crisis-ridden novelist and an ambassador on the steamy island of Bora Bora.

Sophomore director Leonor Seraille’s moves from her directorial debut and Golden Camera winner Jeune Femme to the main competition with Un Petit Frere. Father/son buddy movies are always popular with the (male) critics and Belgian directors Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix Van Groeningen have found another winning formula along these lines with their Palme d’Or hopeful The Eight Mountains set in Italy’s Aosta mountains. MT

PALME D’OR COMPETITION

Holy Spider Ali Abbasi
Les Amandiers  Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi
Crimes of the Future – David Cronenberg
Tori et Lokita Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne
Stars at noon Claire Denis
Frère et sœur Arnaud Desplechin
Close Lukas Dhont
Armageddon Time  James Gray
Broker Hirokazu Kore-Eda
Nostalgia  Mario Martone
RMN  Cristian Mungiu
Triangle of Sadness – Ruben Östlund
Decision to leave  Park Chan-Wook
Showing up Kelly Reichardt
Leila’s brothers  Saeed Roustaee
Boy from Heaven Tarik Saleh
Tchaïkovski’s Wife Kirill Serebrennikov
Eo Jerzy Skolimowski

The Eight Mountains Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix Van Groeningen
Un Petit Frere Léonor Serraille
Torment sur les Îles Albert Serra Spain

OUT OF COMPETITION  :

Top Gun 2 : Maverick  Joseph Kosinski
Elvis  Baz Luhrmann
Novembre Cédric Jimenez
Three thousand years of longing George Miller
Mascarade de Nicolas Bedos

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 17 – 29 May 2022 

The Northman (2022)

Dir.: Robert Eggers; Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawks, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, Björk, Oscar Novak; USA 2022, 136 min.

After his breakout success with The Witch and impressive follow-up The Lighthouse, the main problem with Robert Eggers’ latest – a violent Viking drama set in AD895 – is that it’s not weird enough. Yes, blood and gore will satisfy the aficionados of the sub-genre; and a dash of magic and some warmed-up Shakespeare, with the anti-hero Amleth (Skarsgard) impersonating the Bard’s Danish prince, although less reflective and more prone to spontaneous combustion. The cast is certainly up to it and Jarin Blaschkeof of Lighthouse fame does a brilliant job with the images but The Northman suffers the fate of most auteur-driven vehicles. Once the auteur is no longer in the driving seat the vision is lost in a big studio blowout that careens all over the place at two hours plus.

After returning home from a war to his Queen Gudrun (Kidman), King Aurvandil (Hawk) joins his son Amleth (Norvak) to celebrate victory with ferocious farting match as they impersonate wild dogs (a recurring motif). But the jubilation is short-lived when the King’s brother Fjölnir (Bang), murders Aurvandil in full sight of the boy who escapes and flees the country only to return as a fully-fledged fighter (Skarsgard). Having been sold into slavery by his uncle and mother – now an item – he falls for love interest Olga of the birch forest (Taylor-Joy), and soon turns the tables on Fjölnir spilling family secrets in a revenge-fuelled furore that culminates in a lava-spitting volcano at the Gates of Hell.

A cast of big names appear in cameos: Willem Dafoe has fun as court jester Heimir the Fool, and Björk warns of things to comes as eerie eye-less witch. There is a Valkyrie riding across the sky on a horse – again counterpointing the terrifying violence of spilled guts, death by fire and multiple mutilations. Perhaps the key to Eggers’ approach lies in an early scene when Aurvandil has returned and Queen Gudrun invites him to bed. But the King is too proud to admit he is wounded, and instead of conjugal sex teams up with his son for a bloody bonding session where Amleth watches his father’s intestines morph into a magical tree crawling up into the sky. Later we will see Amleth repeating his father’s penchant for toxic male activities in place of female company. Eggers struggles to close the gap between supernatural magic and an expensive conventional Viking noir adventure. One big question hangs over this overstuffed mainstream production: what would the beast look like had Eggers’ had full control of its reins?. AS

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 16 APRIL 2022

The World of Yesterday | Le Monde d’Hier (2022)

Wri/Dir: Diasteme | Lea Drucker, Denis Podalydes, Benjamin Biolay, Alban Lenoir, Thierry Godard | France, Drama 90′

Elisabeth de Raincy, the French President, has decided to withdraw from political life. Three days before the first round of the presidential election, she learns from her Secretary-General, Franck L’Herbier, that a scandal on a Russian news site will splash her designated successor and propel the right-wing candidate into the Elysée. They have three days to change the course of History.

Inspired by Stefan Zweig’s 1934 novel depicting the stability of the Austro Hungarian empire before the catastrophe of the First World War, this tense political character drama co-written by niche French director Diasteme (French Blood) is a timely reminder of how history repeats itself particularly with the French general elections coming to a head with the threat of major change.

Essentially a three hander this plush and persuasive political thriller unfolds in the elegant surround of the Elysee Palace where de Raincy – an impressive Lea Drucker – is concerned with her political past and her teenage daughter’s need for attention too as she faces difficult choices in a world that is clearly dying out. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

Notre Dame on Fire | Notre Dame Brule (2022)

Dir: Jean Jacques Annaud | France, Docudrama 120′

Veteran filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud pulls out all the stops for this incendiary  docudrama that offers a blow-by-blow reenactment of the thrilling events leading up to the tragic fire that partially destroyed Paris Notre Dame Cathedral during 24 hours in the spring of 2019.

Tracing back to the human error that set the blaze in motion, the film also shows how La Brigade Des Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris (also known as the fire brigade) eventually quelled the flames and saved the iconic Christian monument – that took 182 years to build – from total destruction.

Notre Dame on Fire is a lavishly mounted epic that plays out like a thriller in revealing the perfect storm that leads to the climax. What’s crucial is the way Annaud and his writer Thomas Bidegain (A Prophet) – whose script rather overdoes the melodrama – show just how close Paris came to having its majestic Gothic centrepiece reduced to rubble in a fire that could have obliterated the cultural and religious touchstone of many a film and novel, Victor Hugo’s hunchback the most memorable.

Occasionally veering into dialogue as clunky as the blocks of limestone that bolster the cathedral’s foundations Notre Dame certainly makes for compulsive viewing with its blend of genuine footage – made up of government drones, TV clips, and mobile phones – and the imagined drama that follows the race to save not only the edifice but the priceless religious relics: a crown of thorns believed to be the original from the Crucifixion and a nail from the True Cross. They are locked away in a hidden safe, but the mystery that drives the action forward is – who has the key?

The dramatic scenes of the roaring inferno are brilliantly handled by DoP Jean-Marie Dreujou and production designer Jean Rabasse who has incorporated replica sets, which were subjected to fierce but controlled flames, and these impart an authenticity that is really impressive. The cast and crew had to wear real fire-fighting gear capable of withstanding temperatures of 1300° F. The fiercest parts of the blaze are the choreographed highlights in the belfry and the transept, and catastrophic collapse of the spire as it comes crashing down into the nave. A fascinating true story which makes for a visually exciting spectacle.

IN CINEMAS FROM 22 JULY 2022

Man Caves | Garconnieres (2022) Visions du Reel 2022

Dir: Céline Pernet | Doc, Switzerland

Men share their innermost thoughts in this provocative sortie into the male psyche from first time Swiss filmmaker Céline Pernet.

After three years and over four hundred meetings with Swiss men dating apps and newspapers social anthropologist Céline Pernet, in her thirties, uncovers what it means to be a young man in Switzerland today. The subject of toxic masculinity is a hot potato in newsrooms and dinner parties all over the world, but less is talked about the more positive aspects of male behaviour. How do men see themselves in the 21st century?

Travelling the length and breadth of Switzerland in all weathers, and we watch her braving snowy motorways and summer pastures in her determination to probe the male of her generation and to unearth innermost desires and beliefs. Predictably she finds that men see themselves as strong and protective leaders of the pack who want to triumph in the workplace, avoid emotion and protect their womenfolk, while oggling porn on the quiet.

Under Pernet’s persuasive line of questioning the men – between 30 and 45 – are much more forthcoming than you would imagine. And credit to her. Coy and rather furtive initial encounters soon give way to candid and even tearful revelations as the male of the species reveals how women are viewed as seductive objects of desire to civilising influences in their lives, with sexual encounters leading to marital and paternal bonds and beyond. Interweaving the cumulative interview footage with her driving around in snow, fog and sunshine to undertake her research this is real real catnip for female viewers. And although Pernet brings nothing particularly groundbreaking to the party her clever way of coaxing out and editing her findings it what makes this quietly compelling. MT

VISIONS DE REAL 2022 | Swiss Competition

 

A Holy Family (2022) Visions du Reel 2022

Dir.: Elvis A-Liang Lu; documentary with Elvis A-Liang Lu, Elaine Lu, Lucas Lu, Ming Yang Dei, Y Zhu Zing, Yin Hsien; Taiwan/France 2022, 90 min.

Taiwanese filmmaker Elvis A-Liang Lu shares a personal family story: having left his hometown of Minxiong at the age of eighteen to study film in the capital Taipei, a phone call from his ageing mother Elaine, sends him back to his family – and he soon remembers why he left twenty-four years ago.

Elvis’ father Lucas is addicted to gambling. He has squandered the family home, and merely shrugs his shoulders in response to Elaine’s complaints. Elvis’ brother Lucas believes he is a successful medium: we watch him advising a farmer what to plant at which time of year. But his sideline in predicting the future doesn’t pay the bills, and his pineapple business is going badly. Time to try tomatoes or should he just concentrate of the spiritualism.

Elaine has a strange relationship with Elvis: She puts up with her husband sleeping all day, but takes a dim view of her son, unaware that Elvis and his brother Lucas have had to pay off his father’s gambling debts. And even though she tells Elvis “I never visited you in Taipei because I pretended you did not belong in our family”, she expects him to be in charge of her funeral arrangements, giving orders for her ashes to be scattered in the open air, and taking ‘funeral photos’ for the grave.

With New Year approaching, Elaine then asks Elvis to give his father an extra gift of 2000 TWD. Meanwhile, Lucas has no income at all, having left his job at the distillery, and forfeited a good pension, and is soon diagnosed with a cancer that has spread from his lungs. So he must undergo chemotherapy, but is reluctant to start the procedure even though the doctor tells him it will soon be too late. On his return to Taipei, Elvis learns of his father’s death – he had spent his final days gambling.

The three DoPs create fitting images of a dysfunctional family; often handheld, they show the repressed feelings in close-up: Elaine occasionally musters the courage to complain openly, and Lucas feels betrayed by life, he never won the pot of gold despite his mediumship. Both parents are ready to die in their different ways. The director manages a happy end despite making us fully away of his own feelings. Overall, Holy Family is a long, melancholic good-bye to a difficult past. AS

VISIONS DU REEL | NYON SWITZERLAND

Navalny (2022) Oscar | Best Documentary Feature | Tribute

Dir.: Daniel Roher; Documentary with Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, Dasha Navalny, Zakhar Navalny; USA 2022, 98 min.

When Canadian documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher met Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, they had different agendas in mind. But the poisoning of Alexei Navalny (*1976) on 20.8.2020 in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk, changed everything. Suddenly Roher was sitting opposite Navalny to discuss a film that could be his epitaph. And it has turned out to be for the dissident politician who languished in a Russian penal colony on bogus charges, and has now sadly died.

Navalny had led two different political organisations – “Russia of the Future” and the “Progress Party” – and neither were permitted to run in the 2018 Presidential Elections on account of “Corruption charges” as well as accusations of “Embezzlement”, according to Putin-controlled jurisdiction.

But Putin and the FSB (a new name for the old KGB) were not finished with Navalny. Agents of the FSB poisoned his boxer shorts with the nerve agent novichok (known as LP9 Love potion No. 9 in the FSB handbook). On the flight from Omsk to Moscow Navalny suffered convulsions. His life was saved by an emergency landing in Omsk where he was treated in hospital where Roher and his crew met the dissident and his wife Yulia. They declined to be photographed preferring to maintain the image of a strong and healthy politician in the public imagination. A few days later Novalny was flown to Berlin for further treatment, where the novichok diagnosis was confirmed. The recovering Navalny could only laugh about the attack: “How stupid, they can’t be so stupid”. But they were.

At home in his Black Forest retreat Alexei, his family and the film team discovered, with the help of hackers, the names of the four FSB operatives involved in the assassination attempt. In late December, Navalny put a call through to them, impersonating a leading officer of the FSB, wanting to discuss “what went wrong” during the ‘operation’. The first three agents declined to talk to Alexei, one even pointing out he knew the real identity of the caller. But the forth member, Konstantin Kudryavstev, was only too willing to talk, and confessed that without the emergency landing in Omsk, the victim would have died. A few hours more in the air, without help and the antidote “would have done the trick” according to Kudryavstev. “He is dead, the poor man is dead”, exclaimed Alexei after the end of their phone conversation. He has now shared the same fate.

On January 17th 2021, Navalny was back in Moscow. At Vnukovo airport, huge crowds gathered to welcome back their hero and his family. The authorities quickly diverted the plane to Sheremetyevo, and even though supporters crowded round the disembarking politician, the authorities prevailed and Alexei was arrested on arrival.

His original punishment for the alleged embezzlement and contempt of court was two years and eight months. But since then Putin’s regime has come up with a nine-year sentence, to be served in a maximum security prison. All the organisations Alexei belonged to have now been declared “extremist” and are therefore illegal. Despite all this, Navalny started a hunger strike, only ending when he was on death’s door. After the start of the Ukraine invasion by Russia, he sent out messages from the penal colony, condemning the war.

DoP Niki Walti uses his often handheld camera to great effect, particularly in the scenes when Alexei engages with the corrupt FSB agents. Perhaps, Roher could have forced Navalny more on the extreme nationalist part of his coalition. But overall his film is a coup extraordinaire: the audience bearing witness to living history: to a man’s courage, and the cowardliness of the murderous organisation known as the FSB. Echoes are already sounding in Ukraine on a daily basis. A remarkable document and a worthy winner at the year’s Academy Awards 2023. AS

NAVALNY WON THE 2023 OSCAR FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE | Alexei Navalny 1976-2024

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Dir. David Yates; Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Mads Mikkelsen, Dan Fogler, Alison Sidol, Jessica Williams, Victoria Yates, Ezra Miller, Callum Turner, Richard Coyte; USA/UK 2022, 142 min.

British director David Yates has directed four of the original “Harry Potter” series, and the completes a Fantastic Beasts trilogy to be followed by two more instalments of the Harry Potter prequel.

The Secrets of Dumbledore is much less of a disaster than its predecessor The Crimes of Grindelwald, a weak and unstructured script (by JK Rowling and Steve Kloves) leads to fragmentation disengaging audience for long stretched in a self-indulgent running time of 142 minutes.

Covid and the Johnny Depp scandal led to postponements, and are responsible for a ludicrous budget of close to 200 M $. Mads Mikkelsen (Gindlewold) has replaced Depp, and whilst not the pantomime villain his predecessor was, is far too insipid for a megalomaniac wanting to rule the universe – the magic one as well as the muggle-world – where It soon emerges he shared intimate moments with Dumbledore (Law) when they were young. Both swore an oath never to hurt each other – but we will see how that turns out.

In 1930s New York, Berlin and Bhutan, Secrets deals with the rise of fascism and Grindelwald is the Hitler model. From the get go his face is on ‘Wanted’ posters, but suddenly he is a candidate for “Supreme Head of the International Confederation of Wizards”, something Dumbledore is going to block at all costs.

Magi-zoologist Newt Scamander (Redmayne), who was present at the birth of two oilins (Bambi-like unicorns) has to watch helplessly when Grindelwald’s forces, led by the frightful Credence (Miller), catch one of them, without knowing, that there is also a twin. Dumbledore’s team, including Newt’s brother Theseus (Turner), muggle Jacob Kowalski (Fogler), professor Lally Hicks (Wiliams), Newt’s main assistant Bunty Broadcare (V. Yates) are on the lookout for the Chillin, a dragon-like creature able to see into the future and determine a person’s purity of heart. Grindelwald is always a step ahead, harnessing the little dragon’s power but this only offers a patchy view of the future. The elections arrive, high on the Bhutan mountains, but not before Dumbledore’s second secret is revealed in a the rather underpowered finale. There is no inner logic here : just a continuation of fragmented highlights, leading nowhere. In the end the writers run out of ideas but the visuals are spectacular. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY 8 APRIL

Kash Kash: Without Feathers We Can’t Live (2022) CPH:DOX

Lea Najjar / Germany, Lebanon, Qatar / 2022 / 90 min / World Premiere

Against the backcloth of their chaotic capital Beirut’s pigeon fanciers play the cruel sport of Kash Hamam. The object is to lure other players’ flocks into your own pigeon loft high above the capital. Catching a pigeon entitles you to butcher its wings with scissors, or feed it to the cats: “Because at the end of the day, it’s just animals, just birds”.

Lea Najjar’s lyrical impressionistic feature debut soars above Beirut’s skies to tell the story of a melancholic city and its beleaguered inhabitants still suffering shortages in public services and economic collapse for the past eighty years. But one thing Beirutis can control and master is the pigeon population, and they do so with the same cruelty they complain of receiving from the country’s ‘ruling classes’.

Radwan, a local barbar, has been raising pigeons since he was nine. Despite the rising price of grain he will still go on feeding and tending his birds from chicks, and throwing clementines at them to make stronger flyers, or even cracking whips and slings to scare them into flight from his loft. Kash Haman is a competitive sport but the camaraderie between the men is strong and supportive. In Syria (where the sport is banned because it is considered a form of gambling) the men claim the ‘Kashash’ are  prepared to kill over their feathered friends.

But behind the camaraderie lies a city in disarray. And the problem is the politicians “who pull the blanket to cover only themselves”, according to one fisherman as he navigates the city’s majestic shoreline under a skyscape of stratospheric apartment buildings and cavernous rocks. “If you go to other countries, everyone holds one flag. Here, every sect and party has their own flag”. His sons should be studying at their university but instead they are helping out with the catch. “Our Government does not take care of them” he claims.

Meanwhile Radwan’s little niece begs him to teach her the masculine art of Kash Hamam, but Radwan refuses: “you should be reading, or something”. Meanwhile his Armenian client at the barbar shop is pessimistic about the future of Lebanon. “No matter how much rouge and perfume an old woman wears, she’ll never be young again. Your country is old”. So Najjar doesn’t reach any enlightening conclusions in her film despite its beguiling beauty: the eternal conflict between rich and poor, politician and worker rages on as it ever did in another sad but stunning snapshot of the Middle East. MT

WINNER NEXT:WAVE AWARD 2022 | CPH:DOX COPENHAGEN

Buster (1988) Prime Video

Dir: David Green | Cast: Phil Collins, Julie Waters, Larry Lamb, Stephanie Lawrence | UK Crime drama, 102′

Like the Krays the Great Train Robbers have benefited from nostalgia for the early sixties and their dastardly deeds are here portrayed as a bit of a lark (it doesn’t dwell on the little bit of unpleasantness in the driver’s cab, for example).

An inadvertent irony is the culture shock by Edwards during his South American exile at the streets of Acapulco being full of beggars and the shoddy medical treatment his daughter receives when she swallows a coin during Christmas dinner (a difference that was rapidly becoming less marked as after nearly a quarter of a century Maggie Thatcher was well into her assault upon the welfare state).

Considering the producers spent all that money on flash suits and Austin Westminsters, you’d have thought that someone would have told Phil Collins to trim those anachronistic sideburns; it also has a very eighties rock by Anne Dudley. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Faithless (2000) Blu-ray

Dir.: Liv Ullmann; Cast: Lena Endre, Erland Josephson, Krister Henriksson, Thomas Hanzon, Michelle Gylemo; Sweden 2000, 154 min.

This modern Strindberg variation on female guilt and male violence is Liv Ullmann’s second go at directing a script by Ingmar Bergman that sets out to illustrates why male-female relationships are often doomed. Lena Endre is the star turn here with Ullmann’s sticking faithfully to the page despite an over-indulgent running-time .

Actress Marianne (Endre) lives the idyllic life of the enlightened bourgeoisie with her composer husband Markus (Hanzon) and their precocious daughter, Isabelle (Gylemo). Skint theatre director David (Henriksson) often shares their mealtimes and, before long, Marianne’s bed. What starts as a ‘brother-sister’ relationship, culminates in  a passionate encounter during a weekend in Paris, where they barely leave the hotel. Marianne’s confessions about her marital sex life enrage David who becomes insanely jealous and violence follows.

But alarm bells fail to ring and Marianne becomes fascinated by the self-confessed loser, regularly spending time in his pokey flat, despite her strong relationship with Markus who soon discovers the couple’s hideaway and ends the marriage, claiming parental rights for Isabelle. David and Marianne move in together, but there is no happy ending to their affair.

This episodic narrative all takes place in Bergman’s seaside house on the island of Faro, where he plays the part of Erland Josephson patiently listening to Marianne’s melancholic version of events. DoP Jörgen Persson shoots the Stockholm scenes in intimate close-up with a palette of browns and yellows. Only in the Faro sections are we confronted with the bruising blue aesthetic of the enfolding melodrama. Bergman fleshes out the characters in his traditional style which may seem over-elaborate for today’s audience.

FAITHLESS is an honest approach to the dilemma of the female-male dynamic, only slightly dated by a psychological vocabulary. But it makes the point: that most relationships suffer from the inherent  emotional and physical violence present in men, particularly artists, who often hide their tendencies behind self-pity and and bogus helplessness. Will Smith’s Oscar outburst was a case in point. AS

BFI BLU-RAY/DIGITAL RELEASE FROM 11 APRIL 2022

 

The Quiet Girl (2021)

Wri/Dir: Colm Bairead | Cast: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Michael Patric, | Ireland, 94′

This delightful coming of age drama set in rural Ireland in the early 1980s is the Gaelic-language screen adaptation of Claire Keegan’s short story Foster and won a major Jury award at this year’s Generation sidebar at Berlin Film Festival.

Anyone who grew up in the era will really appreciate the exquisite attention to detail, and nuanced performances that delicately convey the mood without ever overdoing the emotion. And there are considerable emotions and harsh realities at play here: a dysfunctional family ground down by poverty; a little girl starved of love and attention; a grieving couple suffering in silence. The tranquil beauty of the Irish countryside seems to wrap them all in the soft blanket of summer but the hardships are undeniable and deeply affecting. This is a memorable modern classic that transcends the minor flaws in Colm Bairead’s feature debut.

Although she says nothing eight-year old Cait (Clinch) absorbs all the tensions at home where she is largely ignored by her older sisters, gambling father and pregnant mother and left to go hungry and unwashed to school where she struggles with lessons. An unexpected day out with her father culminates in a visit to a farm where she horrified to be left with Eiblin (Crowley) and Sean (Bennett) Kinsella, the middle aged couple who live there. Cait gradually blossoms in Eibhlin’s tender care and her being there seems to have a beneficial all round as she learns the ways of the farm with Sean who buys her new frocks and choc ices, Eileen showing her how to make jam and keep house during those happy summer holidays. She learns that not all men are bad, and some mothers are kind loving, although most women are gossips. But soon she must go back to school.

Slim of narrative but rich and resonant in the small details and in glorious settings captured in Academy Ratio by Kate McKulloch (Arracht), Bairead’s drama builds to an impactful climax and a deeply affecting ending. MT

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR | LONDON CRITICS’ CIRCLE

 

 

A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021)

Dir.: Payal Kapadia; Documentary with the voice of Bhumisuta Das; India 2021, 99 min.

Indian director/co-writer Payal Kapadia, whose short films have been awarded numerous awards, returned to Cannes in 2021 with her first feature documentary A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING, winning the “Oeil d’Or, Prix Documentaire” for best documentary film of the festival. Poetic as well as politically engaged, A NIGHT is a collage made from home videos, archival footage, CCTV recordings and scenes shot from mobiles.

The feature unfolds in an around the campus of the ‘Film and Television Institute of India’ in Pune where letters and a box of clippings and letters written by a female student, simply called L, who was writing to her boyfriend K. The love letters, soon became more and more politically engaged. K. had left the campus, and was literally imprisoned by his parents, for dating the lower cast L. Arriving back. he did not even speak to L, obeying his parents. Now L.s letters were written not to K. but “the man he could have been, or the one I loved once”.

The story dates back to June 2015 when the Modi government, after a landslide victory at the polls, took over all aspects of public life in India introducing their Hindi nationalism to the whole country including the Film and Television Institute. Gajendra Chauhan, who rose to fame in the 1980s as an actor in soap operas, was named the new director of the Film School, his only qualification was his rabid espousal of Modi’s politics. These involved raising tuition fee by 300%, which particularly hit Dalits (formerly Untouchables) and lower cast students the hardest.

The students called a strike which went on for several months. The Police were called in by the government, female students were threatened with rape by the police officers. Violence spilled over to other universities. L, voiced by Bhumisuta Das, edits the films of friends, before engaging more and more in the strike actions. The students’ main slogan was “Eisenstein, Pudowkin – we shall fight, we will win”.

Students graduated with a much different perspective than before the strike. They now had to find a way to make films for Dalits and lower class members, who were repressed by the Modi government. L writes: “We must make sure the ones who make the shoes for the rich, or harvest their food, have a voice”. It is obvious her own experience with her ex-boyfriend played a large part in her politicisation.

DoP and editor Ranabri Das create a dramatic arc showing the escalation of police violence, and the students’ reactions. Like L, many students had started out as proponents of art-house films, but the experience of state violence changed their outlook dramatically. Apart from K that is, L asking in one of her letters, “how could you be so strong when the police attacked, and so vibrant and in the meetings when you give in so easily to your parents”.

A NIGHT is a vibrant kaleidoscope of film styles and personal experiences which suddenly become entwined in the vicious circle of police brutality. L’s identity is changed by outside forces and she emerges no heroine, but no victim either. AS

I’m So Sorry (2022) CPH: Dox 2022

Dir: Liang Zhao | Doc,

Liang Zhao’s gracefully cinematic and quietly persuasive documentary depicts not just the devastation caused by nuclear accidents but also the emotional fallout of those affected by events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

In these days of dwindling power supplies the nuclear option is ongoing. According to the World Nuclear Association’s 2020 report there were still 442 reactors in existence, most are in the US, China and France and around 40 under construction. But Zhou departs from a dry scientific study to focus on the human and environmental cost and the eerie wastelands left by defunct nuclear sites. He also makes use of a Japanese figure that floats silently through abandoned power plants – if ever there was a scary device in an straightforward eco-documentary it is this one.

From the outset camera pans over the devastation caused by the nuclear power plants of Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the silent ruins left behind by the population who fled the directly contaminated areas. Some, mostly elderly people with nowhere else to go, stayed on, enduring the devastation and emptiness both accidents have generated in an existence that stretches before them, alone in the universe. One old woman has spent the past thirty years completely alone in the Chernobyl decontamination zone, surviving off the land in a smallholding. Her approach is calm and philosophical: “Death takes everyone eventually, but they told us a load of nonsense, and sealed all the water wells. How can the water be contaminated, when it looks so clean”.

A menacing soundscape accompanies a slow-paced collection of stunning shots of  remote landscapes and ruined interiors recording a poignant memory of lives destroyed. Melted dolls with singed hair, and tiny ballet shoes lined up against a row of painted cots are all that remains of a nursery school. The deafening silence is the most powerful element.

Driving home his anti-nuclear message in a gentle way is so much more persuasive than the threatening approach of so many eco-docs. Zhao also invites us to question the absurdity of a situation where the nuclear power plant accidents led the affected areas. “Is it the past or the future?”.

Many disused nuclear facilities are now being painstakingly taken apart, and we see the gruelling efforts by a team in Germany forced to spend their days hosing down every inch and angle of the former steel monstrosity; “What one generation builds, the next with dismantle” comes the inevitable voiceover comment.

The film culminates in a sorrowful scene in Belarus, near the Chernobyl Exclusion Site, of a mother tending to her seriously disabled daughter “we weren’t told not to love when we moved here” she explains.  Sadly, I’m So Sorry has no positive message to offer her after showing us a Hell we have been part of creating. There is no bright future on the horizon or any hope in the near future.  Zhao Liang crafts a powerful anti- nuclear plea to the world, if only the world leaders would listen. MT

NOW SCREENING DURING CPH:DOX 2022

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Pawnshop (2021) CPH:DOX 2022

Dir: Łukasz Kowalski | Doc, Poland

Poland’s largest pawnshop has moved from the centre of the city to the outskirts, but still cannot make a profit, largely down to a lack of business expertise by its eccentric owners Jola and Wisek.

Clearly their bizarre relationship captured the imagination of first time writer/director Lukasz Kowalski in his rather dubious and structureless undertaking. The pawnshop is clearly a labour of love for Wisek and Jola who puts fake Zloty notes cut from a magazine in the till in the pretence of hard cash. Often customers are asked to pay “what they want”. There are only 86 Zloty in the cash register at the time of filming.

In a shop boasting over 70,000 items there seems to be a preponderance of deer antlers and non-functioning electrical items, including a kettle that nearly exploded on a trial run. Crystal glass is also a great runner, so we are told; but the 19th century phone, many have an eye on, is not for sale at any price, it belongs to Wisek and he is keeping it. A look at the book section shows an abundance of self-help titles: ‘Medicine and Sex’, ‘Women and Sex’ ‘A new way of Sex’. Either the previous readers want to pass on the knowledge or gave up trying to improve their lives.

Customers ringing to complain about faulty goods purchased are given short shrift by Jola who tells them, in no uncertain terms, to repair the items themselves. When Wisek shows her a ‘mammoth tooth’, he has bought and hopes will bring in a healthy profit, the two nearly have a bust up. Next, there is some complaint about some welding equipment and Loya nearly burns the place down with a blow torch.

The shop assistants moan about their pay, or the lack of it. Jola expects gratitude for keeping them on in the current climate, but the workers are not impressed. Jola and Wisek have been together for eight years, but there is not much love left, Wisek claiming: “You only care about money, not feelings”. Jolanta, one of shop assistants, is so bored she starts trying on fur hats. They suit her, but on her salary, she could never afford them. Finally, Jola and Wisek come up with a marvellous new idea.

DoP Stanislaw Cuske does his best to make the dowdy subject cinematically appealing but with a long line of banalities and hardly any dramatic arc, he runs out of ideas. Kowalski was clearly intending to make a mockumentary about this sorry state of affairs but sails a bit too near to the wind in the current state of living crisis. AS

SCREENING AT CPH:DOX 2022 | SELECTED FOR THE DOC ALLIANCE AWARDS

 

L’Argent (1983) Bfi player

Dir.: Robert Bresson; Cast: Christian Patey, Vincent Risterucci, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van Den Elsen, Beatrice Tabourine, Didier Baussy, Marc Ernest Forneau, Claude Cler ; France/Switzerland 1983, 83 min.

L’ARGENT would be Robert Bresson’s final feature, he was eighty-two years old but would live for another sixteen. Winning the Best Director’s Award at Cannes in 1983 was well-deserved and a suitable valediction for the aloof, enigmatic non-commercial filmmaker whose work always defied classification.

L’Argent is based on Leo Tolstoi’s last novella The Forged Coupon, and once again Bresson cast non-professional actors to shift the focus onto his rigorous style. In possibly the most unsympathetic of all his features, the simple plot centres on a forged banknote. Young student Nobert (Forneau) hands the 500 franc bill to the owners of a photographic shop (Tabourine/Baussy), who pass it on to the delivery driver Yvon Targe (Patey).

Yvon vaguely suspects the note may be a counterfeit, but passes it off in a cafe. At the same time the photographer instructs his assistant Lucien (Risterucci) to muddy the waters, and Norbert’s mother also makes use of money to get her son acquitted in court. Yvon too is exonerated in a legal battle, but loses his job. To feed the family, he drives a get-away car for a bank robbery, is caught and spends three years in prison where he meets Lucien. Yvon blames Lucien for his misfortune, embittered at the death of his daughter. And on his release from prison Yvon goes on a killing spree.

Bresson and his DoPs Pasqualino De Santis and Emmanuel Machuel avoid close-ups and tracking shots; the camera is mostly static, the medium shots often featuring the protagonists from the rear or cropping their heads and feet. Bresson refuses to show his character’s facial expressions, even in the final showdown, all violence happens off-camera. The focus is on hands or nearby objects. Jean-Francois Naudon’s elliptical editing lets the the narrative flow. Rather like Rohmer, no frame is wasted, editing takes place during the shoot.

Bresson’s formal rigidity required him to have complete control over his actors, he often used his wife and former assistant Madeleine van der Mersch to convey his ‘instructions’: The characters are simply there to serve the premise, that money has destroyed their identity as they are slowly destroyed by their greed. The story plays out with the inevitability a Dreiser novel, Bresson leaves no room for his characters to escape. The result is so full of elegantly constructed subtleties it demands more than one viewing. AS

NOW ON BFI PLAYER | SUBSCRIPTION

Under the Sky Shelter (2022) Viennale

Dir: Diego Acosta | Doc, Chile 68′

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

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

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

SCREENING DURING VIENNALE 2022

 

Electric Malady (2022)

Dir.: Marie Lidén; Documentary with William Hendeberg; UK 2021, 85 min.

Radiation from mobile phones, electrical devices and pylons now affects around 3% of the World’s population, according to WHO.

In her first feature documentary Marie Lidén explores the condition through William Hendeberg, 40, who suffers from ‘Electro Sensibility’ and is forced to live in a special hut constructed by his father Jan, in the remote hamlet of Ekeby Björn, Närke, south central Sweden.

Only a decade ago William had a perfect life: he was writing his master thesis, having spent three years at university in Boras and Gothenburg. A gifted musician, he played in no less than four bands. Now he exists in a hut, like a Faraday cage, covering himself in blankets made out of cotton and copper threads to block the microwave radiation. And that’s not all. A special mosquito net also helps to dissipate out any other radiation. “I don’t want the camera so close”, he tells the film crew, “it makes it difficult for me to focus”.

William lives like a recluse. In the early days of his illness he used to venture out but now it makes him feel so unwell, he has stopped doing it. He listens to music, Sinead O’Connor is a favourite “I need music, it shakes the soul. I usually start with nice, happy music, then something more funky, ending up with punk. ‘Lindisfarne’, makes me feel good too. I put a cake tin over the CD player, so I don’t get too bad.” He points to a collection of tea caddies. “Me and my ex, Maria, we loved tea caddies”.

We watch a video shot by William himself in 2007, and another of him playing in a band. “I was so bewildered at first, but it was almost exciting for a while”. At that point he only went out into the radiation-free forest nearby, even though he loved the freedom of the city. But it made him too ill with burning and cramping pains in his forehead. He needed days to recover from his city trips. “Like having your head caught in a vice.”

When is all started, William worked in a library, standing in for his partner Maria who showed milder symptoms of the disease, particularly as a reaction to fluorescent light and the computer screen. “The counter in the library was fitted with a loop for the hard of hearing – this was the beginning. Three other people working there had the same symptoms”. He has had no contact with Maria for 18 months now, after she left the caravan they were living in she got married and had children. We watch a video, Maria cutting William’s hair. They seemed happy.

William has got used to darkness, even though he is addicted to colours, particularly green and red. As his father tells us, William has always loved Christmas. So his parents ‘visit’ their son with presents. They celebrate as if he was still a child. William knows his parents have cried a lot, they want the old ‘William’ back. And are hoping they can all go and visit his sister Alexandra in Karlskoga. One of his chief concerns is that people think he is exaggerating. Everyone just hopes he will recover one day.

Electro Sensitivity has not been acknowledged by the medical profession so William tries to soldier on, not wanting to upset his family. A herbalist has given him some relief: William can now stay up longer, and is more able to focus in his reading and writing. his autobiography is already underway, but he cannot write creatively. “I am still curious about life”. And has started to go out and about, even though it makes his symptoms get worse. He had a phone installed via fibre optic cable: “After 15 years I have a speaker phone. I can talk to somebody who is not here. It feels amazing. But I am still waiting for a miracle, to make me better slowly. I long to be out, in freedom”.

DoP Michael Sherrington uses the camera in a very sensitive way – the quality of the shot is always secondary to William’s condition. Maria Lidén has certainly raised awareness and understanding of this little known condition. Rather like lung cancer, as a result of smoking, and endometriosis, it took the medical profession many years to acknowledge their existence. Lidén approaches her topic without any frills or sentimentality in a direct and informative, but always empathetic approach. An eye opener, produced on a shoe-string budget. AS

ON CINEMAS FROM 3rd March | Premiered at CPH:DOX 2022

 

 

Hide and Seek (2021)

Dir.: Victoria Fiore; Documentary; UK/Italy 2021,85 min.

In the back streets of Naples’ ‘Spanish Quarter’, Entoni dreams of Gomorra. First time filmmaker Victoria Firore follows into teenaghood charting his descent into juvenile prison.

Entoni is just ten when we see him burning down Christmas trees and other petty crimes with his older friend Dylan. His grandmother Dora, is no stranger to crime, a former member of the Camorra she provides the key to Entoni’s past, forced into a life of crime when her husband went to prison. And so did her daughter Natalie when Entoni’s father was given a long-term sentence. Like father like son, crime is endemic in the local community, normal territory for these boys. For Dylan and Entoni this is par for the course. “Boys without fathers grow up angry”, according to Dora. Entoni’s younger brother Gaetano is only too willing to take on the mantel of crime – as we discover in the post credits.

Young Entoni already has a reputation: “Don’t bring Entoni here, he will hurt you”, is the word on the street. A local mother blames the movies: “They copy what they see in  films.” On the radio, a serious voice talks about taking the guardianship away from parents who are involved with the Mafia. Meanwhile Dora does a Tarot to predict Entoni’s future, and the future is not bright.

In a disused jail, Dylan and Entoni talk about their favourite film, surprisingly Titanic. Dora reflect; “We sin, because we have to survive”. Her husband told her he was on drugs when Natalie was seven months old. Stealing was her only way to survive, her husband dying in jail. He had some form of cancer, and when Natalie saw him for the last time, he was like a skeleton, and she was never the same again. Watching a procession, Entoni muses,” in ten years I will be twenty-two and married”.

To avoid Nisida juvenile prison, the authorities decide to put Entoni in a reform school – But Entoni has no intention of staying: “when put him into a reform school before, he was back home earlier than we were”, comments Natalie. Entoni seems to prefer the  countryside to the city, and there are some shot of him wandering around looking vaguely calm. During a visit to his father’s prison, he waves his bandera frantically. But his imprisonment in Nisida comes earlier than expected, setting the tone for the rest of his young years. Is seems the die is cast for these boys: “We are the kids from the Quarter, to hell with everyone else. Prions are always with us. Entoni is always with us.”

Fiore, who grew up in Naples, maintains her distance never sensationalising the boys’ sell-induced tragedy, conveying the inevitability of it all in a lowkey empathy but never sympathy. AS

NASCONDINO (Hide & Seek) – in UK cinemas from January 20th 2023 |  CPH:DOX PREMIERE

Seven Days to Noon (1950)

Dir: John & Roy Boulting | Cast: Barry Jones, André Morell, Olive Sloane, Sheila Manahan | UK Drama 94′

Just how long ago this was made is evident from the opening shot of the postman marching up to 10 Downing Street and what looks like less than half a dozen letters hitting the mat. That it’s set in a London of barrel-organs, when tickets on the Underground cost tuppence and memories of the Blitz made the evacuation of London seem far less far-fetched then than now makes you realise just how long this particular Sword of Damocles has hung over all our heads.

Before we know the contents to Willingdon’s letter the response of Follard’s assistant to reading it is all the more disturbing for being an amused “Another one for the loony bin I suppose” (the second we see reading it bursts into tears).

Although the authorities automatically declare Willingdon mad and what he attempts is monstrous, the film itself is deliberately ambiguous on the matter. The Boultings in later films sent up the clergy mercilessly but Willingdon’s vicar is portrayed sympathetically. But while the first thing we learn about the Professor is that he’s the son of a bishop but finds no comfort in prayer. @RichardChatten

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) Bfi Player

Dir: Val Guest | Cast: Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Richard Wordsworth, Margia Dean, Thora Hird, Gordon Jackson | UK, Sci-fi, Horror, 82′

Hammer’s sci-fi movies still tend to be overlooked, despite Losey’s The Damned being probably the best film they ever made.

Still bearing the banner of Hammer’s earlier incarnation Exclusive, and set – unlike their brightly coloured Gothic horrors – in a contemporary London vividly shot night-for-night, that now feels even more distant than nineteenth century Transylvania (in which TV announcers still wore black tie and drunks used the term ‘gin goblin’), this fantasy sci-fi horror outing is sprinkled with occasional wry remarks like the locals are “all in church or at the local”.

Nigel Kneale strongly disapproved of the casting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass, but he works for me; and the rest of the film is consistently well acted by the usual wonderful cast of familiar faces from Jack Warner, an eight year-old Jane Asher (who has a poignant moment cradling her broken doll), Sam Kydd (of course), to my favourite London landmark, Battersea power station. But surpassing them all is cadaverous Richard Wordsworth giving what is probably the best performance ever given in a horror film as the unfortunate astronaut. @RichardChatten

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

The Divide | La Fracture (2021) Bfi Flare 2022

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

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

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

SCREENING AT BFI FLARE | CANNES 2021 PREMIERE

 

 

 

Every Night Dreams (1933)

Dir: Mikio Naruse | Cast: Sumiko Kurishima, Teruko Kojima, Jun Arai | Drama, Japan, 64’

A typically handsome and vigorous example of this director’s early work with a star performance by Sumiko Kurishima as a youthful example of Naruse’s careworn, impecunious heroines working hard to to keep her head afloat and raise a child against the tide of the rat race waiting for her long-lost husband to come home.

Nearly ninety years later it still looks as fresh as a daisy and – sadly – just as pertinent too in the 21st Century in it’s depiction of life at the bottom of the heap. Although set in Tokyo during the depression of the thirties, it could be taking place at any time or any place. Including here and now. @RichardChatten

Wet Sand (2021) Bfi Flare

Dir: Elene Naveriani | Cast: Gia Agumava, Eka Chavleishvili, Zaal Goguadze, Kakha Kobaladze, Megi Kobaladze, Bebe Sesitashvili | Georgia, Drama, 115′

Elene Naveriani’s subtle and classically told auteur feature centres on a rather sinister turn of events in the closely knit seaside community on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. Neighbours who thought they knew each other are suddenly back-footed when a regular at the local beach cafe is found to have committed suicide to everyone’s surprise. The dark humour is in the realisation that savage mistrust and divided loyalties are just as at home here and they are in the big city, and perhaps even more so. Agnes Pakozdi’s camerawork creates a painterly sense of place in the faded grandeur of the settings. Naveriani directs with style and attention to detail in an unhurried but memorable gem that won Gia Agumava’s performance Best Actress at Locarno 2021. MT

NOW SCREENING AT BFI FLARE 2022

 

Boulevard! A Hollywood Story (2021) Bfi Flare

Dir.: Jeffrey Schwarz; Documentary with Gloria Swanson, Dick Hughes, Richard Stapley, Brooke Anderson, Elizabeth Wyler, Barbara Fixx, Steven Wilson, Alan Eichler, Carl Beauchamp; USA 2021, 85 min.

Veteran documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz unearths a musical version of Sunset Boulevard (1950) and a 1950s love triangle that pictures three victims of the Hollywood system where ageism and homophobia played a dominant role.

The three were Gloria Swanson, star of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 feature,  Dick Hughes, and his lover Richard Stapley (aka Richard Wyler).  Hugh was the composer of the musical “Swanson on Sunset”, with Stapley responsible for the lyrics. It ran for six weeks at the “Cinegrill” in Los Angeles, from November 1994, with revivals until 1997.

The original version dates from 1955 when two young artists and lovers, Dick Hughes and Richard Stapley met Gloria Swanson (still smarting from being pipped to the post by Judy Holliday for the Best Actress Oscar in 1951). During the early fifties , the trio worked on “Swanson and Sunset”, but a lack of finance, as well as Paramount’s refusal to grant Swanson the rights to the Wilder classic, eventually nuxed the project.

Swanson then fell for Stapley and his relationship with Hughes came to an abrupt end. Stapley re-invented himself, becoming a popular actor: The Girl from Rio, and the TV series The Troubleshooters and a bit part in Frenzy being highlights of his career. The film’s focus then swings to its gay theme with Richard’s second wife Elizabeth being well aware of his sexuality, just another ploy to hide his gayness for the Hollywood system. She was prepared to share the limelight and the two remained “just good friends”.

But Dick Hughes could not let go of the musical that never was, and remained obsessed with the feature until his death. He continued to play the piano in exclusive clubs and later became a conductor. Gloria Swanson also remained fixed on the project. According to her granddaughter Brooke Anderson, she never forgot the music written by Hughes, “it never died for her”. Yet, curiously, Swanson never mentioned the Sunset project or even Hughes or Stapley in her autobiography “Swanson on Swanson”. In 1990 Hughes revived “Swanson and Sunset”, playing the role of his younger self despite being well into his sixties. And when he heard about the success of Lloyd Webber’s 1994 musical “Sunset Boulevard”, he reconciled with Richard, who had morphed back from Wyler into his Stapley identity.

Despite their up and downs the two completed the musical for its 1994 premiere at the “Cinegrill”. With the help of Steven Wilson, from the University of Texas in Austin, Schwarz cobbles together enormous amounts of material but the story of the (probably unconsummated) love triangle is never quite divorced from film history, Schwarz clearly felt empathy for his subject and avoids voyeurism at all costs sticking to a mostly conventional approach with multiple talking heads enlivened by animated cartoons of the trio in action. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2022

Vilnius International Film Festival – 24 March – 3 April (2022)

Vilnius IFF will be the first international festival to actively boycott Russian film with the focus of this year’s 27th edition firmly on the recent petition from the Ukrainian Film Academy. Day Zero – on March 23rd – will be dedicated to the latest crop of features and documentaries from the besieged European country. With Lithuania now welcoming hundreds of thousands Ukrainian refugees – and adding children’s films to the line-up – there will free screenings to entertain all ages.

Five films in particular will highlight Ukraine cinema and will open this year’s celebration on 23 March 2022:

BAD ROADS  Dir: Natalya Vorozhbit (image above)

Lithuania knows a thing or two about staying silent. That silence ended on 23 August 1989 when two million people across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia formed a human chain: the Baltic Way. Seven months later, on March 11 1990, Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence.

MARIUPOLIS  Dir: Mantas Kvedaravicius

Daily news reports have shown the devastation of this Ukrainian sea port. In his sophomore feature Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius centres on ordinary life and happenstance in a community unaware that 2022 would bear witness to a tragic loss of life and destruction.

THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS  Dir: Simon Lereng Wilmont (main image)

Set in Eastern Ukraine town of Hnutove, on the frontline of the war, the film follows a year in the life of 10-year-old Oleg who lives with his grandmother. As his friends gradually leave the village we witness the gradual erosion of his innocence amid the constant pressure of the unfolding conflict.

 

ATLANTIS  Dir: Valentyn Vasyanovych

Ukraine’s Valentyn Vasyanovych would go on to win a slew of awards for his first feature that highlights the camaraderie and resilience that has been the life force of this year’s Russian invasion. It sees a soldier suffering from PTSD befriending a young volunteer and hoping to restore peaceful energy to a war-torn society.

MY THOUGHTS ARE SILENT Dir: Antonio Lukich (image above)

Vadim, a sound engineer, has decided to emigrate from Ukraine to Canada at the age of 22. But before he leaves he must undertake an unusual assignment: to record the song of a very rare bird native of the Transcarpathian mountains of Ukraine.

As part of the European Capital of Culture celebration in the city of Kaunas, the festival will build a one-off theatre for a special screening of Laurynas Bareiša’s PILGRIMS (Venice, Best Film Orizzonti 2021) in the village of Karmelava where the film was shot. Vilnius IFF’s industry program Meeting Point Vilnius (MPV) also disinvited Russian projects in line with the festival’s boycott. Instead It will dedicate a special Ukrainian day to its program on April 1 with panels on political, institutional and film industry levels. The Vilnius Film Festival is supported by the Lithuanian Film Centre, co-funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Vilnius City

DAY ZERO | VILNIUS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | LITHUANIA 

 

The Hermit of Trieg (2022)

Dir: Lizzie MacKenzie | UK Doc, 79′

In these days of social media and lives in the fast lane Lizzie MacKenzie’s debut documentary is a breath of fresh air.

It’s all about Ken Smith, a 70 year old loner who has spent the past four decades in a log cabin he built overlooking Scotland’s Loch Treig. Growing up in Derbyshire, Ken had a accident in his mid-20s that would change life forever. A random attack left him with critical injuries: he would never walk or talk again. But Ken refused to give up and eventually he regained his mobility and some power of speech in another lease of life. Travelling to Canada he trekked to the forests of the Yukon where the peace and solitude convinced him to head for the most remote corner of Britain on his return.

Still reasonably fit and active he enjoys the tranquility of the open countryside. The cabin has no gas, electricity or running water but Ken has adapted to the lores of the natural world living off fish from the loch and growing his own vegetables. He must also acknowledge that old age and death may come sooner than expected but is this such a bad thing in the days of overpriced care homes and endless medical intervention?.

A simple story of self-determination and sustainability develops into a visionary film about living life within the bounds of nature and embracing our fate. MT

SCREENED DURING GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL

 

 

Mujde (2021))

Dir.: Alphan Eseli; Cast: Lale Mansur, Salim Kechiouche, Onur Bilge, Erdeniz Kurucan; Turkey 2021, 48 min.

MUJDE shines a critical light on Turkey packing a pithy story into an hour unlike so many features nowadays that drag on interminably relying on atmosphere to carry a paper thin narrative.

Recently widowed Mujde (a brilliant Lale Mansur) rightly suspects her son Okan (Kurucan) and his estate agent friend Berat (Bilge) of having ulterior motives in persuading her to sell the large family house and move to a poky flat in central Istanbul. But she goes ahead nevertheless and employs three Syrian immigrants to help with the move. One of the them, Sayyid (Kechiouche), has lost his son in the Syrian conflict, and his vulnerability leads to romance with the lonely widow. The two make an odd couple, Mujde’s friends disapproving either on the grounds of jealousy or general hostility towards Syrian immigrants who are seen as second class citizens by the local Turks. An unexpected turn of events leads to tragedy on Shakespearean proportions when Sayyid is called back to Syria leaving Mujde in the lurch.

Set amongst Istanbul’s colourful shops and bazars and domestic interiors that bring to mind Fassbinder’s Fear eats up the soul, Mujde is an affirmation of contemporary cinema, proving a strong script is still central to successful filmmaking. Best known for his critically acclaimed drama The Long Way Home (2013) Alphan Eseli is also co-founder of the Art and Culture platform ISTANBUL’74. AS

NOW ON MUBI

 

Hostile Witness (1969)

Dir: Ray Milland | Cast: Ray Milland, Sylvia Sims, Felix Aylmer, Raymond Huntley | US Drama 101′

Ray Milland’s final film as a director was also one of the last in which he wore a toupee. But for the glossy colour it rather resembles a thirties quota quickie (complete with the presence of Felix Aylmer) or early sixties Edgar Wallace complete with opening and ending shots of the statue atop the Old Bailey, albeit at twice the length and with far more histrionics; but it provides the same undemanding entertainment and has a sublime final last line.

Milland stars as hot shot barrister Simon Crawford who finds himself on the wrong side of the law when his daughter is killed in a ‘hit and run’. When his neighbour is also killed, evidence points to his being involved in the murder.

The radiant Sylvia Syms represents the sixties, veteran silent star Percy Marmont the twenties; while fifties regulars Ballard Berkeley and John Horsley are also present, although by now no longer wearing trenchcoats.@RichardChatten

 

1970 (2021) Kinoteka Film Festival 2022

Dir.: Tomasz Wolski; Documentary/animation feature; Poland 2021, 70 min.

Tomasz Wolski finds an inventive way of staging the famous uprising of Polish workers in the Baltic towns of Gdansk and Sopot, that kicked off just before Christmas 1970.

The intense battle of wits plays out from the perspective of the leading communist bureaucrats and ministers played by puppets in stop motion mode. Their arguments are based on original archive phone conversations. Against this background, the director uses documentary material shot for TV and newsreel at the time of the uprising.

The quorum of six ‘decision-makers’ is led by Kazimierz Switala, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and number three in the Stalinist hierarchy, who died in 2011, without ever having faced trial. Barricading themselves in a room thick with cigarette smoke, the negotiators jabber away on multiple telephones. The protest, turning into an uprising, explodes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, where workers lay down tools after the government increased the price of essentials by a massive 20 percent.  

Placards ask for the resignation of Wladislaw Gomolka, First Secretary of the Polish Workers Party – and even more worrying for a change of system: “Away with Communism!” The six leaders get more and more agitated when the Central Railway Station is set on fire, and three Militia officers are trapped in a fire on the third floor of a building, surrounded by demonstrators.

In scenes all too familiar with the current crisis in Ukraine, Molotov Cocktails are thrown by the protestors, people are on fire, and police water cannons have a brutal impact. The defenders of law and order are quibbling about the use of engaging the military in the conflict – they might be needed in Krakow, another hot point of protest. Six civilians are reported dead, with 19 police officers wounded – the interim score promises more casualties.

The black-and-white documentary material, shown in the original 4:3 format is frightening in its intensity: police beating up their prisoners, fires breaking out in apartment blocks. The cold makes matters worse, and the inadequately dressed demonstrators  freeze in the frosty weather. They make up for it by throwing even bigger stones at the police and militia.

In the end, the protests go on for over a week with 27 000 soldiers engaged in the open warfare, 550 tanks and 750 combat vehicles let loose by the Stalinist authorities with 1500 units of chemicals being poured over the demonstrators from low flying helicopters. 1164 protesters were injured, forty-one died. So nothing on the scale of the modern day Ukraine conflict but still a force to be reckoned with in this demonstration against the mighty kosh of the Stalinist regime.  

Over four decades later only one individual was found guilty: Czeslaw Kiszczak, one of the six in the command unit, and the only one to face trial, was given a two year suspended prison sentence.

The uprising led to a pyrrhic victory for the Workers Party: new puppets were installed by Moscow, and one of the highlights of the animated puppet show, designed by Robert Sowa, is the big hand reaching from above, and collecting the six warlords like marionettes, to be thrown into the dustbin the of history. To say ‘history repeats itself’ is once again proved true. AS

SCREENING AT KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL | 27 March LONDON 2022

https://youtu.be/50-BTVb8Dp4

 

 

Ingeborg Holm (1913)

Dir: Victor Sjostrom | Cast: Hilda Borgestrom, Aron Lindgren, Erik Lindholm, Georg Gronroos, Richard Lund | Sweden, Silent Drama 96′

To anyone with a nodding acquaintance with silent cinema the idyllic opening scene depicting the happy Holm family will seem ominous rather than heartwarming; and when Ingeborg Holm’s husband starts placing his hand on his chest in discomfort, you know that trouble and strife lies ahead.

Based on a 1906 play by Nils Krok, it’s realistic and unmelodramatic depiction of hardship generated much discussion and led to changes in the poorhouse laws. A hundred years ago it would have seemed to the socially concerned that the current pace of technological process would ensure that poverty exacerbated by the harsh unyielding poorhouse regime endured by Ingeborg Holm would have become just a distant memory by the end of the 20th Century. More than 50 years later, however, Cathy Come Home (1966) showed that little had changed; and another 50 years has now passed since then. Ingeborg probably ends up costing the state infinitely more than the debts that forced her into the workhouse in the first place, where the irascible officials who have a budget to balance won’t pay for her to visit her sick daughter; but then end up having to foot the bill for the police investigation that tracks her down (just as the taxpayer presumably ended up paying for her later years in a mental institution).

The smattering of Danish films from this period that I’ve seen show that technically Ingeborg Holm is not really the trail-blazer it tends to be claimed. The naturalistic acting is less unusual for the period than those unfamiliar with silent cinema are usually pleasantly surprised to discover, the sets are convincing and lighting is skilfully employed by cameraman Henrik Jaenzon for dramatic impact; but Victor Sjostrom actually frames the action for the most part rather stiffly in the middle distance. It is the content rather than the form that really impresses.

There are no moustache-twirling villains. Even seemingly unsympathetic characters will show unexpected little flashes of humanity (such as the bullying old harridan at the poorhouse who then offers Ingeborg a sip from her hip flask; and the two coppers sent to recapture her). The nearest thing to a villain the film supplies is the jerk manning the counter discouraging customers and ripping off the Holms while Ingeborg’s husband is too sick to keep an eye on him. Having Ingeborg go mad is probably a surrender to the need for some sort of dramatic conclusion to the story. The rest of the film having been such a relentless downer, having her eventually reunited with her long-lost son (played by the same actor who had played her late husband) represents some sort of a happy ending. In reality she would look much, much worse after 15 years in the psychiatric ward than she does here; but the scene is played touchingly and without histrionics. (Although it raises again the question posed by other films with epilogues set several years later: was the main action set in 1898 or the epilogue in 1928?).

The atmospheric photography and period costumes and settings makes ‘Ingeborg Holm’ seem a lot quainter to a modern audience than it would have done at the time. In modern London she would probably end her days less picturesquely sleeping rough in a shop doorway somewhere.@RichardChatten

Autumn Girl (2021) Netflix

Dir.: Katarzyna Klimkiewicz; Cast: Maria Debska, Leszek Lichota, Krzysztof Zalewski, Bartlomiej Kotschedoff, Katarzyna Obidzinska; Poland 2021, 105 min.

Katarzina Klimkiewicz’s Autumn Girl is both a tribute a Kalina Jedrusik (1930-1991), Poland’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, and a snapshot of her homeland in the 1960s.

Krzysztof Kieslowski pictures life in sixties Poland as a time of austerity, to say the least. Not so according to Klimkiewicz and Maria Debska who turn this biopic into a first class Hollywood musical, overcoming sexism and dodgy politics, with a triumphant Debska getting away with everything, just like the original Kalina Jedrusik who died of an asthma attack after starring in Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique.

It all starts in a fashion boutique where Kalina refuses, and not for the first time, to toe the Party line: “The Woman of the 1960s should be fashionable, but modest. Dashing but modest. Chic but modest. Focused of Hearth and Home”. But Jedrusik is anything but modest, she lives the life of Laurie as the star of a Polish TV show, and men literally queuing round the block. After hours, she lives with husband and writer Stanislaw Dygat (Lichota), but their flat is also home to hunky, in-house lover Lucek (Zalewski).

When party bureaucrat Ryszard Molski (Kotschedoff) takes over the TV Ents department – he too wants a piece of the action with Kalina (literally), more or less calling her a whore. And when she rejects his advances she is blacklisted and even banned from her favourite show the “Elderly Gentlemen’s Cabaret”. Her mood swings from aggression to self pity but she paints the town red with her best friend Xymena (Obidzinks), the two ending up in the bus depot after midnight, one of the buzziest numbers of this revue.

Warsaw dazzles in Weronika Bilska and PD Wojciech Zogada’s stunning camerawork with Debska the star turn in an all-singing-all-dancing extravaganza set to Radoslaw Luka’s original score. The aesthetic choices are adventurous in a parallel universe where candy-colours quell dour black-and-white reality: Ken Russell minus the hyperbole springs to mind, with Klimkiewicz playing fast and loose with the facts. Autumn Girl’s success lies in not taking itself not too seriously, or resorting to camp. It maybe a man’s world, but this woman reigns supreme with her sparkling zest for life. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

Batman & Robin (1997)

Dir: Joel Schumacher | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Uma Thurman | US Thriller, 125′

Interestingly enough the venerable Leonard Maltin gave Batman & Robin a higher rating (two and a half stars) in his Movie Guide than Batman Returns (two stars), which over the years has probably caused plenty of outrage in some quarters; but with which I happily concur. As a fan of the TV series I never thought Tim Burton’s Batman movies were that great to begin with – and anyone who says Batman & Robin is the worst movie ever made should be forced to watch Catwoman – so I’d like to say a few words in support of this deliriously Big Dumb Movie.

Yeah, I know, the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan movies are “DARK”!! Big Deal…! They certainly take themselves very seriously; but this isn’t exactly Eugene O’Neill we’re talking about. Sure, Joel Schumacher couldn’t make a decent movie if his life depended upon it; but at least the money is all up there on the screen (it certainly looks as if it cost the $125 million Warner Bros. squandered on it). It contains a touching swansong from Michael Gough’s Alfred (who’s late sister Peg in an old photograph is actually Gloria Stuart, who played Old Rose in the same year’s Titanic), has a cool score by Elliot Goldenthal and swish special effects; and it’s refreshing to see a recent Hollywood movie that actually looks as if it was shot in Technicolor rather than just various shades of brown and beige.

And it has Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. Along with Jim Carrey’s Riddler, Thurman’s Poison Ivy is one of the two best villains in the entire eighties & nineties franchise: every bit the supple, purring jezebel that Michelle Pfeiffer’s whining crybaby of a Catwoman should have been but wasn’t. Elliot Goldenthal’s smooth saxophone theme further heightens her sinuous impact, while her sleek green one-piece (happily without nipples) actually improves upon all the previous versions; making her the only female character since Lee Meriwether’s Catwoman to wear a costume slinkier and sexier on the big screen than she did in the comic strip.

There are just two snags; and in keeping with the gargantuan nature of this epic folly they’re big ones. The first – Schwarzenegger being the bigger star – is that Poison Ivy gets only a fraction of the screen time devoted to his boring Mr Freeze. The other snag – surprise surprise – is Schumacher again.

Schumacher was openly gay and liked the rest of us to know all about it. But whereas gay directors like Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon regularly populate their films with strong and glamorous women, in Batman & Robin we instead get nipples and codpieces adorning the Dynamic Duo in tandem with a lack of interest on the director’s part in Thurman’s thrilling little minx that amounts to negligence. (Schumacher shoots enormous close-ups of the Bat-Trio’s butts as they get dressed for action but repeatedly passes up opportunities to show us Poison Ivy from behind. Note the way that she sweeps in to meet Schwarzenegger in one scene with the camera tracking along behind her as she walks the length of the room photographed full-length from behind AND SHE’S WEARING A FUR COAT DOWN TO HER ANKLES; which she promptly casts off, never to wear it again! And later she places her boot on the bottom rung of a ladder and on the very frame that she starts to turn away from the camera to begin climbing SCHUMACHER CUTS!!)

But enough survives from the detritus to make this a far better way to waste a couple of hours than other overproduced dreck like Armageddon or Pearl Harbor. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Batman: The Movie (1966)

Dir: Leslie H. Martinson | Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Merlwether, Cesar Romero | US, 105′

Incredible as it may seem, it was just over fifty years ago today that this movie originally premiered at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. It’s a substantially different entity from the TV original, to which it doesn’t do justice. The series looks better each passing year with its clean lines and pristine, saturated colours which more resemble the dynamism and visual clarity of an actual comic strip than the murky recent big screen offerings. Despite the supposedly juvenile demographic of this ‘Batman’, it has more literate dialogue than any modern superhero movie: could you imagine Christian Bale’s Batman possessing the vocabulary to employ a phrase like “human jetsam”?

But at 105 minutes the movie feels overstretched and rambling, and I miss the narration by producer William Dozier that was so much part of the TV series. The bigger budget meant the producers could splash out on The Penguin’s submarine along with the Batboat, Batcopter, and Batcycle; which came in handy as embellishments to seasons Two & Three, but which for me slow the action down (I find The Penguin’s sub very confining during the latter half of the movie, and staging the final punch-up on it’s narrow deck feels more cramped than similar showdowns in the TV series; especially as it’s obviously shot on the studio tank in front of a painted backdrop of the sky). On the plus side there are none of those endless back stories for each villain that take up so much of more recent Batman movies; although the fact that The Catwoman is already a “known supercriminal” with a long career in larceny already behind her, yet Batman doesn’t immediately recognise her at a press conference masquerading as Kitanya Irenya Tatanya Karenska Alisoff of the ‘Moscow Bugle’ really does strain credibility, even by the standards of an unabashed piece of hokum like this.

An incidental advantage the 1966 movie has over both the TV series and the later movies is in the characterisations. In one of the Tim Burton movies Batman casually turns a flamethrower on a few goons; which is really not acceptable conduct for the guy who’s supposed to be the Good Guy. This Batman risks his own life to spare a family of ducks; which is as it should be. Adam West spends much more time as Bruce Wayne in the movie than he usually does in the TV series, and as Wayne is permitted a more fiery temperament than Batman ever displays; as when he loses his temper and attempts to head-butt The Riddler. All those narcissistic egos cooped up together on Penguin’s submarine also generate friction: I particularly liked The Joker’s admonition when it falls to The Riddler to post a ransom demand: “And none of your stupid riddles, do you understand? Make those messages plain!”, and the droll nautical exchange between Penguin and two of his goons (probably ad libbed by Meredith), “Yo Ho!” – “Yo Ho What?” – “SIR!”.

And then there’s Lee Meriwether’s Catwoman.

Julie Newmar being unavailable, Ms Meriwether stepped into Newmar’s ankle boots (minus the gold chain and medallion around her neck that Newmar always wore) at the very last minute, and director Leslie Martinson initially had to shoot around her; yet another reason why she actually has so disappointingly little screen time uniformed as The Catwoman compared to the interminable Kitka footage. But from this liability a special strength inadvertently derives, and the film’s take on The Catwoman is both unique and closer to the comic strip; never to be repeated.

When the movie was made Julie Newmar had so far made only one isolated appearance in Season One; so this represents only The Catwoman’s second appearance among the premier league baddies (whereas Gorshin’s appearance as The Riddler is almost a swansong; after being nominated for an Emmy he fell out with the producers over money and made only one more appearance in the series in Season Three). Because all the usual lovey-dovey stuff between Batman and The Catwoman that Julie Newmar found so boring is reserved for the scenes with “Miss Kitka”, for the first and last time The Catwoman herself is portrayed purely as a ruthless career criminal bent on the defeat of the Dynamic Duo, her mind solely on her work with a single-mindedness far removed from the flirtatiousness and playful good humour of Newmar and Kitt. (More like an actual cat in fact.)

To this day most people still don’t get it that the Bruce/Kitka ‘romance’ was purely a calculated ruse on the part of The Catwoman to lure The Caped Crusader into a trap. Furthermore, while Newmar deliciously played The Catwoman with the light of madness forever dancing in her eyes (and alone of all the actresses to have played her seemed genuinely weird enough to have chosen to adopt a clinging wet-look catsuit as her regular working clothes), Meriwether by contrast remains uncomplicatedly mean & sociopathic. Both Newmar and Kitt seem authentically to have clawed their way from the wrong side of the tracks; but Meriwether has the insolent air of entitlement of a prom queen gone bad, thus cutting a much more incongruous figure as a grown woman in the fetish gear Newmar and Kitt seemed born to wear (as worn by them, wet-look black stretch lamé wasn’t merely a fabric it was a weapon!), in which Meriwether marches about rather than slinks. (SPOILER COMING: Any healthy, red-blooded male, by the way, would ultimately be far more likely to be thrilled than heart-broken to find the woman he’s been stepping out with attired as The Catwoman.) Of the three, Meriwether also most resembles those coldly handsome, high-cheekboned harpies that regularly populate comic books.

Gorshin’s Riddler is plainly headed for a padded cell rather than jail when this is all over, with Meriwether’s Catwoman the least flamboyantly crazy of the four: just another criminal to be caged. When Bruce Wayne warns the assembled baddies that “I swear by heaven. If you’ve harmed that girl. I’ll kill you all!”, unusually for a female adversary The Catwoman is obviously included in this threat. And when finally unmasked and batcuffed, Meriwether’s Catwoman reveals herself in her true colours by showing not the faintest flicker of remorse as she is led away pouting to the slammer; unrepentantly heartless and irredeemably evil to the end. Way to Go, Lee!! @RIchardChatten

ON PRIME VIDEO

Reflection (2021)

Dir.: Valentyn Vasyanovych; Cast: Roman Lutskyi, Nika Myslytska, Nadya Levchenko, Andrii Rymaruk, Ihor Shilha; Ukraine 2021, 208 min.

Valentyn Vasyanovych is an award-winning director whose films are set against the backdrop of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia that has been raging since 2014, erupting into a full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. In 2019 he won the Horizon prize at Venice for Atlantis and garnered the Special Jury Price of the Competition of last year’s Mostra with Reflection, again in the climate of Russian/Ukrainian war. 

Both films revolve around love and reconciliation: in Atlantis the love is between a man and woman, Reflection sees a father and daughter united after a divorce: surgeon Sergiy (Lutskyi) and his wife Olga (Levchenko) have left young Polina (Myslytska, the director’s daughter) in the care of step dad Andriy (Rymaruk).

We meet the four of them during the Kyiv conflict, trying to make the best of things for Polina’s birthday. Later, we see Sergiy in his operating theatre, trying to save the life of a Ukrainian soldier in vain. But things will get worse for him and Andriy: the doctor is captured by Russian occupying forces: he is interrogated and tortured by the leader of the Russians garrison (Shulha) but survives, Andriy is not so lucky.

Sergiy bribes a Russian soldier not to incarcerate Andriy in the Russian mini crematorium van bearing the bogus inscription “Humane Aid from the Russian Federation”. Instead, the doctor promises the Russian soldier a hefty sum of money if he releases the body to Andriy’s family.

Vasyanovych writes, directs and serves as his own DoP using hyper-realism in an intense aesthetic dominated by the gloom – apart from one happy scene. The focus in the second half turns to Polina who is clearly hankering after Andriy while accepting her  biological father’s generosity in a drama that offers a powerful snapshot of the conflict from violence to enduring tenderness, Vasyanovych somehow unable to find a satisfying conclusion to the endless atmosphere of tragedy that is still destroying his country, even now. AS

 

 

Deep Water (2022)

Dir: Adrian Lyne | Cast: Ben Affleck, Tracy Letts, Anna De Armas, Grace Jenkins | UK Thriller

Deep Water abandons the subtle psychological ambivalence of Highsmith’s angsty 1950s  novel for a throwaway melodrama that doesn’t make sense.

After a 20 years Adrian Lyne is back in the saddle with an erotic drama to follow Fatal Attraction, but this one lacks the needling tensions of both book and bonk-buster.

Ben Affleck is still darkly drole but somehow dissipated as the lowkey psychopath Vic. But in this screen version he no longer has a physical aversion to his aimless wife Melinda – on the contrary – the two enjoy passionate encounters and express undying love, yet we still root for Vic rather than his wife. And their little daughter Trixie (Jenkins) almost steals the show.

Vic and Melinda enjoy a close circle of friends in the upstate town of Little Wesley where snail-fancier Vic has made a fortune, and allows his bored wife to play the field to avoid the financial meltdown of divorce.  

At first Vic tolerates the arrangement, it keeps Melinda entertained and out of his way. Vic has already dined out on the story of one of her flings, Malcolm McRae, who has mysteriously disappeared. But he takes exception when his flirty wife brings another man to their plush mansion, and masterfully shows him the door.

But one of their coterie, local writer Lionel Washington (Letts), has taken a dislike to Vic, probably jealous of his cushy arrangement, or even professional success. And he drills down on Vic determined to uncover the truth in a series of skanky strung together episodes that conflate the original story into a meaningless mess. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO.

The Audition | Das Vorspiel (2021)

Dir.: Ina Weisse; Cast: Nina Hoss, Simon Abkarian, Jens Albinus, Ilja Monti, Serafin Mishiev, Sophie Rois, Thomas Thieme; France/Germany 2019, 99 min.

Nina Hoss brings her signature style to this muted portrait of middle age crisis from German director Ina Weisse (The Architect).

Suffering from a debilitating illness Anna (Hoss) has been forced to give up her career as a concert violinist and relegated to teaching at Berlin’s famous Conservatoire. A star pupil  Alexander (Monti) becomes the focus of emotional energy as her private life spins out of control. In the throes of an affair with colleague Christian (Albinus) she desperately tests her marriage to bewildered husband Philippe (Abkarian), a craftsman, and over-pressurises her son Jonas (Mishiev) into learning to play the violin.

Borrowing heavily from Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher and Denis Dercourt’s La Tourneuse de Pages, Weisse fails to put her personal stamp on the feature but Hoss gives a resonating performance channelling her angst into all the other characters without resorting to the histrionics Anna clearly feels inside. There are some really taut scenes particularly one where she plays in Christian’s string quartet with disastrous results.

Anna has clearly been affected by her over-achieving parents and she reprimands her draconian father during a terse set-to at a family get together when he tries to discipline Jonas. A dramatic finale follows Alexander’s titular audition, but somehow we feel shortchanged by the outcome. AS

ON RELEASE COURTESY OF NEW WAVE FILMS ON 1st APRIL 2022.

 

The Loneliest Whale (2021)

Dir: Joshua Zeman | US Doc 96′

A stunningly photographed eco documentary that sets out to track the largest and most lonesome sea mammal, accidentally discovered through naval sonar during Cold War reconnaissance in 1989.

The whale – known as 52 for its unique-to-whale frequency of 52 hertz – has never actually been seen by a human being but marine mammal bioacoustics specialist William Watkins determined to put ‘a face to a name’. He searched for the creature for over a decade after its calls went unanswered suggesting it could be the only one of its kind.

The New York Times picked up the story in 2004 and it captured the public imagination with its relatable tale of loneliness and romantic disillusionment for a loveless creature travelling the vast oceans desperate to find a mate. Documentarian Joshua Zeman was also intrigued and got together with the team of marine specialists determined to find answers in a voyage of discovery that would be a drop in the ocean towards uncovering another of nature’s mysteries. MT

ON RELEASE from 4 April 2022

 

 

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Elizabeth (2021) Tribute

“The Rock on which modern Britain was built” Liz Truss, PM

Dir: Roger Michell | Doc, 89′

As the nation pays tribute to the life of her majesty Queen Elizabeth II, this warm hearted documentary celebrates and reflects on a long reign marked by a strong sense of duty to dedicate her life to her people, and respond to a rapidly changing world.

Roger Michell’s Elizabeth celebrates her 70 year reign with a focus on the “Platinum Jubilee” back in June 2022. Bringing together incredible archives, joyful, uplifting and mischievous, Michell creates an amusingly edited memoire from the archives in celebration of a much loved and treasured monarch (just before he died last September).

Elizabeth is a nostalgic, playful, fresh and modern chronicle of the longest reigning British monarch and longest serving female head of state in history. “To us teenagers she was a babe” croons Paul McCartney reflecting on the time The Queen visited Liverpool in 1971. A remarkable film about an even more remarkable life.

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Days of Bagnold Summer (2019)

Dir: Simon Bird | Cast: Monica Dolan, Earl Cave, Elliot Speller-Gillot, Tamsin Greig | UK Drama 86′

The Inbetweeners star Simon Bird goes behind the camera for his screen director debut that sees teenager Daniel (Cave) spending his summer listening to heavy metal music and trying to get on with his librarian divorcee mother (Dolan).

Days of Bagnold Summer is a self-consciously quirky slice of twenty-first century life reminiscent of a less bilious early Mike Leigh comedy-drama. Originally based on a graphic novel, hence the incongruously bright colours that surround the mother and son stuck with each other in their otherwise grey little life together. @RichardChatten

OUT ON LIMITED EDITION SIGNED BLU-RAY at Anti-Words | BLU-RAY and DVD on 25 April 2022.

The Angry Silence (1960)

Dir: Guy Green | Cast: Richard Attenborough, Pier Angels, Michael Craig, Bernard Lee, | UK Drama 85′

I lived in Ipswich from 1967 to 1976 and actually recognised my old school playground in the only picture that I’m aware of being shot in what Alan Whicker described as “a small industrial town”.

Ten years after British cinema had already grappled with the ‘unsexy’ subject of labour relations during the Attlee years in Chance of a Lifetime (1950), with Macmillan now in Number 10 the issue continued to provoke controversy and debate, when fresh from portraying a shifty boss in I’m All Right Jack – under the direction of Guy Green with whom he’d just made SOS Pacific – Richard Attenborough joined the workforce in Britain’s answer to On the Waterfront which also praised the courage of a strike breaker standing up to threats and intimidation; complete with the final savage beating of the hero.

Italian actress Pier Angeli is deeply touching as Attenborough’s pregnant wife, and the film displays a new rawness in sexual matters. As in I’m All Right Jack the owners are portrayed as stupid, remote and venal, a factor overshadowed as in the former by the unflattering and libellous portrayal of trade unionists needing in UK critic Alexander Walker’s words “only bedsheets and fiery crosses to become a Ku Klux Klan purge”.

Originally titled A Dangerous Game, it was made on a shoestring and took still another ten years to break even; all the time drawing criticism from the likes of Ken Loach for its portrayal of the workers as mouth-breathing teddy boys (Michael Craig grew an enormous pair of sideburns for the film) unwittingly being used as cannon fodder by sinister agitator Alfred Burke (described by Walker as passing “through the strike-hit factory like a bacillus through the human body”). While it’s picture of the popular press (including writer Bryan Forbes helping cut costs by contributing an uncredited bit as a reporter) stirring the pot still resonates today. @RichardChatten

Vanity Fair (1932)

Dir: Chester M Franklin | Cast: Myrna Loy, Walter Byron, Barbara Kent, Conway Tearle | US Drama 78’

When she played Becky Sharp, Myrna Loy was still a couple of years away from her breakthrough role as Nora Charles in The Thin Man, which overnight established her as Hollywood’s most charismatic female star of the thirties. Her elevation to the ‘A’ list in 1934 almost exactly coincided with the introduction of the dreaded new Hays Code, which had profound consequences, as the Charles’s were never again to be such heavy drinkers, and the newly elevated Myrna the Perfect Wife was to be an entirely different entity from the gold digging tramps as which the pre-Code Myrna had until now tended to be typecast. The latter was far closer to the woman she actually was, but the former are not surprisingly much more fun to watch when the opportunity now arises – which is far too seldom. And is what makes Vanity Fair so tantalising.

Even in her star vehicles Myrna was rarely the focus of things; and had she played one of literature’s most celebrated vixens in this modernised Vanity Fair in a production properly mounted by MGM (in the sort of slinky backless gowns currently being designed by Adrian for Norma Shearer) it could have been a powerhouse showcase for Loy in her nubile young prime. The screenplay by F.Hugh Herbert does a creditable job of compressing the bare bones of the novel into just 73 minutes; and Loy is surrounded by a pretty good supporting cast (turning her mercenary charms on a trio of randy old goats played by Billy Bevan, Lionel Belmore and Montague Love). But unfortunately for Myrna, what could have been her big break was made on loan-out in just ten days for a poverty row outfit called Allied Pictures and creaks badly.

Miriam Hopkins made a far less appealing Becky three years later, but was backed by an opulent Technicolor production with all the trimmings; which although post-Code also permitted her a more upbeat fate than that suffered here by poor Myrna. @RichardChatten

The River (2021)

Dir.: Jennifer Peedom; co-directed by Joseph Nizeti; narrated by Willem Dafoe; Documentary; Australia 2021, 75 min.

An impressive collection of river images coalesce with a mellow voice-over commentary by Willem Dafoe and music from the Australian Chamber Orchestra in this languorous companion piece to the director’s 2017 documentary Mountain.

We start in the recording studio where the chamber orchestra tune their instruments, and Dafoe looks for the right nuance of tone. Then we are literally thrown into the river, in this case a waterfall, where a canoeist struggles to stay afloat despite losing the paddles. A historical, philosophical and ecological journey ensues, the story of mankind and rivers, and how they shaped each other. The loosely formed narrative flows, oscillating between soothing and wild – just like its subject.

Feel yourself sinking into the languid images; Peedom and the five accredited DoPs filmed in 39 countries, and the result is the capture of natures’ glory, with a few ecological warnings thrown in: “It is always the poor who suffer most”, underlining images of a river polluted by plastic bottles and other industrial debris. “Rivers have shaped us as a species; they are the source of human dreams. Worshipped like Gods, humans dreamt of rivers, forces of live and death”. “But now, our Gods have become our subjects”, dams, and other irrigation measures show the changing relationship between men and rivers. Global networks of transport, connecting metropolis and their smaller brethren: “The world’s great cities all have a river at their heart”. There are mystical cloud plays, connecting the rivers to the firmament.

Rivers is a lesson in visual filmmaking, that eschews ‘Talking Heads’ telling its story visually, images are used as an argument, sometimes poetic, then again also “as wild as the river itself”. Humans rarely feature and only dominant in black-and-white archive material about the ‘taming’ of waterways. But the bursting of dams and other catastrophes show only too clearly that the power is reverting to nature. But still, “we share our fate with the rivers, we flow together”. Rivers very much follows the course Joris Ivens’ A Tale of the Wind.  Peedom is also neither reverential, nor does she agitate on behalf of environmentalists, but simply shows the beauty of ecology. The music composed by Willaim Barton, Piers Burbrook de Vere and Richard Tognetti is an integral part of the feature; editor Simon Njoo is able to harness the ebbing and flowing of the Rivers into a stream of images, into which the audience can lose itself: “Rivers change you, gradually and permanently”. AS

RIVER nationwide Q&A preview 16 March 2022 with Robert Macfarlane and Jennifer Peedom, on general release 18th March www.river.film

The Batman (2022)

Wri/Dir: Matt Reeves | Cast; Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Collin Farrell, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, Barry Keoghan, Jayme Lawson | US thriller, 175′

This ninth live-action thriller is a Batman film for modern times with its themes of female empowerment and white male supremacy in a Gotham City of corrupt politicians falling prey to serial killer, The Riddler (Dano is surprisingly scary in meltdown mode). John Turturro provides the villainous  subtext as Carmine Falcone aka The Rat, and is also father to Catwoman (Kravitz as Selina Kyle). Robert Pattinson makes for a gorgeous floppy-haired Gotham superhero still in his formative years flexing his muscles but also quivering his lips for universal appeal as Bruce Wayne, son of the city’s leading family who are not pulling their weight according to Jayme Lawson’s mayoral candidate. The chemistry with Zoë Kravitz’ sizzles nicely as The Cat and The Bat take it in turns to ‘save’ each other. Some scenes are almost poetic, the dark figures striking a pose or flitting delicately against the incandescence of Gotham City by night. The BatMobile doesn’t disappoint either with rip-roaring chase scenes set to Michael Giacchino’s thundering score riffing on Mozart’s Funeral March to add to the gloomy tone throughout. Matt Reeves juggles an eclectic cast of 129 actors but you’ll never guess who Colin Farrell plays. This Batman is certainly entertaining but an hour too long. MT

OUT ON FRIDAY 4 MARCH 2022

CPH: DOX 2022 | Focus on Ukraine

Scandinavia’s premier documentary festival CPH:DOX kicks off on 23 April with 200 international films of artistic quality and contemporary relevance that speak volumes about the world we live in.

76 are world premieres in a year that will have a particular focus on Ukraine and Russia in the festival’s main competition, Dox:Award. CPH:DOX 2022 will run as a hybrid festival with film screenings and industry events in Copenhagen from April 23 to May 3, 2022. In addition, a selection of films will be made available for streaming in Denmark from April 1-10.

Focus on Russia and Ukraine

With the war raging in Ukraine right now, expect to see the latest films that go behind the news flow and provide new perspectives on the reality in Russia and Ukraine. Here, the audience will get the chance to experience the story of the famous Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned with the nerve gas Novichok and is now imprisoned in Russia. The films Navalny, Holidays (image above) and Outside have all been selected for the main competition Dox:Award. CPH:DOX will also screen the world premiere of Novorossiya, a new film focusing on the lives of people in war-torn Eastern Ukraine. The focus programme includes the critically acclaimed Danish Sundance winner ‘A House Made of Splinters’ about an orphanage in the eastern part of Ukraine, as well as a number of other films about Russia and Ukraine.

Competition line-up

The five competitions, that will all be evaluated by an international jury, are: Dox:Award, New:Vision, F:act Award, Nordic:Dox Award, Next:Wave Award. The full competition line-up consists of 59 titles and features 39 world premieres, 16 international premieres and 4 European premieres.

DOX:AWARD

12 films including 6 world premieres, 5 international premieres and 1 European premiere.

INTO THE ICE (Lars Ostenfeld, Denmark/Germany, World Premiere) main image

A grand, cinematic adventure on the Greenland ice sheet with three leading scientists in search of what the ice can tell us about our climate, our past and possible future.

THE ECLIPSE  (Nataša Urban, Norway, World Premiere) image above
With the solar eclipse in 1999 as her mirror image, an exiled film artist turns her analogue film camera on her family in ex-Yugoslavia to map how a dark past remains embedded in the present.

THE FALL  (Andreas Koefoed, Denmark, World Premiere)

A 10-year-old girl miraculously survives a fall from the fifth floor. Six years later, she is looking to escape the trauma. A subtle, sensitive coming-of-age film about a very unusual young woman.

FIRE OF LOVE (Sara Dosa, Canada/United States, International Premiere)

A unique, poetic and visually stunning adventure film about a French scientist couple, based entirely on their own footage from travels in search of erupting volcanoes in the 1970s and 80s.

GIRL GANG (Susanne Regina Meures, Switzerland, World Premiere)
A contemporary fairy tale about a 14-year-old influencer and her biggest fan. But life as a social media star has a shadow side that the adrenaline, fame and free sneakers can’t make up for.

HIDE AND SEEK  (Victoria Fiore, United Kingdom/Italy, International Premiere)
Four furious years in one of Naples’ toughest neighbourhoods, where all three generations of a single family live on the edge of the law. Can the family’s youngest son break the dark legacy?

HOLIDAYS  (Antoine Cattin, Switzerland, World Premiere)

Russia’s record-high number of holidays are celebrated at an upbeat balalaika pace and with black humour in a lively mosaic of impressions from life in the vast, inscrutable country in the East.

MIDWIVES (Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing, Myanmar, European Premiere)

A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide.

NAVALNY  (Daniel Roher, United States, International Premiere) image above

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyi is both detective and supposed murder victim in a brave docu-thriller about the assassination attempt at his life. Timely, urgent, nerve-wrecking.

 

OUTSIDE (Olha Zhurba, Ukraine/Denmark/Netherlands, World Premiere)
As a 13-year-old boy, he became the poster boy of the Ukrainian revolution. Now Roma is back on the streets with nothing in his pocket but a lighter and a knife as a new conflict looms.

THEY MADE US THE NIGHT (Antonio Hernández, Mexico, International Premiere)

Supernatural visions and indigenous folk myths intrude in an unpredictable and dreamlike Mexican film about a family living in the shadow of the apocalypse. A living, organic work.

UNDER THE SKY SHELTER (Diego Acosta, Chile, International Premiere)

Chilean debut in sparkling, analogue black and white. A lone shepherd crosses rivers, forests and cliffs with thousands of sheep. As he loses himself in the mountains, dreams appear like ghosts.

CPH: DOX runs from 23 APRIL to 3 MAY 2022

 

Maigret (2022)

Dir: Patrice Leconte | Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Jade Labeste, Aurore Clement, Pierre Moure | France, Belgium Drama 86′

Gerard Depardieu plays a downbeat Inspector Maigret in Patrice Leconte’s classically styled murder mystery set in 1950s Paris. The French star follows a long line of actors to play Simenon’s famous trench-coated ‘officer of the law’ (as Peter Sellars put it) from Pierre Renoir and Charles Laughton to more the recent portraits from Michael Gambon and even Rowan Atkinson. This is a decidedly dour endeavour, although Loic Chavanon’s production design is immaculately detailed. It all looks very much like the director’s 1989 Simenon outing Monsieur Hire but is not nearly as memorable.

Mourning the recent demise of his daughter, Maigret finds himself re-living her loss through the violent murder of a young provincial girl savagely knifed to death, her haute couture evening gown reduced to a crimson rag. The portly Maigret is engulfed in his own private grief as he searches in vain for motive and killer, his usual masterful gravitas derailed by maudlin memories and fatherly regret.

Leconte bases his script on Simenon’s ‘Maigret et la jeune morte’ with a lesbian twist bringing things bang up to date in a tight ninety minutes where atmosphere is more abundant than tension. The detective still goes everywhere with his classic pipe although he never lights it and has been advised by his doctor to give up smoking and take a rest. But rest is the last thing on his mind as he methodically ticks off the suspects, trundling from morgue to graveyard and up to the squalid attic room where the girl lived out a miserable existence.

Suspect-wise there is Betty (Jade Labeste) a soulful young woman who reminds him of his daughter, and Jeanine (Mélanie Bernier), a neurotic actress desperate to clinch her liaison with pampered man-child Laurent (Pierre Moure), doted on by his aristocratic widowed mother (Aurore Clement). Everything comes together neatly in this elliptical but rather underwhelming production. With its traditional themes of jealousy, male privilege and working class aspiration, Maigret is solidly staged and well-performed but just a tad too sombre, tainted by its hero’s sullen frame of mind. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

A Woman at Night (2021) Kinoteka Film Festival 2022

Dir Rafael Kapelinski | Jennifer Tao, Lon Lin, Miles Richardson, Alex Change, Leigh Gill, Piotr Adamczyk | UK, China Polish 81’

London can be a lonely place as two girls from Shanghai find out in this stylishly suggestive fantasy drama from Rafael Kapelinski.

The young cousins move into the neighbourhood where the infamous serial killer Denis Nilsen performed his grisly murders. Nilsen preyed upon young boys who had lost their way and fallen through the cracks of society trying to find work down south in the capital. Here the marginalised characters are female and come from much further afield to discover that life in the big city is just as dangerous as it ever was, and potentially more so, but are certainly cannier than their 1980s British counterparts.

Yiling and Yao are very much Ying and Yang, but when the more spiritual of the two gets a job at an estate agency with Nilsen’s old flat on the books she suddenly gets a nose for the money. Far from a ‘des res’ the dingy attic flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill becomes a potential gold mine attracting all kinds of undesirables obsessed with renting – but not buying – the property, and willing to pay any price for the pleasure. Hovering in the twilight certainly brings out the worst in the macabre visitors who will stop at nothing to gain access to the dank top floor premises: there is a professor with sinister sexual proclivities and a silvered tongued midget named Lee who echoes the dwarf in the Singing Ringing Tree.

Kapelinski assembles an eclectic cast of British actors alongside Tao and Lin who are no shrinking violets contrary to their delicate appearances. The standout is Miles Richardson who is really sinister as the posh Professor Laskey whose lewd suggestions meet with derision when Yiling lets him into her car.  Rather slim of plot but rich in atmosphere the Polish filmmaker cleverly works true crime into a strikingly imagined contemporary thriller that scratches at the edges of horror with a narrative that could provide rich pickings for more Nilsen-themed fare. MT

SCREENING DURING KINOTEKA FILM FESTIVAL | 9 March – 3 April, 2022

The Duke (2020)

Dir: Roger Michell | Cast: Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, James Wilby, Matthew Goode, Anna Maxwell Martin, Fionn Whitehead | UK Drama, 96′

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren are the stars of Roger Michell’s jaunty swan song that premiered at Venice in 2020 but has only just been released in the UK five months after his death.

In 1960s Newcastle working class amateur playwright Kempton Bunter (Broadbent) – a cheerful ‘Victor Meldrew’ type – blazes a trail for the common man with his outspoken take on social justice. And while his long-suffering wife Dorothy gets on with the business of living, determined not to let the side down, he nobly flouts the Law.

At the heart of all this lies a poignant sadness for the loss of their teenage daughter in a bicycle accident. A stoney silence has fallen between them on the subject, house-proud Dorothy channelling her grief into cleaning the life out of everything in their crummy red-brick house, and Kempton determined to champion the poor. We feel for them in their efforts to make the best of things. Dorothy works as a char lady for decent local dignitary Mrs Gowling (Maxwell Martin), while Kempton is to be found on his soap box voicing his views. Broadbent is amusing and vulnerable as the down-beaten hero who regularly gets the sack for his forthright opinions. But when he finds out that Goya’s painting of the Duke of Wellington has been acquired by National Gallery, at vast expense to public purse, he oversteps the mark with a plan to “borrow” the work to fund TV licences for the needy.

Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s script is wittily adapted from a true story and bathed in the golden glow of nostalgia at the expense of dramatic tension. Broadbent and Mirren are the epitome of old-school Englishness, bringing out the humanity in two noble souls who have been through the mill – not to mention two world wars – determined to keep a stiff upper lip without resorting to maudlin introspection in this warm-hearted crowd-pleaser. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

 

 

Echoes of the Past (2021)

Dir.: Nicolas Dimitropoulos; Cast: Max von Sydow, Astrid Roos, Danae Skiadi, Nickolas Papagiannis, Maximos Livieratos, Martin Laer, Alice Kriege, Tomas Arana, Prometheus Aleiferopoulos; Greece 2021, 98 min.

Echoes of the Past is a wartime drama dedicated to Max von Sydow in his final role of a stunning career. Sadly, Nicolas Dimitropoulos and his scriptwriter Dimitrios Katsantonis have made rather a mess of their attempt to fictionalise the 1943 Kalaryta massacre where 752 Greek civilians lost their lives at the hands of German troops, in the northern Peloponnese.

Alexis Andreou (Papagiannis) is a member of the Greek partisans fighting the occupying German forces. After some of them are killed, General Le Suire (Arana) asks commandant Tenner (Laer) to shoot all male inhabitants of the town and burn the women and children in the school house. Tenner, whose father deserted in WWI, is only too willing to follow orders, but Austrian private Friedrich Braun (Aleiferopoulos) single-handedly saves the lives of the women and children involved.

The two strands, past and present, unfold in parallel: German government lawyer Caroline Martin (Roos) is trying to avoid making reparations for the massacre, proud at having never lost a case. She visits Kalavryta and meets the only survivor, writer Nicholas Andreou, on his last legs. Out of the blue Martin then resigns, claiming the payout should go ahead. But not before she pays a ‘tea and sympathy’ visit to private Braun’s widow Frau Voss (Krige) in Thal, Austria, proving there to be one good German and one good Austrian in this war crime saga.

DoP Yorgos Rahmatoulin’s images are as uninspired as script and direction, Echoes hovers between sensationalist hyper-realism and soppiness ultimately lacking the gravitas to do justice to such a momentous episode in history. AS

NOW ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

 

Bergamo Film Meeting 2022

After the online experience of past few years BERGAMO FILM MEETING puts the audience and the idea of gathering together again central to this year’s live festival.

From March 26 to April 3, the 40TH EDITION celebrates cinematographic culture and auteur cinema kicking off with CIN’ACUSMONIUM, an acousmatic projection of the restored 35mm copy of Andrej Tarkovskij’s Stalker (1979). The legendary Russian filmmaker’s masterpiece relives on the screen in an all-encompassing sound-around cinematic experience on Friday, March 25th.

Costa-Gavras

Bergamo dedicates a complete retrospective to the master of political cinema of Costa-Gavras (Konstantinos Gavras), who was born in Loutra Iraias (Athens) on February 13, 1933. From his mother, Greek Orthodox from his mother’s side his father, originally from Odessa (Ukraine) was a Resistance fighter during World War II, and this influenced his career as a political filmmaker. In 1949 he moved to Paris where, in 1956, he obtained French citizenship. There, he attended the Institut Des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC). Later, he worked as assistant director to the likes of Yves Allegret, Jacques Demy and René Clément, rising to the international stage with Z (France/Algeria 1969), an amusing political satire that won the Jury Prize at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture a year later. Z is the powerful portrayal of a political assassination in Greece. The film is inspired by a novel by Vassilī Vassilikos on the Lambrakis affair, a university professor and left-wing deputy who died in 1963 “accidentally” hit by a car.

AMEN

 

Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murders), his first feature, was a thriller based on a detective novel by Sébastien Japrisot and produced with the support of his friends Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, who are also the film’s main characters. World War II drama Un homme de trop (Shock Troops, 1967), set in Nazi-occupied France.  L’aveu (The Confession, 1970), adapted by Jorge Semprun, followed a Czechoslovakian government minister, Jewish communist Arthur London, who was accused of treachery by party members and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Stalinist court. The film had clear implications for Costa-Gavras himself, and actors Yves Montand and Simone Signoret and forced them to re-consider their own fierce allegiance to communism.

Missing

Politics coloured his subsequent films. État de siège (State of Siege) (1973) was a direct attack on US support of South American authoritarian regimes. Séction spéciale (Special Section,1975) explores the Vichy trials, and caused an outcry in France, forcing Costa-Gavras to change tack to lighter themes with   Clair de femme (Womanlight, 1979), an intimate drama featuring Yves Montand and Romy Schneider.

Hollywood beckoned in 1982 offering Costa-Gavras  with the opportunity of directing Missing, a  denunciation of the US responsibilities in the post-Allende Chilean dictatorship. In Hanna K. (1983), Jill Clayburgh plays a Jewish lawyer struggling with a conflicted defence case, a Palestinian man accused of terrorism.

Music Box

Conseil de famille (Family Business, 1986), is a comedy about the internal contradictions of the bourgeoisie. In 1988 he shot Betrayed, a denunciation of the horrors of the Ku Klux Klan; the following year came Music box, a judicial drama in which a lawyer (Jessica Lange) takes on the defence of her father, a Hungarian exile accused of war crimes as a member of the pro-Nazi Hungarian militias. Less successful were La petite apocalypse (The Little Apocalypse, 1993), a satire on the failures and weaknesses of the European left, shot in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Mad City (1997), With Amen. (2002) Costa-Gavras tackles the thorny question of the relations between Pope Pius XII and the Nazi regime.

His latest films are: Le Couperet (The Ax, 2005), about a frustrated laid-off employee who is willing to kill his job competitors to get back on his feet; Eden à l’Ouest (Eden is West, 2009), a drama about illegal immigrants; Le Capital (Capital, 2012), about the corrupt and ruthless power struggle in the international world of finance), and Adults in the Room (2019), about the financial crisis that exploded in Greece in 2015 and the rise leftist politician Syriza to government.

BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2022

 

 

Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)

Dir: Joseph Cates | Cast: Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray, Elaine Stritch | US Thriller 84′

Although the Italian giallo officially dates from Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), the genre didn’t bloom until the early seventies; with the unfortunate result that they are indelibly associated for this viewer with ugly colour and even uglier clothes and haircuts.

This Neo-noir thriller gives an interesting glimpse of what gialli would have looked like had they been made just a few years earlier when a modicum of taste still prevailed, and male dress sense (an oxymoron if ever there was one after the late sixties) hadn’t yet been wrecked by the bizarre notion that flares and sideburns looked cool, and sharp suits, thin ties and short back and sides were still standard male apparel (it’s nice to see Dan Travanty (sic) and Bruce Glover, for example, looking so young and clean-cut; the former playing a deaf mute, the latter an unnerving security adviser). That goes for the women too: I’ve never seen Elaine Stritch look more chic and glamorous than she does as the elegant lipstick lesbian she plays here.

Most of the conventions of the giallo are present and correct in this movie: including voyeurism, transvestism, flashbacks depicting childhood sexual traumas, the stalking of women, weird camera angles making us complicit with the killer, obtrusive musical accompaniment and cops who make the Keystone Kops look like Maigret (the unprofessional way the detective behaves at the end has to be seen to be believed!). But Who Killed Teddy Bear could only have been made at that fault-line in the mid-sixties when censorship was being rapidly eroded and subjects that would have been absolutely taboo just a couple of years earlier could even be hinted at; but before the descent into full-frontal crudity that makes so much modern cinema almost unwatchable.

Leon Tokatyan’s script is liberally sprinkled with words like “pervert” and “hooker”, for example; but there’s no swearing. And of course – although no one had any inkling of this at the time – it was made just at the moment that the black-&-white feature film as the cinema’s default setting was on the verge of disappearing forever. Six years earlier cameraman Joseph Brun had shot one of the most breathtaking black-&-white features ever made, Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959); so when I saw his name on the (extremely stylishly designed) credits I knew I was in for something special. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

No U-Turn (2022) Berlinale Film Festival

Dir.: Ike Nnaebue; Documentary; Nigeria/France/South Africa/Germany 2022, 92 min.

In 1995 filmmaker Nnaebue made a gruelling and abortive journey from his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria to Tangier in Morocco, ending up in Bamako, Mali. Now twenty years older, and wiser, he retraces his steps to discover what makes today’s migrants risk life and limb for an uncertain future in Europe.

The way back is teeming with his disenchanted compatriots who are prepared for the dangers awaiting them – thanks to social media that never enlightened them back then. “Nigeria has not enough to fulfil their dreams”. NO U-TURN keeps up a poetic rhythm in the face of the harsh realism of migrant life. For Nnaebue story-telling has been a primary motivation since childhood, when he ‘fell in love with the moon’: “I thought he was following me, and I knew I had a friend for life”. He also at a young age that stories influence people, and this is what led him to become a filmmaker.

Most of the arduous journey takes place by bus – apart from the last leg from Mauritania to Morocco, where Nnaebue resorts to a plane, Moroccan authorities forbidding him to film. On the first leg of the trip he meets a plucky Nigerian woman called Anita, who relates her rough time in  North Africa where the Algerians were hostile towards West Africans, beating up the men and raping the women. But Anita is undeterred, and is positive she’ll make it to Spain to join her sister, this time around.

Few women travelled alone back in the 1990s. Nowadays, women, particularly minors, are prey to sex traffickers. A Nigerian at the border of Togo and Burkina Faso tells horrific tales about the young Nigerian women’s fate: “They are being fooled, some under-aged girls are raped to death”. Women are particularly vulnerable having left their kids back in Nigeria, promising to send money back to their families once in Europe.

Reaching his previous turning point in Bamako, Nnaebue is filled with nostalgia but also determination: this time there will be no u-turn. Back in the 1990s he remembers doing a six-year car mechanic apprenticeship in the city, and although he fell out with his boss, who was supposed to give him the start capital for his own business, it opened the door to his filmmaking career.

At the last stop of his trek in Tangier, Nnaebue meets two young women, Sandra and Laura, who are begging on the streets to save money for a fibre boat to get them to Spain. The film crew accompanies the duo on their reconnaissance mission at the beach. Their plans are hazardous to say the least: the marines will chase them, and hopefully fish them out of the water if they capsize. But they are undeterred, they will try until they succeed – tracing the data of the shipping forecast will help.The migrants all share the ethos of “a journey of no return”. Home and family will be left behind, along with of way life and their culture, tempted away by the dream of a better life. But the grass is rarely greener, just different. DoP Jide Akinleminu’s lively and impressive images of this mammoth trip, often belie the sobering reality. AS

BERLINALE FIM FESTIVAL \ SPECIAL MENTION \ ENCOUNTERS 2022

 

Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Dir: Ahmir ‘Questlove” Thompson | US Doc, 118’

The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is the subject of this dynamite documentary from Ahmir ‘Questlove” Thompson ‘proudly’ showcasing that musical celebration of Black culture, fashion and history.

Back in the day – and we’re talking about the Sixties (and even the 1920s, 30, and ’40s) – everyone loved Black music, not because it was Black but because it was rhythmic, soulful and cool. But maybe that’s because I had a father who hummed, danced and played on the piano those heady tunes from Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and more.

Soul followed on in the same effervescent way, the syncopated jazz of his era becoming the sinuous and sensual soul of my student days: music from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, Marvyn Gaye, Mahalia Jackson and the Supremes.

Thompson revisits this darkly glamorous era in a New York concert that coincided with the much higher profile of Woodstock just down the road. Now that was my brother’s territory: The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Joni Mitchell. The Harlem affair somehow got buried under the weight of Woodstock, but why, when the music was just as fabulous – I never thought about ‘Black’ music – just music I liked…and I would been there like a shot given the opportunity…years later.

In Harlem’s Mount Morris 300,000 – mostly Black- fans gathered to enjoy a series of free ‘gigs’ and Thompson has assembled a treasure trove of archive footage that tethers the era to the present with just a smattering of talk heads that enrich rather than diminish the musical experience. MT

OSCAR WINNER FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE | BEST DOCUMENTARY EE BAFTAS 2022 | NOW IN CINEMAS

Master Cheng (2019)

Dir.: Mika Kaurismäki; Cast: Chu Pak Hong, Anna-Maiya Tuokko, Lucas Hsuan, Kaari Väänäen, Matti Loiri; Finland/China 2019, 114 min.

This film version of Hanno Oravisto’s novel could have been a zany oddball comedy but Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki turns it into a charmless predictable romcom far removed from his brother Aki’s dystopian scenarios and dark humour.

Cheng (Pak Hong) is a recently bereaved widow from Shanghai who fetches up at Sirkka’s Diner in the remote Finnish hamlet of Pohjanjoki hoping to track down an old friend and repay his loan. Neither the regulars Rompainen (Väänäen) and Vesa (Loiri) nor the owner and Chef Sirkka (Tuokko) can help. But Sirkka offers the mysterious outsider work and a place to stay with his son Niu Niu (Hsuan) in a small act of kindness that will change her life forever.

Master Cheng soon transforms Sirkka’s ‘Bangers and Mash” venue into the talk of the town. Cancer-sufferer Rompainen is the fist to reap the benefits of Cheng’s refined Chinese cuisine, and tourists and care home patients alike flock to the restaurant. Sirkka and Cheng soon become romantically involved before the police intervenes when Cheng’s Visitor visa runs out.

DoP Jari Mutikainen goes for minimalism and idyllic panorama shots of the stunning landscape in Lapland, but there is simply no chemistry between Pak Hong and Tuokko. Hsuan’s Niu Niu is pushed to the back burner with Cheng forced to put up with embarrassing acts of endurance before being accepted into the male community The Master turns out to be the quite the opposite of its title – no excuses here for Mika Kaurismäki’s 39th directional credit. AS

IN CINEMAS 21 MARCH 2022

 

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Wri/Dir: Joel Coen | Cast: Frances McDormand, Denzel Washington, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter | US drama, 107’

This elegantly crisp version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play already looks like a modern classic, a cross between Dreyer’s Ordet and Ken Russel’s The Devils thanks to Oscar hopefuls Bruno Delbonnel, Stefan Dechant, and Nancy Haigh who have created a magnificent yet pared-down spectacle that manages to retain the intimacy of the stage.

Joel Cohen’s first solo outing behind the camera stars his wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth and Denzel Washington in the main role. Both bring a heady contemplative quality to the murderous machiavellian couple, but the standout is Kathryn Hunter who trebles up as The Witches in a particularly haunting performance that feels otherworldly but jester-like. A conspiracy of ravens give an inspired and deeply terrifying touch. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE and on APPLE TV

 

Mutzenbacher (2022) Mubi

Dir.: Ruth Beckermann; Documentary; Austria 2022, 100 min.

After her much lauded 2016 film The Dreamed Ones that centred on correspondence between poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, Mutzenbacher would make a better radio play than a feature film. The Austrian writer/director invites a group of men from all walks of life to read excerpts from the pornographic 1906 novel “Josefine Mutzenbacher” by Bambi author Felix Salten.

Banned as a novel, with its authorship contested in court. Mutzenbacher tells the story of a down at heel Viennese sex worker who, according to the author, revelled in being abused from an early age.

The men are invited to share their thoughts on the novel, the majority viewing the “olden days” of the 20th century in a positive light in contrast to today where women are viewed as the ‘victims’ rather then the welcome recipients of unsolicited sexual attention, more so if they are minors. Most of the men fail to take into account that the author was a male, middle-class white man who skews the narrative from his own perspective claiming his heroine enjoyed his advances, even her own father makes her out to be horny at the tender age of ten: “Women had fun with men back in the day, now the focus is always negative, like toxic masculinity.”

For Josefine, even being examined by a doctor is purportedly sexually arousing – especially when her father is in the same room. Only a few of the men point out that children like Josefine were in fact made to feel guilty, questioning whether they were at fault in the first place. It appears that fear and lust make for arousing bedfellows. Even incest is described by Salten as an overwhelmingly pleasurable experience. Josephine’s resume says it all: “We are pounded, they pound us, that’s all there is to it.”

A shame then that such an important and timely debate should be undermined by Beckermann, who must have thought that reducing everything to a stripped down version of text would somehow enhance the audience’s understanding. A hundred minutes of verbal battering in a single room is in the end self-defeating: instead of revealing the “male gaze”, the lack of any structure or aesthetic concept simply diminishes the argument, levelling everything out into a repetitive experience. AS

NOW ON MUBI | Best Director Prize | BERLINALE ENCOUNTERS 2022

Elephant Walk (1954)

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

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

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

Axiom (2022) Berlinale: Encounters 2022

Jöns Jönsson  | Cast: Moritz von Treuenfels, Deniz Orta, Marita Breur, Ben Plunkett Reynolds | Sweden, Drama 108′

Moritz von Treuenfels is the captivating presence at the centre of Jöns Jönsson’s unconvincing drama that wants be intriguing but grows less so as it unfolds. Cutting a swathe through his friends and colleagues Treuenfels is Julius a suave young German from an aristocratic background who is working in a museum before taking up a scholarship in Tokyo.

But there’s something bogus and hollow about this tousle-haired cypher who lords over his friends and colleagues with his intellectual pretensions and glib repartee: Julius is not what he seems to be, yet he fills every frame with a hypnotic charisma luring us into a drama that  speaks volumes about outward appearances and the emptiness of surface charm. There’s nothing remotely interesting or likeable about any of these people; his one dimensional opera singer girlfriend Marta (Breuer) or her tutor Mr Langley (Plunkett). Julius’ friends are there to serve the narrative but do not stand out in any way.

This kind of drama is tricky to pull off successfully and sadly Jöns Jönsson is hoisted by his own petard: in creating a story about the vacuousness of modern ideals of self-reinvention, he axiomatically ends up with a film that feels as empty and unsatisfying as its premise and goes into a dead end. MT

SCREENING AT BERLINALE 2022 | PANORAMA

 

Death on the Nile (2021)

Dir.: Kenneth Branagh; Cast: Gal Gadot, Arnie Hammer, Annette Benning, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Mackay, Letitia Wright, Russell Brand, Sophie Okonedo. Tom Bateman, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders; USA 2022, 127 min.

Kenneth Branagh’s DEATH ON THE NILE has really been through the mill. Based on the Agatha Christie novel of 1937 and adapted by Michael Green, it originally planned to be premiered in 2019, delays on the shoot led to the first postponement, followed by Disney buying up Fox and the feature, followed by the pandemic – and to make things really worse, accusations of rape and other crimes against Arnie Hammer, one of the leading stars. A re-shoot with a Hammer replacement was seen as too costly, and so here we are.

The first surprise is the black-and white prologue, featuring Poirot (a digitally rejuvenated Branagh) in the trenches in WWI, saving his compatriots, but being wounded in the process. More heartbreak is on the way, this time emotionally, leading us to the main course of love and lust, starting in 1937 in a London Jazz club with the impressive blues singer Salome Otterbourne (Okonedo). The latter will join Poirot on the pleasure boat ‘Karnak’, cruising the Nile, where just-married couple Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle (Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Hammer) are celebrating their recent wedding. But the couple are also engaging the help of the Belgian sleuth to fight off threats; mainly coming from the direction of Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mackay), who until recently was Simon’s lover, before super rich Linnet snatched hunky but impoverished Simon from Jacqueline’s clutches.

The action eventually kicks off after an hour: a falling pillar at the Abu Simbel temple just missing the Doyles. We have been pleasantly entertained by painter Euphemia (Benning), mother of Poirot’s best friend Bouc (Bateman), mysterious Dr. Bessner (Brand), Linnet’s thieving accountant (Fazal) and odd couple Mrs. Bowers (French) and Marie van Schuyler (Saunders). But before the first deadly shot is fired, and the victim identified, we are left in limbo. The final reveal makes up for some of the slack, but this Christie adaptation is outclassed by Branagh’s 2017 much less expensive Murder on the Orient Express, let alone John Guillermine’s Death on the Nile version of 1978, with the great Peter Ustinov as the Belgian sleuth.

Strangely enough, Greek DoP Haris Zambarloukas has not only shot Branagh’s MURDER, but also the director’s recent black & white beauty Belfast, costing perhaps ten percent of his latest Agatha Christie adventure budget. Shot in 65 mm (non-anamorphic), DEATH glitters, but it has no atmosphere, which is hardly surprising: only the second unit was dispatched to Egypt, while the remainder was shot against the ‘green wall’ and in a big tank in the studio. CGI can give you sparks, but it feels as hollow as the whole undertaking.

Branagh sadly fails Agatha Christie’s sparkling who-done-it which ends in melancholy mood at the same London Jazz club, Poirot at his maudlin best in the epilogue. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE AND ACROSS EUROPE  FEBRUARY 2022

Kinoteka Polish Film Festival | 9 March – 3 April 2022

KINOTEKA celebrates its 20th Anniversary back on the big screen.

From 9th March to 3rd April 2022, the festival showcases the latest Polish films along with some vintage cult classics at the ICA and BFI Southbank and at Edinburgh’s prestigious Filmhouse cinema, and enjoy a selection at home on BFI player too.

Amongst the highlights are Jerzy Skolimowski’s IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE’, Andrzej Wajda’s Oscar nominated THE YOUNG LADIES OF WILKO; Andrzej Żuławski’s cult science fiction masterpiece ON THE SILVER GLOBE and Agnieszka Holland’s potent political period piece FEVER. 

 

The Closing Night film at the BFI Southbank, will be the UK premier of the newly restored 1924 black and white silent FORBIDDEN PARADISE (1924) directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring his Polish muse, Pola Negri as a luminous Catherine the Czarina accompanied by la live score specially composed by Marcin Pukaluk.

 

NEW POLISH CINEMA

The Opening Night film, Agnieszka Woszczyńska’s award-winning thriller SILENT LAND (2021) Also headlining this strand of New Polish Cinema is Poland’s OSCAR hopeful LEAVE NO TRACES, (2021), Jan P. Matuszyński’s award-winning story of police brutality in communist Poland set in 1983. Other films in this strand include 25 YEARS OF INNOCENCE (below) a huge box office hit in Poland. SONATA, the inspirational, true story of a deaf pianist which won the Audience Award and Best Debut Actor at the Gdynia Polish Film Festival. 1970 is a compelling documentary looking at political unrest during that time when a series of strikes and riots took place against the communist government in Poland. The film draws upon archival photography, recently-discovered telephone conversations and stop-motion animation to give a new understanding of what actually happened and why. This screening will be followed by the Q&A with director Tomasz Wolski.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS AT JW3

JW3 is to screen two outstanding and incredibly powerful films during the Festival. Ryszard Brylski’s THE DEATH OF ZYGIELBOJM  the true and little known story of the tragic fate of Szmul Zygielbojm, an exiled Jewish political activist who committed suicide in London in 1943 to draw attention to the plight of Jews in Europe. Seen through the eyes of a child called Tomek, Konrad Aksinowicz’s moving and raw BACK TO THOSE DAYS at his life with an alcoholic father, who eventually destroys his family life and childhood.

Full details on all of the films taking part in the Festival and a link to book tickets can be found on Kinoteka’s dedicated website:-https://kinoteka.org.uk/

 

Return to Dust (2022)

Dir: Li Ruijin | Cast: Renlin Wu, Hai-Qing | China, Drama 131′

“Love is not about staring at each other, but looking in the same direction”

The sun shines and each frame glows with painterly charm in this modest but momentous story of love and adversity for two people rejected by their family after an arranged marriage, and forced into a humble existence on their isolated homestead in rural northwestern China, 

Return to Dust is the latest from Chinese independent director Li Ruijin who scores subtle political points behind his perfectly pitched storyline that speaks volumes about the China’s rapid urban shift. The focus is farming couple Ma (Renlin Wu) and Gui (Hai-Qing) as they face the odds together in the rugged landscape with only their livestock for company. Tenderness contrasts with dark humour as Ruijin depicts the crass materialism of modern China with the poetic honesty of the past: one scene features their donkey alongside a flash new BMW signalling that time, inevitably, must move on. 

Each day a new challenge presents itself and Ma and Cao seem to cope without drama fronting up placidly seemingly unsurmountable hardship in the haunting beauty of the remote setting. Li Ruijun – best known for his 2015 feature River Road – focuses on the growing strength of their relationship as it transforms from initial diffidence to enduring love. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM FRIDAY | BERLINALE 2022 | GOLDEN BEAR COMPETITION 

 

Concerned Citizen (2022) Berlinale | Panorama 2022

Dir.: Idan Haguel; Cast: Shlomi Bertonov, Ariel Wolf, Ilan Hazan; Israel 2022, 81 min.

Israeli writer/director Idan Haguel tries hard debunk a few urban myths with an uninvolving drama that ends up as a farce.

Gay couple Ben (Bertenov) and Raz (Wolf) have moved to a downmarket part of Tel Aviv where they’ve have more space for themselves and their new baby. The hope is the kid will knock their relationship into shape and bring them closer together; they’ve paid a woman in a catalogue thousands to bear their bundle of joy, but somehow this detached approach to life seeps through the rest of the film.

For Ben and Raz the focus is on fitness, and they prance around their swanky new place wizzing up healthy drinks and exercising. “In five years, this will be a different area” is their positive take on the multi-cultural set up, which is still in its rather wild infancy.

As a gesture of neighbourly goodwill, Ben has planted a tree in the street below their apartment and takes a dismal approach to the two immigrants from Africa using it as a leaning post. Ben asks them politely to respect nature, but to no avail. The police respond to his complaint – and beat up one of the young men, who subsequently dies. Ben – the concerned citizen – then makes a call to the security forces. It turns out the victim lived below and Ben, rather at odds with himself, joins his grieving family at mourning along with his therapist (Hazan).

All the prejudices and latent racial tensions soon emerge at a therapy group session.

We are also watching some animation of happy people in the midst of new apartment blocks, mixing joyfully. But we do not need this reminder to learn about the ideological conflicts in existing in Israeli society, caused by the ‘polite’ racism of a so-called progressive middle class, pretending to be in Sweden or Norway. DoP Guy Sahaf succeeds very much in showing the emptiness of modernity, trying to hide the real conflict. But the structured, overly didactic approach never lets the feature flow, and leaves the audience emotionally disconnected. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Without Warning (1952)

Dir: Arnold Laven | US Thriller

I became aware of this film years ago from a passing reference to it in Carlos Clarens’ ‘Horror Movies’, which had led me to assume that it was better known than it actually is.

The maiden production of the company Levy-Gardner-Laven (later to become very active in TV), and the directorial debut of Arnold Laven, Without Warning! isn’t particularly original – following as it does in the well-worn footsteps of flavourful location-shot police procedurals like The Naked City; and the ending wraps things up a little too abruptly. But as photographed by the veteran Joseph Biroc it treats us to a magnificent tour of some of the seamier parts of Los Angeles as they looked in 1951 (no crime film set in Los Angeles at this time, for example, became complete without a visit to its storm drains, which duly put in an appearance). One of many memorable images the film provides is the all-blonde police decoy squad who resemble something out of The Man from UNCLE; and despite the ultra-noirish title sequence and the occasional night scene, much of the action actually takes place bathed in glorious Californian sunlight for a change.

There are hints that the grip of the Breen Office was beginning to weaken (the wedding ring visibly worn by the blonde that Martin picks up in a bar, for example, would have been vetoed a few years earlier for depicting adultery), and the killer in this film is obviously motivated by sex; although the fact that we later learn that he’s bearing a grudge at the blonde wife who left him makes him more of a sore loser than the all-out sadistic sex fiend the film initially promises (and doesn’t really square with the glee he takes in reading about the case in the papers).

Edward Binns, who plays the police lieutenant, will be most familiar to viewers as Juror 6 in 12 Angry Men, and both he and killer Adam Williams were in North by Northwest; the former again playing a detective and the latter again playing a gardener. @RichardChatten

Cinema Made in Italy 3 – 7 March 2022

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY is back in a live edition to kick off the Spring with the latest crop of Italian releases. The 12th edition takes place at Cine Lumiere, in London’s South Kensington, and is supported by Istituto Luce Cinecitta and the Italian Cultural Institute.

 

THREE FLOORS (Tre piani) | Director: Nanni Moretti

Nanni Moretti pictures everyday life in a Rome apartment in his latest domestic drama in which he also stars alongside an stunning cast of Adriano Giannini, Margherita Buy, Riccardo Scamarcio and Alba Rohrwacher. Enjoyable if rather conventional this is solid entertainment, the pithy plot turning on a series of events that will have a far reaching impact on all concerned: the women are the peacemakers; the men the troublemakers. Beautifully written and well performed Three Floors had its world premiere at last year’s Cannes film festival and is released in UK cinemas on 18 March

CALIFORNIE | Directors: Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman

The five-year journey of a young woman from Morocco who tries to find her place in the sun after moving to a village near Naples: her dreams, her disappointments and her loneliness.

FREAKS OUT – Director: Gabriele Mainetti

Franz Rogowski is the reason to see this needlessly violent drama that follows the lives of three circus performers in 1940s Rome.

FUTURA | Directors: Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher

A portmanteau travelogue that travels the length and breadth of Italy focusing on teenagers’ hopes and dreams for the future.

THE PEACOCK’S PARADISE (IL PARADISO DEL PAVONE) | Director: Laura Bispuri

After her impressive debut Sworn Virgin  and follow-up Daughter of Mine Laura Bispuri’s latest feature is an underpowered domestic drama that drifts around aimlessly despite its impressive cast led by Veteran star Dominique Sanda who plays a mother celebrating her birthday with daughter Caterina (Maya Sansa) and daughter in law Adelina (Alba Rohrwacher who won Best Actress for her central role in Sworn Virgin.

AMERICA LATINA | Director: Damiano D’Innocenzo, Fabio D’Innocenzo

Stylishly empty psychodrama that starts with promise but rapidly goes downhill from the much feted D’Innocenzo brothers who brought us Berlinale winner Bad Tales and wrote the multi-garlanded Dogman it sees a happy and successful man brought down by his own paranoia.

A CHIARA | Director: Jonas Carpignano

The Guerrasio family and their friends gather to celebrate Claudio and Carmela’s oldest daughter’s 18th birthday. There is a healthy rivalry between the birthday girl and her 16-year-old sister Chiara, as they compete on the dancefloor. It is a happy occasion, and the close-knit family is in top form. However, everything changes the next day when Claudio disappears. Chiara starts to investigate; as she gets closer to the truth, she is forced to decide what kind of future she wants for herself.

THE TALE OF KING CRAB (RE GRANCHIO | Directors: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis

Italy, nowadays. Some elderly hunters reminisce about the tale of Luciano together.
Late 19th century, Luciano lives as a wandering drunkard in the Tuscan countryside. His lifestyle and constant opposition to the despotic local prince have turned him into an outcast for the community. In an ultimate vengeful move to protect (from the lord) the woman he loves, Luciano commits the unforgivable. Now an unfortunate criminal, he is exiled to Tierra del Fuego.
There, with the help of ruthless gold diggers, he seeks a mythical treasure, paving his way towards redemption. Yet, little but greed and madness can grow on these barren lands.

WELCOME VENICE | Director: Andrea Segre

Two brothers are in conflict over the way the Venetian lagoon has been transformed, and the identity of the city and its residents has drastically changed.

COMEDIANS | Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Theatrical adaptation: a group of aspiring comedians at a Manchester evening school reunite for their last rehearsal before performing for an agent from London.

CINEMA MADE IN ITALY | 3 -7 March 2022

 

The Great Wall (2016)

Dir: Zhang Zimou | Cast: Matt damon, Tian Jing, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau | 103’ Action Drama

I actually find the idea that the Great Wall of China was built to keep out alien invaders rather fun; and if you can buy that, the story that follows isn’t too hard to take. The basic narrative of ‘The Great Wall’ has seen service before in classics like ‘Zulu’ and ‘Assault on Precinct 13’, while the monsters (collectively called the Tao Tei) are the usual slavering CGI nightmares with rows of ferocious teeth; the later emphasis on the strategic role of their queen recalling ‘Starship Troopers’.

English director Clio Bernard had a hand in the script set in the 11th Century where the action is fast, furious and very noisy; with predictable pauses for the occasional bit of hushed Eastern-style philosophising. Ironically it’s when the action transfers from the Great Wall itself to the capital that it becomes much more interesting to look at, the capital providing a far better backdrop for veteran director Zhang Yimou to display the bold use of colour for which he is renowned (most notably in a climactic scene set in a tower inevitably lined with stained glass windows).

The return to the capital by balloon of Commander Lin Mae of the Crane Troop (Jing Tian) with her female comrades-in-arms is another visual highlight, and throughout the film it’s good to see women serving on the front line (in blue, for a change, with matching capes), albeit usually in the background; and Lin Mae’s armour as Commander doesn’t seem to have been designed to immediately distinguish her from her subordinates. @RichardChatten

 

Beautiful Beings (2022)

Dir/Wri: Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson | Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Czech Republic – 2022 – 123 min – Icelandic Cast: Birgir Dagur Bjarkason,, Snorri Rafn Frimannson, Blair Hinriksson, Askar Einar Palmason.

Life-threatening violence and magical realism make for an imaginative feature that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality in modern day Iceland. Beautiful Beings is the latest triumph from awarding winning Icelandic auteur and producer Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson (Heartstone) whose distinctive lyrical style makes him one of the most impressive talents on the international indie film scene.

Addi (Birger Dagur Bjarkason) is the charismatic boy at the centre of it all. Raised by a clairvoyant mother, he takes pity on a bullied misfit Balli (Askell Einar Palmason) in an impressive debut) and brings him into his gang of teenage hooligans. And the relationship will be the salvation of both of them in this full-throttle character drama that explores teenage-hood in all its dimensions from aggression and violence to loyalty, love and sex.

As the boys behaviour escalates from horseplay to murderous violence, Addi – under the influence of his quietly inspirational mother (Anita Briem) – is touched by series of enlightening dreams that sees him evolve into a sympathetic light-bringer rather than the destructive force he has ground into, along with his friends. But the director avoids simplistic solutions in a subtle narrative that uses its ample running time to explore every single chink of the boys’ developing personalities and how they react with each other, Addi’s dark side is fully fleshed out in a captivating performance from Hinriksson showing how his newfound intuition will have transformative effects on the rest of the gang, not least the most troubled boy Siggi (Snorri Rafn Frimannsson). Silver Bear awarded DoP Starla Brandth Grovlen (Victoria) works wonders with his camera to make Iceland into a summer paradise that provides the luminous backcloth to this human vision of Hell. MT

Signature Entertainment presents Beautiful Beings on Digital Platforms 19th December

 

The Souvenir: Part II

Dir/Wri: Joanna Hogg | Cast; Honor Swinton Byrne, Tilda Swinton, James Spencer Ashworth, Richard Ayoade | UK Drama

Joanna Hogg continues the impressionistic reflection on her twenties in The Souvenir Part II that sees her coming to terms with the abusive relationship that ended in tragedy for her boyfriend, Anthony (an archly sardonic Tom Burke) the first part.

There’s a strong feeling that Julie (Swinton Byrne) invested far more in the relationship than did Anthony. Somehow his caddish manner, pinstriped suit and ‘foreign office’ job made her believe he was worthy of consideration, love even; yet behind it all he was a fantasist and a drug addict who undermined her (“you’re lost and you’ll always be lost”) and stole from her to fund his habit. Hogg brilliantly epitomises this kind of fucked up weirdness of the 1980s that many repressed middle class girls still tolerated in the name of love, and the decent straightforwardness of her comforting parents (Tilda Swinton and James Spencer Ashworth) who provide a welcome sense of equilibrium that kept her going off the rails. But Julie resolves to go back to her London flat where the ‘love story’ forms the more authentic ‘autobiographical’ narrative for her graduation film, after the bogus script about poverty stricken Sunderland is vehemently rejected by her tutors.

Anthony remains the glowering elephant in the room, her colleagues, friends and family tiptoeing around the issue, not wanting to offend Julie who continues to elevate his memory with a solemn respect when secretly he was despised by everyone else accept his long-suffering parents, who gradually fade into the background. At one point Julie tentatively asks her flighty filmmaker friend Patrick (a standout Ayoade): “do you think Anthony worked for the Foreign Office?” He firmly bursts her bubble with: “he was a junkie – move forward”.

Still processing her feelings of grief Julie understandably lacks the conviction to take charge and direct her cast and crew with the confidence they desperately need, and Hogg deftly handles the ‘film in a film’ structure with its scenes of naturalistic on-set mayhem between all of them. Ably supported by her real life mother (Swinton), Honor Swinton Byrne glides through her performance with decorum avoiding histrionics yet imbuing Julie with all the pent up anxiety and hurt her upbringing has forced her to internalise. MT

THE SOUVENIR II IS IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 4 FEBRUARY 2022

 

 

England, My England (1995)

Dir.: Tony Palmer; Cast: Simon Callow, Michael Ball, Rebecca Front, Lucy Speed, Nina Young, Robert Stephens, Corin Redgrave, Guy Henry; UK 1995, 158 min.

Director Tony Palmer excels in biopic dramas of composers  Shostakovich (Testimony) and Rachmaninov, turns his talents to England’s foremost Baroque composer Henry ‘Harry’ Purcell (1659-1695). This is no mean feat as Purcell was a reclusive character and little is known of his origins. But he was nonetheless prolific, and conductor Sir John Eliot Gardener certainly does his music proud despite often verging on the pedantic.

Michael Ball leads a sterling British cast in the main role of Purcell in a biopic that works on two levels, scripted by John Osborne and Charles Wood. It unfolds in 1960s London where a British playwright is attempting to construct Purcell’s life with little to go by. England, My England touches on the composer’s involvement with Charles II (Callow) and Mary II (Front) and the subsequent monarchs James II (Henry) and William III (Redgrave). Lucy Speed acts the part of Neil Gwyn and there are such treasures as Murray Melvin, Corin Redgrave John Fortune and Bill Kenright, who has sadly only just left us.

John Osborne, who died before the film premiered, turns his venom on the “Little Englanders” – bankers and merchants – in the more contemporary sequences. One of the settings is the same dressing room Osborne enjoyed when he was a ‘mere’ actor, before Look back in Anger fame.

In England of the mind 1660s, freedom of speech was also an explosive topic, as it would continue to be three hundred years later. The first poet Laureate John Dryden (Stephens) has a word or two to say about while the bubonic plague ravished London, before the great fire destroyed most of the city. The later scenes were actually shot in Bulgaria, as part of the first Anglo-Bulgarian co-production.

Purcell’s life, as far as we know of it, was full of tragedy: his wife Frances (Young) was a prolific breeder before she succumbed to small pox, Henry went to an early grave with tuberculosis – other reports suggesting something more sinister. But the music dominates, and Dido’s lament from ‘When I am laid in earth’ from Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas” is deeply affecting.

Had Tony Palmer, now in his eighties and 65 directing credits under his belt, been born in France, he would be famous and probably rich. But sadly his canon is underexposed even though his knowledge of history, music and the arts is encyclopaedic and provides the rich textural references in this enjoyable biopic.

Palmer assisted Ken Russell in his early music portraits like Elgar (for BBC2). Most of Palmer’s features also have a striking visual tone, in this case provided by DoP Nic Knowland who contra-points the 1660 with the decades of the mid-19th century in stunning fashion. The script has so many ideas, comparing and contrasting historical themes, forming a rounded treatise on culture and politics, like many of Palmer’s works about England and the English. Alas, as the saying goes, the prophet in his own land…Here is the film in its full glory. AS

Also AVAILABLE ON DVD

Terra que marca (2022) Berlinale | Forum 2022

Dir: Raul Domingues | Portugal, Doc, 66′

I often wonder why some indie filmmakers stumble with such convolutedly arcane ideas when less is always so much more. With a strong story and a beautiful way of presenting it the rest will soon fall into place as Raul Domingues illustrates with his enchanting debut feature, an ethnographical portrait of nature entitled Terra Que Marca (Striking Land). 

The affirmative circle of life goes on year after year in a small corner of rural Portugal where two people develop an ongoing relationship with nature transforming a barren plot of land in Casal da Quinta into a gift that keeps on giving, cumulatively, as the years roll by.

 

It’s often said that people don’t own the land – it owns them. And that’s true. People return year after year to places that draw them in to an emotional bond that strengthens as time progresses. Domingues bases his narrative on a fable relating to a piece of land that came into his family generations ago and perpetuate a feeling that this land must be nurtured and cared for.

Time is of the essence and Domingues is in no hurry to tell his story dictated by the rhythms of nature, he creates a perfectly balanced structure. Senses, images and sounds blend as the year unfolds from Autumn right through to the end of the second year where the burning down of vegetation provides the ash and minerals to fertilise the loamy soil for the next year’s growth, helped along by a healthy presence of earthworms to mix and aerate the earth.  

Soon the robin redbreast makes his appearance along with some sheep and a clutch of chickens, all taking part in this thriving ecosystem. Grass grows, beans, apples and corn on the cob will flourish along with courgettes, barley, potatoes and maize for bread and polenta. Flowers in the shape of lilies, mallow and roses play their part, producing the pollen for the bees to do their stuff and the season draws to a close again as the orange trees yield a bumper crop weighing down the branches almost to the ground as they multiply in the following autumn.  

Relying on an ambient soundscape, Domingues acts as his own DoP and editor in this magical meditation on the comforting power of nature. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | FORUM STRAND

Sundance Film Festival 2022

Sundance 2022 once again followed the ongoing festival trend in this increasingly pandemic prone era: “festival-goers” were forced to peer into their home screens to watch the selection, rather than enjoying the fresh mountain air and apres ski moments in snowy Park City, Utah.

In the spirit of independent cinema the winners were nevertheless worthwhile in their subject matter, a sardonic Bill Nighy saving things from being too worthy with his cancer-themed drama LIVING described by The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw as “a gentle, exquisitely sad film” set in 1950s London, deftly adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, and directed by Oliver Hermanus, a South African filmmaker who goes from strength to strength building on his previous success with Moffie (Venice 2020).

Bill Nighy appears in Living by Oliver Hermanus, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Number 9 Films/Ross Ferguson.

 

The main festival prizes went to Daniel Roher’s NAVALNY an expansive documentary that follows the increasingly relevant story of nerve agent poisoning survivor and politician Alexei Navalny, lifting the lid on the toxic backstory behind his struggle to survive in Putin’s ongoing regime.

Two Indian brothers choose the urgent plight of a bird known as the Black Kite to raise the profile of New Delhi’s toxic pollution and escalating violence in ALL THAT BREATHES, an impressionistic documentary that won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize. From a makeshift hospital in their tiny basement the brothers look after the endangered creatures that fall daily from the skies into their tender care. Awarding the film 4.5 out of 5, Critic Amber Wilkinson wrote: “(director) Sen could easily just have made an observational documentary about the brothers’ day-to-day work or simply focused on the kites themselves but he stretches its wings much further than that”.

Image courtesy of the Sundance Institute

 

Other features to look out for are CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH an intoxicating love story which won an Audience Award and stars Cooper Raiff as a Bar Mitzvah party host who falls in love with Dakota Johnson’s divorced mother coping with an autistic child.

The tragic life of Diana, Princess of Wales gets another airing (thankfully in documentary form after Pablo Larrain’s ghastly fleshing in his ill-advised recent drama). UK director Ed Perkins’s THE PRINCESS uses a cash of clips and commentary to offer further insight into a tragic story that just keeps on going.

image courtesy of Sundance Institute

 

UTAMA, Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s feature debut and winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Prize, looks at the daily life of an elderly couple surviving against the odds in the challenging climate of the Bolivian Highlands. Another film exploring human stories of endeavour, THE EXILES, was awarded the US Documentary prize for documentarian Violet Columbus who continues her investigation into three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre, a feature she first started shooting in the aftermath to the atrocities in 1989.

And to end on a note of horror, Nikyatu Jusu expands on her TV series ‘Two Sentence Horror Stories’ with her feature debut NANNY that took the Top Jury Prize in the US Dramatic strand. Combining the well-worn themes of alienation, colonialism and privilege it tells the story of a young black woman who discovers strange goings on when she takes a job in an market New York household. MT

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | JANUARY 20-30 2022

 

Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021)

Dir/Wri: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Achouackh Abakar Souleymane, Rihane KHALIL ALIO BRAHIM Youssouf DJAORO FANTA Briya GOMDIGUE | Chad, Drama, 87′

Visual storytelling at its most resplendent Lingui is a simple tale gracefully crafted by a director at the top of his game and brought to life by his talented cast.

In a landlocked Muslim country Lingui (The Sacred Ties) follows Amina an observant single mother living on the margins of a male-dominated society with her teenage daughter Maria. The men not only hold sway, they hold themselves above the law, laying it down harshly for their womenfolk. So the women are forced to play them at their game as we discover when Maria falls pregnant and cannot, by law, have an abortion.

With his vibrant compositions and exquisite framing the director keeps dialogue to a minimum in this filmic ‘whodunnit’ relying on strong cinematic language and a propulsive occasional score by Wasis Diop to show how pleasure occasionally breaks into the harsh realities of life in Chad’s main city of N’Djamena, where a tribal society has given way to strictly enforced Islam with mosque attendance ‘de rigueur’. Woman are expected to be subservient and cover themselves up in public, ritual circumcision is routinely practiced and performed by the women themselves when the girls are still very young. To be an unmarried mother is considered sinful whatever the circumstances and so for Maria the future looks especially bleak. And rumours spread fast.

Amina makes metal household equipment which she sells for a pittance by the roadside, but not enough to pay for illegal medical intervention. Maria is a typical young teenager: proudly defiant and living by her own modern standards, but her pregnancy will take her back to the dark ages of backstreet abortions. Worse still, she won’t reveal the truth until circumstances suddenly point to a solution. MT

Born in Chad, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun first won critical acclaim for his short films before directing his first feature, Bye-bye Africa (Best First Film, Venice Film Festival 1999). In 2010, the Venice Mostra gave him the Robert Bresson Award for his complete works and in 2013, the Fellini Medal awarded by UNESCO.

ON MUBI FROM 4 FEBRUARY 2022

Dual Alibi (1947)

Dir: Alfred Travers | Cast: Herbert Lom, Phyllis Dixey, Terence de Marney, Ronald Frankau | UK Drama

A typically offbeat British National production produced by the ill-fated Louis H. Jackson (the company went bankrupt the following year) and directed by the mysterious Alfred Travers with a plot that feels like a silent continental melodrama. James Wilson’s low keyed photography suits the drab, sordid nature of the story as well as enhancing the believable interaction throughout the film of twin brothers both played by Herbert Lom; achieved with the aid of nimble use of a stand-in, skillful editing and the occasional unostentatious use of trick photography.

Lom’s compelling portrayal of two identical but distinct twin brothers made him a star. Terence de Marney is such a skunk as he gets away with shameless daylight robbery (which the law predictably proves complacently powerless to redress) that I felt even the drastic reprisal taken against him let him off lightly. Holes can doubtless be picked in the plot, but it delivers powerful drama right up to the (very) bitter end.@RichardChatten

Love it was Not (2020)

Dir.: Maya Sarfaty; Documentary with Helena Citron, Roza Citron, Frank Wunsch; Israel/Austria 2020, 86 min.

Israeli writer/director Maya Sarfaty builds on her award-winning graduation short film The Most Beautiful Woman (2016) with this ‘impossible love’ story that took place in Auschwitz-Birkenau  between Helena Citron, a Slovakian Jew, and one of her captors, Viennese SS Unterscharführer (Sergeant) Franz Wunsch. Although the title suggests otherwise, witness reports from seven close female camp survivors claim ‘he loved her to the point of madness”.

And somehow Sarfaty helps, however involuntarily, to cement this statement. True, Wunsch, born in 1922 like Helena, was a sadist who beat male prisoners to death and helped at the infamous ‘Rampen’ selections. But he also risked his life to save Helena and her sister Roza (1932-2005) from certain death, literally storming into the corridor leading to the infamous “Shower Rooms” to free Roza, although he could not save her two children, much to Helena’s chagrin.

Helena and Roza were amongst several thousand Slovakian Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, before the Death Camp was fully functioning. The women helped with the demolition of older buildings and many were killed during the TNT explosions, where they were literally at the ‘coal face’. “We had become animals, ready to push our best friends to the front, just to survive ourselves”.

Helena first met Franz Wunsch on his birthday when he asked the women prisoners to sing a song in his honour. Helena chose the titular German hit song “Liebe war es nie” (Love it was Not) and Franz politely asked her for an encore. This was the beginning. Soon afterwards Helena caught typhoid, which was usually fatal, but Wunsch instructed the camp medics to look after her, and she recovered.

In an interview in 2003, Wunsch shares his memories of Dr. Josef Mengele who warned him “we are all going to be persecuted’ and promised not to denounce Wunsch, who had been wounded at the front and walked with a limp before being assigned to guard duty in Auschwitz. He found himself in active service again after the camp internees were sent on a death march. Helena and Roza were amongst the few who survived.

After the end of WWII Wunsch tried to pursue the relationship, but his letters were ignored and eventually he gave up. In 1972, Helena, who had emigrated to Tel Aviv in Israel, got a letter from Wunsch’s wife, pleading her to come to Vienna, where her husband was on trial for murder. “I know the two of you had been close, and I want you tell the court about it”. Under pressure to stay put, Helena still made the journey to Vienna and told the court about Wunsch’s crimes, but also how he saved her sister’s life. Wunsch was acquitted, the jury members, in an interview, claimed to have been on his side. “It was difficult in Austria to get a guilty-verdict in cases of concentration camp guards” said the state prosecutor of the Wunsch inquiry, very much resigned to the fact.

Wunsch’s daughter Dagmar also has her say, indignant that her father wore a medallion with two only photos: that of Helena and himself. “It should have been Mutti’s photo” says Dagmar, visibly upset. Bizarrely Franz Wunsch cut Helena’s face out of one of the photos, and superimposed it onto that of another woman, adding himself into the collage to make out they were just ordinary lovers in real life.

Artists Shlomit Goper and Ayelet Albeuda assemble a multilevel 3D photo montage together with the cuttings of Wunsch superimposed on the reality of the death camp. DoPs Itay Gross and Ziv Berkovich have taken great care filming the survivors, two of them having died before the feature was released. Helena Citron died in 2007, Franz Wunsch two years later. Their relationship in the hell of Auschwitz was a sort of ‘follie a deux’, unimaginable in the real world, rather like the death camps themselves. AS

FROM 26-28 January 2022 | JW3 Cinema LONDON NW3 | HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

 

Outrage (1950)

Dir: Ida Lupino | Cast: Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, Robert Clarke, Raymond Bond | US Film Noir, 75′

Behind the sensationalistic title lies an earnest social drama of the sort one would already expect of director Ida Lupino. It follows a similar plot arc to the same year’s On Dangerous Ground, in which a human being damaged by the Big Bad City finds peace of a sort out in the country. (Although was it really possible in 1950 for a stranger to walk straight into a job – especially one involving handling money – without any sort of references or proof of identity?).

The assault on Mala Powers is never described more explicitly than as a “vicious criminal attack”, and it COULD simply have been a violent mugging – which would have been bad enough; but the morbid obsession with her on the part of her attacker makes it clear what the full nature of the assault was.

A religious component in the script – caring hunk Tod Andrews who provides Powers with a strong shoulder to lean on is revealed to be a clergyman – is one of many potentially provocative issues left unexplored; and there are various other loose ends. Her attacker is revealed to be not just an average guy who turned nasty, but a messed-up serial offender who progresses from sexual assault to armed robbery. The would-be suitor whose brusque advances prove she’s still not safe from such unwanted attentions even in the Garden of Eden she seems to have found is introduced very abruptly – and despatched even more abruptly with a blow from a monkey wrench. The ending is emotional but highly equivocal; although we have been explicitly told that it will probably take years of therapy and guidance to grant her eventual peace of mind.@RichardChatten

 

Something to Live For (1952)

Dir: George Stevens | Joan Fontaine, Ray Milland, Teresa Wright, Richard Derr | US Drama

The presence of Ray Milland prompts comparisons with The Lost Weekend, but it’s emphasis of the relationship between two mature professional people (and the lush score by Victor Young) makes it resemble a more mellow ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ (although the suspiciously short running time suggests the intervention of the censor).

Despite the star power of its leads (Fontaine, in particular, was never more appealing), the production values (especially George Barnes’ incredible photography), and the fact that George Stevens made it between A Place in the Sun and Shane, Andrew Sarris managed to entirely omit this very low-keyed soap opera with asides about problem drinking from his entry on Stevens in his seminal book ‘American Cinema’. Such lack of ostentation links it to Stevens’ other postwar chamber pieces I Remember Mama (1948) and his final film, The Only Game in Town (1969), another film few people have seen. @RichardChatten

The Enemy (2021)

Wri/Dir: Stephan Streker | Cast: Jeremie Renier, Alma Jodorowsky, Emmanuelle Bercot | Belgium/France Thriller, 105′

Part romantic thriller, part prison drama, the early scenes of The Enemy feel like something Terrence Malick may have made earlier in his career, but is now brought to you by Belgian critic turned director Stephan Streker.

Jeremie Reiner plays lovesick Rottweiler Louis Durieux convinced he’s being cuckolded by his flirty wife Maeva (Alma Jodorowsky) while they frolic through a series of emotionally charged encounters in beachside Ostend, enjoying rampant sex and winning big at the Casino.

But the loved-up atmosphere soon descends into a police procedural after Louis wakes up to tragedy and is forced to hire the services of a lawyer (Bercot as Beatrice Rondas) to defend him in a murder case that grows increasingly opaque when the press (as usual) blow it up out of all proportion. Meanwhile, Louis languishes in prison where he meets some ‘real’ people, sharing a cell with a colourful character called Pablo Pasarela de la Pena (Maritaud).

The film goes off the rails in the drawn out final act where Rondas tries to prove her client’s innocence. Trouble is, Louis is such a repellent, charmless individual and the cartoonish Renier does nothing to make us care whether he’s guilty or not. Zacharie Chasseriaud almost saves the day in an underwritten role as his son, Julien, injecting some much needed charisma into the torpid final stages. 

More fascinating to watch than the film itself is Renier’s hairstyle which looks like the turbo-charged tonsor of a medieval dauphin. Lacquered up to within an inch of its life to start with, it then takes on a different guise in every single scene, literally commanding your entire attention and getting it in lieu of a gripping plot-line. MT

ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

Parallel Mothers (2021)

Dir.: Pedro Almodóvar; Cast: Penélope Cruz; Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde; Spain 2021, 123 min.

This so-called women-centric drama from writer director Pedro Almodóvar promises more than it delivers –  many of the Spanish director’s features it peters out into a soppy soap-opera, overstaying its welcome like an overdue baby after a self-indulgent running time of over two hours.

Janis (Cruz) a fortyish fashion photographer meets teenage run-away Ana (Smit) in the maternity ward, both giving birth at the same day. They are going it alone: Janis’ love-interest Arturo (Elejalde) wants to say with his wife who is undergoing chemotherapy, and Ana has been blackmailed by two men into having intercourse. The baby mix-up is telegraphed, and Ana loses ‘her’ child to cot death. Meanwhile Janis has confirmed her suspicion regarding the baby’s identities, having done maternity tests on the sly. Janis then gets Ana involved as a babysitter: she jumps at the opportunity to escape her overbearing actor mother Teresa (Sánchez-Gijón) and emotionally distant father – and is only too ready to accept Janis as a replacement mother. But will Janis spill he beans? And will Arturo, a forensic archaeologist, leave his wife after her recovery?

In the lush interiors Penélope Cruz takes centre stage, dominating the cast, particularly Smit, who is the sacrificial lamb. Almodóvar even finds time for a political lecture with Arturo leading an excavation of a mass grave of victims of the Spanish Falange of the Spanish Civil War, among them members of Janis’ family. DoP JoséLuis Alcaine conjures up decorus images on the widescreen but fails on the close-ups which somehow come across as wooden and artificial.

Parallel Mothers is on par in the context of Almodóvar’s prolific output a minor work – a showcase of everything he is good at – but falls between entertainment and serious satire, leaving the audience disappointed on all accounts. AS

Nationwide from 28 January 2022

Flag Day (2021)

Dir: Sean Penn | Cast: Sean Penn, Dylan Penn, Mitchell McCormick | US Drama

Sean Penn plays the main role and gets his family involved in this torpidly sanctimonious true life drama about a father who turns to crime to finance his daughter (Dylan Penn).

Filming with kids and animals is a well known caveat, but family members should be included too. And the excuse that breaking the law is somehow ok if you need the money can never be justified. So there’s two reasons why Penn sets off on a dodgy wicket with his latest directing project – which rather than entertaining the audience brings nothing new to a mundane story of a feckless felon – the third is his own lacklustre performance as the charmless grifter at the centre of it all.

Growing up with an unreliable father big on grandstanding statements but mired in debt is never a good start for a girl, and even worse when her mother (Winnick) is also irresponsible. But Jennifer Vogel (Dylan Penn) and her brother somehow cope. Over the years John Vogel swings in and out of her life always vowing to do better, and Jennifer (played by various actors as a kid and pre-teen) generally buys into his lies for reasons that remain a total mystery as the two have absolutely no emotional rapport or redeeming qualities whatsoever – but there’s plenty of slanging matches amid rather idyllic shots of nature and swooping wildlife.

Unsurprisingly Dylan eventually goes her own way in Jez Butterworth’s joyless narrative (based on Jennifer’s own book) that does nothing to endear us to its characters, or even feel for them despite their flaws. We remain disenchanted outsiders desperately willing it all to end. The only flag here is a red one. MT

FLAG DAY IS ON RELEASE FROM 28 JANUARY 2022

 

The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021)

Dir.: Peter Middleton, James Spinney; Documentary narrated by Pearl Mackie; UK 2021, 114 min.

Writers/directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney (Notes on Blindness) have tried with co-writer Oliver Kindeberg to explain the dualism between Chaplin’s professional and personal identity without the use of “talking heads”. A great idea but a flawed one – as it turns out – what we get instead is Pearl Mackie’s incoherent narration (Pearl Mackie) that takes the form of a “flow of consciousness” over-didactic commentary, without any inner artistic logic. The directors have also taken on more than they can chew. How do you do justice to an icon like Chaplin in under two hours? – his life deserves a mini-series. Middleton and Spinney do their best but the time factor makes mistakes unavoidable.

It begins in 1916, the first height of Chaplinmania. Across the US a hunt for the real Chaplin is on, whilst Chaplin-look-alike contests are very popular. The idol itself, Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London in 1889, his drunken father soon made a runner, and Charlie had to witness his mother succumb to mental illness. The room in Kennington was re-created later in The Kid. A female voice tells us that the woman – played by an actor in one of many re-enactments -, is Effie Wisdom, who in an interview in 1983 – she was 92 years old at the time – talks about the late 19th century, when she used to play with Chaplin in the alleys, the latter promising to never forget her.

Chaplin joined Fred Karno’s comedy troupe, who later toured the US. Chaplin was a man of the Vaudeville theatre and considered film work beneath his aspirations – until the producers trebled his salary. In a 1966 “Life Magazine” interview he explains the haphazard creation of the ‘Tramp’ personality in February 1914: discarded costume parts of his own, the boots of a college and Fatty Arbuckle’s pants. But behind the camera Chaplin left nothing to chance. In City Lights he drove everyone mad with a 534 days long chase for the perfect pivotal take. Extended clips from The Kid, Gold Rush and Modern Times lead to The Great Dictator, when Charlie finally talks. Chaplin’s sad 1952 expulsion from the USA, J Edgar Hoover and Hedda Hopper combining, is not given enough space, the documentary comes to life again in the Swiss exile, with interviews with the children Chaplin sired with Oona O’Neill, who was seventeen when she met the 52-year old – a rather common age gap for Chaplin’s relationships with women. Jane and Geraldine speak of the loneliness their mother must have suffered, because their father was cool and distant. “I imagine it would be lonely being the wife of Charlie Chaplin”.

All the so-called revelations about Chaplin’s personal life were known during his life time, leaving the re-enactments of his work as director/writer/composer/editor as the most enjoyable elements. Paul Ryan is Chaplin age 58, Jeff Rawle portraits the 77-year old maestro. DoP James Blann finds just the right aesthetic for the dramatisations, whilst composer Robert Honstein’s aggressive score underlines the directors’ gutsy approach for a “kaleidoscopic documentary collage”, which is another way of admitting to a lack of structure. Still, there is so much archive material, new and old, that everyone will find something to enjoy. AS

ON RELEASE IN UK and IRELAND FROM FRIDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2022

The Sanctity of Space (2021)

Dirs: Renan Ozturk, Freddie Wilkinson | US Doc, 101′

In this new documentary two climbers trace and film the steps of renowned photographer, cartographer, explorer and longtime director of the Boston Museum of Science, Bradford Washburn, who became obsessed with climbing after discovering its heath benefits.

Renan Ozturk and Freddie Wilkinson join fellow climber Zack Smith in this snowbound odyssey plotting their journey on a large photograph that Massachusetts-born Bradford had taken back in the 1930s. But Washburn’s dangerous historical quest with its impressive re-enactments rapidly take a back seat as Sanctity drifts into more personal territory for the three filmmakers who reflect on the fate of their climbing friends between 2007 and 2013. At this point the film becomes snowed under by two many voluble talking heads losing the thrust of the narrative as we zone out  overwhelmed by the magnificent mountains and the awe of nature. MT

IN CINEMAS SOON

 

Funeral in Berlin (1966) Prime video

Dir: Guy Hamilton | Cast: Michael Caine, Oskar Homolka, Eva Renzi, Paul Hubschmid | UK Thriller 102′

Probably the least familiar these days of the original Harry Palmer trio, brought to us by Len Deighton, it shows just what a difference a director makes.

Michael Caine returns as “that shrewd little cockney” from the original, transplanted from Blighty to Berlin, the presence of Oscar Homolka anticipates Billion Dollar Brain, and this time we get to see Major Ross doing the garden with his missus (“How can you work for that dreadful man?”).

The directors of the other two Deighton’s were show-offs; the helmsman on this old pro Guy Hamilton (earlier an assistant on The Third Man – and it shows – and recently in charge of Goldfinger), which ensures a film less flashy than the two that bookend it, but is still good fun nevertheless; and Palmer’s objection to his alias bears a suspicious resemblance to the gang quibbling over their colours in Reservoir Dogs.@RichardChatten

A Human Position (2022)

Dir.: Anders Emblem; Cast: Amalie Ibsen Jensen, Maria Agwumaro; Norway 2021, 76 min.

Norwegian writer/director Anders Emblem (Hurry Slowly) creates a slow-moving, considered portrait of a couple recovering from a trauma, set in the idyllic harbour town of Alesund.

The peaceful settings are not just mere background, but play an instrumental part in the interplay with the human duo: often movement is replaced by still shots, and the protagonists enter spaces or depart, dissolving into the panoramic idyll of placid landscapes, in the same style as Kogonada’s 2017 feature Columbus.

The relationship between journalist Asta Ostram (Jensen) and her partner Maria (Agwumaro) is anything but idyllic. Asta returns to work for the Alesund ‘Sommosposten’ newspaper, where she covers local news. All her colleges welcome her back, but we learn from their worried looks that all is not well with Asta.

At home, where a cat dominates the domestic spaces, the tension is even more obvious. Maria is a furniture restorer, doubling up as a composer on keyboards. She does her best to give her partner enough room for the yet unspecified wound to heal – both physically and psychologically.

Asta copes well with routine assignments, but her heart is not in it. At home, she slowly lets Maria get closer to her, very much the wounded animal. Then Asta comes clean about the case of Aslan, an asylum seeker, who ten years ago entered Norway where he worked in a fish factory near Alesund. Then the company had to close because of infringements of the Labour Laws, and Aslan, who was ‘illegal, faced forcible extradition from Norway. With Asta on the search for the elusive Aslan, she lets her guard down and allows Maria to literally touch her injury. We hope that Asta can also find Aslan before it’s too late.

DoP Michael Mark Lanham uses the setting of Alesund as a background for the protagonists who fade in and out of the momentous landscapes. The attic of the couple’s flat is a peaceful sanctuary, underlining the placid atmosphere, a natural habitat for their cat. Asta’s crisis is real enough, yet the narrative feels more like a fairytale fable where a pervasive dread often engulfs the couple as they work through their individual issues in non-verbal contemplation rather than open conflict. Human Position is an acquired taste, but patience is rewarded with a unique experience. AS

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE | PREMIERED at THE 32nd Tromso Film Festival 2022

Reunion (1989)

Dir: Jerry Schatzberg | Cast: Jason Robards, Christien Anholt, Samuel West, Francoise Fabian, Maureen Kerwin | Thriller 110’

Obviously deeply felt by both writer (Harold Pinter from a novel by Fred Uhlman) and director, immaculately designed on what seems to be a lavish budget by veteran Alexander Trauner (who appears early on playing the caretaker) and photographed in widescreen suffused in a nostalgiac glow by cameraman Bruno De Keyzer.

The leisurely pace at which Reunion unfolds conveys something of the gradualness with which the appalling reality overwhelms its characters, although the slow-burning first hour is disrupted by jarringly emphatic black & white inserts to keep reminding the audience of the calamity about to strike (as if they needed such nudging). Konradin’s credulous willingness to give a demagogic snake-oil salesman like Hitler the benefit of the doubt – “He really impressed me. He is totally sincere. He has such… he has true passion. I think he can save our country. He is our only hope.” – however remains depressingly familiar today.

But for the final, very abrupt, ‘surprise’ ending to work, the audience is assumed not to be able to recognise the ferrety face of Roland Freisler, occasionally seen although never identified by name (and ironically – as played by Roland Schäfer looking remarkably like John Malkovich in heavy eye-liner – relatively restrained compared to the actual bellowing maniac preserved for posterity in newsreels). And would it really have taken over forty years and a trip all the way back to the very school in Stuttgart were they were originally pupils for Henry to only now learn Konradin’s fate? @RichardChatten

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021)

Dir.: Brent Wilson; Documentary with Brian Wilson, Linda Perry, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Jason Fine; USA 2021, 95 min.

Do we need another Brian Wilson documentary? I Just Wasn’t made for These Times and Love & Mercy have already told his story, but the billion or so the super-fans will always ask for more. And The Beach Boys were America’s answer to The Beatles, back in the day, they epitomised an era and their harmonies are almost as divine – so yes, we do!.

Director Brent Wilson (no relation), veteran of music docs like Streetlight Harmonies, has tried the linear angle, confronting the images of the ‘Beach Boy’ founder with today’s survivor of schizoid-affective and bi-polar disorders, who enjoys being on tour again, even though the hallucinatory voices still haunt him – and have done for the last 60 years – when he is performing, in spite of all the medication available.

‘Rolling Stone’ editor Jason Fine, a close friend of Wilson, drives the megastar composer/singer round his favourite haunts, sadly only getting monosyllabic answers to his leading questions. Brian is very much in the shell he has created to survive. And there is more that enough pain for anybody to deal with, let alone a highly-strung artist.

There is the Hawthorne home of his childhood, where his father Murry (who died in 1973) played sadistic games while managing the bank with Brian and his brothers Carl (who died of lung cancer in 1998) and Dennis, who drowned in 1963. The two then visit the house Brian shared with his wife Marilyn, and their two children Carnie and Wendy.

They even take in the darker times: The “Malibu Prison” where Brian spend the 1980s under the influence of psychiatrist Eugen Landy, whose infamous 24-hour therapy led to a total inter-dependency, and was only solved when Landy started to mingle in the music business. Landy too was responsible for Brian breaking up with Melinda Ledbetter, but the two then married after Brian’s ‘release’ from Landy – the couple have adopted six children, and Melinda still works hard as Brian’s business manager. Brian insists today “that Landy saved me”.

Music-wise there is extensive time devoted to the iconic “Pet Sounds” and SMiLE, that came into being in  the mid-1960s and finished thirty years later. There are few revelations, the bitter chapter of Brian’s relationship with fellow Beach Boy Mike Love is nearly brushed out of the picture. Only once the mask of self-defence slips, when Brian tells Jason “I have not talked to a real friend in three years.” At the Beverly Glen Deli, where Brian and Jason stop for lunch, Brian devours his ice cream sundae with almost childlike enjoyment: and its with this same soulful devotion that he plays the piano (again) for an audience who adores him. Oh yes, about the surfing: “Yeah, Dennis surfed, I never learned it”.

The movie poster says it all: the young Brian looking over the shoulders if his older self at the piano. But this is not a psychoanalytical study, but a love letter to the music of Brian Wilson. As Bruce Springsteen says of “Pet Sounds”: “The beauty of it carries a sense of joyfulness even in the pain of living. The joyfulness of an emotional life”. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | UK and Eire

Here Before (2021)

Wri/Dir: Stacey Greggs | Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Jonjo O’Neill, Niamh Dornan, Eileen O’HIggins | UK Drama 83′

Andre Riseborough always choses interesting roles and here she once again proves her talents as grieving Belfast mother Laura in this inventive thriller written and directed by Stacey Gregg who is best known for his TV work.

Profound grief is not only about depression. Tragic loss can play tricks with the mind inducing nightmares and even thoughts of reincarnation for the recently bereaved. And this is exactly what happens to Laura. Greggs clearly had Don’t Look Now in mind when writing the lead character who can’t get over the loss of her little girl in a car accident when her husband Brendan (O’Neil) was driving.

In the rainy rural outskirts of Belfast Laura lives in a semi with Brendan and their preteen son Tadhg (McAskie). Their next door neighbour’s daughter Megan (Dornan) bears a striking resemblance to her own little girl, and soon Laura is giving her lifts to school and even dreaming about her, but it soon turns out her suspicions are justified. What happens next is pivotal in this surprisingly tense thriller with surreal undertones and more than a few skeletons in its chilly cupboard. Greggs’ strong narrative keeps us intrigued in a story that doesn’t rely on atmosphere to carry the plot forward, as it so often the case with inexperienced filmmakers, and although the denouement teeters on melodrama the emotional fallout feels more than justified in the circumstances. MT

OUT NATIONWIDE ON 18 FEBRUARY 2022

Russian Roulette (1975)

Dir: Lou Lombardo | Cast: George Segal, Cristina Raines, Bo Brundin, Denholm Elliott, Gordon Jackson | US Spy Thriller 93

The errors liberally sprinkled throughout the IMDb page attest to how confusing both viewers and editors have evidently found this grubby spy drama in the past. But it’s long been one of the conventions of this genre that their plots are invariably both fiendish and fiendishly complicated so I took that pretty much in my stride.

Tourism Vancouver aren’t likely to have been pleased with Brian West’s bleak winter photography which makes the place look a dump. George Segal’s presence evokes memories of The Quiller Memorandum, which ironically made Berlin look much more cheerful than Vancouver does here; while Gordon Jackson performs a similar function here to the one he performed in The Ipcress File.

It builds up to a satisfactorily slam-bang action finish; but I found the creepy and amoral exploitation of exiled dissident Rudolph Henke by both sides and (SPOILERS COMING) what seemed to me Segal’s gratuitous killing of him at the end when doped up to the eyeballs and plainly not capable of going very far unpleasant even by the ethical standards of the genre. Segal also fortuitously lands on his feet a few more times than is probable, engineering a car crash that kills the driver but which he survives, and using a rifle to shoot down a helicopter which crash lands without destroying the centre of Vancouver. And how did Henke’s abductors manage to leave so much blood behind, while still keeping him in one piece?

The unexpected presence in an extremely minor role of Louise Fletcher – looking most fetching in uniform but otherwise wasted – is accounted for because the film was co-produced by her husband Jerry Blick, and that she hadn’t yet made One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That was to be her next film. @RichardChatten

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Dir: Guillermo del Toro | Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen | US Noir Thriller, 150′

One thing you can say about Guillermo del Toro’s follow up to his much vaunted take on Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon is that it looks amazing. In fact Dan Laustsen’s dazzling camerawork and Tamara Deverell’s lush production design make this moral fable watchable, along with starry cast of questionable characters that includes that captivating duo from Carol, Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. Even Bradley Cooper excels himself as a blue-eyed, hunky grifter who brushes up well as the besuited antihero in the second half of this flawed but stylish Neo Noir thriller.

Based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel this is (again) not the first screen adaptation, far superior was Edmund Goulding’s 1947 noir that starred Tyrone Power and Helen Walker as the psychic duo. Despite a bloated budget, this latest version overstays its welcome at well over two hours, and feels very much like two films rolled into one, and the end result is as hollow and soulless as the characters portrayed, although the shadow play and menacing original score by Nathan Johnson does much to install the requisite sinister sense of foreboding throughout.

In a dark and lugubrious travelling circus populated by freaks and losers, Bradley Cooper stands out as the bibulous Stan, a charismatic wayfarer with a twinkling eye and strange psychic gift, or at least the knack of spinning a yarn. Banding together with a motley crew of ‘carnies’, (carnival workers) he soon falls for one in particular in the shape of Molly (a luminous Rooney Mara), after being seduced by the much older stage magician Madame Zeena (Toni Collette).

You might be forgiven for drifting off through this often macabre but overstretched opening half, but things get much more interesting when the action transfers to a sophisticated, sinister urban setting where Cate Blanchett joins the party as Lilith, a soignée psychologist with lustrous Veronika Lake locks and the sinuous poise of Lauren Bacall. She plies her profession from the elegant confines of an office lined with plush sofas and beautiful marquetry. But you don’t trust her an inch, and neither does Stan as he slips under her psychic spell and the two becomes partners in crime, one being smarter that the other. Sadly Richard Jenkins, Willem Dafoe and Blanchett herself are underused in a script that is underpowered in comparison with the extremely slick aesthetics, and the gory scenes seem right out of place in a noir thriller, albeit one that combines elements of horror. MT

OUT IN THE UK ON 21 JANUARY 2022

Dear Pyongyang (2005)

Dir.: Yonghi Yang; Documentary; Japan 2005, 107 min.

In this intensely personal documentary Osaka born writer/director/DoP Yonghi Yang explores her father’s blind loyalty to North Korea.

It’s a long running story of exile and displacement. Yang was born in 1964 in Osaka, her parents were members of the North-Korean leaning Chongryun movement, who fought for a re-unification under the rule of Kim Il Sung, rather like their counterparts in the Mindan movement in Japan, Koreans who fought for the South, and wanted their country united under capitalist rule. Both movements each had about 100, 000 supporters, a small percentage of the Korean population which had been brought to Japan under Imperial rule.

Yonghi had three older teenage brothers: Kono, Kona and 14 year-old Konmin. They were fully integrated into Japanese society; Kono loving classical music and strong coffee. But in the early 1970s their parents packed them off on the ferry to North Korea, the Stalinist paradise Kim Il Sung had in mind. But Yonghi was left behind with her parents, trying to please them. In 1983 she visited North Korea for the first time as part of a youth delegation. Instead of spending time with her brothers, she and her friends were ferried around the country on a ‘cultural tour’ of monuments erected in honour of the wise leader.

Returning home, Yonghi soon find out that her parents had supported her brothers and their growing families with regular food supplies and other packages of ordinary consumer goods, which were unavailable in North Korea. Meanwhile the director’s father, a staunch supporter of the authoritarian leadership clique in the titular Pyongyang, lectured his daughter about staying true to the values he had espoused all his life – but only too glad to enjoy her financial generosity at his birthdays’ and other holidays. For his 70th birthday, the trio went on another ferry pilgrimage to the North, were Yang senior was the celebrated guest of honour, wearing all his medals and extolling the regime to all and his sons and many of their friends who were also received financial support from their parents from Japan. Eventually Yonghi put her foot down and her father agreed to her becoming a South Korean national. But his allegiance to Kim Il Sung never swayed, Yonghi’s mother claiming: “Beliefs get stronger, the longer you hold them”.

The personal and the political clash head-on here, the dualism occasionally becoming unbearably tense. At one point Yang senior puts on his medal-adorned jacket and announced: “I had no choice”. The director remained close to the sibling, and her niece Sona (leading to her subsequent 2010 feature Sona, the other Myself 2010) but was banned from visiting North Korea. AS

YAMAGATA: EXCLUSIVE SHOWCASE OF JAPANESE DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING ONLINE FOR FREE. | The complete selection will be available entirely for free on DAFilms.com from January 17 – 23 at this link: https://dafilms.com/program/1126-made-in-japan-yamagata-1989-2021

 

 

Ring of Spies (1964)

Dir: Robert Tronson | Cast: Bernard Lee, William Sylvester, Margaret Tyzack, David Kossoff, Thorley Walters | UK Thriller

Bernard Lee had already twice played gamekeeper-in-chief ‘M’ in the first two James Bond films when he here played poacher Harry Houghton in this austerely realistic black & white telling of the sensational Portland spy case of 1961. After a deceptively fanciful opening sequence this crime thriller portrays the grubby reality of the life of a spy against an everyday backdrop of an early sixties London in which professional people lived in caravans and relaxed of a night by watching The Crazy Gang on stage, which nearly sixty years later seems as exotic as anywhere ever visited by 007.

Margaret Tyzack in her only film lead (reunited shortly afterwards with fellow actor William Sylvester in ‘2001’) gives easily the best performance as Ethel Gee (here curiously called ‘Elizabeth’). Most of the enormous but usually fleetingly seen cast of familiar faces rarely appeared in films; including later TV comedy veterans Paul Eddington and Geoffrey Palmer. @RichardChatten

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Dir: Stanley Kramer | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn | US Drama, 108’

A curious mass of anomalies. The daring subject matter is cocooned in a very old-fashioned production in which well-heeled professionals do little but talk in a glossily photographed, lavishly appointed set looking out on a diorama of San Francisco in which the trees never move.

The late Sidney Poitier has charisma to spare and it has old-fashioned star power in the final screen teaming of Tracy & Hepburn. The latter deservedly won an Oscar; and the former (whose final speech – which took longer to edit than shoot – in which he swears onscreen for the first and last time when he says “screw all those people”) should at least have been posthumously nominated. @RichardChatten

Now on prime video

Lynx (2021)

Dir/Wri/DoP: Laurent Geslin | Swiss/French Doc, 82′

In the heart of the Jura mountains, a raucous call resounds through the forest. The perfectly camouflaged Eurasian lynx creeps through the trees in search of a mate. After its release into the wild, cinematographer Laurent Geslin has spent the past few years tracking the daily life of this elusive and endangered beast as it forms a new family in the remote Alpine region that stretches between France and Switzerland.

In this full length feature documentary, a follow-up to Geslin’s pursuit of the London-based urban fox, the award-winning cinematographer enchants us with poetic almost Disney-like wonder in his self-narrated study that softens the act of killing without ever sentimentalising the subject matter, making it feel entirely in keeping with the delicate ecological scheme of things as the lynx goes about its seasonal struggle in often hostile terrain.

This is Northern Europe so the Alpine fauna is familiar to most of us but somehow magical and enchanting in Geslin’s limpid lens: owls, stoats, woodpeckers, eagles and mountain goats are so daintily captured in their natural daytime habitat or in the moonlight of starry time-lapsed nights that there are none of those awful ‘lookaway’ moments when the lynx – or any other animal – takes out it prey, as it inevitably does to survive. The feline’s only natural predator seems to come in human form: poachers are still active despite being illegal, and cars are getting faster. Absolutely mesmerising. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 17 JANUARY 2022 | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Too Late for Tears (1949)

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Farewell, Mr Haffmann (2021)

Dir: Fred Cavaye | Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Gilles Lellouche, Sara Giraudeau | France, Drama 115′

Daniel Auteuil is the quietly mesmerising star turn in Fred Cavaye’s sombre but satisfying occupation drama that sees a Jewish craftsman’s act of benevolence backfire with tragic consequences.

He is Monsieur Hoffmann a popular and talented jeweller with a live-in corner atelier in Montmartre when the Germans move into Paris in 1941 setting in motion a mass exodus of Jews and the rounding up of those unable to get away. Seeing a chance to escape and save his business, by transferring it to his  crippled (and it soon turns out impotent) assistant Francois Mercier (Lellouche), he sends his wife and family to the country, but is unable to get away in time and is forced back to take refuge in the basement of his former home, now occupied by Mercier and his mousy wife Blanche (a subtle Sara Giraudeau).

Based on Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s award-winning play and adapted by Cavaye and Sara Kaminsky for the screen, it’s a twisty little story that goes to unexpected places with a compelling undertow despite the rather grimy wartime settings and stultifying atmosphere. Hobbling around on his callipers and unable to impregnate his wife (Haffmann stepping in to do the honours) Mercier will also turn out to have feet of clay – and his hands are not much better either: the Nazis giving the thumbs down to his inferior design skills, forcing Mr Haffmann to burn the midnight oil from his underground ‘prison’ to provide elegant pieces to satisfy the Nazi molls and allow Mercier to keep up pretences.

Obviously it’s not going to end well given Mercier’s severely dinted ego (it’s a hapless role for Lellouche but he plods on undeterred…) and his wife’s sympathies turn to Mr Haffmann rather than her husband in a morally complex character study which hints at Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE

 

Cloak and Dagger (1946)

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

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

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

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

NOW DOING THE ROUNDS ON TALKING PICTURES TV

This is My Love (1954)

Dir: Stuart Heisler | Cast: Linda Darnell, Dan Duryea, Rick Jason, Faith Domergue | US Drama 91

Just as birds descended from dinosaurs, so the film noir of the forties morphed by the mid-fifties into the women’s picture; the histrionics of the Technicolor ‘Leave Her to Heaven’ (1945) evolving into Douglas Sirk’s throbbing fifties melodramas.

Occasional additional forays into Technicolor along the way in crime dramas like ‘Desert Fury’ (1947) and ‘Rope’ (1948) gave hints as to the way colour could embellish thriller material; and the fuzzy Pathécolor employed on ‘This Is My Love’ – along with the incredibly stagy sets – draws us gradually into what initially seems to promise to be a rather bland romantic drama, but proves anything but.

The presence of Dan Duryea warns us that peril lies ahead – and the fact that he’s in a wheelchair, in which he proves a pretty nifty mover – simply heightens the pent-up menace he brings to his part. (And wouldn’t you know it, he depends on medication administered by his long-suffering wife and sister-in-law to keep him alive?)

Practically everybody in the film turns to be nursing bottled up emotions threatening destructively to burst their banks in true 50’s style, and… but I won’t spoil it for you. @RichardChatten

Onoda (2021)

Dir.: Arthur Harari; Cast: Yuya Endo, Kanji Tsuda, Yuya Matsuura, Testsuya Chiba, Issei Taniguchi, Taiga Nakano, Shinsuke Kato | Action drama, 2021, 165 min.

French director/co-writer Arthur Harari collaborates with Vincent Poymiro and Bernhard Cendron in chronicling 29 years in the life of the titular Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda (1922-2014), who for nearly thirty years hid in the jungle of the Philippine island of Lubang, fighting a war which ended in September 1945.

Towards the end of WWII, young Hiroo Onoda (Endo) is chosen to be a Kamikaze pilot. But Hiroo – in contrast to many of his peer group – does not want to die, and he refuses to fly, citing vertigo for his decision. This brings him to the attention of Major Taniguchi (Ogata), who runs a school for secret war activities: Hiroo is told never to commit suicide, or surrender to the fast advancing American troops.

On the Philippine island of Lubang, Onoda is witness to the overwhelming power of the American army. But true to the promise he has given to Taniguchi, he refuses to concede defeat, and gathers a motley crew of three other soldiers embarking on a guerrilla war against the island’s population: “The four of us can kill hundreds”. One of the resisters, Akatsu, deserts in 1949 but Onoda battles on in his own private war still believing the islanders are in alliance with the Americans.

History this may be, but Onoda would be very much at home today: refusing to believe that the war has ended, despite all signs to the contrary. Everything signalling the truth is hailed as ‘Fake News’; even Hiroo’s father speaking with a loudhailer to make his son accept reality. For Hiroo, it is not the voice of his father, but an actor paid by the Americans. And on New Year’s Day in 1950, Onoda and Kozuka await a rescue party after they have “decoded” leaflets and other written material left for them by the population.

Harari tells the story from the POV of Hiroo: we live in his head, hear his inner dialogue, and apart from the overwhelming running time of nearly three hours, there is much to appreciate: Kanji Tsuda as the older Onoda is outstanding amidst an impressive cast. And there is always humour and irony: when Hiroo and Kozuka make a map of the island, they use names from their pre-war life experiences. And, strangely, there is sometimes a sort of beauty in the wild phantasies of a man who cannot give up his dream of becoming a hero, the guilt of his refusal to sacrifice himself as a pilot driving himself on. AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

Licorice Pizza (2021) Best Original Screenplay BAFTA

Dir/Wri: Paul Thomas Anderson | Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Will Angarola, Ben Safdie, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Skylar Gisondo | US Comedy Drama,131′

The excitement and enthusiasm of being a teenager in search of the American Dream is captured in this satirical trip down memory lane set in the early 1970s during the politically turbulent years of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.

Paul Thomas Anderson follows a string of memorable and diverse classics: Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood with a soulful romantic comedy that unfolds in California’s San Fernando Valley where Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour) is a chubby spirited high school actor experiencing first love with his much older crush Alana Kane (Alana Haim), a gutsy Jewish girl with plenty of chutzpah and an overbearing father.

Much more than just a punchy coming of age story Licorice Pizza is a nostalgic journey through America in the Nixon era with echoes of Taxi Driver and The Graduate – and the same grainy look – and a soundtrack of iconic recalling a time where opportunities were endless and brushing up against Hollywood stars was still possible in the everyday scheme of things before they became a protected species. And the teenage realisation that they are just flawed, ordinary people, not gods to be aspired to gives the film some of its most enjoyable scenes.

Gary is not held back from pursuing Alana despite his puppy fat and pubescent acne. His inherent self-belief and entrepreneurial flair soon sees him capitalising on ‘start-ups’ involving pinball machines and the famous craze for water beds: a doomed endeavour involving a celebrity client in the shape of Bradley Cooper’s egocentric Jon Peters is one of the funnier detours the film takes, and there’s a surprisingly sinister undertone to Alana’s episode with Ben Safdie’s aspiring political candidate. This adds a dose of tension to her on/off relationship with Gary making it feel all the more genuine in its avoidance of sentimentality both in sunny and sombre moments – the two of them always feel real and endearingly human in their spiky single-minded belligerence. A bit of an odd couple at first Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman’s gradually emerging on screen chemistry is why the film is so compulsively watchable.

The film goes to unexpected places but always keeps us onboard with its compelling teenage love story that is charming, quirky and totally unpredictable – just like real life. We are drawn further and further into Gary and Alana’s world with its soap-opera elements in a narrative so rich and surprising it could go on forever.

Another part of the film’s success – and a great deal of the subversive fun – comes from trying to guess the real people behind the made up names (apart from Jon Peters): Sean Penn’s character Jack Holden and John Michael Higgins’ Jerry Frick are so familiar yet there’s a inclusive quality that makes them feel absolutely right for the era, whoever they are. Featuring a seemingly endless cast of well-tuned interconnecting characters Liquorice Pizza builds an entire world in the Valley that is both intimate and far-reaching in its scale. MT

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY EE BAFTAS 2022

Whity (1971)

Dir: Werner Reiner Fassbinder | Cast: Ron Randell, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake, Harry Baer | 85′ Germany, Drama

Never released commercially, Whity remains one of Fassbinder’s least seen films, and when spoken of it is usually with mild incredulity since the thing is reportedly a western. Naturally it’s a western the like of which English-speaking audiences have never seen before (or at any rate since Red Garters), but one that would look less eccentric to a German audience used to the popular Karl May adaptations of the sixties in which men are men and women are German. Although there are nods towards Sergio Leone – notably with Peer Raben’s score – it plainly owes more to Gillo Pontecorvo’s Queimada! (1969) and to the ‘slavery’ genre of the seventies that began with Herbert Biberman’s ‘Slaves’ in 1969 and reached its apotheosis with Mandingo.

Sumptuously designed by Kurt Raab and fluidly shot in widescreen and Eastmancolor by the late Michael Ballhaus, visually it anticipates the saturated colours of Fassbinder’s final extravaganzas like Lili Marleen and Querelle, with the cast resembling waxworks. It effectively does for westerns what Der Amerikanische Soldat did for gangster movies, but is far less fun; although Fassbinder’s own appearance as a macho, whip-wielding cowboy is as funny as anything to be found in Carry On Cowboy. @Richard Chatten

Within our Gates (1920)

Dir/Wri: Oscar Micheaux | US Drama 79′

In his provocative 1980 article in ‘Film Comment’, ‘Bad Films’, James Hoberman concentrated almost exclusively on Oscar Micheaux’s thirties sound films in painting Micheaux as a sort of black Edward D.Wood Jr. When Hoberman wrote that “the longer Micheaux made films, the badder they got,” the 1993 Library of Congress restoration of Within Our Gates was still several years away, but – possibly because Micheaux was free of the later encumbrances of dialogue and sound film technology – manages accurately to bear out his statement, since it stands up extremely well.

The fact that nearly a hundred years ago this film was made at all is remarkable enough; that it’s actually survived (in Spain, of all places) is miraculous, particularly as Micheaux’s final film, the three hour-long ‘The Betrayal’ (1948) – made over a quarter of a century later – is ironically lost. In addition to its indictment of institutionalised racism in the United States – where in the South any available negro could be lynched just for the hell of it – Within Our Gates is also remarkable for criticising bible-thumping snake oil salesmen like the black preacher Old Ned, who exhorts his congregation not to bother themselves with the injustices of this world as their reward will come in the next.

Micheaux not surprisingly gives short shrift to the American South, where the poor white trash are depicted as being treated as contemptuously by the land-owning classes as their black brethren (the identical appearance and beards worn by a trio of yokels suggesting in-breeding), and titles are written in dialect to lampoon the Southern drawl, rather than just black speech as tended to be the custom in silent films. The cross-cutting between a lynching and a rape attempt by a white man near the film’s conclusion serves as a well-aimed raspberry at the equivalent sequence in D.W.Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’; although the abrupt uplifting speech about America by the handsome Dr. Vivian at the film’s very end feels extremely tacked on. But Within Our Gates has already hit home with enough ugly home truths by then.

American women, incredibly, still didn’t have the vote when Within Our Gates was made; and Micheaux equates women’s suffrage with black civil rights, in the process marshalling a cast of formidable female characters, both black & white. In one of several elaborate narrative strands that the film packs into less than eighty minutes, black heroine Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) is taken under the wing of wealthy white philanthropist Elena Warwick, whose friend Geraldine Stratton is a rich Southerner and “a bitter enemy of woman’s suffrage, because it appalls her to think that Negro women might vote.”@RichardChatten

 

You Only Live Twice

Roald Dahl’s name on the script should have meant a wittier and more grotesque adventure than this; although the car full of goons plucked off the road by a giant magnet and tossed into Tokyo Harbour is classic Dahl. The action scenes are often spectacular but inclined rather obviously to have been achieved with stuntmen by the second unit, with Connery’s close-ups clearly matted in later, heightening the sense of a star wandering in and out of his own movie.

The characterisations alotted most of the supporting cast tend to be bland, and the leading lady is bizarrely replaced with a new one during the interminable ‘Ninja Training School’ section that further postpones our first proper meeting with Donald Pleasance’s flesh-crawling Blofeld in his lair which resembles a megalomaniacal version of the launching pad beneath Jeff Tracy’s swimming pool from which Thunderbird One used to emerge).

An extremely large cast of speaking parts includes several well-known actors whose contribution bizarrely goes uncredited (including Alexander Knox as the US President), while others like Burt Kwouk as ‘Spectre 3’ are plainly dubbed. @RichardChatten

Cyrano (2021)

Dir: Joe Wright | Writer; Eric Schmidt | Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Ben Mendelsohn, Kelvin Harrison | UK Musical drama, 124′

Joe Wright gives Cyrano De Bergerac a musical makeover with this soft-centred lyrical approach to the time-honoured French classic, transposing the action to early 18th century Italy and dressing the love story up in macaroon pastels and tender gazes as delicate as the Capodimonte porcelain of the region that clearly inspired Sarah Greenwood’s production designs.

Peter Dinklage plays the sweet-natured romantic soldier unlucky in love due to his unfeasibly large nose and lack of stature, but whose way with words woes Haley Bennett’s wistful but unwitting maiden Roxanne (Bennett) through poetic billets doux penned on behalf of the real object of her affections, Christian (Harrison) a recruit in the service of her caustic suitor Duke De Guiche (an ebullient Ben Mendelsohn).

The everlasting appeal of the story lies in the cherished belief that inner beauty and noble intentions can override physical imperfections in our quest for love. And Wright certainly moves us with this woozy concoction and its touching performances particularly from Dinklage in the leading role as a captivating Cyrano crooning original tunes from Aaron & Bryce Dessner.

There have been several adaptations of the 19th century novel, the most famous, from 1990, stars Gerard Depardieu as the disillusioned dreamer, and this one is based on Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage show, which also starred Dinklage in the title role. A little bit lightweight but intoxicating nevertheless.

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Waiting for Bojangles (2021)

Dir: Regis Roinsard | Cast: Romain Duris, Virginie Efira, Gregory Gadebois, Solan Machado Graner | France, Comedy, 124′

Regis Roinsard brings none of the joie de vivre or steamy sensuality of the page to his lavish big screen version of En Attendant Bojangles co-scripted by Olivier Bourdeaut from his own bestseller. Instead we see two selfish, rather silly people pretending to love each other while intoxicated by their own narcissistic dreams.  

What starts as a frothy Côte d’Azur set ‘coup de foudre’ for Georges (Duris whose talents are once again wasted) and his self-seeking bride Camille (Efira) soon deteriorates into an over the top battle of wits while they tirelessly paint the town red, pooh-poohing reality to the astonishment of everyone in their wake, including their good friend Charles (Gadebois).

Meanwhile their spirited little love child Gary (Machado Graner) is left bewildered on the sidelines, his mother even taking an angry pot-shot at his much-loved pet peahen. Wo betide anyone attempting to burst this couple’s bubble of endless fun; reality is simply brushed under the carpet until they eventually run out of steam: Virginie Efira swinging between vicious virago and tedious drama queen in an un-involving ‘folie a deux’ which swerves into tragedy after over two hours. 

Top marks to Guillaume Schiffman and Sylvie Olive for making it all look so nice, but don’t expect any laughs in this depressing start to 2022. 

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRENCH CINEMAS

The 355 (2021)

Dir.: Simon Kinberg; Cast: Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Krüger, Penelope Cruz, Bingbing Fan, Sebastian Stan, Edgar Ramirez; USA/China 2019/21; 124 min.

British-born director Simon Kinberg, producer of the X-Men series, teams up with Jessica Chastain to co-produce this female super-spy caper, co-written by Theresa Rebeck and Bek Smith. Chastain asked Kinberg for a female super-hero feature, having been part of the star studded cast of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, a loss making 200M+ dollar project which he also directed, wrote and produced.

It all starts with a stock slaughter sequence in South America, where drug lords are fighting for an electronic device that gives its owner control over all electronic traffic worldwide. Next, said device turns up on Paris, with major intelligence agencies chasing the hardware destined to be sold in a mass auction on the Dark Net.

Mason ‘Mace’ Browne (Chastain) and Nick Fowler (Stan) represent the CIA as a couple with ‘special benefits’. Marie Schmidt (Krüger) of The Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND), (the German State Security organisation) is still reeling from the shock of her father’s role in the KGB. But Graciela (Cruz), a Columbian DNI agent and psychologist, is the odd-one out: roped in by her fellow countryman Rojas (Ramirez)mwho is dying after the unsuccessful attack on the drug dealer.

Rojas has just enough time to put Graciela’s fingerprints on the desired object’s tracking device. Thus the psychologist becomes the stereo-typical odd-woman-out, just wanting to go home to her family. An African-British computer expert Khadijah (Nyong’o) will later ‘direct’ the quartet, later a quintet, when Chinese MSS operative Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan) joins the party in Shanghai for the last act.

Rojas is not the only casualty: Fowler also comes a cropper, driving Browne even harder to get her paws on the device. Alas, her ex-partner is very much alive – and on the wrong side, making Mace’s retrieving action into a revenge story.

Structured along the lines of a Bourne feature, The 355 (named after the first US female spy operating under George Washington’s command), not only suffers from a convoluted script, but also outstays its dubious welcome, bloodied by needless fighting scenes: all decisions are actually taken by Khadijah, based on her superior technological knowledge. The agents on the ground are reduced to mere ‘action-women’ figures – not exactly “The Female Rainbow coalition” Chastain had in mind.

DoP Tim Maurice-Jones really does a great job on the look of The 355, but the vaunted female heroines are merely inferior James Bond replacements and we don’t care what happens to them, or indeed the upcoming Chastain/Kinberg collaboration entitled  Wayland, another high-budget production destined for a loss. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Dr No (1962)

Dir: Terence Young | Cast: Ursula Andress, Sean Connery | Thriller

The mighty Bond franchise – which turns sixty this year – begins with three blind beggars making their way through Kingston. Filmed completely out of the sequence in which the original novels were, he here meets both Quarrel and Felix Leiter for the first time despite in the 1958 novel having already worked with both four years earlier in Live and Let Die

The pop art credits anticipate a much rawer film than those that came later; with a thuggish Bond who in those days thought nothing a shooting an unarmed man twice (originally it was thrice, but the censor cut one of the shots).

As recently as 1962 the makers depicted a quick going over with a hose as sufficient for radioactive decontamination; and with the series still coining it in, so the sight gag about Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington will gain new currency when ‘The Duke’ opens in the West End next month. @RichardChatten

5 Branded Women (1960)

Dir: Martin Ritt | Cast: Van Heflin, Silvana Mangano, Jeanne Moreau, Vera Miles, Barbara Bel Geddes | US War Drama 94′

Martin Ritt’s only war movie is a strange hybrid which has the thumb prints all over it of producer Dino De Laurentiis – whose bright idea the inevitable communal nude bathing scene doubtless was, and saw to it that his wife Silvana Mangano gets most of the close ups. That said, the film comes a very poor second to the same year’s La Ciociara; also a gritty Italian war movie, which won Carlo Ponti’s wife Sophia Loren the Oscar for best actress.

While all given Yugoslav names, the five women of the title are plainly cast with the international box office in mind; although neither of the American contingent – Vera Miles and Barbara Bel Geddes – get sufficient screen time to make much of an impression. With the exception of Richard Basehart’s Good German, the male lead characters all come across as creeps. Van Heflin’s partisan leader is a sanctimonious bore, while Harry Guardino’s overactive loins (spoiler coming) directly lead to Miles’ death. (He plainly made no attempt to enlighten the court martial that it was entirely him who was responsible, and that it was he who left his post to get his paws on Miles; instead he just brags about all the Germans he’s killed. The other partisans meanwhile are far too quick to stick her in front of the firing squad by his side.

Despite the interesting cast, the whole thing leaves a pretty bad taste in the mouth, and you certainly come away feeling soiled at the waste and squalor depicted, although not necessarily in the ways that the film’s makers intended. @RichardChatten

 

The Danish Collector: From Delacroix to Gauguin (2021)

Dir: David Bickerstaff | UK ART Doc

A private collection of modern art including works from Delacroix, Monet and Gauguin forms the subject of this latest documentary from David Bickerstaff, best known for bringing international art exhibitions to the big screen.

The Danish Collector: From Delacroix to Gauguin shows how a self made man and his savvy wife saved a treasure trove of priceless paintings from the ravages of war in Europe by transferring them to neutral Denmark.

Wilhelm Peter Henning Hansen (1868-1934) rose from modest beginnings to amass a fortune from the insurance business. At the age of 25 he bought his first painting, Monet’s ‘Waterloo Bridge’ (1903) exploring changing light and fog in the haze of industrial development, and by 1912 Hansen’s French realist and impressionist collection was well under way as he set out to acquire twelve works from each of his chosen artists mapping the development of Impressionism from its origins and early influences of Ingres and Delacroix. These included paintings by Sisley, Pisarro, Monet, Corot, Corbet and Renoir and works by female Impressionist painters Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzales.

When war broke out in 1914 he capitalised on the conflict by sending the paintings to his wife Henny in Denmark where they were housed in a specially designed country house in Ordrupsgaard (near Copenhagen). He later joined a consortium of middle-class Danish collectors whose aim was to bring outstanding French art to Scandinavia during in a wave of Civic pride.

Accompanied by an occasional score of strings and more romantic vibes, Bickerstaff’s agile camera lingers over the detail – particularly lovely is Manet’s 1882 ‘Basket of Pears’ – as well as giving a broad-brush approach to the works in their various settings, interweaving informative on-screen interviews from relevant curators.

Eschewing a straightforward narrative the style here is to gather together the various specialists and then give them free rein to talk about their own research and insights. This gives the doc a random, freewheeling yet highly informative quality as the curators go off on their different tangents.

After an intro from London’s Royal Academy chief Axel Ruger we swing into the gallery where Bickerstaff takes us on a fleeting tour of the exhibition, double hanging reflecting the way Hansen hung the pictures in his own home, whetting our appetite for what is to follow.

Anna Ferrari takes over telling us how Henny Hansen realised that the works acquired by her husband were becoming increasingly becoming valuable amongst collectors, and shipping them back to Denmark. The couple were particularly keen on Monet’s ‘garden’ period and Sisley’s landscapes paintings that mapped a journey down the Seine, with smoking chimneys charting the burgeoning industrial era, his ‘September Morning’ (1887) shows leaves tussling in the fresh breeze, with the sky dominating. The film travels from London to Paris, the cradle of the Belle Époque, with its experimental artist scene, and then on to Denmark where Ordupsgaard’s curator Anne Brigitte Fonsmark enlightens with a tour of the house and its specially designed Danish furniture complimented by flower arrangements gathered from the lavish gardens, and the recently added extension by the later Zaha Hadid.

Art historian Professor Frances Fowle makes the most impact with her amusing stories about the illustrious women Impressionist collectors namely the Welsh sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies who built up the country’s largest and most important series of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works in the 1920s and bequeathed it to the National Museum of Wales, and Kentucky philanthropist Berthe Palmer (and her husband Potter) whose collection now forms the core of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Impressionist collection. MT

NOW ON DVD

The King’s Man (2021)

Wri/Dir: Matthew Vaughn | UK, Action Comedy, 130’

Ralph Fiennes and Rhys Ifans lead a magnificent cast in this entertaining if occasionally ridiculous romp, a historical re-write riffing on an eponymous secret spy organisation active in preventing global conflict during the First World War .

Don’t worry if you haven’t followed the other episodes this stand alone comedy sees Fiennes’s back again as the dapper aristo Orlando Oxford, a patriotic pacifist war veteran who rapidly converts to killer mode when his family is slowly decimated by the war effort.

After his wife is killed by a stray bullet in the opening scenes Oxford actively discourages his only son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) from enlisting in the army – but boys will be boys. Aided and abetted by his game comrades Djimon Hounsou (who plays the token black guy) and Gemma Arterton (the token female with an unfeasible Yorkshire accent), Fiennes plays a chivalrous James Bond-style gentleman hero, impeccably suave in Savile Row suiting, and dashingly daring til the end.

Tonally off-kilter for most of its running time – patriotically reverent melodrama making an awkward bedfellow to ‘boys own’ rambunctiousness and silly humour, there are some rip-roaring set pieces, notably the hair-raising hike up a stratospheric mountain-side to find the home of a storied cashmere-bearing goat.

Rhys Ifans is terrific as the anti-hero Rasputin – although the accent is definitely more Gary Oldman’s 1992 Dracula than the sinister Russian mystic. There are various subplots that feel totally redundant to the main thrust of the narrative – a resentful Scotsman whose identity is only revealed at the end (who even cares?). A bit of a mess then, but a really enjoyable one. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE

Sundance Film Festival 2022 | 20-30 January 2022

SUNDANCE is the first major film festival of the year; a true indie festival coming to you from snowy Utah courtesy of its founder Robert Redford. Setting the benchmark for independent titles in 2022, SUNDANCE focuses on excellence in screenplays and innovativeness in cinematography: each filmmaker is put their paces before their film can be considered in competition. Unlike the Academy Awards, SUNDANCE is purely about talent. We have highlighted some buzzworthy titles – watch out for them in the coming year!

Elizabeth Banks photo credit Wilson Web

CALL JANE (2022) DIR: PHYLLIS NAGY

Chicago, 1968. As a city and the nation are poised on the brink of violent political upheaval, suburban housewife Joy leads an ordinary life with her husband and daughter. When Joy’s pregnancy leads to a life-threatening condition, she must navigate a medical establishment unwilling to help. Her journey to find a solution to an impossible situation leads her to the “Janes,” a clandestine organization of women who provide Joy with a safer alternative — and in the process, change her life.
Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy takes the reins as director and executes a riveting narrative, partially based on true events surrounding the Jane Collective, who provided thousands of abortions during a four-year period through their covert and precise mobilisation. Supported by a remarkable cast, Elizabeth Banks delivers an impressive lead performance as Joy, whose determination and strength of character holds relevance more than a half-century later. Call Jane poses urgent questions about systemic barriers, the ever-shifting nature of politics, and the struggle for women to maintain control of their bodies.

Image Courtesy of Sundance Institute

2ND CHANCE (2022) DIR: RAMON BAHRANI

In 1969, bankrupt pizzeria owner Richard Davis invented the modern-day bulletproof vest. To prove that it worked, he shot himself — point-blank — 192 times. Davis then launched Second Chance, which became one of the largest body armour companies in the world. Charming and brash, he directed sensational marketing films, earning him celebrity status among police and gun owners across the country. But the death of a police officer wearing a Second Chance vest catalyzes Davis’s fall, revealing a man full of contradictions cultivated over decades of reckless lies. Equally as questionable as he was captivating, Davis saved thousands of lives while endangering exponentially more.

Acclaimed filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s feature-length documentary debut continues his fascination with the perilous pursuit of the American dream as seen through a uniquely individual lens. The film shrewdly juxtaposes Richard Davis’s actions with those of his righteous right-hand man, Aaron Westrick. Unwilling to passively present questionable truths, Bahrani instead lays bare the complexities of one man’s supposed virtue while speaking to the nature of power and impunity in America.

Bill Nighy in Living by Oliver Hermanus, photo credit Ross Ferguson.

LIVING (2022) DIR: OLIVER HERMANUS

A veteran civil servant and bureaucratic cog in the rebuilding of Britain post-WWII, Williams (Bill Nighy) expertly pushes paperwork around a government office only to reckon with his existence when he’s diagnosed with a fatal illness. A widower, he conceals the condition from his grown son, spends an evening of debauchery with a bohemian writer in Brighton, and uncharacteristically avoids his office. But after a vivacious former co-worker, Margaret, inspires him to find meaning in his remaining days, Williams attempts to salvage a modest building project from bureaucratic purgatory.

South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus (Beauty) offers a poignant reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ikiru (To Live). Nobel and Booker Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s adaptation elegantly transposes the story’s profound humanism to postwar London. Free of false sentimentality and tragic intonations, Living finds its soul in the wistful dignity Nighy brings to Williams. Transcending its period setting, Living is a timely reflection on the compulsions and distractions that obscure what it means to live.

 

Lucy and Desi by Amy Poehler – Image Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

 

LUCY AND DESI (2022) DIR: AMY POEHLER

One day in 1940, two budding stars met for the first time in the RKO Pictures commissary, unaware that together they would change the face of pop culture. After surviving a tumultuous upbringing, a teenage Lucille Ball left her family for New York City, where she first found success as a model before moving to Hollywood to begin working in movies. Hailing from Santiago de Cuba, Desi Arnaz was a paid musician by 16 and quickly broke out as a multitalented entertainer. The two would go on to consistently challenge the status quo in entertainment both in front of and behind the camera.

For her documentary debut, director Amy Poehler respects these two iconic trailblazers as driven individuals and a loving couple until the end. Clearly influenced by Poehler’s own history in entertainment, Lucy and Desi not only chronicles the pair’s personal and professional lives, it also smartly breaks down concepts like the rehearsed choreography of comedy, their innovations in studio production, the sisterhood of comedy, and much more. It’s a thoughtful telling made for those who loved Lucy (and Desi).

image courtesy of Sundance Institute

THE PRINCESS (2022) DIR: ED PERKINS

Decades after her tragic death, Princess Diana continues to evoke mystery, glamour, and the quintessential modern fairy tale gone wrong. As a symbol of both the widening fissures weakening the British monarchy and the destructive machinery of the press, the Princess of Wales navigated an unparalleled rise to fame and the corrosive challenges that came alongside it. Crafted entirely from immersive archival footage and free from the distraction of retrospective voices, this hypnotic and audaciously revealing documentary takes a distinctive formal approach, allowing the story of the People’s Princess to unfold before us like never before.

Director Ed Perkins distills thousands of hours of riveting material to present Diana’s story in a fresh and imaginative way, depicting not only one of the most alluring public figures of the 20th century but also the sociopolitical upheaval afflicting the United Kingdom at the time. The Princess exquisitely captures the echoes of a monarchy whose far-reaching impact on the public continues to this day, turning the camera back on ourselves to explore our own complicity in this enigmatic narrative.

Image of Karen Gillan courtesy of Sundance Institute

DUAL (2022) DIR: RILEY STEARNS

Recently diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease, Sarah is unsure how to process the news. To help ease her friends’ and family’s impending loss, she is encouraged to participate in a simple futuristic cloning procedure called “Replacement,” after which Sarah’s last days will be spent teaching the clone how to live on as Sarah once she’s gone. But while it takes only an hour for a clone to be made, things become significantly more challenging when that double is no longer wanted.

This darkly off-kilter comedy marks a welcome return to the Festival from writer-director Riley Stearns (The Cub, Sundance 2013). He straddles a inventive line between deadpan satire and high-concept storytelling to take us on a sci-fi journey into the ways a catastrophic life change can force reconsideration of one’s entire existence. In the lead dual role, an oddly charming Karen Gillan proves the perfect match for Stearns’s strange, strange cinematic world.

 

ALL THAT BREATHES (2022) DIR: SHAUNAK SEN

Brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites.

Shaunak Sen’s intricately layered portrait reveals an evolving city and a fraternal relationship bonded by purpose. The film’s patient, roaming camera skillfully uses scale and perspective to draw attention to the interconnectedness of an ecosystem — one that humans are a part of, not apart from. The social unrest that begins to materialize in the streets is seen through the perspectives of the brothers and their family, as well as the insects and animals that share the urban landscape. There is both cruelty and tenderness in nature, and Sen elegantly captures how they coexist, while emphasizing the ways in which all living beings must evolve to survive.

A still from The Territory by Alex Pritz, courtesy of Sundance Institute

 

THE TERRITORY (2022) DIR: ALEX PRITZ

The Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people have seen their population dwindle and their culture threatened since coming into contact with non-Native Brazilians. Though promised dominion over their own rainforest territory, they have faced illegal incursions from environmentally destructive logging and mining, and, most recently, land-grabbing invasions spurred on by right-wing politicians like President Jair Bolsonaro. With deforestation escalating as a result, the stakes have become global.

With unprecedented access, and co-produced by the Uru-eu-wau-wau community, The Territory drops the audience into the center of this conflict. Young Indigenous leaders like Bitate and Ari, along with their mentor, environmental activist Neidinha, risk their very lives to defend the rainforest. On the other side, Sergio leads an association of indigent farmers eager to establish a settlement, while others like Martin, impatient and entitled, strike out on their own, clear-cutting the forest to establish a homestead. With the government unwilling to stop this brazen encroachment, the Uru-eu-wau-wau set up their own media team, using technology to expose the truth and fight back.

courtesy of Sundance Institute

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY (2022) DIR: W KAMAU BELL

During his nearly 50 years in show business, Bill Cosby became one of the most recognizable Black celebrities in America. With a career that included an astronomical rise on television in the mid-1960s; work in children’s programming and education; legendary stand-up performances and albums; and an epoch-defining hit sitcom, The Cosby Show, Cosby was a model of Black excellence for millions of Americans. But now, thanks to the brave and painful testimonies of dozens of women, we know there was a sinister reality to the man once extolled as “America’s Dad.”

Over the course of four gripping episodes that feature the voices of people closely connected to Cosby’s life on screen and off, including several survivors, director W. Kamau Bell digs into who Cosby was and what his work and actions say about America, then and now. We Need To Talk About Cosby is a powerful and timely reckoning destined to be widely discussed for how it urges audiences to reconsider not only what they know about Cosby but also about the culture that produced and celebrated him.

WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD (2022) JESSE EISENBERG

From his bedroom home studio, high school student Ziggy performs original folk-rock songs for an adoring online fan base. This concept mystifies his formal and uptight mother, Evelyn, who runs a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse. While Ziggy is busy trying to impress his socially engaged classmate Lila by making his music less bubblegum and more political, Evelyn meets Angie and her teen son, Kyle, when they seek refuge at her facility. She observes a bond between the two that she’s missing with her own son, and decides to take Kyle under her wing against her better instincts.

In his carefully observed, aesthetically pleasing directorial debut, Jesse Eisenberg adapts his audio project of the same name to tell the story of a mother and son who fail to understand each other’s values. With gentle humor and pitch-perfect dialogue, When You Finish Saving the World reflects a moment of internet fame and youth activism, but it also recounts the timeless tale of parents and children struggling to connect across the generational chasm that separates them.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 20-30 JANUARY 2022 | Words courtesy of Sundance Inst.

The Velvet Queen (2021)

Dir: Marie Amiguet, Vincent Munier | France, Doc, 89′

If you’re thinking this is going to be another children’s Christmas animation – think again. The Velvet Queen – or its more informative French title La panthere des neiges – sees two explorer/photographers heading to the snowy wastelands of Tibet in search of the elusive Snow Leopard.

A soulful love letter to nature The Velvet Queen focuses on ambience rather than facts in exploring an unexplored part of the world where animals still reign supreme in the echoing silence of the Tibetan plateau, one of the last sanctuaries of the wild where the rare and endangered leopard still roams despite poaching and environmental dangers.

Vincent Munier and Sylvain Tesson are clearly at one with each other pondering engagingly on the plight of the animals that venture past their long distance lenses in respectful coexistence, all camouflaged by magnificent furry winter coats that make them almost invisible to the naked eye against the sparse landscape known as ‘the roof of the World’.

Even when the feline eminence does make an appearance, towards the end of the film, a sinuous fluffy tail curling gingerly round a rocky outcrop, it cuts an unobtrusive figure prowling stealthily towards the body of a dead yak, then catching sight of the camera and warily withdrawing again into the hinterland. Bushy coated bears, mountain goats and a perky little bird with a black head and rust coloured body all wander by but are never identified, such is the impressionist style of this arthouse eco-doc: Oh David Attenborough where are you when we need a few names to faces? We do meet a local family with three young kids who are fiercely keen to learn and teach Tibetan to the French filmmakers who gladly join them later in their yurt for some welcome sustenance.

Director Marie Amiguet is best known for her documentary debut La Vallee des loups (2016) which goes on the trail of wolves in the French Alps, and she is also joined behind the camera by first time filmmaker Munier in this subtle but luminous look at a world fast disappearing. The film originally premiered in Cannes’ eco-conscious Cinema for the Climate strand and is now on general release at selected arthouse cinemas. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM FRIDAY

 

 

 

Minyan (2021)

Dir.: Eric Steel; Cast: Samuel H. Levine, Ron Rifkin, Christopher McCann, Mark Margolis, Brooke Blom, Alex Hurt, Carson Meyer; USA 2020, 119 min.

Eric Steel’s documentary The Bridge was a shockingly realistic study of suicide attempts from the Golden Gate Bridge. Here he turns his camera on a more sentimental subject, a gay coming of age drama set during the winters of 1986 and 1987 the rapidly changing milieu of Brighton Beach, NYC. Based on David Bezmozgis’ tale about Holocaust survivors from Europe, the title refers to a Jewish prayer meeting, requiring the quorum of ten men to go ahead.

David (Levine) is a seventeen-year-old yeshiva student at an ultra-orthodox institution, and wants nothing more than to leave his parents, an abusive father and over-protective mother (Blum) to start a new life at a state school. Close to his grandfather Josef (Rifkin), whose wife has died.

Josef wants to leave the flat he shared with his wife understandably because there are too many memories there. He and David try to get an apartment in a block of flats subsidised by a Jewish charity. David gets on much better with his grandfather’s generation, is drawn to Itzik (Margolis) and his partner Herschel (McCann), who share a flat, their relationship sanctioned by the other tenants.

With David discovering his sexual orientation, despite attention from the attractive Alicia (Meyer), he feels more and more out-of-synch with his family background. His first lover, super macho Bruno (Hurt), is a revelation for David, but also introduces him to the raging death count in the gay community as the AIDS epidemic claims many victims. More and more liberated, David joins a school in Greenwich village and is properly introduced to the writing of James Baldwin (who died in December 1987) having found out that Bruno used Baldwins’s “Giovanni’s Room” simply as a calling card for pick-ups. After Itzik’s death, his son selling all his furniture, Herschel is left homeless with David drawn into the complex undertaking to find flats for the two homeless old men.

There are too many flaws in what could have been a stunning feature: to start with the running time of two hours is indulgent, since there is no proper story, just a series of episodes. Steel wanted DoP Ole Bratt Birkeland to use images which could have been at home in any up-market Hollywood feature. Dull brown and grey colours give the proceedings an artificial background. And Steel, like many before him, does not do justice to the survivors of the Holocaust, whose lives are blighted by traumata and survivors’ guilt. Like many features set in the death camps, the post-life of the survivors cannot be caught in any way realistically – there is always too much of a chasm between reality and film set staging.

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 7 JANUARY 2022

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

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

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

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Cicada (2021)

Dir.: Matt Fifer, Kieran Mulcare; Cast: Matt Fifer, Sheldon D. Brown, Sandra Bauleo, Michael Potts, Jazmin Grimaldi, Scott Adsit, Cobie Smulders; USA 2020, 96 min.

Auto-fiction can be very satisfying in feature films as well as novels, but the logo “based on a true Story” does not always guarantee the promising results anticipated. First time directors Kieran Mulcare and Matt Fifer – also the co-star, co-writer, producer and editor – have scripted reality into something which is often to pat, and looks more constructed than the authors might have wished.

New York drifter and sex addict Ben (Fifer) meets data-tech expert Sam (Brown, who also has a writing credit), gay and the only black employee in his company. Whilst Ben is only too happy to let everyone know how much in love he is, Sam is understandably more reserved about showing his emotions in public.

We are introduced to Ben’s family: his mother (Bauleo), sister Grimaldi) and church-going father (Potts) and also meet Sam’s father. These short encounters are mainly used to explain the past of the couple: Ben has been sexually assaulted as a child, and Sam nearly died, when he was shot in broad daylight. Misfiring cars bring his PTDS to the surface, whilst Ben has developed a catalogue of psycho-somatic illnesses, for which the stern doctor (Adsit) has no diagnosis. A visit to an off-beat psychiatrist (Smulders), whose dog shares the sessions, does not help Ben either. We are witness to the couple’s self-help, which is also limited, in spite of their best and long drawn-out discussions. The outside world, in from of a news commentary about the Jerry Sandusky trail (2012) does not often enough intrude into this often clumsy and over-wrought ‘Kammerspiel’.

The NY images of DoP Erich Schlicher save the feature from being a verbal slug feast: the scenes set in Washington Park Square are a poetic master-stroke. But even with a running time of only just over 90 minutes CICADA overstays its welcome: repetitions and a near pathological need to show the main protagonists in the best light, leave the audience for great parts unengaged – there are simply no barbs in this rather simplistic tale of love and coming to terms with the past. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 21 JANUARY 2022 theatrical and digital in UK and EIRE

 

A Hero (2021)

Dir/Wri: Asghar Farhadi | Cast: Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Sahar Goldust | Iran Drama 127′

Another moral satire from Asghar Farhadi that mulls over truth, honesty and family life in modern Iran.

Lowkey in its sober setting but brimming with a growing complexity the story takes place in and around a modern prison in Shiraz where the likeable working class hero Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is a regular visitor for his various petty crimes involving debt.

The Royal Tombs of Persepolis provide a striking showcase early on when Rahim meets up with his brother-in-law (Alireza Jahandideh) to discuss ways of refinancing his life and paying back the money he owes a former brother-in-law, Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh), who won’t let him get away with a penny, determined to make him suffer over the divorce. Meanwhile Ramin is hoping to marry career-minded Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust) once things are back to normal.

But the crux of the story revolves around a lost handbag containing a number of gold coins that turns up on a bus. Farkhondeh naively takes the bag home and Rahim tries to sell the coins through a dealer, but the amount offered doesn’t begin to cover the money he owes so he decides instead to put an announcement in the small ads, a relieved woman eventually coming forward to reclaim it.

This simple act makes Rahim a hero in the small local community boosting his self esteem with his family, and particularly his young son who has learning difficulties. But when the national press and TV get hold of the news his popularity leads to family jealousy, particularly for Bahram who now digs his feet in over the money. And so Rahim’s naive act of honesty sets him back even further, the envious family picking holes in the story, and his motivations – they can’t quite believe him to be capable of such a selfless act. Rahim’s lack of confidence causes him to change his take on events, and soon he’s up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Farhadi deftly weaves a social media strand involving false news into his thorny narrative, just for good measure, once again triumphing with this immersive, elegantly paced modern parable that shows how a little fame can boost your profile but too much soon garners envy and resentment from friends and family. More imaginative cinematography and set design would have taken this to another level. MT

IN CURZON CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 7 JANUARY 2022

Crisis (1946) Bfi player

Dir/Wri: Ingmar Bergman | Cast: Inga Landgre, Stig Olin, Marianne Lofgren, Dagny Lind | Drama, 63′

Ingmar Bergman’s directorial debut was according to him “a bona fide fiasco” on which everything that could go wrong did, but none of this is apparent in the finished product. It just seems rather average.

Since few English-speaking viewers have ever seen a forties Swedish potboiler, it’s difficult to know how Crisis compare with its contemporaries, but it looks good (as I imagine most of the rest do), aided by Arne Åkermark’s art direction and Gösta Roosling’s photography. The over-emphatic music by Erland von Koch ironically demonstrates how discreet Bergman’s use of music would be in his heyday.

Considering that it was purely an assignment, its interesting how woman-centred it is, like some of Bergman’s more auspicious later projects. The most involving of various plot strands is that concerning Dagny Lind as the young heroine’s adoptive mother. @RichardChatten

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Vortex (2021)

Dir; Gaspar Noe | 142′

Gaspar Noe’s latest is a tougher, spikier and less affecting version of Michael Haneke’s Oscar-winning Amour (2012) that pictured the final months of a couple in their eighties.

Vortex opens with a man and woman enjoying an evening aperitif on the balcony of their book-filled penthouse. It’s a contented, easy-going domestic vignette with improvised dialogue, but dark clouds soon gather as a split screen then follows their day to day existence, after waking up in the next morning.

Dementia is the focus and Françoise Lebrun will succumb to the illness in a fairly nuanced performance – there are no confrontations or outbursts of aggression – simply a slow downward spiral into mental disintegration. Dario Argento plays the more troubled character, a heavy smoker suffering from heart failure and desperate to complete a book about dreams in cinema – he is fractious and destabilised by his wife’s increasingly erratic behaviour and worried for her safety: “you can’t just go swanning about the place, Paris is full of really dangerous people”. Although his wicked sense of humour comes out in the scenes with their mentally unstable son (Alex Lutz) who gently tries to coax his parents into the idea of a care home – we’ve all been there before, and it doesn’t get better.

The father will protest, the son will desperately try to find another solution – but we all know the writing is on the wall. The tone here is more about resentment and desperate resignation than Amour’s tempered sadness that celebrated the glowing embers a long life full of tenderness and devotion between a couple. Vortex presents a starker more predictable scenario, and very much a Dylan Thomas style ‘rage against the dying of the light’ for Argento’s husband. There are none of the thrills and spills normally associated with the Argentinian maverick’s work. Certainly this is Noe’s most grown-up film to date. An sobering engagement with reality, maybe acknowledging his own mortality. MT

VORTEX COMES TO UK CINEMAS IN MAY 2022.

Belfast (2021) BAFTA Outstanding British Film 2022

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Les Enfants Terribles (1949/50) Blu-ray

Dir.: Jean Pierre Melville; Cast: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe, Jacques Bernard, Renée Cosima, Maurice Revel, narrated by Jean Cocteau; France 1949/1950, 107 min.

It is difficult to imagine two different directors (and personalities) more different than Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville. Yes, both were French – Cocteau, the poet of a decadent underworld; and the intellectually aloof Melville, whose policiers were disguised Westerns. But it happened, when Cocteau asked Melville to adapt his 1929 novel “Les Enfants Terribles” for the big screen, having watched his 1947 debut feature Le silence de la Mer. Detachment met passion, but the result was closer to a duel than a collaboration, fought out between two ex-students of the famous Lycée Condocet. Against the odds, a cult classic was born.

Paul (Dermithe), is severely injured in a snow ball fight at the Lycée Condocet; Dargelos (Cosima) who threw the fatal ice bomb, is expelled from the school. Paul lives with his dominant, possessive sister Elisabeth (Stéphane) and their dying mother, looked after by the maid, and supported by a kind doctor (Revel). Paul’s friend Gérard (Bernard), is the only person Elisabeth will give houseroom to but after her mother’s death Elisabeth’s fortunes improve: she becomes a model and meets Agathe, also played by Cosima, although her short marriage to a wealthy business man ends with his death in a car crash before they can consummate the marriage.

Elisabeth moves into his vast mansion inviting Paul, Agathe and Gérard to join her but Agathe and Paul soon fall for each other concealing their feelings, so as not to upset Elisabeth. But their love is exposed when Elisabeth intercepts Paul’s secret billet doux to his paramour, and she forces Gérard and Agatha to marry and leave the house, so she can be alone again with Paul.

On the first day of filming, Cocteau’s lover Dermitte was on set when the writer shouted “Oh no. Cut”, immediately apologising for upstaging the director Melville, and claiming: “Forgive me, I don’t know what came over me. I thought I was still on the Orphée set”. Later Cocteau went on “to advise” Melville, leading to a contretemps between the two, putting their relationship under strain until Melville, feeling ill one day, asked Cocteau to take over the helm and was surprising that he followed his instructions, “like a real Assistant Director”. Melville then explained, “The one thing Cocteau wanted was for me to die, so that he could make the film himself.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, who became the “grandfather” of the Nouvelle Vague (for a time), reported, that Truffaut had seen the film 25 (!) times, and Chabrol, during the shooting of Les Cousins, asked DoP Henri Decaë “to do exactly what you did in Les Enfant Terribles”. Decaë’s poetic black-and-white images are perfect for this decadent incestuous rapport between two siblings who did not want to grow up, playing games until the disastrous denouement. Melville chose Bach and Vivaldi in preference to the Jazz score, Cocteau had favoured – and  it perfectly accompanies this morbid and maudlin death dance. AS

Released on Blu-ray, iTunes and Amazon Prime on 13 December 2021

 

The 400 Blows | Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ennio (2021)

Dir/Wri: Giuseppe Tornatore | Doc 157′

Ennio Morricone was one of cinema’s best loved and most prolific composers. Giuseppe Tornatore captures his complex romantic spirit in this warmly nostalgic tribute that also celebrates their own working relationship that started with Cinema Paradiso (1988) and continued for many years. In his lifetime Morricone scored over 500 movies, one year alone completing 18 films. 

The biopic straddles film and musicology enriched by a treasure trove of excerpts and the stars that brought them to life praising Morricone’s charisma and single mindedness and describing their own experiences with a man whose modesty contrasted with his prodigious talent to amuse. The final half hour does feel repetitive with its endless clips of concert performances which add nothing to the party, and almost fly in the face of the composer’s lowkey sense of style.

‘The Maestro’ is pictured in his palatial home relaxing in a armchair as he talks expansively about a career that started with his training to be a doctor before his father, a professional trumpeter, persuaded him to become a musician.

Times were hard and the family struggled during the Second World war years when Morricone played for a pittance writing dance tunes before a classical path at the Rome’s Santa Cecilia Conservatory would see him training under the respected teacher and composer Goffredo Petrassi who would strongly influence for the rest of his career.

Working with an avant-garde collective inspired by John Cage allowed Morricone to develop his creative inventiveness using a variety of sound effects using tin cans to the famous whistles and even typewriters to produce his unique sounds during the Sixties in scores often inspired by Bach toccatas, but the bread and butter came from TV work where he was often uncredited.

Morricone often felt he was letting his classical training down preferring to remain in the background with his iconic scores for Westerns, but they allowed him to expand his contacts, and it was here that he would forge a long lasting working relationship with Sergio Leone, one of his old schoolfriends, he would go on to score all Leone’s films after A Fistful of Dollars. 

A Fistful of Dollars (1963/4) provided a springboard for other Western projects where he insisted on having control of the score, even when Leone proposed additions from another movie. He even replaced his mentor Petrassi on John Huston’s The Bible (1966), a moment he still considers regretful, and where he is uncredited. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) followed and Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968). He turned down an offer from Roland Joffe saying he couldn’t score The Mission (1986) without ruining the aesthetic appeal of the images, but then went on to enhance the epic. It was nominated for that year’s Oscar but missed out to Herbie Hancock’s Round Midnight, which was not an original score, and therefore not really eligible for the category. 

This is a film that somehow benefits from its plethora of talking head stars: Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone,  Dario Argento all make valuable contributions along with Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruce Springsteen. Even the elusive Terrence Malick gives his two pennyworth on working with the maestro in Days of Heaven, who received his first Academy Award nomination for the score. The only regret during his prodigious output is that he was unable to score A Clockwork Orange for Kubrick after a misunderstanding with Sergio Leone deep-sixed the collaboration, Leone claiming Morricone was too busy with his score for A Fistful of Dynamite, which was apparently untrue).

Tornatore really gets to the heart of a genuine and deeply sensual man who clearly lived for his music at a profound level and found happiness in his marriage to Maria who provided an invaluable sounding board throughout his career and got him his first job at RAI.

Ennio provides a rich vein of lesser known Italian films from the Sixties – Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s Love Circle, Alberto Lattuada’s Fraulein Doctor and Liliana Calvani’s I Cannibali (1970) as well as classics such as Elio Petri’s A Quiet Place in the Country, Bertolucci’s Partner; Pasolini’s Hawks and Sparrows, and Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers and Leone’s 1984 epic Once Upon a Time in America (still considered his best) whetting our appetite to re-discover these and fully appreciate how his compositions add another dimensions to cinema, Sidelined at the Academy Awards for many years he finally struck gold with Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, at 90. MT

IN CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND | 22 APRIL 2022 | PREMIERE – THE RED SEA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021

The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021)

Dir/Wri: Mark Cousins | Doc, UK 160′

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

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

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

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

ON RELEASE FROM 17 DECEMBER NATIONWIDE

 

Opium (1919)

Dir: Robert Reinert | Silent film

Siegfried Kracauer – who hit thirty the year this feature came out – was able personally to recall the  film’s first release which ran in an expensive Berlin movie theater with the house sold out for three weeks. Of course, one avoided being seen on such occasions”!

With prescription of addictive opiates currently causing a panic in Britain it’s timely to see again this dire warning against the perils of opium a hundred years on; restored to its former glory with magnificent tinting, handsome exteriors and an involved plot starting in China and concluding in Europe.

With so much going on the plot thread involving opium is easy to lose track of, and director Robert Reinert is for the most part content to let his cast mug to the camera (Werner Krauss both looks and acts like Moore Marriott as the leering Chinese villain Nung-Tschang, who keeps magically popping up whenever the action relocates) and let the plushness of the production take care of itself. There are a couple of interesting camera tricks that anticipate Vertigo but Reinert more often favours scenes of Satan cavorting with nymphs to create the atmosphere he’s after!

Although he (eventually) makes an impressive entrance, Conrad Veidt isn’t actually in the film for very long, and the cast member who makes the most sympathetic impression is probably doe-eyed Sybill Morel in a double role as mother and daughter. Richard Chatten

Kayan (2021) Red Sea Film Festival 2021

Dir: Hakeem Jomah | Horror, Saudi Arabia 75’

A young Saudi couple’s past regrets and neuroses play out in this startlingly effective genre piece, a sophomore feature for Hakeem Jomah, who has made a name for himself as the man behind Madayen, Saudi Arabia’s first psychological horror ghost story.

A blood moon, poltergeists and a Dracula like receptionist are some of the sinister experiences the two encounter when they decide to check into a hotel after a boozy night with friends.

Kayan unfolds in modern day Jeddah where Salman and Thuraya are having a tough time relationship wise, and a house move and new baby doesn’t help. The tone darkens on their way home, deciding to spend the night in a rather mysterious old hotel with more that a few ghastly secrets behind its exotic portals.

The weird hotel manager gives them a chilly reception and not surprisingly nobody gets any sleep haunted by hallucinations and strange things that go bump in the night. Thuraya is menaced by a strange little boy – a reminder of an early abortion. She then appears hovering above the bed in a ghoulish transformation – or it is a figment of his Salman’s imagination?. Meanwhile in his dreams he floats between feverish fantasy and reality menaced by a baleful ex-girlfriend and a security guard with kinetic powers. 

Kayan makes effective use of red tints and an eerie electronic soundscape to ramp up the tension in a tightly scripted and stunningly realised psychological horror outing that certainly puts the Saudi Arabian filmmaker firmly on the map horror-wise. MT

RED SEA FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Jules et Jim (1961) Truffaut Season at the BFI

Dir.: Francois Truffaut; Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Oscar Werner, Henri Serre, Marie Dubois, Vanna Urbino, Sabine Haudepin, Boris Bassiak; France 1961, 105 min.

Truffaut mentioned Henri-Pierre Roché’s 1953 novel ‘Jules et Jim’ first in his ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ review for Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1955 western feature The Naked Dawn. Roché (1879-1959) had been a famous Dadaist; he wrote Jules et Jim at the age of 74. Three years later, he would publish ‘Les deux Anglaises et le Continent’, and Truffaut’s screen version followed in 1971.  Both novels are highly autobiographically, featuring a passionate menage-a-trois: Jules et Jim tells the story of a strong woman loved  by two very different men, Les Deux Anglaises is about a weak man in love with two wilful women.

Covering the time between 1912 and 1935, the script adapted by Truffaut and Jean Gruault follows German writer Jules (Werner) and his French counterpart Jim (Serre), who meet in Paris. Jim is a hedonistic womaniser (very much like the novelist Roché) whereas Jules is serious, self-pitying and naive, clinging to abstracts and words rather than actions. They both fall in love with Catherine (Moreau), who is the polar opposite of Jules who she ends up marrying, against Jim’s advice.

The marriage is a disaster, but the war intervenes, the two men fighting on different sides and afraid to kill each other. After the war, Jim goes to see Jules, Catherine and their daughter Sabine (Haudepin) in a small village in southern Germany. Catherine is unhappy, and Jules asks Jim “not to see me as an obstacle” in making love to Catherine. The ménage-a trois is a happy one, but Jim can’t tear himself away from Paris and patient girl friend Gilberte (Urbino), with Catherine’s passionate jealousy ending it all. The trio meet accidentally in Paris in 1934, watching a newsreel about the Nazis burning books. Catherine’s revenge is as brutal as its imaginative and leaves Jules bereft alone in a world which he never understood.

The casting of Moreau made Jules et Jim from a “film d’auteur” into a “film de comédienne”, as Claude Mauriac put it. Arguably, the great DoP Raoul Coutard also owns more of the feature than the director. Coutard’s roving camera, old-fashioned fade-outs and languid tracking shots creates an unreal atmosphere, keeping the audience at the whim of the changing camera angles, just like Jules is permanently wrong-footed by life and his love for Catherine.

Jules et Jim was certainly the high point in Truffaut’s career. His next feature, La Peau Douce (1963/64) would be his last in black-and-white for a very long time; but the change to colour was not only an aesthetic choice. Despite the radical ending, La Peau Douce (like most features which followed) were very much a return the French cinema of quality and psychological drama Truffaut had attacked so vehemently as a critic. AS

 

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT SEASON ON BFI PLAYER & AT BFI SOUTHBANK
The BFI’s celebration of film critic-turned-director, François Truffaut takes place across the UK during January – February 2022 to include a two-month season at BFI Southbank and BFI Distribution re-releases of THE 400 BLOWS and JULES ET JIM.

LES MISTONS (THE MISCHIEF MAKERS) (1957)
A group of boys have a crush on a girl called Bernadette. As they are jealous of Gérard, her lover, they try to disrupt their relationship. When Gérard catches one of the kids spying on them, he thrashes him severely. In retaliation, the boys attempt inspiring Bernadette to doubt Gérard’s love.

SHOOT THE PIANIST (1960)
Charlie is approached by his crook brother Chico, who is chased by two gangsters. Charlie helps him to escape, but he upsets the criminals, so when his brother Fido is kidnapped, Charlie has to take an attitude with tragic consequences.

ANTOINE ET COLETTE (1962)
Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel (introduced in THE 400 BLOWS) works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend.

STOLEN KISSES (BAISERS VOLÉS) (1968)
It’s 1968 and the forever lustful protagonist of the Antoine Doinel series, has been discharged from military service. He stumbles into a position assisting a private eye where many misadventures, romantic and otherwise ensue.

BED AND BOARD (DOMICILE CONJUGAL) (1970)
Antoine has married his sweetheart Christine, and the couple have set up a cosy life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine is pregnant with the couple’s first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty.

ANNE AND MURIEL (AKA TWO ENGLISH GIRLS) (1971)
At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman, befriends Anne, an Englishwoman. While spending time in England with Anne’s family, Claude falls in love with her sister Muriel, but both families lay down a year-long separation without contact before they may marry.

UNE BELLE FILLE COMME MOI (SUCH A GORGEOUS KID LIKE ME) 1972)
Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He meets Camille Bliss in prison to interview her. Camille is accused of murdering her lover Arthur and her husband Clovis. She tells Stanislas about her life and her love affairs…

LOVE ON THE RUN (L’AMOUR EN FUITE) (1978)
Antoine is now thirty, working as a proofreader and getting divorced from his wife. It being the first “no-fault” divorce in France, a media circus erupts, dredging up Antoine’s past. Indecisive about his new love with a store clerk, he impulsively takes off with an old flame.

THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR (LA FEMME D’A COTE) (1981)
Two ex-lovers wind up living next door to each other with their respective spouses. Forbidden passions ensue.

FINALLY, SUNDAY! (VIVEMENT DIMANCHE!) (1983)
Based on ‘The Long Saturday Night’ by Charles Williams, the story is set over the course of a few nights in a small town in the South of France. Julien Vercel, director of an estate agency, finds himself suspected of a double murder: that of his wife, Marie-Christine, and her lover, Claude Massoulier. As circumstantial evidence is against him and a third murder is attributed to him, Vercel takes off to escape the police. His secretary, Barbara, conducts her own inquiry in a bid to find out the truth and gets herself into some worrying, unexpected situations.

River of Blood (2021) Red Sea International Film Festival 2021

Dir: Nitin Lukose | India, Drama 101′

In his beautifully realised revenge drama Indian director Nitin Lokose dives into the troubled waters of a divided Catholic community in the southern island of Kerala to show how an age-old vendetta can perpetuate ill-feeling despite religious cohesion. Each year at Christmas time the two factions at the heart of the story agree to bury their differences but Christmas is rarely a good time for families, and sparks from the fire soon ignite another round of violence.   

A body is brought out on to the sandy river banks deep in the lush Keralan countryside – was it a murder or an accident? The death seems to be connected to a decades long rivalry between two Catholic families unable to live by the values they espouse. Anna (Kosher) and Joey (George) had hoped to get married, but their nuptials are put on ice due to the inter-family feud, Romeo and Juliet style. 

Years later Joey’s uncle Kochappan (Kizhakkan) returns home from jail, having served 15 years for the murder, much to the consternation of his nasty little blind father, a devout Catholic and pillar of the local community who had urged Kochappan to take revenge, even providing the weapon of choice and encouraging Joey and the rest of male to perpetuate the cycle of violence.

Kochappan’s crime hasn’t been forgotten, and as history repeats itself the police are brought in to investigate uncle’s sudden disappearance- no prizes for guessing what’s happened as the killing spirals out of control.

A great premise but rather a simplistic script fails to flesh out characters or backstory instead plunging us immediately into a series of violent episodes between the menfolk – the women remaining cyphers on a sidelines, leaving us caring little for those involved. A curious comedy undertone feels tonally out of kilter with the otherwise baleful mood of constant conflict. Lukose gets into his stride as his narrative unfolds in the second act, full of Srikanth Kabothu’s wonderful images and a tense dramatic undertow that makes River of Blood entertaining arthouse thriller, despite the repetitive violence and rather predicable finale. MT

RED SEA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Ailey (2021)

Dir.: Jamila Wignot; Documentary with Alvin Ailey, Judith Jameson, Carmen de Lavallade , Robert Battle; USA 2021, 90 min.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (AAADT), remains pretty much a mystery in this lyrical portrait of the dancer and choreographer – a black, closeted gay man. Cicely Tyson called him the “Pied Piper of modern dance”, and when Ailey received his award during the Kennedy Honours ceremony in 1988, ironically presented by Ronald whose policies had punished the gay community.

In her first outing as solo writer/director, Jamila Wignot works with Ailey archive interviews often as a commentator, escaping the ‘talking heads’ malaise which blights many documentaries. Alvin Ailey was born in 1931 in rural Texas, he never met his father, but his mother worked on the cotton fields and as a cleaning lady for white homeowners. In 1941 they moved to Los Angeles where their relationship became the corner stone of Alvin’s psychological world for the rest of his life. Later, when he suffered from Bi-Polar disorder and was institutionalised in a psychiatric ward, it was his mother who took him home and looked after him. Alvin was very protective of his mother, right to the end, when he made his doctor sign the cause of his death as a result of a blood disorder, so that she would not be stigmatised by him being a victim of AIDS.

Ballet was for Ailey a form of escape, he was captivated by the Ballets Russes Monte Carlo and Catherine Dunham even though his football coach at High school tried in vain to interest him in the sport. Alvin was taught by Martha Graham, among others, and founded the AAADT in 1958 at the age of only twenty-seven, after having moved to NYC, where he replaced Lester Horton as choreographer at his last engagement.

Perhaps Ailey’s most famous ballet, “Revelations” (1960) was called a “re-enactment’ of life, a mixture of passion and sorrows” by members of the ensemble. In 1970, AAADT was nearly bankrupt, and the Foreign Office sent the ensemble on a tour of Asia and Europe. They were extremely popular, particularly in Stuttgart (Germany) “where the sell-out crowd hollered and stomped, like they had an orgasm”. The audience called the troupe for 80 curtain raisers. But Alvin remained an enigma even for his closest collaborators, he was just another person when he left the building after performing. His work was sometimes criticised for not being political enough in the wake of the rising Civil Rights movement, but he answered “that his protest was on the stage, not the streets”.

Further successes were “The River” (1970) and a year later, “Cry”, a birthday present for his mother, and a solo performance for Judith Jameson. There is interesting footage from an interview of Alvin with Harry Belafonte, where they discuss race integration, which for Alvin did progress too slowly. After the death of close collaborator Joyce Trisher, he was shocked and honoured her with “Memoria” (1979). But the experience in Texas stayed with him forever: after successful performances in Paris, he claimed that he could not adjust to such different experiences, and left. He soon returned with “Fever Swamp” (1983). Alvin Ailey spent the last days of his life on a sofa, watching his troupe rehearse.

Apart from archive footage and Newsreel snippets, Wignot uses rehearsals by the new artistic director, Robert Battle, of “Lazarus” by Rennie Harris, to celebrate 60 years of the AAADT, with Masazumi Chaya, another co-director of the company, also commenting on the continuation of Alvin Ailey’s work.

AILEY flows like a dream, languid and indulgent. Perhaps Alvin Ailey was too much of a contradictory personality to have everything revealed in one feature. But Wignot has achieved enough, to make us curious to get to know him better. AS

IN CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND from 7 JANUARY 2022

Rotterdam Film Festival | Retrospectives 2022

A retrospective in this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival is dedicated to China’s Qiu Jiongjiong, one of the world’ most innovative artists and filmmakers, with a series of films and an exhibition. Intimate memory and national history resonate in Qiu’s baroque rhapsodies of music and design.

Six of his films are presented, including his latest masterwork A New Old Play. Its overview of China from the 1930s to the 1980s, filtered through the semi-fictionalised life of a Sichuan opera star, won the Special Jury Prize at the 74th Locarno Film Festival; the film was supported in development by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund. The accompanying exhibition Qiu Jiongjiong: A Play with Paintings, Drawings and Manuscriptsdisplays different stages of Qiu’s creative process.

Madame, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2010, China, European premiere

The Moon Palace, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2007, China, international premiere

My Mother’s Rhapsody, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2011, China

A New Old Play, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2021, China

Ode to Joy, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2008, China

Portrait of Mr. Huang, Qiu Jiongjiong, 2009, China

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 27 JANUARY – 5 FEBRUARY 2022

Hit the Road (2021)

Dir: Panar Panahi | Iran, Drama 98′

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Val (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOW ON RELEASE

Cyrano de Bergerac (2021) Red Sea International Film Festival 2021

Dir: Joe Wright | Writer; Eric Schmidt | Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Ben Mendelsohn, Kelvin Harrison | UK Musical drama, 124′

Joe Wright gives Cyrano De Bergerac a musical makeover with this soft-centred lyrical approach to the time-honoured French classic, transposing the action to early 18th century Italy and dressing the love story up in macaroon pastels and tender gazes as delicate as the Capodimonte porcelain of the region that clearly inspired Sarah Greenwood’s production designs.

Peter Dinklage plays the sweet-natured romantic soldier unlucky in love due to his unfeasibly large nose and lack of stature, but whose way with words woes Haley Bennett’s wistful but unwitting maiden Roxanne (Bennett) through poetic billets doux penned on behalf of the real object of her affections, Christian (Harrison) a recruit in the service of her caustic suitor Duke De Guiche (an ebullient Ben Mendelsohn).

The everlasting appeal of the story lies in the cherished belief that inner beauty and noble intentions can override physical imperfections in our quest for love. And Wright certainly moves us with this woozy concoction and its touching performances particularly from Dinklage in the leading role as a captivating Cyrano crooning original tunes from Aaron & Bryce Dessner.

There have been several adaptations of the 19th century novel, the most famous, from 1990, stars Gerard Depardieu as the disillusioned dreamer, and this one is based on Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage show, which also starred Dinklage in the title role. A little bit lightweight but intoxicating nevertheless. MT

CYRANO OPENS THE RED SEA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

 

 

The Case of the Vanishing Gods (2021)

Dir: Ross Lipman | US Doc 71

Ventriloquism is explored in this novel and darkly amusing experimental doc hybrid from US documentarian Ross Lipman who traces the phenomenon of ‘throwing voices’ from the oracles of ancient Greece to the spectacle of the modern horror film.

It all starts with a strange one-eyed man who welcomes us into his abode referred to as the ‘psycho ward’ to experience the deepest corners of human mind. The story of puppetry and ventriloquism then unfolds through a consultation between two puppets: psychiatrist Dr Labyrinth and his patient Hugo, interleaved and enlivened by a comprehensive cache of film excerpts and archive footage from the famous ventriloquist stage double acts such as Anthony Hopkins, Karru Mari, Chucky providing a terrifying and comprehensive collage of creepiness that dates back to the 17th century and possibly even earlier.

‘Ventriloquism’ comes from Latin ‘to speak from the belly’ (the Greeks called it nacromancy). Noises from the stomach were thought to be the voices of God that were interpreted by the ventriloquist – forecasting future events 

Essentially a two-hander (or a four-stringer) starring Hugo and Dr Labyrinth, the ‘case of the vanishing gods’ is what the puppet psychiatrist refers to as ‘Hugo’s case’. Hugo – a Bronx-accented classical marionette – is suffering from a fear of scissors and frequent memory loss. Dr Labyrinth puts Hugo under a trance where he experiences the most fantastic dream with sybilles or immortal nymphs becoming oracles and connecting us with the spirit world. Hugo then returns the following week for another session and once again is put into a trance, this time the Gods and Sybilles have disappeared and we learn how the 17th saw ventriloquism take shape as a more earthbound mode of communication. But it wasn’t until 1886 when Costa Joe introduced the first ventriloquist dummy to the theatre – Prof Echo brought his dummy Tommy who sang on stage with tunes like Sweet Rose O’Grady and soon the puppets were appearing in silent cinema: Lon Chaney provided the dummy’s voices himself. Then came Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

All this unfolds through the medium of the patient and doctor consultations. Hugo’s memories then become darker and feature clips from the film Dead of Night (1945), Hugo somehow becoming a character friend of Michael Redgrave. Another memory has Hugo reflecting over the comedy duo where a dummy called Caesar actually takes over his ventriloquist, the dynamic dramatically switching and putting servant in control of master. 

The third segment develops this sinister strand – the focus is now on puppets taking control of their owners – a worrying trend that has actually come full circle, hinting at the AI robots that are now with us in the 21st century. Meanwhile the Doc takes Hugo into his fourth session which encounters yet another memory featuring a Roubinska puppet who could see things the puppet ventriloquist could not express (“It’s schitzo Doc “).

The film touches on ‘Prophetic transition’ where the puppets become an alter ego helping us to bounce off our ideas and seek guidance for a higher unconscious and possibly unlocking the deep and potent inner resources of the human mind. The imagined puppet sequences in the first act are absolutely enchanting, delicately superimposed on Hugo’s first therapy session with the Doc. What follows is a compact yet immersive odyssey through the history of ventriloquism packing a richly thematic punch in just over a hour. And while the experimental style may not have wide appeal, content-wise Lipman offers an enjoyable dive into the history of this arcane form of entertainment. MT

ON FESTIVALSCOPE PRO

Petrov’s Flu (2021)

Dir: Kiril Serebrennikov | Cast: Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova, Yulia Boris and Yuri Kolokolnikov | USSR, Drama

Petrov’s Flu unites Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov with Semyon Serzin, the star of his 2018 drama Leto. His standout thought-provoking religious drama The Student (2016) screened at Un Certain Regard. It won that year’s Francois Chalais Award.

Based on the novel “The Petrovs In and Around the Flu” by Alexey Salnikov this film version is a deadpan, hallucinatory romp through post-Soviet Russia. With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where – beneath layers of the ordinary – things turn out to be quite extraordinary. Set somewhere between reality and imagination, Petrov’s Flu is a visually captivating: rough, funny, violent and psychedelic, and yet at the same time tender and poetic. It’s not quite a good as The Student .but its ideas and striking visual aesthetic make it well worth watching. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 11 February 2022

Tomorrow is Forever (1946)

Dir: Irving Pitchel | Cast: Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert, George Brent, Lucile Watson | US Drama 104″

A fascinating memento of Orson Welles’ extremely brief mid-forties spell as a bankable star in ‘A’ features, with Max Steiner crashing about on the soundtrack, a glamorous, expensively suited Claudette Colbert as his ‘widow’ and a cute little Natalie Wood as his adopted daughter. (Welles presumably hit it off with Richard Long, who plays his grown-up son, since he cast him in his next film, The Stranger).

Playing yet another role greatly in a advance of his real years, Welles wears the first of many false beards he would adopt in the years to come, along with a rather theatrical limp. Director Irving Pichel like all the other Hollywood hacks Welles worked with during this period produced work suspiciously far in advance of his usual accustomed mediocrity; such as a couple of nice uses of a mirror and a finale depicting a burning letter that recalls a certain sledge. The film competed at Venice in 1947 but went home empty-handed. @Richard Chatten

 

Lamb (2021) Mubi

Dir: Valdimar Johannsson | IFantasy Sci-fi | Iceland, 103′

This surreal sci-fi for animal lovers is one of a new breed of arthouse films that blends folklore and fantasy horror with a surprising touch of dark humour.

A first feature for Icelandic director Valdimar Johannsson, its intriguing premise invites us to suspend our disbelief when a childless couple in a remote farmstead in Iceland unexpectedly become parents during the lambing season. Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Guonason) and Maria (Noomi Rapace) realise this is no ordinary newborn. But the sense of joy they feel at finally being a family of sorts fills the couple with a warm contentment. The docile baby takes pride of place in their bedroom, and life goes on as normal.

But there’s an unsettling undertone to this much wanted birth that leaves a nagging doubt in our minds and fuels this sober arthouse curio with eerie dread. The reason for their muted joy soon becomes apparent in a way that is both amusing and bizarre, with its distinct references to Cannes 2021 title Annette and even the recent Border.

Johannsson’s spare soundscape echoes around the bleak lunar-landscapes of Iceland’s craggy peaks and windswept terrain. But the tone lightens with a visit from Ingvar’s musician brother Petur (Bjorn Hynur Haraldsson) whose reaction to young Ada is hilarious but also worrying until he gets used to the unorthodox new household. This amusing interlude provides the story with an upbeat vibe and some rather touching family scenes as the two bond both outsiders in their own special way. But the nagging suspicions remain. And it’s the film’s cruel finale that provides a tragic twist that reminds us that Ada may have been nurtured by loving parents but is still a wild child at heart. MT

NOW ON MUBI

Silent Night (2021)

Dir.: Camille Griffin; Cast: Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Roman Griffin Davies, Hardy Griffin Davies, Gilby Griffin Davis, Annabelle Wallis, Rufus Jones, Davida McKenzie, Lucy Punch, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Sopé Dirisu, Lily-Rose Depp; UK 2020, 90 min.

Silent Night is one of those plucky B-Pictures, with lots of ideas – not always fully realised – and a surreal plot. In this case the setting is in an English country mansion where friends from school and university are celebrating a time of “love and forgiveness”. But they will have to make the most of their get together because – according to News reports,  a poisonous gas will soon engulf the planet exterminating everything alive. The government is giving out ‘Exit-pills’, to relieve the suffering – sounds familiar, eh?

The hosts, Nell (Knightley) and Simon (Goode) are in charge of catering, their son Art (Roman Griffin Davis) cuts himself slicing the carrots. As it turns out, he’ll be in the minority, not wanting to accept the need for the government prescribed pill. Art’s twin brothers Hardy and Thomas (Hardy and Gilby Griffin Davies) are nowhere to be seen, but go with the flow making life for their parents easier. Then the guest roll in two by two, creating a reverse Noah’s Ark effect. Sandra (Wallis) self-centred and attention seeking with hubby Tony (Jones), candidate for ‘Mediocre Man’ of the universe and daughter Kitty (McKenzie), as unbearable as her mother.

Lesbian couple Bella (Punch) and Alex (Howell-Baptiste) are here to enjoy themselves, laid-back medic James (Dirisu) has issues with much his younger partner Sophie (Depp), an American, who is pregnant and joins Art in defiance.
Nell and Simon are proper hosts, trying to cater to everyone’s whim – whilst fighting a losing battle with Art, who will run off deep into the night where he will come across a car packed with the bodies of neighbours who have taken the pills, something Art wants to avoid at all cost.

As the hour of ‘no return’ creeps nearer, James wins the battle of wills with Sophie, whilst Sandra and Tony also make peace just in time, giving their daughter a peaceful exit. But Bella has big problems with Alex who gets so drunk she passes out. Bella administers the pill to her sleeping lover who wakes up and vomits the pill out. Alone in the kitchen with Alex Bella has to come up with a radical solution.- everyone else has retreated to their bedrooms, including Art who is asleep in his mother’s arms, the twins keeping up their personal rivalry to the bitter end.

There are simply too many characters here to given them a convincing backstory and make us feel for their desperate plight, although the leads – especially Knightley and Goode are impressive, and Art, the director’s son and his real life brothers Thomas and Hardy – give the cowardly grown-ups a run for their money.

Simon’s sermon to his children “It’s not our fault, nor is it yours”, rings very hollow but DoP Sam Renton makes the best out of the glittering claustrophobia of the domestic settings and the group interactions are entertaining particularly the hilarious scene where the adults discuss who slept with whom and why at university. A major twist at the end makes us forget some of the shortcomings – it may not totally win you over, but lovers of the bizarre are well served. AS

IN CINEMAS from 3 December 2021

Taming the Garden (2021)

Dir.: Salomé Jashi; Documentary; Germany/Netherlands/Switzerland/Georgia 2021, 91 min.

Georgian writer/director/co-DoP Salomé Jashi (The dazzling sight of Sunset) has portrayed her fellow Georgians justified but remorseless: whilst ex-premier Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Dollar billionaire, robs the country of its natural beauty, the ones directly concerned take the money and moan. Ivanishvili, who also has a private zoo with with kangaroos, penguins and zebras in one of his many villas near the Black Sea, has decided to re-plant old trees near his country mansion, overlooking the capital Tbilisi, were flamingos mingle near lakes. Jashi follows the re-planting on a 135-year old tulip tree, weighing 650 tonnes, on its journey to its new home.

The beginning is surreal, Fellini and Herzog could not have done it better: two men fish at the banks of the Black Sea, when suddenly a tree a tree floats along the waves, only when it comes closer, we make out the barge, which carries it. Cut to to the village of Tsikhisdziri in western Georgia, were the tree, “legally bought” by Ivanishvili, “because giant trees are my hobby, I am developing a park, I think tis is all appropriate”, is dug out from the ground, to go on a journey of forty km along the Black sea coast. Workers use diggers of all sorts and seizes, drills and pipes to extricate tree and roots, and load it on two coupled up HGVs, to drive to the coast.

The job will take about three months, and the crew of workmen compare the current enterprise with other jobs of the same kind, which they have done for Ivanishvili in the past. Planks are laid out, a new road is being constructed, leading to the coast of the Black Sea, where the tree will be loaded on to a barge. It goes without saying, that there will be collateral damage: trees in the neighbourhood of the prize object will be cut down or severely trimmed. The same goes for the trees of the neighbours, next to dirt street, where the tree will be transported. Five hundred Lai is the price per tree. The recipients of the compensation are muted about their response: “Never mind, what sort of villain Ivanishvili is, he is doing something. People never gave a shit about the trees.” One man, slightly drunk swears “I’ll never give way to the transportation workers, I am going for death”. When the deed is done, their is some regret, but also optimism: “The trimmed trees will bloom again in two years”, to which an elderly lady answers “But will I be alive then?”

Celia Stroom’s choral score ends the feature with close-ups of barge and tree, before we cut to Ivanishvili’s new park, were a bamboo forest is next to the newly up-rooted trees’, leaving the audience with the question if this is home or prison.

In foregoing the usual commentary, which tells the audience the obvious, Jashi concentrates on the images and Vox populi: the harsh realism of the work environment clashes with the poetic lyricism of he Black Sea travel. Taming the Garden is harbinger of a world to come, where not only the souls of trees will be up for sale. AS

In UK & Irish cinemas 28th January 2022

My Wonderful Wanda (2021) Prime Video

Dir: Bettina Oberli | Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Marthe Keller, Andre Jung, Birgit Minichmayr | Switzerland, drama 111′

Winner of awards at Tribeca and Vancouver, My Wonderful Wanda is a deliciously amusing satire that sees a wealthy Swiss family get more than they bargained for when a Polish au pair joins the family.

Reworking similar themes as Parasite this European ‘upstairs downstairs’ affair is nearer to home and much closer to the bone than its South Korean counterpart, set in a gorgeous lakeside villa in Switzerland where the head of the Wegmeister-Gloor family, successful industrialist Josef (an affable André Jung) is now wheelchair bound and needing 24-hour care after suffering a stroke.

Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska), in her mid thirties, comes to the rescue leaving her own small children at home in Poland, managing the tricky dynamics of this privileged set-up while also being at the beck and call of Josef who seems to want more than just medical care. All families are complicated and this one is no different, even the adults are spoilt kids. Oberli and her writer Cooky Ziesche contrive a plot that is convoluted yet bang on the nail and extremely well-conceived – without putting too fine a point on it.

A brilliant Marthe Keller is the graceful matriarch who brings much needed perspective with her worldly experience and love for all the family – including Wanda (an appealing Grochowska) who is very much valued and far more influential than she at first imagined. Oberli brings warmth and humanity to this perceptive dark comedy that always looks on the bright side of modern life. MT

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Maytime in Mayfair (1949)

Dir: Herbert Wilcox | Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Peter Graves, Nicholas Phipps, Thora Hird, Desmond Walter-Ellis | UK Drama 94′

The reference to Sir Stafford Cripps in the opening foreword passes for satire in so light a confection; but also reminds us why there was a need for this sort of escapist fantasy seventy two years ago, with ‘Mr. Austerity’ in No.11 Downing Street.

Ravishingly shot in Technicolor and with clothes (designed by Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, Creed and Worth) probably consuming much of the film’s budget ; it’s otherwise played out in sets by William C.Andrews that look as if they’d fall over if you blew on them (it relocates to Paris for a few minutes courtesy of one hotel room and an incredibly phony-looking ‘outdoor’ restaurant), and the wind never disturbs the branches of any of any of the trees that adorn the very occasional studio exteriors.

Never mind, material this slight doesn’t offend the way that Wilcox’s flat-footed direction of more ‘serious’ subject matter does. Michael Wilding is fun overacting like crazy as a conceited jerk, Thora Hird is permitted to look incredibly glamorous as Neagle’s secretary; and it provides a unique opportunity to see “our old friend” Tom Walls in Technicolor playing an Irish police inspector presiding over a station so minimal it could have been designed for ‘Dr Mabuse’. @Richard Chatten

Boxing Day (2021)

Dir.: Aml Ameen; Cast: Aml Ameen, Naomi King, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Fraser James, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Tim Aherne, Shyi Cole; UK 2021, 109 min.

Best known for his acting roles in Inside Man: Most Wanted and Parallel, Aml Ameen directs and stars in this Christmas cracker based on his own experiences in the Caribbean community in London. where black people are for once neither victims or perpetrators, just full of issues and contradictions just like everyone else.

Melvin (Ameen) is a successful author in the US and wants to take highflying girl friend Lisa (King) to London for Christmas, and introduce her to his Caribbean clan. Things will go disastrously wrong: to start with, Lisa is pregnant, but has not yet told Melvin, who has already told her he’s not ready to be a father. Melvin’s Mum Shirley (Jean-Baptiste), rules the roost and soon finds out Lisa’s secret, but has enough problems with her own new partner Dave (Aherne) who will meet the family for the first time over the holidays which would be no big deal, apart from the fact that he is white.

Melvin’s father Billy (James) is not much of a role model having left Shirley and the kids, like many men of his generation, and now runs a night club. He has ‘forgotten’ to tell Lisa that he has left London years’ ago without keeping up contact with the family, apart from a few postcards. And while the teenage generation of the clan is as wild and violent as Melvin’s own age group at the time, countless aunts and uncles are waiting with baited breath to meet Lisa, who is, needless to say, is just another outsider, due to her Afro-American background, charms everyone with her put-on Jamaican accent. But Melvin still seems to have feelings for his ex Georgia (Pinnock, from “Little Mix”), who is now a super star and planning to take up a job in New Zealand, Lisa spying the couple sharing a cheeky covert kiss in the garden.

Ameen skates over the identity politics with panache, never losing the light-hearted sense of humour. The cast is ready to rumble, particularly Jean-Batiste as Shirley, trying to align all the contradictory bits of family life into a Hollywood style happy-ending in a referential bow to Hollywood musicals of the mid 20th century. A cocktail of festive fun and games laced with a few home truths . AS

ON RELEASE FROM 3 DECEMBER 2021

Hive (2021)

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

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

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

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

CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY RECLAIM THE FRAME presents HIVE plus recorded Q&A with writer and director Blerta Basholli on Tuesday 8 March 2022

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch; Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Felix Bressart, William Tray; USA 1940, 99 min.

“The American movie-going public has the mind of a 12-year old child; it must have life as it isn’t. (Ernst Lubitsch)”

Of all Hollywood’s immigrant filmmakers, German born Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was the most successful in serving his new audience, adapting well to the change-over from silent to sound. The “Lubitsch touch” became a trademark, success was guaranteed, he reeled off classic Hollywood comedies like Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka or To Be or Not To Be. He would have churned out even more, but for a heart condition which slowed him down in final years of his life, succumbing to it whilst shooting That Lady in Ermine.

The Shop Around the Corner is based on the play ‘Parfumerie’ by Miklos Laszlo, adapted for the screen by Lubitsch regular Samson Raphaelson (Heaven Can Wait), with some uncredited work by Ben Hecht. Whereas most of his comedies played out in world of the idle rich, The Shop is set in a working environment, taking him back to his father’s tailoring business where he did the accounts as he took his first steps as a stage actor.

The setting is a leather-goods and novelty shop in Budapest (via Hollywood), run by the imperious Hugo Matuschek (Morgan), whose bark is worse than his bite. His deputy is Alfred Kralik (Stewart), a likeable but air-headed man and the day unfolds amid bickering with new shop assistant Klara Novak (Sullavan). Little do they know that after office hours they are falling in love through the post as each other’s anonymous pen pal.

When the great day arrives for the ‘lovers’ first meeting in a local cafe, Mr. Matuschek orders his staff to stay late for an inventory, and then later fires Kralik suspecting him of having an affair with his wife. The real culprit will be soon be revealed. Off to his meeting Kralik looks through the window and, to his horror, sees Klara reading Tolstoi at the cafe table. He enters, talks to her, but does not reveal his true identity. Meanwhile, Mr. Matuschek is saved from suicide by the apprentice Pepi (Tray) who is promoted, as is Kralik who then becomes the manager.

The film positively glows in fluffy fairy-tale black-and white by William Daniels (Cat On A Hot Tin Roof), Lubitsch again ducks the censors by talking sex, but only showing a perfunctionary final kiss. The director might have been inspired by the relationship of Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette McDonald who played love birds in numerous features, despite oathing each other off screen. Lubitsch directed McDonald’s debut (and also his first sound feature) alongside Chevalier in The Love Parade (1929). Often remade with disappointing results – with Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail (1998) the latest offering, Lubitsch’s The Shop is from another universe: A true classic.AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 3 DECEMBER 2021

Tailor | Raftis (2020)

Dir.: Sonia Liza Kenterman; Cast: Dimitris Imellos, Tamilla Koulieva, Stathis Stamoulaktos, Daphne Michopoulou, Thanasis Papagrogiou; Greece/Belgium/Germany 2020, 100 min.

The first feature film of Greek director/co-writer Sonia Liza Kenterman, a graduate of the London Film School, is a fine character study of a man in his early 50s who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, might be on the autism spectrum and is still a virgin. Unfortunately, Kenterman sticks to enigma, resulting in a rather sentimental meandering.

Despite his challenges Nikos Karalis (a brilliant Imellos), is under the cosh of his tyrannical father Thanasis (Papageorgiou), who has been in the tailoring business since the age of sixteen. But the demand for tailor-made suits is near zero in the recession plagued Greek capital of Athens and his clientele is now dwindling in the recession and the bank foreclosing on the shop and all other assets,.

The only joy in Nikos life is his relationship with Victoria (Michopoulou), the spoilt daughter of his neighbour Olga (Koulieva), a Russian emigrant, whom Nikos fancies, without being aware of it. Transformation is needed, after Thanasis is taken to hospital, suffering from cancer. Nikos becomes, overnight, a specialist in creating the most wonderful bridal robes and other feminine outfits. And he even finds the courage to go to bed with Olga – and event which naturally angers her jealous partner Kostas (Stamoulakatos) who destroys Nikos’ work place, sending him and his life possessions on a journey into the unknown. Will Nikos find the courage to fight for his first love?

There are subtle social comments, like the nurse, providing medicines for Nicos’ father in exchange for fashionable outfits. But overall, Tailor lacks a much needed bite, opting instead for an over saccharine approach resulting in a mundane feel-good movie, which panders to audiences’ expectations. A shame, since the impressive images of DoP Dimitris Mihelis and the wonderful ensemble acting deserve more than just another hard-luck story. AS

TAILOR WON THE FIPRESCI PRIZE AT THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL 2020

 

Masquerade (1965) Prime video

Dir: Basil Dearden | Cast: Cliff Robertson, Jack Hawkins, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Charles Grey, Bill Fraser, Felix Aylmer, John Le Mesurier | UK Drama 102′

Like Graham Greene, the writing-producing team of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden interspersed ‘novels’ like Sapphire and Victim with ‘entertainments’ like The League of Gentlemen; and they never made an entertainment more entertaining than this, attractively shot in Technicolor on picturesque Spanish locations with a once-a-lifetime cast (the witty animated titles sequence contains the extraordinary credit ‘Also Starring Michel Piccoli, Bill Fraser’; while Jack Hawkins ironically shares scenes with Charles Gray, soon to become his regular screen voice when Hawkins tragically had his voice box removed).

Dearden and Relph had for ten years planned to film Victor Canning’s 1954 novel ‘Castle Minerva’, originally with Rex Harrison in the lead; but fortunately Cliff Robertson starred when the film finally got made.

William Goldman earned his first screen credit making the hero more American, and it abounds in cynical one-liners like “In my country torture is still legal” and “I’ve – got – scruples?” and a priceless breach of the fourth wall when a sequence both suspenseful and hilarious ends with Robertson staring into the camera and saying “Somebody up there hates me!”

It’s full of surprises – some scenes resemble North by Northwest directed by Fellini – and in a scene worthy of Hitchcock an abduction is carried out in full view of a circus audience laughing uproariously. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

House of Gucci (2021)

Dir: Ridley Scott | Cast: Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Camille Cottin, Jack Huston, Salma Hayek | Drama, 157′

Ridley Scott’s tragicomedy about the downfall of the Gucci family is a real epic: flawed, flamboyant but highly entertaining. A perfect clash between style and bravado. Adam Driver is the driving force behind it all. And he’s brilliant as the starchy patrician lawyer Maurizio Gucci seduced and ultimately murdered by Lady Gaga’s buxom firecracker, Patrizia Reggiani, the daughter of a haulage contractor, whose elbows are as sharp as her husband to be’s tailoring.

Maurizio is the son of suave Gucci scion Rodolfo played by Jeremy Irons whose well-tuned antenna has already spotted Gaga as a gold-digger. And predictably it all ends in tears when Rodolfo dies leaving Maurizio as the majority shareholder whose ideas for the family business conflict with those of his cousin Paolo Gucci – Al Pacino knows all the ropes here as the New York cousin who kept the brand exclusive offering his celebrity clientele loafers lined with gold leaf.

So the social side and the business story go hand in hand in a patchy drama that careers all over the place tone-wise – the bits with Jared Leto as Paolo’s idiotic son are awkwardly painful – but it speeds along like a Ferrari when Driver and Gaga are in the frame, their chemistry and glitzy lifestyle providing most of the fun, Pacino giving one of his best performances in recent years as the savvy businessman who finally loses out when Maurizio, and ultimately the Arab investors gain control. And Rodolfo’s predictions come true, and Maurizio eventually tires of his little wife’s unbridled ambition, and he moves onto the elegant charms of Paola, a woman from his own background in the shape of Camille Cottin (there’s a lovely scene where she shimmies, fireside).

House of Gucci is largely about a clash of cultures, and House of Gucci (based on a book by Sara Gay Forden) is spot on in its retelling of how the once chic emblem of the 1970s – anything by Gucci back then was considered highly desirable – is soon tarnished by family disagreements and over-exposure, so eroding the core values it represented as a brand. But never mind all that, House of Gucci is flamboyant fun. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2021

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Dir: Ingmar Bergman | Cast: Max Von Sidow, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, Gertrud Fridh, Georg Rydeberg | Sweden, Horror 90′

Ingmar Bergman had had a penchant for short injections of fantasy into his films as far back as the chiaroscuro dream sequences of his forties ‘neo-realist’ dramas, although by the time of Vargtimmen the hero (Max von Sydow) has moved up market and is now an artist in retreat from the world on a remote island who happens to have a neighbour – played by Erland Josephson – who lives in a castle occupied by a court of dinner-jacketed idlers.

Based – like The Blair Witch Project – on the diary of an individual who then disappeared without trace, relaxed 60’s censorship permitted more explicit images than the vaguely Freudian nature of Bergman’s earlier fantasies; like Ingrid Thulin baring herself for the camera while cackling fiendishly, and one of Bergman’s sun-bleached nightmares in which Sydow bashes in the head of a young lad in speedos. Elsewhere there are creepy moments as when Josephson is depicted walking up a wall and Naima Wifstrand peels off her face and drops her eyeball into a wine glass; while Sydow prowls about at night like Vincent Price in one of Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations – only shot by Sven Nykvist in glacial black & white rather than the hot Pathecolor hues of Floyd Crosby. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

Flee (2021)

Dir: Jonas Poher Rasmussen | With: Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, Milad Eskanderi, Belal Faiz | Denmark, Animated drama, 90′

Based on real events, this noirish gay awakening story blends new beginnings and past trauma in an involving and surprisingly poetic way, the delicately drawn animations notching down the rawness of a harrowing escape for the central character whose real identity is kept confidential.

Director Jonas Poher Rasmussen calls his friend Amin but only discovered the true horror of his backstory years after they met. Amin is a refugee from Afghanistan who escaped Kabul during the the 1980s and is now safely settled in Denmark in a relationship he never dreamed possible.

Rasmussen recounts his friend’s adventures through a series of animated events and interviews in a way that draws us into his world as we experience the horrors from Amin’s own perspective. The conflict that caused his family to leave their home and suffer at the hands of the authorities on their way to Europe is not news to any of us but it is brought to life here in an alarming way that brings a sobering perspective to the refugee crisis that’s still unfolding every today. Being gay was a further hurdle that Amin had to overcome in this bracingly tense adventure. MT

IN CINEMAS and EXCLUSIVELY ON CURZON HOME FROM FRIDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2022 | NOMINATED FOR THREE OSCARS

Feature Film About Life (2021) Black Night Festival Tallinn

Dir.: Dovile Sarutyte; Cast: Agne Misiunatie, Nele Savicenko, Kestutis Jakstas, Romuald Lavrinovic, Inga Maskarina, Aldona Bronislava Dausienie; Lithuania 2021, 100 min.

Don’t be put off by the rather banal title, this first film from Lithuanian director/co-writer Dovile Sarutyte is a small gem: genre wise, a trauma fuelled road movie that finds dark humour in the banal and the tragic when a young woman is suddenly confronted by the double blow of death and complex funeral arrangements. A time of mourning when we are forced to face the world at the most importune time.

In a Paris hotel we meet Dovile (Misiunatie), a young recording artist in her twenties, celebrating being young and independent with her two girlfriends Egle and Rasa. A day later, at work in her Vilnius studio recording studio in Vilnius, the world implodes with the sudden death of her father. The story continues as past happiness mingles with current anguish – home videos of Dovile’s childhood in the 1990s, and now the aftermath of family tragedy – a clapped-out Mercedes and a neurotic mother (Savicenko).

The two women meet Vladislavas (Lavrinovic) a greedy undertaker capitalising on their grief to sell them the most expensive funeral package. Afterwards, Dovile grapples with the Death Certificate from the hospital morgue, the cause of death was heart failure. Desperate for more detail to help her process her anguish Dovile learns that her father’s liver was severely damaged. The arrangements for the wake are also costly: 500 Euro for a one-day rental. “I could rent a concert hall for that” snaps Dovile and goes to meet Tadas (Jakstas), an old friend of her father, but not before the car breaks down.

Tadas has not seen Dovile’s father for more than six months but proves to be a ‘friend in need’. Father had stopped driving due to an alcohol problem, piling bewilderment onto her shaky state of emotional fragility. Gradually things come together, the Mercedes is repaired and Tadas finds a much cheaper venue for the wake: the boss of the funeral parlour, Zita (Maskarina), is a former flame. Dovile also makes a collage of photos from the family album telling her father’s life story in the wake room, where the urn looks solemn, a life reduced to a pot.

After the funeral, Dovile and her Mum make fun of Zita trying to re kindle her relationship with Tadas. But the laughter turns hollow, when it emerges Dovile’s grandmother somehow missed her lift to the funeral, and she explodes in anger: “You burned my little son”, insisting on a photo of the deceased in an open coffin.

The home videos show a joyful Dovile. But reading between the lines, the truth is quite different. Funny how we often remember the past with rose-tinted spectacles, bringing another strand of false memory to the narrative. At least Dovile and her father bought Christmas presents for each other, and this makes for a mellow ending to the traumatic and frustrating two-day adventure. DoP Eitvydas Doskus has kept up with the pace of the story, the images flying by, but his close-ups of Dovile, who is suffering from a worrying eye infection, are a testament to his skill of creating intimate moments. Dovile Saratyte is certainly a name to be reckoned with – you read it here first! AS

SCREENING DURING BLACK NIGHT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL TALLINN

The Power of the Dog (2021) Best Film & Director BAFTAs 2022

Wri/Dir: Jane Campion | Benedict Cumberpatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee | Western drama, 125’

Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning drama The Piano defines arthouse film and remains seared to the collective cineaste unconscious as a classic for all time.

The Power of the Dog, which premiered at the 78th Venice film festival, has the same potent stillness, captivating characters and visual allure, a traditionally told Western it unfolds in a buttoned-down ranching community in 1925 Montana where outward appearances belie dastardly intentions and family dysfunction, inspired by the novel written in 1967 by Thomas Savage.

Benedict Cumberbatch holds sway as Phil Burbank, the swaggeringly macho, latently homosexual son of a cattle rearing family, an ability to castrate a head of cattle before breakfast is the touchstone to his sadistic prowess. His gentlemanly brother George (Plemons) is quite the reverse soon landing himself a wife in the shape of thoughtful  alcoholic widow Rose (Dunst) and her academic but weakly son Peter (a star turn from Kodi Smit-McPhee) whose wounded pride and keen interest in medicine and dissecting animals provides the key to this beguiling slow-burner.

Ostensibly this is a straightforward family drama about the dynamics of power that create a pecking order locked in stasis until one member cracks the code. At first it seems Phil is on track to destroy Rose and her son, but Peter is not to be underestimated, proving that canny inquisitiveness is far more potent than mere intelligence even in a toxic masculine environment where Phil lords it over the locals resting on his laurels as the sneering ‘intellectual’ cowboy whose crass manners and cruelty to animals and his fellow men makes him secretly unpopular.

Campion loads her film with subtle textural references, Ari Wenger’s widescreen set pieces glower and glow in the hostile terrain. The clever adaptation allows plenty of scope for three intensely unusual protagonists: macho Phil is ultimately trounced by his pride; Rose is weak but utterly sympathetic as a deeply affectionate woman starved of physical love and in thrall to her impossible situation. But Peter is far the most intriguing, his physical weakness hiding a steely resolve to succeed and protect his mother at all costs. MT

OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR | AWARD FOR DIRECTOR, JANE CAMPION | EE BAFTAS 2022 | NOW ON NETFLIX

Rebel Dykes (2021)

Dir.: Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams; Documentary with DEBBIE, ROZ, FISCH, SIOBHAN, SEIJA, BAYA, DEL, LULU; UK 2021, 82 min.

The collective of Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams and producer Siobhan Fahey serve up a slice of subversiveness from the 1980s centred round a group of women activists who got together at Greenham Common, then decided to spice up the not-so-exciting London scene, taking over Women’s Centres and Gay Bars. In Brixton where squatting was not entirely legal, the DYKES started a vibrant underground culture with an SM club.

It was a time of revolt against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s administration: to create a Lesbian Fetish Club was in itself an open protest against the government’s ‘mishandling’ of the Aids Crisis and the introduction of Section 28, which basically forbade any mention in school curriculums about the existence of non hetero-sexual activities. The animated title sequence leads the audience into wild discussions and graphic descriptions of sexual scenes. The group was constantly under homophobic attack in the streets, so they just lived by night. But the danger came also from another front: mainstream feminists picketed the club and forced entrance with crowbars and axes. They accused the Rebel Dykes of anti-feminism and violence. The Rebel Dykes counter with action: invading the BBC News and chaining themselves to the furniture; they also founded sex-toy businesses and erotic Magazines – often having to fight the incriminating laws.

1981-1991 was a pivotal time in the history of alternative culture: kink, fetish, hedonism, music, drugs and political activism developed, leading to the formulation of trans rights and black queer life. It should be mentioned, that The Rebel Dykes were an international set-up: Seija came from Finland, Baya fled repressive East Germany, and Lulu was a San Francisco based photographer. Music plays a central role in the feature: Britpop artist guitarist Debbie Smith, the “most celebrated Black female guitarist”, is the film’s leading narrator. The archive music used is of precious cultural importance since women musicians rarely signed contracts in a male dominated business. The film’s composer, Ellyott, who works with ‘Sister George’ and ‘Night Nurse’, is the founder of Rebel Dyke and Queercore. The archive, consisting of mini-discs, digitised cassettes and VHS tapes, will be house permanently in the Bishopsgate Archive, London. Overall, the story-telling has multiple viewpoints, not a singular perspective.

Co-director/co-editor/animator Harri Shanahan, who studied filmmaking at university and produced post punk/experimental music videos, wanted “to tell the story of the Rebel Dykes because they “felt a kinship with their punk rebelliousness and their DIY approach to art and culture. It has been an amazing experience to meet these trailblazing, kickass people and to have the opportunity to be part of telling their story”.

The Rebel Dykes’s have virtually been written out of the history of the Queer movement, but it is a true revolutionary movement of female, non-binary and trans voices, celebrating direct action. So far unseen archive footage shows the Lesbian Strength March (1988) and the “Lesbian Avengers” who ab-sailed into the House of Lords, the night when ‘Section 28’ was passed into law, not to be revoked until 2003. AS

In cinemas and on BFI Player and Bohemia Euphoria from 26 November

Zero Fucks Given (2021)

Dir.: Emmanuel Mare, Julie Lecoustre; Cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Mara Tarquin, Alexander Perrier, Jonathan Sawdon; Belgium 2021, 115 min.

This bizarre but brilliant first feature for French duo Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre follows a shameless young air-stewardess on a flight to nowhere, emotionally speaking. We soon understand why.

Cassandra (Exarchopoulos from Blue is the Warmest Colour) works for a budget airline mostly around Europe. She dreams of being hired by Emirates Airlines or even a high-paying company called Private Jets, but speaks only a little English apart from French.

From her base in Lanzarote relationships are tricky so she signs out of reality, keeps her family at a distance and opts for an online life on Tinder under the pseudonym ‘Carpe Diem’, a bare-breasted selfie setting the tone for some casual sexual encounters. In some ways she is typical of the resigned young millennial who literally doesn’t care what happens as long as she’s having fun.

Not only is the job repetitive and unfulfilling, Cassandra spends most of her time in airline terminals, a hostile and alien environment made worse since Covid. Drugs and disco are her favourite release on breaks from the inflight tedium. When her contract runs out, she is re-assigned to a course that includes saving passengers with CPR – an exercise Cassandra fails dismally, unable to interact even with a dummy: “You are breaking all his ribs” the course leader tells her, after Cassandra pummels the model doll mercilessly. Job follows job largely down to Cassandra’s ability to sell her persona on Zoom interviews – ‘Seize the day’ very much captures the economic and social climate of this disposal world.

Exarchopoulos gives a stunning performance as the women “with no attributes”, an empty vessel not even trying to find an engagement with the outside world. She is vague to the point of disowning herself, constantly on the move in transit positions. She is the modern young woman honed for the instant turnaround of her professional life, opting for a quick fix while treading water in the hope of a better opportunity, always with her eye on the main chance. Cassandra is the opposite of her sister and father: rootless and uninterested in her past, leaving them to deal with the emotional consequences of the mother’s death. DoP Olivier Boonjing excels with the cold airport images which contrast with the warmer colours of Cassandra’s hometown. Zero Fucks Given is certainly original: an almost sinister study of a modern milliennial. Hugely recommended. AS

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE NATIONWIDE | The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Award for Best Screenplay, presented this year to Zero Fucks Given‹ by Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre |MANNHEIM HEIDELBERG FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Exodus – Pitbull (2021)

Dir: Patryk Vega | Cast: Przemyslaw Bluszcz, Tomasz Dedek, Andrzej Grabowski | Crime thriller, 115’

This nasty little English language crime thriller from Poland’s Patryk Vega’s sees his central character Nos (Przemyslaw Bluszcz) descend to the depths of depravity in the organised crime world in Poland and Eastern Europe. In an attempt to give credibility to the storyline the film uses the book of Exodus for its title but this doesn’t elevate what is already a choppy, unconvincing storyline. Nos is a self-confessed psycho and seasoned killer who speaks like an automaton and takes us rapidly through the backstory, growing up in a dysfunctional home where his pimp mother ran a brothel later blows that Nos destroys after honing his self-taught skills in explosives and bomb-making. The narrative drones on, Nos making a career out of his explosives, with a sideline in corporate bribery and extortion as part of a criminal gang. Eventually Nos gets arrested after proposing to a woman he’s only just met in the vain hope that having a family will put him on the straight and narrow. At the same time he makes an enemy of crime officer Jacek (Andrej Grabowski), after killing his colleague, and this feud fuels the rest of the film. Vega throws every crime into the mix from drug running to kidnapping and more murder for our tawdry antihero. An attempt to weave in biblical references make Exodus faintly ludicrous. A tragic case of less would have been more. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

 

Dying to Divorce (2021)

Dir: Chloe Fairweather | UK Doc, 84′

This grim but worthwhile documentary – the UK’s Oscar Academy hopeful – greets us with the news that one in three Turkish women experience domestic abuse.

Yes. And we meet two of them now living with life-changing injuries, merely for wanting a divorce on entirely reasonable grounds. One husband had openly taken a lover, and reduced his wife Arzu to a wheelchair-bound invalid leaving her unable to care for their five kids. Another,  caused catastrophic head injuries during a petty argument, leaving his wife Kubra – a former presenter for Bloomberg – virtually ‘gaga’, quite literally. And nothing to do with that famous celebrity.

English filmmaker Chloe Fairweather follows a typical day in the life of Istanbul lawyer Ipek Bozkurt who supports these courageous women in court standing up to their husbands in a male-dominated authoritarian regime that is modern day Turkey. At one point we actually see the Turkish president Recep Tayep Erdogan extolling the virtues of child-rearing as women’s only purpose in life in his increasingly authoritarian regime that continues to crack down on all forms of opposition since the attempted coup in July 2016. There is also ample archive footage showing how protestors demonstrated in the streets of the capital on International Women’s Day in March 2019, Police dispersing what looks like teargas into the crown.

We genuinely feel devastated by these women’s horrific injuries and humbled at their perseverance in seeking justice in a climate where men have the upper hand. Without the support of their families these women simply could not carry on.

Dying to Divorce is not a pleasant film but a vital document in the battle to raise awareness that femicide, toxic masculinity and domestic abuse is still an ongoing  occurrence in all societies where women are treated as second class citizens. MT

DYING TO DIVORCE – In UK cinemas from 24th November | Official UK Entry for the Academy Awards for: Best International Feature Film

King Richard (2021)

Dir.: Reinaldo Marcus Green; Cast: Will smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, John Bernthal, Tony Goldwyn; USA 2021, 138min.

The success story of mammoth tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams was already mapped out well before they hit a single ball, according to this extensive biopic whose focus is their father and tennis coach Richard Williams (a game by Will Smith).

Green and his writer Zach Baylin are keen to play on the sunny side of the former security guard’s character avoiding the more troubled aspects of a man who suffered from delusions of grandeur and narcissism.

We meet the Williams family in the seedy side of Compton, LA, were Richard and Oracene Williams (Ellis) are raising their five daughters, among them Venus (Sidney) and Serena (Singleton) who are coached by their father on the run-down tennis courts of the disadvantaged neighbourhood where a gang of youths give Richard a good kicking until he loses his temper and nearly shoots one of his attackers who is mowed down in front of him by bullets from a passing car.

At home Richard is a domestic tyrant with a work ethic high on his agenda. But he sometimes overdoes it, making the kids watch Cinderalla twice on TV to drill them on the virtues of humbleness. Richard is not a good advert for this particular style of parenting as he always knows best, even arguing with coach Cohen (Goldwyn), who teaches Venus for free.

Finally, Richard takes the whole family to the Florida training centre of coach Rick Macci (Bernthal), where there is a disagreement over how soon his daughters should play competitive matches before their mid-teens. Richard argues that the girls should have a ‘normal’ childhood, and just train hard. In the end, he gives in after Oracene takes Venus’ side. She will make her pro debut at the age of fourteen, falling to the World Number One player Sanchez-Vicario in three sets, after leading for a long time.

Richard struts around in tennis gear most of the time even though he has never played himself. Much time is spent on negotiations between the various companies wanting to sign Venus up for multi-million deals, with her father holding out for a better offer, infuriating Macci and well as his wife. Oracene finally reads Richard the riot act and it becomes clear how much the family relied on her contribution, even though Richard goes on hugging the limelight, turning the girls’ success story into his own triumph even when proved wrong.

DoP Robert Elswit’s images are on the conventional side, as befits a traditional bio-pic. King Richard is a star vehicle for Smith, who turns on the charm and totally  convinces as the prophet who makes things up as he goes along. The serious side of the story is hardly touched upon: William’s dealings with the Klu-Klux Klan is the elephant in the room. Overall, King Richard is overdone with a botched ending that leaves the characters of Oracene as well as Venus and Serena on the touchline, and worst of all, seem to believe in its message, that Father knows best. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 19 NOVEMBER 2021

Drive My Car (2021) BAFTAs 2022

Dir/Wri: Ryusuke Hamaguchi | Cast Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada, Reika Kirishima, Park Yurim, Jin Daeyeon | Drama, Japan

Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows Wheel of Fortune and Fame with another thoughtful love story this time Hidetishi Nishijimia is Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director preparing to direct Uncle Vanja at a theatre festival in Hiroshima.

Daily rides to and from work in a stylish red Saab with his shy young driver Misaki (Miura) provide a safe space to share his feelings, and as a tentative relationship develops between the two lonely hearts, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions gradually surface.

Based on the short story Drive My Car in ‘Men Without Women’ by Haruki Murakami, the Japanese director is still riding high on his feature Wheel of Fortune and Fame that won a Silver Bear earlier in Berlinale 2021. Once again this explores loneliness and the intense human need to share and be understood. Kafuku is a passionate and highly relatable character whose professional skills and strong sense of self belie his deep longing for a kindred soul to complete his happiness.

Modest in terms of his material needs, Kafuku has a complex psyche with a rich emotional inner world, and his soul is often laid bare during intimate chats with female chauffeur Misaki. She is a woman whose harsh and extreme life has afforded her a maturity beyond her years. And although the two companions are from different generations Hamaguchi’s textured script and layered characterisations show them both to be highly intuitive and emotionally intelligent.

The film’s ample running time allows for an indepth understanding of what it is to be lonely while also being complete from an intellectual and professional point of view. It’s a subtle, engrossing and enjoyable piece of cinema showing Hamaguchi at the top of his game as one of the world’s leading auteurs.  MT

OSCAR BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE | BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE | BAFTAS 2022

 

Masha (2020)

Dir.: Anastasiya Palchikova; Cast: Polina Gukhman, Anna Chipovskaya; Maksim Sukhanov, Alexander Mizev, Iris Lebedeva; Russia 2020, 86 min.

This first feature from Russian writer/director Anastasiya Palchikova is a thinly veiled critique of the nation post Stalinism, wrapped up as a crime/revenge story. The director takes the forces to task in creating a society riddled with violence where Putin and his oligarchy cronies rule with impunity given the lack of a legitimate opposition.

We meet Masha (Gukhman) just before her thirteenth birthday; she lives in a small Russian town and is the darling of her uncle (Sukhanov), who is a crime lord, involving his sons and other relatives in all his schemes from robbery to murder. Masha, a gifted singer, has the family in thrall – and when school friend Sergey ignores her approaches, she asks Uncle’s sons to beat him up until he relents and offers her the attention she craves. But Sergey has also got mixed up in the family business and will later pay with his life for getting out of his depth.

Uncle is very critical of Masha’s mother Nadya (Lebedeva), who has married outside the clan, and has left her husband while remaining a close friend. Nadya wants to take Masha to a relative in far away Samara, but Uncle does not want to give up control, and asks his son Andrei (Mizev) to burn Nadya’s flat down, killing Nadya’s husband in the process. And he’s not the only one sleeping there.

The end is set in Moscow where a grown-up Masha (Chipovskaya) gets ready for a performance with Uncle, Andrei and other family members are in attendance, getting rich on the spoils of the now legitimate music business. But Masha has not forgotten.

Polina Gukhman carries the feature as Masha the 13 year old whose uncle and sons fulfil her every wish, the big family cushioning her from the big wide world. Violence is the norm for her – but the victims are always the ones fighting Uncle and his clan. Only once is the order disturbed, when one of Uncle’s relatives is killed by a rival gang, having raped an under aged girl. Told from the POV of Masha, for whom Uncle is a sort of God granting her every wish, this is a study of a regressive dog eat dog world, where violence holds sway. In Masha’s infantile understanding of the situation, brutality is just part of getting what you want – just ask Uncle whose soft spot for her (rather like the Kray twins for their mother) contrasts with his harsh treatment of all others, including his wider family. DoP Gleb Filatov’s harsh realism is sometimes hard to bear, but never gratuitous in showing how casually normal this hostile environment is for an adolescent like Masha. But Uncle’s little Princess would grow up one day. AS

MASHA is showing as part of the London Russian Film Festival, currently being held for the first time in the UK – from November 12 to December 10, 2021. New customers can enjoy the festival films as part of an extended Subscription free trial on BFI player using the voucher code RFF21.

 

May God Be With You (2021) IDFA 2021

Dir: Cleo Cohen | Israel Doc

Cléo Cohen’s directorial debut is a highly personal exploration of her own identity as the granddaughter of Jewish Arabs who emigrated from Tunisia and Algeria to France during the 20th century.

In the intimate confines of the family homes Cohen plays devil’s advocate, questioning the time honoured subject of Jewish identity and the relationship between Arabs and Jews in the Maghreb. What emerges is a generational conflict, as well as a very subjective view of the past from the older generation’s perspective.

Cohen starts with a provocative bon mot in the opening titles which manages to ruffle a few feathers back home: What is the shortest joke in history?: “A Jew met another Arab.” When defending the Arabs’ view of history she is told: “Defend the Arabs and you’ll see what happens to you”. When she answers back: “the worst massacre of Jews took place in Western, Christian Europe” a swift reply comes: “If the Arabs were organised, they would have done the same to us. Cleo does not feel Jewish at all when her grandma Denise tells her “the Arabs got what they deserved.”

In an attempt to gain context she then speaks to Richard Cohen (to whose memory the film is dedicated) former lawyer for the FLN in Algeria. He nods, too weak to answer in full. And Daniel Shebabo is equally frank: “The French got the Jews on their side during the wars of Independence in the Maghreb – separating them from the Arabs via the Cremieux Decree, which made Jews French overnight in 1960. I still remember the pride my mother felt. It caused some confusion with other Pied-Noirs, but my mother said we are Pied-Noirs. My family never mingled with Arabs.”

Denise Houri, is firmly in the Jews’ camp and considers herself ‘in exile’ from her native Tunisia. “It was hard finding ourselves in another country. But we can’t go back, the old country won’t be the same any more. Memories stay still in time. You are often disappointed if you go back. Alain went, he sent photos”. Nevertheless, Cleó is planning to visit Oran in Algeria. Denise is hard-line when it comes to Cleó’s duty regarding her own (as yet unborn) children: “You will be the guide for the people of Israel, on their behalf. You must pass that on to your children. Transient Jewish identity is a value. They should never marry an Arab. I practice my religion at home. Cultural blending is not a good idea.”

Daniel Shebabo talks about the thorny issue of identity: “Identity is never a foregone conclusion. It can always be undermined by yourself or others. I am re-assured by being Jewish, but I do not distance myself from others. The more you are re-assured, the better you can accept others with different identities. In Tunisia I mainly lived with Muslims.”

The director wanders around Denise’ flat, resting in the huge bath tub, and reading Albert Memmi’s classic of 1957 ‘The Colonizer and the Colonized” from his perspective as a French-Tunisian writer of Jewish origins. She reflects that “Arabs are not just Tunisians, there are Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs and Jewish Arabs too. We are not Muslims, but we are Jews with an Arab culture and identity. Our mother tongue is Arabic, but we are Jews. I am an Arab by culture, but not a Jewish Arab.”

A highly personal feature which nevertheless touches on ideological conflicts, not only between Jews and Arabs, but also within the Jewish communities themselves. An important film that attempts to shed light on the complex the issues surrounding cultural and religious identity, antisemitism, racism and colonialism. AS

SCREENING DURING IDFA 2021 | INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM 2021

The Vampire (1957) Prime Video

Dir: Paul Landres | Cast: John Beal, Coleen Gray, Kenneth Tobey, Lydia Reed | US Vampire Horror 75′

The biggest spoiler connected with this horror outing is its title. Shot under the working title ‘It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn’, Pat Fielder’s story feels as if it started life as a drama about drug addiction revamped (if you’ll pardon the expression) as a horror film: The line “aspirin never hurt anyone” is ironic, since aspirin is used far more cautiously these days.

The plot, with its drug that causes “regression to a primitive state”, sounds more like Jekyll & Hyde. The few perfunctory vampiric details, such as the very inoffensive fang marks left on one victim’s neck, and the fact that the pills are extracted from vampire bats, feel like token late additions to the script. The climax takes place out of doors in broad daylight and detective Ken Tobey defends himself with a big hefty stick, which, if the film’s makers had been on the ball, he could have driven into his attacker’s chest rather than just used to protect himself. Veteran cameraman Jack MacKenzie’s photography of the small town setting and interiors is clean and attractive, but also fails to deliver in the more shadowy and horrific moments.

What makes this film so harrowing to experience is the quality of the acting and the human dimension. John Beal is so sympathetic you genuinely care about him (as you do for the other characters), and for the sake of him and his cute young daughter Lydia Reed, you badly want to see some sort of happy resolution; even though you know full well that that becomes more and more out of the question with every passing minute. The monster make-up comes as a double disappointment because its crudeness (he looks more like the Neanderthal Man than any vampire) is wholly unworthy of the build up by Beal’s performance @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Conscience (2021)

Dir.: Aleksey Kozlov; Cast: Vladislav Komarov, Alexandre Kononets, Vasily Shcipitsyn, Natalya Sveshinova; Russia 2021, 93 min.

Already winning awards for screenplay and artistic achievement this compulsive crime drama from Russian director/co-writer Aleksey Kozlov takes place in the early 1920s Petrograd where Boris Letush, a law professor at the university, becomes embroiled in a dark underworld of politics and secret police while investigating the death of his brother and sister in law, – his nieceMargo survived, but was struck dumb by the traumatic experience.

Letush (Komarov) is a busy man. Teaching his university students, and actively working for the Police, his boss Matveer (Shcipitsyn) is an unscrupulous and greedy little man, who steals food and sleeps with women who are in thrall to, fully aware he has syphilis. So far the chief murder suspect is a well known felon and gang leader Lyonka Panteleev (Komonets). The police boss is convinced he has his man but Letush suspects Matveer himself of the crime, and his lover, a cabaret singer, is ready to denounce him. But the fly in the ointment is that Panteleev was also working for the police as undercover agent. But the do decide to go ahead with Matveer’s plan to have Panteleev ‘escape’ from prison, being shot “whilst escaping”.

Of course it all goes wrong on the night and Panteleev escapes for real, leaving Letush and Msatveer in the lurch, and attracting the attention of the Cheka (Secret Police) after  Letush’s lover Vera (Sveshinova) falls foul of the law trying to escape to Paris.

Paranoia seethes throughout a city where everyone seems to be untrustworthy, not least the Cheka on the regular Police. Letush, for all his scruples, is caught up in these over-lapping spider-webs of deceit. He may be a goodie with the best of intentions but somehow the climate conspires against him, leaving him no alternative but to participate if he wants to save Vera and Margo.

Throwing shadows all over the place, DoP Viacheslav Tyurin creates a German expressionist underworld of subterfuge and sculduggery where it never seems to get light as the characters struggle to survive the atmosphere of menace. There is no quarter given for mitigation or self doubt, the only way forward is to hunt with the wolves, as Letush will find eventually find out to his chagrin. AS

THE CONSCIENCE is showing as part of the London Russian Film Festival, currently being held for the first time in the UK – from November 12 to December 10, 2021. New customers can enjoy the festival films on BFI PLAYER as part of an extended Subscription free trial using the voucher code RFF21.

 

ALSO SCREENING AT THIS YEAR’S TALLINN FILM FESTIVAL 

 

Mothering Sunday (2021)

Dir: Eva Husson | Cast: Odessa Young, Josh O’Connor, Sope Dirisu, Colin Firth, Olivia Colman, Glenda Jackson | UK Drama 110′

A nostalgic reflection on English family life ravaged by loss in the Great War is the subject of Eva Husson’s languorous female empowerment melodrama.

Slim of plot but indulgently languid in its evocative sensuality Mothering Sunday is seen through the eyes of a young girl in service reflecting back on a fateful summer day in 1924 when tragedy changed her life forever: and she decided to become a writer. The timeline sashays backwards and forwards, Glenda Jackson adding grist as the older novelist Jane shrugging off the success of her prize-winning in the modern day.

Based on Graham Swift’s novella Mothering Sunday – a day when staff in service were given the day off to visit their mothers – evokes the sultry atmosphere of a doomed affair between a maid Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) the only surviving son of a well to do family in the verdant English countryside. Released from duties Jane spends the day in bed with her lover at his stately mansion in his parents’ absence. Paul is going to be marrying Emma in a fortnight’s time, so both he and Jane know their affair is limited by time and social conventions.

In the background Colin Firth and Olivia Colman play the Nivens, an older generation broken by loss, and still mourning their sons killed in the Great War. But the focus here is on sensuality rather than storyline, and the camera lingers on their love scenes as Jane prances around naked. Meanwhile on the grassy lawns of Henley the Nivens keep calm and carry on over a tearful lunch with their coterie of bereaved friends, Colin fronting up well, Colman morose.

But there’s only so much loving-making and visuals of fusty libraries and flowers in a china vase a film can take. And rather than focus on Jane’s literary aspirations and how they eventually take shape and blossom professional – we see her occasionally penciling a word on a page, or in brief vignettes during a marriage in the 1940s, Husson is more concerned with the atmosphere permeating this soulful story with a pent up feeling of loss and longing, that eventually erupts in the tragic denouement. In this sense the film is a missed opportunity to make better use of its strong cast of Colin Firth, Olivia Colman and Glenda Jackson. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 PREMIERE

 

 

Prisoners of Ghostland (2021) Blu-ray

Dir.: Sion Sono; Cast: Nicholas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavates, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Charles Glover, Yazuka Nukaya; USA 2021, 103 min.

In his first English language feature Japanese director Sion Sono (Love Exposure) is still very much the enfant-terrible of today’s Japanese cinema with this wild visual extravaganza that sometimes loses the plot (by Aaron Henry and Sôhei Tanikawa). There are good bits and very bad bits. Nicholas Cage is – true to form- an OTT hero without a name – Ghostlands is a ride-and-a-half on the wild side.

Cage is first seen robbing a bank with Psycho (Cassavates), an enterprise that goes wrong and leaves Cage in prison and at the mercy of shady Governor (Moseley) of Samurai Town. letting Cage out of jail to liberate niece Bernice (Boutella) from Ghostland, wearing a suit which threatens to explode if he oversteps his time limit, and will blow up his testicles, if he makes a move with Bernice.

Ghostland is headed up by Enoch (Glover). Time has stood still since a convoy of dangerous prisoners collided with a transport of nuclear waste; Psycho being one of the victims. But Cage also recognises Bernice, whose mother he shot dead in the debacle following the bank robbery, injuring the child. Somehow the two escape and, with the help of Yasijiro (Sakaguchi), a samurai and young Susie (Nukaya), get rid of the Governor and his clique in a wild shootout with sword fights.

The Western meets the Samurai actioner and together they spawn a post-nuclear disaster movie with humans running around as Semi-Zombies clad in card-board. Cage lets fly, Boutella is underused, and in the end one no one gives a damn that nothing makes much sense. Sôkei Tanikawa’s excoriating images are wasted, as are the attempts of the audience to remember anything of the slightest importance after leaving the cinema. A void. AS

NOW ON BLURAY AND DVD FROM NOVEMBER 15th

Petite Maman (2021)

Dir: Celine Sciamma | Cast: Nina Meurisse, Margot Abascal, Josephine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Stephane Varupenne | Drama France, 72′

Petite Maman ia a haunting drama contemplating loss and longing through the eyes of two young girls.

Seeing things entirely from a child’s perspective French auteuse Celine Sciamma once again explores the subtle sensibilities of human dynamics with a cast of young performers (Gabrielle and Josephine Sanz) who are remarkably calm and detached in a wake of a family bereavement.

The director showed a keen appreciation of young minds in her 2011 film Tomboy. Here the focus is little Nelly and how she copes in the days after her grandma’s death as the rest of the family clears out the home that has become so familiar and comforting during the first years of her life.

Avoiding sentimentality Sciamma creates an atmosphere of placid ambiguity for most of this almost spellbound drama that sees solemn 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) wondering into the nearby woods where she meets Marion (played by identical twin sister Gabrielle), the two striking up a tentative friendship as they build a tree house. There’s a touch of the twins in Kubrick’s The Shining about these children, with their chilly demeanour and distant, ambivalent gaze. But we are far removed from any horror story here in a style that is best described at fantastical realism.

Mature beyond her years Nelly views her bereft mother with emotional detachment, although she is very supportive and practical in other ways, doing chores around the house with her father (Varupenne) whom she regards with scepticism, ticking him off about his chain-smoking smoking. Sciamma gradually abandons enigma in the second half but also keeps us guessing as the story gradually unfolds in an eerie and suspended moment in time.

Building a gentle but restrained camaraderie throughout, the Sanz sisters give captivating debut performances as the confident but controlled friends. Meurisse is full of sensitivity as Nelly’s mother carrying her grief with a doleful dignity. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 |

 

 

Dettori (2021)

Dir: Anthony Wonke | UK Doc | 114′

This biopic about the Italian-born jockey Frankie Dettori is a film for everyone to enjoy, not just the racing fraternity. It gallops forward on the back of Dettori’s infectious charisma and sunny optimism, a role model who proves that perseverance and commitment is just as important as talent, often more so. With over 3000 wins under his belt, Dettori is as popular as he’s successful on the turf. An admiring portrait of a man who’s still raring to go at 50, but the admiration is justified, and, as a bonus, the camera just loves him, as much as the horses do.

Like the jockey himself, Anthony Wonke’s film darts backwards and forwards, while Frankie, spotlit, just talks into the camera. It all starts with a spurt of adrenaline in  October 2019 at the famous Arc de Triomphe in Longchamp (near Paris) where we first meet Dettori and his ‘soulmate’ Enable, the champion British Thoroughbred racehorse. The pair are a legend. And rightly so. Frankie describes his bond with the horse as a ‘living/breathing experience’. Riders can be “emotionally touched” by certain horses, and the champion Enable was certainly one of them for him. Dettori rode Enable in everyone of her 14 races, winning 11 of them. And although they didn’t win on this third unprecedented attempt to take the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, there is tremendous support from the 40,000 strong crowd who are more nervous than he is. The deflation of being pipped to the post is so emotional, and you feel for him – and the horse. Then comes the usual pep-talk from his father on the journey back home.

The story then flashes back to Italy and Dettori’s modest upbringing in Milan. His father Gianfranco had tried his luck as a stable boy and soon developed a talent for riding, becoming a champion jockey and one of the best riders of his generation. His constant presence as a taskmaster and mentor has shaped Frankie’s career. Frankie describes how his father (who still calls him Lanfranco) eventually gave him a palomino pony. But he had “all the gear and no idea” until he was shipped off to Luton, England – which was the making of him. Padre Dettori still spurs him on mercilessly, even today, where the story comes full circle with his own daughter Ella, now competing as a rider.

Frankie remembers a fraught childhood. And although his mother was an affectionate figure, the young Frankie was a ‘volcano inside’ according to his sister Alessandra who spent lockdown in the family home near Newmarket with his English wife Catherine and their five children, and still makes him his favourite “polpette”.

There’s so much to pack in, but Bafta-awarded Anthony Wonke somehow manages it in just under two hours: that day at Ascot in 1996 when Dettori won 7 races on the trot; the tragic plane crash at Goodwood that saw him escaping with Ray Cochrane (the pilot  was killed); his international achievements in Dubai, and the pinnacle of the racing diary The Epsom Derby. He covers the years with the training aristocracy: Luca Cumani, Peter Burrell and John Gosden who describes him as a “one-man marketing operation”. But Gianfranco really seems to have made him what he is today, pumping him full of confidence but also verbally horse-whipping his son into shape. Horses run for him. He seems to fly with the horse and the strong work ethic is there too. And his joie de vivre is extraordinary.

There are the lows too, where Frankie has a brush with drugs, spending time in a Hong Kong jail. But the film also describes his love of the limelight: he wanted to be famous too much to let that life get the better of him. Covid was the worst time, his wife Catherine describing how he very much needs the buzz of the track and the international competitions to keep his mojo up. She comes across as a powerful, stabilising force along with their united, loving family; a rift with his father is now healed. At its heart, Dettori is a feelgood film that captures the essence of an extremely likeable man who simply rides horses better than anyone else does. MT

ON RELEASE ON 15 NOVEMBER IN SELECTED CINEMAS, BLU-RAY, DVD & DOWNLOAD TO OWN.

107 Mothers (2021)

Wri/Dir: Peter Kerekes | Drama: Ukraine, 92’

This candid look at motherhood in a Ukrainian prison makes for grim viewing but it is fascinating nevertheless, and there’s stark honesty in the faces of these women who have brought babies into the world in harsh circumstances. All are criminals, but none are odious as they talk direct to the camera about their lives and misdemeanours. Most are murderers. One woman killed her husband’s lover with a piece of piping. A crime of passion, but one that comes with a certain sense of satisfaction. At least he’s alone now too.

Czech filmmaker Peter Kerekes melds reality and fiction in a documentary that features professional actress Maryna Klimova (as Lesya). A convicted felon cuddling a cherubic-faced newborn baby is the ultimate is contradiction, but maybe the experience of motherhood will offer redemption of sorts as they stare at stone walls and prison bars. Tenderness and torture in a cold climate. A woman punished emotionally and viscerally, unable to love and care for the child who’s been her most intimate companion for the past nine months.

There’s a grudging camaraderie amongst these females of all ages as they shuffle from one vast room to the next, exchanging words and glances, facing uncomfortable facts and surroundings, rather than the love and gentleness that normally surrounds motherhood, a woman’s ultimate goal; her raison d’être, reduced to nothing. Expressing milk from the breast to the bottle – and then pouring it down the plughole feels like a terrible travesty. Surely better to drink the precious elixir of life, than pour it down the sink? And the babies are the ultimate victims, torn from their mother’s warmth, they languish in metal cots crying pitifully until the orphanage or a family member claims them.

But prison is also a reductive experience. And these women are in no doubt as to what they really wanted out of life. And the sad circumstances that led them down the wrong road, their emotions taking over in the heat of the moment. Regret and endurance are now their only bed fellows  Even the prison guard Iryna (Iryna Kiryazeva) has missed her chance at happiness, and it’s her own mother who tells her as much, once the gruelling work day is over and the two sit in solemn silence, the mother lamenting her lack of a grandchild. In the morning, Iryna reads through the inmates’ personal letters, to her chagrin, before posting them in their respective mail boxes. One man writes to his girlfriend: “I’ll bring you tights and red lipstick, we’ll fuck for three days when you’re free”. Some have already managed a covert conjugal visit. There are ways and means, even in prison.

Motherhood behind bars is an unusual subject for a male filmmaker but one that Kerekes delivers with sensitivity in a delicate colour palette. There’s a rhythmic quality to his framing and mise-en-scene that makes this ‘docudrama’ appealing despite the subject matter. Social realism would have been too grim. 107 Mothers is compulsive and memorable despite its flaws. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL HORIZONS WINNER | BEST SCREENPLAY |  MANNHEIM HEIDELBERG FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Vera Dreams of the Sea (2021)

Dir: Katrina Krasniqi | Drama, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia. 87 mins.

The evocative title of this confident feature debut from Kosovo’s Katrina Krasniqi belies the toughness of the heroine in a family drama focusing on inheritance and male dominance. Vera (played with restraint by Teuta Ajdini Jegeni) is a calm but resolute woman who is not to be messed with, particularly when it comes to losing her home.

Vera is swift to point out that the only thing she has ever inherited is her bread-winning ability as a sign language translator, a talent that no one can steal, and gives her economic and personal freedom. She works for a TV news channel and lives in old-fashioned but comfortable surroundings in Prishtina with her husband, retired judge Fatmiri (Xhevat Qorraj).

But when he suddenly commits suicide, Vera faces the threat of homelessness due to Albania’s patriarchal society dictating that males automatically inherit. This taut character drama is a stinging indictment on a culture that places men at the head of the queue before women and children. After the funeral, Vera’s husband’s cousin, Ahmeti (Astrit Kabashi), shamelessly asserts how close he was to Fatmiri, so much so the judge had left him the family house. His side of the story is then endorsed by a disdainful crew of ‘village elders’ who refuse to countenance Vera’s righteous claim on the property. A series of sinister threats then ensue.

Vera’s daughter, Sara (Alketa Sylaj), is a single mother struggling for financial security of her own, which puts her at a disadvantage, confidence-wise, when auditioning for a part which she fails to land in the feature’s ‘play within a film’ structure.

Vera is of the old school of Kosovo women; keeping her own counsel, quietly firm and  pragmatic, unlike the strung-out and emotional Sara. But in private she does shed a tear at the injustice of her predicament, while driving back on the brand new Prishtina-Skopje highway (a nod to the nation’s economic future that has clearly come at a price).

And she will work things to her advantage in the satisfying conclusion, proving her a force to be reckoned with in Doruntina’ Basha’s refined screenplay where a great deal happens behind closed doors. Vera’s emotional outlet comes in her dreams where she sees herself drowning in the titular sea, a potent motif with its clear implications. Another powerful scene pictures Vera and Ahmeti in a cafe for the deaf, where she states her argument loud and clear, and in no uncertain terms. MT

NOW IN COMPETITION AT MANNHEIM HEIDELBERG FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | Grand Prix WINNER TOKYO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

There is No Evil (2021)

Dir.: Mohammad Rasoulof; Cast: Ehsam Mirrhosseini, Shaghayegh Shourian, Kaveh Ahangar, Mohammad Valizadegan, Maytab Servati, Mohammad Sedighi, Jila Shahi, Baran Rosoulof; Germany/Iran/Czech Republic 2020, 152 min.

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (Manuscripts Don’t Burn) is under house arrest in his own country waiting for a prison sentence to be enforced. And to make matters worse, is forbidden to direct feature films.

Nevertheless, Rasoulof managed to escape all restrictions and shot There Is No Evil secretly, and had the copies smuggled out of the country where his film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Festival in 2020. Anyone expecting a hurried guerrilla style film will be surprised: DoP Ashkan Ashkani’s measured wide screen images are intricately composed, and the tempo is either lyrical or unhurried in the four episodes which deal with the death penalty, part of the instrument of terror in Iran’s repressive regime.

The first episode (that takes the main title) shows an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary couple. We watch Heshmat (Mirrhosseini) leave his work place, fetch his wife Razieh (Shourian) from work, collect their spoilt daughter from school, visit the ailing grandmother, prepare for a wedding the next day, pay bills at the bank – with Heshmat having time to rescue a little cat trapped in the garage of his apartment block. It therefore comes as a surprise that Heshmat’s work is to carry out some of the many executions demanded by the Iran’s clerical fanatics aimed at punishing all forms of resistance. Needless to say, Heshmat’s ‘work’ room is as unremarkable as his life outside.

Episode two “She said, you can do it” is a thriller. Private Ponya (Ahangar) is in a room with five other soldiers. As dawn breaks Ponya will undertake his first hanging of the day, by kicking away the stool from the standing victim. Ponya does not want to blacken his soul, but there’s no other way of doing his job. His pleasant girl friend collects him in a car, and Ponya is overwhelmed by his own ‘courage’: triumphant music celebrates his escape from the deadly duty.

“Birthday”, the third segment, returns to the topic of hanging, this time again featuring a soldier whose duty is to kick the stool from under the execution victim: Javad (Valizadegan) agrees to perform the gruelling task in order to get three days off to propose to his girlfriend Nana (Servati). He arrives in the countryside, and washes himself in a stream. Chairs are set out in the garden of the country mansion where Nana is waiting for him, but the chairs are not for her birthday celebrations, as her father tells Javad, but for a memorial service for Keshurvaz, a local teacher and opponent of the Regime, who had been executed the day before. Javad is crushed, and later confesses to Nana. She is gentle but firm: saying good-bye to Javad for the last time.

The last episode, by far the longest, enigmatically called “Kiss Me”, features Baran Rosoulof (the director’s daughter) who plays Darya, a young medical student, living in the USA, and home to visit her uncle Mehr (Sedighi) and his wife Zaman (Shahi), who live in the remote Iranian countryside. Mehr suffers from TB, and is not practicing medicine any more, instead the couple lives from the proceeds of their bee-keeping. Darya is in permanent contact via mobile with her father Mansoor and her boy friend, but neither seems to be able to satisfy her many questions. Finally, Mehr admits the shocking truth about her origins which came about due to a lack of trust and disillusion with the brutal regime in another tragic family story.

Rasoulof avoids sentimentality directing with crisp emotionless precision and never dwelling on the overwhelming negativity. A near fatalistic air hangs above all four segments. “Kiss Me’, teeters on the brink of an emotional outburst but Rasoulof in the end opts for restraint, dwelling on a long shot in the beautiful mountain landscape. The feature was originally called by its direct translation “Satan doesn’t exist”, a more fitting title for this understated masterpiece. AS

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 3 DECEMBER 2021

Playground (2021)

Die: Laura Wandel | Drama, Belgium, 62′

Bullying and the casual cruelty of children is the focus of this schoolground psychological thriller – Belgian’s Oscar hopeful in next year’s academy award.

Everyone remembers a school bully or being at the receiving end of acts of nastiness that caused emotional if not physical pain. The old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” was regularly trotted out by parents attempting to rationalise the situation but offered scant comfort as the next day at school loomed with trepidation.     

Playground launches us straight into the tearful time seven year old Nora is having when her father (Karim Leklou) drops her off at the school gates. And we feel for her, and it’s a touching and impassioned and astonishingly subtle performance from Maya Vanderbegue. She will gradually toughen up during the course of Laura Wandel’s debut feature but you get the impression there is a steely, not altogether, healthy resolve behind her wilful behaviour in the finale stretch, the camera lingering at the kids’ eye level, as the adult world seems far away, irrelevant, any grown up authority unable to intervene or limit the taunts and vicious outbursts of a playground transformed into a gladiatorial arena from the scared children’s’ perspective .

Nora clings to her elder brother Abel (Günter Duret) who soon becomes an unreliable ally: he’s got his own adversaries to deal with in the schoolyard pecking order, and resents Nora’s babyish demands for sibling allegiance when he has to protect his own interests and not appear weak, or involve her by association. Seen through the naturalistic gaze of Frederic Noirhomme’s camera kids are just as complex as fully grown adults but not yet capable of guile and disingenuousness in their facial expressions, making them fascinating subjects to watch.

Eventually Abel will turn the tables on his child tormentors in this impressive first feature which explores how kids separate from the parental comfort zone and learn to fight their own battles – quite literally. MT

PLAYGROUND wins the Grand Prix in Tallinn’s Just Film | FIPRESCI prize for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and the Sutherland Prize for Best First Feature at the London Film Festival.

 

 

 

A Thousand Fires (2021) IDFA

Dir.: Saeed Taji Farouky; Documentary with Thein Shwe, Hwte Tin, Zin Ko Aung; France/Switzerland/Netherlands/Palestine; 90 min.

The day to day life of a family in the Magway region of Myanmar, home to the largest number of unregulated oil fields, vividly contrasts the past and the present. Myanmar – the former Burma – was once best known for its paddy fields but nowadays farming provides only a minimal income in this shift from agrarian to industrial lifestyle.

Thein Shwe and Hitwe Tin are a married couple who, like thousands of others, followed the oil-rush. now eking out a meagre living from their ‘home-based’ production of less than a barrel day. Even though this is still more profitable than working the fields, the work is just as gruelling and unpredictable. And although rigs are machine-powered: ropes and wheels drive the piston – the operation is controlled manually, like in the 19th century, before drilling became industrialised. And the oil reserves are rapidly running out.

The opening sequence is a flaming blaze of fire setting alight a landscape full of derricks and make-shift huts. Clanging, humming and banging fills the air, mud and oil are everywhere, and humidity makes the work even more arduous with Thein Shwe constantly covered in grime. But the future doesn’t exactly look promising with the parents still doing the manual work, while their three teenage children were supposed to bring financial relief through their education. But they’re not much help on that front. One of the sons Zin Ko Aung still lives at home but is unreliable, having left High School without a degree he’s now drifting between the pass and the future although one of his qualified college friends earns good money as manager of a textile company.

Thein Shwe is highly critical of Zin but realises that the teenager should make the best of his talent for football. The local Soccer Academy coach offers him a place and his parents drive him there. But the Coach then tells  Zin “to cut all ties with his family”.

Meanwhile the couple resort to their Buddhist faith and Fortune Tellers who offer a comfort of sorts: Thein Shwe being told not to be greedy. A somewhat scary ritual ‘Feed the Dragon’ is connected to their work environment.

Farouky keeps his distance and even avoids social commentary. What we see is the parents’ abiding love for their offspring – a universal theme that never changes. The old-fashioned 4:3 format creates an intimacy connecting us all with it common threads. Shot by the director with a vibrant colour palette and wonderful night sequences, when absolute peace replaces the clamour of the day, A Thousand Fires is unremarkable but moving just the same. AS

INTERNATIONAL DOC FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM | 17-28 NOVEMBER 2021| Locarno Critics’ Week Winner – Marco Zucchi Award 2021

Naked (1993) Blu-ray and digital release

Dir.: Mike Leigh; Cast: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Claire Skinner, Peter Wight, Gina McKee; UK 1993, 131 min.

Winning Best Director Award at Cannes Film Festival in 1993, catapulted British writer/director Mike Leigh from progressive, but marginal filmmaker, into worldwide recognition with Naked. The dark portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain also garnered the Best Actor Award for its main protagonist David Thewlis, and British cinema had its first internationally recognised director since the New British Wave of the 1960s.

When Leopold Blum, the main protagonist of James Joyce’ 1922 novel “Ulysses” roams the streets of Dublin, both he and the city had an identity. Seventy years on, Johnny (Thewlis) flees his hometown of Manchester for London, stealing a car, as much of a wreck as he is, and fearing retribution after a bout of violent sex with a woman in some dark corner, Johnny, in his late twenties, has long lost any sense of himself or his surroundings. Disenfranchised, he heads towards the capital, the citadel of Thatcherism: a home for nobody, not even yuppies, as we will learn.

And just as there was for Odysseus, there is a Penelope waiting for Johnny – not that he will recognise her. Heading for the home of his ex-lover, Louise (Sharp), a Mancunian just like Johnny, she made a move to London for a job that somehow never materialised. When Johnny arrives he meets Louise’s flat mate Sophie (a brilliant Katrin Cartlidge, who died only forty-one years old in 2002), spaced out on drugs. Johnny enjoys brutal sex, and is soon replaced by the landlord in Katrin’s bed, the suave Jeremy (Cruttwell), who also gets high on violent rape. Katrin, now nearly out of her mind, is saved by the arrival of Louise: the two women locking themselves in a room. Johnny has meanwhile wandered off into the night as nobody wants to listen to his verbal diarrhoea: endless provocations and put downs. On his nocturnal wanderings, Johnny meets the middle-aged security guard Brian (Wight), who guards an empty office block. Just to show he can, Johnny enters the flat of a middle-aged woman, who is the target of Brian’s ‘peeping tom’ longings.

For no reason at all, Johnny decides he rather would continue to put Brian down, but then along comes ‘cafe girl’ (a melancholy McKee). She is so miserable that Johnny leaves her flat willingly when she chucks him out. He returns to Louise’s, where Sandra (Skinner), the main tenant fetches up, having finished a nursing stint in Zimbabwe. Sandra gets rid of the obnoxious landlord (who turns out to be not so tough, when confronted by a determined woman), and bandages Johnny’s injured ankle, the result of a fight. Whilst Sandra recovers in the bath, Louise and Johnny sing together about ‘Rainy Manchester’, and we get a glimpse of what could have been, when Louise leaves to give in her notice, and return to Manchester.

To say that Naked is bleak is an understatement. DoP Dick Pope, who went on to collaborate with Leigh on seven more features, shows grim nights, invaded homes and a general wasteland in colours fit for a funeral. The acting is just perfect and Leigh always gives Johnny a redeeming way out, before piling on more self-inflicted misery. Johnny’s Alter ego Jeremy is just ahead in the male rat race, but driven by the same need to hurt women. A pitiless ending closes a journey into the underbelly of humanity. AS

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF FILMMAKING, BFI RELEASES 4K BLURAY and DIGITALLY, INCLUDING BFI PLAYER on 29 November 2021

Eiffel (2021)

Dir: Martin Bourboulon | Cast: Romain Duris, Emma Mackey, Pierre Deladonchamps | France, Drama 108′

Martin Bourboulon’s elegant and ravishingly realised historical drama also goes by the amusing title of Eiffel in Love and sees the pioneering engineer who designed the iconic symbol of the city of Paris as a disillusioned romantic and national hero played dashingly here by Romain Duris.

In March 1889 Gustave Eiffel is sketching away at his drawing board way in the rooftops of Paris proud in the knowledge that his completed edifice, built for the ‘Exhibition Universelle’, had impressed everyone with its stature and daring design representing France’s return to power and industry after an era of ‘blood and tears’. A cutaway shows him receiving an American award for his framework design for the Statue of Liberty, three years previously, in 1886.

Now a household name, Eiffel feels a sense of professional achievement; the brief was to build a democratic monument that everyone could see: worker, child and aristocrat. It had been an ambitious and controversial undertaking based on Eiffel’s ingenious sand-based system, but dogged by setbacks, worker disputes and anger from local residents due to the disruption and enormity of the perilous building process, pictured in Matias Boucard’s majestic widescreen images.

The sumptuous social settings of his upper bourgeois circle of friends are overshadowed by a tumultuous and bittersweet private life revealing the engineer as a deeply sensual man, a proud father and widower – but destined to be unhappy in love. An early coup de foudre with the young seductrice and socialite Adrienne Bourges (the darkly attractive Emma Mackey) who he calls “spoilt” but soon impregnates, comes to an end when her father declares Eiffel ‘socially unsuitable’. So she goes on to marry his friend, the wealthy and influential Antoine de Restac (Deladonchamps) who supports Eiffel’s controversial tower scheme. His torrid love affair with Adrienne is then rekindled and runs throughout the film as a bittersweet motif in the rather choppy five-handed screenplay.  

Some may see this slickly realised social drama as a unique tribute to France’s 19th century industrial power, trivialised by the doomed love story at its heart. Others may find the romantic interludes flesh out the maverick engineer’s backstory and add emotional freight and tension to the awe-inspiring construction procedural that gradually gains momentum through the sheer human endeavour that built a ‘staircase to infinity’ soaring 300 metres high over the rooftops of Paris, the tallest man-made edifice at the time. Despite its structural flaws – and whichever way you see it –  Eiffel is an enjoyable and fitting homage to a man who was creative, romantic and cerebral. Certainly a hero to be celebrated.  MT

ON RELEASE IN UK and IRISH CINEMAS from 12 August 2022

 

Gaza Mon Amour (2021) VOD

Dir.: Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser; Cast: Salim Dau, Hiam Abbass, Maisa Abd Elhadi, George Iskandar, Manal Awad; France/Palestine/Germany/Portugal/Qatar 2020, 86 min.

Love and war on the West Bank where the refugee camp has become home for two generations of Palestinians. But politics plays second fiddle to this pithy personal story about the people who live here.

Fisherman Issa (Dau) is a grumpy, old man – and there are many reasons for single status. His best friend, Samir (Iskandar) has given all his savings to people smugglers, and will soon leave his family behind. Then there is Issa’s sister Manal (Awad), who wants to marry him off to a wealthy woman, dragging five suitable candidates into Issa’s small flat. But the fisherman has already fallen for Siham (Abbass), a seamstress, who lives with her divorced daughter Leila (Elhadi), who prefers university life to helping her mother. For Manal, this match would ruin her brother’s reputation: a divorced daughter and a bride who meddles in business – clearly a male prerogative.

Then things take a comic turn when Issa catches an old Greek statue in his net, instead of fish. He drags the man-sized object home, but drops it, and the rather large penis breaks off in the process. Issa takes the appendage to the jeweller, who offers him a good price, but Issa declines. Next day, the police search his home, uncover the statue (minus the missing piece) and Issa ends up in jail. The authorities ask an expert to value the piece of art, but when the academic claims it represents the God Apollo, he is ticked off: the use of the word ‘ God’ it not permitted. Religious scruples aside, a foreign museum offers a competitive price and would go higher if the missing piece is found. Issa gives it to the police, but only after having been promised a reward. Meanwhile his sister collects more ‘dirt’ on Manal, and there is nothing but offence left for Issa, he is simply an awkward bugger getting old, and lonely, so marriage seems his only option. Meanwhile Amir has had enough of it and leaves his wife and children behind. The other character with big dreams is Leila: she wants success on her own terms, and while she doesn’t want to be stuck at home with her mother, she loathes the thought of another repressive husband, despite her mother’s advice to settle down.

DoP Christophe Graillot shows Gaza as it is: a planner’s housing nightmare, put together decades ago as a transitional solution but now falling apart. And the inhabitants, are under just as much under the IDF cosh with their daily bombing raids as the business owners – Siham’s boss cuts her wages, telling her to be glad she’s not laid off – like others. And the electricity company charges exorbitant prices, even though regular black-outs disrupt everyday life. But then there is Issa, dreaming of love in midst of the chaos of this run-down but obdurate community.

With great performances by Dau and Abbass, Gaza Mon Amour is a slow-burning humanist tale of bizarre and absurd contradictions. AS

GAZA MON AMOUR IS PALESTINE’S OSCAR ENTRY IN THE 93rd ACADEMY AWARDS | NOW ON VOD AND in US theatres.

 

 

The Beatles and India (2021) Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival

Dir: Ajoy Bose, Peter Compton | Doc, 95

Regaling the time when The Beatles went mad in India – where Beatlemania was already a thing – this new musical documentary digs up some archive treasures from from an era that launched flower power and all things surreal and psychedelic.

The title sequence kicks off with Rammi Kapoor doing his stuff accompanied by India’s equivalent band the Savages and a motley crew of exotic dancers in Bhappi Sonie’s 1965 film Janwar. We then cut back to archive footage of a bomb-struck Liverpool where the boys recall their how grim it was back then in England – has anything changed – and confirming that the grass is always greener when you venture to pastures new. As they did.

The Beatle story has already been rung dry of new juice but somehow Ajoy Bose and his co-director Peter Compton switch stuff around to make this fun and entertaining, and a tribute to how four young guys electrified the youth of their day, who up to then looked and acted pretty much as their parents had done until this zippy injection of counterculture ushered in the Swinging Sixties.

And the band’s massive success certainly did its bit in turning the spotlight on India  which until then had never registered in the collective consciousness of the west (could they now please do something for climate change?).

Of course, George Harrison will always go down in history as being the most adventurous Beatle beating a path to India to take sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar in 1966. The others followed in 1968 captivated by the idiosyncratic sitar music and its history and transformational powers, and this is the thrust of this new film with its fascinating talking heads recalling their own memories of the band’s visit from the Indian perspective. MT

MALLORCA EVOLUTION INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | 27 Oct 27 – 2 Nov 2021

Cow (2021)

Director: Andrea Arnold | UK Doc 94′

Andrea Arnold returns to her native Kent for a first documentary feature that follows the daily life of a best-loved farmyard animal, the Cow. An intrusive almost wordless look that starts with the birth of a female calf to Luma, a long-lashed beauty with a glossy black and white splodged coat. Hooves first, the baby emerges and all we see is an enquiring eye looking round at the world in amazement, Luma wiping a lustrous tongue round her baby’s fluffy ear. But mother and calf are soon parted, the calf is taken away to the plastic teat of the farmer’s bottle. Dairy cow Luma will then be milked mechanically for our own consumption til the end of her life.

Cow has echoes of the 2012 shocker Leviathan where Lucien Castaing Taylor and Vanessa Paravel took an intense arthouse gaze at commercial fishing through the eyes of the fish themselves. Gunda took a similar wide-eyed approach: A human attempt to see things from the animals’ perspective. Here the cow becomes our friend and the human a cruel, opportunistic and exploitative interloper. When the black bull arrives to do his business, Luma carries on unimpressed. The only moment of bliss in her life is grazing in the bucolic peace of the summery Kentish meadows, chewing buttercups and lush grass in the moonlight. Overhead a plane comes into landing its lights flashing like an alien spaceship in her natural world.

The mass production of milk is big business but Arnold doesn’t bore us with the facts or figures, or even talking heads. The only heads here are furry bovine ones, and muddy bottoms caressed by swishing tails. Bemused, bewildered and beguiling the cows look out in wonder at a world of exploitation. And when Luma’s calf disappears into a plastic pen with a plastic teat, Luma moos loudly in protest as the two are parted. And as each of her calves is born Luma becomes more and more protective, or at least that’s what we hear from a disembodied human voice. Clearly cows have feelings too. But here she merely exists to produce milk – gallons of it – and that repetitive diurnal task is what leads us to the film’s shockingly blunt finale. MT

Andrea Arnold’s first feature documentary COW in cinemas on demand from 8 April 2022.

 

The Laureate (2021)

Dir.: William Nunez; Cast: Tom Hughes, Dianna Agron, Laura Haddock, Indica Watson, Fra Fee, Julian Glover, Patricia Hodge, Timothy Renouf, Christian Anholt; UK 2021, 108 min.

William Nunez chronicles three years in the life of British wartime poet Robert von Ranke Graves as a voyeuristic sex trip, the creative context being largely sidelined.

The focus is the late 1920s ménage-a-trois with his wife Nancy Nicholson and the American poet Laura Riding that gradually became a quartet when the Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs joined the party. Graves was once of the most influential poets and writers of his generation, his WWI Memorial ‘Good-Bye to all That’ being a seminal text, yet with all that dramatic potential to mine, it does seem surprising that bedroom affairs and orgies take centre stage in The Laureate, Nunez portraying Graves as a straight man, rather neglecting his relationship with fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon who only has a cameo role.

Graves had several near-death experiences: as a boy he suffered from pneumonia and later, in the trenches, was left for dead returning shell-shocked from the front. His 1918 marriage to Nancy Nicholson, an early feminist resulted in four children but Graves was often plagued by writing-block due to his PTSD.

American poet Laura Riding visits the couple and their daughter Catherine (Watson) in a cottage in Oxfordshire where Riding at first seems more interested in Nancy than Graves. But soon, with Nancy’s open approval, Laura takes Robert to London’s Hammersmith where they indulge in some clumsily staged sex parties.

Laura, the archetypal destructive femme fatale, soon claims another male scalp: Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs, a rather wooden performance by Fra Fee. But Phibbs is very taken with Nancy who has been left alone, renting a house boat on the Thames. Laura jumps out of a window when Phibbs fails to return her affections. Robert jumps after her. Both will survive and live together before separating in 1940. Phipps will divorce his artist wife and live with Nancy until 1934 in Oxfordshire, Nancy becoming a famous textile designer.

There is a great deal of name-dropping, with TS Elliot (Anholt) making a pass at Laura, promising to publish her writing if she goes to bed with him. Sassoon (Renouf) offers to help Graves with his writing block possibly for ulterior motives but then becomes miffed when Graves marries Nancy. Sassoon felt betrayed by Graves, believing their relationship should have meant more than the heterosexual relationship with Nancy.

In this sumptuously staged arthouse drama Nunez concentrates on salaciousness at the expense of the complex intellectual relationships between the writers: Riding continued to support Graves while he was writing “The White Goddess” (1948), even though their sexual relationship was over. Nunez also shamelessly re-constructs history: particularly where Graves’ daughter Catherine in concerned. And she only appears briefly to serve the narrative in showing Laura as an unfeeling mother who tries to trick the child into jumping out of the window, just to show her power.

NOW IN ARTHOUSE CNEMAS

Night Tide (1961) Mubi

Dir: Curtis Harrington | Cast: Dennis Hopper, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders, Linda Lawson | US drama 82’

Starring a fresh-faced young Dennis Hopper during his blacklisting following a row with the director Henry Hathaway; director Curtis Harrington was a film historian of some distinction who wrote glowingly of Val Lewton and this fanciful little Freudian psychodrama obviously draws upon Cat People. 

Enhanced by glacial photography by newcomer Vilis Lapenieks and haunting music by veteran David Rakin; in addition to Hopper the unique cast includes Gavin Muir (an urbane English-accented presence at Universal during the forties), Marjorie Cameron (who had appeared with Harrington in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome), and Luana Anders, later reunited with Hopper on Easy Rider

NOW ON MUBI

The Novice (2021)

Wri/Dir: Lauren Hadaway | Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Dilone, Amy Forsyth, Jonathan Cherry, Kate Drummond, Jeni Ross, Eve Kanyo, Nikki Duval, Charlotte Ubben, Sage Irvine, Chantelle Bishop | US Thriller 94′

The ‘sports or performance thriller ‘ is fast becoming a sub-genre in its own right: The Novice follows on from the recent skiing drama Slalom (2020) and The Coldest Game (2019), Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and even the recent Israeli drama God of the Piano where the central protagonist is obsessed by chosen field, often to their own detriment.

In Lauren Hadaway’s rowing-related film, Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman) skulls along in the dark waters of a river, desperate to beat all records, hellbent on her own performance despite being part of a team. Later, on the rowing machine, Dall is enters the ‘zone’ again high on adrenaline and challenging herself to the limit – ignoring an innate lack of talent but turning instead to strategy, hell bent on being better and better. Eventually her desire becomes a unhealthy obsession that somehow feeds on her soul, an all-consuming need to push the body further and further, until she feels physical pain in order to achieve her goal: the Varsity rowing team.

The Novice in actually a film about obsession rather than enjoyment – and Dall has to excel in everything she turns her hand to: be it a sport or a subject at college where she is a ‘Fresher’. Meeting teacher’s assistant Dani (Dilone) is the turning point – she is naturally gifted, relaxed and secure. Their chemistry sizzles for a time despite Dall’s lack of social skills – prickly and awkward – she is not popular, but her obsession soon takes over again and everything suffers in the wake of her drive to succeed. Dall is in flight from herself, restless, constantly on the move. Rowing gives her a ‘raison d’être’.

She does have one other ally in the shape of Jamie (Amy Forsyth), but soon even he is alienated, along with the others, in her desire to be the best. Her sporting prowess defines her, all the pain is worth suffering, or is it? Here – unlike the other films in the genre – there is no prize for Dani’s excellence – only the loneliness of extreme endeavour, and the misery of isolation. There’s a comfort in this mental anguish, it feels familiar – and that reinforcement is the reward for Dall, confirming her habitual unhappiness. This is the status quo that she’s grown used to since childhood. A welcome home from home.

Based on the director’s own experience The Novice is a convincing depiction of character implosion. And Fuhrman gives it her best efforts as Dall in an award-winning turn (Best Actress US Narrative at Tribeca 2021). Todd Martin keeps things suitably dank and murky with his watery visual aesthetic along with Hadaway’s confident direction in an unsettling study of an unbalanced mind. MT

NOW ON FIRETV, APPLETV, ROKU. 

 

Jane by Charlotte (2021) Tribute to Jane Birkin

Dir/Wri: Charlotte Gainsbourg | Doc, 86′

In his rather tricksy biopic singer, photographer, actor and now director Charlotte Gainsbourg (1971-) attempts to unveil her legendary mother Jane Birkin (1946-2023), model, actor and enigmatic star of that kinky song “Je t’aime, moi non plus” by her rakish father Serge

Keen to retain her mystique, Birkin – who has died aged 76 – smirks winsomely behind a tousled mop of hair, murmuring breathy soundbites to retain her allure, her daughter tentatively teasing out episodes past and present to avoid embarassing or disrupting the fragile facade that created her mother’s original elusiveness. The two speak French, Birkin sometimes breaking into ‘Franglais’. Meanwhile we desperately clutch at straws hoping for a meaty backstory, something more tangible to feed on; not so much of that flirty love affair between Birkin and Gainsbourg but of the essence of Birkin herself, and how she came to be celebrity muse to maverick star Serge Gainsbourg.

Many of her fellow female celebrities of the sixties: Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Marianne Faithful, and the like, have retained that place in history, seared to our collective consciousness as legendary icons. But was their legendary status justified; did it have ballast – or where they just lucky to be around to capture the essence of a time when this cloud of creative counterculture known as the ‘swinging sixties’ burst onto the scene?.

The legendary Agnes Varda had a go at revealing Birkin in her upbeat film essay Jane B. by Agnès V. but managed to keep her friend under wraps. Will Charlotte do the same, or will her piece a ‘peek behind the scenes’ that manages to find something more intriguing. Sadly no.

Loose and louche, this turns out to be rather sketchy, to say the least. Mother and daughter potter around in the garden of Birkin’s picturesque seaside home accompanied by various small kids, the veteran star, now 74, attempting to be edgy by admitting to hacking off her hair in a flattering mirror, catching sight of the finished result in a less attractive reflection, and is horrified. But the stunt gave her singing career another lease of life when she performed onstage at the Paris Bataclan, proving she did have a real voice. Previously she had lip-synced to a playback tape.

From her various interviews over the years, and searching on Wikipedia, we know that Birkin was married to prolific film composer John Barry and had Kate who later committed suicide in 2013. She then gave birth to Charlotte with Gainsbourg and  Lou Doillon with Jacques Doillon. The Hermes ‘Birkin’ bag was named after her and she wrote the “Munkey Diaries”, but what new gems are uncovered here? Not a lot in an arcane outing that feels like an intensely personal vanity project with its family footage and hushed mother/daughter chats, but nothing else. There are no archive clips or film excerpts to enrich the film for the entertainment and enlightenment of audiences young and older. Just a rather ‘off the cuff’ sortie that plays out as a series of snapshots of the two spending time together. They are clearly close, touchingly so, but also respective of one another’s talents and Charlotte never pushes the boundaries into real intimacy.

The most fascinating scene sees Jane and Charlotte swinging by Serge’s flat in the rue de Verneuil (Paris) which has remained untouched with his white shoes – even Gitane cigarettes and old cans of food (many having exploded!) – there for all to see. But that’s as interesting as it gets for the outsider. Another missed opportunity. MT

JANE BIRKIN 1946-2023

 

 

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

Dir.: Will Sharpe; Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Amy Lou Wood, Haley Squires, Stacy Martin, narrated by Olivia Coleman; UK 2021, 111 min.

Louis Wain’s paintings of anthropomorphic cats changed the human perception of our feline friends forever. In his whimsical if uneven imagined biopic drama Sharpe raises the profile of the lesser known English artist in a conventional hyper-emotional approach that borders on a TV soap, but its solid cast and the wacky subject will certainly appeal to cat lovers, and Olivia Colman’s narration is exquisite.

The Electrical Life stays clear of any sensational rumours about the artist’s mental decline which seems to go hand in paw with Wain’s prolific output in In the early 1880s the shy and introverted Wain (Cumberbatch) is heading up the London home of a family of six women after the death of his father. Of his five sisters Caroline (Riseborough) would have been better suited suited to the task of pater familias but Louis does his best with his meagre artist’s income, leaving his secure teaching job, and counting the editor of the London Gazette, Sir William Ingram (Jones), as a client, along with the New York Hearst Newpapers where Louis visits in 1907. Marriage to the family governess Emily Richardson (Foy), who is ten years his senior – was a scandal in those days, but a move to Hampstead, where they adopt a stray cat, calling it Peter, changes Wain’s artistic outlook forever. Louis’ work is very popular, but as a businessman he is less successful and the tragic death of his wife puts a dint in his morale and ultimately leads to his downfall.

In fact mental health issues dog the entire family – his sister Mary (Squires) has to be committed to an asylum – and Louis himself suffers the same fate in 1924, entering the pauper’s ward of Springfield Hospital, Tooting. A year later, a campaign was launched to have the artist relocated to the Royal Hospital Southwark ((where H.G. Wells was a patron) and then the Napsbury Hospital near St. Albans, which had large gardens and a huge colony of cats. In the years before his death, Wain paintings entered a new stage: full of bright colours, flowers and intricate abstract patterns, the cats still the centre of his artistic universe. This repudiates views that Wain had suffered from schizophrenia, which would have resulted in a deterioration of his work. It is highly likely that he suffered from Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

DoP Erik Alexander Wilson choses a surreal approach, picturing Victorian England as a fanciful fantasy idyll echoed in Suzie Davies’s plush production design in the style of BBC Sunday afternoon classics.  AS

IN CINEMAS ON New Year’s Day 2022

 

You Will Die at Twenty (2020)

Dir.: Amjad Abu Alala; Cast; Mustafa Shehata, Islam Mubarak, Mahound Maysara Elsaraj, Bonna Khalid, Talal Afifi, Amal Mustafa | Drama 103 min.

This first feature film from Sudanese director/co-writer Amjad Abu Alala is a melancholic rites of passage fable that has won awards across the board since Venice Film Festival 2019. Based on the short story “Sleeping at the foot of the mountain” by Hammour Ziada, it tells the story of Muzamil, who was destined at birth to live no more than the titular twenty years (according to a religious prophecy). With gorgeous images by DoP Sébastien Goepfert, the feature won the Luigi de Laurentis Award for Best First Film at the 76th Mostra 2019 in Venice.

In a village near the river Nile, Sakina (Mubarak) has given birth to a son, Muzamil. The Sheik and Village Eldest oversees the ceremony, but just when he wants to wish the baby a long and prosperous life, the dancer – reciting the incantatory verses – loses consciousness, his last word being ‘Twenty’.

From that time Muzamil will be known forever as the man who will die at twenty. His overprotective mother Sakina goes into mourning and wears black from the day of that  fateful ceremony. The children tease him, calling him “Son of Death”. His father Alnoor (Afifi) reacts differently to the potential loss of his son.) leaves the family and becomes a nomad on the African continent.

When Muzamil (Shehata) reaches his teens, his childhood sweetheart, Naima (Khalid), tries in vain to make him marry her. Muzamil has a brilliant memory, and can recite the whole Quran in two versions. But he also has an admirer in the shape of local Imam.  But Muzamil’s life changes when he meets Sulaiman (Elsaraj), a cinematographer who has travelled the world and has filmed his foreign adventures, as well the nightlife in Khartoum. He enthuses Muzamil with his zest for life and cinema and soon an internal conflict grows in Muzamil’s heart challenging his modern aspirations with his traditional values.

Alala choses a slow tempo to recount his tale making it clear where he stands in the fight between religious repression and human desire. With its naturalistic performances and sparse dialogue, this is pure visual storytelling and despite the rather maudlin subject matter You Will Die At Twenty is delightful to watch. AS

NOW ON MUBI

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2021

Hungary is to be the focus of this year’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) announces Hungary as the Focus Country for this year’s 25th edition of the festival. The 25th celebration will open with Ildikó Enyedi’s ninth feature The Story of My Wife, which premiered in competition at Cannes this year, with 18 more Hungarian films screening as part of the In Focus: Hungary programme, including 10 films in a special archive section and 8 new films representing the best of current Hungarian cinema.

Eight current feature films will be shown at PÖFF25, including Gábor Fabricius’ Erasing Frank, which premiered in Venice this summer, Kornél Mundruczó’s Evolution, which premiered in Cannes, and Péter Bergendy’s Post Mortem, Hungary’s entry for the Academy Awards. The archive programme includes cinematic gems from acclaimed directors including Ildikó Enyedi, Miklós Jancsó, Márta Mészáros and István Szabó.

The Story of My Wife is set in the 1920s and sees a middle-aged Dutch seaman betting his cynical business partner that he will marry the next woman who comes into the café they’re sitting in, and unfolds from there in an adaptation of the Hungarian poet Milán Füst’s novel of the same title – oosely based on the legend of the cursed Flying Dutchman.

The Hungarian theme continues with György Pálfi’s Perpetuity. And another, Wild Roots, will screen as part of the Just Film sub festival.

Opening Film / In Focus: Hungary

The Story Of My Wife / A feleségem története (2021, Hungary/Germany/Italy/France, Director: Ildikó Enyedi)

Official Selection – In Competition / In Focus: Hungary
Perpetuity (2021, Hungary, Director: György Pálfi)

In Focus: Hungary Programme

Erasing Frank (2021, Hungary, Director: Gabor Fabricius)
Evolution (2021, Germany/Hungary, Director: Kornél Mundruczó)
Post Mortem (2021, Hungary, Director: Péter Bergendy)
Things Worth Weeping for (2020, Hungary, Director: Cristina Grosan)
Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2020, Hungary, Dir: Lili Horvát)
Cream (2019, Hungary, Director: Nóra Lakos)

In Focus: Hungary / Just Film Programme

Wild Roots (2021, Hungary, Director: Hajni Kis)

In Focus: Hungary Archive Programme

Merry-Go-Round / Körhinta (1955, Director: Zoltán Fábri)
Current / Sodrásban (1963, Director: István Gaál)
The Round-Up / Szegénylegények (1965, Director: Miklós Jancsó)
Love / Szerelem (1970, Director: Károly Makk)
Sindbad / Szindbád (1971, Director: Huszárik Zoltán)
Nine Months / Kilenc Hólnap (1976, Director: Márta Mészáros)
Mephisto / Mephisto I-II. (1981, Director: István Szabó)
Son of the White Mare / Fehérlófia (1981, Director: Marcell Jankovics)
The Midas Touch / Eldorádó (1988, Director: Géza Bereményi)
My 20th Century / Az én XX. századom (1988, Director: Ildikó Enyedi)

Tallinn Black Nights | 12-28 November 2021

No Time to Die (2021)

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

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

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

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

The Exam | A Vizsga (2011)

Dir.: Peter Bergendy; Cast: János Kulka, Zsolt Nagy, Péter Scherer, Gabriella Hámori; Hungary 2011, 89min.

Hungarian director Peter Bergendy has made a taut B-picture of Norbert Köbli’s script about the mechanics of the Hungarian Secret Service under Stalinism.

Bergendry previous feature, Post Mortem, screened at the 2021 London FrightFest, and will have another viewing at Tallinn Black Nights this November – so we’re not surprised to discover this is much more of a horror film than a thriller: the director actually majored in psychology with a thesis entitled ‘Psychology of the Horror Film’.

Set over twenty hours on December 24th, 1957 in Budapest, Andras Jung (Nagy) is a teacher of German and also a low level informer for the Hungarian Secret Service. A year after the failed uprising, the Secret Police is busy cleaning up their ranks, hunting down remaining sympathisers of Miklos Rakosi in particular. Senior officer Pal Marko (Kulka) is in charge of a unit testing Jung, Marko’s protégé. Marko had been exchanged during the war for a French spy and was greeted personally by NKDW chief Lavrenti Beria on his return.

The young Andras is in a relationship with Eva Gati (Hámori), who has fought the Secret Police during the uprising in the ‘battle’ of Corvin Lane. Or has she? We doubt her more and more, because Jung’s flat is full of surveillance microphones, his conversations are listened to by Marko and his fellow spies, one of them the sinister Emil Kulscar (Scherer) – and Jung himself tapes a conversation he has with Marko. All will be revealed at the end, when a grand inquisitor in the underground HQ of the Secret Police will listen to the testimonies of the trio, with Jung’s tape of his conversation with Marko playing a central role to determine who will be the victim of the charade.

Jung’s flat and the one rented by Marko and the Secret Service members are the main locations, and DoP Zsolt Tóth’s grim images of black and brown are symbolic for a feature, where even the snow in Budapest’s streets is made to look grey. There are beautifully dark images of the banks of the Danube, and the huge cars are looking more like tanks than automobiles. All of the protagonists are ambivalent, or hiding their true motives: to survive, one has to denounce friends or lovers, just to stay on the right side of the permanent shifting Party line. A desperate portrait of a society where lies are the common currency for staying alive, told sparsely and without any glimmer of hope or redemption. AS

COURTESY OF HUNGARIAN FILM CENTRE LONDON

Dune (2021)

Dir.: Denis Villeneuve; Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard, Javier Bardem, Charlotte Rampling, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa; USA/ Canada 2021, 155 min.

The forth realised adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult novel Dune, directed by Québécoise filmaker Denis Villeneuve (2049) is big news – with a budget of 165 million dollars Warner Brothers have taken a gamble in the hope that streaming on their platform HBO Max and good receipts at the cinema box office will guarantee a sequel covering the second half of Herbert’s book.

After the David Lynch version of 1984 was butchered by the producers (from 180 to 137 minutes), and two TV mini-series, Villeneuve’s almost two hour version could be seen as a mere set-up for the all-revealing two-and-half hour denouement – or even part of a new franchise. But Part Two is not a certainty at all, if you cast your mind back to the troubles Alejandro Jodorowsky had in the early 1970s, when even Salvatore Dali failed to get the Chilean helmer’s project off the ground, spawning only Frank Pavich’s 2013 doc exploring its contingent failure.

To their credit, Villeneuve and co-writers Eric Roth and Jon Spaiths, have played down only the background of the saga, so that non-aficionados of the Herbert novel can enjoy the more entertaining intrigues and endless battles: in the far, far future humankind has conquered the universe due to a super, life-enhancing spice that super-charges the brain endowing humans with preternatural powers of rapid mobility in space travel, that today would take millions of years. The downside is that this super-dust, called Spice, is only found on the planet Arrakis, aka Dune, where giant sandworms contribute to a very inhospitable environment.

The indigenous population known as Fremen (read Free Men) are engaged in an ongoing battle to combat the colonisation of the Emperor’s armies. Enter the House of Atreides, a noble family who is ordered by the Emperor to take charge of Dune and its rebellious population. They take over from the House of Harkonnen, but it is not clear if the Atreides are getting a promotion, or are just a toy in the hands of the Imperial ruler. Duke Leto (Isaac) of Atreides, his concubine Jessica (Ferguson) and their son Paul (Chalamet) arrive on Dune, only to be ambushed by evil Baron Harkonnen (Skarsgard). Paul’s mother belongs to a tribe of women known as the ‘Bene Gesserit’,who have been engaged for centuries in creating “The One” – but it’s still uncertain if Paul is really this long-awaited saviour.

Jessica trains her son in the art of “Voice”, which allows its user total mind control. Paul is being prepared for battle by Gurney (Brolin) and Idaho (Momoa), so he can lead the stranded family on their way to salvation on Dune, whilst taking the Spice and dreaming of Chani (Zendaya), a Fremen woman, whom we only see in Paul’s dreams. Will the enigmatic Paul and Jessica become allies of the Fremen, or is this just the start of hostilities with the black-clad Harkonnen?

The two-part script structure is clearly flawed but Villeneuve, DoP Greig Fraser and PD Patrice Vermette have created a totally unique universe where sandstorms (aka climate change?) pose an even greater threat than the mayhem caused by human armies. This is brutalist futurism where helicopters fly like birds with insect wings, and the Harkonnen army, with their hairless, pale faces bring to mind the SS ‘Angels of Death’. But the graphic descriptions of the battle scenes often feel  repetitive and gradually lose their power to shock, becoming ineffectual. DUNE is certainly a visual masterpiece, so let’s hope the producers’ pay-as-you-go strategy pays off with Part II. Shame though the the whole thing couldn’t have been down in one go. AS

NOW In CINEMAS

 

In Front of Your Face (2021)

Dir: Hong Sang-soo | South Korean, Drama

The subtle South Korean director teases us once again with this elegant arthouse gem that follows a day in the life of middle-aged actress Sangok, back from America to visit her sister Jeongok (Cho Yunhee) in their hometown of Seoul. A first walk in the park together reveals their very different personalities. But there’s an enigmatic quality at play and a feeling that Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung, a leading light from the 1980s) is leaving a lot our imagination, until an unexpected tragicomic twist occurs in the final denouement. 

After the walk Sangok agrees to meet for lunch with a lightweight film director called Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo). All this is plays out with Sangok’s voice-over monologues giving us small clues as to her state of mind. Clearly Jaewon is a big fan of the Sangok’s work and he surprises the actress with intense recollections of a particular film she finds it harder to remember, but feigns flattery nevertheless. After she declines an offer to star in his next film, Jaewon quietly dissolves into tears during a cigarette break outside the cafe, clearly deeply affected by her rejection. The two then leave during a sudden thundery downpour, as the camera watches them tentatively sharing another cigarette.

The final reveal comes the following morning when Sangok wakes up to find a mobile message from Jaewon, It makes her laugh out loud. Her upbeat approach is gently philosophical. Clearly the benefits of experience have once again trumped youth: reality is there for all to see. MT 

ON RELEASE from 23 September 2022 | Reviewed at VIENNALE 2021

 

Brazil Indigenous Film Festival 22 – 24 October 2021

Inspired by the UN Climate Summit this first edition of the Brazil Indigenous Film Festival takes place in London’s ICA cinema on the Mall from October 22 -24, featuring a dozen or so features and shorts from indigenous filmmakers sharing their stories – both fact and fiction – from all over Brazil.

Twelve films, in six languages, from seven different groups will be showing in the three-day festivalbetween 22 – 24 October 2021. The programme is split into three strands: The Right toEarth combines work on different forms of Indigenous struggle – symbolic, practical, political, mythological – for the right to land; The Ritual Dimension documents and celebrates the Maxakali andKisedjê in rural Brazil, exploring their political rituals, and Orality, Film and History brings historical, social and philosophical perspectives from the Parakanã, Guarani–Nhandewa and Guarani–Kaiowácommunities.

A few highlights from the programme: Equilibrium, an ethno-media video art by Tupinamba journalist and educator Olinda Muniz Wenderley. The female filmmaker explores through an experimental narrative the connection of the Indigenous People with the Earth and their spirituality. Two animations explore colours of nature and traditions. The Celebration of the Spirits tells the saga of a Guajajara man, who, during a search for his lost brother, ends up on a voyage of self-discovery.

Other films to look out for are Tatakox, a hypnotic ritual film that documents celebrations evoking the spirits of dead children, and Nũhũ yãgmũ yõg hãm: This land is our land!, winner of the Best International Film prize at this year’s SheffieldDoc/Fest.

The festival also presents two productions from Alberto Alvares: Dream of Fire, an interpretation of a dream – an omen of disease, according to Guarani Nhandewa traditions, and Tekowenhepyrun: The Origin of the Soul, is based on the belief that the soul is the connection between the body and the spirit. Alberto has had works exhibited in Arts Biennales and international film festivals.

FreeLandCamp a documentary by photographer and anthropologist Edgar Kanaykõ, portraying the massive 2017 demonstration organised by APIB, when diverse ethnic groups got together in the country’s capital, Brasília to demand their rights. Ava Yvy Vera: The Land of the People of Lightning, is a depiction of the Guarani–Kaiowá peoples’ struggle for land rights that gained international recognition after the release of a joint letter in 2012, protesting against the assaults and advances of Brazilian agribusiness.

The thought-provoking Zawxiperkwer Ka’a explores the activities of the Guardians of the Forest, a group that has been fighting against illegal logging and working to protect the Awá-Guajá, one of the most threatened isolated Indigenous groups on the eastern coast of the Amazon.

This festival has the support of APIB, a national reference of the Indigenous movement in Brazil. Raising international awareness about Indigenous peoples as protagonists in the fight against climatechange and resisting the destruction of their traditional ways of living is urgently needed.

Festival Schedule:

Friday, 22 Oct @18h30 (Opening Night followed by a Q&A with festival curators and special guests)

Saturday, 23 Oct @16:20

Sunday, 24 Oct @16:20

Full programme can be seen here.

The Gravedigger’s Wife (2021)

Dir.: Khadar Ayderus Ahmed; Cast: Omar Abdi, Yasmin Warsame, Kadar Abdout Aziz Ibrahim.Somalia/Finland/Qatar/Germany/France 2021, 82 min.

The Gravedigger’s Wife was the first Somali film ever to be nominated for the Oscars in the Foreign Features category. It takes place in Djibouti City, the capital of the smallest country on the African continent, where employment – or the lack of it – is a major issue for nearly a million who live in and around the capital.

Guled (Abdi) and his wife Nasra (Warsame) are true romantics: they eloped as teenagers, Nasra’s family wanting her to marry an older, wealthy man. Even now, they only have eyes for each other, their teenage son Mahad (Aziz Ibrahim) has the freedom to roam the streets with his mates, but his truanting only comes to light after he has missed months of school.

Guled competes with his friends for the ‘bounty’: they are all lined up at the gate of the local hospital, ready to chase the arriving ambulances. Guled and Nasra never had much money, he left his herd of goats to his brother in their home village, after he and Nasra were expelled for disobeying the wishes of the elders.

The couple light-heartedly “borrows” a goat, presenting it as a wedding gift at a wedding they gate-crash. But their playful attitude has to stop, when Nasra develops a kidney infection requiring surgery at a specialist hospital in Ethiopia at the cost of $500 000

When Nasra’s condition worsens, the doctor has good and bad news: On a positive note the surgery can be managed locally by a visiting anaesthetist, but the price tag remains the same. So Mahad and his friends take on all kind of jobs to contribute to the staggering costs, Guled swallowing his pride, as he sets off for his home village to reclaim his goat herd.

You could call Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s first film a road movie, as most of the action plays out in the streets of suburban Djibouti and the long desert road between the city and his home village. But the most intimate scenes are set in the modest family home where hope fades with day that passes, Nasra’s presence a pale comparison with her former strength in the local community, she now stays at home, her pain all too visible.

DoP Arttn Peltomaa contrasts the sun-dappled colours of the desert surroundings with sombre earthy colours of the intimate domestic interiors where the family fears for the worst.

In his passionate feature debut Ahmed adopts a less is more approach to the narrative, but the way he deals with conflicting emotions augurs well for the future.  AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 21 OCTOBER 2022

The Last Duel (2021)

Dir: Ridley Scott | US Action Drama 153′

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

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

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

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

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

NOW IN CINEMAS

 

 

Unpublished Story (1942

Dir: Harold French | Cast: Richard Greene, Valerie Hobson, Basil Radford, Roland Culver | UK Drama 82′

The British wartime authorities’ perennial obsession with fifth columnists (‘enemy agents’ were serving as baddies as early as the 1940 George Formby vehicle Let George Do It!) here finds elaborate expression in an ambitious production set in London during the Blitz. It took five credited writers to concoct this frequently hard to follow propaganda piece in which actual footage from the Blitz is adroitly combined with recreated studio footage. Censorship is benignly depicted as an essential part of the war effort (hence the title), while a pacifist organisation called ‘People for Peace’ is revealed to be not simply a Nazi front organisation run by British reactionaries but headed by authentic German ‘sleepers’ who privately converse among themselves in German. (With acts of terrorism in Europe by refugees from the Middle East now becoming almost everyday occurrences, the sequence depicting the arrival of a German agent masquerading as a Belgian refugee has disturbing contemporary resonances.)

Richard Greene and Valerie Hobson are colourless leads, and dependable supporting actors like Basil Radford, Roland Culver and André Morell are generally given remarkably little to do; with the notable exception of Brefni O’Rorke as the editor of ‘The Gazette’, the newspaper the plot revolves around, who gets to deliver the film’s stirring final speech at the fadeout. @Richard Chatten

 

A.rtificial I.mmortality | Warsaw Film Festival 2021

Dir: Ann Shin | Doc Canada, 74’

If you could create an immortal version of yourself, would you?

Don’t be put off by its tricksy title, this new documentary from award-winning Toronto-based Korean filmmaker Ann Shin is fascinating from start to finish. 

A.rtifical I.mmortality opens with a welter of technical experts fast-talking their way through their ground-breaking research. But the focus soon narrows on Shin, best known for her HBO title The Defector: Escape from North Korea, who is now working on how to capture the essence of her dying father who is rapidly sliding down the slippery slope of dementia. Is there a way to keep part of him alive, and leave something of herself for her own kids to reflect on? – she ponders while chopping away at those ubiquitous veg in her kitchen?.

Apparently there is. And Shin showcases each new discovery in a film that uncovers the cutting-edge world of AI: “what is it that makes us uniquely human, and cannot be recreated by a robot, however sophisticated?. The film’s first episode is possibly the least plausible and most confusing: we meet Lincoln Cannon, a leading proponent of the ‘Trans humanist Movement’ which believes in the ‘ethical use of technology to transcend human limits, even making death “optional”.’ Is this a load tosh, you may wonder? Well, watch on, it does get better.   

What follows is a deep dive into the realms of artificial intelligence, machine learning and biotechnology. Shin interviews specialists from the world of religion, robotic science, technology, philosophy and neuroscience.

She 52 year old mother of two then explores ‘mind-files’. Facebook and Twitter all possess these intensely personal impressions of us from the social posts that we share with them. So what if these could be downloaded onto a personal file and then uploaded and stored privately for our benefit on an avatar?. She talks to Dr Deepak Chopra has already created his own “digital Deepak” from his mind-file. The idea is to pass on the essence of himself and his accumulated knowledge for his grandkids.

Mind files can also be used for Chopra’s own commercial benefit, as a virtual mentor and guru.  He explains the difference between this unique personal version and, say, Siri. With your digital avatar you have a direct relationship with that tailored made ‘person’.  It can interpret your own feelings based on a personal knowledge bank, created by you in an AI version of yourself that you compile well before you die. 

Meanwhile in California, Profesor Alysson Muotri has found a way to replicate actual human brain cells in a petri dish using stem cellls known as organoids. These can produce a more complex and nuanced artificial brain material. So sometime in the future brains may be able to grow this material for positive uses, including the treatment of traumatic injury, and even to tackle mental illnesses such as depression or motor neurone disease.

Over in Japan where robots are very much part of everyday life, Hiroshi Ishiguro has pioneered ‘intelligent’ robotics. So lifelike is his own android that it actually fooled audiences into believing it was Ishiguro himself – but that’s possibly because he looks and acts more like an Android than a human, in the nicest possible way. 

One of the sceptics of the AI world is neuroscientist Dr Taufik Valiante who has been finding out exactly how memories are made in the brain. Very little is actually known about the brain and how it processes memory. But the significant issue here is how malleable memory is, and how much it is subject to individual and personal reflections. Memories are a ‘loved experience’ with a richness that AI does not have the capability of recording. Human cognition is an “embodied cognition’ far more complex that any AI can replicate. Robots, no matter how sophisticated, can’t smell, feel or touch. How could those elements be replicated by a computer?  Taufik heads up a think-tank at the neurological department of Toronto’s Krembil Research Institute and reminds us, reassuringly, that humans are capable of feeling exquisitely subtle qualities including ‘body memory’ that avatars are just not able to sense. This all very encouraging for those fearing a takeover by robots. The Japanese have coined an expression “sonzaikan” that refers to the unique presence of another being. So there’s hope for us real humans yet in the scary world of future intelligence. MT

WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Money Has Four Legs (2021) Bfi London Film Festivali

Dir.: Maung Sun; Cast: Okkar, Khin Khin Hsu, Hein Thiori San, Kio Thu; Myanmar 2021, 98 min.

Mynamar’s Maung Sun opts for a light comedy style to get this debut feature past the censors. Set in the capital Naypyidaw Money Has Four Legs is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a contemporary filmmaker and his trials and tribulations trying to get a movie in a country seemingly down on its knees.

We first meet Sun’s alter ego, Wai Bhone, arguing over his script in the censor’s office. All this unwelcome interference radically alters the finished product, proposing a scenario where the police force is the guiding force and sex scenes are symbolic rather than graphic. And Bhone could do without it. Back home in his living room, decorated with his awards and photos of his father, a famous director, Bhone contemplates an uncertain future, his wife Seazir (Khin Khin Su) is about to lose her job ay the bank, and there’s their daughter Meemi (Thiori San) to think about too. Seazir’s brother Zaw Mynth (Ko Thu), a film extra, is prone to violent episodes when drunk – which is nearly always. The film’s producer is at the end of his tether, considering replacing Bhone with another helmer. Luckily, he manages to keep the show on the road after digging up some some dirt on his producer, and when Seazir’s bank goes into liquidation, as anticipated, Bhone and his brother turn the situation to their advantage in a denouement that feels like a tribute to Jules Dassin.

DoP Thaiddhi conjures up fairytale images that certainly sum up the chaotic upbeat style  Sun had in mind: the colours are bright, the scenes in the hustling streets are well-observed. But behind all the bungling – in real life and film-making – this is a cry for help: if the banks are going under, what hope is there for an out-of-work population? Sun’s debut is a subversive attack, a welcome celebration of 100 Years of Burmese cinema. AS

SCREENING DURING BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 6-17 OCTOBER 2021

 

Who Dares Wins (1982) Prime

Dir: Ian Sharp | UK Drama

Interviewed on the set, Lewis Collins said the situation depicted was ambivalent since although his character deplored the terrorists’ methods he sympathised with their aims. The film itself naturally displays no such nuance; and the late Philip French described it at the time as the most ludicrous political picture he’d seen since the Boultings’ ‘High Treason’ over thirty years earlier. (An apt comparison, although the earlier production was plainly a much better film.)

After the Iranian Embassy Siege, Collins – always the less introspective half of ‘The Professionals’ – was quickly snapped up by producer Euan Lloyd for the lead for this fascinating document of the mood that prevailed in Britain during the bleak winter of 1982 between the Toxteth riots and the war in the Falkland Islands that reunites the writer and one of the stars of ’12 Angry Men’.

No such film would of course be complete without a voluptuous female psycho from Europe with an itchy trigger finger (played by Ingrid Pitt in fatigues), and despite being idyllically married to a wife in Laura Ashley (played by Lloyd’s daughter Rosalind) big-haired Judy Davis says Collins makes love like he “just got out of prison” while her glowering entourage of lefty malcontents look on enviously. (Since they have to to get their hair cut and be smartened up to impersonate a military band a fascinating scene that didn’t make the final cut must have been Ms Davis impatiently showing her confederates the correct way to do up their bow ties.) @RichardChatten

NOW ON ANAZON PRIME

Italian Films at the BFI London Film Festival 2021 | 6-17 October

Italian cinema has had a good summer so far. So expect to see a good selection at this autumn’s BFI London Film Festival, courtesy of Cinecittaluce.

SMALL BODY is a delicate fantasy drama from Laura Samani and had its premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week. MARX CAN WAIT is Marco Bellocchio’s documentary tribute to a much loved twin brother, and also screened at Cannes, where the veteran director was awarded the 2021 Honorary Palme D’Or for his body of work.

Paolo Sorrentino was on the Lido with his latest lush drama THE HAND OF GOD which took the Grand Jury Prize, its lead, Filippo Scotti, was awarded the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor. Meanwhile, Michelangelo Frammartino’s Special Jury Prize winner IL BUCO captured the hearts and minds of Italian and international critics at Venice: Il Buco is his long-awaited follow-up to Le Quattro Volte.

ITALIAN FILMS | BFI FILM FESTIVAL 2021 

Eugenie Grandet (2021)

 

Dir: Marc Dugain | Cast: Josephine Japy, Olivier Gourmet, Valerie Bonneton, Cesar Domboy | Drama, France/Belgium 103′

Another Balzac novel hits the big screen: this time his early 19th tale about the evils of capitalism and family inheritance, sombrely adapted by Senegal born director Marc Dugain.

Eugenie Grandet is a dour and joyless story and Dugain does little to lift it above the confines of the page despite thoughtful performances from Josephine Japy in the lead role, and Olivier Gourmet as her vehement property-dealer father Felix whose stinginess and greed makes her life a misery at a time when self-realisation was impossible for ordinary women.

Saumur 1819 during the Bourbon Restoration is the setting, and endless views of dripping rain and dank mornings establish the grim milieu where Eugenie Grandet and her mother (Bonneton) endure a monotonous bourgeois existence, her father poncing around the countryside doing deals and pretending to be down on his luck. Although the reality is quite different.

Felix Grandet is not a good father. Frugal, possessive and emotionally remote, he keeps his wife and daughter on a tight budget, making a big deal out of giving Eugenie a single gold coin for her dowry. Eugénie spends her days sewing and dreaming of love and when her cousin Charles (Domboy) arrives to stay she is completely taken with his dashing good looks and suave Parisian manners. So much so she falls in love with him – rather too quickly – offering her only worldly possession when it emerges that his father has killed himself due to mounting debts. And when the mean-spirited Felix finds out what has happened he further castigates Eugenie, imprisoning her in her bedroom.

Gilles Porte creates a morose atmosphere in the darkened interiors of the Grandet household, often softly highlighting the characters’ faces in the style of Caravaggio, and in Eugenie’s case this accentuates  her qualities of gentleness and devotion. And although Dugrain’s script successfully condenses the novel into a reasonable running time, it doesn’t quite give enough weight to Charles and Eugenie’s love affair which after all carries the novel’s uplifting emotional freight, much needed to counterbalance all the endless misery. Joséphine Japy is brilliant as the innocent, long-suffering heroine in a world where women’s happiness and wellbeing depended entirely on the integrity of their menfolk. MT

 

Shepherd (2021)

Dir/Wri: Russell Owen | UK Horror 103’

A little bit style over substance, Shepherd is an effective but rather overwrought third feature from Welsh writer/director Russell Owen, with Greta Scachi as the star turn and Tom Hughes as angst-ridden widow Eric Black.

Devastated after the mysterious death of his wife, who is pictured teasing him in menacing early flashbacks, Eric takes a job as a shepherd heading for the solitude of ramshackle  house on a remote island with only his faithful Collie Baxter for company.

Front-loading the narrative with foreboding tropes and jump scares before really establishing Eric’s grievances with his wife makes it difficult for us to really feel for him or appreciate his troubled state of mind. So Owen keeps things ambiguous with a recurring motif of gloomy mountains and a roaring soundscape, an ominous tolling bell driving the narrative forward in this wind-beaten setting. The island is purportedly uninhabited but soon after arriving on a lighter steered by a gaunt boatsman, Eric spies a sinister hooded figure darting around a disused lighthouse, and discovers human remains in a stream.

Trauma from the past resurfaces in a scary vignette from Greta Scacchi as his widowed mother who has somehow tracked him down and was clearly not a fan of Rachel. But is she alive or dead, a nightmare or reality?  Then Baxter goes missing and Eric’s state of mind down-spirals into a glowering night of the soul as the truth comes back to haunt him. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 26 November 2021

Boiling Point (2021)

Dir.: Philip Barantini; Cast: Stephen Graham, Vinette Robinson, Alice Feetham, Ray Panthaki, Jason Flemyng, Lourdes Faberes; UK 2021, 92 min.

Stephen Graham is a budding star chef in this adrenaline fuelled single-take drama that powers non-stop through the hectic kitchens of a top restaurant where staff and owner could lose their livelihoods at any minute.

Graham’s Andy is a committed workaholic, a ‘business before family’ kind of guy. But his dedication to the job is clearly not paying off. Boiling Point gets off to a simmering start with a visit from the food hygiene inspector who downgrades his restaurant’s kitchen from a five to a three, point-wise. Andy takes it all out on the staff, particularly his sous-chef Carly (Robinson) and commis chef Freeman (Panthaki). To be fair, Andy is not the only person responsible for restaurant’s shaky reputation: front-of-house maître Beth (Feetham) overplays the role of social media, particularly Instagram, and this has a detrimental affect on proceedings.

Everyone has a story to tell about Andy’s classy eaterie; there are reports of self-harm and drug misuse. And that bottle Andy carries with him seems to contain more than just water.  The fractious evening comes to a climax when TV chef Alastair Skye (Flemying) arrives with capricious food critic Sara Southworth (Faberes): A female guest is apparently feeling the affects of her nut allergy, even though the staff had been informed of her condition at the start of the evening. The ambulance arrives, and Skye puts the blame unjustly on Beth for the incident. But Andy refuses to “throw” Beth “under the bus”, leaving Skye in deep water over his £200K investment. But that’s not the end of it, new developments will test Andy to breaking point, again.

Everyone plays their part in keeping the tension going, and credit to DoP Matthew Lewis for making the best in a limited environment with his use of crane shots to break up the intensity of person-to-person conflicts. Often in these kind of films staff are either demonised for being jealous, or pushed into the eternal victim role by well meaning middle-class script writers. But in Boiling Point the focus is on competent professionals doing their jobs while falling victims to a boss on the downward spiral. AS

IN UK CINEMAS from 7 JANUARY 2022

 

Raphael Revealed (2020)

Dir: Phil Grabsky | Doc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 OCTOBER 2021

Le Frisson des Vampires (1971)

Dir: Jean Rollin | French, Horror

Disinterred from its crypt in the small hours recently by London Live, not a lot really happens in this fanciful little trifle by Jean Rollin – who David Pirie wrote “it is tempting to see as the Claude Lellouch of the vampire cinema” – but it contains some beautiful colour effects, and an attractively lit chateau housing a coven of female vampires who glide about in big hair and little else.

Vampiress-in-chief, Isolde, is given to making dramatic entrances from hiding places as varied as a grandfather clock (whose door swings open in an image worthy of Nosferatu, from behind a curtain and up a chimney; while her handmaidens dance off into the night together before the film’s conclusion on the director’s favourite location, the beach at Normandy. Richard Chatten

ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS: THE FANTASTIQUE WORLD OF JEAN ROLLIN | and other SELECTED TITLES is on ARROW.COM in FEBRUARY 2023

Getting Away with Murder(s) (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

27 January 2023 | 9pm CHANNEL4

 

The Astonished Heart (1950)

Dir: Anthony Darnborough Terence Fisher | Cast: Celia Johnson, Noel Coward, Margaret Leighton, Joyce Carey  UK Drama 85′

Like Brief Encounter based on one of the theatrical pieces that comprised ‘Tonight at 8.30’, this reunion of that classic’s writer and star is an equally garrulous but far more grandiose affair that failed as spectacularly as their previous collaboration had succeeded (although the scenes depicting the neuroses exhibited by Noel Coward’s patients are still haunting after the film is over; particularly the scene where John Salew is challenged to read a certain word Coward claims to have written down for him to look at.

All involved were as genuinely unhappy making this epic folly as they looked acting in it; Coward having taken on the lead only after Michael Redgrave took one look at the rushes and walked.

After lumbering through the wreckage like Frankenstein’s monster (Alan Strachan later observed that “Coward’s performance of ravaged heterosexual ardour is riotous”) the star subsequently found himself a far more congenial niche making guest appearances in other people’s films. @Richard Chatten

Pleasure (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/1hl4D0sE5TA

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

 

From the Wild Sea (2021) Zurich Film Festival 2021

Dir: Robin Petré | Doc, 77′

Weather conditions are becoming much more extreme. Marine animals are needing emergency care due to injuries caused by the effects of climate change on tides and changing oceanography.

The caring efforts of marine conservationists are at the heart of this cinematic nature doc From the Wild Sea from Danish documentarian Robin Petré known for her unconventional short nature films (Pulse, Stream and Distant Water) that push the borders beyond the norm. Along similar lines to Leviathan and Bird Island (2019) this deeply sensory film shows how vets in coastal regions are building up a strong support system of rescue centres to rehabilitate mammals and sea birds.

The sheer power of an image is all that’s needed to convey the tragedy of our changing climate which has given rise to powerful storms raging into Europe from the Atlantic, bringing with them injured and confused animals such as seals, dolphins, whales and seabirds. The film is swift to point out that untrained human interference in nature – however well-intentioned – is not helpful. Moving injured animals that have been washed up on the shore should be avoided at all costs. The changing tides have had a deleterious effect on seal mammals who rely on echolocation to get their bearings and forage of food: One such seal recently lost its sense of direction and headed to Morocco, wildly off course. After rehabilitation in Cornwall it made its way back north, then took a wrong turn at the Continental Shelf and headed South again only to be re-homed in the Cornish sanctuary. The release of these healthy seals back into the wild is the film’s highpoint.

Although the work being done in animal rehabilitation is an admirable labour of love, this is a really upsetting film to watch: we see seals in great distress – some of them uttering almost human cries as they struggle to breathe, their airways caught up with plastic or infection as the trained staff work to help them recover. We watch another seal gradually losing its fight for life, flippers twitching as it cries out in pain, its mottled fur coat is a thing of exquisite beauty, its soulful eyes speak volumes of the tragic marine odyssey that has led to its death.

Many animals are suffering the effects of starvation. One seal enjoys a basinful of fish, while another waits patiently for attention by the side of a ceramic bath. It’s extraordinary to imagine that an animal that spends most of its time under the sea can demonstrate so much awareness of a human setting on dry land. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that thousands of years ago we too came from out of the sea.

Whales fare particularly badly: we watch as a 19-metre-long whale lies beached like a massive, punctured tyre, off the coast of Cornwall. The team rushes to help but it’s already too late. The animal will not just die from its bleeding injuries but because its sheer weight will crush the organs, unless the tide favours transport back into the sea. Many whales die due to head-butting from a boat, or multiple injuries from propellers. An autopsy takes place on the beach itself, it must be one of the few times the pathologist actually gets inside a body to do his work. We also witness a fascinating autopsy of a small 4-5 year-old dolphin who has been terribly badly scarred by marine craft and survived and healed, before finally dying of other injuries.

Birds are particularly difficult to handle, and a white swan hisses savagely when it is given a bubble bath to wash off black marine diesel in the clinic, and here the camera offers intense close-ups of the meticulous cleaning process, including a blow-dry to return the bird to its snow white beauty before release. Frequently the camera pulls out to pan the coast in widescreen images of waves crashing down on the raging ocean. Nicholas (de) Montsarrat was not wrong when he called his 1951 war novel: “The Cruel Sea”.

Robin Petre maintains a respectful distance from her subject matter avoiding anthropomorphism at all times while filming with a deeply humane perspective.  A really immersive film for those interested in animal welfare and suitable for all the family (except for the very young). MT

ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL 25 SEPTEMBER – 3 OCTOBER 2021

Ascension (2021) Zurich Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Jessica Kingdon | Documentary; China 2021, 97′

Mesmerising in its imagery, Ascension is a frightening impressionistic portrait of China’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labour, consumerism and wealth.

In her documentary debut Chinese-American Jessica Kingdon explores this study of Chinese superiority by those whose crafted the system. But there is also the hankering after western values and traditions, coupled with a search for perfection in every aspect of working life. Through sheer determination this stealthy dragon will soon be the number economic power on the globe – a nightmarish vision.

The film is structured in three parts, ascending through the hierarchical levels: workers running factory production, the middle class selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites revelling in a new level of hedonistic enjoyment. In traveling up the rungs of China’s social ladder, we see how each level supports and makes possible the next while recognizing the contemporary “Chinese Dream” remains an elusive fantasy for most.

Job-seekers gather in front of buses which will ferry the chosen ones to their factories and dorms. The pay is a couple of dollars an hour, but there are restrictions: Only applicants between 18 and 38 are welcome, men are not allowed to have tattoos or ear-studs – and no illegals will be accepted let alone those with a criminal record. Then there is the roll call for the HUWAI bus, under a big sign of “Work hard, and all wishes come true” the workers put their luggage away before entering the bus. Other poster slogans tell the workers “Be civilised, set good examples” before we set off for the factories.

In a plant producing water bottles from plastic, the female workers discuss the role of the manager: “It does not matter how many days you work, the manager will decide how many days you get paid for. I buy the boss lunch, right after having been paid. We all plead to buy lunch for him so he can pull some strings for us.” In a factory producing jeans, the workers are told “to work harder”, because these jeans are for export: the stitching reads “Keep America great”. In front of a factory producing sex dolls, the chorus shouts slogans like “I love my company, I love my colleagues, I love my career even more. My fate is tied to the company’s, my glory bound to the company”.

Books are given out to workers and they are exhorted to study them with diligence, since the boss spend much time on writing the advice for his workers. During work hours, role play about how to be a perfect workmate is transmitted via loud speakers. We see workers marching like soldiers in front of factories. Meanwhile in the sex doll factory, the workers earnestly discuss the colour of the nipples and the trimming of the pubic hair.

A little more up the food chain, the middle-managers are equally enthusiastic about paying good money to listen to champion managers, who have a large fan base. “Monetise your personal brand. Knowledge must be monetised”. Others have participated in a two-day course and promise “to make millions and millions” in the coming months and years. There are other expensive courses that tell you how to smile (show eight teeth), nod and hug, the latter not being very popular in China.

At a lecture by the Senior International trainer we learn “either you influence me, or I influence you”. There is a training school for butlers too: The new Chinese ruling classes want to copy their European counterparts. “You may not have much time for your personal life, or your family. The rich people do what they want to do, and you have to accept it. They are the people who pay you, no matter how much they humiliate you”.

We watch a group of young men being trained as body guards for the big bosses – unfortunately the applicants fail: the boss has been killed. A group of rich Chinese business people complain about the West calling them out for their Human Rights violations. “They don’t understand the poor have to learn to survive, there is no place for human rights, just survival.” One of the directors tells the audience of employees that “If your intelligence does not match your wealth, Chinese society has hundreds of ways to take your wealth away”.

Before a rather melancholic ending, we are reminded again “that dreams are”. Kingdon keeps the tone understated, letting images and the slogans talk. The result is a mixture of false naivety – on behalf of the upper classes – and a kind of religious fervour of obedience from the workers. But whatever the future holds, the mixture of state capitalism (after all the Party rules supreme) and expanding consumerism, which will see China overtake the USA’s GDP by five times, is a reason for trepidation – to say the least. A brilliant study of a communist nation on the march. AS

ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | 25 SEPTEMBER – 3 OCTOBER 2021 | THE 2021 ALBERT MAYSLES AWARD BEST NEW DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR to JESSICA KINGDON AT Tribeca Film Festival | JUNE 2021

Next Door | Nebenan (2021)

Dir.: Daniel Brühl; Cast: Daniel Brühl, Vicki Krieps, Peter Kurth, Rike Eckermann, Aenne Schwarz, Gode Bendix; Germany 2021, 92 min.

Spanish-German actor Daniel Brühl, who shot to fame in 2003 with Wolfgang Becker’s GDR satire Goodbye Lenin, also stars in his autobiographical themed feature debut, a political satire that riffs on Berlin’s modern day gentrification.

Essentially a two-hander It all takes place in a bar in Berlin’s now upmarket Mitte district where Brühl is self-important film and TV thespian Daniel preparing for a screen test in London. After the obligatory early morning work-out he swings by his favourite cafe (where owner Hilde jokes about the ‘new’ craze for espresso), and shoots the breeze with his East Berliner night-worker neighbour Bruno (Kurth), who regrets voting for re-unification ultimately handing over the power to the capitalist West.

Daniel has a private lift to his lush penthouse but relationships wise the two are on the same page:. Bruno listens to Daniel’s marital up and downs with Clara (Schwarz), who is now having him followed, Bruno knows the territory having had to put up with his wife’s unfaithfulness. But the men also share a chequered past with each other: Daniel’s father also cheated Bruno’s over the ownership of the flat Daniel now lives in. And the security agent has also found out that Clara herself has been playing the field and that Daniel himself is hardly pure as the driven snow as we will discover in the film’s end titles.

Daniel Kehlmann’s script is laced with satirical subtexts but these are only relayed verbally making the whole things feel rather claustrophobic: Next Door could have worked better on the stage or even as a radio play. We only see Clara for a few minutes groaning at being woken up early, and Hilde holds court as a sort of a verbal umpire who eventually falls out with Daniel.

DoP Jens Harant does his best to liven things up with overhead shots of the bar, the few street scenes make a welcome change from the interior bound verbal duel between Daniel and Bruno. The dialogue is sharp, and Bruno’s grievances are certainly plausible. but there are too many characters serving as bland window-dressing: Daniel’s two children and a particularly aggressive drunkard, and Vicki Krieps is under-used in the support.  Next Door makes a good point regarding gentrification and social inequality in Germany today, but cinematographically it misses the mark. AS

AT CURZON CINEMAS AND HOME FROM 1 OCTOBER 2021

 

 

 

Wild Indian (2021)

Dir: Lyle Mirchell Corbine Jr. | Cast: Michael Greyeyes, Chaske Spencer, Jesse Eisenberg, Kate Bosworth | US Drama 90’

Native Americans justifiably have an axe to grind in these post colonial retribution times. Coming from this background himself, Lyle Mitchell Corbine certainly knows the territory. His feature debut, “Wild Indian,” captures the zeitgeist in a sober debut that opens with scenes of past glory where a proud warrior is seen brandishing a bow and arrow, but is sadly unable to deal with his traumatic past and male prowess in modern day America.

But let’s forget all the stuff about tomahawk spirit guides and dusky squaws bedecked in chamois leather. This is actually a classic female abuse drama couched in a Native American heritage drama. It sees a disenfranchised man called Michael taking his traumatic past out on women, then asking Jesus for mercy in a phoney act of confession .

We first meet Michael as Ojibwe teenager Makwa (Phoenix Wilson) with his best friend and cousin, Ted-O (Julian Gopal), living on a Midwest reservation. Makwa is clearly a troubled individual whether as a result of his upbringing or his heritage is never really explored in-depth. Messing about in the woods one day with Ted-O, Makwa comes across a former classmate who he shoots and kills, unable to reconcile a long held grievance from the past.. Ted-O is so shocked he actually helps his friend bury the body – something he will live to regret as the crime comes back to haunt him in later years.

Fast forward to 2019 and the pigtailed Mawka, now Michael (Greyeyes), is living in another part of the US and married to an ex dancer Greta (Kate Bosworth) with whom he has a son. Enjoying the uplift his heritage proffers him in the context of workplace diversity Michael enjoys all the perks of his job in a successful marketing company alongside colleague Jesse Eisenberg (who is also the film’s producer). Ted-do (Gopal), on the other hand, has just served time for a drugs-related offence and looks the epitome of a hard bitten criminal covered in tattoos. Despite attempts to ingratiate himself with his sister Cammy (Lisa Cromarty) and her five-year-old boy, he bizarrely decides to sleep outside in a tent, rather than in her house. His manual job in a restaurant is not something he is not proud of, but he clearly feels remorse for the woods incident and tries to make it up to the family of the boy Makwa killed, an episode that ends in tears.

Greyeyes gives a convincing performance as the hard-eyed Michael emerging a vicious bully where women are concerned, and they are forced to deal with the full brunt of his particularly toxic brand of machismo throughout this feature, Michael continuing to cause havoc, many years after killing his school friend in cold blood.

Corbine manages the two-stranded narrative well enough although there is not enough about Michael’s American heritage – details of which could have been fleshed out in flashbacks rather than a ‘before and after scenario’ that leaves us wondering whether his abusive childhood was not the only factor contributing towards his becoming a psychopath.

Instead, the thrust of this fraught psychological drama focuses on his everyday casual violence in the present day as he struggles with the perceived injustices of his background while outwardly presenting as a high-performing almost seductive   psychopath prone to visiting lap dancing venues where he asks one ‘hostess’ to indulge him in his predilection for choking.

Well performed by the ensemble cast – Greyeyes is really chilling in the central role – Wild Indian is a brave attempt to highlight the issues facing Native Americans in the present day, but sadly rather a lost opportunity because of its confusing narrative. MT

On digital platforms (iTunes/ Apple TV, Amazon, Sky, Virgin, Google/ YouTube, Rakuten, Microsoft) this Friday 29th Oc

Vengeance is Mine (1949)

Dir: Alan Cullimore | Cast : Valentine Dyall, Anne Firth, Sam Kydd | ,UK Drama 59’

The unmistakable voice of Valentine Dyall as the Man in Black sent shivers down the spines of radio listeners in postwar Britain and led to a few leading roles in horror thrillers during the late forties, of which this comes nearest to a ‘straight’ lead.

Packing a remarkable number of twists and turns into less than an hour’s running time, the central premise of this film has seen service several times, usually played for laughs, and dates back at least as far as Robert Siodmak’s ‘Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht’ in 1931. Unusually it here serves as the basic for a luridly enjoyable thriller that as photographed by the reliable Jimmy Wilson vividly evokes a sleazy postwar London of spivs and a still-flourishing black market; suitably embellished by a noisy jazz score by Ken Thorne that sounds more 50’s than 40’s.

Veteran character actor Richard Goolden makes a rare but memorable film appearance in the pivotal role of Sammy Parsons, Anne Firth provides Dyall with a handsome Girl Friday and Sam Kydd has a much more substantial role than we’re used to seeing him in. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the casting of the smaller parts, such as Russell Westwood as an oily-haired henchman in a zoot suit and Betty Taylor as the silent but unnervingly watchful “The Little Girl”. Great fun. @Richard Chatten

Five Films for London Film Festival 2021

 

The BFI Film Festival is the highlight of the Autumn calendar for London cinema lovers. This year has seen a bumper crop of new films at major festivals all over Europe and America, as the post-pandemic backlog finally clears. So expect to see the best of them  – with a few premieres thrown in for good measure – along with virtual reality and shorts. Blockbusters Dune, The Last Duel and The Green Knight may have captured the limelight. But this is what we recommend off the beaten track:

HINTERLAND (2021)

This stylish noir thriller from Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky sees Germany and Austria brought to their knees after gruelling defeat in the Great War. While soldiers limp home to a decadent poverty-ridden Vienna a serial killer on the loose sets the scene for a desperate homecoming where their surviving comrades are being preyed upon by the grisly murderer. Wonky German expressionist framing and a sombre mood creates a jagged-edged, rather quaint feeling, echoing M by Fritz Lang or even Grimms’ Fairy tales. All this is suffused with Klimt’s Secessionist jewel-like paintings transporting us rather evocatively back to early 1920s Vienna where a mood of mistrust prevails. The background photograph technique works wonders in conjuring up the contrast between doom and the squalid splendour of the Austrian capital. But our war hero Peter Perg (Murathan Muslu) is still haunted by the nightmarish terror of the trenches looming up in dream sequences on the vast wall behind his bed. LOCARNO 2021

BROTHER’S KEEPER (2021)

Ferit Karahan’s stunningly captured second feature takes place in a draconian boarding school deep in the snowbound mountains of Anatolia. Bringing back memories of many British public schools where caning and freezing cold showers were commonplace, this study of cold-hearted repression serves as an artful metaphor for the ongoing conflict between Turks and their Kurdish underclass whose cultural identity has been repressed since the 1980 coup. In this chilly hellhole – and the cold here is palpable – Turkish teachers subject the poor but gifted Kurdish pupils to regular beatings in spartan conditions where internet connection is random. Once a week, the boys are allowed to shower, and on one such occasion twelve year-old Memo catches a chill in the freezing dorm and by the morning is very ill indeed. His friend Yusuf tries to alert the masters to the boy’s plight but they carry on their collective neglect of Memo – so desperate are they to keep up the macho facade – until the boy becomes unresponsive, along with the mobile connection to the emergency services. BERLINALE 2021

LAMB (2021)

This surreal sci-fi for animals lovers is one of a new breed of arthouse films that blends folklore and fantasy horror with a surprising touch of dark humour. A first feature for Icelandic director Valdimar Johannsson, its intriguing premise invites us to suspend disbelief when a childless couple in a remote farmstead in Iceland unexpectedly become parents during the lambing season. Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Guonason) and Maria (Noomi Rapace) realise this is no ordinary newborn. But the sense of joy they feel at finally being a family of sorts fills the couple with a warm contentment. The docile baby takes pride of place in their bedroom, and life goes on as normal. But there’s an unsettling undertone to this birth that leaves a nagging doubt in our minds and fuels this sober arthouse curio with eerie dread. The reason for their muted joy soon becomes apparent in a way that is both amusing and bizarre, with its distinct references to Cannes 2021 title Annette and even the recent Swedish fantasy flic Border. CANNES 2021

NITRAM (2021)

Justin Kurzel blows us away with this scorching arthouse psychodrama commemorating the Port Arthur tragedy, exploring the milieu that created a murderer (Martin Bryant) who would kill 35 people on that fateful day in 1996. Not since Snowtown has a film engendered such utter terror through its central character – the titular Nitram – played by a coruscating Caleb Landry Jones – a fully formed enfant terrible who lives with his long-suffering parents (Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia) in the sleepy seaside town. Snowtown writer Shaun Grant again shows how long-term parental abuse and a casually toxic environment turns Nitram ((Martin backwards his hated school nickname) into a vulnerable, isolated loner who wreaks havoc wherever he goes. A display of his anti-social behaviour kicks off a story driven forward by his unpredictable behaviour, even more frightening than his brutal strength: like a firecracker he goes off without warning, but is also capable of loving affection for his mother who diminishes him with constant putdowns, unleashing a monster which roars through this splintering psychodrama. CANNES 2021 – Winner Best Actor Caleb Landry-Jones.

 

EUROPA (1931) Photo credit: Themerson Estate 

Stefan and Franciszka Themersons’ long lost 1931 anti-fascist masterpiece Europa will be screening at this year’s festival, 80 years after it was seized in Paris during the Second World War. Originally believed to have been destroyed by the Nazis, Stefan and Franciszka Themersons’ incendiary film was rediscovered by chance in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin, in 2019. On behalf of the Themerson Estate, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe negotiated the restitution of the film from the Bundesarchiv, which had preserved the original nitrate film since the reunification of Germany in the 1990s. LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (photo credit: Themerson Estate).

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | 6 – 17 OCTOBER 2021

 

 

Earwig (2021)

Dir:  | Wri: Lucile Hadžhalilović, Geoff Cox | Cast: Paul Hilton, Romola Garai, Alex Lawther, Romane Hemelaers | 114′

French auteuse Lucile Hadžhalilović offers another bizarre but compulsive arthouse psychodrama, this time in the surgical horror sub genre, upping her game with a star cast of Romola Garai and Alex Lawther.

Arcane and edgy Earwig is immaculately crafted with its surreal Lynchian credentials that subtly inveigle us into the horror bound story of little Mia (Romane Hemelaers) who is forced to undergo the painful daily procedure of having her teeth surgically replaced by ice-cubes due to some unexplained medical condition. Yes, this is not for everyone but fans of her quirky style will thrill to Earwig’s macabre charm.

The Lyonnaise filmmaker’s previous film Evolution (2015) saw a young boy hospitalised and subjected to strange interventions performed by a series of female cyphers dressed as nurses. Once again writing with her Evolution collaborator Geoff Cox, Hadžhalilović keeps the storyline enigmatic in a dialogue-starved scenario: no explanation is offered for the procedure as we peer at the screen desperately looking for clues, our own teeth almost twinging with the agony of expectation. Ken Yasumoto’s scraping soundscape recalls the abject terror of the dentist’s chair, brought to cinematic life in Marathon Man, but there are also echoes of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’ Goodnight Mommy (2014).

Closely based on a book by sculptor and performance artist Brian Catling, the film actually takes its title from the male central character Albert (Paul Hilton), a singularly morose carer who tends to Mia in the confines of a squalid flat in mid century Liege, Belgium, redolently captured in Jonathan Ricquebourg’s dingy visuals where the weather is as grim as the storyline.

Part of Albert’s misery is being under the cosh of a telephone taskmaster, a mysterious man who hounds him unpredictably, demanding updates on Mia’s condition. Meanwhile he continues the meticulous molar replacement mission until forced into the outside world with Mia on a hospital visit which ends in more pain, this time in a local bar where Romula Garai is another hapless victim. MT

NOW AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY | SAN SEBASTIAN PREMIERE

 

Falling for Figaro (2021) Netflix

Dir: Ben Lewin | Cast: Joanna Lumley, Hugh Skinner, Danielle Macdonald, Shazad Latif | UK Comedy 104′

Hugh Skinner is the reason to see this instantly forgettable bit of fun. Just one look at him brings a smile, along with Joanna Lumley who has the finest English voice and diction in living memory. Bringing to mind the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, although the chanteuse in Ben Lewin’s comedy is American, and sees a jaded city whizz kid leaving her dead end romance and heading for the Scottish highlands to chase her dream of becoming an opera singer.

Unfortunately, Millie, a brilliant Danielle Macdonald, doesn’t realise that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and also has a voice strangely similar to Susan Boyle, despite the efforts of her talented but overbearing coach Megan Geoffrey-Bishop (Lumley). Amusing and light-hearted with Lumley carrying the film to its predicable conclusion. Worth a watch if you’re in the mood for unchallenging comedy. MT

ON RELEASE FROM October 1st | On demand on most platforms 

 

Prayers for the Stolen (2021)

 

 

Dir/Wri: Tatiana Huezo | Cast: Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzalez, Marya Membreno, Norma Pablo, Mayra Batalla, Eileen Yanez, Emeo Villegas Olivia Lagunas | Drama 100′

A lush and haunting tale of friendship and survival draws us into the vortex of oppression and fear felt by three girls growing up during wartime in rural Mexico. Recent figures from Amnesty suggest that around ten women and girls are killed in Mexico alone, every day.

Based on the 2014 novel by Jennifer Clement this is the latest human drama from Tatiana Huezo who has been quietly raising the profile of social and personal abuse for woman all over Latin America – from Civil War in El Salvador (in El Lugar mas pequeno in 2011) to human trafficking in Mexico (Tempestad (2016)). This is her third and most accomplished feature to date.

In a tight-knit community nestled in the Mexican mountains, we first meet eight year old Ana (Ordonez Gonzalez), digging a hole in the ground with her mother Rita (Batalla). Ana will ‘bury’ herself here when the guerrilla soldiers come to kidnap the local girls who will be turned into captives and slaves. In the bosky remote hillside violence is an everyday part of growing up for young Mexican girls. So Ana and her two friends create their own impenetrable parallel universe where they play at being women, comforting each other with an affectionate bond of friendship, singing and painting their lips with beetroot. Soon Ana’s long hair will be cut into a boyish crop to avoid detection. On lonely days she hides out in the empty houses of villagers who have long disappeared or fled, such as Juana and Don Pancho, whose abandoned flock of cows now roams free in the village.

Strong on atmosphere the film is cinematic study of what it means to grow up as a girl in a hostile environment where men are almost constantly the enemy. Ana’s father is supposedly working on the other side of the valley, but he has not sent money back for several years, and so Ana and her mother are forced to fend for themselves on the brink of poverty. One surreal scene pictures Rita desperately trying to get a mobile signal on the top of a mountain, along the other abandoned women whose ‘phones light up the darkness like mini torches glowing in the gloom.

Five years later, at thirteen, the girls become teenagers as they face the harsh reality of what being a woman really entails in this toxic climate of war and macho culture. Abstract danger becomes an inescapable threat, as a Russian roulette plays out one day when soldiers arrive to take Ana, forcing her into the dugout as her mother is threatened with death.

Some films are moving but this rich character drama is actually harrowing too, as we become emotionally invested in the girls’ story fleshed out in Huezo’s richly textured script, joining them in their descent into traumatised hell as a daily experience. The casual involuntary abuse from Ana’s mother is echoed by the disorientating fear she feels from the outside male threat. Ana – both as a child and a teenager – is impressively performed by two newcomers (Ordonez Gonzalez and Membreno), and is matched by Huezo’s assured direction and luminous camerawork by Dariela Ludlow.

IN CINEMAS FROM 8 April 2022, and exclusively on MUBI from 29 April 2022 | San Sebastian FILM FESTIVAL | Latin American Prix HORIZONTES WINNER

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | UN CERTAIN REGARD SPECIAL MENTION AWARD

 

The Severed Arm (1973) Plex TV

Wri/Dir: Tom Alderman | Cast: Deborah Walley, Paul Carr, Marvin Kaplan, John Crawford | US Horror, 89′

Thomas S Alderman’s exploitation movie sees five trapped miners on the bring of starvation resort to butchering one of their mates, before rescue brings retribution for all concerned. The Severed Arm follows that old chestnut about a group of men haunted by a guilty shared secret, who receive a nasty surprise in the mail followed by scary nightly visits.

Dated by the seventies haircuts and moustaches, constant zooms and a synthesised score, and seemingly edited with the same axe their nemesis employs; it’s all played straight (including by veteran comedy actor Marvin Kaplan as nighttime D. J. ‘Wild Man Herman’) and reasonably effective on what was plainly half a shoestring.

Although top billed, early sixties teenage actress Deborah Walley is largely absent for most of the duration; although she certainly makes up for lost time at the conclusion. Richard Chatten

NOW ON PLEX TV AND YOUTUBE

The Alpinist (2021)

Dirs: Peter Mortimer, Nick Rosen | US Doc 93’

Almost everyone is entranced by the thrill of mountains. And so another documentary about man pitting his wits and physical stamina against the elements is always welcome.

Just the sheer elation of being overwhelmed by stratospheric heights and snowcapped peaks only adds to the nail-biting suspense of the ascent: will the mountaineer make it to the top, or will nature hold sway. And then there’s the descent – the most critical part of any top-tier climber’s mission. More people die going back to base camp then scaling the summit in this perilous pastime

Mortimer and Rosen’s taut documentary offers much of the intensity Mountain and Free Solo and is probably more realistic about the pitfalls and realities of mountaineering. Not for the vertigo prone, the directors occasionally going off piste themselves in their storytelling, occasionally there’s a sense that the film teeters on the brink of a mockumentary in style.

The Alpinist does not refer to its namesake, the European Alps, but to the practice of tackling complex and perilous peaks, and here the focus is a complex climb in Patagonia where Canadian climber Marc-André Leclerc challenges perilous conditions. Best known for his derring-do in tackling mountain paths less travelled with the added challenge of racing against time to compete with established records, Leclerc is a courageous climber who pits himself against the elements. No mean feat considering he suffered ADHD as a child. A case in point is an ascent in Canada where he beat the record-holding alpinist Honnold in a complex endeavour given the challenging circumstances: like every sport nowadays enhanced gadgetry and equipment is increasingly de rigueur. Solo climbs are a speciality for Leclerc who gets his buzz from the spiritual experience that alpinism offers. Although he is occasionally accompanied by his girlfriend Brette Harrington, who is an accomplished climber herself.

Mortimer is not over-awed by Leclerc’s courage or the stratospheric scenery conjured up in The Alpinist’s dizzying visuals, keeping his distance – literally and metaphorically, although he doesn’t quite get under the Canadian’s skin. Leclerc is an unintentionally evasive character, and the shoot was not without its own ups and downs given the peripatetic and often haphazard nature of his life, when the spirit moves him he’s up and at it like a true pro. Talking heads help to break up the tonal intensity of Leclerc’s experience as fellow alpinists share their stories — some amusing, some intriguing in this heady foray into this extreme sport. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 24 SEPTEMBER 2021

IL Buco (2021)

Dir.: Michelangelo Frammartino; Documentary with Paolo Cossi, Jacobo Elia, Denise Trombin, Nicola Lanza; Italy/France/Germany 2021, 93 min.

Milan born director/co-writer Michelangelo Frammartino is not in a hurry: more than a decade after Le Quattro Volte his languorous essay on nature and the limited influence of humans, is a re-staging of the 1961 speleogical expedition, the doco-fiction hybrid paints a rather sober picture of the Abisso del Bifurto at the Pollino plateau in Calabria, where the then – third largest cave of nearly 700 m was discovered and meticulously measured.

Once underground, there is only artificial light: the team’s helmet lamps illuminate the usual detritus: old newspapers with recognisable idols such as JFK and Sophia Loren their images going up in flames to provide firelight for those men and women toiling meticulously in the abyss. It being Italy, a football match takes place underground, the two players overground unable to keep the ball away from the cave entrance. Other team members snooze, with a horse poking his nose into their tent.

In the nearby village, locals gather round a TV screen as if it was a cinema: the fuzzy black-and-white picture shows the 24-story high Pirelli building in Milan, and some crackly old dancing numbers. Strangely enough one of the old villagers, a man in his eighties, steals the show. He is a bystander collecting wood borne by his donkey to the hut where he lives with other farm workers. Somehow we expect him to be there forever (like the old boy in Quattro Volte), even when the film crew is long gone – but nature intervenes. The men transport him to his home where a doctor arrives later on another donkey. We’re prepared for the grim outcome reminding us of our own mortality and the fragility of life.

Meanwhile in the cave, the speleologists tool their way down, encumbered by ropes and other instruments. Afterwards they sit in the sunshine copying their measurements on old-fashioned writing paper with a quill. It all ends in a puddle in a cul-de-sac, without fanfares and celebrations.

DoP Renato Berta lets his camera glide lovingly about the landscape and the animals, showing the descent like in a glowing string of beads. Somehow we cannot take it all seriously, the animals and farmers overground seem much more real than the heroes with their determination to discover and measure. If there is any message, it is that so-called progress is very limited – as is fame. The age-old railway which brought the climbers to their destination, and the their motley collection of tents remain in the memory, along with the old man who has ‘sneaked’ in grabbing the limelight as a major attraction. Progress is measured by human patience and observance of nature, records of all kinds are fleeting.

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE VENICE 2021

Buñuel: A Surrealist Filmmaker (2021) San Sebastian

Dir; Javier Espada | Spain, Doc 90′

Spanish filmmaker Javier Espada shares his birthplace of Calanda (Aragon) with the legendary Spanish surrealist and Palme d’Or winner Luis Buñuel Portolés (1900-83) whose story forms the subject of his engaging new documentary that premiered in the Cannes Film Festival Classics section.

As a teen during the Easter Semana Santa processions Espada escaped the loud drums of the ceremony for the relative calm of his local fleapit and was instantly bewitched by Luis  Buñuel’s The Milky Way (1969), the image of Christ fusing with the character of the Marquis de Sade in his subconscious, creating subversive undertones.

Although far from a full-bloodied biopic of Buñuel’s films, this plays out as nostalgic tribute to the legendary director from one of his most ardent admirers. Espada’s obsession would also provide the springboard to a lifelong friendship with Buñuel’s regular screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière whose script for Diary Of A Chambermaid would continue with cult classics such as Belle De Jour and The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, and would also pave the way for Buñuel’s memoirs ‘My Last Breath.’

A recently restored archive from stereoscopic glass plates, clips and personal photos – provided by his sons Juan Luis and Rafael – and the Luis Bunuel Film Institute is enlivened by Espada’s own thoughts and those of the director providing insight into a charismatic career that started with his traditional upbringing in a well to do influential family in Calanda. But a tragic incident involving a donkey would put a subversive spin on the director’s output and much of his work would be banned banned by Franco’s regime due to its controversial subject matter. DoP Ignacio Ferrando Margeli provides a pristine black and white aesthetic in this dive into cinema history. MT

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | CANNES CLASSICS

 

 

I Want to Talk About Duras (2021) San Sebastián Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Claire Simon; Cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Swann Arlaud; France 2021, Drama 95 min.

US born, French director Claire Simon explores one of the most obsessive love affairs in literary history: between Marguerite Duras (1914-96) and her much young partner Yann Andréa (1952-2014) that continued for sixteen years despite the age difference and his being gay.

Simon draws her material from the 1982 interviews made by Duras’ close friend, the writer Michèle Manceaux, who became Yann’s confidante in Neauphie-le-Chateau. The intimate two-handed drama sees a chain-smoking Yann (Arlaud) talking to Marie Claire columnist Manceaux (Devos) while the tape recorder is running. All this is intercut with archive footage and wordless dramatised sequences where the two lovers are pictured in romantic rendezvous. After Manceaux’ death, Yann entrusted the tapes to a friend who later handed them over to Andréa’s sister Pascale Lemée in 2015.

Marguerite Duras is possibly best remembered for her script of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour.  But it was in Caen during a 1975 screening of her film India Song, starring Delphine Seyrig, that she met postgraduate student Yann Andréa. He was an avid fan of her novels and initiated a – mostly one-sided – correspondence with Duras for the remainder of that decade. Then, in 1980, Duras invited Yann, who was gay, to live with her in a hotel in Trouville. Thus began an extraordinary relationship which lasted until Duras’ death sixteen years later.

Covering more or less the same ground as Josee Dayan’s Cet Amour Là, starring Jeanne Moreau as Duras and Aymeric Demarigny as Andréa, based on Andréa’s memoire, the interview is a sharp reminder of the closeness of love and death. Manceaux insistently but gently probes him with personal questions, Yann confessing “total love for Duras and her work. It was eternity that completely belonged to me. Passion yes, but passion struck by death”. He would leave his job, apartment and friends to be with Duras and was soon eclipsed and dominated by her. He tried to pull back, ending the relationship several times and even attempting suicide. Duras challenged his sexual orientation: “I am not just a writer, I am also a woman. You are not gay, I am all your desire”. Yann was soon convinced that his homosexuality was a form of solidarity that allowed him to escape his true feelings. But it went much deeper than that: “She was the master. She re-created me. And un-created my old self, to create me.” Passion and fiction overlapped. “I existed but at the same time I felt projected into her imagination.”

Duras emerges a bit of a control freak, reformulating her lover, changing the way he dressed and even his perfume, discouraging his personal friendships and forbidding him to read any  novels but her own. Even his rapport with Manceaux “felt like a betrayal of her”. His entire existence was subsumed by Duras, who opined “You only exist through me”. Yann felt like the main character in her book ‘The Malady of Death’. Andréa also played a part in Duras’ film L’Homme Atlantique (1981), “but I realised later, that she made me die by filming me; always in a chair, never moving. And finally, Yann actually felt inadequate and unable to satisfy his lover: “Maybe I love her less than she loves me, I am always a step behind, she wants to raise me to her intensity. She sees that I can not do it. That hurts her a lot.” But whatever went on between them Duras set him a monument in words: ‘Yann Andrea Steiner’, her final book.

DoP Céline Bozon uses a gap in the interview (which went on for two days) to focus on the countryside settings where Yann is pursued by alluring men. Enlivened by paintings of the couple’s sexual relationship and excerpts from India Song and L’Homme Atlantique this is a captivating piece of filmmaking that avoids sensationalism in portraying a remarkable, real-life relationship between a man and a woman. AS

SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | COMPETITION

Small World (2021)

Dir.: Patryk Vega; Cast: Piotr Adamczyk, Enrique Arce, Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz, Montserrat Roig de Puig, Andris Keiss, Sally Day; Poland 2021, 117 min.

Poland’s Patryk Vega is well known for his unpretentious action thrillers like The Plagues of Breslau, usually mitigating the hyper violence with a certain glossy style, making it all worthwhile. But SMALL WORLD is a singularly unpalatable and relentlessly uncomfortable watch, the narrative – about victims of under-age sex trafficking – is ham-fisted and full of gratuitous violence, with its anti-hero policeman looking for vengeance, while morphing into a vile super-hero of the worst kind.

It all looks terrific: Norbert Modrzejewski’s brutal images leave nothing to the imagination, the camera gleefully recording unmitigated violence, making it all look like a titillating videogame for adults. Vega sinks to his nadir when his antihero Police officer Robert Goc (Adamczyk) is seen groping a young girl in the flume of a public bath. Ultimately the detective is just as depraved as the felon he’s chasing.

In the opening scenes Got is seen pursuing the abductors of four-year old Ola and her mother, but they narrowly miss a truck of under-aged kids being waived through the Russian border by a corrupt police officer. In Russia, years later, a gas explosion rips through the apartment belonging to Oleg (Keiss). In the wreckage are photos of under-age girls, including one of Ola. Goc re-opens the investigation, and the obsessive hunt for Ola. But once again he is too late, with Oleg’s brother whisking the girls away.

Later Goc meets Jasmina (de Puig), the evil leader of a satanic paedophile ring, celebrating a masked ball with her follows, But the police officer manages to slip through her clutches,  finally tracking down the (now) 16-year old Ola (Wieniawa-Narkiewicz) in Bangkok, where she lives with her wealthy abuser John (Arce), and his coterie of prostitutes. In reality, Goc is a bit of a nonce himself, and gets off on underage girls. But he manages to save Ola sending her back to her mother in Poland, before tackling the nefarious Jasmina and her masked followers. AS

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

The Djinn (2021)

Dir.: David Charbonier, Justin Powell; Cast: Ezra Dewey, Tevy Poe, Donald Pitts, John Erickson, Rob Brownstein; USA 2021, 82 min.

After their successful collaboration in Behind the Door, US writers/directors David Charbonier (also the PD) and Justin Powell (editor) get together to torture 12 year-old Dylan, whose new home is the battleground for a fight with an intrusive evil spirit, the titular Djinn. The mute boy is driven to the end of his tether for not heeding the warning, “be aware of the Djinn’s toll, for the gift you seek might cost your soul”. In other words that trusty old chestnut “be careful what you wish for”.

Set in 1989, and aesthetically beholden to this period, Dylan (Dewey) is left to his own devices when his father (Brownstein) goes off to work the night shift, after reading his son a bedtime story from ‘Pinochhio’, with the warning “What’s done, can’t be undone” ringing in our ears. Dylan finds ‘The Book of Shadows’, and asks the Djinn to grant him a voice. The nefarious entity is apt at switching into multiple personalities: Dylan’s mother Michelle (Poe), or an old man who recently died, are amongst its repertoire. The Djinn (Erickson) then chases the boy round the house, leaving him gasping for breath, his Asthma inhaler running out. Come the morning, Dylan is only grateful to be alive, welcoming his father with open arms.

Lacking tempo, and resorting to corny dialogue: “Would Mum have stayed if I was not …. different”, The Djinn is often tedious and predictable plot-wise, right up to the anticlimactic finale. Inventive production values mask a tiny budget, and save this from sinking without trace. AS

OUT ON FRIDAY 17 September

 

Balloon (2019)

Dir: Pema Tseden | Drama, Tibet 100”

Tibetan director Pema Tseden brings a tender sense of beauty and tragedy to this inspirational family drama, his seventh feature, exploring ordinary life in the early 1980s for a Tibetan farming community.

Vibrantly captured and delicately observed The Balloon initially appears to be a straightforward modern fable, but there’s much to it than that. Tseden’s clever script is underpinned by a subtle socio-political commentary and a contemporary female empowerment theme (in the style of Tulpan) highlighting women’s pivotal place in the East Asian pecking pecking order, running contrary to outward appearances.

In this much fought over territory an extended family of grandfather (Konchok), mother Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo), father Dargye (Jinpa) and two cheeky young sons (Druklha Dorje and ​Palden Nyima) eke out an existence from their cramped living conditions where privacy is impossible, so one of the boys soon finds a condom tucked under his mother’s pillow. Mistaking it for a balloon, the boys have great fun the following day, blowing it up in broad daylight, much to the amusement of the older menfolk.

Despite demure outward appearances their demure mother Drolkar is not just a pretty face, nor is she under her husband’s thumb. But China has just adopted a strict population-control policy with crippling fines extending to Tibet. Drolkar is anxious not to have any more children, but needs to satisfy her husband’s rampant sex drive into the bargain.

Ironically the Chinese birth policy does not apply to the family’s flock of sheep which are actively being encouraged to breed and the couple’s teenage son is tasked with engaging the services of a young ram to do the job. All this is further complicated when Dargye’s Buddhist father suddenly dies, leaving the grieving farmer with the obligation of having to provide another soul to allow for his father’s reincarnation, this religious touchstone adding further complexity to The Balloon‘s seemingly straightforward storyline.

Meanwhile, Drolkar has secretly consulted a savvy female doctor (Kangchen Tsering) providing her with the wherewithal to call the shots family-planning wise. The couple already have a teenage son who is running their ram breeding programme. But somehow Drolkar falls pregnant again and knows she must have an abortion but how she proceeds is both intriguing and amusing.

Peyman Yazdanian’s atmospheric score and Lu Songye’s stunning handheld photography     capture the sheer beauty of Tibet’s magnificent scenery boosting the wide-ranging appeal of this charming ethnological drama. MT

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 2021

 

Whether the Weather Is Fine (2021) Toronto Film Festival

Dir: Carlo Francisco Manatad | Cast: Charo Santos-Concio, Daniel Padilla, Rans Rifol | Thriller, 105′

For his debut feature, a post apocalyptic fantasy thriller, Filippino director Carlo Francisco Manatad explores how the aftermath of catastrophe changes life for three individuals in his native city of Tacloban.

Hayan is not the first typhoon to devastate his hometown in the coastal region of Eastern Visayas and it won’t be the last. A young man wakes up one morning to discover that two close friends have disappeared in the utter chaos – his mother Norma (Santos), and Andrea (Rifol) the woman with whom he was a planning a new life.

But worst of all, the authorities impose strict regulations on the region leaving Miguel (Padilla) in a state of emotional turmoil that swings between cynicism and obdurance in a bid to survive food shortages and lack of shelter.  In their hour of need many of the religious villagers seeks recourse to their faith, even folklore. Others desperately clamber onto ships offering to take them to the nearby capital of Manila.

Spiked with flashes of dark humour, and the occasional foray into fantasy as a way of evoking the climate of loss, fear and confusion, Manatad directs with confidence in this follow-up to his short film The Imminent Immanent (2018). Whether the Weather is Fine serves as a rousing tribute to the people of Tacloban whose stoicism and resourcefulness is another example of the human will to survive in times of adversity. MT

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

 

Terrorizers (2021) Toronto Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Wi Ding Ho; Cast: JC Lin, Moon Lee, Po Hung Lin, Jie-Fei Huang, Pipi Jao, Cheng Ko, Annie Chen; Taiwan 2021, 127 min.

Taiwanese director/co-writer Wi Ding Ho is clearly disturbed by the youth of modern day Taipei judging by his nihilistic thriller Terrorizers playing at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

Not to be confused with Edward Yang’s Taiwanese masterpiece The Terrorizers from 1986, there are clearly parallels to be drawn in the melancholy bleakness of the settings. But Wi Ding’s version deals with the VR world, now infringing what is called reality.

After six gruelling years in the kitchens washing dishes Xiao Zhang (Lin) returns to Taipeh, now a qualified chef on an ocean cruiser, hopes to open his own luxury restaurant with an uncle. Then up pops his old flame Yu Fang (Lee), now an actress in rehearsal for The Seagull, and soon they’re talking about moving in together. Yu has some doubts, she’s had a trail of doomed relationships that started when her mother left when she was a little girl, and an affair with a porn star called Monica (Chen), leaving her in the lurch. Family-wise her political father has just married his pregnant secretary and is on the verge of moving to another city, so Yu, once again, is alone.

In downtown Taipei Yu shares her apartment with Ming Liang (Hung Lin), the son of a politician, and her father’s financial backer. Liang and Yu are not on speaking terms but the psychotic Ming is somehow convinced that they’re an item. But worse is to follow: Ming has filmed Monica making love to her, and now wants to kill Yu for “deserting” him.

In spiteful act of revenge, Ming attacks Yu with a machete, Xiao narrowly saving her life. And Ming’s nasty side surfaces again when he gives the police the video showing the two women in bed together, claiming his attack was motivated by Yu’s betrayal of him.

All this dystopian darkness reveals Taipei to be a toxic male environment that seems to be particularly down on women: Yu’s father now forcing her to leave town, afraid that her staying in Taipei will harm his career. It’s ironic that a monster like Ming can sway public opinion to be on his side, denouncing the two women as perpetrators, and getting away with it, when we are all made aware of his monstrous nature, possibly inculcated by his abusive alcoholic mother, a ‘masseuse’ who regularly  gives her son a ‘full service’ – fortunately off screen.  But Ming is not the only villain of the piece: teenagers Kiki and Billy also prey upon randomly chosen strangers to get their kicks.

DoP Jean Louis Vialand shows the VR world for what it is: a fake construct where humans create substitutes of themselves and, in the process, become dependent on the media circus generated. Ming is the ultimate voyeur and ‘director’ of his sick universe. Chopin’s mournful Nocturne in e-flat accompanies this soulless descent into Hell.AS

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

La Cha Cha (2021)

Dir: Kevin Allen | Cast: Liam Hourican, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Sonny Ashbourne Serkis, Rhys Ifans, Llyr Evans, Dougray Scott, Keith Allen, Alfie Allen | UK Comedy

Rhys Ifans and Dougray Scott are the stars of this light-hearted bit of fun that follows the residents of a campsite in the North Wales who are hiding a dark secret.

Solti Buttering (Liam Hourican) is on a road trip to scatter his grandfathers ashes. Finding everywhere closed, he stumbles across La Cha Cha, a holiday park where a motley crew of pensioners are having time of their lives. Meanwhile spirited owner Libby Rees (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) and her brother Damien (Sonny Ashbourne Serkis) are struggling to keep the place alive and kicking with a very unusual plan.

LA CHA CHA is essentially a romantic comedy that riffs on that famous Under Milk Wood quote: “do not going gentle into that good night”. Set on the Gower Peninsula with a sterling cast of British talent, it’s aimed at an audience sick an tired of doom and gloom and look for some genuine comedy relief.

Kevin Allen (Twin Town, Under Milk Wood), wrote and shot the feature in a mobile film studio in Wales during lockdown, uniting the entire cast of the cult classic Twin Town for his ‘companion piece’, and adding a few young rising stars into the bargain. Essentially it’s a series of amusing cameos featuring real musical performances combined with the original soundtrack by Mark Thomas and, of course, a few Cha Cha Chas.

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM 17 SEPTEMBER 2021

London Spanish Film Festival 2021

A chance to see a selection of recent Spanish films which may not get a general release in the UK. Most are UK premieres from new talent and established filmmakers

LA ISLA DE LAS MENTIRAS | The Island of Lies

dir. Paula Cons, with Nerea Barros, Ana Oca, Sergio Quintana, Celso Bugallo, Darío Grandinetti | Spain/Argentina/Portugal | 2020 | 93 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Galician and Spanish with English subtitles

In dense fog of a Christmas morning in 1921, a boat with 260 emigrants bound to Buenos Aires sinks off the coast of Sálvora, Galicia. Three courageous women row out in a bid to save as many people as they can. The tragedy captures the imagination of an Argentine journalist who investigate the many fatal coincidences that happened on the night of the shipwreck. | Fri 24 Sep | 6.30pm

 

UN EFECTO ÓPTICO | An Optical Illusion

dir. Juan Cavestany, with Carmen Machi, Pepón Nieto, Luis Bermejo | Spain | 2020 | 80 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Alfredo and Teresa, a married couple from Burgos, decide to take a deserved trip to New York. Shortly after their arrival Teresa starts to feel strangely uncomfortable. Then Alfredo’s pictures of monuments don’t match what they remember they saw. Cavestany’s film is a distinctive and daring take on tourism, globalised provincialism, the banality of a steady couple’s daily life… and much more. | Sat 25 Sep | 6.30pm

EL SUSTITUTO | The Replacement

dir. Oscar Aibar, with Ricardo Gómez, Pere Ponce, Joaquín Climent, Bruna Cusí, Vicky Luengo, Pol López | Spain | 2021 | 117 min | cert. 18 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

In 1982 a young father and hardened police officer moves his family from Madrid to a small Mediterranean sea town where he is to replace an inspector, murdered in mysterious circumstances. During his investigation, strange links between the inspector’s assassination, drugs and property speculation come to light. Based on real events, Oscar Aibar’s beautifully made thriller takes us to a happy retirement spot on the Mediterranean coast that Nazi’s gained possession of due to Franco’s regime and kept through the Transition | Sat 25 Sep | 8.30pm, Mon 27 Sep | 6.05pm

EL PLANETA | Planet

dir. Amalia Ulman, with Ale Ulman, Amalia Ulman, Nacho Vigalondo, Zhou Chen | USA | 2021 | 79 min | cert. 15 |London premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

A jobless young woman is forced to leave London and return home to live with her eccentric mother, after the death of her father. The wolf is at the door but they continue to live beyond their means in Gijon. El Planeta explores contemporary poverty, class awareness and female desires as well as mother-daughter relationships in post-crisis Spain all throughout with a charming and subtle sense of humour. | Sun 26 Sep |6.20pm

NIEVA EN BENIDORM | It Snows in Benidorm

dir. Isabel Coixet, with Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Anna Torrent, Carmen Machi, Pedro Casablanc | Spain/UK | 2020 | 117 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In English and Spanish with English subtitles

After a long career at his bank Peter is “awarded” early retirement and sets off to visit his brother in Benidorm on a trip that doesn’t quite turn out as expected. A poetic take by veteran Isabel Coixet on Benidorm’s particular beauty, its gloomy side and its “unpoetic” real estate mafias as well as on love at an older age. | Fri 24 Sep | 8.35pm

CATALAN Strand

SENTIMENTAL | The People Upstairs

dir. Cesc Gay, with Javier Cámara, Griselda Siciliani, Alberto San Juan, Belén Cuesta | Spain | 2020 | 82 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

Ana and Julio are a couple who seem to spend most of their time together arguing. Salva and Laura, on the other hand, never stop having sex.  Julio is extremely annoyed when Ana invites them for dinner for an eventful evening where secrets, fears and insecurities soon surface, spiced up by witty dialogue written by Catalan Cesc Gay. The result is a highly enjoyable and intimate comedy exploring the complexities of modern relationships. | Thu 23 Sep | 8.30p,

UN BLUES PARA TEHERÁN | Tehran Blues

dir. Javier Tolentino, with Golmehr Alami, Sina Derakhshan, Pezhman Dishad | 2020 | 80 min | cert. PG |doc | UK premiere | In Spanish, Persian and Kurdish with English subtitles

Javier Tolentino’s documentary debut  transports us to some of Iran’s most remote corners, discovering a truly sophisticated culture seen through the eyes of Erfan, a young Kurdish man who sings, writes poetry and dreams of being a film director. Tolentino is one of Spain’s most established journalists and film critics, now turned director.| Sun 26 Sep | 4.10pm

CHAVALAS | Girlfriends

dir. Carol Rodríguez Colás, with Vicky Luengo, Carolina Yuste, Elisabet Casanovas, Cristina Plazas, José Mota | Spain | 2021 | 91 min | cert. PG | UK premiere | In Spanish with English subtitles

After an initial stint as a professional photographer, jobless Marta finds herself having to go back to live with her parents in a suburban flat in Barcelona, where she grew up. There she reconnects with her childhood girlfriends Desi, Soraya and Bea, sharing the bond of their teenage years. Carol Rodríguez Colás’s first feature film is a sincere and tragicomic take on friendship. | Tue 28 Sep | 8.45pm

BASQUE strand

ANE | Ane is Missing

dir. David Pérez Sañudo, with Patricia López Arnaiz, Jone Laspiur, Mikel Losada, Luis Callejo | Spain | 2020 | 100 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Basque and Spanish with English subtitles

When Lide discovers her teenage daugher, Ane, is missing, she teams up with ex-husband, Fernando, to track her down. As the troubled Lide’s determination grows Fernando’s fear of Ane becomes more evident. Throughout most of the film Ane feels like a ghost and an oppressing and spectral unseen presence. A first feature for awarded shorts director David Pérez Sañudo,   moves seemlessly from from mystery to family drama and then to political thriller.

Preceded by the short:

QUEBRANTOS | Breaches

dir. Koldo Almandoz, Maria Elorza | Spain | 2021 | 7 min | doc | cert. PG | In Basque with English subtitles

Living with fear… Based o an interview on Euskadi Irratia Radio. | Tue 28 Sep | 6.30pm

NORA

dir. Lara Izaguirre, with Ane Pikaza, Héctor Alterio, Ramón Barea, Itziar Ituño | Spain | 2020 | 100 min | cert. 15 | UK premiere | In Spanish, Basque and French with English subtitles and English

Lara Izaguirre’s sophomore feature is a fresh and optimistic reflection on the road less travelled for a young Spanish woman prepared to put her self out there, and take a few risks. As the saying goes, “bad weather, good face” (in Spanish, “al mal tiempo, buena cara”). | Wed 29 Sep | 8.30pm

London Spanish FILM FESTIVAL 23-29 SEPTEMBER 2021

Courageous Mr Penn (1942)

Dir: Lance Comfort | Cast: Clifford Evans, Deborah Kerr, Dennis Arundell, Aubrey Mallalieu | UK Drama 78′

A straightforward history lesson plainly aimed at drumming up support from the isolationist United States of 1941, Penn of Pennsylvania wasn’t ready for cinemas until Pearl Harbor had already forced America’s hand and thus rendered this film obsolete by the time it finally opened in Britain at the end of January 1942. It received only a perfunctory New York airing at the end of 1943 retitled Courageous Mr. Penn to suggest action rather than history and was then quietly forgotten. (The print on YouTube is of the US version, with hasty-looking credits containing errors and omissions – Edmund Willard is billed as ‘Edward’ and the name of director of photography Ernest Palmer is missing altogether.)

Precisely because it’s moment was so brief makes Penn of Pennsylvania extremely interesting viewing today. In many respects it ironically resembles a German ‘genius’ film of the same period such as Friedrich Schiller (1940), in which a fiery young hero back in the Bad Old Days defies convention and outrages the reactionary old establishment. Both a jury of Penn’s peers and Charles II himself (played by Dennis Arundell) are shown taking the side of the dashing young Mr. Penn against the dead weight of the establishment.

The Merry Monarch thoughtfully opines for the benefit of any future waverers across the Pond that “We could take America and turn it into a vast continent whose freedom of thought and liberty of conscience will be the birthright of every man”. Penn goes one better by declaring “We would treat the Indians as brothers and gain their friendship”; although he’s later required to show himself handy with his fists to prevent the lynching of one of his new brethren. Penn also makes a point of obliging his colleagues to leave their weapons at home when he comes to negotiate with the local chief.

(A strange moment occurs when the King himself solicits the opinion of a gentlemen that he addresses as “My Lord Halifax”, who we then cut to in close-up – the actor himself is like many others in the film unidentified in the credits – so that he can respond “I think that Mr. Penn is an extremely brave gentlemen, and I should like to wish him luck.”)

The cast includes many familiar faces in wigs – including Henry Oscar as Samuel Pepys and Gibb McLaughlin as the Indian Chief (fortunately the latter isn’t playing a speaking part) – embellished with handsome sets and photography and William Alwyn’s first score for a feature film. A radiant young Deborah Kerr plays his wife Guli, whose memory a title informs us “was always with him” after her death in 1696. The film omits to mention that he remarried two years later and fathered nine more children. @RichardChatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

A Brixton Tale (2021)

Dir: Darragh Carey, Bertrand Desrochers | Cast: Barney Harris, Lily Newmark, Ola Orebiyi, Michael Mahoney, Jaime Winstone | UK Drama 76′

Worlds collide in downtown Brixton where confident, coke-snorting Leah (Newmark) is making a film about thoughtful black guy Benji (Orebiyi) who she falls for in a big way. 

Her producer friend Tilda (Winstone) is impressed enough with Leah’s first rushes to offer her a potential screening, although Benji doesn’t always welcome the intrusion of Leah’s probing lens as their romance gets heavier, somehow softening the tone of Leah’s narrative, much to Tilda’s irritation. But the love affair is soon over.

When Leah finds out that a video of her making out with her ex (Charles/Harris) has gone viral, Benji is determined to defend her honour with tragic consequences for all concerned.

There’s a suitably experimental feel to this upbeat urban fable with its convincing performances, driven forward by a sensory soundscape and strong visual storytelling. Derek Holland’s lively editing offers a snapshot of the South London ‘hood, rainy streets and sweary locals epitomising this edgy part of town. MT

ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 17 SEPTEMBER

Copilot (2021)

Dir.: Anna Zohar Berrached; Cast: Canan Kir, Roger Azar, Ozay Fecht, Julia Roth, Ceci Chuh; Germany/France 2021, 118 min.

German director Anna Zohra Berrached is the daughter of an Algerian immigrant who grew up in the GDR. Her sophomore feature, a complex character study, follows a Muslim couple in late 1999s Germany before the world was changed forever by the turbulent events of 9/11. Based loosely on one of the pilots (Ziad Jarrah) who actually took part in the atrocity (Ziad Jarrah), the film asks the question: how much do we really know about people close to us?

Asli (Kir) is a brilliant medical student, shy and insecure. She falls for a Lebanese student Saeed (Azar), whose dream is to be a pilot, but his wealthy traditional family refuse to support him, Asli’s Turkish just wanting her to marry the ‘right’ husband. Saeed is certainly not on this list partly because of his Arabic background. so the lovers will later marry in secret, but not before Saeed becomes more radical in his views, giving up alcohol and avoiding sex with Asli, telling her: “I don’t want to be like the Germans, who sleep around”.

But there are warning signs from the beginning. Saaed’s anti-Israel remarks soon make the two of them social outcasts amongst their group of friends as Saaed starts proselytising Islam to them and eventually Saeed disappears off to Yemen for a while. And when he comes back his behaviour has changed radically. Suddenly, he decides to take up his pilot licence in Florida, the cheapest and quickest way possible. Asli joins him and they fly together as she gradually becoming his titular co-pilot. Returning to Germany for an operation, Asli comes round from the anaesthetic to see breaking news about the 9/11 disaster on her beside TV. But Saeed’s mobile is switched off.

With its multi-lingual cast and differing cultural touchstones Copilot had quite a laborious scripting and filming process, and as the story unfolds hope gradually fades as Asil loses her focus on reality, preoccupied with work. As for Saeed, he lived in a dream world, sustained by a nightmare: his final letter to his wife is proof of his ghastly fantasy: “The world will be a different one, and happier for all”.

RELEASED IN UK & IRELAND IN CINEMAS 10 SEPTEMBER 2021

Amira (2021) Oscar hopeful withdrawn by Jordan

Wri/Dir: Mohamed Diab | 98’

Amira is a passionate but conflicted melodrama that turns on a case of mistaken identity involving one of the thousands of babies conceived through artificial insemination between men in Palestinian prisons and their wives in the outside world.

17 year old Amira (Tara Abboud) is the result of one such miracle: her father Nawar (Mohamed Ghassan) smuggling out a frozen packet of sperm from his cell in the Megiddo Prison to her mother (Saba Mubarak). But there’s an unexpected twist to the tale when it soon becomes apparent that Nawar is shooting blanks and unable to provide his wife Warda with a much wanted second child as Amira prepares to leave home to study photography.

Amira is close to both her parents, but particularly her father in his hour of need. Keen to keep him included in her life on the outside, she has skilfully photoshopped him into family snaps proudly presenting them as gifts on her frequent visits to Megiddo Prison where he has been on hunger strike.

Now her past and future descend into emotional turmoil when it emerges that Nawar is not her biological father, raising all sorts of questions not least about her real paternity, but also Warda’s fidelity.

The film gets off to a strong start with its thorny premise and fiery conflicting characters but these elements are handled with a surprising lack of finesse compared to Diab’s usual deftness so much in evidence in his previous features Clash and Cairo 678. An ill-considered final section that descends in raucous melodrama and an overbearing sound design only make matters worse.

In scenes that are quite shocking considering the 21st century advances in female emancipation, Warda’s inlaws put her under house arrest in a locked room, confining her until she reveals the identity of Amira’s father, even before she has been proved guilty of dishonouring the family, or indeed, any crime. Diab paints the Israel faction as inhumane yet fails to see how his own countrymen are still subjugating their own women as second class citizens, and the only character objecting to Warda’s treatment is a male colleague who then falls under the spotlight as Amira’s potential father simply because of his protective stance. Despite all this Abboud gives a dignified and restrained performance in the title role as a woman whose world is blown apart bringing about the final tragic denouement. MT

Jordan’s Royal Film Commission has withdrawn Egyptian director Mohamed Diab’s drama Amira as its submission to the 2022 international feature Oscar race following a local backlash against the film.

 

 

 

Marceline. A Woman. A Century. (2021)

Dir.: Cordelia Dvoràk; Documentary with Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Simone Veil, Judith Perignin, Jean-Pierre Sergent; France/Netherlands 2018, 76 min.

Cordelia Dvoràk’s biopic about the life of filmmaker and author Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928- 2018) is an example of the triumph of opposition: Fourteen year-old Marceline Rozenberg was imprisoned in Bollène (Vaucluse) then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 13.4,1944, having worked with her father Szlama for the resistance. She did not only survive Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Terezin (Theresienstadt), but became a filmmaker, working with her husband Joris Ivens (1898-1989) in Vietnam and China.

Loridan-Ivens was one of only 2500 French Jews who survived deportation, just under three percent of the total of 76 000 victims. After watching Loridan-Ivens signing copies of her auto-biography ‘Et tu n’es pas Revenu’, she meets co-author Judith Perignon in her Parisian flat, a cheerful place with flowers everywhere. This sets the tone of an upbeat documentary: the old Marceline talking to her young self. “Hunger, beatings, thirst. People die, and you instantly forget them. No soul is left. I can see her clearly, that little girl that is still inside me to this day. She is fairly shy”. Marceline met Simone Veil in Block 9, and the once Minister of Culture makes a (too) short visit.

After her liberation by the Red Army in May 1945, she returned to Paris where her mother “wanted her daughter to marry into Jewish families, have children and erase the past”. But “sexuality was a form of disobedience”, and Marceline, who never wanted children on her own, preferred to visit the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris and sit in bistros to discuss the past and present. This is how she met documentary filmmakers Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, whose star she became in Cronique d’un Ete (Chronicle of a Summer) in 1961. It also led to a liaison with 18 year-old journalist Jean-Pierre Sergent, who was supposed to teach Marceline all about Philosophy so that she could prepare to study at the university. But the two became lovers and later filmmakers in their own right, having discovered that filmmaking was not that difficult. The duo was very much a supporter of the FNL, Marceline even carrying suitcases for the FNL. The result was the documentary Algeria Année Zero. Today, Loridan-Ivens is very critical of herself: “We thought the FLN was led by progressive militants, little did we know the majority had their roots in Islamic fundamentalism.”

She met Joris Ivens whilst watching his feature A Valparaiso. He was impressed by Marceline, sending her flowers, but then disappearing for months. When they met again, they stayed together until Ivens’ death. The couple lived like vagabonds, Ivens being “very macho” at the beginning, but Marceline “imposed her will on him.” The past suddenly becomes the present, when Mrs. Phuong arrives from Vietnam to invite Marceline for the 50th Anniversary screening of The 17. Parallel, the couple’s iconic Vietnam documentary, with Mrs. Phuong not only doing the translating, but was also offering technical support. Next for the filmmakers was China, then ostracised by the whole world, after their split with the Soviet-Union.

Joris and Marceline documented the last two years of the cultural Revolution in the 763-minute epic How Yu Kong moved the Mountains (1976), which was to be shown in twelve parts. With “The Band of Four” making a power-grab, Premier Zhou Enlai told the filmmakers to leave the country immediately. Jean Bigiaoui, who worked with the crew, gives a lively commentary on the (film)adventure. We watch clips from Franck Leplat’s 2015 documentary Marceline Loridan-Ivens racontant sou passage a la prison de Sainte-Anneavant (2015). Loridan-Ivens is, for once, very bitter on the commentary. She remembers singing for her father, whose cell was near to her own. But this sets her off into an angry monologue about “never forgiving” the perpetrators.

Marceline is the only Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor who returned to the camp and made her own feature film about her incarceration there: La Petite Prairie aux Bouleaux (The Birch Tree Meadow) 2003. Anouk Aimée plays Marceline’s Alter Ego, who meets a German photographer and questions him about his motives for taking photos in the ruins of the camp. Marceline was not quiet satisfied with her effort: “The concept of a documentary was not enough, because I wanted a representation. I should have played myself.”

Marceline Loridan-Ivens died on 18.9.2018, six weeks after this documentary was finished. She wanted to be buried, even though it frightened her. “But everything is better than being burned”. AS

NOW ON TRUE STORY at all leading platforms | From September 17

The Hand of God (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stateless (2020) Latinx cinema at Casa Festival 2021

Dir.: Michèle Stephenson; Documentary with Rosa Iris Diendomi Alvarez, Gladys Feliz-Pimental, Teofilo Murat; USA/Canada/Dominican Republic 2020, 97 min.

Stateless, a documentary debut for Canadian writer/producer Michèle Stephenson, follows the turbulent lives of two feisty women at the opposite end of the political spectrum in the Dominican Republic (DR), a country undergoing a long history of conflict, not least the massacre of 30 000 citizens under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in 1937.

In Trujillo’s drive to “whiten” the population of the DR he ordered the slaughter not only of Haitians, but also the darker skinned DR population. To cap it all, in 2013, a decree by the nation’s Supreme Court stripped about a few hundred citizens of their rights (dating back to 1929) despite their heritage, making them effectively stateless in their own country.

Human rights lawyer Rosa Iris Diendomi Alvarez sums up the status quo: “They are here, but they don’t exist”. We watch her touring the country, and helping the disenfranchised to claim their rights, keeping up with the often conflicting stance of the authorities, who try to keep as many people as possible disenfranchised. Alvarez is also actively campaigning against electoral corruption and is an advocate of social justice. Later, she will run for congress, but the game is rigged, her opponent is able to triumph with the help of many 100 pesos notes.

Meanwhile, her cousin Juan Teofilo Murat, who has spent all his life in the DR, now lives in Belladere, Haiti, close to the border. He is one of the many “dispossessed”, even though his documents, according to Alvarez, are proof of his DR citizenship. Their trip together into the DR, the pair are wearing hidden body cameras, is an ordeal. They are countless times stopped for no reason, always being asked “Are you Dominican?” On TV, we listen to DR president Danilo Medina, responding to claims that his government is currently expelling Haitian Dominicans, although he claims the opposite, introducing an identification document under a “national regularisation plan”.

His ‘benevolence’ is in stark contrast to the behaviour of his political allies, such as Gladys Feliz-Pimentel, a member of the Dominican Nationalist Party, who is a direct descendant of one of the nation’s founding fathers. She was once married to a black Dominican man, whom she divorced. Both her children are black. We meet her at a bridge crossing between the to countries, where she pontificates that “the Haitians coming into the country only want to murder DR citizens, chopping them up”. She recalls, the Israeli government telling the then President Hipolito Mejia to ‘build a wall’. But he, unfortunately, did not listen. Pimentel and her party are making up for it, we see many posters advocating the building of a wall, which, so Pimentel “is the basis for nation building”. Later we see her on the podium during a party congress, quoting Philippine president Duarte as a positive example of how things should be done, before starting to sing the country’s National Anthem.

Alvarez also recounts the story of Moraime, a young, black girl, who had to flee the country during the genocide of 1937. Her spirit now lives in the rivers of the country, where she takes care no harm comes to children. The wonderful images of magic realism are in stark contrast to the grim political reality of white supremacy – in a country were 80%of the population is black or of mixed race.

Stateless is a sober document. More evidence of Trump’s ideology has poisoned other countries. Six DoPs share the work, avoiding “Talking Heads” as much as possible. But there is no happy-ending: Rosa Iris Alvarez, harassed and threatened, has asked for political Asylum in the USA. It was eventually granted. AS

LATINX CINEMA AT LONDON’S CASA FESTIVAL

Django and Django (2021)

Dir.: Luca Rea; Documentary about Sergio Corbucci with Quentin Tarantino, Franco Nero, Ruggero Deodato; USA/Italy 2021, 80 min.

Italian director/co-writer Luca Rea (Cacao) pays tribute to compatriot director Sergio Corbucci (1926-1990), who, with Sergio Leone, dominated the short era of the Italo-Western in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Corbucci, who made 63 feature films, is usually shunned by mainstream critics, even though he directed huge box office successes with Adriano Celantano and Toto, as well as the later Terence Hill and Bud Spencer Western comedies. Quentin Tarantino is the main source, leading us through Corbucci’s career in seven chapters.

Sergio Corbucci, like Leone, started out as a film critic, and via screen writing became an assistant director. In 1959 Leone and Corbucci worked for Mario Bonnard in The Last Days of Pompei and their valuable contribution set them both up for a great future, even though both Sergios’ insisted the glory belonged to Bonnard alone. Tarantino maintained that Corbucci’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ were a settlement of his scores with Fascism, since the young Sergio grew up under the Mussolini dictatorship and WWII. He even had the ‘honour’ – as a member of the Fascist Youth Choir – to be five feet away from Mussolini and Hitler he visited Rome. Corbucci’s villains rode roughshod through all his features as sadistic, misogynist and racist monsters, in love with spilling blood – particularly the one of innocents.

Romulo and Remo (Duel of the Titans) 1961 was Corbucci’s first attempt to show a prototype of the violent men which would later dominate his Westerns. His first, Minnesota Clan (1964) was shot in the same year as Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood. The shooting of Django (1966) didn’t go to plan: all the horses bolted, and nobody was sure which of the film lots they were shooing on. Nevertheless, the Kurosawa-inspired revenge story (nearly all Corbucci Westerns fall into this category), “was the most violent film, before Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch came along in 1969″.

Corbucci’s Mexican Revolution trilogy of The Mercenary (1968), Companeros (1970) and What Am I Doing in the Middle of a Revolution (1972) is perhaps his most popular, but the most violent by far is The great Silence (1968). The role of Gordon, the mute avenger, was meant for Franco Nero but he decided to go to Hollywood, making an angry Corbucci cast Jean-Louis Trintignant. Klaus Kinski acted the sadistic killer Tigero, who survives, whilst Gordon is killed. Shot in an eerie, snowy landscape, The great Silence also featured another re-occurring theme of the Corbucci’s Western: the cowardly citizens of the hamlets, who would rather obey the repressor than take the side of the avenger. “It feels like Corbucci is taking a swing at John Ford. The latter’s films show the town building and solidarity of the citizens, whilst Corbucci’s folks are rather meek and cowardly”. One of Corbucci’s last Western was Sid & Jed (1972), a Bonnie and Clyde story set in a Western milieu.

Tarantino offers a clever solution to an unsolved riddle in Django. When the titular hero arrives, we see him laying flowers on the grave of a certain Mercedes. Tarantino conjures up an explanation, in which Django is a soldier who has fought the Confederates, and now returns to give a keepsake to Mercedes, the wife of his black friend who was killed in the war. He then encounters the hooded KKK, who have done away with the black population, and are targeting the Mexicans. All set in Missouri, where slavery was not abolished.

Filmmaker Ruggero Deodato, once Rossellini’s assistant, who worked with Corbucci on 13 films, gives insight into the director’s work, as do many private videos sharing some hilariously funny and candid incidents during shooting. They also show a director who certainly enjoyed his work, and who was always ready for a good laugh – even at himself. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX | Premiered at VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Calling All Stars (1937)

Dir: Herbert Smith | With: Larry Adler, Arthur Askey, Bert Ambrose, Caroll Gibbons, Evelyn Dall | UK Musical 75′

Shown in the small hours by Talking Pictures, this tinny Joe Rock potboiler is of archival interest for the visual record it provides of the likes of The Mills Brothers, Mantovani and Nat Gonella, loosely held together by a farcical plot involving Clapham & Dwyer in the doghouse for saying a naughty word on the air and getting involved with Claude Dampier as a gormless rat poison salesman rejoicing in the name of Pomphrey Featherstone-Chew.

Purportedly the film debut of Arthur Askey, a sassy young Evelyn Dall supplies the glamour; and the finale is broadcast using television technology far in advance of that actually then available. @Richard Chatten.

TALKING PICTURES TV

Silent Land (2021)

Dir: Aga Woszczyńska | Poland, Drama 112′

In Aga Woszczyńska’s impressive first feature, a Polish couple’s relationship exposes serious fault-lines during a stressful Italian vacation where everything goes wrong.

Polish filmmakers certainly know how to be provocative and push the boundaries where love and sex are concerned and Silent Land excels in ramping up the tension in this subversive and acutely piquant two hander.

A cleverly written script and choice visuals keep us engaged with an all too familiar holiday scenario primped with surprising twists and turns enough to derail the most loved-up up romantic break. And what initially feels like an ideal marriage soon shows cracks that run deeper than those in the dirty and disused swimming pool that awaits this couple in their dream villa.

Confronted by builders who can’t speak English – or Polish for that matter – Adam and Anna head for the idyllic beach for some rest and relaxation. On their return the pool has been repainted but still lacks the requisite water, and a serious accident poolside involving the immigrant builder then deep-sixes any chance of a late afternoon swim. Soon the owner and the paramedics arrive and as the two holidaymakers give evidence in the ensuing police investigation, a dark vein of humour creeps into the narrative ‘lost in translation style’ when the carabinieri also turn up, and clearly don’t speak much English either. But why should they?.

The compliant Poles are only too delighted to accompany the police to the station to help with inquiries, their holiday clearly heading into a disaster zone for no fault of their own. A Kafkaesque scenario develops when the detective leading the inquiry picks apart their statement and asks them to return for further questioning. The tables are gradually turned as the justifiably disgruntled clients soon become unwitting suspects in an accidental death inquiry.

There are certainly touches of Michael Haneke’s observational storytelling in the precise framing as the voyeuristic camerawork tracks the couple in silent contemplation or sharing a private joke. The Colombo style police procedural has a understandably unsettling and de-stabilising affect on the couples’ sense of integrity and tranquility as they start to question their own response to the tragedy as foreigners in a unfamiliar environment increasingly coming under the xenophobic spotlight of a tightly knit community far away from home. Tense and highly intelligent filmmaking. MT

ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2022 | TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL

 

 

Annette (2021)

Dir/Wri: Leos Carax | Marion Cotillard, Adam Driver, Simon Helberg | Drama France, 139′

French auteur Leos Carax last graced the Croisette with Holy Motors a weird and mysterious odyssey into the mind of one man. Annette his latest creation sees him back in Cannes nine years later with another cinematic sensation: another journey into the complexities of male psyche that explores the nature of fame and the fragility of love through his first English language film.

Adam Driver haunts this moody modern opera with a muscular expressiveness that lurches from rage to almost religious fervour as offbeat comedian Henry, although his comedy act sequences are overlong and not particularly amusing and detract from the central narrative which already has more than enough references to his anger issues. Marion Cotillard shimmers exquisitely as the diva he falls for but the baby they make together is simply out of the world.

Visually stunning in the style of Holy Motors, is Caroline Champetier once again beguiles with her luscious cinematography in a highly original film that blends its bizarre ideas and tonal switches with elegance, always surprising the audience: particularly with erotic sex scenes laced with obsidian black humour: this is a richly thematic modern classic with a focus firmly in the future.

The cult rock band Sparks performs and composes a score that is daringly racy and poignant in the style of a Greek tragedy (complete with a black female chorus) where its central character Henry (Driver) is a meglamaniac narcissist whose lust for new experiences and extreme carnal compulsion will be his devastating downfall, destroying everything challenging his dominance.

Opera singer Ann (Marion Cotillard) melts his heart with her dulcet tones – for a while at least – and the two wander deliriously in a verdant garden of Eden crooning the film’s catchy musical leit-motif “We Love Each Other So Much”. and soon their baby Annette is born and their joy now complete.

But storm clouds soon gather over on the loved-up paradise in a melodramatic tone shift. Carax goes into overdrive in a full-blown expose of macho toxicity where passions are given full throttle during Henry’s hysterical nighttime motorbike rides home to his tropical hideaway, the dizzying camerawork  recalling Holy Motors’ nocturnal taxi forays. There is a third narrative strand in shape of Simon Helberg’s compelling turn as Ann’s spurned lover now reduced to her accompanying pianist at her elegantly-staged opera gigs. Once again Cotillard get the chance to play Lady Macbeth and this will be teased out suggestively in the film’s third act.

Baby Annette is like a benign female version of ‘Chucky’, her blue eyes and auburn locks adding an endearing appeal and vulnerability to the subtle scariness she engenders but also hinting at A.I. She will grow up to be a thoughtful and intuitive little girl, whose presence pivotal to the storyline. At this point Carax uses the female chorus to clever effect as a #MeToo theme kicks in and this feeds into Henry’s violent anger management issues which are now the central focus of the story and pivotal to the final reveal.

Annette is a compelling visual masterpiece that utterly captivates and confuses for nearly two and half hours. An atmospheric soundscape, dreamlike images and extraordinary performances coalesce in a contemporary rock melodrama the like of which has never been seen before, and it world premieres here at Cannes. MT

NOW ON RELEASE AT CURZON

The King of Laughter | Qui Rido Io (2021) Venice Film Festival 2021

Dir: Marco Martone | Cast: Toni Servillo

Toni Servillo is the star turn in theatre director Mario Martone’s resplendent portrait of Neopolitan comic theatre legend Eduardo Scarpetta, making its bow here in Competition at the 78th Venice Film Festival.

Scarpetta (1853-1925) who first took to the stage as a four year old, was best known for his role as the light-hearted slightly air-headed Felice Siociammocca, a typical Neopolitano who, in a break from tradition, was more good-natured than the darker stereotype of Pulcinella whose origins lay in 17th century ‘commedia dell’arte’ as a stock character from puppetry. Scarpetta was also celebrated for his plays – of which he wrote more that fifty – one in particular: ‘Poverty and Nobility'(1888), was later made into a film starring starring Sophia Loren and comedy star Totò. Scarpetta’s main achievement off stage was to translate into Neapolitan the standard Parisian farce of the era: Hennequin, Meilhac, Labiche and Feydeau. He also fathered actor and playwright Eduardo De Filippo along with two other children.

Martone’s begins his story at the beginning of 1900s, when Eduardo Scarpetta has already made his name as the most successful Italian comedian of the era, his plays are all box office hits, and the stage is his exclusive kingdom. But behind the scenes his unconventional family life is proving challenging, the drama tracing his eventually descent into darker times, including the his trial with the magniloquent poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Servillo lends his ebullient joie de vivre to the role in this lavish production which follows the star on stage and in real life in an around Naples and Rome in the mid 18th century. Martone and his writer Ippolita Di Majo keeping us entertained for over two hours with the gracefully-paced storyline, partly in Italian, and partly in Neapolitan dialect, and classically captured by Swiss Italian DoP Renato Berta (Au Revoir Les Enfants). MT

Venice Film Festival | COMPETITION 2021

Spencer (2021)

Dir: Pablo Larain | Wri Steven Knight  Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris | Drama 113’

An imagined Christmas at Sandringham is the latest showcase showdown in the tortured saga of Princess Diana’s fated marriage to Prince Charles.

Pablo Larraín’s Venice competition hopeful Spencer makes for extremely painful viewing as an atmospheric arthouse portrait of isolation and emotional disintegration. But the fact that it portrays two well known figures representing the British royal family makes it all the more poignant. A story of two of unhappy people struggling within the confines of tight security and rigorous protocol was never going to be joyful especially when each one is a mannered caricature of their putative selves.

Chilean auteur Pablo Larain has become somewhat of a dab hand at painting marginalised characters: from Jackie Onassis to a group of distressed priests in his 2015 feature The Club. And those who hate the monarchy will have a field day with how dreadful a royal weekend is made to look.

Diana  – who died 24 years ago – is victimised to within an inch of her life by the regal system, eventually falling victim to her psychosis in Sandringham’s splendour during a visit that would send anyone screaming for a taxi to Norwich, if they didn’t have their own Porsche parked outside. The film’s timing is even more significant in a year where Her Majesty the Queen has had enough to contend with, not least the death of her husband.

Kristen Stewart couldn’t be more suited to her role as Diana, her wan pallor and delicately chiselled features mirror those of the tragic Princess who doted on her boys and wanted a normal life despite her wealth and privilege. That said, she lacks the vivacious charisma of the princess – who I once met. It’s a performance that plays to the crowd rather than the cognoscenti. Spencer will prove divisive: Some will find it brittle, glib and shallow; others will delight in its sullen melodrama.

The film starts with Diana literally losing her way in the depths of the Norfolk countryside, the film was actually shot in Germany, on a bleak winter’s day. Pitching up at a roadside cafe to ask directions, she eventually finds herself in the safe hands of Sean Harris’ Sandringham chef Darren who guides her back to face the music over her late arrival.

Larrain draws clever but rather chilling comparisons with Diana’s situation and that of Anne Boleyn (Manson). Dream sequences picture the hapless wife of Henry VIII drifting through Sandringham’s gilded corridors. In fact, there’s a great deal of drifting and floating in this often haunting tragedy, as Diana frequently goes awol in frosty nights and foggy mornings, in a bid to avoid the strictures of this regimented family ‘holiday’.

Playing out as a series of grim episodes during the festive break, Diana gradually implodes:.And if she’s not hounded by equerries (Timothy Spall makes for a ghastly bully) and dressers (her only trusted aide is Maggie played by Sally Hawkins), then the press are on her tail with their long distance lenses. Forced into wearing a series of specially selected twee outfits (Christmas lunch, boxing day tea etc) Diana erupts in anguish, biting into a rope of pearls that clatters into her pea soup – a scene that leads to a bulimia attack. The pearls were a gift from Charles (played by Poldark’s Jack Farthing) who offered the same jewels (known as a symbol of tears) to his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles. Only Diana, Maggie and Spall’s equerry are fully fleshed out, the other characters are cyphers only there to serve the narrative.

Diana is seen making the most of joy-filled moments with her boys (played gamely by Jack Nielen and Freddie) and eventually there is a happy ending to this particular episode which culminates with a liberating car ride to Mike and the Mechanics. A dismally depressing, washed out watch, fraught with sorrow. A terrible tribute to the real people it depicts. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN UK CINEMAS | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Gaia (2021)

Dir: Jaco Bouwer | Cast: Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk, Anthony Oseyemi | US Eco-thriller, 97′

South African director Jaco Bouwer delivers a stunning eco thriller that’s less impressive on the narrative front despite a beguiling premise that unfolds in the mysterious depths of the country’s atavistic Tsitsikamma rain forest, home to some terrifying species.

South Africa’s rangers are well known for their intricate knowledge of the animals that inhabit the wild untamed landscapes of the Cape and beyond. But during a routine mission with her colleague Winston (Oseyemi), nothing prepares Bouwer’s heroine Gabi (Rockman) for the terrifying alien predators that lurk in the undergrowth. And when she is injured by a poisoned spear, help arrives in the shape of two mysterious human beings who initially save her life. These ‘post-apocalyptic survivalists’, father and son Barend and Stefan, are clearly versed in all sorts of natural medicine, but lying in a state of semi-sedation, Gabi starts to wonder whether they are as benign as they appear, while trying to contact Winston who has disappeared into the forest. Communicating exclusively in Africaans with the surreal cavemen-like couple Gabi is nevertheless none the wiser as to their motives. Things take a sinister turn when Winston is invaded by flesh-eating lichen like funghi and Gabi’s hopes of escape start to diminish. Bouwer comes up with some stunningly imaginative special effects captured by Jorrie van Der Walt’s immaculate lensing. But Tertius Kapp’s storyline is just too slow-burning and enigmatic to keep us engaged despite the film’s modest running time. Although highly entertaining for body horror fans, Gaia is perhaps best described as style over substance. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 27 SEPTEMBER 2021

 

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Dir: Michael Curtiz | Cast: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson | US Drama 106′

This depiction of the love/hate relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex is obviously based on a play (the Irish debacle is plainly staged on a single Germanic-looking set, and Cadiz – although frequently referred to – is only talked about).

The film is sumptuously produced with an incredible supporting cast; some of them practically just glimpsed (with Olivia de Havilland – in reality one the few woman who resisted Flynn’s advances – as usual while she was under contract to Warners wasted but radiant as Davis’s most serious rival in love).

At the centre of course are two star performances, although Daves’ makeup is grotesquely aged but completely unlined with those famous eyes darting hither and thither as the elderly Queen, and – the vaguely ‘naughty’ title notwithstanding – they are shown doing little more in private than playing cards together. Richard Chatten

BETTE DAVIS: HOLLYWOOD REBEL SEASON IS NOW PLAYING AT THE BFI Southbank FOR THE REMAINDER OF AUGUST 2021

 

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Dir.: John Huston; Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Lee Patrick, Gladys George, Jerome Cowan, Elisha Cook Jr; USA 1941, 101 min.

The second film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’, which was serialised in the ‘Black Mask’ before being published by Knopf in 1930, became a corner-stone of a new sub-genre: the Film Noir. Directed by debutant John Huston, who makes good use of Hammett’s dialogue in his analytical script, the star of the show is Humphrey Bogart who plays Private Eye, Sam Spade. With Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet – the latter another newcomer at the rip of age of 61 – it made film history. John Huston would direct his most famous film The Asphalt Jungle nearly a decade later.

Partners Sam Spade (Bogart) and Miles Archer (Cowan) run a sleazy detective agency. One of their clients, the enigmatic Bridget O’Shaughness (Astor), using a false name, wants to track down a relative. The same night Archer is shot dead. The finger points at Spade due to his affair with Archer’s wife Iva (George). Spade and the widow are seen in a passionate embrace by ‘Girl Friday’ Effie Parine (Patrick). But it soon turns out that Bridget is one of four of crooks on the hunt for the titular Maltese Falcon, a bird emblazoned with priceless jewels. Bridget had shot Archer to get rid of a fifth bounty hunter, Thursby, who is the number one suspect in the Archer murder case. Kaspar Gutman (Greenstreet) leads the hunt for the bird, aided and abetted by his minions Joel Cairo (Lorre) and Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr) who are subjected to Spade’s robustness on more than one occasion. In the end, the Falcon turns out to be a fake, and the three men land in prison. But the worst fate awaits Bridget, Spade following head before heart in giving her up to the police: “You might get away with twenty years, I’ll wait for you. If they hang you, I will never forget you”.

Warner Brothers had first asked George Raft to play Spade, but the big star was not keen to put his reputation on the line with a newcomer like Huston. Greenstreet and Lorre would act together in nine more features, Bogart occasionally joining them. The highlight for DoP Arthur Edeson, who shot Casablanca, is a seven-minute take in a hotel room the highlight, shot over two days. But the feature belongs to Bogart: a violent detective, cynical womaniser, and crass opportunist in a nest of vipers. AS

ON RELEASE from Friday 17th September | IN UK CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Captain Volkonogov Escaped (2021) Venice Film Festival 2021

Dir: Aleksey Chupov, Natasha Merkulova | Cast: Yuriy Borisov, Timofey Tribuntsev, Aleksandr Yatsenko | USSR Drama 120′

A muscular yet strangely poetic drama suffused with human emotion by Russian directing duo Aleksey Chupov and Natasha Merkalova whose feature The Man Who Surprised Everyone, did just that.

Classically styled and set against the backdrop of the 1938 political persecutions – the colour red serving as a thematic touchstone for Soviet ideals of valour, sportsmanship and nationalistic allegiance – it stars man of the moment Yuriy Borisov fresh from his triumphs in Cannes with Compartment Number 6.

He plays Fyodor a hard-boiled, weightlifting law-enforcer in a Russia pulsating with subversive wartime undercurrents where cowing-towing to the Soviet system is the only way to go. But when Fyodor sees his peers being interrogated by the authorities he decides to abscond. Once on the run (to rousing sounds of ‘The Russian Red Army’ and a propulsive electronic score) Fodor is hotly pursued by his wiry, tuberculosis ridden superior Golovnya (Tribuntsev), haunted by the past as it plays out in a series of haunting hallucinatory sequences featuring his old comrades. So he decides to return as surreptitiously as possible while surrounded by a seething climate of savage mistrust.

Immaculate lensing by ace Estonian cinematographer Mart Taniel makes this a visually captivating as well as thrilling with its storyline that tracks Fodor’s evasion from his steely band of brothers with a pervasive feeling of danger and gritty authentic characters who feel real in their struggle to survive against the odds in a climate of fear and suspicion that forces them to root for themselves while keeping their backs against wall in their putative allegiance to the state. That said, the few female characters are seen as weak and febrile, the men physically and emotionally rigorous.

Powered forward but some really shocking violence: an execution scene is one of the most starling: a state employee priding himself by dispatching his firing squad victims with just one shot; in another a little girl recounts how her father was tortured by Spanish Fascists and then Russian Communists, the latter the more affective in sending him to him to his grisly death. Unorthodox weapons come in all shapes and sizes – an old fashioned telephone proving an effective stunning device. But the harsh brutality is tempered by some potently transcendent moments that Andrey Konchalovskiy or Tarkovskiy would be proud of: an enormous red zeppelin glides by silently framed between two buildings; a wild dog scampers along joyfully in the morning mist, and an emaciated man breathes his last moments of life cradled in Volkonogov’s tender embrace. MT

Venice Film Festival | 1 – 11 September 2021 | COMPETITION

Prophecy (1979) Blu-ray

Dir.: John Frankenheimer; Cast: Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth, Richard Dysart; USA 1979, 102 min.

US filmmaker John Frankenheimer (1930-2002), director of the original Manchurian Candidate, started out, like Sidney Lumet, directing TV fare including numerous reputable ‘Playhouse’ episodes. He never lost feel for a good newsworthy story, and Prophecy is a good example with its focus on environmental issues.

Written by David Seltzer (The Omen), Prophecy takes place near Maine, where strange findings are reported in the river Ossipee. Considering, the Flint Water Crisis in Michigan went on from 2014 to 2019, Seltzer’s script is very much ahead of its time.

Doctor Robert Verne (Foxworth) and wife Maggie (Shire) are working in Washington DC, and hope that a holiday in Maine might take their minds off the polluted capital. But soon they are witnessing strange incidents in the river Ossippee, near the paper mill run by Bethel Isley (Dysart). Babies are being born with physical defects, people are walking around in a drunken stupor even though they have not consumed a drop of alcohol, and in the local river salmon and tadpoles are growing to monstrous proportions, while on dry land racoon are running riot.

When a group of lumberjacks go missing, Isley blames the indigenous population, who in turn claim that the Katahdin, a Sasquatch monster, is responsible for the mysterious happenings. Maggie, who is pregnant, but has not told Robert, grows increasingly nervous – she has eaten fish caught in the vicinity. But worse is to come in the shape of an enormous bear with diseased skin that causes total mayhem for all concerned.

Bad timing saw Prophecy premiering only a few weeks before Alien, and Ridley’s Scott’s monsters were very far superior to the giant bear. DoP Harry Stradling jun. (Convoy, Little Big Man) is on fine form, and the mixture of conspiracy and horror is a potent brew. When the survivors leave the scene, a bear cub is left behind – but unlike Alien, a sequel to Frankenheimer’s outing never saw the light of day. AS

OUT ON BLURAY courtesy of Eureka Classics

Promises (2021) Venice – Orizzonti 2021

Dir.: Thomas Kruithof; Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Reda Kateb, Naidra Ayadi, Jean-Paul Bordres, Vincent Garayer; France 2021, 98 min.

Isabelle Huppert is the guiding light of this socio-political drama that centres on a deprived Parisian housing estate where she is Clemence Collombet the ambitious mayor with her eye on the main chance.

Modelled on local authorities like St. Denis or Bobigny, Thomas Kruithof’s sophomore feature accurately portrays the sort of self-seeking politician we have grown used to of late: Clemence has a wilful, authoritarian streak and limitless ambition. From her upmarket home she hopes the struggle on the decaying housing estate Les Bernardins will define her future, and has promised to resign after two terms, her deputy Naidra (Ayadi) – whose parents have immigrated from North Africa – is her chosen successor.

Clemence is keen to further her career and only to happy take on a ministerial post in central government when it is offered. Her chief of staff Yazid  – Reda Kateb on top form – is kept busy by her many machiavellian moves. Les Bernardins is run by the shady developer Chaumette (Garayer) and Clemence wants to replace him. The real victims are the tenants of the estate, who have seen promises constantly broken while the building falls into a parlous state of disrepair.

But the real villain is Jean-Marc Forgeat, the local Mafia boss. On the opposite side is Michel Kupka (Bordres), chair of the tenants’ association, trying to keep up a deal for renovation with the mayor and Yazid, even though Kupka does not trust the politicians. Then everything changes when Clemence’s ministerial appointment fails to materialise, and all she gets is a place in the Senate. In a furious volte face she reneges on her promise not to run again – offering the disappointed Naidra the job of mayor in three year’s time. Meanwhile Yadiz is involved in a race against time to get the renovation project off the ground, and into the hands of the local MP at an Elysee meeting.

Kruithof shows two different levels of the playing field, the mayor using the tenants merely to advance her own career. Yazid is shown as the beavering ‘nuts and bolts’ man who has still a little bit of engagement left, but is dependent on people on the ground, like Kupka, who is fighting a battle on two fronts, trying to unite the tenants in the hope that Yadiz keeps his promise.

DoP Alexandre Lamarque offers up a sophisticated looking feature reflecting the changing milieu, from council house to corridors of power, but there is simply two many plot lines going on for the audience to see things clearly. Isabelle Huppert once again running the show like a seasoned professional with composite ease.  AS

The Noise of Engines | Le Bruit des Moteurs (2021) San Sebastian Film Festival

Dir.: Philippe Grégoire; Cast: Robert Naylor, Tanja Björk, Marie-Therese Forline, Naila Robel, Alexandrine Agostini; Canada 2021, 90 min.

The bizarre debut feature of Canadian writer/director Philippe Grégoire is too clever by half, hurtling into cul-de-sacs, before petering out with a limp. There are some interesting moments, but overall The Noise is simply too pretentious and immature.

Gregoire kicks off in semi-documentary style with a group of Canadian customs officers being introduced by Alexandre Mastrogiuseppe (Naylor) to the use of firearms. Later Alex has sex with Laura (Rabel), one of the the trainees – all rather awkward as her efforts to wear a mask bring on an asthma attack, Alexandre coming to the rescue. He is nevertheless suspended from work by the strange unit chief (Agostini) who admits she is in an open marriage while she claws the underside her desk in frustration, enviously alluding to his multiple sexual escapades. Alexandre is then sent home to his mother (Forline), who owns a race course in a small town.

On the race course Alexandre is accosted by two police officers who accuse him of sticking an obscene drawing on the church door. Next he embarks on a treasure hunt instigated by Icelandic racing driver  Adalbjörg (Björg) a big fan of filmmaker Andre Forcier, the two eventually fetching up in a deserted backwater. The two policemen appear again, burning Alexandre’s hands on the hot plates of an oven, and other unspeakable parts of his body. Needless to say, things go from bad to worse for Alexandre who embarks on a journey to discover the holy grail of drag racing

Essentially The Noise is a series of disconnected episodes where everything feels unnatural, performed by an unexceptional cast, Shawn Pavlin’s images are as anaemic as the whole undertaking. So not a strong  debut for Gregoire despite some interesting ideas. AS

San Sebastian FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | 17 – 27 SEPTEMBER 2021

The Pawnbroker (1964)

Dir: Sidney Lumet | Wri: Morton S Fine | Cast: Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sanchez | US Thriller 116′

Director Sidney Lumet’s gritty New-York set Nazi survivalist movie made Rod Steiger a star with his unforgettable portrayal of a Holocaust survivor. Jewish refugee Sol Nazerman is a broken holocaust victim eking out an existence as a pawnbroker in Harlem’s squalid mean streets. His world-weary cynical approach to his customers is a study of indifference occasionally erupting in irritation – he’s too exhausted by misery and the memories of the wife he lost in the Death Camps to be angry or even sad any more, although at one point he’s reduced to tears of sheer emotional exhaustion by his tyrannical business partner, the gangsterish Rodriquez (Brock Peters).

Haunted by the lost and the misunderstood, The Pawnbroker is given a certain poignance with its louche jazz score from debut film composer Quincy Jones. Based on Edward Lewis Wallant’s cult novel – the film evocatively recreates a not so swinging Sixties America where life limps on in the shadows of the past. MT

THE PAWNBROKER IS OUT ON BFI BLURAY/DVD 16 August 2021

Wendy (2020)

Dir.: Benh Zeitlin; Cast: Devin France, Yashua Mack, Gage Naquin, Gavin Naquin, Kevin Pugh, Shay Walker; USA 2020, 111 min.

Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was a breakout hit with its endearing little heroine. This take on the J.M. Barrie classic Peter Pan doesn’t quite have the same magic although is still a much worthier drama than Steven Spielberg’s Hook. WENDY’s long journey into being – principal photography started in 2017 – has left its imprint on the finished feature.

Siblings Wendy (France) and twins Douglas (Gr. Naquin) and James Ga. Naquin) live with their mother (Walker), who runs a diner in Louisiana where the adventurous trio hop on a freight train, following a black boy called Peter ((Mack). They eventually land on an island, vowing never to grow old in their partly submerged world ruled by an octopus-like creature the children call ‘Mother’. But the inevitable    ageing process arrives leading to a rather unconvincing ending

The whole undertaking is somehow spoiled by Wendy’s twee voice-over, which takes away from the magic of the settings – WENDY was partly shot on Montserrat – the stunning island captured by Sturla Brandth Grovlen. Devin France’s Wendy carries the film through some questionable plot twists: One somehow has the feeling that Zeitlin’s siblings never got far enough away from the Barrie original. Their re-imagining is also hampered by having to pull off some brutal shock-effects, which oversteps the suitability for younger viewers. WENDY is not a failure, but proves the curse of the sophomore feature is still alive and kicking. AS

NOW IN CINEMAS

The Last Bus (2020)

Dir.: Gillies MacKinnon; Cast: Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Natalie Mitson, Ben Ewing; UK 2021, 86 min.

The Last Bus is something between a feel-good-movie and an elegy on death in modern Britain seen through rose-tinted specs. Carried by the great Timothy Spall, it somehow lacks enough information on the character he plays, eighty-something Tom Harper, who is taking his wife Mary’s ashes all the way from John O’Groats to Lands End, making the 838-mile journey on public transport thanks to his bus pass.

After Mary’s death Tom’s reverse journey is a nod to the past, with flashbacks of their married life together as a young couple (Natalie Mitson/Ben Ewing) when they first made the trip, through to the present day. Undeterred by terminal cancer, Tom still firing on most of his cylinders: helping when the bus breaks down and rooting for a racially abused fellow passenger. As the bus travels southwards we’ll get to know more about Tom’s trails and tribulations finishing on a high note on his arrival in Lands End

The contrast between the early 1950s and today Britain seems more positive than realistic: the good old days reflect the happiness of Tom’s married bliss with Mary, nothing seemingly dimming their nirvana, even 70 years later. The goodwill shown by nearly everyone towards the pensioner seems idealist given what most older people have to put up with. Nostalgia rules visual and tonally, the characters reflecting this bland idealism in their conventional rather make-believe lives. A touch of irony would have been welcome to take the edge off the sweetness, Spall breathing life into a chocolate box existence. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 20 August 2021

Mandragore (1952)

Dir: Arthur Maria Rabenalt | Cast: Hildegard Knef, Erich von Stroheim, Trude Hesterberg, Denise Vernac, Harry Holm | Fantasy Drama 92′

The fifth and – to date – last film version of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ 1911 bestseller is handsomely mounted, interestingly cast but far too talky. It worked far better as a silent film, with Brigitte Helm much more convincing than dear Hildegard Knef as the soulless product of artificial insemination.

By bestowing such inauspicious parenthood upon his creation Professor Jacob ten Brinken (Erich von Stroheim!) explicitly states that his desire is to inject a bit of depravity in the female genes in order to create a more  exotic bloom by unnatural means than two upstanding citizens could ever hope to produce; although real life is constantly demonstrating that Mother Nature can always be depended on to bring into the world plenty of young women with more conventional antecedents that would be capable of wreaking just as much havoc among the male sex.

Although Ewers was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the New Order and joined the NSDAP in 1931 – and Alraune clearly reflected the eugenics debate that Hitler brought into disrepute – it wasn’t filmed during the Nazi era. The director of this postwar version, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, had been an enthusiastic propagandist for the Nazi regime, which makes him an ironic choice for such potentially touchy subject matter. @Richard Chatten

Black Diamonds (1932)

Wri/Dir: Charles Hammer Cast: Beckett Bould, Jennie Stevens, Norman Astridge, Jenny Morgan | UK 53′

Black Diamonds was made by working miner and amateur filmmaker Charles Hanmer “without the usual Studio facilities, or professional resources” as a follow up to his earlier documentary Tour of a British Coal Mine (1928), from which he reused footage to create a public relations film to promote awareness of the hazardous conditions worked in and to drum up public support for Britain’s miners. Starting with a recreation of the Cadeby mine disaster of 1912, it depicts the efforts of miner John Morgan to convince an initially unsympathetic MP to finance a film about pit life. Hanmer plainly didn’t know the first thing about filmmaking, but as a document of working life it still resonates. Nearly thirty years later, Beckett Bould, who plays Morgan, ironically played a small part in the union-bashing The Angry Silence (1960). Richard Chatten

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

 

Escher: Journey Into Infinity (2020)

Dir.: Robin Lutz; Documentary with George and Jan Escher, Liesbeth Escher-Hogenhout; Netherlands 2018, 80 min.

Like many before him Dutch graphic artist M(aurits) C(ornells) Escher (1898-1972) came late to fame. But his influence, particularly in pop-culture, is still growing. This might seem to be a contradiction, since Escher was a modest creative who told his admirers he was not clever enough to be an academic and had to wait until 1970 for his first exhibition. But he doubted his artistic talents because he believed a ‘real’ artist should not enjoy his work but be tortured in creating it

Escher met his wife, 24-year old Russian émigré Yetta Umica, in Ravello in 1923. The couple married in Viareggio a year later and settled in Italy where Escher marvelled at the blue skies “colour was needed, but I did not want colour”. He often sketched at nigh-time although he maintained: “the reality of the day is like a dream”.

Escher and his wife travelled on a cargo ship to Valencia, paying their way with ten drawings, which the company used for advertising. They then travelled through southern Spain to Granada where he worked every day in the Alhambra. Escher was particularly struck by the geometric figures used by the Moors. Back home in the Netherlands he worked from dawn to dusk “so that the inner images came out”. One of his most famous drawings was of people living in the ‘second and third dimension’ but never meeting on imaged of stairs, one person going up as the other went down. Mathematics became increasingly important to his work leading him to pose the question: “Is it still art?”. But as son Jan comments, “work was opium for him.”

By now, the Germans had occupied the country, and Jewish artists could not exhibit any more. Escher cancelled his membership of the Artists’ Society and the Graphic Association. He rescued over two hundred drawings from his art teacher, one of the many deported to the death camps. When the wartime food supply dwindled Yetta sacrificed her own well-being, saving what little was available for the three sons.

After the end of WWII, she became more and more fragile and her mental health deteriorated. She would later travel to Switzerland and live with her son and his wife Liesbeth, but they eventually had to put her into a nursing home. She survived her husband who died after numerous operations for cancer.

MC Escher had been supported by his wealthy parents for most of his life, but an interview with ‘Time-Life’ in the 1960s raised the profile of his work and he became famous virtually overnight. One of his most famous concepts pictured people as wheels, rolling forward. When he listened to Bach’s St. Matthew oratorio, he imaged the cathedral floating over the ocean to New York and San Francisco. And this drawing with its psychedelic beauty found many admirers in the growing counter-culture, even though Escher had little in common with the flower-power generation.

Stephen Fry reads Escher’s letters as a v.o. Music by Bach dominates the feature, hardly a co-incidence since the composer himself admired mathematics. Escher was a certainly a person of substance and wild imagination, and deserves all the plaudits he gets after a life of self-doubt. AS

NOW AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL RELEASE

A Walk with Angels (2020) Locarno Film Festival

Dir.: Tomasz Wysokinski; Documentary with Jeremaiah Marobyane, Thandi Mbatha, Louisa Mbatha, Ma Mbatha; Poland 2021, 84 min.

Polish director Tomasz Wysokinski spent four years in the shanti Town of Kliptown, Soweto for this labour of love that follows ex-child soldier and civil war commander Jeremaiah Marobyaneon on his search for missing children. “Every sixty minutes a child is lost in South Africa” is the cruel premise of the raw and resonant documentary.

The focus is his search for Angie, kidnapped six months previously from her mother Thandi Mbatha and her family. Jeremaiah sets out on gruelling mission during which he’ll come across, always coming across children exposed to violence on an everyday basis. Soweto is a hotbed of superstition and Satanists are actively kidnapping kids for ritual execution. The members of the local show clear signs of mental disorder: “by day I am a boy, but at night a girl ‘they’ want to use”.

The perpetrators practising exorcism, “taking the genital parts from the babies, like penis and testicles from boys and breasts from girls”. The cult members are convinced that “demon power will give them power to kill”. Meanwhile, Jeremaiah has arrived in the small town of Witbank where he is told that Angie is no longer alive is told, and that the witch doctors have got hold of her. Unperturbed, he pushes on further to Johannesburg, a city “which looks good in the glittering lights from a distance”, but when he arrives we see colonies of children sleeping in the streets. In the borough of Hillbrow, Jeremaiah puts up the poster of Angie, who has a distinct birthmark near her eye. The children, sleeping in boxes on the pavement, go through the rubbish in the day time, often finding the corpses of babies. One shot is particularly disturbing. “The witch doctors crush the babies, mix their blood with herbal medicine and throw them into pots while they are still alive.

Finally, Jeremaiah finds a young woman who has interviewed Angie’s father Mbengeni, who apparently confessed to having abducted his daughter. Undeterred, and walking with the titular angels, Jeremaiah makes his way to meet Mbengeni.

This no-frills documentary is highly disturbing and makes for a grim watch. It shows a South Africa still suffering from abject poverty and dangerous superstition. Jeremiah is well aware that “Apartheid has destroyed South Africa’s people”, causing bitter conflict between the various factions, but the total absence of state intervention points to some serious underlying reason for this discord.

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2021

The Nest (2020)

Dir.: Sean Dirkin; Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Oona Roche, Charlie Shotwell, Anne Reid, Michael Culkin; USA 2020, 107 min.

After the breakout success of his debut Martha, Mary, May Marlene Sean Dirkin’s follow up is a dark story of greed, lies and  – aptly set in the early 1980s during the high tide of Reagan and Thatcher. An alternative title could have been “Lie with me”, a crime story by British author Sabine Durrant.

In both book and feature film the two main protagonists are fully aware their other half is lying, but go along with it, as long as it suits them. Commodity broker Rory O’Hara (Law), born in London, returns to the city of his birth from the USA with wife Allison (Coom) with their ten-year old son Ben (Shotwell), teenager Sam(antha) and Allison’s daughter from an earlier relationship. This is not the first upheaval for the family, Allison has experienced four moves in the last decade alone. At one point Rory was a high roller, thinking he would be a big swinging dick forever, and this move to London is motivated by those good old working for tycoon Arthur (Culkin), running the show in his posh London office.

A bit of a flash git, Rory is keen to make a big impression: rentimg a huge mansion in Surrey, dishing out hefty school fees for the children, even transporting Allison’s horse from the USA (which will have dramatic consequences). He brags about ‘a Central Park apartment’ when looking for a Mayfair pad. But the reality is quite the reverse: the couple can’t even afford an expensive meal, using the issue to score points. And whilst Rory plans to trouser big bucks from the merger of Arthur’s company with a US outfit, he hasn’t checked the fine print and his boss has already written the move off.

As things go from bad to worse his relationship with Alison deteriorates Rory emerging a snarky bully, Jude Law is perfect for the part. Dirkin shows us a glittering balloon of material wealth, waiting to pop and deflate at any minute. Particularly harrowing is a meeting between Rory and his mother (Reed), whom he has not seen for more than a decade. Hungarian DoP Mátyás Ederly, who shot Saul and Sunset, really does his stuff here creating a visual masterpiece of riches beyond the dreams of avarice splicing horror and thriller elements with startling effect at home in the world of business his images convincingly conveying the business world as if it were an entertainment industry Rory soon finding out that they belong to neither. AS

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | ON RELEASE from 27 August 2021

Victory of the Faith | Der Sieg des Glaubens (1933)

Dir: Leni Riefenstahl | Germany, Doc 64’

One gets a sense of déjà vu all the way through this trial run for Triumph des Willens, as so many of its images were deliberately recreated by Leni Riefenstahl a year later for the more famous film, which also reuses Herbert Windt’s music; although sadly there is no zeppelin in Triumph des Willens.

In addition to being almost exactly half the running time of the interminable ‘Triumph’, it’s the mismatches and the occasional moments of spontaneity that makes Der Sieg des Glaubens the more endurable of the two films. The presence throughout of Ernst Röhm is naturally the most remarkable feature; usually at Hitler’s side but otherwise not unduly prominent (the film overall contains mercifully far less speeches – and marching – although there do seem to be rather more shots of Goebbels this time round).

After years of being accustomed to seeing the aerial view of the threesome of Hitler, Himmler and Lutze (Röhm’s tame replacement as head of the SA) approaching the Ehrenhalle in ‘Triumph’, the sight of just Hitler and Röhm giving the salute comes as a jolt. The presence of Vice-Chancellor Papen (soon to be sidelined by the Führer until collared by the Allies in 1945 and brought back to Nuremberg as one of the defendants) reminds us that this is still very early days for the New Order, and Riefenstahl occasionally cuts to a suitably overwhelmed looking Italian delegation.

 

 

image coutesy of @wikiwand.

Two amusing moments depicting the Führer caught slightly off-guard are early on when he immediately thrusts a bouquet of flowers two little girls have just presented him with in Rudolf Hess’s direction; and the unaccustomed slouching posture he adopts while the leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, attempts to quieten them down so that he can begin his address.@Richard Chatten

 

Hinterland (2021)

Dir: Stefan Ruzowitzky | Austria/Luxembourg, Noir Thriller 99′

Germany and Austria have been brought to their knees after gruelling defeat in the Great War and limp home broken to a decadent Vienna amidst poverty, despair – and a serial killer on the loose – in this stylish noir thriller that sees Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky return after his The Counterfeiters won the international Oscar. For once the tight running time could have been extended to fully flesh out the story which also could work well in as a Netflix series. 

In the opening scenes a ship glides by laden with dead and mutilated soldiers, the living barely alive against the atmospheric green-screen technology that pictures utter devastation an a desperate homecoming. The men soon discover their surviving comrades are being preyed upon by a grisly murderer as the story unfolds around Marathon Muslu’s dynamite performance as an injured veteran embroiled in the murder mystery.

Wonky German expressionistic framing and a sombre atmosphere creates a jagged-edged feel echoing M by Fritz Lang or even something out of Grimms’ Fairy tales, suffused with Klimt’s jewel-like Secessionist paintings transporting us back to early 1920s Vienna where a savage mood of mistrust prevails at every turn in the decadent splendour of the Austrian capital. But our war hero Peter Perg (Muslu), once a respected police officer and criminologist, is still haunted by the past. After dark, the nightmarish terror of his Russian internment camp looms up in dream sequences on the vast wall behind his bed in the apartment he once shared with his wife who has fled to the sanctuary of the countryside with their daughter. Meanwhile the fatherland has lost its indomitable Emperor emperor (Franz Joseph, in 1916), and Austria is raging against a climate of anarchy and political unrest brewing throughout Vienna’s tea rooms. 

Perg teams up with the Poirot-like Detective Renner (Marc Limpach) and pathologist Theresa Korner (Liv Liese Fries) to fathom out a motive for the horrific murders perpetrated by the “Beast of Vienna” – one particularly gruesome corpse has been decapitated and flayed with a cat o’nine tails, another left to be eaten alive by sewer rats. But the team’s interest focuses on the iniquitous murder of Perg’s war-wounded comrades, who are being picked off, one by one, his close friend Captain Krainer appears to have been garrotted by the roaming psychopath. And as their investigations go underground to the murky depth’s of the city sewers Peter becomes meets the killer face to face in this seedy and stylishly evocative serial killer thriller. MT

NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE 2021

 

 

 

 

 

Rose (2021) Locarno Film Festival 2021

Dir/Wri: Aurelie Saada | Cast: Francoise Fabian, Aure Atika, Gregory Montel, Damien Chapelle, Pascal Elbe, Mehdi Nebbou | France Romantic Drama, 102′

Aurelie Saada brings her musical training as a composer to this brilliantly executed and vivacious film about love, family life and second chances.

A crowd-pleasing winner which will particularly resonate with Jewish audiences who will appreciate its finer details, Rose is a riff on Sebastian Lielo’s Berlinale winner Gloria, Francoise Fabian is absolutely magnificent as the grieving widow Rose. Elegant and graceful in her seventy-eighth year the opening scenes see her celebrating a joyous family occasion with her debonair husband (Bernard Murat in cameo) whose subsequent death sends her spiralling into overwhelming grief and confining her to the safety of her comfortable Parisian apartment.

Family and friends offer support but bring their own issues to the party, and this familiar outpouring of collective misery is not always welcome to the person most closely affected, Rose retreating into a world of her own, understanding yet unable to offer guidance or even deal with her three middle-aged children who are all experiencing emotional trauma unconnected to their father’s death. Her daughter Sarah (Aure Atika) is in the final throes of a separation for her straying husband (Mehdi Nebbou); Pierre (Gregory Montel), a doctor with his own marital issues, and Leon (Damien Chapelle) is a prickly man-child in trouble with the law.

In her feature debut Saada brings a maturity and wisdom to this hopeful story with its convincing characterisations and perfectly pitched mise en scene. Francoise Fabian understand her role and strikes just the right balance between vulnerability and self-possession as a woman who has dedicated her life to husband and children but now realises she needs an outside stimulus, and she finds one – quite unexpectedly – in the shape of a local restaurateur (Pascal Elbe) who restores her raison d’être and offers a sympathetic ear at a time when Rose needs it most.

A powerfully emotive score of well known classics and Saada’s own compositions give this soigne romantic drama a potent kick along with Martin De Chabaneix’ lush and sophisticated cinematography. Gracefully paced, smart and highly enjoyable Rose is an upbeat flight of fantasy and a tonic for those looking for a silver lining when family is actually the last thing we need. MT

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | PIAZZA GRANDE

 

Zola (2020)

Dir.: Janicza Bravo; Cast: Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Brown, Colman Domingo; USA 2020, 96 min.

Sex has never been so ugly in this rollercoaster ride on the sleazy side that makes Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers look like a film for kids. Sexploitation, kidnapping and a suicide attempt are just some of the highlights of this unsavoury tale, teetering self-parody and something much nastier. It’s the work of Janicza Brava who directs a script by Jeremy O. Harris, and the author of the original 148 tweets, A’Ziah King.

Still, it’s worth bearing in mind that Jim Thompson got the same treatment of disbelief from the established literati, back in the day (never mind during his lifetime) and his books are now sought after cult classics, analysed by academics.

Trailer trash white stripper/hooker Stefani (Keough) picks up titular waitress Zola (Paige) and they set off for Florida where they will be well paid well for working the poles, although they have to contend with Stefani’s nerdy boyfriend Derrek (Brown) who whinges non-stop. But when Zola sees X (Domingo), Stefani’s pimp, she gets cold feet: this is prostitution of the most sordid kind. Taking pity on Stefani, she organises more lucrative tricks which pay $500 instead of150, X is impressed and makes Zola his deputy.

Whenever Zola has to watch any bodily contact, she spits out “Gross” and turns her back on all kinds of graphic degradation – including Derrek’s suicide attempt: half desperation, half cry for help, which defines very much the whole enterprise.

DoP Ari Wegner just lets the camera roam around the sleaziness of it all, the scenes in the dystopian luxury hotels are a treat, and his night images on the road are some of the best recently commited to celluloid. Meanwhile Paige clearly enjoys every second, and so does Keough, who just gets the balance right between vulnerability and arrant naughtiness. When it comes to women’s sexual depravity it appears they are worse than men –  there are simply no limits for bad taste. No one can pretend its in any way a critique of anything: This is X-rated stuff with a mental health warning, but just enjoy the spectacle and have fun AS

In cinemas from 6 AUGUST 2021

House of Gucci (2021)

Directed by Ridley Scott from a script by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna based on Sara Gay Forden’s bestseller The House of Gucci brings to the big screen the shocking true story of the family empire behind the Italian fashion house of Gucci. Spanning three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder, we see what a name means, what it’s worth, and how far a family will go for control.

 

COMING TO CINEMAS THIS NOVEMBER

 

 

Girl in the Headlines (1963)

Dir: Michael Truman | Cast: Ian Hendry, Ronald Fraser, Margaret Johnston, Natasha Parry | UK Drama 93’

Based on a 1961 novel by the actor Laurence Payne called The Nose on My Face. This enjoyable little murder mystery with an interesting cast – most of them still relatively young – and shot on familiar London locations seems on the surface charmingly old-fashioned (everybody is so immaculately dressed, and ball-point pens were still sufficiently novel for one to be an important plot point).

Yet the the victim is described as “a little nympho…without morals or scruples of any kind” who came to London to have “an operation” after getting pregnant by her mother’s fiancée. “Reefers” and “cocaine” are also mentioned by name and a character (described as “a rich and successful TV thing”) is stabbed to death in what is obviously a gay club. Incredibly this only carried an ‘A’ certificate in 1963, which shows how rapidly times were then changing.

Like Inspector Morse, Ian Hendry (who was still young and dashing then before his drinking got the better of him) as the detective drives a Bentley and knows his opera. Coincidence? @Richard Chatten

TALKING PICTURES

Human Factors (2021)

Dir.: Ronny Trocker; Cast: Max Waschke, Sabine Timoteo, Jude Hermann, Wanja Valentin Kube, Daniel Séjourné; Italy/Germany/Denmark 2021, 102 min.

Italian-born Ronny Trocker’s intelligent but underpowered invasion thriller has the same fault line that runs through many German features of the past few decades: a premise that looks promising on paper but fails to come alive cinematically because everything has to serve the central construct. This may work for Michael Haneke but Trocker’s film lacks the narrative heft that makes Haneke’s features so absorbing. DoP Klemens Hufnagl tries for a ‘Huis clos’ atmosphere but he’s further hemmed in by the narrative confines, and the actors can’t inject much verve either with their underwritten characters.

Human Factors centres on a repressed and deeply conflicted upper-middle class family. For some light relief they take a break in a holiday home in Belgium near the German border but this is a sticking plaster rather than a solution to their woes. Husband Jan (Waschke) and wife Nina (Timoteo) run a PR agency in Germany, but politically they are poles apart and this tension bleeds into their ongoing campaign in the run up the country’s elections. Their kids are suffering too: Teenage daughter Emma (Hermann) is having problems at school and hanging out with the wrong crowd, her young brother Max (Kube) has lost the plot completely and is only interested in his pet rat Zorrow.

The holiday gets off to a bad start with a bungled burglary, the repercussions having a knock on affect for all concerned in this Rashomon like set-up. Nina’s gay brother Flo (Séjourné) and his partner then fetch up on the scene, and this doesn’t go down well with the rather homophobic Jan, opening up further avenues of discontent. Back in Germany on the Monday, things just go from bad to worse. AS

IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 15 February 2022 | SUNDANCE LONDON premiere |

 

Misha and the Wolves (2021)

Dir.: Sam Hobkinson; Documentary with Misha Defonseca, Jane Daniel, Evelyn Haendel, Sharon Seargant; Belgium/UK 2021, 89 min.

Sam Hobkinson (Fear City) tells one of the most bizarre stories of modern times. Misha and the Wolves could be a fairy tale, but it turns into a nightmare – and then into something completely beyond the wildest imagination.

In the remote town of Millis, Massachusetts. Belgian immigrant Misha Defonseca regaled friends and neighbours with her experiences during the Holocaust. She told the members of Temple Bel Torah how, as a little girl in during wartime 1941, she left her loveless foster home and began to search for her biological  parents who had been deported to a death camp. Taking up with a pack of wolves she walked on foot from Belgium to Germany, it what would be an eventful and violent journey.

One of her neighbours of Defonseca Jane Daniel, ran a small publishing company, the Mt. Ivy Press and offered to publish the memoir as ‘Misha: A memoire of the Holocaust Years’. It came out in 1997 and was a great success, as was the French version. In 2007, the French filmmaker Vera Belmont shot the story as Survivre avec les Loups. But the cracks started to show: Defonseca took Daniel to court, over her refusal to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Next came a major discovery: Defonseca had used two different versions of her birth name: one for the America edition, one for the French one. Than everything unravelled quickly, thanks to forensic genealogist Sharon Sergeant, and Evelyne Haendel, a Belgian researcher and Holocaust survivor. What emerged was a completely different version of events.  Misha was born in 1937 as Monique de Wael to catholic parents in Etterbeek, Belgium. She never left home as a child.

Hobkinson then uses the Errol Morris technique, turning the narrative into a Patricia Highsmith style story where the focus is no longer Defonseca – but a gullible public on both sides of the Atlantic intrigued to have discered just another plucky Jewish survivor. The guilt surrounding lack of social responsibility during the Shoah still haunts communities who react with denial (as in Poland) or half-truths as they do in France. Misha’s real story is also chained to this process of uncovering the kindness of strangers who courageously risked their own safety to help Jews. Opportunism is still rife in the publishing world, Jane Daniel being only one example. DoP Will Pugh documents this torrid tale of a deception that provides a welcome version of the truth, an antidote to bestseller spin. Misha Forenseca still lives in Millis. AS

NOW ON RELEASE

Writing With Fire (2021) Movies that Matter Festival 2022

Dir.: Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas; Documentary with Meere Devi, Shyonkali Devi, Suneeta Prajapate; India 2021, 92 min.

This Oscar nominated documentary by first time feature directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (also co-DoP) once again exposes an endemic culture of police corruption, bribery and misogyny in Indian culture seen through the ‘Khabar Lahariya’ (‘News Wave’) newspaper. The publication was founded just after the turn of the century by women of India’s lowest cast – the Dalit, and operates out of Uttar Pradesh, a region which usually votes for the winning Party in the General election – and this will play a big part later.

We begin with chief reporter Meere interviewing the victim of a brutal rape, and her shocked husband. Meere then walks straight into the police station to demand why nobody has been charged with the assault. Alarmingly the police are not interested in helping the victim. Clearly they are not there to serve the people or enforce law and order, but to trouser lavish bribes from their venal local overlords who continue to operate with impunity.

Although the “Khabar Lahariya’ is now digital, at the end, with 125 million followers on You Tube, the journalists are not really taken not seriously – even by their own husbands – one proclaiming the whole operation will fail.

During the 2019 election, the sitting candidate of the region left his own party, and joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP. When interviewed by the women he gives the usual lip service to fighting corruption, if re-elected, since the BJP will allow him to be active on this front, unlike his old Party. Modi and the BJP won in a landslide, not only in Uttar Pradesh. But already a week later, the journalists are repressed by members of the BJP, wearing orange outfits, and pretending to represent religious groups. The danger of absolute Hindu nationalism is obvious.

The fate of the individual members of the newspaper is also told, centring around Suneeta, Meere’s best ‘student’. Disappointingly she then decides to give up her profession and marry. Lost in that immediacy is a deeper historical look at the paper itself; while we understand its creation was unique, Writing with Fire is so invested in the present that the filmmakers fail to offer key information about its founding.

Still, now is as good a time as any to follow the paper and its evolving reporters as we watch Khabar Lahariya grow in size and influence. It’s a double-sided coin: Increased visibility means increased impact, for the journalists and their subjects, but it also places the women in the crossfire of anyone opposed to them (and that’s plenty of people, especially as the country enters a key election period).

The personal toll is never far from the frame, and while some of the documentary drags as its filmmakers cycle through repetitive scenes (a husband rolling his eyes at his wife’s work, a family railing against the impossibility of marrying off their daughter, a puffed-up subject refusing to talk to female journalists), they also put the audience very much inside the world of Meera, Suneeta, and Shyamkali.

A startling finale makes Writing with Fire one of the finest features ever made about journalism, a real eye opener. AS

GRAND JURY DOCUMENTARY AWARD WINNER | MOVIES THAT MATTER 2022

 

The Sparks Brothers (2021) Sundance London 2021

Dir.: Edgar Wright; Documentary with Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Mike Myers, Giorgio Moroder, Tony Visconti, Christl Haydon, Steve Jones, Alex Kapranos; UK 2021, 135 min.

At first glance, The Sparks Brothers is an odd choice as a first documentary for director/writer Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver). They were the operatic star turn with their score for Annette at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and their music has endured half a century. Hits like ‘This town is not not big enough for Both of Us’, was a great success in the UK, but ignored in the US, leaving many fans with the impression they were British – but they were born and bred LA. The Sparks have produced twenty-five albums, and Wright (a self-confessed fan) has given everyone enough space here – which accounts for a self-indulgent running time of two hour fifteen minutes.

Ron and Russell Mael had a proper cinema upbringing with their parents, who, idiosyncratically, took their kids to the cinema whenever they saw fit. No surprise then that Ron and Russell wanted to compose for the big screen. But early efforts with Jacques Tati and Tim Burton came to nothing. Luckily, they ‘escaped’ the dud Rollercoaster from 1977, which fell instead to poor Lalo Schifrin while we get an uncredited glimpse of the brothers. Finally Ron and Russell got their just reward: this year’s opening feature at Cannes directed by Leos Carax, scored by the Maels. Not bad for a duo who inspired New Order, Duran Duran and The Human League.

The brothers Mael are great entertainers, even performing with a dummy. And Wright mocks the genre roles of the documentary, with animation and CGI inlets. Wright hits the spirit of the Maels: the 1979 album produced by Giorgio Moroder, featured classics like ‘Try outs for the Human Race’, just the sort of anarchy Wright reproduced in his feature films. The Sparks Brothers is a proper head banger, celebrating the feeling of anarchic creativity. AS

SUNDANCE LONDON | July 29 – August 1st 2021

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Dir.: Jaume Collet-Serra; Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Edgar Ramirez; USA 2021, 127 min.

Fizzing with feelgood vibes Jungle Cruise is a blockbuster extravaganza that takes its name from the famous Disney Land theme park ride and brought alive here by Catalonian born director Jaume Collet-Serra and his writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.

After the overwhelming success of Pirates of the Caribbean it comes as no surprise that Disney would chose another fairground theme for a feature film, Taking place1916 during WWI, the action-packed prologue is set in London, where Dr. Lily Houghton (Blunt) and her gay brother MacGregor (Whitehall) hope that some dusty old relics will lead them to a magical tree in the Amazon jungle so they  can harness its much needed healing powers amid the slaughter of the trenches.

Arriving at the Amazons, Lily takes her wuss of a brother in hand and hires Captain Frank Wolff (Johnson) to lead them to the mystical  tree. But despite a massive ego the debit-ridden Frank is not really up to it and neither is his shambolic boat. His real name is Francisco and he fetched up here 400 years ago with the conquistadores. Over the centuries his quest for the legendary tree has been in vain in a desperate search to help his soldier friend Aguirre (Ramirez), who needs the petals for his sick daughter Anna. Aguirre still haunts Frank in his nightmares.  Meanwhile Prince Joachim, a relative of the German Kaiser, is also after the tree’s petals, hot on the heels of Frank’s motley crew in their U-boat. Luckily, Frank’s pet leopard is there to defend them – despite getting drunk and throwing up. The foursome face a fearful battle before a happy-end delivers them back to London.

Basque DoP Flavio Martinez Labiano can take all the credit for this spectacle. His roving camera almost makes you throw up – never mind the leopard – and his rapid change of lighting angles creates a hostile, supernatural atmosphere of dread. Johnson is, as always ‘The Rock’, but Blunt is no shrinking violet either in the petal quest. Whitehall’s understated MacGregor is just shy of a caricature.  Fabulous production values more than make up for the narrative torpor. Just enjoy the fun. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 30 July 2021

 

The Collini Case | Der Fall Collini (2019)

Dir.: Marco Kreuzpaintner; Cast: Elyas M’Barek, Alexandria Maria Lara, Franco Nero, Heiner Lauterbach, Manfred Zapatka, Jannis Niewöhner, Catrin Striebeck, Peter Prager; Germany 2019, 123 min.

A gripping courtroom drama based on a real events sees a modest man tried for a motiveless murder.

Even today war crimes are still being committed all over the world. German director Marco Kreuzpaintner‘s feature serves as a timely reminder of the Dreher Law that allowed many war criminals to get off by a technicality.

Inspired by Ferdinand con Schirach’s bestseller of the same name and adapted by Christian Zübot, Robert Gold and Jens-Friedrich Otto, The Collini Case brought the scandal to the international stage. It’s an impressive undertaking that rather overstays its welcome despite Franco Nero’s engaging performance as defendant Franco Collini.

It maintains that the German justice system and the majority of politicians wilfully obstructed the persecution of war criminals, in the majority members of the Waffen SS.

Lawyer Caspar Leinen (M’ Barek) is appointed by the court to defend Fabrizio Collini (Nero), who has killed the German industrialist Hans Meyer (Zapatka) with three shots to the head. Collini is not willing to defend himself, and refuses to talk to Leinen, whose mother was Turkish, and was abandoned by his father (Prager) when Caspar was two.

Leinen is inexperienced in court dealings and his position is not helped by his close ties to the Meyer family: Meyer senior has financed his studies and treated him like a son and he has been enjoying an affair with Meyer’s grand daughter Johanna (Lara). Flashbacks flesh out how  Leinen’s  relationship with the influential Meyer family ended after several members of were killed in gruesome car accident, and bring to light Meyer’s senior’s controversial past: he was a member of the Waffen SS and responsible for a massacre in Montecatino when he saved little Fabrizio from being shot as a hostage. instead the child had to watch his father being killed, with Meyer ending his life in a coupe de grace.

In 1969 Fabrizio and his family filed a law suit against Meyer, but were then told that the German parliament had adopted the so-called Dreher law, which meant that all German war criminals were guilty of Murder Two – in other words the statue of limitation run out after twenty years, whilst Murder One had no time limit for prosecution.

In tense but protracted court scenes Lenien is locked in a battle of wits with his mentor the Public Prosecutor Prof. Mattinger (Lauterbach) part of a committee which formulated the Dreher law.

Although some may consider the flashbacks self indulgent, distracting from the central narrative. DoP Jacub Bejnarowicz does a brilliant job of enlivening the court proceedings with his visualisation of a contemporary Berlin still full of reminders of a murderous past. But his flashback images are rather on the kitsch side. Franco shines in a central tour de force but the support cast is not always convincing. Somehow there is too much pathos, partly due to the script.

The Collini Case needed a touch of irony to lighten its ever-relevant themes: But despite its worthwhile and ever-relevant themes of corruption, judiciary ethics, and toxic masculinity. Nero adds allure in a film marred by a rather stuffy support cast, the whole ensemble resembling a fighting unit, ready to attack rather than engage. AS

IN CINEMAS 10 September 2021

The Plough and the Stars (1936)

Dir: John Ford | Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Barry Fitzgerald, Denis O’Dea | US Drama 72’

Made during John Ford’s ten-year 1930s sabbatical from making westerns; he’d just won an Oscar for The Informer, so he could insist upon yet another Irish subject. The opening caption “Dublin — Ireland”, however, straight away betrays its Hollywood provenance, and despite photography by the great Joseph August, lurches throughout between beautifully designed and lit interiors and obvious studio exteriors.

RKO imposed upon him Barbara Stanwyck, who Ford treated very badly on the set before eventually withdrawing to his yacht in a huff when shooting wrapped. Of the Abbey Players themselves, F.J.McCormick is visibly younger and healthier here than in the role of Shell ten years later in Odd Man Out for which he is known today and Arthur Shields looks very dashing as Padraic Pearse. But considering how notoriously truncated a version of the play this is, far too much time is devoted to depicting Barry Fitzgerald’s ‘hilarious’ fondness for a tipple. @RichardChatten

TALKING PICTURES TV

European Arthouse Film | ARTEKino Selection Summer 2021

The ARTEKino Festival is an innovative online film festival presented by ARTE.tv and Festival Scope aimed at movie goers from all over Europe. The festival strives to celebrate and promote European films from new filmmakers to larger audiences in less accessible countries.

This year the ARTEKino Selection is also available free at ARTE.tv. Each month a new film is featured representing the richness and diversity of European cinema.

In July, the ARTEKino Selection features Claire Denis’s 2008 film 35 Shots of Rum, currently streaming onARTE.tv. For August, Tereza Nvotová’s powerful debut feature Filthy, explores hard-hitting issues of rape, trauma and secondary victimisation. In September ARTEKino presents the potent real-world feminist fable Sibel featuring a mesmerising performance by Damla Sönmez.

The ARTEKino Selection – August 

FILTHY

Slovakia, 2017

Director: Tereza Nvotová
Available at ARTE.tv from 1 August to 31 August

Seventeen-year-old Lena’s carefree world comes crashing down when she is raped at home by her maths teacher. The attacker calmly walks away, but Lena ends up in a psychiatric hospital. But even there she can’t bring herself to tell anyone what happened to her, since it doesn’t appear the staff are prepared to combat secondary victimisation. Tereza Nvotová offers up a drama which clearly demonstrates that rape only marks the beginning of a series of distressing experiences and brings to light an often-marginalised problem exacerbated by inadequate professional help. The oppressive subject matter acquires form as an assured study of the main character and of those around her, their contours nuanced by Marek Dvořák’s camerawork and by Dominika Morávková, whose Lena comes to realise that only she can find the strength that lies within her.

The ARTEKino Selection – September

SIBEL

Turkey, 2018

Directors: Çagla Zencirci & Guillaume Giovanetti
Available at ARTE.tv from 1 September to 30 September

25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area. Rejected by her fellow villagers, she relentlessly hunts down a wolf that is said to be prowling in the neighbouring forest, sparking off fears and fantasies among the village women. There she crosses path with a fugitive. Injured, threatening and vulnerable, he is the first one to take a fresh look at her.

Watch free of charge, on ARTE.tv, via the ARTE mobile app and the Smart TV app  @ARTEen

 

Old (2021)

Dir.: M. Night Shyamalan; Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krisp, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee, Elizabeth Scanlen, Kathleen Chalfant, Ken Leung Nikki Amuka-Bird, Aaron Bird, Alex Wolf, Thomasin McKenzie, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliot; USA 2021, 108 min.

Somebody once said that M. Night Shyamalan more or less recreates an episode of ‘Twilight Zone’ in all his features. We wish! In reality this is filmmaking by numbers, aiming for mystery yet putting his cards on the table one by one the writer director is caught in his own universe with a tried and tested formula – OLD is just that. 

Based on the graphic novel ‘Sandcastle’ by Frederick Peters and Pierre-Oscar Levy, it sees a group of hotel guests unable to escape their a nightmare tropical holiday when they find themselves trapped on their beautiful beach ageing rapidly at an alarming rate in fanciful camerawork provided by DoP Mike Gureckis.

Married couple Guy (Bernal) and Prisca (Krieps) are giving their relationship a final try on the island idyll, with their two young children Trent and Maddox. Prisca develops a tumour in the blink of an eye – shock-horror-gasp. Another couple, Charles (Sewell) and wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) and their young daughter Kara (Scanlen) are also victims of the ageing process; whilst a third couple, Jarin (Lesung) and Patricia (Amuka-Bird) are written out of the narrative early on. Prisca and Guy eventually make peace in the evening but by now the adult Trent (Elliot) and Maddox (Davidtz) are desperate to get away. A famous rapper (Pierre), going by the name of Mid-Sized Sedan, is not even spared, despite his fame.

Meanwhile Charles, who may or may not be a schizophrenic, is trying to remove Prisca’s tumour hampered by his inability to the film that starred Brando and Nicholson together. You guessed it: Missouri Break.

A solid premise – age gets to us all in the end – could have led to a twist in the tale, instead Old goes out with a whimper. Rod Serling of ‘Twilight Zone’ fame would have winced. AS

IN CINEMAS

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2020)

Dir.: Kristina Lindstrom, Kristian Petri; Documentary with Björn Andrésen, Robine Roman, Annike Andrésen, Jessica Vennberg, Miriam Sambol, Margareta Krantz, Ryoko Ikeda; Sweden 2021, 93 min.

Swedish directors/writers Kristina Lindstrom (Palme) and Kristian Petri (Sommaren) explore the blighted life of actor/musician Björn Andrésen (*1955) who shot to international fame in 1971 as the blond youth Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice.

The remainder of the young man’s life resembles a Greek tragedy after a world-wide advertising campaign based on Andrésen’s androgynous image inspired, among others, Japanese Manga writers Ryoko Ikeda, sealing  his fate. But What’s crucial here is that Visconti ‘owned’ the image of the under-aged actor via a copyright agreement for three years.

Björn was the fifth of six actors Visconti tested in 1970 in Stockholm for role of Tadzio, the nemesis of gay composer Von Aschenbach, in the novel of the same name by Thomas Mann. Visconti intended to direct the movie for the big screen, having been obsessed by it for a long time. Paradoxically Visconti somehow got away with being a prominent member of the Italian Communist Party and a very wealthy aristocrat. He was openly gay (exceptional in Catholic Italy after WWII) and his film crew consisted mostly of members of the the same sexual orientation.
At the screening test, Visconti made Björn strip to his pants, making the teenager highly uneasy.

Visconti emerges a stern and authoritarian figure, issuing an edict: nobody could even so much as look at Björn. Meanwhile the director touted the teenager around at gay nightclubs during the film’s shoot in Venice, where – acceding to teenager “the waiters looked at me as if I was a particular rare food which they would devour at any time”.

Miriam Samboli was engaged by the production company to look after Björn as a governess, helping him with his homework, and Casting Agent Margareta Krantz. Word had it that Visconti was completely smitten by Björn:”Whenever he was with Björn, his whole body came alive.” The media circus gathered speed in 1971 after Death in Venice had its premiere in London with The Queen and Princess Anne in attendance. The festival in Cannes, a few few months later, made the young man into a worldwide star. He was particularly famous in Japan as the first ‘Western Idol’, and made some music records. Next came Paris, where a certain Mr. Durant paid Björn 500 francs a month as pocket money, and rented a flat for him. “I had never any of my own money during my travels round the world”.

But Björn still had his education to think about and at school the boys sneered at him for his ‘femininity’: “I only had to snap my fingers and ten girls would come running – I never learned the social skills to communicate with the other gender”.

Björn Andrésen amassed credits for 16 TV films and series (40 TV episodes), as well as eleven feature films. He had asked not to be cast in the “Tadzio” mould, because he wanted to escape the gay image. It goes without saying he never gained the same attention as he did in 1971.

But it would be wrong simply to blame the Visconti episode for Bjorn’s post 1971 career, there were clearly aspects in his childhood that contributed to his lack of ongoing success: Björn never knew his biological father and his mother Barbro, a writer and painter, committed suicide. We watch him in a heart-breaking scene with an archivist who shows him the police report of Barbro’s suicide. His sister Annike Andrésen, the siblings were born in the same year, and daughter Robine Roman, paint a picture of a haunted man who never came to terms with fame. But the worst was still to come: Björn’s son Elvin died, nine months old, of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He is convinced he died “because I loved him not enough, I was not up to it”.

The present sees him with supportive girlfriend Jessica Vennberg, who helps Björn clean his flat and fight off an eviction order from a Housing Association. A an adult he cuts a shy figure, hiding behind masses of hair: clearly not wanting to be seen.

DoP Erik Vallsten follows Björn Andrésen’s journey with a respectful distance: Here is a man so much hurt by the past  he is a whisper away from disaster, totally lacking agency or self determination. Lindstrom’s biopic echoes an uneasy silence, captured with empathy in this diligent and dignified portrait. AS

NOW ON BBC IPLAYER

The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) Prime

Dir: Budd Boetticher | Cast: Ray Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse Whir | US Neo-Noir 107’

After a run of intelligent and highly-regarded colour westerns, director Budd Boetticher made a remarkable about turn with this classic recreation of the roaring twenties. The Production Code was by 1960 losing its iron grip on Hollywood, and The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond came at just the right moment to recapture both the breezy amorality of the pre-Code crime films of thirty years earlier, while Lucien Ballard’s crisp black & white photography vividly evokes the look of the era.

The absurdly good-looking Ray Danton is unforgettable in the lead, and the amused charm he brings to the part rather subverts the film’s message that he owed his fall to his lack of basic humanity, since you’ve spent most the film enthusiastically rooting for him  @Richard Chatten

ON AMAZON PRIME

Sabaya (2021)

Dir.: Hogir Hirori; Documentary with Mahmud, Siham, Shadi, Sheik Zyad; Sweden 2021, 91 min.

Kurdish director/writer/DoP/editor Hogir Hirori (The Deminer) has certainly ventured where few other filmmakers dare to go: he follows Kurdish resistance fighters, both men and women, in their efforts to liberate young Kurdish women who have been abducted, raped and sold by members of Daesh, during their reign of terror which lasted from 2014 to 2019. The Yazidi, a Kurdish minority religion, was one of their fiercest opponents, and Daesh took it out on them: By 2016 over two thousand six hundred women and girls – some still babies – were abducted, 3793 remain as sex slaves until now, given the titular name of Sabaya by their captors.

Mahmud, a Syrian, seems to live where he works, the ‘Yazidi Home Centre’ in north-east Syria. Mahmud and Sheik Zyad, the director of the Centre, lead a group sending female “infiltrators” into the nearby ‘Al-Hol’ refuge camp to locate Yazidi women. Daesh is trying to reconstitute itself by selling Yazidi women to sex trafficking groups. Bereft of any political aim, they are simply a Mafia organisation. Some of the Yazidi women are sold up to 15 times to different sex-slave operators. The fighter’s most important allies are older Arabic women who “look after” the captured Kurdish women evading Mahmud and his female spies by changing tents when the liberators arrive. The search is hampered by their inability to identify the women, post capture, and this is their main setback. Even when a positive identification is made, the real trouble begins: the liberators – including Hirori – are shot at in their cars, and near the end there is an armed attack on the Centre itself. Eylol, the commander of the female troops, also has to use rifles. The number of nationalities in the Camp makes is even more difficult and dangerous to spring the Yazidi women: 58 nationalities are involved, among them citizens of Morocco, Tunisia, Russia, Chechnya, France and Somalia.

Mahmund, whose wife Siham and young son Shadi suffer from his regular absence; but when he visits the nearby Hassaker Prison, where Daesh prisoners are kept, he can confirm the identity of Leila and Dilsoz, who were abducted from the city of Sinjar. Leila has a baby from her Daesh rapist/husband, but when even if her family are alive it’s doubtful they will welcome her with open arms. Finally, young Mitra, who is unable to speak or understand anything but Arabic, will be re-united with her parents – if they can be found. To date, 206 Yazidi women and girls have been rescued, 52 had children born after a rape. When Mahmud takes five of the liberated women to Sinjar, he brings back the same number of female infiltrators.

Like his ‘hosts’, Hirori certainly put his life at stake during the nightly raids. Sabaya is a chronicle of courage, it is filmed like a diary, avoiding dramatic arcs – the continuous action speaks for itself. It could be considered a thriller – but that would sensationalise its sad subject matter. The reality can be found in the faces of the ‘liberated’ women – to call hem the lucky ones would be a sad euphemism. Brutal and unforgiving, Sabaya is a unique tale, told under the most hazardous circumstances. AS

IN CINEMAS FROM 20 AUGUST 2021

 

The Fan (1949)

Dir: Otto Preminger | US Drama

Towards the end of his journeyman years at Fox, having recently completed Ernst Lubitsch’s final film, ‘That Lady in Ermine’ (1948); Otto Preminger next remade one his illustrious predecessor’s silent hits with strange results.

Although fluidly photographed by his collaborator on ‘Laura’, Joseph LaShelle, he later admitted that it was “one of the few pictures I already disliked while making it” and rather than a droll comedy of manners it bizarrely resembles a Victorian film noir in which characters occasionally come out with familiar Wildean epigrams (a sense compounded by the postwar framing story, from which it flashes back in the style of the forties).

Martita Hunt is menacing rather than comical during her fleeting appearances as the Duchess of Berwick; while Madeleine Carroll in what proved her final screen appearance as Mrs Erlynne is far from the glacial blonde we remember from her thirties films. @RichardChatten

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Dir: Joachim Trier | Wris Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier | Norway, Romantic comedy 121′

Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress award at Cannes for being ‘the worst person in the world’ in Joachim Trier’s latest film. But her only crime is indecision in this morally complex character drama about freedom of choice for beautiful young things in the 21st century.

Julie is 30. A perfect age to be alive in Oslo where she lives with her boyfriend Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie, who also stars in Bergman’s Island), a successful cartoonist who adds a thoughtful stability to Julie’s spirited self-focus. The choppily edited early scenes see Julie reinventing herself in various career choices: medicine then psychoanalysis, then photography. Her mother is supportive then exasperated in an upbeat narrative that regularly spins off in various directions but never loses its central focus in a script co-written by Eskil Vogt.

Aksel’s career is going from strength to strength and he wants to start a family. But Julie is conflicted and even more so after the two spend a fraught weekend with his family where other smug couples make her feel uncomfortable with her lack of decision. What follows is series of episodes where Julie toys with her career choices and the men in her life, Aksel becoming more and more disenchanted with her constant forays into pastures new.

Divided into twelve chapters, a prologue and epilogue, the film fizzes with light-hearted fun never making Julie out to be callous – she is sensitive and likeable – but feels a genuine uncertainty about her emotional status in a society that seems to funnel us into a lemming like direction of commitment. There is melancholy too, especially in the final chapter where Julie is made aware of the impact of her choices, or lack of them. Sometimes splashy but always entertaining this is a watchable chronicle of modern millennial life. MT

The Single Standard (1929)

Dir: John S Robertson | Cast: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian | US Drama 89′ Silent

The second of three silent features featuring Garbo released in 1929 while MGM scratched its head pondering how they were to promote her as an attraction in talkies; The Single Standard was also her second feature in a row pairing her with fellow Swede Nils Asther.

Garbo is improbably introduced as All-American party girl Arden Stuart, presumably loaded, but of whose life and means prior to the wild party in an enormous Art Deco mansion with which the film begins we learn nothing. Despite the provocative title – vaguely advanced at one point as some sort of feminist statement about the social constraints placed upon women – The Single Standard swiftly turns into a standard Garbo vehicle in which after flirting with modernity in the form of motor rides at seventy m.p.h. and a dalliance with pugilist turned artist Asther she ultimately embraces respectability and parenthood with John Mack Brown for the sake of her cute little curly-haired moppet of a son.

The name of director John S. Robertson isn’t much recalled today, even by connoisseurs of silent cinema (unless they’re also connoisseurs of horror cinema, since he directed the John Barrymore version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1920), but he does a good job here with the assistance of high-priced Metro talent like cameraman Oliver Marsh, art director Cedric Gibbons, costume designer Adrian and whoever was responsible for Garbo’s various hairstyles which subtly changed as the film ran its course to reflect her developing emotional state. @Richard Chatten

 

All Things Bakelite (2018)

Dir.: John E. Maher; Documentary about Leo Hendrik Baekeland, narrated by Adam Behr; USA 2018, 59 min.

Everything you needed to know about the origins of plastic is here in John E Maher’s watchable docu-drama that sheds a light Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863-1944), the Belgian born inventor of Bakelite, which under its common name, Plastic, has dominated our lives since 1907.

Plastic is a dirty word nowadays, but it was hailed as a miracle back in the day when Baekeland first invented the substance. His biographer, Carl Kaufmann, and even a flamenco dancer sing his praises, Mark Ferreira, re-creating dramatised insight into the genius who was not keen on other people.

Born in Ghent, Baekeland married Celine Swarts, the daughter of his professor at the town’s university. But instead of following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, he emigrated with his wife to the USA in 1889. The couple would have three children, two of which survived their childhood. An inventor at heart, Baekeland struck gold first by coming up with a new photographic paper in 1893, the rights of which were bought up by the Eastman company making Baekeland independent and ready for the big step forward in 1907.

Bakelite was a mixture of phenol and formaldehyde, but Baekeland “hit a wall, like his competitors, but he found a door”. The original mixture was too sticky to be formatted, and it took Baekeland 680 attempts to find a solution for its adaption in all forms possible. Radio, telephone, cars – all mass-produced articles soon relied on the new invention. Others copied Baekeland, and only in 1923 did a judge gave him he sole right for the production of the new formulary.

Baekeland was in love with cars, he even got a speeding ticket for driving at 30 in a 20 mph zone. But behind the scenes, he was an anxious, lonely and nervous man, just the opposite his wife, a socialite who loved to give parties. Her husband felt safest on his yacht, where he spent hours on his own: “He was not a people person”.

But Bakelite would soon find its way into Hollywood: art-deco design dominated the features of Busby Berkeley, and, on the other end of the spectrum, the invention of the first Baby Monitor in 1937. In 1940 Bakelite was the foundation for the first Hawaiian guitar, which was played later on SNL. But crucially the film points to the inevitable downside: plastic is not bio-degradable and will be with us forever – even if, in the future new components make it more eco friendly.

That hydrogen bombs also have a use for Bakelite, is another irony and makes a quote by Kaufmann particularly poignant: “Plastic is the finest and worst expression of mankind”. Baekeland, who was nocturnal in his habits, often feeling like a ‘wandering ghost’, leaves us with pithy food for thought, a Professor of the History of Design at Pratt Institute exclaiming “the heart of Bakelite is the American soul”.

Short and to the point, Maher uses archive material to make his points, his re-staging of Baekeland life is not always successful, and his admiration for chemistry as a whole is obviously questionable. Still, we get to know the man who left us with a major long-term problem, by solving all our daily needs. AS

ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS WORLDWIDE

Joy Womack: The White Swan (2020)

Dir.: Dina Burlis, Sergey Gawrilov; Documentary with Joy Annabelle Womack, Nikita Ivanov-Goncharov, Masha Beck, Elizabeth Shockman; USA 2021, 91 min.

A culture of bribery and corruption in Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet provides the cut and thrust of this new documentary, seen through eyes of Prima ballerina Joy Womack.

Born in 1994, Womack grew up in California and Texas, even though she is ethnically Russian. At the age of 15 she left her family and went to train at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in 2009, later becomeing a member of the Bolshoi Ballet proper – quite an achievement and a ‘first’ for an American. But she would resign in 2013 when the scandal became public, later joining the Kremlin Ballet Theatre Moscow where she performed the leading role in ‘Swan Lake’ and other iconic parts in the repertoire.

Told in a series of flashbacks that culminate in her performance in ‘Swan Lake’ at the Kremlin Ballet Theatre – the film is a hotchpotch of episodes  in Womack’s life: there are highlights of her training and rehearsals, and her close relationship with ex-partner Nikita Ivanov-Goncharov. Two biographers, Masha Beck and Elizabeth Shockman are the main commentators, often rather too gushing in style giving the undertaking a hagiographic flavour. Training to be a dancer is gruelling and psychologically stressful: at one point Womack needed complex and expensive surgery after dancing with a fractured foot, just because no understudy was available. Fortunately her church provided the financing for her operation, because her family had gone bankrupt.

Most dancers suffer from weight problems, and Joy is no different. Weighing at one point only 38 kg, she developed an eating disorder, along with many of her colleagues. One point of contention between Joy and Nikita, also a dancer, was her total commitment to work. Womack is clear about her goals in life: “More work is good, no compromises. I train at the gym, practice my yoga, run a bible group and attend church. I could not do all this if I was still with Nikita. Many things make me into a better dancer and a better person. For me, works comes first, and I consider it impossible to combine work and personal life”.

Sadly, Nikita, now a choreographer, has to accept she’s married to her work with almost religious devotion. But it wasn’t a happy decision and she misses him: “He does not understand it, he is heartbroken. My heart aches for him.” When she left the Kremlin Ballet Theatre for a position in Seoul, she was adamant to burn no bridges: “Moscow will be always my home, I think of it as a base”.

Structurally flawed due to its confusing non-linear timeline – makes this a confusing to watch, but Womack herself is very much a documentary filmmaker’s dream: outspoken and always willing to take centre stage, she is a force of nature to be reckoned with, even if her underlying need for entitlement is sometimes grating.

Lively and action-packed throughout its running time, this portrait of a woman bulldozing herself through life, taking no prisoners is impressive. AS

OUT ON 19 JULY 2021

Handsome (2021)

Dir.: Luke White; Documentary with Nick and Alex Bourne, Molly and Charles Somers, Amber and Armand Maillard, Krich and Sachit Matrega, Thanh Nam and Tranh Viet; UK 2021, 98 min.

This adventurous new documentary from writer/filmmaker Luke White (Blood Money) who embarks on a international search for care-givers for those suffering from Down’s Syndrome. The idea was inspired by his friend Nick Bourne who also looks after an affected sibling, and has come to the stage where he wants to develop his own life. So he takes his brother Alex on a journey round the world, to explore others are coping in his position.

First stop is Cornwall, where Molly Somers looks after her brother Charles (Charlie). Their home is in an idyllic country setting, and Molly is fiercely protective of her brother who clearly brings out her motherly instincts. Compared with Alex, Charlie’s Down’s is quite mild, and he gets on well with his sister, Nick feeling rather envious of their closeness. Obviously it helps if you can through money at the situation, but despite family wealth Molly is determined not to hide reality from Charlie: “He knows he is different.”

Next stop is New York, where Nick and Alex visit City worker Amber who in naturally concerned that caring for her brother Armand will have a negative impact of her own career.  Again, it looks like Nick is over-estimating his brother’s mental capacity and lack of verbal dexterity – which he blames on his parents for sending the boy for speech therapy. Alex can also be overbearing and this is another area Nick must confront as his brother matures into a manhood. There is a tendency for both Amber and Nick to refer to their siblings in the third party, even when they’re actually in the same room, they also need to keep them in the loop, so this in part understandable.

Government help is non-existent, but funding would their lives so much easier. At its the same in Mumbai, where Nick and Alex meet Krich and Sachit Matrega. To start with, Sachit is not badly affected by his Down’s: an accomplished cook, he can also organise his domestic life. Krich shows Nick some self-help organisations in the slums.

On their final stop, in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nick and Alex meet brothers Than Nam and Tranh Viet. The situation here is dire, religious fortune-tellers spin their lies for profit, and even worse, unqualified doctors perform brain-surgery offering false hope to all involved. The two also come across victims of “Agent Orange”, the toxic nerve gas sprayed from planes by American troops from their planes during the war. At the end of the fact-finding mission Nick has reached a decision.

Handsome is often hard to watch, the emotions are so raw. Somehow it feels like we’re intruding into the intimate lives of those affected, and that often feels wrong. Handsome is simply overloaded with human suffering. There are complex issues at stake but White does his best in the  cannot be worked out in a mere 98 minutes. AS

ON DEMAND FROM 30 AUGUST

 

Nitram (2021)

Dir: Justin Kurzel | Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Essie Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Sean Keenan, Conrad Brandt | Australia: Drama 118′

Justin Kurzel blows us away with this scorching arthouse psychodrama commemorating the Port Arthur tragedy, exploring the milieu that created a murderer (Martin Bryant) who would kill 35 people on that fateful day in 1996.

Not since Snowtown has a film engendered such utter terror through its central character – the titular Nitram – played by a coruscating Caleb Landry Jones – as a fully formed enfant terrible who lives with his long-suffering parents (Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia) in the sleepy seaside town.

Snowtown writer Shaun Grant again shows how long-term parental abuse and a casually toxic environment turns Nitram ((Martin backwards his hated school nickname) into a vulnerable, isolated loner who wreaks havoc wherever he goes. A display of his anti-social behaviour opens a story driven forward by an unpredictable behaviour even more frightening than his brutal strength: like a firecracker he goes off without warning, but is also capable of loving affection for his mother who diminishes him with constant putdowns.

But his unpredictability is nerve-shredder here. And the film open with a typical episode of antisocial behaviour when Nitram sets off firecrackers  from the rooftop of his parent’s house in a bid to dispel his sense of ennui and hopelessness – there’s nothing else to do here but surf, and we watch him floundering in the waves, driven to tears by another failed attempt to stay onboard.

Port Arthur feels more like an English seaside town in the 1960s, charmingly down-at-heel and raffling. Redolent of its faded but questionable glory as a colonial outpost, basking in the lush green landscapes leading down to the sea. But when Nitram meets ditzy local heiress and Gilbert & Sullivan fan Helen (Essie Davis) things are set to change. An offer to mow the extensive lawns of her rambling mansion with its menagerie of dogs leads to a touching friendship, Nitram finding acceptance and a contentment of sorts as the misunderstood misfits rub along together in a ‘folie a deux’ before thunder clouds once again gather and his fate is finally sealed.

Kurzel and Grant show how Nitram is unable to empathise as a result of his dysfunctional family dynamic. Davis and LaPaglia are charismatic as his callous mother and depressive father, Nitram’s flawed emotional touchstones as the story seethes towards a devastating finale. All this contrasts with the serene shambolic beauty of the painterly settings – particularly of Helen’s home. This is a mesmerising look at mental illness made all the more pitiful by the tragedy that could have been avoided. As a master of quirky psychological dramas Kurzel is back at the top of his game. MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 1 JULY 2022

Shorta (2020)

Dir.: Frederik Louis Hviid, Anders Olholm; Cast: Jacob Lohmann. Simon Sears, Tarek Zayat, Al Jabouri, Issa Khattab; Denmark 2020, 108 min.

Shorta is an intelligent a police thriller tucking a range of weighty social issues firmly under its belt for an adrenaline-powered ride.

Danish first time directors/writers Frederik Hviid and Anders Olholm unpack the role of the today’s police in a crime caper that never lets up in dealing with racism, immigration and misogyny. The violence is hard-hitting but never gratuitous.

We start with the familiar good cop/bad cop routine: a day after a teenage immigrant is gravely injured by police, the squad boss asks officer Jens Hoyer (Sears) to keep an eye on fellow officer Jacob Lohmann (Andersen) who has a track records of open racism and misogyny, and enjoys provoking immigrants – something to be avoided on a day of high tension, even so when their patrol covers the infamous Svalegarden estate where the young victim lived.

At first the cops’ behaviour is true to form: Hoyer the voice of reason, Lohmann a brutal bully. Their relationship is made even more fraught by Jens having been a witness when the teenager was put in an arm lock by the police. Lohmann more or less threatens Hoyer to lie to the internal investigators maintaining that no excess force was used during the incident – appealing to his esprit de corps. Enter Amos (Zayat), a teenager from the same estate, deliberately throwing a milkshake at the two officers in the squad car. Amos is arrested and it soon emerges that  the victim of police brutality has died in hospital and more violence follows for all concerned.

Although the director keeps his distance, his message is clear as day: the police cannot be expected to deal with issues caused by politics and parents who are no longer responsible or even interested in their kids. There are two scenes which really are heart-breaking: Lohmann fighting a German Shepherd in a lift: no prizes for guessing who survives. When are filmmakers going to stop kill off their dog characters? Still, Shorta makes its point and is entertaining – if you disconnect from reality. AS

ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS FROM 30 AUGUST 2021

Bergman Island (2021)

Wri/Dir: Mia Hansen-Løve | MCast: Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie | Drama 112′

In the Swedish island of Faro two filmmakers explore their work and their love for each other in Mia Hansen-Løve’s dreamy sun-kissed drama that combines a documentary stye to explore the island’s cinema legacy.

The ghost of Ingmar Bergman fills this sensuous summer story through the emotional encounters of a group of friends there to celebrate a wedding and a writers’ workshop. Filmmakers Chris (Krieps) and Tony (Roth) will stay at the famous house where Bergman shot Scenes from a Marriage. Krieps is the same diffident, restless woman she was in Phantom Thread, finding the peace and tranquility of the island oppressive and missing her daughter June. Tony is laid-back, supportive and secure in his skin as the two discuss their various projects, Chris keen to probe his ideas on her outline film script which forms the core of this film within a film that sees Mia Wasikowska as Amy, the slated central character and also a guest at the wedding where she is reunited with her ex-lover Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) their affair rekindled, although both are now spoken for back home. Chris also makes friends with a Swedish film student (Hampus Nordenson), whose role is to instruct us on the Bergman background.

Mia Hansen-Løve directs with confidence and a lightness of touch deftly integrating the various strands of her story with seamless ease in a drama that explores the ups and down of love and the complexities of modern relationships exposing both the pleasure and the pain in a breezy beachside reverie. Faro is very much a character here DP Denis Lenoir’s luminous landscapes providing the backcloth for this enjoyable and affecting drama. MT

NOW ON RELEASE FROM 3 JUNE 2022

 

The Innocents (2021)

Dir/Wri” Eskil Vogt | Cast: Rakel Lenora Flottum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Sam Ashraf, Ellen Dorrit Pedersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf, Lise Tonne | Norway, 117′

The Omen meets Jack Clayton’s 1961 titular original in this haunting arthouse horror trip from Eskil Vogt who explores the parallel world of children in his chilling second feature.

The Innocents follows his eerie experimental drama Blind with this textured thematic look at casual violence and subversive behaviour in a group of young friends growing up in small-town rural Norway.

Seen entirely from the children’s point of view this is a deeply sinister and often violent film, at times frighteningly so, but subtle as a whisper. A sense of terrible dread seethes as the plot unfolds, Vogt spending rather too much time establishing the milieu of a modest domestic set-up before hitting the jugular in full blown psychological horror that dives deep below the surface of ordinary young lives.

Freed from the mundanity of running their lives kids are free to let their imaginations wander. And wander they certainly do in a serene suburban idyll surrounded by pine forests and sparkling blue skies that create an oppressive sense of isolation for the blonde-haired angel-faced Ida, played by Rakel Lenora Flottum, her autistic and mute older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) and their kindly but ineffectual parents (Ellen Dorrit Pedersen and Morten Svartveit).

The kids are free to roam far and wide and soon become firm friends with tousled-haired Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) and the levantine Ben (Sam Ashraf impressive in debut) whose background is more troubled, in one violent scene he throws Ida’s pet kitten from the top of the stairs and crushes the crippled animal’s skull – without any remorse. Ben also develops telekinetic powers not unlike Danny in The Shining but Ben’s are put to nefarious use in sending a boiling pan of water over his single mother (Lise Tonne) while he carries on oblivious.

An eerie soundscape from Gustaf Berger and Gisle Tveito ramps up the tension as Ben’s powers come into conflict with Anna’s benign psychic sense as a turbulent battle of wills plays out completely beyond the radar of the adult world.

As the film edges towards its startling finale Vogt creates a distinctive and highly-tuned alter universe in a lushly cinematic supernatural horror that remains tethered in reality while sending out shockwaves of terror with lowkey but chilling affect. MT

Now ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS

 

Souad (2021)

Dir.: Ayten Amin; Cast: Bassant Ahmed, Basmala Elghaiesh, Hager Mahmoud, Hussain Ghanem, Carol Ackad, Sarah Shedid, Islam Shalaby, Mona Elnamoury; Egypt/Germany/ Tunisia, 96 min.

Egyptian director/co-writer Ayten Anin (Villa 69) offers a snapshot of the younger female generation symbolising all the contradictions of Muslim countries like Egypt, where their modern world is on collusion course with the more traditional background of their families. Amin has her narrative structured in chapters, the headings go with the main protagonists.

Chapter one, named after the titular heroine, nineteen-year old Souad (Bassant), begins in a commuter bus where Souad tells a woman seated next to her all about her fiancé Ahmed who is serving in the army, a fact that frightens her – but she can’t wait to get married and loves his family.  Next, she is in another bus with another woman, and this time Souad’s fiancé is still Ahmed, but this time he’s a surgeon in Cairo, and Souad herself is studying medicine, coming from a family of doctors.

The reality is very different, when we watch Souad in the small flat she shares with her younger sister Rabab (Elgaiesh) and her traditional parents (Shalaby/Elnamoury). They live in Zagazig, a fraught industrial town. Souad and her girfriends Yara (Ackad), Amira (Shedid) and Rabab are addicted to their mobiles – to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

Souad likes to flirt, particularly with the rather wild Wessam (Mahmoud), but her true love is Ahmed (Ghanem) although he lives 300 miles away in an upmarket part of Alexandria. Ahmed is a budding influencer on the insta, and the two share photos and poems, even engaging in phone sex. They will never meet, because Souad, anxious about her exam results, throws herself from the balcony of the flat.

For her parents it’s enough that she died a virgin, the rest is “God’s will”. Basically, the feature starts again when Rabab, who has inherited Souad’s mobile, travels to Alexandria to meet Ahmed, to “give him a present from Souad”. Rabab falls for Ahmed’s charm, just like her sister, but at only sixteen she is more realistic, far too young to have a fiancé. Ahmed is now betrothed to an upper-class girl from a leading family but he’s decent enough to admit to Rabab that he did love Souad although she well aware of the situation. Ironically, she passed all her exams.

Souad’s confabulations are not uncommon for a young woman of her age, but is also clear, that she – and her friends – are used to living in a parallel universe, where shopping with her mother for a new hijab, collides with her activities on the mobile. What is also pivotal is the lack of understand about her depression. The friends’ rivalry is certainly part of it – they argued about the use of cosmetics to make them look whiter, among other issues. But rather than explore her psyche Amin is more interested in the impact her death made on her family and friends. What is crucial here the affects of societal repression on a whole generation of young Muslim women in countries dominated by a male-orientated religion.

The ensemble acting is brilliant; Ahmed and Elghaiesh won joint “Best Actress” at Tribeca this year. DoP Maged Nader excels both in close-ups and a roaming camera in the cities of Zagazig and Alexandria, underscoring the social divide that impacted on Souad’s wellbeing. Ayten Amin directs with great sensibility in this moving expose of Arab society. AS

ON RELEASE IN AUGUST 2021

Everything Went Fine | Tout est bien passe (2021)

Dir: François Ozon | Cast: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Éric Caravaca, Hanna Schygulla, Grégory Gadebois, Jacques Nolot, Judith Magre, Daniel Mesguich, Nathalie Richard | France 98′

Francois Ozon always has a cheeky grin in his films. And Everything Went Fine is no exception. This candid end of life drama is a delightful follow-up to the darkly drole Summer of 85, a funny version of The Father with the same piquancy and sharp attention to detail. It could be anyone’s family story once parents get to ‘un certain age’. It could even be yours.

Charlotte Rampling is back, along with his regular collaborator the late novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim who wrote Under The Sand, Swimming Pool and 5X2 and on whose book this new story is based. Refreshingly honest and laced with Ozon’s classic subversiveness, André Dussollier plays the classic stroke-ridden 84 year old with an arch naughtiness and poignancy. The relationship with his long-suffering middle-aged daughters Emmanuelle and Pascale is spiky, to say the least. There’s even a cameo role for veteran Hanna Schygulla who advises on euthanasia.

What elevates this from trite comedy territory is the cast who really capture the essence of fraught family life with an honesty that tonally transcends sentimentality. Some may call it a ‘love hate relationship’ but this is exactly what happens with life and death, and Ozon craftily navigates these prickly relationships making us believe that he’s really been there himself.

Emmanuèle’s father André Bernheim is a cultured man with an ego not unlike Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Meyerowitz Stories that premiered at the festival in 2017. A rather selfish gay art collector who rediscovered his sexuality after marrying the girls’ sculptress mother – a cool-handed Charlotte Rampling – he keeps on the ball despite his stroke leaving him physically challenged.

Many may baulk at the humour Ozon playfully uses to convey a desperate family tragedy but this is really how it is – as those affected can frankly testify. And it’s this complete authenticity that keeps you glued to the screen and nodding in agreement, rather than the cardboard worthy scenario many may envisage.

Euthanasia is also thoughtfully handled, offering the film a morally meaty maze with plenty to chew on. This is a satisfyling mouthful that will make you laugh to self rather than out loud. A light-hearted comedy that unflinchingly faces reality with heart and humanity. MT

ON RELEASE from 17 June COURTESY OF CURZON | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

Goodbye Morons | Adieu les cons (2021)

Dir.: Albert Dupontel; Cast: Virginie Efira, Albert Dupontel, Nicholas Marie, Jackie Berroyer, Bsstian Ughetto, Marilou Aussilloux, Josephine Helin; France 2020, 87 min.

Winning no fewer than six César’s at this March’s ceremony, Goodbye Morons is populist and playfully anarchic hitting just the right tone despite the odd cliché.

Comedy meets tragedy in the lives of three people: a dying woman and a suicidal software programmer in charge of national security who team up with a blind archivist to locate the woman’s long lost child.

Forty-three year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet (Efira) has fallen victim to the longterm hazard of aerosol hairsprays used in her saloon. But making contact with her son, given up for adoption, is her main priority before she goes. What follows is a fraught and hilarious struggle to see the teenage Alter Ego (Helin), assisted by soft-ware developer Jean-Baptiste Cuchas (Dupontel) whose attempts to end it all, after being sacked, only end up injuring a colleague in the next room.

Blind archivist Monsieur Blin, already a victim of police brutality, comes to Suze and JB’s rescue and their research leads them to Dr. Lint (Berroyer), the obstetrician who delivered young Suze’s baby boy. But Dr. Lint is suffering from Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home. To make matters worse his handwritten diaries are illegible, only his wife can decipher them. Eventually the trio finds success of sorts but this happy-end is overshadowed by a showcase showdown in true ‘Thelma and Louise’ fashion.

DoP Alexis Kavyrchine uses all the tricks in the book with his avant-garde electronic surveillance methods. Nobody is safe from the government, thanks to JB, but turning the tables on them proves counterproductive. Once again the comedy lies in the ridiculous red-tape. Dupontel melding machines with the mindless men in charge. A comedy enforcing a barbed message: our technicians are even less humane than the systems themselves. AS

NOW ON RELEASE AT CURZON CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Don’t Take it to Heart (1944)

Dir: Jeffrey Dell | Cast: Richard Bird, Edward Rigby, Esma Cannon, Ivor Barnard | UK Drama 90′

Jeffrey Dell’s best remembered credit as a director is probably Carlton-Browne of the F. O., which he co-directed fifteen years later with Roy Boulting; and which looks like Ken Loach compared to this frenzied exercise in garrulous lunacy set in Chaunduyt (pronounced ‘Condit’), a fictitious rural community with an inbred population whose surnames tend to be either ‘Bucket’ or ‘Pail’.

Richard Greene is just a hole in the screen as the supposed ‘hero’ (compensated for by a very young Patricia Medina as a button-eyed socialist in jodhpurs). However, it looks good and has a typically wondrous supporting cast of the period. But it’s never actually as funny as it should be (despite the exclamation mark in the title and the soundtrack’s strenuous efforts to convince us how hilarious this all is), and the interminable courtroom section that takes up much of the second half of the film is a pale (or should that be ‘Pail’?) echo of the equivalent sequence in Passport to Pimlico.@Richard Chatten

 

The Surrogate (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS FROM 9 JULY

Anaïs in Love (2021)

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

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

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

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

COMING TO CINEMAS ON 19 August 2022

Where is Anne Frank? (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS FROM 12 AUGUST 2022

Freaky (2020)

Dir: Christopher Landon | US Comedy Horror 98′

A fun and freaky body-swap film that sees a bullied beauty become the target of a serial killer on the run whose mystical dagger sets in motion an unlikely switcheroo. Worse still the young schoolgirl has only twenty four hours to return to her original form before she is stuck as the hideous “Blissfield butcher” forever.

Vince Vaughn is astonishingly complex in his teenage girl guise carrying this film through a largely predictable storyline with some inspired gore-filled set pieces echoing Freaky Friday in a comedy slasher that’s more weird than scary, but certainly entertaining and confidently put together by Landon who is best known for his 2017 outing Happy Death Day.

Meanwhile Millie (Kathryn Newton) recruits her friends (Misha Osherovich and Celeste O’Connor) to help her get back to normal and garners considerable emotional and physical power as a 6.5 foot man – offering some food for thought with the boot on the other foot. There’s also a flirty frisson going on in the background between Vaughn’s teen transformation and Millie’s high school crush (Uriah Shelton). And you don’t often see that kind of subplot is this kind of movie. MT

OUT IN CINEMAS FROM 1 July 2021

West 11 (1963) Blu-ray

Dir: Michael Winner | Cast: Diana Dors, Eric Portman, Alfred Lynch, Kathleen Breck | UK Crime Drama 93′

Michael Winner’s social realist crime caper is not his best by long chalk, lacking the heft to transport into the realms of a gritty thriller or an involving drama. Captured by Otto Heller’s inventive camera it certainly evokes the seedy squalor of 1960s Kensington well before gentrification made it trendy ‘Notting Hill’. The cast was intended to include Oliver Reed for the lead role of Joe Beckett. Instead Alfred Lynch stepped in as an aimless office worker recruited into crime by Eric Portman’s lowlife gangster. Beckett’s two complementary love interests are a smouldering Diana Dors and coquettish Kathleen Breck but the feature the lacks the verve of so many other outings of the era despite a decent script from Keith Waterhouse, based on Laura del Rivo’s ‘The Furnished Room’. MT

NOW ON STUDIO CANAL DVD, BLURAY and DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 5 JULY 2021

 

Ultraviolence (2020) Bfi player

Dir.: Ken Fero; Documentary with Vivian Figueiredo, Lucy Chadwill, Brenda Weinberg, Amy Sey, Myrna Simpson; UK 2020, 75 min.

Director Ken Fero has teamed up again with writer Tariq Mehmood, the co-director of their 2001 documentary Injustice, to follow up on the topic of death in police custody in the UK: a thousand people died between 1969 and 2006, most of them people of colour. Fero has framed Ultraviolence as a letter to his son using Godard and Marker, among others, for the non-linear chapter structure dedicated to a victim of police brutality.

Injustice more or less killed off Fero’s career. It won several awards but was never shown on TV after the Police Federation threatened all media platforms with legal action, Fero threatened to sue them for loss of earnings but never received a reply. But it took a personal case for the director to engage again: Brian Douglas, a sports- and music promoter, happened to be a class mate of Fero at secondary school; he was stopped in May 1995 by constables Mark Tuffey and Paul Harrison in Clapham. Brian was struck with an American-style long-handled baton by PC Tuffey. Despite vomiting in his cell in Kennington Police Station, Douglas was only taken to hospital 14 hours later. He had a fractured skull and damage to his brain stem, dying five days later. At the inquest Tulley said his baton slipped accidentally when he hit Douglas on the shoulder. Evidence at the inquest revealed that the force of the blow was the equivalent of being dropped from eleven times his own height onto his head. The jury returned a verdict of misadventure, a verdict later challenged unsuccessfully by the Douglas family at the High Court.

Nuur Saeed, Paul Coker and Christopher Alder suffered equally gruesome deaths. The most clear-cut case of manslaughter (if not worse), is the case of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot after running away from Metropolitan Police hunting the Middle-Eastern perpetrators of a recent London suicide bombing. The policemen shot de Menezes seven time in the head, without even making an effort to talk to him in Stockwell Station. Vivian Figueiredo, Charles’ cousin, is one the many family members to this day is asking for justice. “Unity will give us strength to win” is one of her battle cries. Only, they do not win. An Independent Police Complaints Commission report concludes that the then Commissioner, Ian Blair, “was not served well by his staff, that his private office failed to keep him informed, but does not uphold allegations of a cover-up against him. No police officer is charged.” The family is left bewildered: “A man is shot in the head and yet their conclusion is no one is accountable?”

The most disturbing CCTV footage is from Plumstead Police Station, where Paul Coker died in August 2005. He became slightly paranoid in the flat of his girlfriend Lucy Chadick. She called the police, who arrested him. Chadwick told the police, that she heard Paul crying out to the police “You are hurting me, I can’t breathe, you are killing me”. He was carried by the police down the stairs, his head lolling from site to site. Later in the Police station, the policemen laughed about him “He is an evil fucker”. “He has already assaulted four officers”. “Its amazing the strength of the fucker to try and do that.”

There is at least one moment of redemption for the family of Brian Douglas. In 2006, eleven years after the killing of Brian, Mark Tuffey was in court, facing criminal charges. He had been reported by a fellow officer of kicking a black man and calling him a “dirty black cxxx”. Tuffey was convicted of aggravated behaviour and ordered to pay £400 fine and £400 cost. “It felt good to know he would no longer be a serving officer, as he had continued after Brian’s death. I walked away from court not necessarily victorious but that a little piece of justice had been done”, said Douglas’ sister Brenda Weinberg.

There is a certain overreach by Fero: He tries to connect the topic of his feature with wars like Vietnam and Iraq, trying to find a common strategy to end all violence. But the lively images of DoPs Koutaiba Al Janabi and Souleman Garcia are enough to support the continuous fight of the families of the victims. Their dedication stands for itself. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 16 JULY 2021

Joan of Arc (1948)

Dir: Victor Fleming | Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Jose Ferrer, Selena Royle, Robert Barrat, Jimmy Lydon, Rand Brooks | US Drama 145′

As befits a film based on a play, this independent production is a slow, talky, studio-bound affair, shot in the rather cramped confines of the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City (with most of the exteriors and even the very perfunctory battle scenes obviously shot on sound stages under immobile clouds); rendered slower still by the number of close-ups (ravishing as they are) shot by director Victor Fleming of his beautiful (and expensive) old flame Ingrid Bergman.

Although naturally nominated for several Academy Awards – receiving Oscars for its costume design and Technicolor photography – the latter accolade immediately lost its lustre when Natalie Kalmus of Technicolor went over the heads of the Academy by presenting a special award to The Red Shoes.

Joan’s army is populated by bruisers like Ward Bond and Ray Teal in pudding bowl haircuts; while as the “poor, mad maid from Lorraine”, big, strapping Scandinavian Ingrid Bergman makes (as her own father observes after she has her hair bobbed) “a handsome lad”. She looks fitter still in armour. But the film, alas, isn’t even halfway through before (SPOILER COMING:) she receives a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Violet Evergarden: The Movie (2020)

Dir.: Taiochi Ishidate; Voices of Yui Ishikawa, Daisuke Namikawa, Haruka Tomatsu, Sumire Morohoshi; Takehito Koyasu; Japan 2020, 140 min.

It all started with a series of novels by Kana Akatsuki, featuring Violet Evergarden, a child soldier from an unspecified conflict in the early 20th century. A TV anime version was created in 2018 and streamed at Netflix.

A spin-off feature, Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll was released in 2019, the first release at Kyoto Animation Studio after the deadly arson fire. But Violet Evergarden; The Movie (written by Reiko Yoshida), the final chapter of the series, had to be postponed twice: first as a result of the studio fire, then because of Covid-19.

The feature is delivered in the typical Kyoto animation (‘KyoAni’) style: a romantic melodrama with phantasy elements. Whilst Violet (Ishikawa) dominates the proceedings, Yuris, a young, terminally ill boy is the narrator. He asks Violet, a ‘memory doll’, to write letters to his parents and a friend he fell out with. Violet’s profession as a letter-writer for people who cannot express their feelings in words is also very much a self-help project.

At the end of war, the dying Major Gilbert (Namikawa) confessed to object of his dreams: “I love you”. Violet never really understood the concept of romantic love so he tries to come to terms with her past by expressing emotions on behalf of others as a sort of ghost writer. Eventually her skills become more and more redundant, with the  invention of the telephone, and conflicting memories of Major Gilbert start to surface.

The Movie also takes up strands from the series, with characters Anne and Daisy, whom she had helped with her letters during over the generations featuring in the storyline. The narrative brings to together the interplay between the episodic strands and the overarching history of Violet. It all culminates on a remote island where Gilbert, who lost an eye and an arm during the war, is very much alive. A letter gets Violet to the island, but Gilbert does not want to see her. Spoiler alert: there will be a happy end after the final credits – don’t leave before!

The story plays out against vast and shimmering cityscapes. Computer-generated water sometimes collides with the hand-painted background . Character design is very elegant, conjuring up the many decades of the past the narrative is covering. Equally impressive are the fantastical elements of the mechanical arms. The images focus on small objects in the rooms, the characters are caught in long panning shots, in which the background signifies their emotional state. The very detailed animation of tears – making sobbing really look gorgeous – is certainly a speciality of ‘KyoAni’. But overall, the expressive characters archive a lot with minimal exaggeration.

Violet Evergarden is a feast of visual fireworks, there is so much to admire, feelings and emotions taking centre stage, absorbing us in a storyline that never out stays its welcome despite the prodigious running. A real joy. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 1 JULY 2021

False Positive (2021) TriBeCa 2021

Dir/Wri: John Lee | Cast: Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan, Gretchen Mol, Sophia Bush, Zainab Jah, Josh Hamilton, Sabina Gadecki, Jaygee Macapugay, Danielle Slavick, Lucy Walters, Kelly AuCoin, Nils Lawton, Sullivan Jones | US Fantasy thriller 92′

Ilana Glazer co-wrote the script for False Positive in which she also stars as Lucy, a desperate New Yorker trying to get pregnant with her husband Adrian (Theroux). But this is no ordinary fertility drama – there are quirky bits like the scene where Adrian jacks off to an extreme bondage video to provide the sperm for the procedure – and so we’re not surprised when events turn more sinister as the psychological thriller unfolds with its feint echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, naturally minus Polanski’s iconic allure.

A pompous Pierce Brosnan (channelling Vincent Price) is the archetypal maverick fertility expert (and cosmetic surgeon) Dr Hindle who treats Lucy in his new age clinic where he has masterminded an enigmatic ground-breaking technique. After jumping the queue thanks to Adrian’s medical connections with the good doctor, all goes according to plan and soon Lucy is pregnant with – not one – but three potential babies: twin boys and a singleton girl. But something’s not right. And there’s not room for the three foetuses to develop, so amidst growing paranoia and a need for ‘selective reduction’ Lucy and Adrian must a harrowing decision to abort either the two boys or the girl. And they decide to keep the girl naming her ‘Wendy’ in line with the film’s burgeoning ‘Peter Pan’ motif.

Midsommer and Hereditory DoP Pawel Pogorzelski creates some sinuous visuals which add to a sinister soundscape pulsing away in the background (including a dulcet performance from Marcia Henderson of “Who Am I” from the 1950 Broadway musical Peter Pan). False Positive makes for a chilling addition to the small but perfectly formed fertility horror genre which relies on women’s natural fears and anxieties surrounding safe pregnancy and birth to drive the story forward sending it soaring into stratospheric realms of terror.

To add grist to the fearful misogynist maelstrom, derogatory phrases such as “mummy brain” are frequently bandied about in a patriarchal culture that still seems to persist in today’s medical establishment. Lee interweaves photos from the archives showing the gruesome possibilities when childbirth goes wrong, but this feels tonally out of kilter with the otherwise slick drama unfolding that even hints at artificial selection.

Meanwhile, Lucy is desperately trying to keep her job as a marketing consultant on track. Late in the day she decides to change her ‘birthplan’ after bizarre developments with Dr Hindle cause her to seek out a new midwife, the mysterious Grace Singleton (Zainab Jha).

Convincing performances from the central trio are what makes this compelling, based on an original story by John Lee and Alissa Nutting. This is a stealthy psychological thriller that keeps us glued to the screen despite some awkward elements showing that when the chips are down women can trust no one – least of all other women. That all said, the conclusion is definitely positive. MT

Tribeca Film Festival 2021

 

 

 

The Krays (1990) Blu-ray

Director:Peter Medak Screenwriter: Philip Ridley Cast: Billie Whitelaw Tom Bell Gary Kemp Martin Kemp Susan Fleetwood Charlotte Cornwell, Stephen Berkoff, Alfred Lynch | UK Drama 115′

Peter Medak’s thrilling drama about the Kray twins rattles with wartime angst – there’s an evocative scene in the underground the sound of bombs thundering overhead. The Krays (1933-95/2000) were a product of that stoical generation weaned on rations by a mother as tough as old boots who fought tooth and nail for them – here played by the indomitable Billie Whitelaw in a rather painterly portrayal of the legendary story. That said there’s some brutal violence, and plenty of scarlet bloodshed mostly involving swords.

Although we think of the Ronnie and Reggie Kray as 1960s mobsters it was all over for them by 1968 (they spent the rest of their lives in confinement). Their story really started in in the 1930s where we see them as nasty little boys growing up in the grimy backstreets of Haggerston well before they became the instigators of organised East End crime.

Their’s was not a pleasant household – and the family milieu seems to dominate here, their mother Violet threatening to slit their father’s throat in one of the more feisty scenes, the boys defending their mum against an emasculated father, their consumptive aunt Rose (Fleetwood) hovering in the background with her horror stories of being left at home while the men were being ‘heroes’ on the front.

The twins rise to glory in seen in sedate night clubs and fairground settings where their heyday played out against swing bands, Matt Munro and early Beatles. The deft touchstones of Philip Ridley’s textured script are school life, army service, mob and murder. There’s a sensitive turn from Kate Hardie as Reggie’s put-upon wife Frances. Martin and Gary Kemp are more psychopathic than thuggish as the sleek, twinkly-eyed twins – Medak brushed up against them in the East End while shooting another movie and felt the full force of their power. There’s an iconic turn from Tom Bell as Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie, and where would we be without the snarling Steven Berkoff as George Cornell. And Jimmy Jewel as the grandad. The action is more glamorous than dark and dastardly but, as I said, this is more of a family drama. A social document of backstreet London in the aftermath to the Second World War. MT

NOW ON RELEASE COURTESY OF SECOND SIGHT | 12 JULY 2021

Vier um der Frau (2021)

Dir: Fritz Lang | Cast: Hermann Bottcher, Carola Toelle, Lilli Lohrer, Ludwig Hartau | Germany, Silent, 52′

Now a hundred years old! Despite resurfacing in Brazil in 1987 and now available on YouTube, this dynamic, good-looking little gem by Fritz Lang remains stubbornly overlooked by most film historians, yet is probably as lively as anything Lang ever made, based on a play by Rolf E, Vanloo, and a script by Thea von Harbou.

Like his earlier serial Die Spinnen, Lang’s template at the time was Louis Feuillade’s melodramatic tales of arch criminals transposed to what is presumably contemporary Berlin (although the time it was made is now far closer to Dickens than us), in which morals were loose, most of the characters wear large overcoats and hats signalling their social status (and one of the employees at the local restaurant is a little black kid). The production company plugs itself by making the local cinema prominently on view the Decla-Bioscop; while Teutonic thespians like Rudolf Klein-Rogge play characters with Anglo-Saxon names like ‘Upton’. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1958) Curzon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 4K RESTORATION ON CURZON | 30 AUGUST 2021

 

Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie and Tupac (2021)

Dir.: Nick Broomfield; Documentary with Suge Knight, Tupac Shakur, Biggie, Pam Brooks, Russell Poole, Faith Evans, Greg Kading, Bernard Parks; USA 2021, 105 min.

Director/writer Nick Broomfield provides the sequel to his own documentary Biggie & Tupac (2002) about the founder and CEO of LA’s Death Row Records Suge Knight. Back in 2018 Knight was sentenced to 28 years in jail for the voluntary manslaughter of fellow music producer Terry Carter, CEO of Heavy Weight Records on 29.1.2015 in Compton, California.

The two had been friends; the same can be said about Knight’s relationship with the murdered Rappers Biggie and Tupac. Knight’s incarceration loosened the tongues of many witnesses, and opened up new avenues, including the involvement of the LAPD.

Suge Knight, born 1965 in Compton, Cal., was raised by his mother, keeping him away from the gang violence of the area: he was not allowed to play with certain groups and later had a college career as a footballer, followed by a short stint with the NFL team LA Raiders in 1987. Two years later, he began his career as music producer, which led to his founding of Death Row Records.

The company was soon involved in the Bloods versus Crypts gang warfare which overshadowed the music business along with the ultra violence and abusive lifestyle of his star performers. Substance abuse also featured heavily. Rapper Tupac Shakur was born in 1971 East Harlem to parents who were members of the Black Panther organisation. When he was jailed in 1995 for sexual offences, Knight paid his bail and added Tupac to his DRR stable a year later. Friends of Tupac (amongst them the producer Pam Brooks) remember how prison had changed Shakur: he was no longer interested in the progressive politics of his parents, but indulged in extreme behaviour: the henchmen of DRR even had women fighting each other, watching the proceedings like dog fights.

After Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had left DRR, Shakur was the victim of a shooting in September 1996 in the aftermath to watching a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. He died six days later. Biggie’s drive-by murder a year later in LA, again was credited to Knight, even though some members of DRR claim Tupac had a relationship with Faith Evans, Biggie’s wife.

But LAPD officer Russell Poole (1956-2015) was convinced that two of his colleges from the LAPD, Rafael Perez and David Mack, were involved in the shootings of both men. Poole died of a heart attack, after fighting in vain to uncover the guilt of the two officers. Mack was a former middle-distance runner, participating in the World Championship, but later became a bank robber and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, until his release in 2010.

Even LAPD Police Chief Bernard Parks admitted to the involvement of the two officers. Meanwhile, Biggie’s mother, Voletta Wallace, claimed the LAPD knew the identity of her son’s murderers at the 20th anniversary of his death: A photo of three people, all clad in the red of the Blood gangs, features the daughter of LAPD chief Bernard Parks. It had since disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Last Man Standing is a like an old fashioned who-done-it, with the background of sex and drugs fuelling an over-the-top atmosphere. DoP Joan Churchill adds a certain sense of realism, but Broomfield’s pursuit of the truth still feels very much like fiction. A roller-coaster ride of a very deadly music business. AS

WORLD PREMIERE SCREENING + EXCLUSIVE Q&A WITH NICK BROOMFIELD | HOSTED BY TREVOR NELSON | IN CINEMAS ONE NIGHT ONLY 30TH JUNE  | TICKETS:WWW.LASTMANSTANDING.FILM
| ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 2ND JULY

Piccadilly (1929)

Dir.: Ewald André Dupont; Cast: Jameson Thomas, Gilda Gray, Cyril Ritchart, Anna May Wong, King Hou Chang, Charles Laughton; UK 1929, 109 min.

German director E.A. Dupont (1891-1956) did not make a success of the talkies in the advent of sound cinema, although his features set in the show-biz world: Variety (1925) Salto Mortale and Trapeze (1931) were visually ravishing.

Emigrating to Hollywood in 1933 brought him mostly failure, his twelve US films include the infamous Neanderthal Man from 1953. Piccadilly, based on the script by Arnold Bennett, was later ‘updated’ with scores and sound effects provided by Harry Gordon.

London Nightclub owner Valentine Wilmot (Thomas) is in love with dancer Mabel (Gray), brought in to boost the club’s clientele with her partner Vic (Ritchart). But one night an irate diner (Laughton) complaining about a dirty plate, interrupts Mabel’s performance, sending Wilmot into the kitchen where Shosho (Wong) is entrancing the workers with her table-top dancing routine. Wilmot fires her, and next morning Vic also resigns in a move that will lead to betrayal, lust and murder as he fights to save his club.

Wong captivates with her smouldering charisma DoP Werner Brandes showing the glamorous side of the glittering London nightlife with dreamy images, light and shadow transforming the set into an ethereal fantasy.

Unfortunately, Brandes would stay in Nazi Germany, shooting, among others, Veit Harlan’s propaganda film Der Herrscher (1937). Dupont would follow up with Atlantic, the Titanic story (1929), the major production resulting in a very costly flop despite its star turn Madeleine Caroll.

Anna May Wong soon left Hollywood, disenchanted by the portrayal of Asian characters as evil. Her European career never caught fire, so she returned to Hollywood to co-star in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932) alongside Marlene Dietrich. AS

PICCADILLY NOW ON BFI BLURAY ON 21 JUNE 2021

 

 

Flame in the Streets (1961)

Dir. Roy Ward Baker | Cast: John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Brenda de Banzie, Earl Cameron, Johnny Sekka | UK Drama 93′

Sixty years ago Sylvia Syms bravely accepted two parts as women facing ostracism because of their choice of partner. Most people know about Victim, but far fewer have seen this film, ironically preceded on Talking Pictures by a disclaimer warning audiences that the offensive language belonged to 1961, in those far off days when the opening credits were accompanied by a brief snatch of calypso rather than reggae or rap.

Yet the characters using such language are shown to be in the wrong; while the sentiments expressed – by members of all communities – are still routinely expressed today, but with less candour. And you only have to pick up any newspaper today at random to discover the sores this film reveals are still fresh. @Richard Chatten

Wildmen – Vildmaend (2021)

Dir/Wri: Thomas Dakeskov | Denmark Drama 101′

Another amusing absurdist Danish comedy along the same lines as male midlife crisis films Klown and Another Round.

Written and directed by Thomas Dakeskov it sees married man Martin escape to the wilderness of Norway – aka his ‘man cave’ – in a bid to escape growing up in the modern world and reverting to ‘hunter-gather’ mode, regretting the loss of his bankcard when the going gets tough.

Although somewhat derivative in its narrative pretensions, this is guaranteed to make you laugh – especially the scene where a ‘people carrier’ collides with a moose – and the animal comes out on top. There are some hairy moments, quite literally, when Martin dons an animal skin for a shopping trip to the supermarket – an episode which ends, inevitably  in tears – of hilarity.

On the run from life in the Norwegian mountains Martin (Rasmus Bjerg), freely engages in acts of supreme physical prowess which contrast wildly with his normal humdrum existence, but goes on to confront uncomfortable truths about the masculine reality. The film pokes fun at his macho attempts to look butch in the wild, as opposed to mild-mannered and sophisticated in his urban habitat. And while his ludicrous antics are clearly entertaining to the audience, the humour points a rather derogatory finger at Martin, making him into a pathetic figure of fun, rather than a renaissance renegade. That all said this inventive caper doesn’t aim to plumb the depths of the human psyche, merely to entertain and upliFt. And it does so admirably despite its obvious limitations, never taking itself too seriously. A little gem. MT

NOW ON RELEASE NATIONWIDE \ Tribeca Film Festival 2021

 

 

The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970)

Dir: Irving Rapper |  US Drama 98′

Described by David Thomson as “possibly the most bizarre departure by any director once in steady work”. The Christine Jorgensen Story that explores identity confusion, is virtually a remake by Irving Rapper, the veteran gay director of Hollywood ‘women’s pictures’- then in his seventies – of his 1942 classic Now, Voyager.  Yet Bette Davis looked far more butch in her Warner Bros. prime than John Hansen ever does here.

Rapper was doubtless equipped to empathise with what was troubling his confused young ‘heroine’, and it shows in the film; although the Danish ‘heroine’s transformation is here brought about by surgery, rather than psychoanalysis and a makeover by Perc Westmore and Orry-Kelly.

Based on Jorgensen’s autobiography the film feels like a TV movie of the period, complete with a 50’s-style piano & violin score by the veteran team of Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter, but with the addition of words like ‘clitoris’ and ‘testicles’ to the script, and a glimpse of a penis in a shower-room sequence (was this a Hollywood first?). With women today clamouring to be taken seriously as footballers and for basic training for the armed forces, young George’s dislike for these activities and preference for wearing dresses would not necessarily today be seen as evidence that he’s ‘really’ a woman. The discovery by Professor Estabrook (Will Kuluva) that George’s glands are secreting more oestrogen than testosterone curiously leads him to recommend cutting them off altogether rather than simply injecting him with testosterone. So off to Denmark it is, where the operation he is about to undergo is described in quite some detail by Dr.Dahlman (Oscar Beregi).

We finally meet Christine about two-thirds into the film, when Hansen is transformed into a better-looking version of John Lithgow in The World According to Garp rather than the elegant and articulate woman Jorgensen actually became. That his father is discovered to be waiting for ‘her’ at the airport upon her arrival back in America provides a genuinely touching conclusion. Jorgensen declared herself satisfied with the result; as well as relieved that it didn’t end up as another ‘Myra Breckinridge’ @Richard Chatten

 

Cannes Selection…now complete

There are always a few last minute additions to the official film line-up at Cannes Film Festival, and today Thierry Fremaux completed the Official Selection for the 74th ‘all live edition’ running from 5 -18 July 2021with FROM AFRICA WITH LOVE. Nicolas Bedos, Jean Dujardin and Pierre Niney star in the Final Screening of the 74th Festival de Cannes!

By renaming the closing film as the “Final Screening”, the Festival de Cannes aims to rekindle the tradition of the last screening, drawing inspiration from huge evening galas gone by like the screening of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (in the old Palais in 1982) or Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (in the new Palais in 1991).

This year, the 74th Festival will round off with the premier of the latest chapter in the adventures of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, code name OSS 117, played by Jean Dujardin who will appear onscreen alongside Fatou N’Diaye, Pierre Niney, Natacha Lindinger and the late Wladimir Yordanoff.

Gaspar Noe is back with a docu-drama Vortex, starring Dario Argento, and focusing on the final days of an elderly couple. Press queued all evening at the Marriott Hotel for his previous film Climax in 2018, but this – by its very nature – promises to be a more sober affaire, although with Argento at the helm one never knows.

Once again the films are distinctly Gallic in flavour with three music-themed outings joining the party: TraLaLa is a musical comedy from Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, and Supremes looks at the French band NTM, directed by Audrey Estrougo. Of the Special screenings New Worlds, The Cradle of a Civilisation is Andrew Muscato’s musical documentary, set in Athens, Greece. It captures the final performance of Bill Murray and Jan Vogler’s European “New Worlds” tour.

Mi iubta Mon amour is the directorial debut of actor-turned-filmmaker Noemie Merlant whose smouldering performance in Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire was one of the highlights of Cannes 2019.

For his latest film Where is Anne Frank? the Oscar-nominated Israeli animator Ari Folman has gained special access to the diaries of the tragic young Jewish girl who went into hiding in wartime Holland. Seen through the eyes of her imaginary friend Kitty, to whom Anne dedicated her diary, she wakes up in contemporary Amsterdam and tries to find Anne in modern day Europe. The film plays out of competition.

Mes Freres Et Moi by Yohan Manca completes the line-up at the Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Jodie Foster will receive an honorary Palme d’Or. Spike Lee will preside over the Jury, and the world premiere of Annette with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard will open proceedings.

OUT OF COMPETITION

Where is Anne Frank ? by Ari Folman (Israel)

Animated film

CANNES PREMIERE

Vortex by Gaspar Noé (Argentina – Italy)

starring Dario Argento, Françoise Lebrun and Alex Lutz

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Mes frères et moi by Yohan Manca (France)

starring Sofian Khammes, Dali Benssalah, Judith Chemla, Maël Rouin Berrandou

First feature

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

Tralala by Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu (France)

starring Mathieu Amalric, Mélanie Thierry, Bertrand Belin, Maïwenn, Josiane Balasko, Denis Lavant

Suprêmes by Audrey Estrougo (France)

starring Théo Christine, Sandor Funtek

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Bill Murray’s party: New Worlds, the cradle of a civilization by Andrew Muscato (Greece-USA)

starring Bill Murray and the musicians from New Worlds: Jan Vogler, Mira Wang and Vanessa Perez

Mi iubita, Mon amour by Noémie Merlant (France)

starring Gimi-Nicolae Covaci and Noémie Merlant

First feature

Les Héroïques by Maxime Roy (France)

starring François Creton, Richard Bohringer, Ariane Ascaride, Clotilde Courau, Patrick D’Assumçao

First feature

Are you lonesome tonight ? by Wen Shipei (China)

starring Sylvia Chang, Eddie Peng

First feature

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | 6 – 18 JULY 2021

 

The Savior For Sale: The Story of Salvator Mundi (2020) Sheffield Doc Festival 2021

Dir: Antoine Vitkine | France Doc 95′

Controversy has long surrounded this emotive work of art purportedly by Leonardo da Vinci. Like a beautiful woman, many men have struggled to win her and have succeeded, but then been deceived or outwitted. But the ‘Salvator Mundi’ represents more than just a depiction of Christ, it has a deeper resonance thanks to its title: ‘Saviour of the World’ capturing the zeitgeist of our fragile planet, that resonates beyond Christendom.

Best known in France for his TV outings: ‘Magda Goebels, First Lady of the Third Reich’ (2017) and ‘The President and the Dictator: Sarkozy-Kadafi’ (2015), journalist, writer and director Antoine Vitkine explores the painting’s eventful journey from discovery to oblivion so exposing the vagaries of the international art market. This is a lushly mounted sinuously-scored thriller, its twists and turns revealing some of the most powerful players in the art world, and those making money out of them. It’s a tale of backbiting, greed and hype that shows how leverage from a handful of key players can transform a virtually valueless piece to a painting commanding millions the following day in the hurly burly of market credibility.

From the opening scenes The Savior For Sale bristles with intrigue and skulduggery transporting us into the hushed homes and yachts of the super-rich from Paris to New York, London to Monaco. A masterpiece in investigative journalism the film’s cut and thrust only adds to its allure, showing how the ‘Salvator’s’ attribution to the legendary old Italian master would see its value rise to stellar heights, becoming “the most expensive – and coveted – painting in the world”.

Modest yet deeply resonant its depiction of a serene Christ – not unlike that of the Mona Lisa – the painting’s route to success comes courtesy of a fascinating group of protagonists whose roll-call plays out like a game of Cluedo. There is “The Expert” Martin Kemp; “The Dealer” Warren Adelson; “The Journalist” Scott Reyburn; “The Oligarch” Dmitri Rybolovlev and his Swiss right-hand man Yves Bouvier. Belgian art specialist Chris Deacon also makes his case, and soon the Saudis wade in with their billions. The aim is to prove that Leornardo was the painter, not simply his studio, and there’s a great deal to be gained – and lost – financially in the process. MT

SCREENING DURING SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 2021

Almost Liverpool 8 (2021)

Dir: Daniel Draper | UK Doc, 89′

Daniel Draper makes the Toxteth area of Liverpool cinematic in his summery trip through the streets of the neighbourhood known 50 years ago for its race riots.

Billed as Don McCullin: Almost Liverpool 8 in the Sheffield Doc Festival programme, we were hoping for another look at the renowned photographer’s life. But he only bookends the film chipping in occasionally with memories of a time when he worked on the railways in the 1950s as a teenager, wending his way back and forth between London and the deprived place he recalls as “dark and Satanic” back in the day. As a war photojournalist decades later he would capture the Toxteth community during an era of transition and decline.

McCullin is joined by a motley crew of friendly, laid-back locals who shoot the breeze on camera with Draper, their chats interweaved with Allan Melia’s artfully framed long takes. What emerges is a calm and reflective love letter to a working class district now home to a multicultural bunch who now get along like a house on fire – or so they would have us believe: Victorian churches and mosques standing cheek by jowl.

Liverpool was once a major industrial seaport the maritime trade providing the lucrative backbone of a place whose well built low rise red-brick housing now offers ample opportunity for a chat over the fence or a neighbourly meeting on the doorstep. Roads are named after composers (Brahms, Beethoven etc) and Dickens characters, but there is little evidence of the high-rise housing blocks, crime or the rank social deprivation we had come to associate with the place.

Local Poet Roger McGough is joined by salt of the earth beekeeper Barry Chang; a hairdresser tells of her regular Somalian clientele. Then there’s   community organiser Joe Farrag who laments the loss of local shops that once energised the area when sailors regularly passed through on their way from the docks. An lyrical look at a proud and welcoming Toxteth in 2021.MT

NOW ON RELEASE

SHEFFIELD DOCFEST 2021 UK COMPETITION

 

 

Nashville (1975) Robert Altman Retrospective

Dir.: Rosbert Altman; Cast: Karen Black, Keith Carradine, Henry Gibson. Geraldine Chaplin, Lily Tomlin, Keenan Wynn, Ronee Blakley, Barbara Harris, Scott Glennon, Shelley Duvall, David Hayword, Gwen Welles, Barbara Baxley, David Peel; USA 1975; 160′.

Nashville, undoubtedly director Robert Altman’s greatest feature, was scripted by Joan Tewkesbury and shot by Paul Lohmann: it is still, 26 years later, a magnificent portrait of the American South.

Set in Nashville, Tennessee, is tells the stories of stars, drifters and wanna-bee singers, all fascinated by country music and unaware of anything political going on: the most important agitator is never seen during the Presidential primaries for 1976 election: Hal Philip Walker, an early Donald Trump version, candidate and founder of the radical right ‘Replacement Party’, sends his PR man on a mission to win over musicians for his campaign.

Twenty-four central characters pass the baton around, the playing field gradually growing until violent fragments destroy nearly everyone’s life. Barbara Jean (Blakley) is the archetypal Loretta Young type, mismanaged by her punitive husband, living in her own world, even if on stage – but still remaining the ‘Queen Bee’.

Rival Connie White (Black) makes a good enough stand-in after Barbara, just recovered from treatment on the East-Coast for a burn treatment, has lost it completely in front of a bewildered audience. Singer and promoter Haven Hamilton (Gibson) had opened proceedings with his recording of “We must have done something right to last 200 Years” hymn on the United States. Hamilton is upset with his son Bud (Peel), who has hired the “wrong” pianist. Haven breaks off the session and tells the pianist: “Get a haircut, you do not belong in Nashville”. His companion Lady Pearl (Baxley) is certainly living in the past: she had had worked for the Kennedy brothers in the 1960s and 1968 elections, and can’t get over her frustration about Nixon winning Tennessee by a small margin over JFK in 1960.

Then there is Tom Frank (Carradine) a narcissistic womaniser and singer – Carradine would win the only Oscar for Nashville, for his original song. Tom spends all day and night in bed, inviting women to join him. One of them is Linnea Reese (Tomlin, in her debut), a mother of two deaf children and member of a Gospel Choir. Also to be found between his sheets is BBC reporter Opal (G. Chaplin), who makes the most inappropriate racial comments when interviewing members of the music scene. When she visits a disused car lot, her take on this hyperbole is more suited for the millennium.

Two women try their luck as newcomers: Albuquerque (Harris) is running away from a husband, and trying to get a debut as a singer. She has no idea how her wish will eventually become reality. Sueleen Gay (Welles) is a waitress, who in spite being tone-deaf, tries her luck as a singer: The rowdy audience cajoles her into stripping. There is a quartet of more lowkey participants, led by Mr. Green (Wynn), who is looking after his dying wife in hospital. His niece Joan (Duvall) is an incompetent groupie who never gets to see her aunt or meets the musicians. A uniformed soldier (Glennon) is lurking around Barbara Jean during most of the film, we fear the worst, but the shots at the ending are fired by smart and pleasant Kenny (Hayward).

Nashville is a kaleidoscope of celebrity fandom showcasing the early stages of political manipulating through culture. Haven Hamilton has been given the nod to become the next Governor of the State if he supports Walker. But the drifters and onlookers are given equal screen time for their shattered dreams. A marvellous script which is acted out by a stellar ensemble cast. Nashville remains the benchmark for everything following in its wake. AS

ROBERT ALTMANN RETROSPECTIVE AT BFI Southbank 2021

Rendezvous in July (1949)

Dir/Wri: Jacques Becker | Cast: Daniel Gelin, Brigitte Auber, Nicole Courcel, Pierre Trabaud, Maurice Ronet | France, Drama 102′

One of Jacques Becker’s most financially successful films, this exhilarating slice of postwar Parisian life isn’t quite the first ‘slacker’ film (that distinction probably belongs to Val Guest’s Give Us the Moon five years earlier) – but its freewheeling portrait of the young at play around Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter, aided by tremendous photography by Claude Renoir, vibrantly captures the look and feel of a Paris only recently freed from the dead weight of the Occupation and discovering jazz (and amphicars!).

Strongly anticipating later ‘youth’ subjects like Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) and Marcel Carné’s ‘beat’ film Les Tricheurs (1958), a full ten years before the Nouvelle Vague Becker’s film also discreetly employs the whimsical archaism of irises in and out that later became one of the hallmarks of the new kids on the arrondissement during the early sixties. Among the attractive cast of newcomers, watch out for veteran Gaston Modot playing a professor. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

Directors’ Fortnight | Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (2021)

Cannes Film Festival is only weeks away and the Directors’ Fortnight selection has just been announced screening from 7 to 17 July 202. It’s surprising how many new filmmakers feature in this year’s slate with Britain’s Clio Barnard and Joanna Hogg joining the party with her sequel to her personal feature Souvenir (2019). 

Other noteworthy directors are Romania’s Radu Muntean (One Floor Below), Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro), who joins fellow directors Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) and Francesco Munzi (Anime Neri) in a documentary portrait of Italy’s up and coming generation. Also to look forward to is the latest from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes (Arabian Nights).

A Chiara – Jonas Carpignano 98′

A Night of Knowing Nothing Payal Kapadia (debut) 90′

Ali & Ava – Clio Barnard 93′

Clara Sola – Nathalie Álvarez Mesen (debut) 108′

De bas étage (A Brighter Tomorrow) – Yassine Qnia (debut) 86′

Diários de Otsoga (The Tsugua Diaries) – Miguel Gomes, Maureen Fazendeiro 108′

El empleado y el patron (The Employer and the Employee) de Manuel Nieto Zas 108′

Entre les Vagues (The Braves) d’Anaïs Volpé | 99’1h39

Europa de Haider Rashid – 1h15

Futura de Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher 105′

Întregalde – Radu Muntean – 1h44

Jadde khaki (Hit the Road) – Panah Panahi (Debut) 93′

Les Magnétiques (Magnetic Beats) de Vincent Maël Cardona (debut) 98′

Luaneshat e kodrës (The Hill where Lionesses Roar) de Luàna Bajrami
(debut) 82′

Medusa d’Anita Rocha da Silveira 127′ 2h07

Mon légionnaire (Our Men) de Rachel Lang 106′ Closing Film

Murina d’Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (debut) 92′

Neptune Frost de Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman 105′

Ouistreham (Between Two Worlds) – Emmanuel Carrère 107′ Opening
1h47 – Film d’ouverture

Re Granchio (The Tale of King Crab) d’Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis 90′

Retour à Reims (Fragments) – (Returning to Reims (Fragments) – Jean-Gabriel Périot 83′

The Souvenir Part II de Joanna Hogg – 106′
1h46

Yong an zhen gu shi ji (Ripples of Life) de Shujun Wei – 120′

The Sea Ahead d’Ely Dagher (debut) – 116′

SÉANCE SPECIALE
The Souvenir de Joanna Hogg – 120′

QUINZAINE DES REALISATEURS | 7 -17 JULY 2021

 

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)

Dir: Kier-La Janisse | US, Doc 193’

Everything you wanted to know about horror films: this immersive three hour documentary is an expansive study of the macabre genre of “folk horror”  from the lurid to the surreal and downright ghastly. A gruesome and immersive trip to Hell signposted by the trilogy of cult classics: Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) Piers Haggard’s  Blood of Satan’s Claw and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.

Canadian filmmaker and scholar Kier-La Janisse embellishes her film with insightful talking heads and over a 100 clips from the archives, to explore how “Folk horror” came into being relatively recently, casting a spell over a growing audience with enigmatic qualities often escaping definition yet firmly rooted in the countryside with local mores and primitive superstitions providing its down to earth life blood, sustained by a fear of the unknown. This “juxtaposition of prosaic and uncanny”, coined by author and actor Jonathan Rigby, lies at its heart.

A must for genre fans Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched also provides a valuable potted history for newcomers, divided into six chapters, for ease of reference. Commentatory from occult experts, historians and cult filmmakers enriches the informative brew.

The only two surviving directors from the unholy trilogy also give their pennyworth on their rural cult outings: Robin Hardy’s terrifying ‘pagan meets pious’ tale The Wicker Man (1973) and Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) a tale of villagers fearing possession by the Devil in 17th century Christian England.

Britain has always harked back to past socially and architecturally, and so UK folklore provides a particularly rich trove to draw with its rural  traditions and literary heritage of ghost stories and the supernatural. American directors can mine the puritan sensibilities of the pilgrim fathers onwards for their source of folk horror. Here Robert Eggers talks about his breakout revivalist features The Witch and The Lighthouse. Janisse then skates more broadly over the international scene showing how folk horror in countries such as Australia and South America is largely influenced by Colonialism and its literary traditions of magic realism. Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin also makes an appearance talking about his surreal, award-winning work.

Janisse has crafted a worthwhile and entertaining compendium film that can be enjoyed in an afternoon, or dipped into from time to time. MT

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME |  ROTTERAM FILM FESTIVAL | SUMMER SEASON June 4-6 2021

 

 

 

Sheffield Doc Festival 2021 | TV highlights

Among an exciting array of the latest big screen documentaries, this year’s SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL highlights two new digital and TV productions heading to our screens with a series of quintessentially British stories

All at Sea: Fishing for Britain (w/t)

So disappointing that the British Fishing industry has been suffering of late with the new Brexit regulations. My own great grandfather was a sea captain with his own fleet of trawlers on the Lincolnshire coast so it seems only fitting that the BBC should explore our fishing heritage in this new six part series showcasing the British fishing fleet on a scale not seen before.

It follows boats from all around the nations’ shores plying their trade across a vast expanse of UK waters. Focusing on deep-sea fishing fleets, a key industry in communities from Shetland to Newlyn, this series will dramatically intercut the stories of fishermen who put to sea for a week at a time, work round the clock in all weathers, and do one of the most dangerous, high stakes jobs in Britain.

Each episode will be set over a week at sea, with multiple crews filming simultaneously, capturing the contrasting fortunes of different vessels. With access to boats in every kind of fishery, from multi-million-pound pelagics and supercrabbers to wreck-netters and trawlers, we’ll see characters facing unique challenges and shifting odds as they battle to bring home their catch – hundreds of miles apart, but all sailing the same fine line between risk and reward.

The series will use satellite tracking technology to drive graphics that link these stories and set them in the epic big picture of fishing activity around our coast. While latest-generation camera technology on board the boats captures this most dramatic of precincts.

All at Sea: Fishing for Britain (w/t) (6×60) for BBC One and iPlayer is made by Frank Films

The Nilsen Files: A Very British Crime Stories

In the wake of the BAFTA-winning Yorkshire Ripper Files and the extraordinary revelations of The Shipman Files, filmmaker Michael Ogden will re-examine the case of Dennis Nilsen, convicted in 1983 for the murders of six young men. Focusing on the lives of the victims, he’ll ask why 40 years on they remain just a footnote in this terrible case. Michael will explore not just who these boys and young men were, but also how attitudes at the time allowed their disappearance and murders to be overlooked.

Meeting with former police officers, he’ll discover their regrets about the premature closure of the case, leaving seven murder victims unidentified and families without answers about the fate of their missing children.

This series will upend everything we think we know about this case; exploring the homophobic attitudes that allowed Nilsen’s crimes to go un-investigated for many years. And how attitudes suggested that there was little interest in missing young men, often dismissed simply as ‘drifters’. Understanding the case anew, Michael will seek to show how these attitudes are as dangerous to young men’s lives today as they were almost forty years ago.

The Nilsen Files: A Very British Crime Story (3×60) for BBC Two and iPlayer 

SHEFFIELD DOC FESTIVAL 2021 | JUNE 3 – 14 2021

The Father (2020) Blu-ray

Dir: Florian Zeller | Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell | Drama 97′

If ever there was a film for now it’s The Father. Dementia has become today’s most dread disease – along with cancer – not least because of its emotive and devastating effects on sufferers and loved ones alike as the personality disintegrates in a frightening and often hurtful way casting a dark shadow on entire families as they struggle to make sense of it all as everything changes.

Based on the acclaimed, award-winning play, The Father starts out with a simple idea based on the situation familiar to many of us. Anne (Olivia Colman) realises her 80-year-old father, Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is losing his mind but can do nothing to help him. Anthony refuses a carer determined to control his own destiny while exerting an invidious grip on his frustrated and desperate daughter, who is moving to Paris and needs to ensure his wellbeing.

The Father is rather a triumph for director and playwright Florian Zeller who has already won an Oscar for his clever script nailing the anxiety, frustration and sadness surrounding dementia, and the confusion it causes for the sufferer and those affected who increasingly find themselves at odds with each other.

Anthony thinks a conspiracy is playing out as he continues his life ‘as normal’ believing his daughter (Colman) to be overplaying the situation as she becomes increasingly neurotic and overbearing, according to him. One of the features of the disease it that sufferers confuse members of their family, and Olivia Williams steps in to play the ‘other’ person. Meanwhile Anthony suspects (wrongfully) that things are being done behind his back and this all too familiar aspect of dementia often gives rise to a dark humour that Zeller thoughtfully interweaves into the fractured narrative through a series of surprise events and changes adding a bizarre twist to proceedings.

Hopkins pulls this off brilliantly in a totally convincing performance that sways from outrage to pitiful vulnerability building on his reputation as one of the world’s finest actors. Colman too is impressive as she struggles convincingly between anger and deep sadness. A sibling set-to would have added grist to the storyline, so often family members fall out as they are pitted against one another amid stress and confusion in a battle to comply with the sufferer’s need to divide and rule in the descent in mental mayhem.

The Father is a difficult film to watch – and it will touch a nerve with so many of us – but Hopkins and Colman deliver their best and that’s all that can be hoped for in the circumstances. MT

The Father is on Digital Download 27 August and Blu-ray & DVD 30 August from Lionsgate UK

The Brothers (1947)

Dir: David MacDonald | Cast: Patricia Roc, Will Fyffe, Maxwell Reed, Finely Currie | UK Drama 98′

It’s hard to tell if this barnstorming adaptation of L. A. G. Strong’s novel is ‘serious’ melodrama or a spoof until John Laurie (already rolling his eyes like he was on something) turns up in another even more eccentric additional role in whiskers and pebble lens glasses looking like Corporal Jones’ elderly father as ‘Alistair McDonald’, when you realise the humour must be intentional (although the late Will Fyfe, who compares the heroine to “a daffodil growing on a dung heap” seems the only cast member actually in on the joke).

Maybe the authorities thought it would reconcile audiences mired in drab postwar austerity by showing the Isle of Skye nearly fifty years earlier more visually majestic but less fun to actually experience. (Stephen Dade’s camera – noisily pursued by Cedric Thorpe Davie’s’ music – creates majestic exteriors and interiors worthy of a German silent film).

Arriving at this sty of “crossbred pigs” (where the ratio of males to females already seems unhealthily high) young Patricia Roc finds Scotland even more of a trial than Nova Pilbeam did Wales a year later in The Three Weird Sisters. @ Richard Chatten

 

 

Petrov’s Flu (2021) | Cannes 2021

Dir: Kiril Serebrennikov | Cast: Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova, Yulia Boris and Yuri Kolokolnikov | USSR, Drama

Petrov’s Flu, the new film by Kirill Serebrennikov marks the third time in a row for the Russian director at the Cannes Film Festival, uniting him once again with Semyon Serzin, the star of his 2018 drama Leto. His standout thought-provoking religious drama The Student (2016) screened at Un Certain Regard and won that year’s Francois Chalais Award.

Based on the novel “The Petrovs In and Around the Flu” by Alexey Salnikov, PETROV’S FLU is a deadpan, hallucinatory romp through post-Soviet Russia. With the city in the throes of a flu epidemic, the Petrov family struggles through yet another day in a country where the past is never past, the present is a booze-fueled, icy fever dream of violence and tenderness, and where – beneath layers of the ordinary – things turn out to be quite extraordinary.

Set somewhere between reality and imagination, PETROV’S FLU is a visually arresting experience: rough, funny, violent and psychedelic, and yet tender and poetic. A tale that is going to stick in the viewer’s mind for a long time after the credits roll. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2021 | COMPETITION

 

The Last Film Show (2021) TriBeCa 2021

Dir/Wri: Pan Nalin | Cast: Bhavin Rabari, Richa Meena, Dipen Raval, Rahul Koli | India, Drama 110′

The Last Film Show is one of the most buzz worthy titles at this year’s TriBeCa film festival. Essentially India’s answer to Giuseppe Tournatore’s 1988 cult classic Cinema Paradiso it’s a lush nostalgic crowdpleaser beautifully written and directed by Pan Nalin whose Angry Indian Goddesses garnered acclaim as India’s first female buddy movie back in 2015.

A mischievous nine-year-old boy called Samay is the film’s pre-teen hero, a cross between between Toto’s child and teenager – as he never gets any older in this version – he’s altogether more sullen too without the endearing charm of Toto, but cheekily played by the tousled-haired Richa Meena who is savagely beaten by his father when he plays truant after discovering his secret new hobby.

In early scenes we see Samay (Rabari) and his mates hitching a ride on a train  trundling through the remote Gujarat village where he lives with his parents and younger sister, finding their way to a rundown cinema where the boy bribes the hungry projectionist (Dipen Raval channelling a much leaner Philippe Noiret) with the lunchbox prepared for him by his mother.

Samay slips into a daily routine captivated by his newfound love for cinema, offering Bapuji his lunch box in exchange for the best seat in the house – the projection booth. And when the cinema goes digital from 35mm, the rites of passage narrative sees Samay and his mates setting up their own projection suite, as their parental ties finally loosen.

Pan Nalin pays tribute to the cinema of yesterday with this vibrantly cinematic homage to the magic of film, its ability to unite and uplift seen through the eyes of a naughty young boy. MT

Tribeca Film Festival 2021 | 10 JUNE, 2021 WORLD PREMIERE

The Committee (1968)

Dir: Peter Sykes, Wri: Max Steuer | Musical Drama | Cast: Paul Jones, Tom Kempinski, Robert Langdon, Pauline Munro | UK 58′

To grasp where this film is coming from I guess you’d have to read the short story by Max Steuer (originally a dream) on which it is based. It plays as a bargain basement melange of Robbe-Grillet and Kafka, with the attention immediately grabbed by the arresting title sequence juggling mug-shots of the three main protagonists to a sinister blurping accompaniment on the soundtrack; but which is soon allowed to dissipate by what follows. For a film that begins with the central figure decapitating a total stranger on a whim, The Committee is an incongruously well-mannered, very British affair – albeit with hip sixties trimmings in the form of a soundtrack by Pink Floyd and a personal appearance by Arthur Brown.

Ian Wilson’s cool black & white photography is presumably intended to evoke L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, and as in Marienbad there’s a lot of talk but very little actually said. The plush backdrop is here provided by the London School of Economics, where Steuer – author of ‘The Scientific Study of Society’ (2003) has been ensconced in the philosophy department since 1959, and was at the time of the making of ‘The Committee’ a lecturer in economics and social sciences. The endless gnomic prattle may be a joke at the expense of his colleagues there. @Richard Chatten

THE COMMITTEE is available on Amazon

La Civil (2021) Cannes – Un Certain Regard 2021

Dir: Teodora Ana Mihai | Cast: Arcelia Ramirez, Alvaro Guerrero, Jorge A Jimenez, Ayelen Muzo | Belgium. Drama 140′

La Civil is only the third Belgian Flemish feature of recent years to be included in the prestigious official Un Certain Regard sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Another startling episode in the history of Latin America was the inspiration for this feature debut from Belgian-Romanian director, Teodora Ana Mihai. This time we’re in Mexico channelling the tragic real life experience of Miriam Rodríguez through the character of a young mother Cielo who is desperately looking for her daughter abducted by members of a drug cartel. Once again, the authorities are not much use so Cielo (a feisty Arcelia Ramirez ) takes things into her own hands gradually turning from ordinary housewife into avenging activist, all for the love of her daughter.

Visually striking and packed with gritty authenticity thanks to a script from Texan born Mexican author Habacuc Antonio de Rosario the film comes alive in relating the ongoing horror of families blown apart by drug cartels, not unlike the British equivalent in the recent County Lines. At its heart La Civil is about unconditional parental love, a mother refusing to back down in the face of a venal enemy, prepared to do anything to save her child, rather like this year’s other Mexican survival drama Amparo playing in the Semaine de la Critique section.

Here the camera sees things from the victim’s point of view with strong atmospheric echoes of the US TV crime series Narcos. MT

UN CERTAIN REGARD CANNES | JULY 12TH PREMIERE

Basic Instinct (1992) Blu-ray release

Dir: Paul Verhoeven, Wri: Joe Eszterhas | Cast: Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, George Dzundza, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Leilani Sarelle | US Thriller, 127′

A lush and stylish Neo noir thriller capturing an era of permissiveness and danger its sultry assured heroine remaining mysteriously foxy until the final reveal, the taut and twisty narrative overpowered by the cinematic allure. Basic Instinct has a potent whiff of sex and seduction about it, and that’s what sealed in the public imagination.

San Francisco seemed the right setting, more alluring that LA and laid back than New York, Jerry Goldsmith languorous score striking just the right mood for love, and murder. Sharon Stone at the height of her powers, the perfect choice to play Joe Eszterhas’ liberated woman (the script garnering him a $3 million pay check), attractive, sexually voracious, Mustang driving and smart, with just a hint of vulnerability setting the detectives against each other in their bid to prove her guilty of a crime. But one of them falls prey to her charms. And the thrill of the chase is his undoing. To be fair, he’s ripe for exploitation by this femme fatale.

Michael Douglas was also at the top of his game having won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Oliver’s Stones’ Wall Street. As detective Nick “Shooter” Curran, Stone’s Tramell whips him up into a frenzy, his addictive personality unleashed into a toxic brew of indignation and lust. So his ditches his on off girlfriend/mentor (Tripplehorn): “We went to bed ten maybe fifteen times – it wasn’t memorable enough to call a relationship”.

The film walks a fine line between revelation and enigma, giving us just enough to draw us further into the murder mystery, never revealing the truth in a finale that will remain ambiguous. MT

ON 4K UHD COLLECTOR’S EDITION STEELBOOK, BLU-RAY DVD and DIGITAL JUNE 14, 2021

 

 

The Skull (1965) TPTV

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

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

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

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | PRIME VIDEO

Scarecrow | Pugalo (2021) IFFR 2021

Dir: Dmitri Davydov | Cast; Valentina Romanova-Chyskyyray, Anatoly Struchkov, Artur Zakharov, Sargylana Lukovtseva | USSR Drama 72′

Sakha director Dmitry Davydov, a rising star internationally, has built an intriguing drama with horror genre elements on the basis of this frosty story about a social outcast ostracised by uncompromising locals whose obdurate demeanour reflects their dour surroundings and harsh outlook on life.

A modern day fable of witchery is wrapped round an astonishing central performance from Valentina Romanova-Chyskyyray who plays a healer who lives in the vast, snowy expanse of the Sakha Republic in Russia. Ostracised by the local population despite her proven supernatural powers, she is clearly a neutralising conduit of disease and toxic negativity, suffering grotesquely- or even entering a trance-like state each time she treats a patient, making this feel authentic as well as intriguing and visually arresting with its evocative occasional score that features the ‘krymppa’, a rustic violin-like instrument.

Enigmatic, spare on dialogue and immaculately photographed in picturesque widescreen long takes and in intimate close-up by Ivan Semyonov in a monochrome palette of taupe and snowy greys, Scarecrow is one of the strongest, recent examples of the flourishing Sakha cinema, where local makers stray beyond the confines of Russian cinema, creating their own cinematic identity.

Like many other Sakha makers, Davydov is a self-taught director who combines serious drama with genre elements, Sakha folklore and landscapes. The disturbing scene, shot in one long take, in which the troubled lead takes great gulps from a vodka bottle whilst crying, is haunting, mesmerising and memorable. MT

ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL | SUMMER SEASON | 3 -6 JUNE 2021

The Day Today | Au jour d’aujourd’hui (2021) IFFR June 2021

Dir/scr: Maxence Stamatiadis | Doc with Suzanne Mouradian, Edouard Mouradian. Sci-fi mokumentary, France. 67′

Artificial intelligence can unite us with a loved one, as we saw in the recent British sci-fi flick Archive. In his documentary debut Franco-Greek director Maxence Stamatiadis goes a step further showing what could happen in real life.

The mockumentary mishmash of art installation, archive footage, sci-fi,  and droll satire is very much redolent of recent Greek ‘weird wave’ fare. Close-up camerawork projects us forward to the near future in Paris where an elderly couple are going through the motions of everyday life. Still very much in love with her husband Edouard, 88 year old Suzanne Mouradian is addicted to sharing kitten videos and her innermost thoughts on losing her soulmate on social media through her various devices, Edouard (1929-2013) meanwhile puts up with her tender overtures, secretly yearning for a second chance as he struggles on resentfully with his pills, and his glasses, their obnoxious grand-daughter laying down the law on impromptu visits.

My own father once said to me: just because you’re old you don’t change, ‘you still have the same ideals, and romantic desires’. And Stamatiadis captures this couple’s romantic affection and closeness drenching his story in documentary-like authenticity, using his grandparents as the lead characters clearly intensifies the experience; the knowledge that life is coming to and end lacing the film with a melancholic tristesse heightened barely disguising his subversive humour with a sultry Claude Chabrol style occasional score.

The narrative slides back and forward beginning in Les Pavillons-sous-Bois in 2013 where the couple live out a claustrophobic domestic existence darkened to assist their addiction to technology. Moving on to 2024, Suzanne is now a nostalgic widow and has found an internet site (The Day Today) that bizarrely enables her to recreate Edouard, right down to that burgundy jacket he wore the time that love was in the air (“il etait si chouette”) courtesy of a volunteer ‘swapper’.

So along comes the new version of Edouard his latent dark side this time ramped up: he tools with a flick-knife and sports gaudy knucke-dusters along with his pink halo. Monosyllabic, churlish and generally unbiddable to Suzanne’s constant need to control, he even darts demonic looks in her direction while she slaves over his ‘petites tartines’ and lovely prepared dinners. While Edouard is own on his mysterious evening strolls, Suzanne resorts to her devices, describing him as “tragic”, the whole endeavour as “mal foutu” but carries on all the same with a “better the devil you know” acceptance of her new hubby.

The Day Today is a darkly delicious satire of modern life, highlighting the perils of internet dating, artificial intelligence and even our human tendency to go with the flow even when the going gets rough. MT

IFFR CONTINUES ITS SUMMER FESTIVAL | 2 – 6 June 2021

 

In the Heights (2020)

Dir.: Jon M. Chu; Cast: Anthony Ramos, Melissa Barrera, Leslie Grace, Corey Hawkins, Jimmy Smits, Gregory Diaz IV, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Stephanie Beatriz, Olga Merediz; USA 2021, 143 min.

Director Jon M. Chu (Filthy Rich Asians) is behind this dizzying adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights (written before Hamilton, when Miranda was still a student), based on the script of the original writer Quiara Alegria Hudes.

Released a year late due to the Pandemic, Heights is a musical extravaganza, combining Hollywood, hip hop and pop, with the narrative serving primarily as a bridge between the dance numbers, brilliantly choreographed by Christopher Scott.

The titular Heights are in Washington Heights, a 40-block ‘hood in New York City, that starts at 155th Street. Originally home to Jewish and Irish immigrants, and is now dominated by Latinos; with Miranda writing very much about his own experience. There is a permanent carnival atmosphere, spiced by social commentary – the fight for the much coveted “Green Cards”, while avoiding the clutches of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), commonly known as ‘Dreamers’.

The action is centred around two couples: bodega-owner Usnavi de la Vega (Ramos) is supported by his sidekick Sonny (Diaz IV), and madly in love with Vanessa (Barrera), who works for fierce real-life couple Daniela (Rubin-Vega) and Carla (Beatriz). Vanessa dreams of moving downtown and becoming a designer, but can’t get the finance.

Then there is Benny (Hawkins), a black guy who is dating Nina (Grace), the daughter of the cab company owner Kevin Rosario (Smits), Benny’s boss. Kevin is helping his daughters through law school at Stanford University, But Nina is unhappy at the ‘posh’ place of learning when she is mistaken for a waitress at faculty meetings. Nina decided to quit to the chagrin of her father.  Benny wants Nina to stay for his own sake, and the knowledge, that she help the fight against the authorities. Finally, there is Abuela Claudia (Merediz), the community ‘matriarch’, who, like many of her generation, wonder whether the sacrifices made for their kids have really helped in realising the American Dream.

Powerful songs”Carnival del Barrio” and the jubilant “96,000 Dollars” really set the night on fire along with a dancing couple in the sizzling set piece outside a tower building, the tenants looking down in disbelief. But the visual highlight captures the spirit of Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams, with 500 extras celebrating summer in the local lido.

In the Heights is intoxicated by its permanent carnival atmosphere, a barely disguised feeling of melancholia permeates this need for make-believe, best symbolised by Usnavi, an unreliable narrator, who relates the story to a small group of children at a more than perfect beach in the Dominican Republic. But overall this is a big party, the plot a side-show with its sleek social commentary, vibrant visuals provided by DoP Alice Brooks. The film strikes just the note for the re-opening of cinemas. It might be overlong, overdue, and still threatened, but relentless in spirit, nevertheless. AS

The Silent Enemy (1930)

Dir: H P Carver, Wri: W Douglas Burden | US Doc 84′

The makers of this dramatised documentary, following in the footsteps of Nanook of the North (1922) about the Ojibway Indians, returned after spending a year in Northern Ontario. They brought with them 25,000 feet of silent footage shot by the veteran Hollywood cameraman Marcel Le Picard. By the time the footage had been made into a feature, silent film had long since become a thing of the past.

Before Paramount could release it, The Silent Enemy had to be transformed into a part-talkie through the addition of a short opening speech to camera by Chief Yellow Robe – who had played Chetoga in the film – along with a synchronised organ score.

As usual the villain of the piece is the witch doctor, and as previous reviewers have commented some of the scenes must have been staged for the makers to have been able to have had their cameras in precisely the right place at the right time; and some of the wildlife is extremely roughly treated (including a couple of extremely cute bear cubs that the hero has just orphaned) in a way that would draw screams today from the American Humane Association, amongst others. The title by the way refers to hunger. @Richard Chatten

Cannes Film Festival | Programme 2021 announced

Thierry Fremaux looked proud and relaxed to confirm that the 74th Cannes Film Festival programme will go ahead from 6 – 17 July, two months later than its normal May edition.

Only one journalist looked on at the Paris Press conference as Thierry announced this year’s programme during a cosy chat with Festival president Pierre Lescure. The two Frenchmen laughed and bantered voluably – it seems that all is well on the Cote d’Azur, so far. It remains to be seen whether the British press corps and distributors will be able to make it due to government restrictions.

The twenty four films selected from almost 20,000 will include festival regulars Hong Sang-soo, Arnaud Desplechin, Mathieu Amalric, Asghar Farhadi and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Sean Penn will also be there with Flag Day  – his previous feature The Last Face screened to mass walkouts back in 2016.

Appropriately, female directors are there in force, and Spike Lee will finally get a chance to head up the main jury after last year’s fiasco was cancelled due to the pandemic.

French director Leos Carax is also back with the festival opener Annette – also in competition – his last Cannes feature was the astonishing Denis Lavant starring Holy Motors (2013, now a firm cult classic. And Finnish director Juho Kuosmenan whose breakout Un Certain Regard winner The Happiest Day in the Life of Olii Maki enters the main competition with Compartment Number 6. Justin Kurzel is also back with Nitram after his stunning version of Macbeth, in comp five years ago.

Britain will also feature with Andrea Arnold’s latest Cow, and Mothering Sunday, based on a novel by Graham Swift (who also wrote Last Orders and Waterland), forming part of the new Cannes Premiere strand, dedicated to first features.

From the US, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, will also finally get a premiere, after missing its chance last year. And Todd Haynes will be there with a new documentary The Velvet Underground. 

The Un Certain Regard sidebar, the home for edgier competition fare features Kagonada’s latest After Yang, Alexei German Jr’s follow up to Dovlatov, Delo (House Arrest) and Tatiana Huezo’s Noche de Fuego.

Competition

Annette – Leos Carax (also opening night film)
Benedetta – Paul Verhoeven
Bergman Island – Mia Hansen-Love
Drive My Car – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
A feleségem története (The Story of My Wife) – Ildikó Enyedi
Flag Day – Sean Penn
La Fracture – Catherine Corsini
The French Dispatch – Wes Anderson
Ha’berech (Ahed’s Knee) – Nadav Lapid
Haut et Fort (Casablanca Beats) – Nabil Ayouch
Un héros (A Hero) – Asghar Farhadi
Hytti Nro 6 (Compartment No.6) – Juho Kuosmanen
Les Intranquilles (The Restless) – Joachim Lafosse
Julie (The Worst Person in the World) – Joachim Trier
Lingui – Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Memoria – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Nitram – Justin Kurzel
Les Olympiades (Paris 13th District) – Jacques Audiard
Par un demi clair matin – Bruno Dumont
Petrov’s Flu – Kirill Serebrennikov
Red Rocket – Sean Baker
Titane by Julia Ducournau
Tout s’est bien passé – François Ozon
Tre piani by Nanni Moretti

Un Certain Regard

After Yang – Kogonada
Blue Bayou – Justin Chon
Bonne Mère – Hafsia Herzi
Commitment Hasan – Hasan Semih Kaplanoglu
Delo (House Arrest) – Alexey German Jr.
Freda – Gessica Geneus
The Innocents – Eskil Vogt
Lamb – Valdimar Jóhansson
Moneyboys – C.b Yi
Noche de fuego – Tatiana Huezo
Un monde – Laura Wandel

Cannes Premiere

Cette musique ne joue pour personne (Love Songs for Tough Guys) – Samuel Benchetrit
Cow – Andrea Arnold
Evolution – Kornél Mundruczo
In Front of Your Face – Hong Sang-Soo
Mothering Sunday – Eva Husson
Serre-moi fort (Hold Me Tight) – Mathieu Amalric
Tromperie (Deception) – Arnaud Desplechin
Val – Ting Poo and Leo Scott

Out of Competition

Aline – Valérie Lemercier
Bac Nord – Cédric Jimenez
De son vivant – Emmanuelle Bercot
Emergency Declaration – Han Jae-Rim
Stillwater – Tom McCarthy
The Velvet Underground – Todd Haynes

Special screenings

Cahiers noirs (Black Notebooks) – Shlomi Elkabetz H6 – Yé Yé
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass – Oliver Stone
Jane par Charlotte – Charlotte Gainsbourg
O marinheiro das montanhas (Mariner of the Mountains) – Karim Ainouz

Midnight screenings

Oranges sanguines (Bloody Oranges) – Jean-Christophe Meurisse

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 6 – 17 JULY 2021

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017) Prime

Dir: Paul McGuigan | Cast: Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Kenneth Cranham, Julie Walters | UK Drama 105′

Years later I discovered that during the late sixties, Veronica Lake and I had both been living in Ipswich at the same time; and at the Sheffield Crucible in 1979 I actually saw Gloria Grahame in the same production of ‘The Glass Menagerie’ we see her preparing for in the opening scene (I also later watched my own mother succumb to cancer.) Gloria had looked just as she had in her Hollywood prime, and I was astonished when only a couple of years later she joined the ages.

Annette Bening is too distinctive-looking in her own right, doesn’t have Ms Grahame’s slinky eyes, pouting lips, or even attempt her distinctive gurgling voice; but brings her own authentic movie star quality to the part – along with the appropriate vulnerability; it also seamlessly synchronises archive footage of the real Grahame into the narrative, based on the book by Peter Turner.

It’s strange to see a time I was actually living through now part of history, a fact underlined when a publican informs the young hero that his pint is 90p. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Running Against the Wind (2021)

Dir: Jan Philipp Weyl | Cast: Ashenafi Nigusu, Mikayas Wolde | Drama, 119′

A feel good film about sport, friendship and ambition Running Against the Wind, sees two friends growing up in a remote village drawn together by their love of running, a sport that has long been associated with this now beleaguered nation which has produced two-time Olympic gold medal winner Haile Gebrselassie – who has a cameo in the film – and long-distance runner Muktar Edris.

But the boys’ lives diverge when Solomon (Wolde) leaves for Addis Ababa to become a professional photographer and Abdi (Nigusu) pursues his running career. They will meet again under darker skies.

German filmmaker Weyl has put a great deal of thought into his feature debut – clearly a ‘method director’ he has immersed himself in the country’s history and culture, even learning Amharic, one of Ethiopia’s eight major languages, to make a story that feels gritty and authentic with the bond of friendship at its core. Mateusz Smolka’s widescreen visuals capture the magnificent scenery and the intimacy of the human story with its universal appeal. MT

NOW ON BLURAY and QUALITY DIGITAL PLATFORMS from 11 JUNE 2021

 

Mandabi (1968)

Directed by Ousmane Sembène. Starring Makhouredia Gueye, Ynousse N’Diaye, Isseu Niang, Mustapha Ture, Farba Sarr.

Directed, written and produced by the legendary, ‘father of African film’ Ousmane Sembène, Mandabi was originally made in 1968 and won the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival. 

There’s an elegant simplicity to Sembène‘s cinema that makes it a joy to watch. This second feature was the first ever made in the Wolof language—and glows with its involving narrative, convincing overblown characters and spectacular sense of place.

Adapting his own novella – Sembène crafts a scathing satire of society in his native Senegal, scarred by corruption, greed, and poverty in a post-colonial disarray with its own hierarchical system led by head honcho, Ibahima Dieng, an obnoxious self-entitled bully (Gueye) who is pictured enjoying the attentions of a local street barber in the opening scenes.

Presiding over his large family and two wives who pander to his every need, Ibrahima is a penniless proligate who lives on a mountain of debt. And when a nephew in Paris sends a generous money order back home to Dakar, for a time is looks like Ibrahima’s lucky break, but it isn’t. And French colonialism is to blame for what happens next – as a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolds.

While we hate him for his pompousness, Ibrahima also has our sympathy. The trials and tribulations he experiences are only too familiar red-tape wise. Absurdist humour takes the edge off the harsh realities of life in this beautiful but impoverished corner of Africa, Paul Soulignac’camerawork adding to the allure of this neorealist gem. MT

MANDABI is in cinemas June 11, available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from June 28 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LJ5RJ8wOg

Treasure City | Bekeido (2020)

Director: Hajdu Szabolcs; Cast: Abel Krocovay, Orsolya Töth, Arpad Schilling, Fanni Wrochna; Hungary/Romania 2020, 92 min.

Hungary has lost the will to live according to Hajdu Szabolcs (The Gambler) who looks at the lives of a handful of disorientated Hungarians struggling to make sense of it all.

Demonstrators are seen clashing with police, while opposition activists accuse Victor Orban’s semi-fascist government of rising violence and mass immigration. Weirder still, Treasure City is actually set in the Romanian city city of Cluj-Napoca.

A subtle mix of nocturnal urban tales Treasure City pictures the dark side of sexual, political and romantic relationships. Dorottya (Wrochna) is accused by her female boss of lying and incompetence and begs for another chance. A row breaks out in a florists where Alma (Töth) and her daughter Johanna (Palfi) insults the female shop assistant with an unprovoked, racist attack, apologising profusely when the worker phones the police

In Treasure City one event connects to another in a post-covid metaphor exposing anger, frustration and inertia. Life is no worse than it was, in the 21st century there are just many more ways to complain about it all. And the pandemic has pushed everyone to the brink emotionally and physically, the gulf widening between native and foreigner, rich and poor, teen and parent. Even friendships have suffered as we are pushed into banal backwaters stifled of creativity, the window of freedom turned into a mirror focussing on our own inadequacies and shortcomings.

Essentially a series of twenty two interconnecting storylines Treasure City is really a metaphor for our post-covid world, exposing the anger, frustration and inertia.

DoP Banto Csaba uses magic realism to create a nightly universe of turmoil, misunderstandings and emotional frustration. Treasure City is very much a case of Bunuel meets Michael Haneke: not for everyone, but the committed will certainly enjoy themselves. AS

ON RELEASE FROM 18 JUNE 2021

 

Two Way Stretch (1960)

Dir: Robert Day | Cast; Peter Sellers, David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Irene Handly | UK Comedy 78′

In 1973 the Allans opined of this little gem that “looking back, Sellers may feel was the peak of his career. After this, he became a major international star and the fun seemed to go out of his films.” An ego like Sellers is unlikely to have agreed with such a verdict and in 1960 his career was in fact ascending fast until his traumatic near-death experience in 1964.

However, his obsession shortly after making this film with the very married Sophia Loren marked a further decline in his mental state and his increasingly self-centred behaviour on set culminated in various psychotic episodes during the making of Dr. Strangelove, (for which he was nominated for a Oscar and which definitely DID constitute the peak of his career), and he had made himself absolutely detested on the set of Kiss Me Stupid before being forced to drop out by a near-fatal series of heart attacks; after which his films became almost consistently unwatchable.

To return to happier days, however, among a wonderful supporting cast particular credit is due to Lionel Jeffries as the first of two extremely stupid upholders of the law (the second being Parker of the Yard in The Wrong Arm of the Law). The latter was stupid but harmless, but Sidney Crout (“Shut up, I’m talking!!”) is almost as terrifying as his Queensbury in the same year’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde and makes Mackay in ‘Porridge’ look as soft-hearted as Mr.Barrowclough. It’s hard to believe Jeffries was only 33 when he made this. @Richard Chatten

 

Blind Ambition (2021)

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

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

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

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

 

The Killing of Two Lovers (2020)

Dir/Wri: Robert Machoian | Cast: Clayne Crawford, Sepideh Moafi, Chris Coy, Avery Pizzuto, Arri Graham, Ezra Graham, Jonah Graham, Bruce Graham, Barbara Whinnery | US Drama 84′

A searingly honest portrait of relationship breakdown plays out like a social realist thriller in the bleak big sky country of snowy Utah.

Wrapped around a simmering central performance from Clayne Crawford who co-wrote the script and plays David, a mixed-up musician who is barely tolerating a break from his marriage to Niki while they ‘work things out”. Niki meanwhile has taken a lover – Derek – into the family home she shares with their four kids, two boys and a teenage girl, who are all apposed to this new set-up.

David is out on limb in many ways – rather like Adam Driver’s character in Marriage Story – he’s in a no-win situation, an articulate wife holding all the cards. An unemployed musician and part-time carer for his ageing father – Bruce Graham in amusing vignette – David also acts as house husband to Niki and the kids. But his self esteem has hit rock bottom, and we see him toying with a gun in the opening scene as he agonises over killing the titular sleeping couple now occupying his own marital home.

The background to this sorry story is left to our imagination – but we can scope out the scene: Niki is sick of running the show financially, David possibly not pulling his weight, so they go for a trial separation, David unable to get Niki or his beloved kids out of his head. We also see the couple declaring love for one another – it’s a familiar situation, and we feel for them both.

The tautly spare narrative gives nothing away and wastes no time in words. It’s an astonishing first feature for writer-director Robert Machoian who joins Clayne Crawford in the writing of an intimate, intense and incendiary realist drama that bursts into flames in the breathtaking final scene that will leave you gasping with its brutal impact.

An angsty occasional percussive score drives the action forward, sometimes echoing gunfire: it’s a bewildering sound technique. Worth mentioning also is the grainy look of the film shot by Oscar Ignacio Jiménez in the boxy claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio used in the silent era, making the emotional impact more keenly felt. MT

ON BFI PLAYER FROM 9 DECEMBER 2021

 

 

 

The Red Pony (1949) Prime

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

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

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

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

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Babadook (2014) Bluray release

Dir: Jennifer Kent | Cast: Essie Davies, Noah Wiseman, Douglas Henshall Aus Horror, 94′

When it comes to home invasion thrillers it doesn’t get much scarier than this Australian shocker from Jennifer Kent that started life as a short film called The Monster in 2005. Over the next decade Kent tooled away at the narrative and in 2014 THE BABADOOK was born. It went on to win over fifty international awards from critics and viewers alike. Kent successfully employs every horror trope in the book along with a discombobulating soundscape to create a cumulatively distressing psychological thriller that feels real and yet completely outlandish at the same time with its violent visual and emotional onslaught .

Amazingly THE BABADOOK was also Kent’s first full length feature, and worth watching for its sensational central performance from Essie Davis as Amelia, a bereaved single mother still going through the trauma of her husband’s death in a car crash minutes before she gave birth to her only child, Samuel (Wiseman). The two hunker down in their dour Victorian house on the outskirts of Adelaide, where the boy becomes obsessed with a children’s book entitled Mr Babadook, a dark demonic raven-like creature who gradually becomes the vehement vector for their mutual misery and paranoia.     

At times unbearable to watch it’s the way little Samuel bears the brunt of his mother’s violent anguish that makes this so horrifying and heartfelt. There’s a visceral longing and a sexual yearning in Amelia that tips the feature into full blown Gothic territory. And as usual the family dog has to die. MT

The Babadook: Limited Edition 4K/ Blu-ray is now 28th June 2021 from Second Sight Films.

Death on the Streets (2021) IFFR 2021

Dir.: Johan Carlsen; Cast: Zack Mulligan, Katie Folger, Chris Abel, Tammy Hansard Hernandez; Germany/Denmark/Greece 2020, 93 min.

Homelessness has reached a critical level in these pandemic times where businesses have simply disappeared overnight leaving those previously gainfully employed on the scrap heap.

Danish born director/co-writer Johan Carlsen looks at the plight of Kurt a casual worker in rural northern Illinois. Death of the Streets shows how Kurt simply falls out of a society that doesn’t need him any more. Playing out like a research project the film is done with great dignity and understatement.

Kurt (Mulligan) is a tractor driver helping with the maize harvest. He loses his job at the end of the season in a “don’t ring us, we’ll ring you” fashion. There is an offer of a loan. But Kurt is perplexed, he never bargained for this to happen. His caring wife, Sarah (Folger) looks after the couple’s two boys, but Kurt is deeply affected by his new unemployed status and changing dynamic in his role as former head of the family. Old wounds also open with his father-in-law (Abel) who has never respected him, believing that his attractive and intelligent daughter deserved better.

The family has a whip round but Kurt rejects their offer of help. His mother (Hernandez) turns to God asking Kurt to join her in church. But Kurt is adamant. He refuses to take any “hand-outs”. A job interview comes up in the insurance business. But Kurt is clearly not a salesman and has difficultly presenting himself well at interview.

Shamed by his loss of face, Kurt packs his bags and makes his way to Atlanta City where he sleeps under the piers, his mental health gradually going down hill as a chasm opens up between him and his family. Somehow Kurt seems pre-destined to end up a drifter. Like a puppy-dog, he’s willing and keen but unable to understand the basic structures of society, raising questions about his own childhood upbringing. Even at the end of the film his face looks totally unmarked – as if nothing has happened.

DoPs Eric Ferranti and Jide Tom Akileminu creates a great sense of place in the hostile environment seen from Kurt’s POV as he drifts into nothingness, echoed in a bleached out aesthetic eventually morphing into black and white. Death on the Streets is not a political movie, more an intense study chronicling a soul who falls through the cracks of a society he struggled to join. AS

IFFR 2021 CONTINUES ITS LIVE SUMMER SHOW | JUNE 2021

Agony (2020)

Dir: Michele Civetta | Cast: Asia Argento, Jonathan Caouette, Claudia Salerno, Nick Daly, Ninetto Davoli, Franco Nero, Monica Guerritore |

In this fantasy melodrama, New Yorker Isidora (Argento) gets hit by a bombshell in the opening scene – the mother she thought had died in the 1970s has only just departed this world leaving her troubled daughter Isadora the marchese of an extensive Tuscan estate.

Once in Tuscany (actually Viterbo slightly further south) strange things start to happen and Isadora is plagued by hallucinations of a grey-haired wailing woman who haunts the medieval castle in psychedelic magic realist sequences that dovetail seamlessly into Nicola Pecorini’s lushly rendered visuals that create a great sense place in the rural Italian settings. A pig-trailed Franco Nero (Carlo) is the only person she feels she can trust and the two instantly bond when he confesses to a close friendship with her mother (“she saved me from a haze booze and baccarat”) claiming she fell victim to a religious curse in the village back in the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

Driven forward by Bardi Johannson’s sinister soundscape Michele Civetta’s feature debut has echoes of Jane Eyre and an impressive Italian cast (Franco Nero joins fellow Pasolini veteran Ninetto Davoli) – but there’s also something spooky going on with his script (co-written by the film’s producer Joseph Schulman) that seems tonally out of kilter with the histrionic New Yorkers who are crass and cartoonish in the context of the otherwise rather enjoyably lowkey poetic narrative that grows increasingly outlandish in their wake. MT

OUT ON 14 JUNE 2021

 

 

The Singer Not the Song (1961)

Dir: Roy Baker | Cast: Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Mylene Demongeot | UK Drama

Anybody who thought Dirk Bogarde’s performance as a homosexual in Victim blazed a trail should acquaint themself with this camp classic in which kitted out in leather trousers (his wardrobe “a fetishist’s dream”, as Peter John Dyer observed at the time) he strokes kittens, his left eyebrow permanently arched as the third corner of a very unlikely triangle of which the other two members comprise Mylene Demongeot (referred to as “the child” and with whom Bogarde commiserates “It must be heartbreaking to fall in love with a man you can never have”) and John Mills.

John Mills?! Director Roy Baker understandably would have rather had Richard Burton (who preferred the role of the bandit) or Paul Schofield (who Baker knew better than to ask), but considering how awful towards him Bogarde was throughout shooting his final film under contract with Rank, he clearly just wanted to pack his bags and get out.

In small town Mexico (actually Alhaurin de la Torre on the Costa del Sol) Mills does his best as a Catholic priest who ultimately wins respect from the outlaw, despite his feeble attempt at an Irish accent. It would have been fun to see Burton rise to the occasion after trying to be a gangster in Villain.@Richard Chatten

Miracle in Soho (1957)

Dir: Julian Amyes | Cast: John Gregson, Belinda Lee, Cyril Cusack, Rosalie Crutchley, Ian Bannen | UK Drama 93′

Miracle in Soho begins with the proud declaration “An Emeric Pressburger Production”. The elevation of Michael Powell to the Pantheon of great directors has not been without muted grumbles; and has even lead some to claim Pressburger was the one with the talent.

But such talk tends to ignore the two 1950s films Pressburger made without Powell, starting with the only one he actually directed, Twice Upon a Time (1953). Always conspicuous by its absence from Powell & Pressburger seasons, the experience evidently cured him of the desire ever to direct again, this time hiring Julian Aymes to take on that onerous task. Based on a script called ‘St Anthony’s Lane’, which he had written in 1934 and was in his suitcase when he arrived in Britain the following year, the film follows Michael Morgan (Grigson) an ordinary bloke whose life is turned around by the ‘miracle’ of love. Neither Pressburger nor Aymes ever made another film; and Miracle in Soho proves that whereas Pressburger gave the Archers’ their heart, Powell definitely supplied the muscle.

Ten years earlier Powell had done an amazing job of recreating the Himalayas without leaving Britain in Black Narcissus; and three years later he too would set a fanciful Eastman Colour production in Soho. But Peeping Tom was a vision of Hell compared to the studio-bound whimsy of Miracle in Soho. Like Black Narcussus before it Miracle in Soho was also shot at Pinewood, but although set in a location far closer to home it’s far less convincingly evoked than Black Narcissus. A previous writer on the IMDb has speculated that the final cut had a hefty edit, which would account for the brevity of Billie Whitelaw’s role and the haunting but fleeting presence of an un-billed Wilfred Lawson as John Gregson’s father (ironically seen sipping tea from a saucer in the second of his two very brief appearances; since he’s obviously been tippling on something a lot stronger). @Richard Chatten

TALKING PICTURES TV

Shiva Baby (2020)

Dir.: Emma Seligman; Cast: Rachel Sennott, Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Molly Gordon, Danny Deferrari, Dianna Agron; USA 2020, 77min.

Rachel Sennott is the star turn in Emma Seligman’s inspired featured debut Shiva Baby. She is Danielle, a Jewish woman caught up in her parents’ plans to get her a husband – or at least a job – in this hilarious comedy.

During happier times we see Danielle in bed with her sugar daddy, Max (Deferrari), who will save her from the woes the world has in stall for her. But that was then. A Jewish funeral get-together (Shiva) provides an ideal networking opportunity for the family’s machinations, never mind that one of their loved ones has actually died.

So parents Debbie (Draper) and Joel (Melamed) head off to the Shiva, Danielle making a last unsuccessful attempt to learn the name of the deceased. Still not having made her way in the right circles, her parents are well aware of the seriousness of the task that lies ahead: Danielle is earning a pittance as a ‘babysitter’ but the fruits of her labours seem to stem from another, more dubious source. Professional ambitions are still unclear university-wise, and her parents are covering all the bills.

Friendships are fraught – she had a stormy relationship with Maya (Gordon) who is also at the Shiva. Debbie warns her daughter “not to experiment today”. But before Danielle has time to internalise this parental guidance and critique (“You look like Gwyneth Paltrow on food stamps, and not in a good way”), enter Max, followed by his wife Kim (Agron) and baby daughter Rose. The lovers can’t agree on their opening gambit, “where did the two of you meet”, finally settling for ‘schul’ (the synagogue). It soon turns out Kim is the major breadwinner in the family, and she carps half-jokingly about her husband’s penchant for expensive restaurants.

Meanwhile, Daneille’s parents have cornered Max in the hope of an internship for their daughter. Kim joins the conversation, expressing the need for a babysitter – Debbie praising her daughter’s (non-existent) experience. Danielle mislays her ‘phone number in the bathroom, having sent Max a rather daring selfie. Maya finds the phone but promises to keep schtum: “I don’t want your parents to know their daughter is a whore.” After much bickering and desert-guzzling, nervous exhaustion finally takes over as furtive hands find each other in the back of a crammed car.

Seligman gets away with her not very likeable heroine in a mishmash of sharp-elbowed characters trying to get into pole position on the back of each other. Danielle hasn’t the slightest idea what she wants from life – apart from not ending up like the rest of the Shiva crowd. Her only virtue is a foggy idea about feminism – something that doesn’t follow through in her relationship with Maya.

DoP Maria Rusche takes her lead from Robert Altman in crowd scenes that zero in on the individual players, a bleached-out aesthetic echoing Danielle’s efforts to stay sane. Editor Hannah A. Park keeps the encounters lined up, the interplay amusing and insightful. Shiva Baby is funny, but the humour is as sharp as the lemons the characters chew on, Seligman bringing the curtain down while the going’s still good. AS

IN SELECT UK CINEMAS FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
WITH SPECIAL Q&A 9 JUNE 2021  ON MUBI FROM 11 JUNE 2021

Zebra Girl (2021)

Dir.: Stephanie Zari; Cast: Sarah Roy, Jade Anouka, Tom Cullen, Daisy Mayer, Isabelle Connolly; UK 2021, 79 min.

In leafy suburbia Catherine (Roy) lives a seemingly blissful life with husband Dan (Cullen) when suddenly she stabs though the eye with an eight-inch knife in the opening scenes. Not altogether surprising when we later learn the same thing happened to her father who abused her as a teenager. All this is all delivered in ‘comic mode’.

Based on the one-woman-play “Catherine and Anita” performed by Roy to apparently rave reviews at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and King’s Head Theatre in London, Zari’s film debut is not so successful, mixing ultra-realism, horror elements and psychological traumata into an awkward narrative,

Catherine Derry’s stirring camerawork keeps things interesting from a visual point of view: dicing with inventive changes of perspective and frightening dolly-zooms. Derry also makes affective use of rush cuts, signalling that Catherine is clearly schizophrenic. Meanwhile Caspar Leonard’s score keeps the unsettling atmosphere alive.

But horror and real trauma do not make good bedfellows – apart from in gothic masterpieces – and Zebra Girl is set very much in a realist present where Catherine’s suffering is equally real. There is also an uneasy humour at play, particularly between Catherine and her friend Anita, which is far too flippant in the context of narrative. And these contradictory elements reduce Zebra Girl to a superficial, good-looking horror flic undermining the heroine’s tragic history. AS

The Woman in his House (1932) Amazon

Dir: Edward H Griffith | Wri: Horace Jackson | Cast: Myrna Loy, Les Howard, Ann Harding, William Gargan, Ilka Chase | US Comedy Drama 85′

Four years after this film was made, Myrna Loy – then Queen to Clark Gable’s King of Hollywood – played his wife in a glossy ‘A’ list trifle suggestively called Wife vs. Secretary (1936). The wife of the title is a whiny gold-digging shrew whose charm resides solely in the enormous charisma of the actress playing her; while the racy title is belied by making the newly ‘brownette’ Harlow brisk, efficient and wholly honorable in her intentions toward husband Clark Gable.

When I saw it I thought it would have been a much more interesting film if it had been made Pre-Code with Loy playing the secretary and Harlow at her sluttiest and most peroxided as the wife (as in Dinner at Eight). The same thought occurred to me watching The Animal Kingdom. Being pre-Code, it’s able to be frank about the role that sex plays in the various characters’ interrelations without being too flippant about it either, since it’s really about relationships rather than sex (rather as Douglas Sirk’s glossy melodramas of the fifties tended to be) and views a husband leaving his lawful wedded for his on again-off again mistress with active approval.

@wikipedia

Loy’s name isn’t even included on the title card but she actually gets far more screen time than Ann Harding as the mistress and is obviously offering husband Leslie Howard passion (when she feels he’s earned it) of an order he plainly hasn’t known with Harding for some time. As in real life the characters have made exasperating life choices (Loy herself in reality notoriously made four wholly unsuitable choices of husband).

Loy is here charming but mercenary and manipulative, while Harding seems very prim for a supposedly “promiscuous” (yes!, that’s the word that Loy – no less – uses to describe her) bohemian who has allowed her physical relationship with Howard to wither on the vine, yet is still affronted that Howard should have the temerity to seek more… stimulating companionship elsewhere. The fact that he nonchalantly leaves her apartment while she just carries on talking in the next room speaks volumes about the state of the relationship.

Within minutes of primly branding Harding “a promiscuous little…!” Loy reveals herself to be not above finally stopping teasing poor Neil Hamilton and giving him a little of the “excitement” he’s plainly been gagging for since the film began if he’ll perform a professional service on her behalf. Having until now shown himself to be weak and easily manipulated, Howard at the film’s conclusion draws upon hitherto unsuspected reserves of iron self-control – that would certainly have been well beyond me – to turn his back on a bedroom door on the other side of which the delectable Loy is undressed and waiting for him.

All the acting is good – particularly William Gargan recreating his stage role – and Loy was always effusive in her praise for the guidance she received from the film’s largely forgotten director Edward H. Griffith. Also fascinating is the diorama of the Brooklyn Bridge visible through the window of the New York apartment occupied by the supposedly penniless Harding. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

Joan the Woman (1916)

Dir: Cecil B DeMille | Wri: Jeannie Macpherson, William C de Mille | Cast: Geraldine Farrar, Raymond Hatton, Hobart Bosworth, Theodore Roberts | US Drama, Silent 138′

Premiering over a hundred years ago on Christmas Day 1916, this marked the first of the historical epics with which Cecil B. DeMille’s name became synonymous. Joan the Woman far excels his later sound spectacles, by which time he’d lost his enthusiasm for location shooting, his films becoming painfully studio bound, with just a few token exterior sequences left in the hands of second-unit directors. Handsomely designed by Wilfred Buckland and photographed by Alvin Wyckoff, at 138 minutes, it is almost as long as Victor Fleming’s Technicolor folly of 1948 with Ingrid Bergman, but far surpasses it as spectacle.

Imposing a contemporary WWI framing story was probably prompted by Griffith’s Intolerance and pushes the feature over the two hour mark, making it a long even by today’s standards; and the first third of the film drags a bit. The other weak link in the chainmail is Farrar herself. The title ‘Joan the Woman’ (compared to later versions with titles like ‘Das Mädchen Johanna’ and ‘Jeanne la Pucelle’) already seems to acknowledge that DeMille is aware that the 34 year-old soprano Geraldine Farrar looks extremely matronly as Joan (much more so than the 32 year-old Ingrid Bergman in 1948). In the rare close-ups where DeMille has her lit for effect from below, Farrar actually looks strikingly like the 43 year-old Hedy Lamarr in The Story of Mankind (1957). Sadly she also gives possibly the worst performance in the film, constantly playing to the camera rather than the other actors.

However when Joan finally gets into her armour and lays siege to Orléans the film really gets going. The screen positively swarms with extras, some of whom look as if they’re genuinely getting hurt (you can actually see some of them flinching). Joan’s imprisonment and trial also captures DeMille’s imagination and provides him with the opportunity to indulge in one of the torture sequences he developed a penchant for, to the accompaniment of appropriately dramatic ‘Rembrandt’ lighting. Now in the clutches of tombstone-faced Theodore Roberts as Cauchon, the faces of the menacing-looking extras DeMille amassed to fill the courtroom during Joan’s trial are really something; as is her execution, when a flaming orange firebrand is applied to her pyre. Courtesy of the Handschiegl colour process she expires in an eye-boggling blaze of orange flames. @Richard Chatten

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Dir: Stuart Paton | Allen Holubar, Dan Hanlon, Edna Pendleton, Curtis Benton | UK, Action Drama 105′

A remarkably lavish production that seems not content with merely filming Jules Verne’s 1870 novel but for good measure also throws in his later novel ‘L’Île Mystérieuse’ and a concluding flashback that – as the subtitles themselves admit – owes nothing to Verne but must have made an already expensive production needlessly extravagant (Universal’s Carl Laemmle took a bath – if you’ll pardon the expression – on the reported $500,000 he spent on it).

The most remarkable aspect of the film is the pioneering underwater photography supervised by the brothers Ernest & George Williamson (some of it shot in the Bahamas) depicting the view from Captain Nemo’s famous picture window, the camera lingering lovingly on strikingly modern-looking actuality footage of coral reefs and shoals of fish. When Nemo’s crew get into their diving suits there is then remarkable footage of them interacting with actual sharks; although the realism abruptly evaporates in a later scene involving an extremely phony looking octopus.

The film’s makers quickly lose interest in a straight adaptation of Verne’s novel at this point, and the action transfers to a mysterious desert island whose one human inhabitant is initially a boisterous ‘child of nature’ played by Jane Gail in dusky body makeup, who jauntily trades in her cheetah skin sarong for a fetching combination of blouse and trousers provided by one of the visitors. (Quite a few adventure films from this period that I’ve seen have put the leading lady in trousers.) Nemo, alias Daaker, turns out to have been an Indian prince in a previous life, and Miss Gail turns out to be his daughter, as is explained in a flashback thrown in climaxing in a native uprising. The film had at this point seemed to be drawing to its conclusion; which makes the insertion of this very expensive looking sequence reportedly featuring almost 2,000 extras all the more bewildering.

The extraordinary underwater footage aside, the handsome and atmospheric look of the rest of the film probably owes more to the photography of Eugene Gaudio (whose elder brother Tony’s long career at Warner Bros. included The Adventures of Robin Hood) than to the rather perfunctory direction of Stuart Paton, who should have told Allen Holubar as Nemo and the unidentified actress playing his late wife not to wave their arms around so much. Other reviewers have commented on the resemblance of the uniform worn by Captain Nemo and his crew to the one traditionally worn by Santa Claus. @Richard Chatten

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

The Toth Family | Isten Hozta Örnagy (1969)

Dir.: Zoltan Fabri (1917-1994); Cast: Zoltan Latinovits, Imre Sinkovits, Marta Fonay, Vera Venczel; Hungary 1969, 95 min.

Zoltan Fabri’s amusing dramatic farce serves as a well-veiled metaphor for Stalinism. Adapting from Istvan Orkeny’s novel ‘Totek’, the Hungarian director was first and foremost a humanist whose films successfully smuggled their subversive subtexts through the censors as here in this lively social satire that couldn’t really offend anyone.

It all takes place during 1942 in a village in Northern Hungary where the peaceful existence of the Toth family comes to an abrupt end with the arrival of their son’s regimental superior, on sick leave. Father Lajos (Sinkovits) the naive head of the fire brigade, his plump wife Mariska (Fonay) and their doting daughter Agika (Venczel) find themselves lodging and entertaining the paranoid war-weary Major Ornagy (Latinovits), catering to his every whim in a bid to promote their son’s army career.

The major really is in a state: the slightest noise makes him jump as he imagines enemy soldiers at every corner and mistakes nighttime shadows for trenches, desperate to avoid them. In an effort to exert control over the locals he puts in place a laborious new system the villages must adhere to involving a series of boxes. Agika develops a crush as chaos reigns and the mentally impaired village postman Gyuri mislays the family’s post, including a letter of vital importance leading to the film’s dramatic finale.

The Toth Family has aged well: its Brechtian narrative serves the farcical content well – the family forced into a futile labour of love while the major is blissfully unaware of the havoc his demanding behaviour is causing. The output of useless boxes is the only direct connection to every-day live under Stalinism, where production of everything but consumer goods was the mantra of the system.

DoP Györgi Illes painterly images and saturated prime colours give the film a traditional, almost fairytale feel. Fabri’s classical approach helped him package his messages discretely – never attracting the same negative attention from the authorities as Miklòs Janscò with his eye-catching modernist style. But the death of Communism also marked the end of Fabri’s output. His final feature Housewarming was made in 1983. AS

COURTESY OF THE HUNGARIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE

After Love (2021) BAFTAs 2022

Dir/scr: Aleem Khan | Joanna Scanlan, Natalie Richard, Talid Arris | UK, Drama 89 mins

A spare but transcendent feature debut that takes place between Calais and Dover in the aftermath of a cross-channel menage-a-trois. Happily married Muslim convert Mary/Fatima (Scanlan) discovers her husband’s secret on his mobile ‘phone, shortly after his sudden death. Curiosity sees her travelling to France where she tracks down Genevieve the middle-aged mother of his love child Solomon, now an unruly teenager much loved by both his parents. Through a understandable mix-up the women’s lives come together, but only Mary is aware of Genevieve’s identity. Both women are forced to deal with loss and longing in different ways.

Writer director Aleem Khan delivers an accomplished and insightful drama that speaks volumes about race, identity and the nature of love and faithfulness through a storyline that goes to unexpected places. Joanna Scanlan is quietly tremendous as a woman exploring grief and bereavement in a graceful and philosophical way that never descends into melodrama or histrionics, so commonplace in this kind of story. And it’s also down to Khan’s economic style of writing that follows the saying: ‘speech is silver, but silence is golden’.

Instead the two women discretely and gradually explore the past and the present in a way that is both surprising and satisfying. Khan leaves a great deal to the imagination – we are left to make up our own minds about Mary and Genevieve’s life, the focus here is the dynamic between them as they feel their way forward, largely in the dark, as the truth gradually emerges questioning their core beliefs and feelings.

One scene in particularly mirrors the women’s crushing loss of faith seen through a section of Dover’s white cliffs literally crumbling into the sea. It’s a stunning metaphor for this graceful two-hander that portrays women at their best, coping calmly with disappointment and bewilderment, reflecting on their lot with dignity and philosophy. A stunning and mature drama in the classic tradition of storytelling. MT

BAFTA AWARD FOR LEADING ACTRESS Joanna Scanlan | Released on Blu-ray and digitally as a BFI Player Subscription Exclusive on 23 August 202

 

 

 

The Best of Men (2012)

Dir.: Tim Whitby; Cast: Eddie Marsan, George Mackay, Leigh Quinn, Niamh Cusack, Rob Brydon, Richard McCabe, Tracy-Ann Oberman; UK 2012, 87 min.

This upbeat crowd-pleaser takes place in leafy Buckinghamshire where the Paraplegic Games first kicked off courtesy of one Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980), a Jewish neurologist who revolutionised life for injured veterans, after fleeing Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Second World War.

TV Director Tim Whitby and his writer Lucy Gannon are best known for their popular TV series Bramwell and their star-strewn big screen production shows how the pioneering Jewish doctor’s groundbreaking work at Stoke Mandeville Hospital eventually led to him founding the centre’s Para-Olympics, held parallel with the London Olympic Games of 1948. Guttmann also founded the International Medical Society of Paraplegia and was later knighted.

Eddie Marsan plays the good doctor who arrives at Stoke Mandeville where paraplegic soldiers injured in the war effort are more or less being left to die, plagued by bed sores and suicidal with chronic pain. At first the medical staff are totally opposed to Guttmann’s methods with a great deal of tutting from Nurse Carr (Quinn) and Sister Edwards (Cusack) and  pompous resident Doctor Cowan (McCabe) who tries to obstruct the newcomer, there’s even talk of a transfer.

The storyline follows twenty year old William Heat (Mackay) – who we see in happier days with his fiancée – he now wants to die after a prognosis of being confined to a wheelchair. Then there is Wynne ((Brydon), a Welshman who wants a divorce from his wife on the grounds of him not being man enough anymore. With the help of a PE instructor, Guttmann gets the men out of bed – and the rest is history.

The good old British stiff up lip makes light of the sombre topic, Rob Brydon and George McKay are lively and amusing. Guttmann’s fight against the stolid traditions of British bureaucracy has an upbeat feel – but Guttmann doesn’t get an easy ride of it – he too can be difficult at times. The men rise to the occasion with banter and witty repartee. An outing to the local pub underlines the film’s firmly British credentials.  DoP Matt Gray captures the English countryside with roving panorama shots, his interiors are full of inventive angels. Marsan is convincing as the knowledgeable intruder whose solemn bedside manner fails on the empathy front with his British hosts. A tad didactic at times, The Best of Men is a wonderfully entertaining insight into a sporting triumph. AS

DVD & DIGITAL RELEASE ON 14 JUNE 2021

Topkapi (1964)

Dir: Jules Dessin | Cast: Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Maximillian Schell, Robert Morley, Akim Tamiroff | 120′

The second of two glossy international adventures Istanbul played host to in 1963 (the first was From Russia with Love), this much-copied (especially the scene with the cat burglar suspended from the skylight) adaptation of Eric Ambler’s 1962 novel The Light of Day’ is the sort of slick entertainment Losey thought he was making – but wasn’t – when he made Modesty Blaise two years later.

Effectively a sumptuous, less clinical Technicolor remake by Jules Dassin of his own classic fifties heist movie Riffifi. Henry Alekan’s photography is as fluidly mobile as it is ravishing to the eye (notably in the scene clambering across the roof of Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace Museum in brilliant sunshine).

With the cast including Peter Ustinov playing a schmoo “who aims low and misses”, Robert Morley and Akim Tamiroff you know you’re not going to get method acting; even without queen bee Melina Mercouri. (Ustinov later opined that director Dassin “could have had a more remarkable career if he had not dedicated himself so devotedly to her service”.) Yet despite the gleaming presence of Ms Mercouri as a voracious nymphomaniac there are occasional scenes with a strong homoerotic character; and not just the one with the oiled-up wrestlers. @Richard Chatten

 

In a Quiet Place: Part II (2021)

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

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

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

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

NOW ON RELEASE IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

The Last Days (1998) Netflix

Dir.: James Moll; Documentary with Bill Basch, Irene Zisblatt, Renee Firestone, Alice Lok Cahana, Tom Lantos, Dario Gabbai, Randolph Braham,Hans Munch; USA 1998, 87 min.

Five Hungarian Holocaust survivors, now settled in the USA, share their memories of Dachau, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen in this astonishing Oscar-winning documentary that sees James Moll (Inheritance) taking them back to their tragic past. The Last Days, was only the American director’s second feature yet it manages to stun with its trenchant insight and archive footage showing the human spirit at its darkest. But there are glimmers of hope.

In March 1944 Germany occupied Hungary with the help of the Hungarian Fascists, the Arrow Cross Party. Nearly half a million Jews were ferried in cattle trucks between 15th of May 1944 and 9th of July 1944 to Concentrations camps in Poland and Germany, where they were murdered. The Jews of Budapest were saved by the arrival of the Red Army. But elsewhere in the country the occupying Germans (and their allies) focussed on annihilating Jewish Hungarians at the expense of the war effort, which was admittedly by this time a busted flush.

Irene Zisblatt, now a grandmother, remembers the day, when her mother sewed diamonds into hem of her skirt – the girl would swallow these and wash them again and and again in Auschwitz, they would provide bread when the going got tough. These diamonds have been fashioned into pendants, given to the first girl in each new generation in the USA.

Alice Lok-Cahana, a painter, is joined by her children, husband and grandchildren for a prayer in KZ Bergen Belsen. Art is her way of re-emerging from the ashes of the Second World War. But there is also survivor’s guilt: business man Billy Basch recalls how he swore everlasting friendship with two fellow inmates. But when the Germans ordered the Auschwitz prisoners on a death march in the winter of 1945, a foot injury prevented one of them from continuing, the SS guard putting paid to their solidarity threatening to shoot all three, leaving their friend to a certain death.

Renee Firestone, a teacher, literally interrogates Hans Munch, a German doctor who experimented with women prisoners: sterilisation and changing the eye colour of prisoners were his speciality. Her sister Klara, who died in June 1945, was one of his victims, Renee is seen putting flowers on her grave. Munch managed to escape indictment at numerous court cases claiming his parents would have been executed had he not obeyed. His mitigating ‘decency’ acted in his favour, compared to the sadism of the other doctors. But when he talks cold-bloodedly about the smell of human fat, the facade slips.

And there is Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor elected to the US Senate, singing the praises of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who hid him and others in houses belonging to Swedish diplomats. Lantos is now the proud grandfather of seventeen grandchildren.

DoP Harris Done has a delicate hand, always knowing when to cut if the witnesses are too overcome by grief. With a memorable score by Hans Zimmer, The  Last Days leaves us in no doubt. Over 75 years later the psychological wounds still run deep. AS

NOW ON NETFLIX

Suspect (1960)

Dir: John & Roy Boulting | Cast: Tony Britton, Virginia Maskell, Ian Bannen, Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Spike Milligan, Raymond Huntley | UK Thriller, 81′

Sadly forgotten today. This sober adaptation of his own 1949 novel ‘A Sort of Traitors’ by Nigel Balchin is one of the very few films by the Boulting twins signed by both as co-directors, and the third of an unofficial trilogy of Cold War dramas that recalls the earnestness of the brothers’ films of the thirties and forties (the monstrously unfunny comedy relief by Spike Milligan being ironically by far the weakest component).

Instead of the atom bomb ten years earlier in Seven Days to Noon the threat to humanity here is the unfortunately only too topical menace of virulent contagions like Bubonic Plague or Typhus. Sixty years later it remains one of the very few British films to mention Korea (where Ian Bannen lost both his arms), and the presence of such a singular character as Bannen plays could only happen in a film based upon a novel. Rather than the saintly figure the disabled are usually portrayed as (“People are usually reliably sentimental about the maimed”) Bannen has obviously been destroyed mentally as well as physically by his ordeal.

Pragmatism is favoured over idealism (“The slippery ones are easy, but these honest chaps turn you grey” laments deceptively vague spymaster Thorley Walters). Although supposedly the hero, Tony Britton incredibly dismisses the disabled as “of no social value”; while Raymond Huntley’s obstructive minister (despite his distractingly obvious toupee) demonstrates to be sharper than he seems throughout the rest of the film in an incisive speech cogently stating that political realities trump heady idealism (“Matters of judgment are our business”).

Despite its ultra-low budget, the efficient production design and use of locations – cleanly lit by veteran Boulting’s cameraman Max Greene – makes the film looks austere rather than cheap; while the economical use of excerpts from Scriabin and Chopin also adds to the melancholy of the piece, and is possibly a discreet reminder that Bannen’s dashed dream had been of becoming a concert pianist.@Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES

David Hockney: the Arrival of Spring in Normandy 2020

David Hockney ‘Britain’s most expensive living artist’ (1937-) made a snap decision at the outbreak of Covid. Travelling to Normandy from his home in California his express intention was to capture the arrival of Spring – nature couldn’t be cancelled by the pandemic. 

Staying in a small wattle and daub house surrounded by four acres of countryside, he observed the blossoming of a new year frame by frame as spring emerged and took hold with all its drama and glory.

Hockney had first depicted this ‘most classical of subjects’ in his native Yorkshire in 2011 in a fifty two part work. This was the first time he took to his iPad and a show was later organised at the RA. Two years later he was back again working this time in charcoal on paper.

The Arrival of Spring in Normandy sees him taking to his iPad again but this time with a new app, adapted and developed to his specific requirements, allowing a freedom of expression and mobility to capture the fresh zinging elements in a ‘naif’ style that perfectly compliments foliage and flower, from March until July 2020. Working very much like the French Impressionists two hundred years ago, his pictures are captured ‘en plain air’, just like Monet in nearby Giverny. There is also an animated work featuring gentle rain falling a meadow. At 86 the much loved painter is still inspired and inspiring. MT

The Arrival of Spring in Normandy – is now showing at London’s Royal Academy of Arts 

 

The Rise of the Krays (2015)

Dir: Zackary Adler | Cast: Matt Vael, Simon Cotton, Kevin Leslie, Olivia Moyles

With a new series ‘Secrets of the Krays’ now on TV the endless fascination with the terrible twins continues, here played by Simon Cotton (Ronnie) and Kevin Leslie (Reggie) who appropriately won Best Actor at that year’s Marbella Film Festival.

Although it supposedly begins in Hackney in 1951, this movie takes its sartorial and visual lead from David Bailey’s 1965 portrait of the Kray Twins and its technique from A Clockwork Orange rather than The Blue Lamp; while the saturated Edward Hopper colours evoke the swinging sixties rather than the drab Britain of the fifties where the action mostly takes place. Likewise the saturnine young blades depicted here bear little resemblance to the beefy, cold-eyed bruisers of Bailey’s double portrait (while naturally no attempt has been made to cast actors who resemble Alec Douglas-Home or Henry Brooke in the brief scene with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary at Number 10).

Amidst all this testosterone a couple of ladies from Albert Square make all too fleeting appearances in the form of Anita Dobson as a barmaid and Nicola Stapleton as the twins’ mother, Violet. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME

Those That Wish Me Dead (2020)

Dir: Taylor Sheridan | Cast: Angeline Jolie, Medina Senghore, Aiden Gillen, Nicholas Hoult, Finn Little, John Bernthal, Jake Webber | US Action Thriller, 100′

A flash and burn action thriller that really doesn’t set the night on fire despite a solid cast and a smouldering Angelina Jolie who plays a Montana firefighter recovering from one too many forest tragedies. And in the midst of this she rescues and befriends a traumatised orphan (Little) whose father (Webber) has been blown to bits in escaping an incendiary couple of cypher-like assassins (Gillen and Hoult) who kill people for reasons that never really makes sense – destroying swathes of bosky Montana countryside in some spectacular set pieces that will make nature-lovers and environmentalists weep.

Taylor Sheridan was heralded a promising new talent on the indie circuit with his spunky scripts for the lauded Hell or High Water and Sicario. Here he gets behind the camera sharing the virtue-signalling narrative in a group effort – and it shows – a big budget fails to paper over the cracks in the muddled, multi-stranded storyline takes a while to shape up, based on a book by Michael Koryta – who joins Charles Leavitt and Taylor in the writing department.

One thing it does have is two feisty female characters in the shape of Jolie (the more convincing of the two, taking over from Emily Blunt’s FBI agent in Sicario) and Medina Senghore who gets the cheesy option as a simpering pregnant sheriff’s wife whose gloves go on in the fraught finale. Between them they save the day amid endless mayhem – and that’s something to welcome in this otherwise rather forgettable pulpy production. MT

NOW IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

The Monster Maker (1944) Plex TV

Dir: Sam Newfield | Cast: J Carrol Naish, Ralph Morgan, Talia Birell, Wanda McKay | US Horror fantasy, 62′

1944 was the year in which a hitherto obscure glandular disorder called acromegaly hit the Hollywood mainstream. In the Sherlock Holmes adventure ‘The Pearl of Death’ a crowd player named Rondo Hatton (1894-1946) who suffered the affliction was promoted to featured billing as the backbreaking Hoxton Creeper and achieved transitory stardom as the only movie monster who didn’t require makeup. And it was also a central plot element in The Monster Maker; stored in a bottle in the drugs cabinet of a certain Dr.Markoff bearing a professionally printed label reading “Acromegaly A.5.B2”, as if he’d bought it at his local branch of Boots.

It was probably tasteless for a mere horror movie to use the authentic condition which in reality afflicted poor Hatton (a picture of whom will show you what a genuine sufferer actually looks like); but the film is nowhere near as sleazy as authorities like Leonard Maltin and the late Denis Gifford made it sound (and that it’s provenance as a production of ‘Z’ budget studio PRC might lead one to expect). J.Carroll Naish and Ralph Morgan are both urbanely professional as the oily Dr Markoff and the concert pianist whose daughter he covets. The acromegalic makeup by Maurice Seiderman (who worked on Citizen Kane) is actually not bad (although is wisely not lingered on for too long by director Sam Newfield); and is more convincing than that later worn by Leo G. Carroll when afflicted with the same condition in Tarantula. Oddly enough, cinematographer Robert Cline’s name isn’t in the credits (at least in the prints posted on YouTube), but he does a fluid and elegant job; as does editor Holbrook N. Todd.

Previous IMDb reviewers have pointed up similarities to The Raven (1935); and schlockmeister Herman Cohen in turn probably drew upon youthful memories of this when he produced the laugh-out-loud funny Konga (1961), with which it shares in common a very mad scientist (hilariously overacted in Konga by Michael Gough) with a fondness for injecting serums, a besotted female assistant frustrated by her boss’s infatuation with a younger, cuter and blonder girl on whom he forces his creepy attentions to a predictably unenthusiastic response, and a pet gorilla in a cage (who looks as if he’s even wearing the same gorilla suit) who he occasionally lets out at night to deal with people who are making a nuisance of themselves.

One of the most improbable elements in the film is also one of its strengths. As played by Tala Birell, Markoff’s assistant Maxine is a smart, handsome woman who knows her way around a laboratory. But, knowing what he did to the real Markoff and his wife, why is she so besotted with this jerk in the first place? Happily she avoids the fate suffered by lab assistants in most horror movies and survives until the end, seems to take Markoff’s death in her stride and hopefully went on to settle down with someone more worthy of her. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PLEX TV

Cairo Station | Bab el Hadid (1958)

Dir.: Youssef Chahine; Cast: Youssef Chahine, Hind Rostom, Farid Sawqi, Hasan al-Barudi; Egypt 1958, 75 min.

Cairo Station was the eleventh of over thirty feature films by prolific Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine (1926-2008) providing a snapshot of Egyptian society that appears, on the face of it, more permissive than today.

Chahine was born into a multi-lingual family of Coptic Christians in British-occupied Alexandria where his lawyer father was a supporter of the Wafd nationalist party; his Greek mother sent him to the Christian English-speaking Victoria College. His desire for a theatrical career was first prompted in childhood by seeing shadow plays, then 9.5mm films.

Chahine rose to the international stage with his autobiographical trilogy set in the bustling Mediterranean port of Alexandria, the place of his birth and a creative melting pot where the Egyptian film industry was born in the 1920s: Iskindiria … Leh? (Alexandria … Why?, 1978); Haddouta Misriyya (An Egyptian Story, 1982); and Eskandarai Kaman We Kaman (Alexandria Again and Forever, 1989). But although he was highly regarded by European directors his films were rarely shown beyond the festival circuit in the West, apart from in France where he won a Palme d’Or for his oeuvre in 1997. Cairo Station was Chahine first auteur feature: far ahead of his time aesthetically and contents wise and now getting a international showing on Netflix.

Radical and very much ahead of its time – when you consider the step back that the Arab world has since taken – Cairo Station was later banned and Chahine forced to leave Egypt.

The station is seen as a microcosm of Egyptian society in the late 1950s. The country had undergone drastic changes: In 1956 Gamer Abdel Nasser had overthrown the monarchy and nationalised the Suez Canal. Everything was being questioned, particularly the role of women and the status quo between employers and workers. Despite the ebullient liveliness of some of the scenes, there’s a sinister thread of misogyny running through this psycho-sexual melodrama, Chahine was not for nothing an ardent admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, and DoP Alvise Orfanelli mirrors his use of light and shadow both on the widescreen images of the station and in intimate close-ups that convey the lust, fear and longing in the characters’ eyes. Considered Neo-realist by some critics, the element of male sexual obsession belongs very much to the early 1970s films of Brian de Palma, another Hitchcock disciple.

Told by the elderly narrator Madbouli (Al Barudi), a newspaper seller at the station, the narrative focus is his club-footed employee Quinawi (also played by Chahine) who lives in a porn-decked hovel where he drools over photos of semi-clad females dreaming of the flirtatious drinks seller Hanuma (Rostom). Quinawi is besotted by Hanuma, who sometimes plays him along if it suits her, although she is really in love with station porter and trade unionist Abu Serih (Sawqi), who is active in cutting out the middlemen, who take much of their earnings, giving the film its political angle.

One day Quinawi reads in the papers that a serial killer is on the loose. And while Abu Serih is busy with his union business, Hanuma plays a wicked game with Quinawi: toying with his offer of marriage and taking him up on his idea of going back to his village, where they will marry and raise a family. When Quinawi finds out he has been duped, he strikes out in the same style as the serial killer, blinded by rage and anger, making a fatal error that leads to the shocking finale where he emerges a tragic and pitiful victim.

There are two impressive highlights: the first is a Be-Bop interlude with “Mike and the Skyrockets”, performing in a train, Hanuma dancing along with gusto. The other one shows Quinawi taking revenge for his frustration on a little kitten. There is nothing muted or tender about the film’s characters who are seen in all the cruelty and splendour of the Middle East. AS

Drama & Desire: The Films of Youssef Chahine – BFI Southbank season

Maniac (1934) Prime Video

Dir: Dwain Esper | Cast: Bill Woods, Horace B Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller | US, Horror 51′

Although copyrighted in September 1934, Maniac feels as if it were made five years earlier, both technically and in its extraordinary subject matter; the latter because it was never intended to be exhibited by any of the major theatre chains and thus beyond the reach of the newly enforced Production Code.

To watch Maniac is as if the Production Code had never happened, as it abounds with such brazen flouting of the Code as four young girls sitting about in their underwear discussing current stories in the press in surprisingly highfalutin’ language, a couple of fleeting glimpses of bare breasts, eye-watering and jaw-dropping violence such as a scene involving cruelty to a cat lifted (along with much of the rest of the plot) from Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’ and a remarkably energetic, hair-pulling, clothes-ripping catfight in a cellar between Thea Ramsey and Phyllis Diller that escalates from hypodermics to a baseball bat. (Ms Diller – whose name regularly provokes comment – as the scheming Mrs Buckley is an elegantly dressed, bun-faced middle-aged woman who sounds as if she’s reading her lines off cue-cards and couldn’t less resemble her much younger namesake.)

Crudely made but with a nodding acquaintance with rudimentary cinematic technique, this film is obviously cheap but far from inept. The veteran editor William Austin makes competent use of cutting and dissolves (as well as footage apparently lifted from Maciste all’Inferno), the laboratory scenes are actually quite good-looking and reasonably competently framed and lit by cameraman William Thompson (who also shot Plan 9 from Outer Space!), there’s a satisfactory amount of outdoor photography (although the night scenes are far too dark), including exterior shots of the back yard of a Hollywood bungalow, and the climax looks as if it’s shot in a real cellar.

The script is by the director’s wife Hildegarde Stadie, and she plainly knows her Poe, who is actually name checked at one point. Some of her dialogue is also quite a salty commentary on modern life, like the exchange between the two embalmers: “between the gangsters and the auto drivers, we won’t need another war to carry off the population. You didn’t even mention the suicides”. A lot of the humour is plainly blackly intentional, like the neighbour discussing breeding cats for their furs while feeding them on (and to) rats.

One narrative device that heightens the film’s rather archaic Pre-Code feel is its use of intertitles which periodically interrupt the plot to describe various abnormal mental conditions (all of which sound applicable to the former incumbent of the White House). Plainly fig leaves to maintain the pretence that the film has a Serious Educational Purpose (and accompanied by the only music in the film, apart from the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth over the opening credits), normally this medical stuff would have been delivered at some point by an actor pretending to be a doctor, but here it’s done with passages cribbed from medical publications. One of these conditions, Dementia Praecox, was a quarter of a century later the condition Elizabeth Taylor was diagnosed with in Suddenly Last Summer and compared by Katherine Hepburn to an exotic bloom (“Night-blooming Dementia Praecox”) in a purple passage that wouldn’t have been out of place here. @Richard Chatten

MANIAC IS ON PRIME VIDEO

Calibre (2018) Netflix

Dir/Wri: Matt Palmer | Cast: Jack Lowden, Martin McCann, Tony Curran, Ian Pirie, Cal MacAninch | UK Thriller 101′

A wee weekend in the Scotlish highlands has no happy outcome for anyone concerned in this gritty thriller that sees the usual low budget British gangland flick evocatively transposed to north of the border.

Calibre is the feature debut of seasoned shorts director Matt Palmer whose canny script certainly makes for gripping if uncomfortable viewing. The only downside is the lack of a spunky female character to counterbalance the fearsome  red-bloodied males in a cast led by Jack Lowden (Dunkirk/Small Axe).

After a romantic opening scene the engines start firing when suburban, soon to be father Vaughn (Lowden) bids farewell to his fiancé Anna (Morgan) and heads off with close friend Marcus (McCann) into the wild and rather hostile territory of West Lothian for a spot of deer shooting.

Palmer and his Hungarian DoP Mark Gyori establish the dour milieu of the tartan-shrewn hunting lodge where the two settle down to a night of heavy drinking, you can almost hear the bagpipes grinding ominously in the gloaming. Dawn sees them venturing into bristling gorse-lands nursing hangovers that clearly skew their shooting skills. What happens next is pivotal to the remaining hour or so of the film where the two wish they had spent the weekend quietly at home in Edinburgh rather than drenched in dread and despair up north. A gross error of judgement leaves Vaughn and Marcus toughing it out at the lodge, rather than reporting events to the local police, or even heading home – there’s also a suggestion that some kind of business deal is attached to the trip to explain their staying, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise gripping little thriller. One mistake leads to another as soon all hell breaks loose with the locals who are not able to forgive or forget. There’s a Straw Dogs feel to the way the film plays out, and it’s brutal and not for wimps.

Most of the violence occurs off-camera with Chris Wyatt’s clever editing skills conveying an unbearable tension that gnaws away as the vehement locals prepare to take matters into their own hands. MT

NOW ON NETFLIX | Calibre won the Michael Powell Award for best new British feature at Edinburgh 2018.

Hitler: Dead or Alive (1942) Prime video

Dir: Nick Grinde | Cast: Dorothy Tree, Ward Bond, Warren Hymer, Paul Fix | US Drama 70′

This isn’t really very good, but is nevertheless a historically fascinating film that needs to be seen to be believed; if only for the incredible ending, whih is no more far-fetched than that dreamed up by Quentin Tarantino for Inglorious Basterds.

The previous year Geoffrey Household’s pre-war novel about stalking Hitler, Rogue Male, had already been filmed by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt, and I had settled down to this expecting another piece of crass hokum like Desperate Journey with Errol Flynn, which had recently treated killing Nazis as a bit of a lark. At first it seems as if we’re in for more of the same, but the tone darkens considerably as the film progresses, with obvious references to the massacre of civilians at Lidice the previous spring.

Despite being warned that in Germany they speak German, this proves not to be the case; and absurd inaccuracies like the claim that Hitler grew his moustache to cover a scar acquired in a Bavarian brawl in the early 20’s (presumably the First World War photographs of Corporal Hitler sporting an enormous Kaiser Wilhelm moustache were less familiar to the American public at the time of the Second World War) nestle side by side with depictions of cozy confinement in Dachau and children going before a firing squad that would seem offensive in a mere ‘Z’ budget quickie were the serious intentions of the film’s makers to bring in under the radar a passionate piece of anti-Nazi propaganda under the guise of a simple minded action movie not increasingly evident. All the actors give of their best, and Ward Bond in particular grows in the lead and when he later disguises himself with a moustache to look older, he bears a remarkable resemblance to how he actually did look in his later years.

All in all it compares favourably with The Dirty Dozen and Inglorious Basterds on a fraction of the budget. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Human Voice (2020)

Dir: Pedro Almodovar | Tilda Swinton | Drama, 30′

This one-hander is a loose take of the original 1930 stage play by Jean Cocteau, which was itself adapted in 1948 by Roberto Rossellini for Anna Magnani

Pedro Almodóvar’s first outing in English premiered last year at Venice and is now on general release. It’s a play that’s ideally suited to an Intimate collaboration between actor and director – not to mention a beautifully behaved dog – and Swinton and Almodovar work together. There is also Ted Kotcheff’s 1966 version starring Ingrid Bergman, and no doubt there will be others to look forward to.

A graceful and imposing Tilda Swinton is ‘the voice’ in question here, a jilted woman suppressing discretely controlled but mounting histrionics as she glides exquisitely around her chic city apartment all dolled up in bright red Balenciaga and various other stylish accoutrements – and welding an axe, the dog picking up on her anxiety.

She is hoping her lover will change his mind about their relationship, but there’s a masterful quality to Swinton’s performance: she is no moaning Minnie but a woman empowered by her pain and driven by a dignified sense of decorum. Powerful stuff. Alberto Iglesias composed the needling violin score. MT

NOW ON RELEASE | Streaming here 

 

My Mexican Bretzel (2019) IFFR 2020

Dir.: Nuria Gimenez; Documentary with Ilse G. Ringier, Frank A. Lorang; Spain 2019, 73 min.

“Lies are just another way of telling the truth”.

Spanish first time director/writer/co-editor Nuria Gimenez pulls off one of on of the greatest coup’s in the history of the “Found Films” genre.

My Mexican Bretzel is one of those documentaries where spoilers are unavoidable. Gimenez was clearing out her grandparents’s attic and came across the 8 mm footage of a film shot by grandfather Frank A, Lorang and featuring his wife Ilse G. Ringier who she calls Vivian and Leon Barrett in her film. The other thing to mention is the flowery quotes from a certain guru Kanvar Khajappali, which are spread through the silent footage enlivened by newspaper cuttings that give a time frame.. These are based on fantasy as Kanvar Khajappali never existing. It’s a fascinating story that shows how life can be complicated and messy behind the facade of family respectability.

As the film rolls we meet Nuria’s well-to-do grandparents in their comfortable home in Switzerland where Leon B. had made money from his involvement in a new drug “Lovedyn”. But a flying accident curtailed his activities and caused him chronic pain and Vivian is not keen on the  luxury boat her husband bought, to compensate for the plane, he could never fly again. And when she is allowed to steer the boat he just lets the action roll, to her chagrin, as his obsession behind the camera takes over: “I am fed up with him looking at me through the lens. As if he was aiming at me with a gun, ready to shoot at any time”. Vivian prefers writing but does admit: “I think filming is the best form of self-delusion. And a beautiful way to vanish, and become an animal or God. If you film, you don’t have to live or give explanations.”

Eventually she falls for Leonard or Leo, a Mexican. “I was dragged towards him without thought or willpower. I feel guilty for not feeling guilty”. After a brief affair with Leo she flies back to meet her husband in New York. Vivian and Leon go on living together, but Leo remains the elephant in the room. Later Vivian notices that a friend of theirs, Olivia, is wearing the bracelet Leon gave her some time previously. And she gravitates back to Leo again. “I want to be young again and be with Leo.”

Meanwhile Leon makes up for his lack of desire for her with excessive bouts of attention. Vivian becomes obsessed with death, dreaming she would die on the same day as Pope Pius XII. But when his death is announced in October 1958, Vivian is still resolutely alive and holidaying in Venice.

This is an audacious retelling of a woman’s true story through the 1940s to the end of the 1960s. On the face of it, Vivian/Ilse seems to have the best of both worlds – her life is materially rich, but lacking in emotional fulfilment. And although the couple enjoy their endless trips around the world, the constant movement seems to point to a lack a spiritual serenity or any real meaning – echoed in the meaningless Khajappali quotes.

Gimenez creates a story from images these revealing images, discovering her family heritage quite by chance. My Mexican Bretzel is a little gem, winning Best Film in the “Found Film” section of the IFF Rotterdam 2020. AS

NOW SHOWING AT THE SPANISH CINEMA WEEKEND 2021

 

 

London Spanish Film Festival 2021

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

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

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

LAS NIÑAS  | Schoolgirls

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

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

Fri 28 May | 6.30pm | £13, conc. £11

EL OLVIDO QUE SEREMOS Memories of My Father

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

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

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

LA VOZ HUMANA | The Human Voice

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

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

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

Sat 29 May | 4.15pm | £13, conc. £11

LA INNOCÈNCIA | La inocencia | The Innocence

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

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

Sat 29 May | 8.45pm | £13, conc. £11

MY MEXICAN BRETZEL 

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

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

Sun 30 May | 6.10pm | £13, conc. £11

LA VIDA ERA ESO That Was Life

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

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

Sun 30 May | 7.55pm | £13, conc. £11

LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 2021 

Surge (2020)

Dir.: Aneil Karia; Cast: Ben Whishaw, Jasmine Jobson, Ellie Haddington, Ian Gelder, UK 2020, 100 min.

Director/co-writer Aneil Karia shows how easy it is to lose our grip on reality in these gruelling Covid times. Ben Whishaw is a man in flight, running away from himself and caring less and less about the consequences, or anyone he meets.

The story takes place over 24 hours in London where Joseph works in a soulless job in security at Stansted Airport. We first meet him enjoying a cake with his colleagues – only later do we get to know that this is Joseph’s birthday celebration. Unsatisfied and disillusioned for all sorts of reasons, not least his unresolved relationship with a colleague Lily,  Joseph’s life soon spins out of control after a minor incident involving a broken glass.

On the run again and making a bid to help Lily (Jobson) with some computer issue, Joseph soon loses control due to another minor setback. The narrative here is familiar, Karia focusing on mood and atmosphere to create a palpable feeling of desperation and disorientation in her first feature film.

Whishaw gives a flawless performance as the disenchanted Joseph who seems less and less affected by the unfolding mayhem. The graver the situation, the more nonchalant Joseph becomes as he disconnects from reality. Karia brings her feature to a soft landing, Joseph’s outburst of manic anger having run out of steam. DoP Stuart Bentley’s handheld camera follows the path of the tornado, a needling electronic score by Tujiko Noriko underlining the chaos of Joseph’s everyday life. A few cuts would make the result even more impressive, but Karia’s debut is nevertheless a confident tour-de-force. AS

SURGE WILL BE RELEASED IN UK CINEMAS AND ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS FROM 28TH MAY 2021.

Mosley: It’s Complicated (2020)

Dir: Michael Shevloff | Doc, 82′

For most people the name Mosley is often synonymous with Fascism. And Sir Oswald Mosley’s son Max (1940-) – who has died age 81  laboured all his life to overcome his unfortunate family connection, and done a decent job of it with his tireless charity work and successful Formula One racing career. He went on to use the Formula 1 brand to promote road safety both on the track and on the road with Euro ENCAP. But his life is not without scandal and setback.

Tall and elegant, Max Mosley certainly cuts a suave dash in this documentary portrait that chronicles the qualified barrister’s often controversial life and times as the former FIA president and at the head of F1’s governing body from 1993 to 2005, and who now holds the Legion of Honour.

US Director and producer Michael Shevloff teams up with TV producer Alexandra Orton in an even-handed, no holds-barred approach to the story of Mosley’s career and his efforts to raise levels of road safety all over the world. Mosley has cooperated with the filmmakers but this is not an authorised documentary.

The focus here is obviously motor racing but those not interested in Formula 1 will be watching with a beady eye on the emerging private life of this high profile figure born into an illustrious family: his aristocratic mother Diana was one of the Mitford sisters and a ‘Bright Young Things’ during the 1920s and his politician father formed the British Union of Fascists in 1932 for which he was interned during the Second World War, is now a character gracing the BBC’s Peaky Blinders (season 5).

The fearless lawyer presents an inscrutable persona with his fine manners and dapper mien but one cannot help musing about certain elements that emerge from the engaging narrative: Mosley’s spats with Italian racing supremo Flavio Briatore; his penchant for sex parties (admittedly in the privacy of his own home); his landmark victory over the News of the World who tried to put a Nazi spin on their story; his contribution towards the Leveson Inquiry; and the tragic death by overdose of his son Alexander. Despite all this you can’t deny his affable appeal, although his steely stare suggests subversiveness and a strong resolve. Married to Jean since 1960, he is also close friends with billionaire businessman Bernie Ecclestone, another former racing driver who built his empire around broadcasting the sport.

But back to motor racing, and petrolheads who will find this a fascinating watch particularly as Hugh Grant, David Ward, Alan Parr, Gerhard Berger, Jean Todt and Charlie Whiting also add their two penny worth. But former Ferrari team principal Marco Piccinini puts in all in a nutshell “His brain has the most powerful acceleration…but some problem with the brakes”. And Hugh Grant agrees: “I wouldn’t want him as my enemy”. When all is said and done, you come away from the film with a positive impression of a man who was not afraid to stand up for his beliefs. Someone who has tried to improve certain standards of modern life and challenge the gutter press and who clearly had strong friendships despite his detractors – Hugh Grant, who appears in the documentary on the subject of privacy, recently described Max in a Tweet as “very bright, very kind and very, very brave”. MT

Mosley: It’s Complicated will be in UK Cinemas from 9th July, and on Digital Download & DVD/Blu-ray from 19th July. The DVD / Blu-ray can be pre-ordered through Dazzler Media.

 

Daisy Kenyon (1947) Prime Video

Dir: Otto Preminger | Cast: Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, Ruth Warwick | US Drama 99’

In the hands of George Cukor, this script – which boasts some priceless one-liners rather earnestly delivered – could have been an effervescent marital romp like ‘Adam’s Rib’, but is here directed as melodrama by Otto Preminger, with lighting to match.

The most interesting scenes tend to be those with Dana Andrews, whose amiable fellowship that forms between him and his supposed romantic rival Henry Fonda has definite screwball possibilities, with Crawford – despite the film having been titled after her to appeal to memories of ‘Mildred Pierce’ – somewhat sidelined by their unlikely camaraderie.

Ruth Warrick as Andrews’ histrionic, high-maintenance harpy of a wife (taking her woes out on their teenaged daughters played charmingly by Peggy Ann Garner & Connie Marshall) goes out of her way to make Crawford seem a better catch; but the eventual likely outcome can be guessed at if you bear in mind the Breen Office’s prevailing view at the time of the sanctity of marriage. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Graft (1931)

Dir: Christy Cabanne | Cast: Regis Toomey, Sue Carol, Dorothy Revier, Boris Karloff | US Drama 54′

At the time this unambitious quickie with a distinctively terse title came and went unnoticed. It’s title today remains more familiar to connoisseurs of old horror movies than of pre-Code cinema, as it occasionally crops up in histories of the horror genre as the film Boris Karloff was making when in June 1931 he was spotted in the Universal commissary by James Whale and offered the role of Frankenstein’s monster. For the remainder of its brief production, Karloff would stay at the studio after finishing his day job on ‘Graft’ for nighttime make-up tests with Jack Pierce.

Few people have seen this movie, and horror authority Carlos Clarens erroneously refers to it as a gangster movie rather than yet another newspaper picture about a rookie reporter going after a big story. The jaunty music over the credits sounds more like something from a Laurel & Hardy picture, and sets the tone for the inconsequentiality of the piece; a point thuddingly underlined by the presence of its dim-witted though ultimately triumphant hero, Dustin Hotchkiss.

Although the film is well directed by Griffith alumnus Christy Cabanne, with superb photography by Jerome Ash, Hotchkiss is so annoying you can’t wait for the thing to end. Regis Toomey was fine in later classics like ‘The Big Sleep’, so the blame lies with the character rather than him. Of the two female leads, bad girl Dorothy Revier easily outshines good girl Sue Carol; but the most striking female presence in the film is Carmelita Geraghty – a leading lady in silent films remembered today for Hitchcock’s debut feature ‘The Pleasure Garden’ (1925) – but here demoted to the uncredited but eye-catching role of the villain’s slinky secretary.

And then there’s Karloff as his henchman “Terry”. Immaculately turned out in what Karloff himself later said was “my best suit”, his unique appearance and diction, allied to an expressed dislike of women, suggests that he bats for the other side. It further attests to Hotchkiss’s uselessness as a reporter that immediately after a murder he runs slap into BORIS KARLOFF – for chrissakes! – yet all he can recall of his appearance was that he wore a hat and a dark coat. @Richard Chatten

The Big Chance (1957) TPTV

Dir: Peter Graham Scott | Cast: Adrienne Corri, William Russell, Ian Colin, Penelope Bartley | UK Drama 59′

Yet another long-forgotten gem doing the rounds on Talking Pictures, the big chance – seized by both with both hands – those of director Peter Graham Scott and leading man William Russell (back then starting to make a name for himself as TVs Sir Lancelot).

Although billed second to femme fatale Adrienne Corri, Russell carries the film just like Joseph Cotton did in Andrew Stone’s The Steel Trap five years earlier, which seems to be its model; dreaming of escape to Honolulu, as Cotton had wanted to get away to Rio. Except here it gets even more complicated than Stone’s film when Corri enters the picture as a high maintenance dame in a fur coat.

Like Stone’s film vividly shot on location, the feature’s rough edges simply enhance the drama; and instead of Dimitri Tiomkin thundering away on the soundtrack we initially get Russell himself narrating the action (actually anticipating Stone’s Cry Terror the following year) and Eric Spear bringing out the cornet he later immortalised in his theme for ‘Coronation Street’.

Amazingly this all is all dealt with in under an hour during which you haven’t the foggiest idea how it’s all going to resolve itself; frequently thinking, as it grows more relentless, that it’s all going to have turned out to be a dream. Or a nightmare. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV

The Human Factor (2021)

Dir.: Dror Moreh; Documentary with Dennis Ross, James Baker, Aaron David Miller; USA 2019, 106 min.

Israeli documentarian Dror Moreh (The Gatekeepers) takes a look behind the scenes of the US-led peace mediations between Israel and Palestine, revealing failure on an epic scale, starting under the administration of President Herbert W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker.

The wake up call to pursue his documentary project coincided with the assassination of one of the main protagonists of the peace process, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed by an orthodox religious fanatic at a peace rally in Tel Aviv on 4th November 1995, also Moreh’s birthday.

When Bush senior came to power he inherited a new world order: the Cold War had ended in 1991, leaving the USA as the only world Super Power. But President and his Secretary of State still faced unsurmountable difficulties. Baker was known for “getting things done”. He succeeded in getting Israeli and Arab state leaders around the table – a first – but that is as far as it got.

The major part of this documentary is devoted to the efforts of the Clinton administration who felt they had a real chance of success. Mediator Dennis Ross (still affected emotionally by Rabin’s murder) and his chief assistant Aaron David Miller really felt they had the bit between their teeth during some positive years of negotiation but they couldn’t bring things to a satisfactory conclusions. There were two elections in 1992, as Baker stated, “the first one was won by the ‘right’ person, Yitzhak Rabin”.

November 1993 saw Bill Clinton beat George H. Bush to the presidency, which meant an exit for James Baker. Miller was of the opinion that peace could never be achieved between two sworn enemy states at war since 1948, and using the word “peace” would always doom the process to failure.

The preparation for a meeting between PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the US mediators was farcical, the Arafat team were filmed watching the US Soap ‘Golden Girls’ on TV. When Arafat and Rabin first got together on September 13th 1993, most of the meeting was taken up with ironing out the many pre-conditions set by the two men: Rabin agreed to shake Arafat’s hand (whilst keeping him away with his other hand), in exchange Arafat had to forgo his uniform and his gun. In the end he wore a Safari suit and promised not to kiss Rabin.

The body language between the two leaders spoke of their mutual distrust. But by 28th September 1995, when both men signed the “Oslo B Agreement” this had all changed. In a a speech at the reception, Rabin called “Arafat close to being Jewish, for excelling in Israel’s national sport of speech-making”. A month later Rabin was dead. His successor, Shimon Peres, lost the election to ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu (Likud) who was not interested in any long term settlement. In 1999, Ehud Barak’s Labour Party came to power. A general like Rabin, he withdrew Israeli troops from Lebanon and gave the Clinton administration new hope, but the Monica Lewinsky scandal weakened his credibility, and he only just avoided empeachment.

Barak stated openly that he was negotiating in the spirit of Rabin. At the Camp David Peace talks in 2000, he pushed for Arafat to sign over control of the largest Mosque in Jerusalem to Israel – which would have led to a Fatwa being placed on the Palestinian leader. Arafat later wrote to Clinton, calling him ‘a great man’, but Clinton’s response was that he “felt like a failure, because you made me one”. The American negotiators, many of them Jewish, believe in hindsight, that they acted more like lawyers for the US government, viewing the world “as they wanted it to be, not like it really was”. Failure continued to dog the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama who were both complete non-events when it came to a peace settlement. Donald Trump did no better, and actually poured oil on troubled waters particularly on the West Bank.

Moreh ends on a sober note, stating that the demonisation of the enemy has led to growing intolerance. According to Amos Gitai, Arab children associate Israelis with a gun culture, some of them never even seeing a Jew without a weapon. And both sides still claim the right to military intervention. The martyr death of Yitzhak Rabin seems, sadly, to be in vain. AS

IN REAL CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY 28 MAY 2021

The Cry Baby Killer (1958) Amazon

Dir: Justus Addiss | Cast: Jack Nicholson, Carolyn Mitchell, Brett Halsey , Lyn Cartwright | US Drama 70′

Jack Nicholson makes his screen debut in this economy-sized Le Jour se Lève’ for the Drive-Ins where he is second billed to veteran TV and ‘B’ movie tough guy Harry Lauter; here representing the law. Although Roger Corman is credited as Executive Producer, and has one line as a TV cameraman (after which all we see of him for the rest of the film is his right hand resting on the side of the camera), the film is a United Artists release rather than one of AIP’s quickies, with slightly bigger production values; a mixed blessing in the face of TV director Justus Addiss’s lethargic direction.

Corman regulars Leo Gordon (who co-wrote the script) and Bruno Ve Sota (who the same year directed The Brain Eaters) fill out the throng gathered to ogle; and Gordon generously gives Ve Sota one of the script’s best lines, “Teenagers, never had ’em when I was a kid!”

The basic situation dates back at least as far as Jean Gabin in Le Jour se Lève’ (1939), and was probably more immediately inspired by the siege at the end of Rebel Without a Cause. Nicholson doesn’t actually get that much screen time, as much of the action taking place back in the diner and in the forecourt. The script flits from character to character, including Gordon’s own wife Lynn Cartwright, who gives an attractive performance as waitress Julie, united with Ruth Swanson as Nicholson’s mother in her contempt for poison maiden Carolyn Mitchell who started all the trouble in the first place by ditching Nicholson for obnoxious alpha male bully Brett Halsey. (Swanson sums her up as “selfish, vulgar, cruel…rotten!!”)

The film’s unsung hero is Jordan Whitfield as Sam, the black dishwasher who keeps his head throughout the crisis. That we don’t see him get his due as Hero of the Hour at the film’s conclusion is one of several issues left unresolved (including the ultimate fates of both Nicholson and Halsey) when the end credits roll. @Richard Chatten

 

Sunflowers (2021) Exhibition on Screen

Dir: David Bickerstaff | Prod: Phil Grabsky | UK Do

Exhibition On Screen is a series of documentary portraits of painters and their iconic works. It goes behind the scenes at major galleries and museums offering insight from experts and curators and dramatised scenes that bring the artists to life.

David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky have already highlighted the letters and paintings of Van Gogh. This time the focus is on his famous paintings of sunflowers and how they inspired the artist to create a series of pictures that have become synonymous with the Dutch master and his tragic and extraordinary life. The image of the Sunflowers nowadays stands alongside the Mona Lisa as one of the best known and best loved images around the globe.

Van Gogh’s broad brush strokes and vibrant colour palette embody his passionate and intense nature in a prolific and struggling career that was partly funded by his brother Theo, whose letters to Vincent form part of an earlier film by the director duo (Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing) and Van Gogh in Japan. Other films focusing on the Dutch master are the animated 2017 drama Loving Vincent with Helen McCrory, and Maurice Pialat’s drama Van Gogh 

Here the focus is on the sunflowers that inspired five related paintings. These bold and honest flowers that embody beauty, strength and vulnerability somehow grew in significance. The weed-like crop native to the arid fields of France, Italy and Spain, became the subject of a work of art now worth millions of pounds. In the same way, the flowers connect with Van Gogh’s simple and soulful nature and his struggle to find meaning through his art that still resonates deeply with audiences today.

World authorities on Van Gogh’s work provide valuable insight amongst them Louis Van Tilborg from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and Chris Riopelle from the London’s National Gallery who take us behind the scenes to reveal the complexities surrounding the five famous depictions of the Arles Sunflowers from collections in London, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Munich and Amsterdam.

Meanwhile actor Jamie de Courcey (from A New Way of Seeing) again fleshes out the artist in dramatised sequences that attempt to show Van Gogh’s innermost thoughts about what the flowers really meant to him. MT

Sunflowers is released in cinemas across the UK from 8 June, including Curzon, Everyman, Odeon, Picturehouse, Showcase, Vue and independent cinemas. Find your nearest cinema at exhibitiononscreen.com

Vom Reiche der Sechs Punkte (1927) Mubi

Dir: Hugo Rütters | Doc, Silent 95′

A staple genre in Germany during the mid-twenties, and also popular abroad, were these upbeat documentaries known as ‘Kulturfilm’. Of these, Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (‘Ways to Strength and Beauty‘, 1925) – which can be viewed on YouTube – gained postwar notoriety as the film debut of Leni Riefenstahl, and for being singled out by Siegfried Kracauer in his postwar book ‘From Caligari to Hitler’ for its declared aim to promote the “regeneration of the human race” while Kracauer castigated the ‘Kulturfilm’ as a whole for “their amazing indifference to human problems”.

The new broom that swept Germany after 1933 may indeed have had little concern for the physically vulnerable; but Vom Reiche der sechs Punkte attests to a concern in the days of the Weimar Republic to strengthen Germany by means other than mass murder.

A feature-length dramatised documentary covering the attempts by the medical profession in the Rhineland to equip the blind for lives as productive members of society, this engrossing film intersperses documentary sequences featuring genuine staff and patients along with scenes where actors portray young steel worker Hermann and his fiancée Luise who learn that that he’s going to lose his eyesight through not seeking medical treatment soon enough; and Luise’s discovery of the help available in a home for the blind. (The point that his eyesight might have been saved if he’d seen a doctor soon enough is underlined by the fact that the other patient in the ophthalmologist’s waiting room is a small boy whose eyesight is also impossible to save because his mother didn’t bring him in to get his eyes examined soon enough). Gradually Hermann regains his hope for the future, while Luise joins the home as an assistant.

The documentary portion of the film provides distressing evidence of the damage childhood infections and other afflictions can do to infants’ eyesight, before moving on to the treatment available, including a brief history of various aids to communication culminating in braille (the ‘six dots’ of the title), the manufacture of glass eyes, and outdoor excursions into the country for the kids. Most of the emphasis is on children, although we see Hermann in a class being taught basketmaking and a concert by blind musicians fronted by a blind pianist. A scene with a blind beggar serves as a reminder of the fate in store for so many disabled people between the wars, but strangely enough no mention is ever made of all the soldiers blinded in The Great War.

Purely by dint of having been shot during the 1920s, much of the film appears charmingly picturesque in the handsome tinted and toned print found in the Finnish Film Archive. It would be interesting to learn what a modern ophthalmologist would make of the standard of treatment depicted. @Richard Chatten

 

The Reunions (2020) Chinese cinema season

Dir.: Da Peng aka Dong Chengpeng; Documentary with Liu Lu, Wang Jixang, Da Pen; China 2020, 80 min.

Chinese writer/director Dong Chengpeng had great success with his comedy City of Rock. But The Reunions is a different beast altogether. Actually, it’s two films in one, conflating the 40-minute doc-drama A Reunion (2018), whose cinema premiere we witness, with a second part, A Final Reunion, exploring contradictions of modern China: the price of success, the chasm between big cities and the countryside and the loosening of traditional family ties. Its languid mood is full of resignation and regret.

The director’s first foray into arthouse territory was inspired on a trip back to his rural hometown of Tonghua, where the family New Year get together will celebrate his ailing grandmother, who has held to the family together. But she died during the shooting, leaving Chengpeng’s original script in tatters. So the real drama unfolding is not the death, but the problem of what to do with Uncle Wang Jixang, a man in his early sixties who has suffered brain damage leaving him with the mental age of a baby, his vocabulary reduced to mumbling the names of his relatives, but leaving out his own.

Structured a little bit like Michael Frayn’s play ‘Noises Off’, we see both sides of the enfolding drama: the docu-drama elements are set against the filmmaking itself, as crew and cast come together as Chengpeng’s intentions are put to the test.

Throughout the film a musical motif glorifies the Chinese Communist Party and its Chairman Mao. Wang had been a high ranking Security official before his illness, and helped many of his relatives to settle in the city, no mean feat. Among those is his thirty-something daughter Lili (Liu Lu), who sided with her mother and benefited from a financial settlement when the family was divided. Lili has a young child and is unable to look after her father, who needs constant care.

Reality and script collide in a pause during filmmaking when Lili asks one of the relatives why ‘she’ had stayed away for ten years from the family: instead of an answer, there is silence – with her real life counterpart looking on. All the feuding family can agree on is that the making of the film had motivated them to attend the gathering – which may well be the last.

Dong Chengpeng serves as his own DoP along with Wang Quinyl to capture the generalised feeling of sadness as well as the colourful New Year’s celebrations with the its impressive fireworks. The director is clearly moved by his own remorse: this long goodbye to the village where he grew up and the slow erosion of the family have finally taken their toll. @AS

CHINESE CINEMA SEASON continues in online screens the Rio, GENESIS, HOME (Manchester), Kinoculture, Sheffield Workstation, Chapter Cardiff, Reading Film Theatre.

Generation Utøya (2021) HotDocs 2021

Dir.: Aslaug Holm, Sigve Endresen; Documentary with Ina Rangones Libak, Kamzy Gunaratnam, Renate Tarnes, Line Hoem; Norway 2021, 104 min.

Commemorating  that fateful day of 22th July 2011 when Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 young people on the island of Utøya just off Norway. Aslaug Holm and Sigve Endresen have created a passionate portrait of four women who survived to tell their tale, and they couldn’t be more different.

Kamzy Gunaratnam is the child of modest Sri Lankan’ emigrants at pains to keep their daughter away from politics after their own experiences in the homeland. Kamzy believed in that ‘old chestnut’: ‘It couldn’t happen here’. But it did. On that fateful summer day, Kamzy swam away from the shore in the midst of Breivik’s killing spree that went on for over an hour. Today she is the Deputy Mayor of Oslo, a position she has to fight for at every turn, the Labour Party fully aware that her background may not win her as many votes as a native candidate. But Kamzy is indomitable, she travels the country visiting schools to bring her message into classrooms.

Ina Rangones Libak was shot three times by Breivik – she recalls her experience with an almost clinical detachment: “First he shot my hands, and I thought -that’s not too bad, then he shot at my jaw and finally my chest. I knew I might die, my last thought, at least what I believed it to be, was a drop of water falling on a leaf”. Friends kept her warm, and stemmed the bleeding and after a long battle she recovered. From 2016 to 2018 Ina was Deputy leader of the AUF, before leading the organisation in the following two years. She still has treatment for PTSD, and receives permanent online abuse, particularly after the Justice Minister of the ruling ‘Progress’ Party, Sylvi Listhaug called the Labour Party to task for “putting the interests of radical Muslims before the safety of the Norwegian people”. Ina reminded the Minister that she and her Party had been the target of a terrorist attack.

We watch Line Hoem as she works with her therapist to help overcome the debilitating psychological after-effects of her ordeal. She also finds regular exercise – particularly running – is a helpful way of easing anxiety.

Renate Tarnes has coped with her ordeal in a community-based way, helping to restore the island of Utøya as a meeting place for people who shared the same beliefs as those who lost their lives there 10 years ago: they pick flowers, and put them onto the names of the sixty-nine who were actually shot down on the island, and whose names are engraved in a large ring structure.

The directors avoid sentimentality even though the emotional consequences are never glossed over. Generation Utøya is a testament to survival – not to victimhood – but to the enduring strength of those women who live on. AS

NOW AT HOTDOCS Toronto Canada

End of Sentence (2019)

Dir: Elfar Adalsteins | Cast: John Hawkes, Logan Lerman, Sarah Bolger, Olafur Darri Olafsson | US, Drama 97′

There’s a dicey moment in the opening scenes of this road movie when a grieving husband nearly drops his wife’s ashes on the way back from her funeral in small-town Alabama. This is one of the lighter moments in Michael Armbruster’s tragicomic script that takes the edge off a bitterly violent reunion between likeable father Frank (Johan Hawkes) and his bullying son Sean (Logan Lerman).

Anna’s dying wish was that her husband and their ex-con son would scatter her remains back home in Ireland near her favourite lake. The casket of ashes will become the MacGuffin providing some humorous plot twists in this father and son journey that starts in the Southern States and ends in County Wicklow, the American spiritual home.

We see Sean checking out of a correctional facility where he has served time for crimes unknown. Frank has arrived to meet him only to be rudely rebuffed by the miscast felon, a hardened brute who clearly hates his dad, again, for reasons unknown.

But Frank finally persuades him to go on the trip to Ireland in the hope of burying the hatchet, along with the casket. Once in Dublin there’s no peace for the grieving Frank, Sean giving him an impromptu battering before heading for the hotel bar. He soon takes up with Jewel (Bolger), a savvy call girl who also knows a thing or two about spark plugs, clearly she’s no dumb blonde, just a rather one-dimensional one.

Soon they’re snogging in the carpark, Sean promptly throwing up all over the hire car’s velour seats. It doesn’t take us long to realise that the only good guy on this ‘road to redemption’ is Frank. Sean – his polar opposite – is somehow miscast in a role which has no backstory to give ballast to his fall from grace. Jewel will turn out to be a hollow hooker, minus the heart of gold.

We know exactly what will happen in End of Sentence, John Hawkes making it all watchable with his subtle take on grief. Upbeat for the most part, and lushly photographed in Southern Ireland, the sentimental final scene and earnest score is what you’d expect for a film pitched at an American audience where it premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. MT

BLUE FINCH FILMS on UK digital download | 10 May 2021

 

 

The Doll (2021) Winner of Hot Docs Best International Short Documentary

Dir: Elahe Esmaili | Iran, Doc 32′

A teenage marriage is viewed through the eyes of friends and family in this weirdly tragic ‘smoke and mirrors’ snapshot of modern Tehran from first time filmmaker Elahe Esmaili.

The ‘bride to be’ in question is 14 year-old Asil, a child trapped in a naive middle-aged woman’s persona, from her bright red nails to her fuddy duddy fashion sense, she cuts an odd figure, simpering like the cat that got the cream. It’s an arranged marriage of sorts. It turns out that a man saw her portrait in her father’s photography studio and decided she could make a good match for his son, who doesn’t make much of an appearance although we understand he is much older and has just finished college. We are fed snippets of information. And as the story unfolds an ‘smoke and mirrors’ story emerges making this intriguing viewing.

Their engaged status means the couple are allowed to spend more time together, Asil’s intended courting his giggling sweetheart with fluffy toys and sweeties, much to her delight. No whiff of pheromones or onscreen chemistry here. In fact, there’s something distinctly unconvincing about this young romance that leads us to believe that Esmaili is not giving us the full facts. Asil’s grandmother suspects there’s more to the match than meets the eye, and we tend to agree – Although Asil is not letting on. She may just be out of her depth, or desperately trying to hide the truth. Family photos from the past see her as a cosseted little angel used to being the centre of attention. Is she caught in a trap of her own making, unable to see the unfolding reality of her situation. Or is the romance wishful thinking?.

The family set-up soon reveals cracks in the facade. Asil’s father Alireza is divorced from her mother – although it’s complicated – and there’s a big question mark about his new relationship. The 35-year old father is struggling to bring up two teenagers in a pokey flat, so money is clearly an issue, raising questions about Asil’s boyfriend’s financial status. Meanwhile, Asil’s intended gives lip service to her pretensions at getting an education. Although you get the impression she may follow the more traditional route once celebrations are over. And as Esmaili delves deeper through a series of telling insights provided by members of the family, radical views emerge along with anecdotal stories. The Doll is a cleverly-scripted tightly-packed look at modern Iran where the paternalistic fist still waits in the wings for those who think freedom is now within their grasp. MT

THE DOLL PREMIERES AT HOTDOCS 

Winner of Hot Docs Best International Short Documentary

 

 

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Dir: Stanley Kramer | Writers: William and Tania Rose | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas, Edie Adams | US Comedy drama 215′

Stanley Kramer continues to be damned with faint praise to this day, so his one attempt at crazy comedy was never going to get an easy ride from the critics. But that doesn’t stop it being very very very very funny!!

A group of motorists hear about a crook’s hidden stash of loot, and race against each other across country to get their paws on it.

When it first opened nearly sixty years ago it seemed the height of modern folly. More time having now elapsed since the silent era than when it was itself made now makes it’s shiny colour, sharp suits, classic cars (treated with a lack of respect that would make modern audiences weep) and lack of swearing render it charmingly dated; as does the presence of the likes of long-gone Hollywood legends like Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton. (It even includes Zasu Pitts, forty years after she starred in ‘Greed’, which would have made an apt title for this). @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Trezor (2018) Netflix

Dir.: Peter Bergendy; Cast: Zsolt Anger, Peter Scherer, Bence Tasnadi, Zoltan Bezeredi, Gabriella Hamori; Hungary 2018, 85 min.

Set against the last knockings of the Hungarian Uprising in Autumn 1956, Peter Bergendy spins a story of police corruption into a fast and furious action thriller with some whip-smart plot twists, finally abandoning grim ultra-realism in a saccharine showdown.

Safe-cracker Janos Beck (Anger), a locksmith by trade, is serving a twenty year sentence for murder after a theft of gold bullion went wrong in the mid 1940s. But the murder was actually committed by secret police officer Kalman Honti (Scherer) during the bungled safe robbery that resulted in the death of one of the perpetrators.

By the Autumn of 1956 Soviet tanks have finally put paid to the Hungarian insurgence, and Honti offers to cut Beck’s remaining time in prison in exchange for opening the same safe, but time the quarry is Honti’s personal file in the Secret Police archives. Beck falls for the plan, but there’s a surprise in store in the vaults: a corpse and man in a tuxedo: pianist Geza Ivanyi (Tasnadi), who overwhelms Beck and chains him to the heating pipe. It turns out, the piano player was celebrating the success of the Uprising a few days previously, and is unaware that Russian tanks have reversed the situation. The two of them get into a philosophical debate, with Beck, who has educated himself while in prison, defending the Stalinist regime. Meanwhile, Honti is tasked with finding a way into the vault by Interior Minister Ferenc Münnich (Bezeridi). Suddenly Beck’s life is once again in danger.

Norbert Kobli’s script adds gravitas with some weighty political debates between Beck and Ivanyi, the former defending his jailers, while the pianist takes a libertarian line. Filming in and around Budapest, DoP Andras Nagy captures the dour prison atmosphere in a cold-blooded totalitarian regime that has long abandoned the credo it started out with. @AS

TREZOR IS NOW ON NETFLIX.

 

Inside the Mafia (1959)

Dir: Edward L Cahn | Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Robert Strauss, Grant Richards, James Brown | Elaine Edwards | US Thriller 72′

The title of this film suggests a “now it can be told” drama-documentary along the lines of The House on 92nd Street and I Was a Communist for the FBI, but for most of its running time it’s actually more a remake of Lewis Allen’s Suddenly (1954), which had depicted a hit man holding people hostage while lying in wait for his intended target.

The enormous success of the TV series ‘The Untouchables’ having recently sparked a wave of gangster films that nostalgically returned to the 1920s, this lively exploitation quickie from Allied Artists brought the on screen depiction of organised crime bang up to date by purporting to recreate the Apalachin criminal summit of 14 November 1957 at which about 100 underworld bosses were swooped on by the law (rather more than the budget of this film permitted), which had forced FBI director J.Edgar Hoover finally to acknowledge the presence in the United States of the Cosa Nostra and brought both public and official perception of contemporary organised crime bang up to date.

The amount of plot Orville H. Hampton’s script manages to cram into just 72 minutes – engrossingly juggling high-level mafia power politics with a ticking clock and the drama of hostage taking – recalls the classic pre-code crime films of 25 years earlier, as do the sharp suits (although the ponytail and slacks worn by Carol Nugent as the more pert of the two sisters taken hostage serve as a continuous visual reminder that it’s now the 1950s). There is a probably deliberately tongue-in-cheek quality to the way these Mafiosi couldn’t be more conspicuous if they tried. Cameron Mitchell, nattily attired in dark glasses and felt hat (like his equally immaculately dressed henchmen Robert Strauss he keeps the hat on indoors; maybe to signify that he’s on duty) visibly still cared about his acting in those days, and plays the hit man to the hilt. As his intended victim, Grant Richards brings real authority to his role as crime boss Johnny Lucero when he finally appears. Great fun. @Richard Chatten

https://youtu.be/q3TZKB8u69w

 

Montparnasse 19 (1958)

Dir: Jacques Becker | Cast: Gerard Philipe, Anouk Aimée | Lilli Palmer | Drama France, 108′

The Grim Reaper casts a long shadow over this film depicting the final declining months of Amedeo Modigliani – one of the giants of 20th Century art – who, in January 1920, died in Paris in poverty of tubercular meningitis aged just 35. The original director Max Ophuls had died suddenly at the age of 54, and both his replacement as director and the film’s star were dead within two years of its completion.

Had Ophuls lived we would now be contemplating a very different film – probably in colour and alive with his trademark dolly shots. Having already shown the seamier side of the Belle Époque in Casque d’Or, Jacques Becker wasn’t about to romanticise Parisian life after The Great War. In addition to making drastic changes to Henri Jeanson’s script – which led to rows – Becker (who had just made his two worst films, both in colour, which put him off making a third), instead of lifting the soul by concentrating on the art as posterity’s triumph over the life – as had Lust for Life – takes us on a bleak, monochromatic tour of the lower depths of Modigliani’s cramped and thwarted mortal existence; his mental and physical decline reflected in Paul Misraki’s sinister score.

The film already carries an on-screen disclaimer that it takes liberties with historical fact; and good as they both are as the two doomed lovers, it’s hard to believe the ethereal Gerard Philipe as the sort of brute who could possibly strike a woman, while Anouk Aimée – who has just celebrated her 89th birthday – looks more like a chic fifties left bank existentialist than a vulnerable little waif. A vibrant Lili Palmer, however, is spot-on as Modigliani’s bohemian ex-lover. Representing the art trade, Lino Ventura looks as if he’s barged in from the set of ‘Touchez Pas au Grisbi’; and the final shot of him greedily rifling through Modigliani’s artistic legacy is not for the faint-hearted @Richard Chatten

 

Blue Box (2021) Hot Docs 2021

Dir.: Michal Weits; Documentary about Joseph Weits; Israel 2021, 83 min.

Israeli director/co-writer Michal Weits sheds light on a fragile episode Isreaeli history. Examining the Jewish National Fund’s Blue Boxes – part of a successful fundraising campaign to support the purchase of land in Palestine – in which her grandfather took an active part – Weits comes face to face with her own family history that unveils a painful and enlightening exploration of a nation’s past but also some unpleasant home truths.

There’s nothing more depressing than discovering skeletons in your own family cupboard. But this is exactly what happened when Weits delved deeper into the story of her mythological family figure: in this case her own great grandfather, Joseph Weits. Born in 1890 in the small Russian town of Boremal he emigrated to Palestine in 1908 where he joined the struggle for independence helping to lay the foundations for the new State of Israel. He is known as the “Father of Trees”, planting over 80 million trees in the Jewish state.

But further examination of his extensive diary, reveals Weits senior was also the “Father of Transfer”: helping Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to ‘legally’ annexe villages and towns of Arabs, who had to flee after the “War of Independence” in 1948. The majority of the Weits family reacted with an outright denial of the facts.

When Joseph Weits arrived in Palestine, Arabs outnumbered Jews. In 1933, nearly a million Arabs lived with several thousand Jews in what was then the British Protectorate of Palestine. Both sides were unhappy with the status quo, and Jews started to pour into the country, after the rise of fascism in Europe. Zionists, encouraged by Theodor Herzl, tried to organise a steady Jewish immigration. In 1937, the British had plans to partition Palestine in two states. Joseph Weits was aware that the number of Jews living in Palestine would determine the nation’s future size. So he bought villages and land from ‘Effendis’, who lived outside Palestine, and sold the land of their small-holders. He also encouraged to buy directly from Palestine farmers, paying with the money of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which had been founded in 1901. In his diary Weits writes: “The man was selling his homeland, and the Jews are buying it up. And: “It’s Them or Us. We want to be clear: There is no room for both of us. If the Arabs remain, the country will be crammed and impoverished. The only solution is Israel with no Arabs. There is no room for compromise. Transfer them all!”.

At the beginning of WWII, two of Joseph’s son, Raaman and Sharon, joined the British Army, whilst the third, Yehiam, was a member of the Zionist Underground, and later killed. After the end of WWII, and the discovery of the Concentrations Camps, Joseph writes: “Building the state of Israel will be our revenge”. After the War of Independence in 1948, nearly a million Arabs fled into neighbouring countries, only a few thousand staying put. Meanwhile, the Jewish population had risen to replace what had been an Arab majority.

In Haifa, only a few thousand were left of the once burgeoning Arab population. Joseph was leading the ‘transfer’ of properties, even though “Jaffa’s silence frightens me”. By annexing land and buildings, creating a “Transfer post factum”, the Arab exodus was made permanent. The members of the Transfer Committee, Joseph was one of them, had four guiding principles: 1. Preventing the Arabs from returning to their land; 2. Assisting the Arabs to settle in other countries; 3. Settling Jews in several villages and cities; 4. Destroying as many Arab villages as possible through military action”;

Old newsreels show the bulldozers doing their job. The UN resolution 194 stated clearly that all Arab refugees could return to their properties. Weits and his committee avoided the consequences by selling 250, 000 acres of land from the absentee landlords to the JNF, since the latter was not beholden to International Law. At this point, the filmmaker is confronted by a family member: “I have no idea how this this Transfer business worked. I am not comfortable with you doing this. You would have done the same had you been around in 1948/9. I want no part of this film”.

But Joseph Weits was less in denial than parts of his family: “There are 52 refuge camps, surrounding us. The Prime Minister thinks, the problem will go away with time. But they are surrounding us with hate, they will not desist in years to come. They will be a barrier to peace making. The illusion of occupation is convenient, but the intoxication of our victory has muddled our long term thinking. We have the land, but we did not pay the Arab refugees for their land. If we paid with the blood of our soldiers to get peace, why do we not pay with money now”. In 1966, 2.4 million Jews lived in what was Palestine, in contrast with just half a million Arabs. Joseph Weits left the JNF after 35 years. He was isolated, not even asking for advice anymore. “The West Bank annexation is a burden, now and for the coming generations.”

His great grand-daughter, the filmmaker, and her family have to live with the demystified Joseph Weits: yes, he planted 80 million trees, but he was also the “Father of Transfer”. But his fate is the fate of the nation he served, where good and evil live side by side for the coming generations to solve. With an insightful array of historical documentary material, this is a honest account of a family who grew up believing in the mythos of greatness. AS

SCREENING DURING HOTDOCS FILM FESTIVAL | CANADA 2021

Antoine et Antoinette (1947) Prime Video

Dir: Jacque Becker | Cast: Roger Pigaut, Claire Maffei, Noel Roquevert, Gaston Modot | France, Drama 78′

This charming slice of Parisian street life throbs with vibrant energy in the dependable hands of its gifted director Jacques Becker, whose fourth feature it was. It contains relatively few of the sweeping dollies and tracks that characterised his previous film Falbalas, instead bombarding the viewer with a collage of dramatic compositions (including some of the biggest closeups seen before Sergio Leone got behind a camera) cut together at breakneck speed by his regular editor Marguerite Renoir. All the acting, down to the smallest part, is superb.

The sheer gusto with which this film is put together helps gloss over the bleak reality of its eponymous young lovers’ existence in their tiny attic flat; the lottery ticket that occupies the final leg of the film being something of a red herring. Like the sudden windfall that rescues Emil Jannings from destitution at the conclusion of Der Letzte Mann, the release from a world of petty privations and even more petty employers their lottery win represents is poignant for the fact that it will in actuality never become reality for most young people like Antoine & Antoinette.

The incredibly phoney looking back-projection behind the two young lovers as they head off to the horizon on his new motorcycle at the film’s conclusion may well be intended to highlight the fact that real life, alas, rarely provides endings like this. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Fair Wind to Java (1953) Prime Video

Dir: Joseph Kane | Wri: Richard Tregaskis | Cast: Fred MacMurray, Vera Ralston, Robert Douglas, Victor McLaglen | US Action Drama, 92′

Barnstorming South Seas hokum in chewy Trucolor of the type Republic Pictures was churning out by the yard at this time, full of plot elements that had earlier done service in their westerns & serials, such as diamonds being sought by a plummy-voiced villain in a carnival mask, endless fisticuffs, and of course Vera Hruba Ralston, wife of Republic’s president, Herbert J. Yates.

On this occasion she pays Kim Kim, a dusky Eurasian exotic dancer with extraordinary eyebrows, and her mere presence causes a stir with the menfolk who all vy for her attention aboard McMurray’s rigger the ‘Gerrymander’. He is later flogged to reveal the location of the diamonds. This was well after his suave double-crossing insurance exec role as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity. 

The phoniness of the studio scenes on board the deck of the ‘Gerrymander’ is complimented by the usual overacting by Republic stalwarts Victor McLaglen and Paul Fix, in marked contrast to superb model work by the Lydecker brothers depicting the ‘Gerrymander’ battling pirates at sea and climaxing in the 1883 eruption of the volcano Krakatau and the resulting tidal wave. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Wall of Shadows (2021)

Dir/Wri: Eliza Kubarska | Polish Doc 98′

As Buddhists, Sherpas are very respectful of spirituality of their mountain habitat as we discovered in Jennifer Preedom’s award-winning documentary Sherpa. Their habitat of the Himalayas has long been exploited by an increasing number of tourists who they depend on for their livelihood, offering expert knowledge of the unique mountain range in return. But recently things have got out of hand with tourists expecting an increasingly luxurious experience that has led to overcrowding of the region that often results in tailbacks and risk-taking.  

The focus here in Wall of Shadows, that took a prize at the Bergen International Film Festival in Norway, is once again the intrinsic spirituality of this visually stunning but highly treacherous part of the world, where the weather can change in minutes leaving climbers stranded and in danger.

The film takes place in Nepal’s Kumbhakarna Mountain, the 32nd highest in the World and an outlier to Kangchenjunga, the 3rd highest peak with some highly challenging weather conditions and steep ascents. This is home to a Sherpa family who agree, against their better judgement, to take some experienced climbers who push the guides to uncomfortable emotional limits in order to reach the top. The Sherpas continually voice their concerns, but equally realise they won’t get paid if they don’t complete their contract, forcing them between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile the Sherpas are clearly uneasy but continue to pray to the mountain spirits.

Their clients are three leading alpinists, the outstanding Polish climber Marcin Tomaszewski and two-time winners of the climbing Oscar (Golden Ice Axe) Dmitry Golovchenko and Sergei Nilov from Russia, take part in the expedition on the eastern face of the mountain which, at 7,400 metres, is one of the most difficult challenges in alpinism today. This is the first time they’ve worked as a team and tensions start to emerge surrounding their different strengths and weaknesses.

DoPs Piotr Rosolowski (who also co-wrote the script) and Keith Partridge conjure up a real sense of awe in the majesty of the locations making this feel like a spiritual journey while at the same time a highly dangerous one. Barbara Toennieshen creates a sense of slowly building tension with her clever editing which never cuts corners in allowing the unique serenity of the place to beguile the audience. To this day, Kumbhakarna’s East Face (7710m) remains unconquered. MT

The film is the third collaboration between director Eliza Kubarska and producer Monika Braid and is a Polish-German-Swiss co-production. MT

IN CINEMAS in the UK and Ireland on Friday 22nd April 2022.

https://youtu.be/Sz5slumAjL0

 

What If? Ehud Barak on War and Peace (2020) Moscow Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Ran Tal; Documentary with Elud Barak; Israel 2020, 85 min.

In his immersive new documentary Israeli director/writer Ran Tal (The Museum), interviews former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The upshot? That war has dominated Israel’s history – from before its foundation of to the ongoing stalemate.

Since the State of Israel came into being, the Premier also served as Defence Minister. This changed in 1967, after the war when battlefield hero General Moshe Dayan became Minister of Defence. Since then, five Prime Ministers have been high ranking military men: Yitzak Rabin, Ygal Allon, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Some people may include Menachem Begin, who was a leading proponent of the Zionist Underground, responsible for the death of over 80 British soldiers in the bombing of the Hotel King David in 1946. Barak was only PM for two years at the turn of the 20th century when he met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the failed Camp David meeting in 2000, where President Clinton tried in vain to broker an agreement between the two leaders. It turned out to be the last time a peace agreement seemed possible.

Ehud Barak (*1942) grew up in Mishmar Ha Sharon, a small Kibbutz. He remembers nights round the camp fire when the young members of the modest Kibbutz – a family room was a just 11 square meters, and there was no loo – they sang patriotic songs that told how “it was worthwhile to die for one’s country”. 300 meters down the road was the Arab village, the inhabitants “looking like our biblical forefather”. There was no tension between the two communities, but one day, the Arabs disappeared. The Kibbutz suddenly grew, taking, over the land which had belonged to the Arabs. When Barak became Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army he once asked the Chief of Military Intelligence if they should assassinate Yasser Arafat. The answer was negative, since Arafat was deemed to be a political leader.

A few years later, the situation had changed. Barak saw active service in the 1967 war, which, so he believes, was won, “because we attacked first”. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (Barak flew in from California, where he was studying), the roles were reversed: Barak was part of heavy fighting in the Sinai peninsula.

After the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, Barak became leader of an Elite Corps, called the ‘Wrath of God’ who targeted terrorist all over Europe, killing, among others, Abbas al-Musawi, the Secretary General of the Hezbollah which he had co-founded. Asked about the civilian victims of these killings, Barak is clear: “When you operate, not to kill civilians, you won’t do anything.”  Referring to the assassination of Sadam Hussain, he claims history could have been entirely different: “Over a hundred thousand lives lost in the Iraq war, might have been saved”.

Strangely enough, the Rabin assassination “is not comparable with the aforementioned terror acts”. Sometimes Barak sounds reasonable: defending the reason to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon, or offering to divide Jerusalem in four sections, an offer Arafat refused at Camp David. But then he slips back into the warrior position: “We can not offer the Palestinians an enlightened occupation, that would be an oxymoron”. In 2001 Elud Barak lost the General Election to Ariel Sharon – an ex-general, responsible for the massacre at Sabre and Shatila.

No doubt Palestinian leaders are thinking on the same lines as the Israeli commanders – but how can you sit down and negotiate a peace treaty with somebody you would have assassinated, had you had the chance. This is the real oxymoron. Ran Tal’s feature is sad proof the military conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will go on for a long time: the language of war speaks loudest. AS

SCREEEING DURING THE MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Picture Mommy Dead (1966)

Dir: Bert I Gordon | Wri: Robert Sherman | Cast: Don Ameche, Martha Hyer, Susan Gordon, Zsa Zsa Gabor | Fantasy horror, 82

“The Past is Like a Tiger, and No Matter How You Pet It or Pretend That It’s Tame One Day It Will Turn…”

If I’d missed the start and hadn’t caught the director credit, I would have taken this for the work of William Castle rather than sci-fi and horror specialist Bert I. Gordon briefly venturing into Psycho/Baby Jane territory. The production values are in fact rather more impressive than one would have got with Castle. Greystone, the Beverly Hills mansion in which most of the action takes place is well served by Ellsworth Fredericks’s elegant photography, which gives the film the feeling of an Italian ‘giallo’ (complete with spooky close-ups of dolls, portraits and various childhood relics) produced as a glossy sixties TV movie. Unfortunately, shorn of Castle’s gimmicks Gordon’s direction manages to be even more pedestrian than Castle’s would have been; and fails utterly to energise a talky script in which things are constantly spelled out through dialogue rather than conveyed visually.

In an interesting cast of has-beens, Ameche is wasted as the heroine’s weak and corrupt father; but as the ghastly stepmom – who having already maxed out hubby’s nest egg is now making absolutely no secret of her desire to have her stepdaughter committed so she can gets her mitts on HER inheritance too – Martha Hyer rises to the challenge of convincingly playing a wife even more high maintenance than her predecessor Zsa Zsa Gabor must doubtless have been. (If she hadn’t been busy at the time making ‘Green Acres’, it would have been interesting to see Zsa Zsa and her sister Eva in the role played by the not dissimilar Hyer squaring up against each other in the same movie.) Signe Hasso pops up ominously in a nun’s habit, Wendell Corey is obviously drunk (he died from cirrhosis of the liver two years later) but enjoyably intimidating as the family lawyer; as is Maxwell Reed, who does justice to some wonderfully fruity dialogue as a male Miss Danvers. Anna Lee’s role as a family friend promises to be nicely bitchy too, but she unfortunately disappears almost as soon as she appears. @Richard Chatten

 

 

Man of God (2021) Moscow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Yelena Popovic | biopic Drama, 110’ |

Venerated Eastern Orthodox Saint Nektarios of Aegina (1846-1920)  certainly had a hard time of it, according to Man of God, screening in  Moscow Film Festival’s competition line-up, chronicling the life of this beloved and highly revered religious figure.

Exiled, slandered and convicted without trial, Saint Nektarios gets a worthy but rather lifeless, sepia-tinted drama dedicated to his memory with clunky dialogue more suited Silicon Valley than a 19th-set religious biopic following the trials and tribulations of the ‘Metropolitan’ who was canonised in 1961. Overall Man of God is well-researched and informative in raising the international profile of a lesser known religious figure. It’s a film that will have great appeal to those of an Eastern Orthodox persuasion.

In her first feature as solo director, and producer Yelena Popovic (who scripted L A Superheroes) adopts a straightforward narrative quickly establishing our hero as a pious and quietly-spoken miracle worker serving his community with abject humbleness – in early scenes we see him offering his shoes to a beggar – and Aris Servetalis (Apples) plays him with conviction although never quite achieving the saintly aura of Enrique Irazoqui in Pasolini’s Gospel According to Matthew.

Nektarios is soon ordained as the Metropolitan of Pentapolis (named after the five sacred places in Italy). But his acts of Godliness and virtue and his popularity amongst his flock, but incur the envy of the Egyptian clergy who fear he might become the next Patriarch of Egypt. He is discredited and quietly ushered out of Egypt, one high official still believing in him (“you seem to be the real deal”) securing him a posting in Mount Athos, Northern Greece.

Despite the magnificent scenery, DoP Panagiotis Vasilakis keeps his colour palette muted in religious respect as Nektarios who continues to impress the locals at the same time honing his literary skills which see him promoted to the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School where he becomes a Christian mentor and prolific author. Retiring to Aegina on the grounds of ill health (he still manages to rebuild a monastery with his own hands) he somehow falls foul of the system once again, accused of immorality, and goes to join his maker. The unlikely casting of Mickey Rourke (as a leper) seems appropriate for this tale of saintly redemption and purity, and he becomes the fortunate recipient of Nekarios’ posthumous final miracle at Aretaieion Hospital, in Greece. MT

MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION 2021

Gli Indifferenti | The Time of Indifference (2020) Moscow Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli; Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedesci, Eduardo Pece, Vinzenzo Crea, Beatrice Granno, Awa Ly, Giovanna Mezzogiorno; Italy 2020, 82 min.

The Time of Indifference is a modern-day take on Alberto Moravia’s first novel Gli Indifferenti written in 1929 (when the author was twenty-one) about a Roman family’s changing fortunes during Fascism.

Remakes are a tough call – and this one is a pale rider in comparison with Franceso Maselli’s 1964 original, adapted for the screen by award-winning Suso Cecchi D’Amico who worked with virtually all the Neo-Realist post war directors on Bicycle Thieves, The Leopard and Miracle In Milan. Screen legends Claudia Cardinale, Rod Steiger and Shelley Winters are also a tough act to follow.

Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli’s stylish version is lavishly-mounted and entertaining up to a point, but you can’t replace a strong script with visual and theatrical flourishes, and the director’s attempts to integrate a social media/gaming angle feels flaccid. Moravia’s story has lashings of dramatic potential, a salacious page turner oozing sexual politics, corruption, and intergenerational conflict in a down-spiralling economy – it’s all there for the taking, quite literally, in a “fiddle while Rome burns’ kind of way”. All very much in keeping with the unsettling climate today.

That said The Time of Indifference is not without its merits, and one is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Always a pleasure to watch, she makes for a supremely sensitive Maria Grazia, a widowed countess who has fallen from grace, unable to escape the pretences of her former glory or its material excesses. Edoardo Pesce is utterly convincing as her conniving lover, a suave conman who has his eyes set on her property, and her daughter, Carla (Granno), while her ineffectual son Michele (Crea) is unable to take the family forward, despite his better judgement.

Maria Grazia is in love with Leo, but her sexual power is waning, despite her graceful attributes. And we feel for her. But like most men of her own age, Leo is obsessed with youth, and fancies her 18-year-old daughter Carla (Granno). Meanwhile Michele (Crea) affair with his mother’s best friend (and Leo’s former lover) Lisa (Mezzogiorno), also doesn’t work, largely down to miscasting.

What is missing in this version is the elegant decadence of Moravia’s novel. While looking down on Mussolini as an upstart, the Italian upper classes and intelligentsia had made peace with his regime. This status quo gave no quarter to the tragedy unfolding, they just kept going by selling their properties and status no a new middle-class, of which Leo is a symbolic member.

In the end Leo’s greed and desperation shows his true colours, and is pivotal to the family’s salvation – of sorts – due to an act of female empowerment that buys the family time. This all plays out off-scene, resulting in a rather vapid denouement in the scheme of things. Enjoyable Saturday night fare. MT

SCREENING DURING MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

 

Fängelse | Prison (1949)

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

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

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

 

 

Volker Schlöndorff Retro | Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Bergamo is back with another film festival to mark the city’s triumphant return after the setbacks of the past year.

This 73rd edition – which runs from Friday 24 April – 2 May – celebrates a major retrospective dedicated to director, screenwriter, producer and actor Volker Schlöndorff, one of the most significant talents of post-war German cinema. Bergamo is also set to pay homage to Polish director, writer and artist Jerzy Skolimowsky and one of the key figures of  Hungarian cinema, director and writer Márta Mészáros.

But first let’s look at Volker Schlöndorff  (*1939) whose career to date spans over 50 years with 23 feature films, nine segments for feature films, seven TV movies, three documentary and seven TV documentaries, an impressive rollcall. If there is one common factor in his feature film output, it’s his penchant for literary adaptations, starting with his 1966 debut, the Musil version of The Young Törless.

Of all the directors of the “New German” cinema – Wenders, Fassbinder and Reitz – Schlöndorff has relied most heavily on others’ work for his inspiration and has courted the critics, even more so than the audience. It is no co-incidence that Schlöndorff took on the leadership of the old Babelsberg Studios after re-unification in 1990, serving as CEO between 1992-1997.

Training in Paris at the prestigious IDHEC, Schlöndorff  worked as an assistant to Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais. His sophomore feature Törless, shot in black-and-white, bears the influence of the French masters: the story of a boarding school cabal with home-erotic undertones is told with great sensibility and relies very much on the unity between aesthetic and content. Törless is arguably the most mature feature of the fledging New German Cinema.

Michael Kohlhaas – Rebel (1969), based on the novel by German classicist Heinrich von Kleist, is a melancholic study of a failed revolutionary in the 18th century. But Schlöndorff’s major breakthrough onto the international stage was with Heinrich Böll’s adaption of The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum (1975) a film that showcased corruption in the West German establishment, Baader-Meinhoff’s activities undermining the freedom of expression and re-establishing the old Nazi power structure.

Two years late Schlöndorff directed three segments of Germany in the Autumn, a critical portrait of eight directors, Kluge and Fassbinder amongst them, seen against the background of ongoing West German reconstruction. His next feature, The Tin Drum (1979) was to place him firmly in the spotlight, winning the Palme d’Or Golden at Cannes (alongside Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now). German cinema was now a force to be reckoned with. Based on the novel by Günther Grass, The Tim Drum pictures the advent of fascism in Germany from the POV of a little boy reluctant to grow up, self-denial jostling with opportunistic desire.

Success in Europe paved the way for heavyweight productions in the US: Arthur Miller’s Dustin Hoffman starrer Death of a Salesman (1985) and Marcel Proust’s Swann in Love (1984) with Jeremy Irons and Alain Delon. Competent yet indistinctive in their style, these dramas could have been made by any talented director. In 1990 The Handmaid’s Tale followed, based on the novel of Margaret Atwood (that would later spawn the ongoing TV series).

In the mid nineties Schlöndorff was back on form again with The Ogre (1996), based on the novel by Michel Tournier. The film plays out like a horror story, a naive German (John Malkovich) inadvertently taking part in the Holocaust. In 2000 The Legend of Rita, another biographical piece, this time about Inge Viett, a member of the RAF underground, who fled to East Germany, where she settled with the help of the STASI. Based on the play by Cyril Gely, Diplomacy (2014) saw Schlöndorff returning again to German history, a combative wartime episode outlining Hitler’s order to burn Paris to the ground . Swedish diplomat Raoul Nording finally succeeds in convincing the German commander, General Dietrich von Choltiz, to defy the Nazi leader.

Overall, Schlöndorff is more comfortable working with these historical dramas plundering German history, than with blockbuster adaptations of successful novels. But he is still an important part of the German cinema of the early 1960s, whose proponents finally laid to rest the unholy UFA tradition. AS

Retrospective | BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2021

Full Moon | Pun Mjesec (2019) Bergamo Film Meeting

Dir.: Nermin Hamzagic; Cast: Alban Ukaj, Ermin Sijamija, Muhamed Hadzovic, Jasua Diklic, Boris Lehr; Bosnia and Herzegovina 2019, 85 min.

Tales of ‘bent coppers’ are all the rage at the moment. This first feature for Bosnian director/co-writer Nermin Hamzagic is a tense, psychologically brutal account of everyday life in Bosnia Herzegovina where bribery rules, the law protecting the country’s new elite. What makes it even more scathing, is that Full Moon is set in a police station, with the would-be-hero a highly ranked officer.

Rather than making this a moralist roll call portraying the region’s turbulent past and present what develeps is a rich character study centring on Hamza, his homeland and his life.

It all starts with Hamza (Kosovar-born Ukaj) having to be on duty, even though his wife is experiencing a difficult birth in the nearby hospital. A government delegation is in town and needs police protection. The precinct is in chaos and Hamza will spend the rest of the night dealing with the upshot of the lawless corrupt set-up.

Full Moon certainly feels very convincing, Hamzagić and his co-writer Emina Omerović sticking to a traditional narrative structure, the storyline veering into surprising places: Hamza is hardly whiter than white – it turns out he too has had his fingers in the till (which is how he paid for his wife’s IVF). And his decent behaviour doesn’t necessarily reap rewards. Ukaj leads with a gutsy central performance and each character resonates on its own merits. And although Full Moon occasionally falls into the trap of over-the-top sentimentality, there is plenty of textural nuance to break it all up: One of the detainees is a real hard-nosed criminal.

An element that doesn’t quite ring true is the appearance of a young boy in the precinct in the middle of the night, and only Hamza seems able to see him. He could be a metaphor for Hamza’s higher self, a sort of guardian angel, but we are left bemused.

Visually more Nordic noir in style, than grim post Soviet squalor. Full Moon is debut full of rage, filmed with finesse and compassion. AS

BERGAMO FILM MEETING 2021

 

Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)

Dir: Ennio De Concini | Cast: Alex Guinness, Simon Ward, Adolfo Celi, Diane Cilento, Joss Ackland, Sheila Gish | Gabriele Ferzetti, Eric Porter | Drama, 106′

Even before Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (2004) became in most people’s minds the definitive big screen treatment of the last days of Hitler, this 1973 version was already overshadowed by G.W.Pabst’s Der Letzte Akt (1955) with Albin Skoda as Hitler. That said, it’s still a reasonably accurate breeze through the known facts of Hitler’s final days enlivened throughout by the succession of familiar British faces ranging from Diane Cilento’s strapping aviatrix Hanna Reitsch (who in reality was a tiny, elfin little woman) to Andrew Sachs as the notary summoned to the bunker to officiate at Hitler’s wedding; all to the accompaniment of an incongruously jolly Viennese score by Mischa Spoliansky.

Sir Alec, bless him, is marginally less unbelievable casting as Hitler than Liberace or Jerry Lewis might have been. The Führer’s legendary, carpet-chewing tantrums, for example, are wholly beyond him. Like all fictional depictions of the final days in the bunker this film fails utterly to accurately depict the doped-up, trembling, rheumy-eyed physical wreck that Hitler by then was (the famous moustache, for example, had gone completely grey); but Guinness’s frequent ramblings convey extremely well the opinionated, self-absorbed bore described, for example, by Alfred Speer in Inside the Third Reich.

Occasionally the film can’t resist putting words into the Führer’s mouth (Guinness actually uses the word “exterminate” with reference to the Jews, when in reality Hitler just left such tedious details entirely to subordinates like Himmler who actually did his dirty work and were painstakingly careful to avoid explicitly stating such things); and the final scene between Hitler and Eva Braun is particularly unbelievable. But its still worth a look. @Richard Chatten

 

Spring Blossom (2020) Curzon

Dir/Wri | Cast: Suzanne Lindon, Arnaud Valois, Frédéric Pierrot, Florence Viala | France, Drama 78′

A delicate sensuous coming of age story from Suzanne Lindon who stars as the film’s subversive heroine who is also rather a dark horse.

In her directing and acting debut Lindon has clearly inherited her parents’ talents – she’s the 20-year-old daughter of Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain, but wrote the film when she was only 15. They clearly said: “write about what you know” and this is exactly what’s she’s done, Spring Blossom has a freshness of touch that perfectly compliments its subtle narrative.

Spring Blossom is slim but evocatively recherché – avoiding gauche thrills or flirty silliness it feels its way intuitively forward. There’s a palpable sensuality to the heady taste of first love that slowly simmers and smoulders between the stylish but vulnerable high-school girl and her older crush Raphaël (Arnaud Valois), an actor performing in the local theatre and experiencing the ennui of performance fatigue. In a sun-dappled Southern France the amorous feelings gradually well up in her teenage heart but Suzanne remains dignified and secretive around her parents, sharing the odd complicit tete a tete with her younger sister.

There’s a sense that Suzanne will grow up to be subversively sensual like Jacqueline Bisset or Charlotte Rampling, still retaining that edgy sexiness that sets women like her apart from the crowd. And in a way Lindon’s slight narrative plays to the film’s advantage, hinting at the mysteries of female sexuality as Suzanne’s febrile imagination considers the art of seduction.

There’s something provocative but eminently natural about this suggestive love affair that seems grown-up and plausible, each character possessing calm dignity and an alluring sense of self. Seen from the young woman’s perspective, there’s nothing smutty about the concept of a teenager with an ‘older’ man, although you’d hardly notice the age different, Raphaël not coming across as a lothario,  but a ‘bon chic bon genre’ type of guy. The pairing has very much the clean-cut top drawer allure of Joanna Hogg’s recent The Souvenir, but the brittle cruelty of Tom Burke’s Anglo Saxon public school boy turned roguish love rat contrasts with the rather lowkey laidback loucheness of Valois’Raphaël. This is very much a French love story with a hint of Louis Garel’s early films about it all. MT

ON CURZON ONLINE FROM 23 APRIL 2021

 

The High and the Mighty (1954) Prime

Dir: William A Wellman | Cast: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack, Jan Sterling | US Disaster Movie 147′

Indispensable viewing for anyone interested in Hollywood in general and the 1950s in particular, when air travel was glamorous. Former WWI pilot William A. Wellman immediately snapped up the 1953 novel by aviation specialist Ernest K. Gann and the result couldn’t fail to be irresistible box office fodder in the classic tradition of Grand Hotel and Stagecoach (the stars of which it reunites). Sidney Blackmer’s role recalls Berton Churchill in ‘Stagecoach’ and anticipates Van Heflin in Airport while Robert Stack actually parodied his role in this in Airplane!

It’s all very easy to sneer at the way the movie throws in everything but the kitchen sink, and the relentless promotion of Dimitri Tompkin’s Oscar-winning score (the theme of which John Wayne even whistles occasionally), complete with heavenly choirs. There’s also the oversight of not casting any black actors (although it does include an Asian). But with immaculate photography in CinemaScope and Warnercolor by Archie Stout and a fabulous cast there’s something for everyone. So just enjoy! @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO | TALKING PICTURES TV

Ghost Tropic (2020) Bergamo Film Meeting 2021

Dir.: Bas Devos; Cast: Saadia Bentaieb, Nora Diri, Stefan Gorm, Guy Dermul, Maaike Neuville; Belgium 2019, 85 min.

Simple but never simplistic Ghost Tropic is a nighttime odyssey in Brussels seen through the eyes of a Maghreb domestic cleaner, after missing her metro stop.

Bas Devos establishes himself as a leading talent in filmmaking with this upbeat picture of a woman but also a city; a melting pot of race, religion and cultures, short vignettes gradually building up a picture of middle-aged Khadija and of Belgium’s capital city.

Khadija’s living room is seen at the beginning with the light giving way to darkness. “What might people think about the person who lives here?” asks a voice-over. The answer is given in the small encounters which amplify Khadija’s experience and the kindness of strangers at the end of the metro line, with no services running till morning.

A night bus is cancelled, and the nearest ATM yields a blank, so she sets out on foot to find her way home amongst those living on the margins of society, stumbling across a dog and a tramp (Dermul), one of them won’t make it through the night. A friendly petrol station worker (Neuville) worker offers her a lift home and another story of misfortune, and we learn that Khadija’s husband Munir died some years ago. A call to her son Bilal, reveals he lives alone, and she spots her seventeen-year old daughter (Diri), with a group of youngsters. She follows at a distance noting her daughter’s burgeoning relationship with a boy, a serendipitous meeting outside another building yields a lucky outcome for Khadija and gradually as daylight dawns we see her home in a reverse proceeding of the opening shot.

Shot on rich Kodak stock by DoP Grimm Vanderckhove, the night seems to shimmer with hope despite her ordeal, the darkness is never threatening, with small moments of beauty thrown in. Buildings loom like lighthouses, illuminating her passage through the gloaming, a journey that started in darkness dawns with a ray of hope – a gradual realisation that life has come full circle – what at first seemed daunting now radiates with light. Full of humanity, Ghost Tropic is a real pleasure to watch – and to admire. AS

BERGAMO FILM MEETING  | 24 April – 2 May 2021 | WINNER CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019

 

The Penthouse (1967)

Dir: Peter Collinson | Wri: Scott Forbes | Cast: Terence Morgan, Suzy Kendall, Tony Beckley, Norman Rodway | UK Thriller

British director Peter Collinson was probably best known for his comedy caper The Italian Job with its unlikely casting of Michael Caine, Noel Coward and Benny Hill. But before that he made TV outing The Penthouse which belongs to the extremely nasty genre of the home invasion film.

Two earlier examples, Leslie Stevens’ Private Property (1960) and Walter Grauman’s Lady in a Cage (1964) had already been denied circuit releases in Britain, and in 1967 The Penthouse was following close on the heels of Dutchman and The Incident, both located the same situation, this time in railway carriages.

Far and away the most frightening of these films was The Incident, starring Martin Sheen and Beau Bridges, a powerfully vicious thriller never to released in Britain, with the emotive tagline “hits like a switchblade knife”. Later films that have been structured around similar situations include A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs and Funny Games, while real life – alas – got in on the act during 1968-69 with the hideous murders of Ramon Novarro and Sharon Tate.

Pretty obviously based on a play (‘The Meter Man’ by C.Scott Forbes), and directed, for all it’s worth, by first-timer Peter Collinson with Gothic lighting by Arthur Lavis (and occasional strident intrusions by John Hawksworth’s score), The Penthouse draws strongly for its content on Private Property and for its ambiance and dialogue on Harold Pinter.

In reality, Tom (Tony Beckley) and Dick (Norman Rodway), the pair of gurning cretins who invade the adulterous couple’s luxury penthouse suite (£15,000 at 1967 prices we’re told!) would never talk so much or be so articulate; and both their bizarre behaviour and that of the girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) who loses her fear and then her inhibitions remarkably quickly after being plied with booze and marijuana, suggests that gritty realism is not exactly what the film’s makers were striving for.

The film becomes more unbelievable still when less that twenty minutes from the end the couple actually let Harry in, who proceeds to bring the two goons back into the apartment to continue their mind games. But since Harry is played by Martine Beswick at her most fabulous (which is saying something!) I can forgive the film a lot. Well, a bit. @Richard Chatten

 

 

Children of the Enemy (2021) CPH:DOX 2021

Dir: Gorki Glaser-Muller | Sweden, Denmark, Qatar | Doc With Patricio Galves, Clive Stafford Smith, Isabel Coles 95′

Like most stories coming out of Syria since the recent reign of terror this is a familiar one chronicling days of anguish amid political turmoil. Children of the Enemy centres on one man’s Kafkaesque journey to rescue his family and take them back to their homeland of Sweden. Meanwhile the Swedish authorities and even the media keep a low profile for fear of repercussions.

Chilean Swede Patricio Galvez cuts a tragic figure as shares his pain with filmmaker Gorki Glaser-Muller. Told simply, its tone of ongoing desperation being the focus, it tells how another unsuspecting victim – his nubile daughter – became radicalised and married one of Sweden’s most notorious ISIS terrorists.

After both were killed in the fight for a caliphate their children were left high and dry, lost somewhere in the Al-Hol prison camp in Northeast Syria. A moving phone montage on Patricio’s mobile phone is all he has left to identify the kids during his nightmarish 45 day recovery mission through Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile every minute could be their last. Days of desperation and disbelief add to the ongoing narrative of this ‘missing persons diary’ in a world that grows more and more hostile, less compassionate as allies and enemies become increasingly indistinguishable. MT

CPH:DOX | WORLD PREMIERE|  INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION  | COPENHAGEN DOC FESTIVAL 2021

 

 

Return to the City 2021 | June 2021 at the Barbican

A hopeful mini series of films that celebrates the return to cinema screens with some urban-themed lesser known documentaries reflecting life in bustling capital cities all round the globe including Paris, Cairo, Lima, New York, Las Vegas and Kaili in South East China.

New Yorkers take in the sights, sounds and rhythms of the 1950s in the UK premiere of Manfred Kirchheimer’s Free Time, US 1960/2020

The filmmaker has meticulously restored and constructed the 16mm black-and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. Free Time captures the in-between moments – kids playing stickball, window washers, Manhattanites reading newspapers on their stoops – and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach and Count Basie.

This screening will be introduced by visual artist and writer Will Jennings.

In contemporary Lima the sounds of punk, psychedelia and experimental electronica are the backdrop for Ximena Valdivia and Dana Bonilla’s Lima Screams (Peru, 2018), an ecstatic and visually thrilling journey through Lima, where marginalised communities make beautiful music, and political protests are backed by fierce electronic sounds.

Introduced by writer and curator Awa Konaté, Nationalité: Immigré (France 1975) by Mauritanian filmmaker Sidney Sokhona, blends fiction with documentary in a staggering and radical account of African migrants at the margins of Parisian society in the 1970s.

Cairo Station (Egypt 1958), directed by and starring Youssef Chahine, blends melodrama, neorealism and thriller conventions to tell an unforgettable, disturbing story of love and madness set in Cairo’s train station

Nina Menkes’ Queen of Diamonds (US 1991) offers a glimpse of Las Vegas seen through the eyes of a casino croupier, a place of garish, windowless interiors, but also huge blue skies and desolate desertscapes dotted with burned-out mobile homes, cheaply-furnished apartments, and dried-up lakes

Long Day’s Journey into Night (China, 2018) Bi Gan’s sensuous, dream-like drama set in Kaili in South East China, a labyrinthine cityscape is captured in single, hour-long, gravity-defying take – a must-see on the big screen in 3D.

All films will be shown in Cinema 1 in June. Lima Screams, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2D version), Nationalité: Immigré and Queen of Diamonds will also be available to watch on Cinema on Demand throughout July.

Donations can be made here: barbican.org.uk/donate

UK Premiere: Free Time (U*) + intro by writer Will Jennings
US 1960/2020 Dir Manfred Kirchheimer 61 min Digital presentation
Tue 8 Jun 6.15pm, Cinema 1

1950s footage of New York comes alive in this beautifully restored city symphony from celebrated filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer.
In his latest work, Manfred Kirchheimer has meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black- and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. Free Time captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, Manhattanites reading newspapers on their stoops—and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach and Count Basie.

The footage was shot in several distinct New York neighbourhoods, including Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, and Hell’s Kitchen, and features evocative stops throughout the city, making time for an auto junkyard in Inwood and a cemetery in Queens.
This screening is introduced by Will Jennings. Will Jennings is a visual artist and writer interested in architecture, politics, history and how built form interacts with wider culture and society.

Lima Screams (12A*)

Peru 2018 Dir Dana Bonilla, Ximena Valdivia 77 min
Thu 10 Jun 6.20 pm, Cinema 1
A pulsing and immersive city symphony dedicated to Peru’s capital city, pumping with the sounds of punk, psychedelia and experimental electronica.

Directors Ximena Valdivia and Dana Bonilla take us on an exciting dive through the streets and music venues of Lima, showing the eclectic and diverse musical talents of the city’s artists against a collage of moments and sensations.

Lima Screams is an ecstatic and visually thrilling journey through the city’s spaces, as marginalised communities make beautiful music and political protests are backed by fierce electronic sounds. As the city screams, you have no choice but to be carried along with it…

Long Day’s Journey into Night 3D (12A)

China/France 2018 Dir Bi Gan 139 min Digital presentation
Sun 13 Jun 2.30 pm, Cinema 1

A search for a lost love animates this sensuous, dream-like drama set in the city of Kaili in south-east China.
After many years away, a solitary man, Luo Hongwu, returns to his hometown for his father’s funeral. There, he is assailed by memories of a former lover, Wan Quiwen, triggering an obsessive need to find her again. Luo’s present-day quest and his memories of their romance intertwine; both play out against a backdrop of marginal, semi-derelict urban spaces – with a weird, near-hallucinatory quality.
The film’s dazzling second act opens when Luo wanders into a dingy cinema and puts on a pair of 3D glasses, whereupon he re-emerges on-screen in a film-within-a-film that begins in a tunnel, then proceeds to a pool hall and an open-air karaoke bar.

His journey through this labyrinthine cityscape is captured in single, hour-long, gravity-defying take – a must-see on the big screen in 3D.
Nationalité immigré (12A*) + intro by curator Awa Konaté
France 1975 Dir Sidney Sokhona 69 min
Tue 15 Jun 6.20pm, Cinema 1

Mauritanian filmmaker Sidney Sokhona blends fiction with documentary in a staggering and radical account of African migrants at the margins of Parisian society in the 1970s.

Nationalité: Immigré dramatises the real-life housing strikes undertaken by Sokhona and his fellow migrant neighbours in a Parisian working-class slum dwelling. Centring identity, socio-economic injustices, and the bureaucratic exploitations of migrants, we are offered a depiction that positions community organising as crucial to simply exist.

With Western capitalism, anti-blackness, and migration at its fore, the film’s politics is more than ever relevant to current public debates on inequalities. Its expressions of resistance and resilience invite us to reflect and inquire, what does life and survival look like on the periphery?

This screening is curated by Awa Konaté, a Danish-Ivorian writer, curator, and founder of the interdisciplinary research platform Culture Art Society (CAS) that methodises African archives for public arts programming.

Queen of Diamonds (15*)

US 1991 Dir Nina Menkes 77 min Digital presentation
Sat 19 Jun 6.15pm, Cinema 1

An alienated blackjack dealer is at the centre of this slantwise portrait of Las Vegas. The many cinematic depictions of Las Vegas typically glory in the glittering casino lights and the drama of the gambling table: the thrill of risk, the joy of winning, the devastation of loss.

Not so this film, which shows the flipside of the city from the point-of-view of one of its worker-residents, a casino croupier, for whom each wager, each hand, carries no excitement, but is part of one long round of drudgery.
Our heroine drifts through a series of encounters. But events are beside the point, the appeal of this film are its images – sad, gorgeous, strange. This is Las Vegas as seen from the margins, a place of garish, windowless interiors, but also huge blue skies and desolate desertscapes dotted with burned-out mobile homes, cheaply-furnished apartments, and dried-up lakes.

Cairo Station (12A)

Egypt 1958 Dir Youssef Chahine 77 min Digital presentation
Sun 27 Jun 3pm, Cinema 1
A disabled newspaper vendor falls obsessively in love with an engaged drinks seller in Youssef Chahine’s thrilling study of passion, sexuality and violence.

BARBICAN | JUNE 2021

Black Bear (2020)

Dir.: Lawrence Michael Levine; Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon; USA 2020, 104 min.

Writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine should have heeded home truths: if you have a good subject, stick with it, don’t shut it down halfway through. Particularly when your second part is a film-in-film story – a conceit that has frustrated countless directors – François Truffaut’s, Day for Night serving as an exceptional along with The Exorcist .

Part one (‘The Bear on the Road’) has an often re-played beginning, with actor turned filmmaker Allison (Plaza) sitting near a foggy lake, very decorative in her red one-piece swim suit. Finally, she gets up and leaves for the lake house, starting her script. Writer’s block sets in shortly after the opening title. Instead she goes, Cassavetes style, into war with her hosts, out-of work musician Gabe (Abbott) and his  pregnant wife Blair (Gadon). The couple bicker and fight, but instead of staying out of it Allison takes sides in a very underhand way.

The outcome is a coitus-interrupted and a rush for the hospital, all cut short by the titular bear appearing on the road. That’s a pity, because we really want to know what happens next. But the narrative makes a swerve into the same lake house scene, but this time we watch a film being shot. This time around Plaza deftly becomes Allison, the insecure actress, bullied and belittled by husband director Gabe (Abbott again) and threatened by Gabon’s Blair, who seems desperate to change roles after what went on in part one. But Levine doesn’t pull it off with this complicated, over talky second part, even the bear re-appearing near the end. Black Bears tries to be too clever, only to deliver second-hand histrionics in part two’s ‘Bear by the Boathouse’; ending in a rather lame repeat of the introductory shot.

Apart from the symbolic meaning of the titular bear, Levine withholds any reasonable explanations in part two. DoP Robert Leitzell cannot make up his mind if he is shooting a horror flick, or one of Woody Allen’s Bergmanesque features, falling, along with Levine’s script just between two chairs. The actors do there best, the peerless Plaza is always watchable, desperate a difficult role. Black Bear takes a rather tepid story and treats it like an exercise in meta-physics. In the end it’s just a blown-up B-picture. AS

BLACK BEAR – RELEASED ON DIGITAL 23 APRIL 2021

 

 

The Strange Woman (1946) Prime Video

Dir: Edgar G Ulmer | Herb Meadow | Cast: Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Gene Lockhart, Hillary Brooke | US Noir, 90′

Based on a 1941 novel by Ben Ames Williams, whose Leave Her to Heaven had just provided the 40’s Hollywood melodrama with one of its most memorably manipulative female psychos in the form of Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent. Hedy Lamarr chose this as her first independent production and cannily selected Edgar Ulmer to direct, who makes the most of the opportunities provided by unaccustomedly decent production values and a solid supporting cast, while giving Ms Lamarr her head to create a memorable femme fatale.

In early 19th Century Maine, Hedy learns as a child how to manipulate boys for her own spiteful ends. So far, so promising – particularly as portrayed as a worldly, spiteful little vixen by Jo Ann Marlowe – but one apprehensively suspects she will inevitably prove less enjoyably sociopathic when she grows up to be Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy herself as a young woman initially shows promise, wearing lots of lipstick and making eloquent use of her eyes while otherwise cultivating an intriguing stillness as she twists men round her little finger and declares “I don’t want the youngest. I want the richest!”. Learning to cultivate her feminine wiles in the face of brutal patriarchy in the person of her drunken and violent father (played by Inspector Lestrade, Denis Hoey), she promises to become a more alluringly damaged adult than she ultimately proves to be. SPOILER COMING: Ms Lamarr – whose accent increasingly slips as the film approaches its conclusion – loses her nerve towards the end of the film, when she falls victim to true love and dies misguided rather than Bad.

The title is taken from Proverbs 5:3 and doesn’t really fit Ms Lamarr; but The Wicked Lady was already taken, although she doesn’t prove that wicked either. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Dancing With Crime (1948) Prime Video

Dir: John Paddy Carstairs | Wri: Brock Williams | Cast: Richard Attenborough, Barry K Barnes, Barry Jones, Sheila Sim, Garry Marsh | UK Thriller 83′

London was awash immediately after the war with zoot-suited black marketeers, and this gritty little crime thriller directed by John Paddy Carstairs (remembered for his Norman Wisdom comedies) and slickly shot by Stanley Pavey involves innocent young taxi driver Dickie Attenborough in one of his first starring roles along with his real-life wife Sheila Sim, led by a slightly younger-than-usual Barry Jones and pre-war leading man Barry K. Barnes. Attenborough is a young cabbie who gets mixed up with a criminal gang and sets out to expose them for what they are.

It boasts several formidable females with big hair and even bigger shoulders, none of them with bigger hair or bigger shoulders than reluctant moll Judy Kelly. Most of the rest of the cast are uncredited: including a highly conspicuous Diana Dors and an ironically very inconspicuous Dirk Bogarde (whose bit with his back to the camera – sounding nothing like him – near the end of the film as a police dispatcher is the sole reason the picture is now recalled). @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

The Battle of the Sexes (1928) Prime Video

Dir: D W Griffith | Cast: Jean Hersholt, Phyllis Haver, Belle Bennett, Sally O’Neil | US Drama 88′

It tends to be forgotten that D.W.Griffith continued busily turning out feature films into the talkie era, and on the rare occasions that these later films are ever acknowledged it’s usually just to dismiss them as the dying embers of a burned-out career.

Griffith’s 1928 remake of his lost 1914 feature film The Battle of the Sexes – historically noteworthy as his last entirely silent film – turns out to be a lively, intimate contemporary comedy-drama embellished with little visual flourishes like indoor tracking shots and overhead shots (probably suggested by cameraman Karl Struss) rather than the more saucy piece of fluff the rather schematic title seems to promise.

The opening sequence with Phyllis Haver having her frizzy peroxide blonde hair dressed in a salon adjacent to millionaire Jean Hersholt on whom her gold-digging eye alights suggests a typical jazz age comedy vehicle for Miss Haver fresh from playing Roxie Hart in Chicago; an impression reinforced by the sequence that follows in which she engineers their ‘accidental’ meeting in the apartment building in which he and his family live and she has somehow managed to rent a place for herself.

So far so amusing. But this is Griffith we are talking about, and the devastating impact of Hersholt’s dalliance on his family is conveyed with sufficient force to turn the comedy into drama; and the focal point of the film becomes Sally O’Neil as the daughter. (The visual contrast between the petite, bird-like brunette O’Neil and big blonde Phyllis also adds additional weight to their confrontation). Although all eventually ends well, Hersholt hasn’t returned to his wife because of his love for her overcome his desire for Haver, but only because he is presented with incontrovertible evidence even he can’t ignore that she was only ever after his money. The formulaic happy ending remains overshadowed by the mother’s earlier despairing words “It’s too late now” delivered by a drained-looking Belle Bennett; and it seems unlikely that this family will ever return to the idyllic state we witnessed at the beginning of the film. @Richard Chatten

ON PRIME VIDEO

Ostrov – Lost Island (2021) | Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: Swetlana Rodina, Laurent Stoop; Documentary with Ivan, Anna, Alina, Anton, Galina, Valera, Tatiana, Roman Tamangiz; Switzerland 2021, 93 min.

Time warps still exist even in the 21st century. And one is the island of Ostrov deep in the Caspian Sea. During Soviet times it was home to over 3000 people. Nowadays only a few survive, and most belong to a large extended family. Their existence very much connects to a global narrative of survival for small communities all over the world.

Writers/directors Swetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop (Citizen Khodorkovsky) take a look at how life has changed there in past thirty years. There is still a hospital, a school and a kindergarten. Ivan (50) and Anna (45), occupy one of the homely wooden houses with their kids Alina and Anton. But their patriarch Tolya is not the only one living in the past.

Every day Ivan takes his ramshackle fishing boat out to sea, always aware of the coast guards who are keen to catch them fishing sturgeon, which for reasons not explained, is forbidden. In the “old days” of the Soviet Union, according to Anna, the family was prosperous, making a good living with sturgeon’s black caviar: another restriction not explained. Military police inspects the island every so often: what they are looking for is one of the many open questions.

Roman and Tamangiz have fled the mainland town to the island – but both are unhappy, being used to city life. Roman admits their poverty has destroyed their relationship, only the cats and dogs are contented stretching lazily in the sun. ‘Make do and mend’ values still survive here out of necessity,  Ivan is always repairing something or another – mainly his motorcycle, which has surely seen better days, probably built in the Soviet era. There is a war memorial for the dead of WWII, and the anniversary of 9th of May 1945 is celebrated.

On the newly acquired TV – it works, in spite of Ivan telling us there is no electricity – President Putin is the star attraction. In Donetsk, Russian soldiers give out Russian passports to Ukrainians, the annexation of the Crimea is celebrated. In Germany, meanwhile, Neo-Nazis are marching, revenge hungry, and one more reason for the war in Ukraine.

Anton has had enough of the propaganda but Ivan stays and complains the younger generation does not appreciate the old war songs any more. Not surprisingly, apart from getting drunk and listening to the army radio, there is not much for the youngsters on the island to do.

Tolya dies and is buried in coffin with an orthodox cross. Ivan asks his daughter Alina to take a letter to Putin – and when he doesn’t get a reply, he plans to write another. Meanwhile Putin plays the role of the humble statesman on TV.  Ivan refuses to blame Putin for the poverty on Orlov – he believes it is all down to the corrupt and incompetent administration. New Year’s Eve 2020 offers a chance to celebrate all round with drinking and dancing. Meanwhile, Putin hectors on about a bright future, Ivan praising him for building a strong army.

Dop Laurent Stoop is perfectly placed to play the “Fly on the Wall” – unobtrusive his pictures tell a thousand words. The soft limpid colours of the maritime setting give a lyrical feel to this contemporary story, that could be set a hundred years ago.

Orlov is one of many documentaries about Putin’s Russia, showing the parallels to the Soviet Union – minus the social structure of the era. Like Stalin before him, Putin’s obdurate strength is what makes him popular. The fault always lies with his underlings. Orlov tells a poignant story of  yesteryear, and displaced youngsters trapped in time between utter boredom and a glorious past. AS

NOW AT VISIONS DU REEL | NYON 2021

 

The Queen of Versailles (2012) Prime Video

Dir: Lauren Greenfield | US Doc 103′ | With Jacqueline and Davie Siegel

An instructive companion to The Grapes of Wrath and the South Park episode ‘Asspen’, in which the hunter becomes the hunted as – after becoming a billionaire pressuring ‘moochers’ into living beyond their means by investing in his timeshire holiday homes – ‘timeshare king’ David Siegel gets a taste of his own medicine following the financial crash of September 2008.

In The Grapes of Wrath (the novel, not the film), the bank is fatalistically described as ‘The Monster’, which must continue to be fed profits or it will die. Hence the mass evictions of honest, hard-working tenant farmers like the Joads so ‘The Monster’ can devour their assets. In 2008, the bankers who encouraged Siegel in the first place to overstretch himself financially are, instead of going to jail, shored up with taxpayers’ money and show their appreciation in an orgy of foreclosures and asset-stripping of their own victims to sustain profitability as usual.

David’s amiable trophy wife Jackie compares the bank to vultures circling her husband’s business waiting for it to die the better for them to devour its corpse. The modest little home of Jackie’s old school friend faces foreclosure even after Jackie gives her $5,000 to cover a debt that had started out at just $1,700; while David’s bank is putting the screws on him to surrender his own assets to them at knockdown prices.

Jackie initially seems remarkably unspoiled by her immense wealth, and remains seemingly stoical as her husband’s fortunes unravel and she is reduced to travelling by commercial airliner and shopping at Wall-Mart. But the visible deflation of David is painful to watch as for the first time he has to worry about meeting his electricity bill. (It usually takes financial reversals for people to start conducting themselves in an environmentally responsible manner.)

The almost comical lack of irony with which Jackie described the Siegels as “ordinary people like us” lays bare the sheer incomprehension of the 1% of how the 99% live, the political ramifications of which in a plutocracy like the United States include the casual vindictiveness its political leaders (and their paymasters like the Siegels) routinely display and enshrine in legislation against those less fortunate than themselves. (While Jackie stressed her “need” for the additional living space Versailles would have provided, in Britain the same year that this film was released the government of Old Etonian David Cameron introduced a punitive “bedroom tax” in the Welfare Reform Act of 2012 whereby council house tenants with any room considered “spare” automatically had their housing benefit docked.)

We see the reality of ‘trickle-down’ economics in the impact upon the Siegel’s vast army of employees and dependents all the way down the food chain in the fate of their pet lizard, who amidst the confusion is allowed to die of thirst. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Lost Boys (2021) CPH:DOX 2021

Dir.: Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Cetinkaya; Documentary with Joonas Neuvonen, Jani Raappana, Antti , Lee Lee, Thi, narrated by Pekka Strang; Finland 2020, 99 min.

It all started with Reindeerspotting-Escape from Santaland back in 2010. Its Finnish director Joonas Neuvonen turned out to be a drug dealer from a middle class background, and this fuelled the storyline for Lost Boys, a drug-powered tour of Thailand and Cambodia to celebrate the film’s success. Joining him were petty thief and addict Jani Raappana, and his mate Annti. Reindeerspotting co-writer Sadri Cetinkaya co-wrote the script.

Three months later Jani would be found dead in Phnom Penh. How he met his fate is still uncertain. Indications are he was murdered. Pekka Strang narrates, as the voice of Neuvonen, commenting from his cell. The trio were heavy users of ‘ya ba’, formerly known as yama, a potent mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine, also used as a horse drug, and favoured by soldiers, taxi drivers and sex workers.

Lost Boys chronicles their down-spiralling nightmare into Hell, a modern day, sordid version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The drug culture inevitably leads to debt, organised crime holds sway with death squads enforcing control. Sex workers are all part of the picture, the exploited leading their clients into the hands of the drug lords. Cambodia’s turbulent past has contributed to the country’s post traumatic stress disorder that started with colonisation and culminated with the Khmer Rouge. Sex tourism involving adults and children is now rampant throughout Cambodia. The country’s horrific history – past and present – plays out in a gruesome montage to the strains of La Marseillaise, as colonialism meets today’s sex tourism.

Neuvonen maintains his sole interest is in saving Annti and finding Jani’s murderer, but at the same he seems ambivalent about his mate, coming clean about the anti-hero of his first film: “I wanted him to vanish. I wanted him to die”. But will he be the only survivor of this trip to Hell?

Meanwhile Jani’s girlfriend Lee Lee and her friend Thi are compliant vessels for the sins of others and Annti is the victim of paranoid psychosis believing the nearby radio masts are there to stalk his thoughts and send the messages to a company called “Sky”.

What makes this quasi detective story so compelling is the way we’re led by its unreliable narrator in a non-linear narrative full of elliptical deceits imbued with hallucinatory visuals from dizzying handheld cameras. More than just a story, Lost Boys captures a state of mind – lies coalesce to cause the downfall of all three men whose paradise of sex and drugs leads them into a maze of death. Colour grading and editing sustain the scratchy edges of the documentary that floats in a woozy soundscape, leading us on a fractious journey as the men drift into a harrowing cul-de-sac. Lost Boys is a visual poem of the cruellest most nihilistic kind.

CPH:DOX | APRIL 2021

Miss Zombie (2013)

Dir: SABU | Japan, Horror 85′

In Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) the local squire was resuscitating recently deceased Cornish villagers in 1860 to work in his tin mine, while the American writer William Seabrook claimed to have watched zombies in the late 20’s working on plantations in Haiti.

George Romero later parodied contemporary society in his Living Dead trilogy, so it was only a matter of time – on screen at least – before 21st Century zombie farmers would eventually be supplying zombies (complete with instruction manuals) to do household chores for the affluent.

Shot for the most part in grungy black & black minus the breathless pace that characterised SABU’s earlier thrillers, Miss Zombie – SABU’s first horror film – is pretty evidently an allegory of the developed world’s increasingly insatiable appetite for cheap imported labour, and the bullying and exploitation – including sexual – that goes with it. When Shara starts collecting knives we seem to be entering Jimmie Blacksmith territory and order eventually breaks down with consequences that should be sufficiently bloody to satisfy the gorehounds in the audience. @Richard Chatten

 

The Artist’s Wife (2020)

Dir: Tom Dolby | Cast: Lena Olin, Bruce Dern, Juliet Rylance, Avan Jogia, Stephanie Powers, Catherine Curtin, Tonya Pinkins, Caryn West, Ravi Cabot-Conyers | US Drama

Dementia is not a happy affliction so Tom Dolby’s film is bound to make for painful viewing despite thoughtful turns from Bruce Dern who plays an ageing artist stumbling on the foothills of mental decline, and his wife Lena Olin who somehow gains strength from the experience.

Claire Smythson (Olin) is a sympathetic character who has sidelined her own painting career to support her husband, a renowned abstract artist Richard Smythson. And it all starts breezily with the two being interviewed as she snuggles up affectionately to her husband: “I create the art, and Claire creates the rest of our life.”

The drama plays along similar lines to The Wife which is a shame because you can’t help feeling a sense of deja vu despite Olin and Dern who are always enjoyable to watch and bring head-nodding subtext to their respective roles.

Dern is particularly good as the vulnerable ego-driven sweetheart who realises his life – and control – is ebbing away making him hit out and occasionally become obnoxious. He’s not as funny as he was in Nebraska, but this is inspired by Dolby’s own experience so his script is all the more personal (yet sketchy – despite involving two other writers).

Olin gets the surprisingly insightful role that sees her increasingly empowered to develop her own craft, and then there’s her prickly daughter in law Angela (Juliet Rylance) a lesbian who’s – predictably – ‘so busy’ and also has a child with her partner – but  it’s a hapless “you were never there for me role” vis a vis her estranged father. There’s a bit of a romantic frisson between Angela’s nanny Danny (Jogia) and Claire but nothing happens.

The focus is Richard’s recent diagnosis which comes in the wake of some erratic behaviour. The timing couldn’t be worse as he’s preparing for a major show which also make things feel rather schematic.

Beautifully filmed in the Hamptons and occasionally moving despite its irritating score, this goes down easily – and predictably, there are no surprises. MT

ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS + UK & IRISH CINEMAS FROM 30 APRIL

Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies (2017)

Dir.: Amanda Ladd-Jones; Documentary with Alan Ladd jr, Mel Brooks, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, Richard Donner; USA 2017, 83 min.

Amanda Ladd-Jones films countless members of the industry in this eulogy to her talented father, the director and movie mogul Alan Ladd jr (*1937) whom we have to thank for Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner to name but a few. It’s true to say that Ladd is a winner, and everyone loves a winner, particularly in Hollywood.

Ladd jr started his career in 1963 as a motion picture talent agent with clients including Judy Garland, Warren Beatty and Robert Redford. In 1968 he moved to London to produce, among other features, Villain with Richard Burton (in arguably his most miscast role). Then a return to Hollywood in 1973 saw Ladd becoming Head of Creative Affairs and three years later President of Twenty Century Fox where he was instrumental in fighting for George Lucas’ Star Wars projects, against the majority of the company’s board.

Ladd also turned his magic touch to art house features such as Julia (1977) and would cleverly change the ending of The Omen directed by Richard Donner, letting the malicious child survive, instead of killing him off, thereby spawning a whole new franchise.

The success story continues with Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, which had run into financial difficulties in 1980. The Rocky Horror Picture Show and An Unmarried Woman were also among the projects Ladd supported against a conservative board. His corporate career prospered and in the  mid-1970s Ladd named Ashly Boone Fox’s President of Marketing, the first Afro-American woman to rise to this status in the USA. Later, Boone joined Ladd jr at the Ladd Company and MGM, winning the first of his Oscars for Chariot of Fire (1981).

By comparison Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) was a financial disappointment, only to rise to cult status a decade later and showing how masterpieces need to stand the test of time rather the sensation of the moment. Rush (1991) was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck at a time when women directors were nearly unheard of in mainstream cinema. At MGM Ladd jr was responsible for very diverse projects, like Rocky IV and A Fish called Wanda.

In the early 1990s Ladd jr left the executive world for good and established The Ladd Company, winning his second Oscar for Braveheart in 1995. Gone Baby Gone, the debut movie of director Ben Affleck, was to be the last feature Ladd jr produced in 2007.

If this reads like a rather boring celebrity roll call, it unfortunately reflects this documentary itself which is overlaid by Amanda’s over-talkie narration competing with an incessant ‘musak style’ score. Ladd jr himself seems the only participant not praising his own talents and achievements in giving the Midas touch to even doomed projects and transforming putative B movies into Oscar-worthy outings such as Fear is the Key (1972).

Certainly worth a watch for its juicy cinema titbits Laddie could have invested more time in exploring the director’s tragic relationship with his actor father Alan Ladd – or Amanda’s own lonely childhood, when she saw her Dad only in-between films, instead of claiming “He loved me the best he could.” But that would be a documentary expose rather than a eulogy, and Amanda’s telling statement shows great insight into the nature of success from a daughter who was proud of her father and recognised his limitations in the scheme of things. Laddie will certainly be appreciated by fans and cineastes alike as a worthwhile trip down Hollywood’s memory lane. AS

ON SKY STORE, iTunes, Apple, Youtube, Google Play and Rakuten from 26 April 2021

Broken Blossoms (1936) Prime Video

Dir: John Brahm | Cast: Dolly Haas, Emlyn Williams, Arthur Margetson, CV France, Basil Radford, Edith Sharpe | UK Drama

“An effective, if old-fashioned melodrama”: such was the verdict  passed by the not easily impressed Rachel Low, and Julius Hagen’s fanciful remake of the Griffith classic – while yet another step in Hagen’s headlong plunge into bankruptcy – looks good today precisely because it’s so old-fashioned. (David Lean had worked at Twickenham Films during the early thirties, and this film probably influenced his equally stylised Dickens adaptations, particularly the cutaway to a shot of a door banging against a sapling when Battling Burrows takes a whip to Lucy.)

Hagen had originally brought D.W.Griffith himself over to direct the film, but when Griffith proved too drunk for the task Hagen instead assigned Hans Brahm (still using his real name), who cast his soulful-eyed wife Dolly Haas as Lucy; so both leads Haas and Emlyn Williams (also credited with adapting the original) have unlikely accents. (If there’s one thing modern audiences sneer at in old British films it’s the accents, especially if they belong to familiar British thespians like Donald Calthrop & Gibb McLaughlin – both of whom later worked for Lean – pretending to be Chinese.)

Bernard Vorhaus had hoped to direct it but was passed over and fobbed of with serving as technical advisor, so he not surprisingly badmouthed the film that resulted. Brahms also brought in German exiles Curt Courant & Karol Rathaus to light and score the film. Brahms’ later Hollywood version of Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square was a travesty of the original but rightly regarded as a classic Hollywood melodrama. His version of Broken Blossoms deserves more sympathetic reappraisal. @Richard Chatten

AVAILABLE ON PRIME VIDEO

Radu Jude Retro 2021

Streaming service DAFilms offers a chance to revisit five films from Romanian director Radu Jude in celebration of his Golden Bear win  for Best Film: Bad Luck Banging, or Looney Porn (2021).

This special programme will run from Friday 16th to 30th April 2021 and includes the online debut of his 2020 The Exit of the Trains (Berlinale Forum) in certain territories.

Accompanying the launch of this special programme of the Romanian auteur filmmaker’s work will be a live online conversation with respected Argentinian critic, programmer, and filmmaker Lucía Salas who talks to Radu Jude on Facebook and on DAFilms Live on Monday 19th April at 19:00 CET / 13:00 EST / 10:00 PT.

In English | During the stream, viewers will be able to submit their own questions.

 

Some Kind of Heaven (2020) digital release

Dir: Lance Oppenheim | US Doc

A life of eternal holidays beckons in a Florida retirement complex in the opening scenes of Lance Oppenheim’s  thought-provoking first feature.

Days of sun-drenched relaxation by the pool or a round of golf before cocktails with other mature singles – 130,000 to be precise – all sounds ideal at first, but we all know the reality is quite different. And so does Lance Oppenheim who has made a series of shorts exploring the world of leisure and here digs deeper in his complex exposé of the Florida retirement community who on the surface appear to be thriving in their golden days of freedom.

A sunny place for shady people is how Somerset Maugham described the Cote d’Azur. And South Florida seems to be the US equivalent. A cheerful opening sees well-preserved residents frolicking in palm-fringed paradise. But gradually the clouds gather and the tone grows almost sinister as Oppenheim reveals the truth behind The Villages idyl. Party time gradually descends into a nauseating round of chipper chat-up lines as seedy gold-diggers and petty criminals bask ill-disguised in dapper sombreros, perma tans and Pierre Cardin sportswear, blonde brush-overs barely ruffled by the sultry breeze.

And it doesn’t come cheap. The Villages’ brochure boasts a 401K price tag for this idyllic existence. Most denizens have traded in their urban lifestyles for this semi-tropical resting place – so there’s going back to normality however jaded the guilded cage becomes.

Marriages forged for decades can finally take a turn for the worse, and it’s the women we sympathise with, rather than the men: Anne and Reggie have been married for 47 years, but now find themselves seeking counselling as Reggie turned to cocaine to make his newfound ‘bliss’ bearable. The judge calls him “the rudest person he has ever met” during his court hearing. You feel for Anne as she calmly hopes for the best, patiently talking Reggie through another day.

Barbara is another appealing character whose soulful expression speaks of tragedy back in Boston where she was widowed, and now works full-time in The Villages, hoping to find a soul mate. 81-year-old man-child Dennis is clearly not the answer. Currently living in an illegal camper van on the grounds he hopes to find a rich widow, a ‘nurse and purse’to see him through his final stretch. The Villages is simple a microcosm of real life but the sun shines nearly every day and the garrulous are never lonely.

Some Kind of Heaven is a stomach-sinking experience, a salutary warning that sunny climes and social clubs are not the answer to most people’s dreams. As Anne puts it, all we really want is someone to cherish and respect us, who listens to our thoughts, and cares.

Oppenheim never ridicules his protagonists despite the modern trend of belittling the elderly. There is beauty here in the souls and faces of these people and it shines through clearly, particularly with Barbara who gives a moving reflection of her childhood, or Anne whose gentle eyes belie her tortured tale. Dennis does eventually find a pleasant companion who inadvertently exposes him as two-faced and shallow without really knowing the truth behind his orange tan.

Some Kind of Heaven is quite simply an unforgettable documentary debut that speaks volumes about the final chapter in the human condition. It shows that even though the flesh is weaker, beauty still shines through in Anne’s sensual disco dancing or Barbara’s poetic take on her complex past. MT

ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS FROM 14 MAY 2021

Behind the Door (1919) Prime Video

Dir: Irvin Willat | Wri: Gouverneur Morris, Luther Reed  | Cast: Hobert Bosworth, Jane Novak, Wallace Beery, James Gordon | US 70′

Walter Schwieger, the U-boat commander who on 7 May 1915 ordered the torpedoing of the ‘Lusitania’ could never of dreamt of the bloodlust against his countrymen that his action fuelled in the United States. It certainly kept Wallace Beery in steady employment playing bestial huns as late as Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), when he chomps on a chicken leg while instructing a firing squad; and it’s when he makes his first appearance in Behind the Door as a dastardly U-boat commander that this film – which shows hatred of the Hun unabated a full year after Germany’s surrender – comes to life.

It comes as no surprise that Gouverneur Morris’s original 1918 short story was barely two pages long, as most of ‘Behind the Door’ feels simply like preparation for Hobart Bosworth’s vengeance on Beery for what he does to his wife. Bosworth is taxidermist Oscar Krug, who after sampling the hostility welling up in small town America against those like himself of German extraction, shows his patriotism by rolling up his sleeves and commanding a ship to fight the German navy.

It would be interesting to know if submarines in wartime actually did make off with shipwrecked female passengers as spoils of war as Beery does with Bosworth’s wife, but it’s not hard to imagine. Harder to anticipate is the incredible vengeance Bosworth exacts on him when fate bring them together again two months later.

Having already failed to recognise Bosworth as the grimacing face pressed against a porthole as his U-boat dived, Beery is then stupid enough to brag in detail over a cup of coffee about what he did to his wife. The first of two visual shocks that follow is the shot of her being tossed through a doorway to Beery’s sex-starved crew like a bone to a pack of starving Alsations (when they’re through with her she’s then fired out of a torpedo tube); the second is a close-up of Bosworth’s taxidermy tool kit, which Bosworth had conveniently brought along with him. What he does with this kit is not shown, but we’re left in no doubt.

Bela Lugosi did the same to Boris Karloff at the conclusion of The Black Cat (1934) fifteen years later, and in Intolerance (1916) a man has his head lopped off on camera. Doubtless equally gruesome moments exists elsewhere in pre-Code cinema, but in those days such moments were all the more effective for being unexpected; unlike the depressing competition modern filmmakers seem to be constantly engaged in of drawing attention to themselves by outdoing each other in pushing the limits in the depiction of ultra-violence on the big screen. @Richard Chatten

 

Escape (1948)

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

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

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

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

 

House of Cardin (2019)

Dirs: P David Ebersole/Todd Hughes | US Doc | With: Hanae Mori, Dionne Warwick, Sharon Stone, Naomi Campbell, Hiroko Matsumoto, Jean-Michel Jarre, Philippe Starck | US Doc

P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes (Mansfield 66/67) look into the world of fashion icon Pierre Cardin (1922-2020) giving a real sense of who he was and how he shook things up in the early Sixties.

Cardin wasn’t just a fashion designer – he was all about futurism, transforming haute couture, watches, even sunglasses and cigarette lighters with a unique vision for the modern world in the late 1950s and 1960s. Always looking forward to the future and, crucially, maintaining control of his brand, and never selling out.

Born Pietro Costante Cardin near Treviso in summer 1922, his Italian wine merchant parents had fled to France to avoid Fascism, and Pierre grew up near St Etienne with his ten siblings, eventually drifting to Paris after the war to study architecture. Rather than designing buildings he was drawn to fashion tailoring eventually joining the Paris atelier of Paquin in 1945 where he was put to work on the fantasy costumes of Jean Cocteau’s classic Beauty and the Beast, and by 1947 he was heading up the tailleur atelier of Christian Dior. He was 25. Striking out on his own he founded the House of Cardin last three years later where his avantgarde designs focused on geometric Space age forms, rather like his fellow designer André Courrèges (1923-2016).

Ebersole and Hughes opt for a chronological structure and a punchy style of editing that pops with archive footage intercutting soundbites from Cardin’s catwalk models with collaborators from all over the world: this reflects how the designer pioneered international markets way beyond the West in a International branding furore that took  in Japan, China and Russia where he was the very first to develop an easy style of ready to wear fashions with a keen eye to the global possibilities on offer.

Cardin’s triumph was to offer women freedom after the constraints of those corsets and tight-fitting styles of the early 1950s, with bright primary colours and futuristic fabrics that were cutting edge: the “bubble dress” was a case in point, fashioned on the bias over a stiffened base. These were not elegant pieces but flirty, fun and functional, offering comfort and flexibility, they still look ultra modern even today. Apart from his global branding initiative, Cardin was also one of the first to choose models from different ethnic backgrounds such as Naomi Campbell and Hiroko Matsumoto.

But there was a price to pay for all Cardin’s maverick desire to spread his brand far and wide: in 1959 he decided to make a range of designer dresses for those with style but a shoestring budget, and  fell foul of the strict French federation of haute couture. This was seen as cheapening the designer ethos of the era – even today you will never see Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent in the sale.

Ever the enterprising innovator, Cardin moved on inexorably, branching out into new ventures such as cars, furniture and – in a musical twist – the Espace Cardin, a theatre in the former Cafe des Ambassadeurs in Paris which even featured Alice Cooper, and provided the springboard for Gerard Depardieu’s acting career.

Jean-Paul Gaultier is one of the most amusing talking heads, revealing how Cardin was turned away from Maxim’s restaurant for not wearing a tie in 1960, and duly brought the place two decades later, making it trendy and cool. In 2001 he acquired the former home of the Marquis de Sade, the Chateau Lacoste, where he ran a respected musical drama festival in the heart of the Vaucluse.

Cardin himself appears in footage as rather subversive and cheeky with a glint his eye and a ready quip: like a little boy he loved to be in the limelight, with the talent and foresight to back it all up. But we learn little of the man behind the persona, or of his love life  beyond his surface popularity as a sexual conquest – by his own admission “I was very much in demand”. Openly gay, he also enjoyed a long affair with Jeanne Moreau in the 1960s and rather like his countryman Yves Saint Laurent he later became romantically involved with his business partner Andre Oliver.  Still firing on all cylinders in his late 90s when this biopic was made, the legendary Pierre Cardin was more than just a designer, he was a major creative force to be reckoned with and is now a household name. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 26 APRIL 2021 ON MAJOR PLATFORMS

 

Aviva (2021) Curzon

Dir.: Boaz Yakin; Cast: Zina Zinchenko, Tyler Philips, Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber; USA/France 2020, 116 min.

This fluid, romantic drama from American-Israeli writer director Boaz Yakin explores a fluid relationship between Parisian Aviva and her New York lover Eden. Dance and sex scenes dominate but the standout here in that the couple are in reality a quartet: Aviva has a male double, Eden a female one. They interact on all levels and in all combinations.

It all starts with a film-in-film scene where Aviva (Zinchenko), declares her love for the camera that follows them in their most banal and intimate moments. Her love object is Eden (Philips), the two are very intimate online – but after Aviva has moved to New York, their love-making is awkward, to say the least, Aviva complaining that Eden doesn’t look at her. Closeness, it seems, it much more easily achievable online. The couple’s gender alternatives are surprising: Eden’s female identity is acted out by Bobbi Jene Smith, Aviva’s male soul partner is Or Schraiber; with Smith and Schraiber, who are connected to the Israeli dance company Batsheva, responsible for the feature’s choreography.

An early rather enigmatic chapter, titled “Anatomy of a Kiss” deals with Aviva’s childhood: a montage of babies and fathers, parents having sex and lots of giggling teenagers. Eden’s backlog memories are a little more to the point with the little boy discovering that his boy friend is actually a little girl. “Paradise is lost” for Eden.

But there is a hint to adult Eden’s inability to come to terms with Aviva and his own female self. Dancing (and lovemaking) dominate: Eden’s history is told in flash-backs where lively kids dance and play in Coney Island. Eden has the most problematic rapport with his female self: his sullen behaviour while flat-hunting with Aviva is typically male (as well as the boy he was). When not the centre of attention, he shouts at his inner woman. This all constitutes a form of misogyny, which has so far not been shown on screen.

The wedding scene is therefore, logically, acted out by the two female selves. Unfortunately, the love story is rather gloomy with banal dialogue, Eden coming across as more and more insecure. Aviva is much more able to come to terms with her dual existence. A rather morbid injury to the titular heroine and a late announced pregnancy propel the action forward – until the audience has to guess the identity of the ‘couples’ walking off in the park.

Yakin has difficulty developing the threadbare storyline into a two-hour feature, edging dangerously near to pretentiousness. DoP Arseni Khachaturian saves the day with a dreamlike atmosphere that somehow softens the sex scenes, creating something wild and other-worldly heightened by Asaf Avidan’s, enthusiastic score. Zina Zinchenko leads an inspired cast, transforming the rather tepid script into something extraordinary. AS

CURZON HOME CINEMA | 30 April 2021

The Hands of Orlac (1924) Blu-ray

Dir.: Robert Wiene; Cast: Conrad Veidt, Alexandra Sorina, Fritz Kortner, Hans Homma, Fritz Strassny, Carmen Catellieri; Osterreich 1924, 92 min.

Four years after his most emblematic feature, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, director Robert Wiene (1873-1938) filmed Ludwig Nerz’ adaption of Maurice Renard’s novel as a psychological horror feature blending Grand Guignol with German Expressionism. It starred two of the great stars of the German speaking cinema of the first half of the 20th century, Conrad Veidt and Fritz Kortner; both of whom emigrated to the USA, where Veidt would go on to play Major Strasser in Casablanca. The film would be later be reworked as Mad Love in 1935, directed by emigrant Karl Freund and starring fellow émigré Peter Lorre in his Hollywood debuta. Amongst others, there is also a 1960s version of the original which stars Mel Ferrer, Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasence.

Veidt is mesmerising here as creepy tormented concert pianist Paul Orlac (Veidt) who is gravely injured returning from a concert tour when his train collides with one coming in the other direction. At the nearby sanatorium, Dr. Seral (Homma) saves his life by amputating the pianist’s hands, replacing them with those of a convicted murderer. But it’s not only the criminal’s hands he inherits in the ground-breaking surgery, as we discover in a grim twist in the finale.

Based on a novel by Maurice Renard, Wiene vividly brings to life Orlac’s horrifying descent into madness as his genius suffers and his reputation slowly disintegrates, his career in tatters. He is blackmailed by Nera (Kortner) and his father is mysteriously murdered, Orlac’s fingerprints appearing on the weapon. .

DoPs Günther Krampf and Hans Androschin use light and shadow to deft effects in the cavernous set design, making Orlac much more of a genre horror feature than Caligari. Mad Love was Freund’s last feature as a director, but he would go on shooting 45 features, including Key Largo). Meanwhile, Robert Wiene died in 1938 on the set of Ultimatum while in exile in Paris, the feature – starring Erich von Stroheim and Lila Kedrova (The Tenant) was finished by yet another future Hollywood great, Robert Siodmak. AS

COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA | MAY 2021

West of Shanghai (1937)

Dir: John Farrow | Cast: Boris Karloff, Beverly Roberts, Ricardo Cortez, Gordon Oliver, Sheila Bromley, Vladimir Sokoloff | US 64′

West of Shanghai was the third of four film versions of a play by Porter Emerson Browne (best remembered today for ‘A Fool That There Was’), and was the only version not filmed under the play’s original title of ‘The Bad Man’ or in the original Mexican setting.

Successfully produced on Broadway in 1920, The Bad Man had originally been a comedy, which explains the beguiling flashes of humour sprinkled throughout Ralph Spence’s script; notably in the sassier quips by Lola Galt, and a vaudeville routine in which Fang divests Creed, then Galt, then Dr. Abernathy of $50,000, only for it to eventually end up in Fang’s own wallet.

Boris Karloff is obviously enjoying himself as Chinese warlord General Wu Yen Fang (“I am Fang!!”), despite the uncomfortable-looking makeup, which genuinely gave him blurred vision on the set. His opposite number General Chow Fu-Shan is played by Moscow-born Vladimir Sokoloff, while the authentically Chinese-American actor Richard Loo is the only one not required to adopt an accent as Fang’s US-raised right-hand man Mr. Cheng.

The script does a sort of reverse Psycho by setting up Ricardo Cortez as Gordon Creed as the film’s hero, only to switch allegiance to the boring Jim Hallet (played by Gordon Oliver) and casually have Creed killed off, enabling Hallet to ride off with Creed’s estranged wife Jane (as if anyone cared). Sheila Bromley is so sassy as Lola Galt and Beverly Roberts such a pudding as Jane Creed the film’s switch of emphasis from the former to the latter, and Fang’s unlikely preference for Jane to Lola (“Hair like straw, eye like fog; have wide mouth of fish”) suggests that the script was insufficiently revised to accommodate the casting.

Photography by L. William O’Connell and direction by John Farrow are both up to their usual standard. @Richard Chatten

 

The Red Kimona (1925)

Dir: Walter Lang | Wri: Dorothy Arzner, Adela Rogers St Johns | Cast: Priscilla Bonner, Nellie Bly Baker, Carl Miller, Mary Carr, Virginia Pearson | US Silent 76′

One of the most sought after missing Hollywood silents is Human Wreckage (1923), a drama about drug addiction that was the first of three crusading independent productions produced by and featuring the actress Dorothy Davenport under the name “Mrs Wallace Reid”.

Number Three was The Crimson Kimona which manages to pack an incredible amount of plot into under eighty minutes while addressing the thorny subjects of prostitution and the rehabilitation of offenders; and, like Human Wreckage, was banned by the British Board of Censors. Unlike the former this happily still survives.

The surprises start early with the name of Walter Lang – whose debut feature this was – prominently displayed as director. For 25 years from the mid-thirties until the early sixties, Lang was a competent ‘A’ feature workhorse for Fox whose name adorns such bland big budget fodder as The King and I without his name ever on its own account ever exciting much interest among scholars. Lang gets solo credit on The Red Kimona (Mrs Wallace Reid getting a separate supervisory one), and does a remarkably good job, aided by excellent photography by James Diamond and uniformly good performances, not all of them credited. (Tyrone Powers Sr, for example, plays Gabrielle’s brutish father, but the pinched-faced actress playing her mother is uncredited). In order to sugar the pill of the earnest Sunday school nature of the subject (complete with biblical quotations), The Red Kimona is replete throughout with blandishments that keep the audience attentive, ranging from coloured inserts of the eponymous Red Kimona (presumably designed to symbolise the heroine’s fall from polite society) to an invigorating car chase through Santa Fe.

Making much of being based on a genuine criminal case in New Orleans in 1917, and scripted by Adela Rogers St. Johns and Dorothy Arzner, the film begins and ends with Mrs Wallace Reid speaking directly to camera, her words conveyed by subtitles; a device routinely used in sound films and on television, but which I’ve never before encountered in a silent film.

Gabrielle’s suitor Howard Blaine (played by Carl Miller) is so repulsive – significantly a bruise can be seen on her upper arm in one scene, and the only kindness she receives later is from the prison matron – one suspects a diatribe against men is in the offing; but socialite Mrs. Fontaine, her Mrs Danvers like housekeeper (played with crow-like malice by Emily Fitzroy) and her coven of clucking lady friends get equally short shrift (another eye-catching performance by an uncredited performer is by the actress who plays Mrs. Fontaine’s cynical maid). Gabrielle meanwhile finds her knight in shining armour in a chauffeur’s uniform in the form of Mrs. Fontaine’s chauffeur Freddy, engagingly played by Theodore Von Eltz.

As Gabrielle herself, Priscilla Bonner’s performance grows on you as the film progresses (which is not in straight chronological sequence) and her character evolves as she rolls her big round eyes lovingly filmed in close up. (Like historical detective fiction author Anne Perry when the release of Heavenly Creatures [1994] outed her forty years after the event as the fifties teenage killer Juliet Hulme, the real life Gabrielle Darley was less than thrilled at having the spotlight again turned on her without her permission using her real name; and in 1931 she successfully sued Mrs Wallace Reid for substantial damages.) @Richard Chatten

 

Palm Springs (2020)

Dir: Max Barbakow | Cast: Andy Sandberg, Cristin Milioti, J K Simmons, Peter Gallagher | US Romcom 90′

As romcoms go this is a blast of sunshine at a grim time when cheerful moving pictures are just what you need when you can’t be bothered with anything deep. Well that’s not exactly fair – Groundhog Day-style buddy movie with a time-loop conceit is probably the best way to describe a film that seeks to escape the infernal repetitiveness of you know what, powered forward by the frisky frolics of a dynamite duo that is Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti whose budding romance feels real and adds meaning – although nothing surprising – to the party as wedding guests forced to go through the same day again and again. There are laughs to be had and it doesn’t overstay its welcome, perfect for an easy night in (again!). MT

NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS

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

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

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

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

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

ON NETFLIX 

Symphony of Noise (2021) CPH:DOX

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Dir.: Enrique Sanchez Lansch; Documentary with Matthew Herbert; Germany 2021, 93 min.

Spanish director Enrique Sanchez Lansch has followed British composer Matthew Herbert for ten years to record his experimental sounds in this rather experimental film that plays out like a performance.

Herbert’s credo is that mankind should listen more closely to sounds, if they want to topple right-wing governments – even though the Kent born composer admits that this target may be too fanciful. The genre-breaker Herbert has a proven track record: over 30 albums, film scores, among one for Ridley Scott, and an Oscar for the score of A Fantastic Woman (although the opening track was actually Alan Parson’s Project classic ‘Time’. 

Whether underwater or in outer space, Herbert feels entirely at home, composing even for audiences who are asleep. But it all started much closer to home when Herbert recorded the noises of his newly-born piglets for the rest of their lives – even during their slaughter. He is tired of the repetitive approach to piano and violin, so has learned to play both instruments from scratch, transferring his critique to the cooking of an omelette.

Forty-four eggs are first selected, a bared-footed woman then crunches the shells, the sound creating a sort of entirely new sounds while the omelette is being made. Other sound mixes include people having sex; forests being cut down; and an over-ground train in Berlin. Having lived in the city, Herbert has created a sound Symphony of people dying (79) and being born (183), with his “orchestra” performing the applicable noises like the final breath and first cry.

Mahler’s music is certainly appropriate for a staged funeral, with the composer combining this performance, and discovering that Mahler had to use a flute for a birdsong, whilst the teenage boy Herbert could use a recorder to catch the original sound of the birds.

In the RIAS Berlin radio station, Herbert rehearses his “BrexitBig Band“, to protest against the vote in favour of leaving the EU. “Leave all the fuckers and their hatred behind” is one of the refrains. Having watched Emma swim for 14 hours in the English Channel, we then imagine a love song between an English and French person on the shores of the English channel aka ‘La Manche’.

Tree cutting sounds remind the composer that “we are all living in an emergency situation“. Nevertheless, he still has time to deep-fry his trumpet in a Fish and Chip shop, before ending in space with “the impossible sound of solar winds” and “the sound of virgin lights hurtling through space.”

DoPs Thilo Schmidt and Anne Misselwitz use appropriate images for this cacophony of sounds. And although Sanchez Lansch starts to feel like a mischievous magician pulling too many rabbits to pull out of a hat with his myriad exotic recordings Symphony is certainly inventive and full of weird ideas that occasionally stun and surprise the audience. AS

CPH:DOX COPENHAGEN 2021

Eternal Love (1929) Prime Video

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch | Cast: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn | German, 61′

Eternal Love was the final silent film made by Ernst Lubitsch and John Barrymore. Based on a 1900 novel by J.C.Heer called ‘Der Koenig der Bernina’, the feature is fairly typical of the cross-pollination then common between Europe and Hollywood, with a German director and scriptwriter and female leading actress, sets and costumes by Caligari veteran Walter Reimann and Banff National Park in Canada standing in for the Swiss Alps in 1806.

Despite the high-powered talent brought to bear on it, Eternal Love for the most part lacks Lubitsch’s customary saucy wit promised in the earlier scenes featuring the saucy Mona Rico, and seems rather perfunctory compared to G.W.Pabst’s similar but far superior Weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü released later the same year. Oliver Marsh’s photography would plainly be far more impressive in its pristine nitrate form than the rather blurry version available today, while the drab Vitaphone score by Hugo Riesenfeld also rather holds it back.

The luminescent final shot of the moon emerging as the clouds part strikingly anticipates Crack in the World (1965), directed 35 years later by Eternal Love’s editor Andrew Marton, which ends with a shot almost identical to that of Eternal Love, except that at the end of Marton’s later film there are two moons…@Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Les Enfants Terribles (2021) Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: Ahmet Necdet Cupur; Documentary with Zeynep Cupur, Mahmud Cupur, Nezahat Cupur, Ahmet Cupur; Turkey/Germany 2021, 92 mins.

Taking the title from Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1950 film adaptation of Cocteau’s play this reflection on the past is also a study of a family fighting tradition – and each other – in a world that has seen so many changes.

First time director Ahmet Necdet Cupur is back home in the village of Keskincek, twenty years after freeing himself from the stifling family set-up in south eastern Turkey. Three year’s in the making, the film revisits a bitter domestic battlefield: his brother and sister-in-law on one side; his old-fashioned parents on the other. Nothing changes, or so it seems.

Starting in January 2018 Ahmet makes contact with his sister Zeynep and her audio description of what’s going on with her parents hits a raw nerve: “Keep on writing, you have shown me exactly how your life is”. Now he’s back in situ with a camera to film the goings-on. Teenage Zeynep works in a cloth factory in the nearby city of Antalya but feels too young to be married off by her father who keeps her earnings for himself, whilst mostly loafing around all day. Her dream is to study and go to university, a plan, which both her parents object to, because she is a female.

The family is in a mess and forced to marry the kids off for financial reasons: brother Mahmut was made to marry Nezahat, so as to secure her dowry (known as a ‘mahr’), but the two have never slept together, Mahmut preferring a certain Birsen, whom we never meet. Meanwhile his rather has been trying to unlock his son’s mobile, to check what’s going on.

Mahmut is no spring chicken having already held down a job in Kuwait. But the family Imam Hüseyim Cupur, won’t grant him a divorce on any grounds. And now the village gossipers are out in force wondering if he is ‘a real man’. Zeynep is fully aware that the woman is always at fault in Turkish divorce proceedings, even her own mother won’t support her.

Election Day arrives and the whole family is forced to vote for the father’s choice.  Zeynep is particularly annoyed, since this candidate has been in office for donkey’s years and hasn’t made any changes for the better. She takes it all out on her religious mother :”You say, you are old and wise. But you are not, you have never read a book in your life”. But the complaint falls on deaf ears: “Good created us to live here, in our home. And the only book I am going to read is the Koran”.

Ahmet’s involvement certainly a certain tension in the family dynamics  – never has “the fly on the wall” been closer to the action. The tone is hyper-aggressive, with both parents and children vowing to kill each other. But in the end,

But despite the conflict, things do eventually move on for both kids, Ahmet delivering a positive, if not ‘happy’ ending. The young generation is slowly taking over: religion and patriarchy are on the back foot. Ahmet’s debut is a vociferous and direct testament. AS

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION | VISIONS DU REEL | NYON | SWITZERLAND | Shared Special Jury Prize Winner 2021

 

 

Lifeboat (1944) TPTV

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix, Mary Anderson, Henry Hull | US Drama  97′

That the celebrity of Hitchcock’s films bears no relation to their actual achievement is attested to by the obscurity in which this little beauty continues to languish.

Having already set The Lady Vanishes largely on a train, although Hitchcock never got to make a film entirely set in a phone booth (as he once longingly speculated), he comes close with this bold and stylish exercise that anticipates his own Rope and 12 Angry Men by making a film consisting entirely of people talking within a confined space. (And also contains a ferocious murder unaccompanied by music like that in Torn Curtain.)

Although obviously shot entirely in the studio tank, it’s still a thoroughly cinematic experience thanks to a script as raw as the strictures of the Hays Office would then permit, gothic photography by Glenn MacWilliams capable of virtuoso effects like sweat breaking on a man’s brow and consistently superb performances (one of them from Hume Cronyn, who latter collaborated on the screenplay of Rope), including a typically ambivalent Hitchcock ambivalent villain, as ruthless and resourceful as Eric Portman had been in 49th Parallel.

(Also as in Rope, Hitchcock himself got round the problem of making his appearance by featuring in an advertisement for Reduco – the “Obesity Slayer”. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | PRIME VIDEO

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) Prime Video

Dir: Anthony Mann | Cast: Christopher Plummer, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Alex Guinness | US Action drama

Samuel Bronston’s answer to Heaven’s Gate is usually dismissed as inferior to El Cid, but The Fall of the Roman Empire still has recent Desert Island Disks castaway Sophia Loren in it (according to George MacDonald Fraser the historical Livia was “a murderous adultress who tried to assassinate her brother”, so maybe Lollobrigida should have played her after all); plus the inevitable Finlay Currie clinching this film’s credentials as a bona fide vintage historical epic. There is also the bonus of Alec Guinness and James Mason.

The late Christopher Plummer meanwhile hit his stride as a screen actor as the seriously mad Emperor Commodus. (He and director Anthony Mann had a such a blast working together they were keen to do another picture together; but Mann sadly died only four years and one and a half films later before that could happen.)

The fact that it was a colossal financial (and critical) flop simply enhances its grandeur and the money is certainly all there up on the screen, with impressively wintry location work shot outside Madrid; while the recreation of the Forum in Rome made it into the ‘Guinness Book of Records’ as the largest set ever built for a movie. (There is none of that fake-looking CGI or wobbly steadicam that ruins 21st Century epics. And what colours!)

Robert Krasker and composer Dimitri Tiomkin both surpassed their work on the previous film, and although like most epics it’s at least an hour too long, Plummer comes into his own in that final lap; his emergence from a giant hand worth of Brigitte Helm flaunting herself in Metropolis and Dietrich shedding a gorilla skin in Blonde Venus. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

 

Bellum – The Daemon of War (2021) Visions du Reel 2021

Dir.: David Herdies, Georg Götmark; Documentary with Bill Lyon, Fredrik Bruhn, Paula Bonstein, Aisha Lyon, Sweed, Karolina Bruhn; narrated by Johannes Anyuru; Sweden/ Denmark 2021, 87 min.

War is in the DNA of humans, always has been. The Romans were masters of conquering countries on more than one continent. Their motto was “War pays for itself, so soldiers do not need to be paid, there is always plenty to plunder”. Statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BC) was an early warmonger, ending his speeches in front of the Senate for years with the call for war: “Anyhow, I am of the opinion, that we should destroy Cartago”. After a few years, his peers got the message and the African city, capital of a kingdom, was indeed conquered.

This essay film from Swedish director duo David Herdies and Georg Götmark traces the history of war, present and future: veteran war photographer Paula Bronstein delivering some cruel images from Kabul.

But amidst the doom and gloom AI scientist Fredrick Bruhn has a surprisingly upbeat theory about the end of armed conflict, and US veterans Sweed and Bill Lyon are the living examples of survivors of the recent outings of the US war machine.

Not that far from Los Alamos in New Mexico, where Robert Oppenheimer and his team developed the first nuclear bomb in the State of Nevada (his prophetical warnings open the feature) is the location of the US Army’s Drone Operations and Training Base – AFB. Demonstrators with placards protest outside the gates, while veterans Sweed and co, cheer on every car leaving or entering the compound, making fun of the demonstrators. “I bet she borrowed the baby”, comments Sweed on a mother carrying her child.

Later we listen to Sweed and his friend Bill Lyon talking about their active service experience that destroyed people rather than buildings. In training, the drones attacked the simulated town of Kandahar, creating the atmosphere of an arcade game. The images are not just circles any more, but human forms, the intention is to blur the lines between the lines between practice and real actions. But for the veterans, the question is just survival: “When your compound has been hit, you are either dead, or you go back to sleep. For most people this is crazy, but I loved it. It was boring when you get home.”

Meanwhile Bronstein shows the photos of the Kabul victims she asks a boy to give her a smile. He refuses. Paula explains” I want to put some beauty into my photos, some life. To make the victims human. Meanwhile AI developer Fredrik Bruhn is hopeful about the future: “We are twenty years away from the point, when a computer can build the next generations of AI himself, he will replicate human brains, but goes much further than the 500 billion synapses of our brains. I do not see that we can have a world without war, as long as humans are in control. But robots do not have our DNA inheritance, they do not need to act like us. In the end the question will be about human existence, or the survival of digital humanity.

Bellum is perhaps too complex for its limited running time. But it certainly shows the existential question flagging up the need to write humankind out of the script. The documentary is dedicated to Bill Lyon, who, like Sweed, passed away. AS

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMP | VISIONS DU REEL 2021

Black Oxen (1923)

Dir: Frank Lloyd | Cast: Corinne Griffith, Conway Tearle, Tom Ricketts, Clara Bow, Tom Guise | US Drama 81′

This film version of 65 year-old feminist writer Gertrude Atherton’s controversial 1923 novel, based upon her own treatment with an early form of hormone therapy, was on cinema screens by the end of the year and generated a lot of discussion at the height of the flapper era; and it remains increasingly topical today.

Aged 45 (but like many matinée idols of the era looking much older), Conway Tearle as eligible bachelor Lee Clavering has the dilemma that dizzy flappers like Janet Ogelthorpe (played by Clara Bow) bore him, yet has “a vague idea that Autumnal love is – is rather indecent”. He indeed looks pretty long in the tooth for 28 year-old Corinne Griffith as the mysterious Mary Ogden, referred to in the opening credits simply as “The Woman”; about whom an awful lot of footage is squandered upon speculation as to her true identity until she finally fesses up and confirms that she is really sixty year-old Madame Zatianny. In a flashback in which she is supposed to be in her late fifties, but is made up and shuffles about like an infirm eighty year-old, she is rejuvenated in Austria by a medical procedure that is alluded to only very vaguely.

At this point it gets interesting, as her old friends digest the implications of this revelation; notably Claire McDowell as Agnes Trevor, who bitterly regrets her own lost opportunities to find love when young and thus sorely envies Madame Zatianny the second chance her treatment has gifted her. (McDowell was actually less than six months older than Tearle and would probably have benefited enormously just from a more contemporary makeup and wardrobe like Griffith’s.) Unfortunately, with twenty minutes still to go this is the point at which the only currently available version of Black Oxen abruptly ends. Or maybe it’s not so unfortunate. We know from original reviews that her old Austrian beau Prince Rohenhauer (played by Alan Hale) shows up, persuades her to act her age and return with him to Austria, leaving Lee to find true happiness with the flapper who had so bored him earlier, provoking ‘Variety’s original reviewer to ironically state that the film’s “only fault seems to be the disappointing ending”.

An epilogue to Black Oxen that proves yet again how much stranger real life can be even than a silent movie came in 1966 (the year that Claire McDowell died at the age of 88) when 72 year-old Griffith divorced her 45 year-old fourth husband of a few days and testified in court (contradicting testimony from Betty Blythe and Claire Windsor, who had both known her during the 1920s) that she was not Corinne Griffith, but her younger sister who had taken her place upon her elder sibling’s death. @Richard Chatten

 

Peril for the Guy (1956)

Dir: James Hill | Cast: Frazer Hines, Mandy Harper, Christopher Warbey, Ali Allen | UK Drama, 55′

A delightful CFF lark that starts well with a jaunty title sequence, after which it’s elegantly directed by James Hill against the atmospheric backdrop of a freezing fifties London fog.

Blandishments that would satisfy the most politically correct modern audience include a little black kid called ‘Ali’, with an oil company the guys in black hats rather than the usual gormless spivs (although Ian Whittaker is gormless enough for an entire gang), Paul Daneman suitably dashing as the young inventor whose invention they’re after, Katherine Kath a glacial, buttoned-down dragon lady and today’s cameo appearance provided by an unbilled Arthur Mullard.

The makers actually managed to commandeer a helicopter for the finale, while as befits a film set around Guy Fawkes night the climax involves fireworks rather than water. Without being too preachy about it the audience is discretely reminded to be careful around fireworks and the final display is conducted under the stewardship of (reasonably) responsible adults. ©Richard Chatten

NOW ON BFI PLAYER

Karloff at Columbia 1935-42

 

Boris Karloff was born in London as William Henry Pratt on 23 November 1887. His parents shared Indian ancestry and his mother’s maternal aunt was Anna Leonowens whose writings inspired The King and I musical. Pratt was tall and well built but suffered from a lisp which adds a rasp to his deep, melodious voice. The youngest of nine children, he was privately educated at Uppingham and went up to King’s College, London with a view to joining the Foreign Office, but eventually ended up travelling to Canada where he fell into acting adopting his stage name of Boris Karloff. He would marry six times, clearly his big break in Frankenstein in 1931 at the age of 45 didn’t put women off.

As one of the legends horror cinema he made six horror films during his time at Columbia, three with Nick Grinde, one with Robert Dymtryk and a final comedy spoof, joining forces with Peter Lorre: The Boogie Man Will Get You directed by Lew Landers.

The Black Room (1935)

Writing for The Spectator in 1935, Graham Greene described Roy William Neil’s thriller as “absurd and exciting”, and “wildly artificial.” praising both the acting of Karloff and the direction of Neill, and noting that Karloff had been given a long speaking part and “allowed to act at last”, and that Neill had “caught the genuine Gothic note” in a manner that displayed more historical sense than any of Alexander Korda’s films.

In the early 19th century twins are born to the DeBerghman family who rule a Czech province from their majestic medieval castle, bizarrely located in the Tyrol and designed by Stephen Goosson (Columbia art director who won an Oscar for Lost Horizon). A curse on the family states that the birth of twin boys will destroy the dynasty forever, the younger will murder the elder one in the infamous Black Room, betrayed by the family dog.

Made for Columbia Pictures at the height of his career, an eloquent Karloff has  fun here fleshing out the characters of the gallantly endearing gentleman Anton and his arrantly fiendish older brother Baron Gregor (who women both fear and detest). Magically captured in Allen G Siegler’s luminous black and white camerawork, it’s fascinating to see Karloff getting his teeth into a fully formed, non horror role. The pet mastiff Tor is terrific in support.

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

Columbia’s prescient sci-fi themed riff on the Old Dark House theme sees Karloff directed by Nick Grinde in the first (and arguably most intelligent) of his ‘mad scientist’ roles as Dr. Henryk Savaard a kindly and convincing psychopath bringing the dead back to life through the use of an artificial heart, twenty five years before reality. But when his healthy patient dies in a ‘failsafe’ experiment Savaard is tried in a pithy courtroom procedural (“I offered you Life, but you gave me Death”) and condemned to swing. Using the doc’s same methods his assistant, Lang (Byron Foulger), revives him, but Savaard is bitter for revenge.

The Devil Commands (1941)

Karloff really brings out the humanity of a bereaved husband mourning his beloved wife in Edward Dmytryk’s Gothic horror outing based on William Sloane’s novel The Edge of Running Water. It’s a convincing beast from the ‘mad doctor’ stable that explores the afterlife where science meets the surreal in a sorrowful romantic love story stylishly captured by Allen G Siegler’s spooky shadowplay making Karloff look raffishly sexy.

Nick Grinde collaborated with Karloff in two other ‘mad scientist’ films: The Man with Nine Lives (1940) and Before I Hang (1940). MT

NOW ON BLU-RAY EUREKA CLASSICS | 3 May 2021

The Last Shelter (2021) IDFA

 

Dir.: Ousmane Samassekou; Documentary; Mali/France/ Germany, 2021, 85 min.

Malian director Ousmane Samassekou has filmed random travellers from all over North Africa in a transit home in Gao, near the Sahara Desert. Most have come a long way, the nearest from the Malian capital of Bamako which is 496 km away – and some as far away as Burkina Faso. Their common goal is Algeria, a stepping stepping stone away from France and Italy where there are magic money trees and streets of gold. The reality is migrant camps and years of misery.

The Caritas –  House of Migrants caters for mostly young people whose aim is to cross the desert, however reluctantly, to their families in Bamako or more far-flung destinations. Many of the girls and women have spent time in captivity and have been raped. Yet they travel on regardless, risking it all. One 16-year old girl talks about the usual teenage pipe dreams of becoming a celebrity, an actress or a boxing champion. Far from this reverie is the reality of road blocks, where they often robbed on the money to pay the people smugglers taking them over the border. They’d have been much safer staying at home with their families.

Esther doesn’t want to share details of her relative, ashamed that she has not made it to France, even though her family has given her money to support them from Europe. So her dreams are largely built on wild ideas from unrealistic parents who are simply living in the cloud cuckoo land of social media, and she is caught in an invidious trap. Another young woman had ended up in captivity, and only thanks to a benevolent older woman, has been released – but she still wants to try again to get to Europe from this Sahara’s hostile terrain and treacherous sandstorms.

Mariko, an older man, begs staff not to send him to Bamako where they will give him injections which make him sleep all the time. Another young woman was sold by the man who was supposed to be looking after her. Endless stories from Sahara crossings are told: “You die without warning. No matter why, they shoot us like chickens.” The staff warns them over and over again: “Your dreams and illusions make you feel clever, but you will not reach your destinations, it is better to have a job at home, than to dream of abroad.”

Made on a shoestring budget, The Last Shelter could do with a re-edit. But the rawness of the material lends itself to some structural inadequacies, a more polished version would only mask the terror these migrants have been through – and, worse, want to risk all over again. Their lives are so far removed from the dream of the places they want to reach – they think that wearing the logo teeshirt of a millionaire footballer from Barcelona and Arsenal – will transport them on a magic carpet to that lifestyle. They as well might try and reach Mars. AS

|CPH:DOX | DOX:AWARD Winner – Main Competition
|DOK.fest Munich (5-13 May) | NOW SCREENING DURING IDFA 2021 | 17 – 28 November 2021

Studio One in Hollywood: 1984

Dir: Paul Nickell | Creator/Wri: Fletcher Markle | US Drama

As a huge admirer of Orwell’s original novel I was pleasantly surprised that although inevitably not in the same league as Nigel Kneale’s BBC adaptation broadcast the following year, how much of the basic storyline – and more importantly the mood – adaptor William Templeton’s distillation managed to get into just 50 minutes (minus commercials) broadcast live on a TV budget.

A modern viewer will approach this version with scepticism, knowing that it was made at the height of anti-Red hysteria in the United States and of the blacklist. An opening narration underlined by Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony has been added to Orwell’s story to convey Soviet-style totalitarianism and stresses that “What happens to the people in this story might happen to us. Might happen to you. If we should ever relax in our fight for freedom, if we should allow any individuals or any group of individuals to reduce our freedom of thought, our freedom of speech, our freedom of religion, then what happens to the people in this story will happen to us.” However, the irony implicit in this exhortation forcefully delivered by CBS newscaster Don Hollenbeck in the context of the McCarthyite America of 1953 is probably deliberate; and Hollenbeck himself was hounded into committing suicide by gassing himself the following year by a relentless campaign of press harassment headed by a Hearst columnist named – I kid you not! – O’Brian. (Hollenbeck is played by Ray Wise in the 2005 film ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’).

The production looks suitably expressionistic (the bizarre, vaguely abstract portrait of Big Brother somewhat resembling Dr. Mabuse), and although big, strapping Eddie Albert is as miscast as the undernourished, downtrodden Winston Smith as Edmond O’Brien was in the film version three years later, like O’Brien he gives his usual excellent performance. Fans of ‘Bonzana’ will be surprised to see Lorne Greene as an incisive O’Brien. Norma Crane (little known to film viewers, but memorable as Ellie Martin in ‘Tea and Sympathy’ and Golde in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’) is a sassy Julia who I personally found far sexier in her regulation-issue dungarees & blouse and leather greatcoat than the fifties party frock she changes into during her trysts with Winston (in this version of the future it’s mainly the women rather than the men who wear ties), and the moment when she undoes and discards her Anti-Sex League sash carries quite an erotic charge. @Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

The Last Photograph (2017)

Dir: Danny Huston | Cast: Danny Huston, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarita Choudary, Stacy Martin, Vincent Regan, Jaime Winstone | Drama, 85′

“everybody’s unhappy, you’ll learn that in time”.

Danny Huston stars and directs for the first time in this slight but thoughtful paean to loss and longing set in a summery Chelsea in the run up to the Lockerbie air tragedy in 1988. Financed by the Rausings and photographed partly in monochrome partly in a washed out aesthetic by ace photographer Ed Rutherford it is based on the best-selling novel by Simon Astaire (who also wrote the script).

Dominating the cast with his star quality and allure Huston plays troubled and tousled-haired pater familias Tom Hammond who finds himself alone in a fusty old mews house, running a dilettante book shop and driving a vintage car (obviously not at the same time). Nobody quite knows what this Hollywood hard-hitter is doing in town with his teenage son Luke (Jonah Hauer-King) who is loved up in a long distance affair with New York based Stacy Martin – referred to as simply ‘the bird’. But the Rausings clearly wrote an open cheque for the project so money was no object although the result feels rather underpowered as we never really feel invested in Hammond’s character before we’re required to feel his pain.

What starts as an everyday story of disgruntled Londoners going about their business, suddenly branches out something more imaginative when Hammond’s life is blown apart by two random events, first his bag is stolen containing the titular photo, then his son gets caught up in the Lockerbie incident on his way to New York.

Clearly Huston had Nic Roeg and Terrence Malick in mind with his melange of dreamy slowmo sequences combined with archive footage and mournful reflections on the River Thames as Hammond mournfully reflects on the tragedy and its implications on a personal and universal level. And although the shifts in tone feel quite abrupt from the banal scenes as the film establishes its plot to the aftermath of the tragedy it doesn’t fall into the trap of easy answers or bogus love affairs, although Sarita Choudary’s character tries desperately to seduce Hammond at his lowest ebb after antagonising him in the opening scenes as his neighbour in the Chelsea Market. Stacy Martin is her usual vapid self as Luke’s girlfriend. Huston light up every scene with his charismatic presence but more about how he came to be this rather morose central character would have been welcome MT

THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH is released in the UK and Ireland to download / stream 

from 26th April 2021 from all good digital platforms

 

 

 

 

A Man and A Camera 2021 | CPH:DOX 2021

Dir.: Guido Hendrikx; Documentary; Netherlands 2021, 64 min,

“What are you doing here? Why are you filming me?” is exactly the reaction you’d expect if you rang someone’s doorbell and randomly pointed a camera at them without any permission. But this uncontrived candid camera approach also throws up some unexpected results.

But this exactly what Dutch director Guido Hendrikx did in his observational documentary that sees him wandering around a small, unnamed town in the Netherlands, candid camera at the ready when doors are opened. The film also works as a fascinating exploration of front doors, many of them works of art.

The reactions of the homeowners in not unexpected. One person threatens quite reasonably to trash his camera, another one attempts it un successfully. Somebody wants to know “is there a deeper meaning” – apparently not. The man with the camera is told by one rather stoic man, who lets him into his house, where he carries on filming, ” he should be aware that the police may take an interest in him, you know, there are group chats, and one may get frightened”. His grandchildren are certainly not afraid.

In the town square we watch two female police officers looking at their mobiles, but no action is taken. Another couple lets him into their home and he keeps filming, whilst coffee is prepared. Gradually people let him into their homes, and their hearts as the film becomes a surprising arm’s length confessional: The wife tells him “I’ll only work for another three weeks, then it’s over. I’ve worked for the same employer 31 years. My husband was laid off two years ago, because of his age, that’s not nice, is it?” But when she goes into the kitchen, she tells her husband: “Keep an eye on him, yes”.

Soon our cameraman is becoming part of the wallpaper for several of his subjects, gaining their confidence as he inveigles himself into their lives. The soon to be pensioners are a case in point. The grandfather is also unfazed by the filming, asks the filming guest to “Leave me a note if you go, and tell me why you were here”. Left alone, the cameraman films the family leaving as Leonard Cohen’s ‘Going Home’ ends a rather enigmatic feature.

At heart we are all social animals in the right conditions. A Man and A Camera is another example of how people often accept unconfrontational intrusion in their lives, taking things a step further than their voluntarily offerings shared on social media. This uninvited guest here offers an opportunity for people to unburden themselves, a non-religious confessional, almost, once a level of trust has been established. Given the placid, unquestioning nature this unsolicited interloper, people are only to happy to let him into their lives. Hendrikx observational film makes insightful impact as an informal social study. He observes and we observe too – no questions asked, or explanations needed. AS

SCREENING AT CPH:DOX | 21 April – May 2021

CPH:DOX | DOX:AWARD – Main Competition

Stella Dallas (1925) Venice Film Festival

Dir: Henry King | Wri: Frances Marion | Cast: Ronald Colman, Belle Bennett, Alice Joyce, Jean Hersholt | US Drama

Anybody even vaguely familiar with the subject of Olive Higgins Prouty’s 1923 novel should know about the famous ending; so I won’t bother spoiling it by discussing it here. More people will be familiar with the 1937 remake made by a better director and with a greater actress in the lead. But moving as she is to watch at the remake’s conclusion, Barbara Stanwyck comes across as naturally more capable and resilient than the rather simple and child-like loser portrayed by Belle Bennett, which is what makes Bennett so heart-breaking to watch.

Although top-billed, Ronald Colman gets only a fraction of the screen time of Bennett and never gets the opportunity to project himself as much more than a bit of a prig as Stella’s husband; and one never really appreciates what drew them to each other in the first place other than on the rebound from other disappointments in love. One can certainly warm, however, to the almost unbearably beautiful Lois Moran as their daughter Laurel, who ages very convincingly from a child to a young woman and whose scenes with Bennett powerfully convey the bond between them. One would have thought that Laurel could have had a quiet word with her mother offering her advice on fitting in with her new up-market circle of friends with a few hints on dress and make-up, and keeping her voice down in polite company (as well as spending a lot less time carousing with the egregious Ed Munn, played by Jean Hersholt, who would cramp anyone’s style; but who she later rather cruelly uses). But it’s in the nature of heart-rending tales of mother-love like this that her sacrifice for her daughter has to go far far beyond the necessary call of duty. @Richard Chatten

 

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 | CLASSICS STRAND 2022

 

White Heat (1949) Prime Video

Dir: Raoul Walsh | Cast: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brian, Margaret Wycherly | US Crime Drama 116′

Jimmy Cagney was in his fiftieth year when he made this return to the gangster genre, and looks it. But age has neither mellowed him nor slowed him down in this consummate star vehicle with all the trimmings (including a haunting score by Max Steiner – who gets a separate title card all to himself).

White Heat is inconceivable without Cagney, but he’s surrounded by a top supporting cast, most of whom aren’t even named in the credits (I particularly liked G.Pat Collins as the old lag with the hearing aid), with Margaret Wycherley unforgettable as the meanest mama since Ma Barker.

White Heat begins by showing it means business with an incredibly violent train hold-up; after which Cagney continues to display a wanton lack of respect for human life right up to the end. But being Cagney you can’t help rooting for him, and he and Edmond O’Brien (usually unfairly overlooked in discussions of this movie) are both such charismatic presences that it’s almost heartbreaking to see them bond while knowing all along that O’Brien is simply a police plant. Although we’re told well before the end that Cagney is by now hopelessly insane with only brief periods of lucidity, he still seems perfectly functional until the very, very end. (His retelling of the story of the Trojan Horse is particularly cherishable.)

For a late 1940s thriller much of the film actually takes place in the Southern California sun; and the use of locations throughout is exemplary, culminating in the oil refinery on 198th Street and Figueroa, near Torrance, which provides Cagney with a suitably imposing backdrop for his big scene at the end. @Richard Chatten.

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Backyard Village (2021)

Dir.: Marteinn Thorsson; Cast: Laufey Eliasdottir, Tim Plester, Soley Eliasdottir, Eyglo Eliasdottir, Sara Dögg Asgeiersdottir, Johann Gunnarson; Iceland 2021, 92 min.

Icelandic director Marteinn Thorsson (XL) has adapted Gudmundut Oskarson’s script about grief and how not to deal with it in this zany and often bizarre tragic comedy, set in what can only be described as the back of beyond. Iceland’s hostile terrain and freezing weather lend an icy chill to the tricky human interactions, Thorsson steering his ‘ship of fools’ through to a surprising ending – narrowly avoiding self-parody,.

Colour comes from a few brightly painted wooden huts near a spa where Bryna (L. Eliasdottir) fetches up needing psychiatric help more than physical rehab. Equally disturbed is her next door neighbour, middle-aged Mark (Pelster) from England, who knocks on her door, looking for paprika (yes, it’s a weird one). Both bear the scars of family trauma: Bryna at odds with her mother for leaving when she was only five. Mark is a lone traveller dealing with a recent bereavement. Awkward conversation and a meal cooked by Mark in his self-catering ‘chalet’ allow the two to get to know one another. But their lack of knowing themselves makes it impossible for them to engage in a meaningful way. The next morning the two set off to a remote spot where Mark’s son was discovered after a two-year police search. Meanwhile Bryna’s mother has declared her ‘a missing person’ unable to reach her by ‘phone.

Later, back at base, Johanna (S. Eliasdottir) and sister Gunnhildur (E. Eliasdottir), are livid at Bryna’s sudden disappearance and concerned for her wellbeing. Mark turns up on the scene anxious to defend Bryna with a sudden intrusion that forms the quirky catalyst for a Chekovian showdown of as each desperate character revisits the past.

The feature’s shifting, twisting mood from drama, comedy and outright farce keeps us guessing in an unsettling scenario inflamed by surreal settings, DoP Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson’s stunning camerawork reflecting the magnificent terrain where humans strive to make sense of their existence in an absurd tragic-comedy. AS

Santa Barbara International Film Festival

 

Rascal (2020) Vilnius Film Festival (2021)

Dir/scr: Peter Dourountzis | Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Ophelie Bau, Sebastien Houbani | France, Thriller. 96′

Rascal is a an everyday story of a psychopath played with hard-eyed nonchalance by Pierre Delardonchamps.

There’s nothing sensationalist about the story of Dje. The title might suggest a cheeky playfulness but this couldn’t be far from the truth. Not without charm when he wants something, Dje he can also being quietly menacing as he goes with the flow living by his wits, casually violent if he needs to be. In fact, ‘casual’ sums up a man who never gets worked up about anything. This homeless opportunist is none too shabby in his stylish anorak. A recidivist bottom-feeder who gets by on the streets of Limoges, where we first meet him on a train, rudely intruding on the privacy of his neighbour in a train carriage. But that’s the most harmless trait in his repertoire of antisocial behaviour.

Peter Dourountzis’ first feature takes a detached view of his psychopathic protagonist seen through the steely lens of DoP Jean-Marc Fabre. Limoges is seen as a joyless urban centre where danger lurks at every turn as Dje slips unnoticed in the crowd until he spots an unsuspecting female glance and returns it with a smirking stare. What follows could be a seduction or something more deadly but it mostly occurs off camera, and some women can be extraordinarily accommodating to this enigmatic stranger who is never there when the going gets tough. Of no fixed abode he has no identity papers. Meanwhile, street signs in bus shelters warn women to be vigilant. There’s a killer on the loose. But why would anyone suspect Dje with his boyish looks and clean complexion?.

Rascal was originally made as a short film, Dourountzis cutting himself plenty of slack with the textured script that plays to our fertile imagination and works in a subplot about Dje connecting with an underground network of homeless misfits who offer him room in their squat. Here he meets Maya (Ophelie Bau Mektoub, My Love) and the two have a thing for a while until Dje loses control and needs to move out of the spotlight and back into the shadows. MT

EUROPEAN DEBUT COMPETITION  | Best Actor: Pierre Deladonchamps | AT VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL | 18 MARCH – 6 APRIL 2021 |

 

 

 

 

The Snorkel (1958) Blu-ray

Dir: Guy Green | Cast: Peter van Eyck, Betta St John, Mandy Miller, Gregoire Aslan | UK Psycho Drama, 90′

In 1968, when I was nine years old, I was about 10 minutes from the end of this gripping Hammer psycho-thriller on Anglia Television when my father amused himself by suddenly packing me off to bed. It’s taken me forty-nine years, but I finally got to see the ending of this film.

Hammer’s psychological thrillers of the early sixties are usually deemed sub-Hitchcock copies of Psycho; but since The Snorkel was released a full two years before Psycho their inspiration is more obviously Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955), from the mystery novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narjejac, who also wrote the book on which Vertigo was based. (Peter van Eyck, the evil stepfather in The Snorkel, actually starred in Clouzot’s previous film, Le Salaire de la Peur.)

The Snorkel was the last film lead played by the unique Mandy Miller, then 13, whose dramatically arched eyebrows and full lips render her still recognisable as the pretty little deaf & dumb girl from Ealing Studio’s classic Mandy (1952). Already convinced that her mother is simply the second of her two parents to be murdered by Van Eyck, a poster of Cousteau’s ‘Le Monde du Silence’ provides her with the clue she needs as to how he did it, and she enters with gusto into a game of cat and mouse with her wicked stepfather. Thus provoked, van Eyck puts on his striped jersey and rubber gloves again, slips her a Mickey Finn, seals off all the windows and doors and turns on the gas, and then…

It’s taken me nearly fifty years to find out what happened next, but it’s a beaut! ©Richard Chatten

NOW ON BLURAY AT AMAZON 

Zee and Co. (1972)

Dir: Brian G Hutton | Wri: Edna O’Brian | Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine, Susannah York, Margaret Leighton | US Drama 110′

For anyone who ever hankered to see what a collaboration between the novelist Edna O’Brien and the director of Where Eagles Dare would have looked like, look no further! After two war movies in a row, Brian G. Hutton obviously felt the need to try his hand at something a bit more dangerous; and Elizabeth Taylor in all her big-haired, loud-mouthed and even more loudly dressed glory dominates this delirious spectacle in a way rarely seen since the heyday of Bette Davis.

Taylor and Caine give their all as a self-absorbed pair who make George & Martha from ‘Virginia Woolf’ look like The Brady Bunch. In reality Caine would probably have abandoned or murdered Taylor long ago; but she’s entertaining to watch and listen to – at least for the duration of the movie – and shows a delightful flair for mimicry mocking some of her co-stars. (spoiler coming up: I thought she jumped the shark, however, with her suicide attempt.)

Susannah York understandably seems more than a little overwhelmed by the madhouse she’s wandered into. A few spoilsports have already revealed the twist at the end of this tale. As a bloke I was as surprised and delighted as I was relieved that a woman wrote it; so it absolved me of feeling guilty at being served up with one of my favourite male fantasies about two women.

Whatever happened to these three after the closing credits is anybody’s guess; but the audience I watched it with at the Barbican tonight laughed appreciatively all the way through and gave it an enthusiastic round of applause as the lights went up. @Richard Chatten.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Bad Roads (2021) Vilnius Film Festival 2021

Dir.: Natalya Vorozhbit; Cast: Igor Koltovskyy, Andrey Lelyukh, Vladimir Gurin, Ekaterina Zhurakovskaya, Ekaterina Zahdanovich, Anastasia Parshina, Yulia Matrosova, Marina Klimova, Yuri Kulinich, Zoya Baranovskaya, Oksana Voronina, Sergej Solovyov; Ukraine 2020, 105 min.

Ukraine’s Natalya Vorozhbit shows how women are exploited sexually and emotionally during wartime in this award-winning feature debut adapted from her play of the same name that staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

In 2014 Ukraine’s Donbass region was the setting for ongoing hostilities with neighbouring Russia. Women bore the brunt of both sides of the conflict, humanitarian rules were abandoned in the survival of the fittest. Bad Roads explores four episodes in very different settings detailing man’s barbaric treatment of the opposite sex during wartime.

At a casual road stop in the war zone, a headmaster (Koltovskyy) of a nearby school is trapped in a Kafkaesque showdown with two soldiers. The teacher clearly came out with the wrong passport, that morning, and the Kalashnikov rifle in his boot doesn’t help matters. He claims it is a toy model for teaching the students, but the militia men are suspicious. Then it becomes clear why the teacher is driving around: he is looking for a female student; after spotting her, he asks the soldiers to let her go: “You are saying that you defend us, but you are fucking our children. Please leave this one alone, she is an orphan”. The headmaster retrieves his passport and the Captain (Lelyukh), gives the him “the word of honour of an officer that there is no girl in the compound of the militia”. These assurances fall on deaf ears: Both know that he is lying.

Three school girls wait at a bus stop for their soldier friends who bring them cigarettes and cosmetics in return for sex. There’s nothing new in this transactional relationship, but it has a brutal edge as the girls know full well they may be lynched when the soldiers retreat. A grandmother (Matrosova) recounts the past when she and her friends sat on the same bench waiting for their boyfriends to come home from work.

In the most inhumane scenario a human rights journalist (Klimova) has suffers an attempted rape after being detained by soldiers one of whom (Kulinich) shares his childhood memory of a pet hamster who bit him so hard he made the animal drown in his own blood. War makes monsters of these men, death becomes meaningless “at first, you were glad that you were alive, but now there are no feelings left”. The episode ends shockingly.

A young woman (Baranovskaya) driving in the countryside accidentally runs over a chicken. She tries to compensate the old couple (Voronina/Solovyov), who think she has stopped for another reason. “Have you been raped? We can call the police”. They ask candidly. Later on the couple try to bargain with the woman, putting a priceless value on their hen. Bitterness and desperation turn ordinary people to irrational acts of mental cruelty. And there are no happy endings in Bad Roads: Later on the old people hear on their radio that a young local woman was severely injured when her car ran over a landmine.

DoP Voladymir Ivanov oscillates between hyper-realism in the Spa episode, poetic realism in the episode with the three girls and a bit of horror-treatment in the last section. The ensemble cast is brilliant, particularly the three girls, who are non-professionals. But the narratives are grim and unforgiving. Bad Roads is a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life: utter depravity of mind and body.

VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE | 18 MARCH – 5 APRIL 2021

People We Know Are Confused | Vilnius Film Festival (2021)

Dir.: Tomas Smulkis; Cast: Milda Noreikaite, Gabija Jaraminaite, Arunas Sakalauskas, Paulius Markevicius, Dainus Svobanas, Jolante Dapkunaite; Drama, Lithuania 2021, 102 min.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the Lithuanian way. 

Founded in 1387, Vilnius is still shifting on the fault-lines of its turbulent past according to debut filmmaker Thomas Smulkis, who has made this resonant, unworldly feature debut with a distinct cinematic voice.

Over four summer days Smulkis distills the essence of a modern capital in flux through the surreality of three bewildered inhabitants calling it home – for the time being. An airy feeling of serenity wafts through the summery settings in the limpid light of the Northern hemisphere softened by Sigita Simkuaite’s stylish hues of eau de nil and taupe. Nature plays a signicant part here and Smulkis’ dazzling eye for detail captures everyday life on the streets in unexpected and eerily serendipitous ways.

Goda (Jaraminaite) is the most straightforward of the trio, even though her glorified existence is anything but stable. Will she be able to see the gilded trap she has built for herself? We first meet her overladen with designer shopping bags making her way into a chic apartment in a smart part of town. Goda lives alone so why are a pair of men’s shoes in the hallway? Her sister has invited a colleague to stay, although she lives somewhere else. Clearly Goda is put out, to say the least, calmly asking the stranger to leave via  email. But he stays on oblivious taking his leave on his own terms while she wanders round displaced and uncomfortable longing to regain the peace of her sanctuary.

In another part of town, medic Juste (Norakaite) and her partner and co-worker Paulius (Markevicius) are also going through a confusing time. Paulius has been offered a flat in a high rise block outside the city, but Juste does not want to live “in the middle of nowhere”. They carry on oblivious until a negative pregnancy leaves her relieved at the result. The two cycle off, and at the lights Paulius has a something unexpected to say.

In their stylish urban kitchen Vytas (Sakalauskas) placidly asks his wife of twenty years for a divorce. Later he visits his old flame Audrius (Svobanas), who is dying of cancer. A literal and metaphorical car crash sees Elena (Dapkunaite) quietly reflecting on how her ife carried for so many years in tacit denial of an emotional truth that has always been obvious for everyone concerned.

DoP Vytautas Plukas pictures these characters silently reeling in the face of calm contradiction. Vilnius reflects the silent chaos in the rubbish-strewn building sites of the centre: the character of the old city has changed forever, the capital will soon look like any other metropolis in Europe as the past is gently aid to rest – without reflection. Mostly relying on an ambient soundscape, the occasional score by Lina Lapelyte makes a weird intrusion into this perplexed but passionless world. A sensitive and aesthetically mature debut feature. AS

SCREENING AT VILNIUS FILM FESTIVAL 2021

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Dir/Wri: Sam Fuller | Cast: Constance Thomas, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey | US Drama 90′

It was always hard to tell if Sam Fuller was pulling your leg or in earnest in his 1964 follow up to Shock Corridor another potent psychodrama. Female lead Constance Towers (who had recently featured in two productions for John Ford) is yet another otherwise little-known actress only fleetingly given the opportunity to show on screen just what she was capable of. As late as 1994 she still brought a glacial elegance to the role of a sophisticated older woman in an episode of ‘Frazier’, and as photographed by Stanley Cortez in Fuller’s last film in black & white, thirty years years earlier, she is amazing; entirely worthy of Cortez’s previous collaborations with Orson Welles & Charles Laughton. The Naked Kiss resembles a silent film, and parts of it an underground film of the 1970s; (and like them the supporting cast includes a former silent star, in this case in the form of Betty Bronson, who forty years earlier had played Peter Pan).

The Naked Kiss continues to divide the relatively small number of those who have actually seen it. Some consider it a masterpiece, others an utter bore. That said, it remains ahead of its time while exuding retro glamour (especially when Virginia Grey turns up in a beehive and business suit playing a madam). Rejected by the British Board of Film Censors in 1964 it would probably continue to encounter censorship problems today. @RichardChatten

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Pariah Dog (2020)

Dir.: Jesse Alk; Documentary with Kajal, Milly, Subrata, Pinku; Canada/US/India 2019, 77min.

This homage to the stray dogs of Kolkata is the first feature documentary from US Canadian director Jesse Alk. The decaying glory of the former capital of the Raj provides an evocative setting for his labour of love, and  possibly the saddest film of the year. Alk (whose father Howard, directed The Murder of Fred Hampton 1971) influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Paris Spleen’ a hymn to the street dogs of Paris, who inspired his poetry.

The Indian Pariah dog, aka South Asian Pye dog, has been forced out of its native habitat leaving nowhere left to go in the squalid backwaters of grandiose post-colonial decay: shoeless children play on a riverbank, a man urinates against a wall while a little girl disco dances, oblivious. Shot on the hazy waterways of the coastal delta or at night under velvety street lights where goats are herded through waterfronts and slums, Uber-Drivers dart like ghosts from another cosmos.

But Pariah Dog is more about the four souls who help strays survive. It’s a symbiotic relationship, the dogs are their raison d’etre and their extended family. Artist Pinku tools wooden sculptures by day and drives a taxi at night to pay the bills. A gentle, philosophical man he lives for his menagerie of dogs, a parrot, a rabbit and a monkey, all sharing a decrepit hovel not big enough to swing a cat. Meanwhile Subrata is possibly the first yodelling rickshaw driver. His efforts to raise money with his dog-themed songs are laudable and touching, but his pleas for animal welfare donations fall on deaf ears, so he resorts to street leftovers to feed his grateful pack of hounds. In 2013 he took part in a Bengali TV show, fading posters the proud testament to his moment of glory. Later in the film he transforms into a canine troubadour encouraging others to care for “humans, animals and plants”.

Two women make up the foursome: Milly and her helper Kajal come from different castes of Hindu society, often falling out over their rules of engagement. Millly is a highly educated disillusioned romantic whose husband left her in her decrepit family pile. Of Japanese-Russian descent, she pleads poverty: her land has been taken over by squatters but the authorities couldn’t care less. Kajal lives nearby in a hut the size of a kennel. Devoted to her strays, maimed by passing cars or unkind people, she cares for them until they die, burying them with a yellow garland, a sign of Hindu respect. A supreme love for life and the vulnerable has struck a chord with their feelings of dispossession, carrying these desperate women through ructions and reconciliations, their dignified street marches to raise awareness of animal welfare are to be admired.

For dog lovers, some of the footage is too difficult to watch. Alk conjures up enough poetry in his images without resorting to sentimentality, maintaining a dispassionate eye in this cruel metropolis of 15 million where only the fittest survive. In this ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ the spirit of Mother Theresa still survives.

AVAILABLE TO VIEW ON TRUESTORY

No Ordinary Man (2020)

Dir: Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase Joynt | US Doc

The story of jazz musician Billy Tipton (1914-89) is seen from the perspective of his sexuality rather than his musical talent in this new, experimental documentary from Canadian filmmakers Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt (who is trans). They see Tipton as a trans trailblazer, a jazzy gender bender. But his common-law wife Kitty Kelly claims never to have realised he was a woman. And it didn’t end there. Another three ‘wives’ under his belt and three adopted kids later, this trans legend still had everyone fooled almost everyone.  And who really cared when he played the piano so divinely and was always ready to improvise when another musician dropped out.

By way of background, Billy was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in Oklahoma City on December 29, 1914 and was raised by an aunt in Alabama, but later adopted Spokane, Washington as his home. Tipton had shown a keen interest in jazz but was barred from joining the all-male school band at Southwest High School. But perseverance paid off and he eventually developed a serious musical career as a ‘male musician’ by concealing his female form and calling himself Billy Lee Tipton in the early 1930s. By 1940, Tipton was living as a man in private life as well in public.

But rather than sensationalising the reveal of his being transexual, the filmmakers’ focus here is laudably Tipton’s legacy as a ‘transmasculine’ icon, inspiring the lives of many. During his lifetime he was successfully all things to all people: Kelly claiming. “Billy Tipton was a man in every sense of the word,” – “he was the best husband anyone could have dreamed of” adding “He will always be a man. He will be nothing more than a man” to a stunned audience in one of Oprah Winfrey’s chat shows.

Enriched by archive material, newspaper clips and excerpts from Stanford professor Diane Middlebrook’s 1998 biog ‘Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton’, this is an intellectually bracing film informed by a welter of authoritative talking heads, most poignantly Tipton Jr.  Amongst them is also author and gender theorist Kate Bornstein who asserts “there was no such thing as a trans man back in the 1980s. But one can hardly blame Billy for embracing the idea that being a ‘man’, rather than a woman, would path the way to success in the music business (or any business) back then. Had he stayed cisgender we may never have enjoyed his brilliant contribution to the world of jazz. Tunes like “Please Don’t Be that Way”.

Susan Stryker, a filmmaker, author and professor of Gender and Woman’s Studies comments on the rampant transphobia of the 1980s, hardly surprising when even nowadays the whole idea of trans sexuality still has some people run, screaming for the hills. But no-one has any proof that Tipton, who began presenting as a man from the ago of 19, made any fuss about his conception of gender identity, one must assume he just got on and did it, joining the party with so many other artists of the era who freely indulged their queer sexuality while being married to ‘women or men’.

What makes this film so innovative is the filmmakers’ framing device that sees a group of talented trans-masculine actors auditioning for the main role in a putative Tipton documentary, taking their cues from the (offscreen) directors in order to perform Billy at pivotal moments during his career – such as his first meeting with Duke Ellington, and so on. This offers them a collaborative springboard to then voice their own experiences and impressions of trans-masculinity with reference to Tipton – a very popular device nowadays – but not if you’re just yearning for a straight up biopic of the legendary musician himself, which hasn’t been done before.

No Ordinary Man does fall into the trap of allowing judgement of the past to be made by today’s standards, with a double time line – twenty years after the Middlebrook biog, and another nearly ninety, since Billy first put on masculine garb. We are living in a hyper-sensitive age where there are so many differing viewpoints and so many platforms available to give these varying stances voice, it’s almost impossible not to offend. But in this instance the film provides pithy insight into the trans experience, widening the debate for those affected by the issues, and offering worthwhile insight into how trans stories are often framed from the cisgender viewpoint – all in a meaty 83 minutes. Poignant also to that Tipton junior is able to hear more about his famous forebear. Well made, engaging and powerful. MT

SCREENING DURING BFI FLARE 2021

 

 

 

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Dir: Henry Hathaway Wri: Jerome Cady | | Cast: James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J Cobb, Helen Walker, Betty Garde | US, Noir thriller 112′

The postwar Jimmy Stewart demonstrates his new, hard-won gravitas in this engrossing drama in which background music and narration are largely absent as he investigates a conviction he becomes increasingly convinced is unsafe; while Richard Conte plays a downtrodden Pole rather than a downtrodden Italian as the innocent man sentenced to 99 years.

Most viewers already know (even before Truman Bradley informs us in the opening narration) that Conte is released, so it’s HOW rather than WHETHER he’s cleared that holds the attention; and it all gets rather involved. That those in authority found it convenient to leave Conte in jail is touched upon, while high-tech gadgets like polygraphs and microfilm cameras further the narrative, and such a gadget makes for satisfyingly cinematic climax that anticipates ‘Blowup’ by twenty years. But (MASSIVE SPOILERS COMING:) was it really possible in 1944 to blow up the date on a newspaper as sharply as is done here, and (as my predecessor observed) why did they ignore the pictures on the front page, which we never see sharpened up and would in themselves have confirmed which edition the newsboy was holding?

Real life as usual inevitably denies us such a tidy conclusion as ends the film; since the real Joseph Majcek, actually led a troubled life following his eventual release from prison in 1945 and ultimately ended his days in a mental institution in 1983. ©Richard Chatten

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | AMAZON

Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2020)

Dir: Lisa Immordino Vreeland | Cast: David Frost, Dick Cavett, Voices of Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto; USA 2021, 96 min.

Apart from in chat shows few people have actually heard the real voices of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams but Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons sound realistic in this enjoyable documentary about the friendship between two of the most charismatic personalities in American 20th century culture.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland is a dab hand at as a documentary filmmaker having already showcased the lives of Peggy Guggenheim, Cecil Beaton and Diana Vreeland (her grandmother-in-law). And here she brings the forty-year long relationship between Capote (1924-1984) and Williams (1911-1983) into focus – whilst private secrets are spilled, Vreeland never falls into the trap of sensationalism, the overall structure is enlivened by TV interviews of both men by David Frost and Dick Cavett.

courtesy of Getty Images

Capote and Williams both grew up in the South and had troublesome and relationships with their overbearing fathers, turned to books early on as a way to escape, and had a life-long struggle with drugs and alcohol. They met when Capote was sixteen, and spent most of the years between 1940 and and 1960 enjoying Spain, Italy, France and Morocco with their respective partners: Williams with the actor Frank Merlo (1921-1963) and Capote with the author Jack Dunphy (1914-1992). Truman says, that their relationship was purely “an intellectual friendship”, which did not hinder either of them from making bitchy remarks about the opposite’s spouses.

Courtesy of the Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Capote’s first success came with ‘Other Voices, other Rooms’ in 1948, three years after Williams’ ‘The Glass Menagerie’, which was followed by ‘A Street named Desire’. It may come as a surprise that Williams, who confessed to being “just terribly, terribly over-sexed”, did not have his first (heterosexual) affair before 27, having taken up masturbation only a year earlier, before consummating his first gay affair aged 28 with Frank Merlo.

Truman was blunt about his sexuality stating that it would have been easier to have been a girl, but “I was homosexual and I had never any guilt about it what so ever. I was the only character who was beyond the pale. I didn’t care”.

Williams, assuming rightly, that he would be judged by the many feature films based on his plays, regretted that censorship ruined many endings, even to the point of negating what had gone on before. Capote felt let down by the producers of Breakfast at Tiffany’s claiming he had been promised Marilyn Monroe, his first choice, as Holly Golightly. But they “cheated”, and “cast Audrey Hepburn, who was not right for the part, because Holly was based on a real person, and she was very tough, unlike anything Hepburn was”.

The docu-feature film of Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, about two drifters who murdered a Kansas family, “scraped me right down, to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me. I had been a stable person. Afterwards, something happened to me”.

The 1970s and 80s saw both men in decline, Williams complaining he never had a positive review after 1961. “Everything went wrong, private and professional, and ultimately my mind broke”. They died within 18 months of each other. Getting together for the last time at a party a few weeks before William’s death, the latter asked Capote “Where will we meet again?”. To which Truman answered “in paradise”.

Overall Truman & Tennessee does feel like a very private affair, dominated by the revealing ‘conversations’ of these literally giants who lived and breathed through for their writing. DoP Shane Sigler integrates the still photos, feature film clips and the TV interviews into an aesthetically convincing form, with Vreeland showing enough empathy with her subjects, bringing their Icarus-like careers into perspective in this cinematic catnip for literary lovers. AS

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation is available on Dogwoof on Demandand other platforms from 30 April.

Main image credit: At Sotheby’s 1978 Globe Photos/Media Punch/Shutterstock & Tennessee Williams courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

True Mothers | Asa Ga Kuru (2020)

Dir.: Naomi Kawase; Cast: Hiromi Nagasaku, Arata Iura, Aju Makita, Reo Sato, Hiroko Nakajima, Telsu Hirahara, Myoko Asada, Ren Komai, Taketo Takata); Japan 2020, 139 min.

Naomi Kawase’s films are an acquired taste but have a firm following. Here she adapts Mizuki Tsujimura’s mystery novel about motherhood from two different perspectives and frequently departing from the narrative to delve into arthouse-style reverie exploring maternal feelings and emotions, rather like her Cannes Grand Prix winner Mourning Forest. And although True Mothers is more accessible than many of Kawase’s films, the flashbacks and epic length require commitment.

The first hour focuses on the dawning realisation and gradual resignation to the sadness that haunts every childless couple. Satoko (Nagasaku) and Kiyokazu (Iura) can’t have their own family so after much soul-searching they turn to Mrs Asami’s adoption agency (Baby Baton) for a child, and are overjoyed when the big day finally arrives. Baby Asato is handed over to his new parents by his mother, 14-year old schoolgirl Hikaru Katakura. who apologises, her parents cowering in shame.

Five years later, the couple get a strange phonecall from someone claiming to be their son’s real birth mother, demanding her baby back – or a great deal of money. When the woman arrives, looking rough and disheveled, she doesn’t resemble the meek and submissive Hikari who handed over their child, and the Kuriharas make it clear they are in doubt of their son’s real background, but can’t help wondering if they’ve been scammed.

We now learn more about Hikari’s fate. Her family never forgave her for “bringing shame” on the family. In one disturbing scene her uncle tells her “I know about it, horrible business, really” during a family meeting that descends into a brawl. Leaving her family, and finding no support from the child’s father Takumi (Takata), who simply ignores her, Hikari starts work as a paper seller, and meets Tomoko, one of girls who was at Baby Baton. Tomoko is a sex worker, and forges Hikari’s signature as a guarantor on a loan agreement. The money lenders are vicious, making desperate Hikari phone the Kuriharas. When all seems lost for Hikari, True Mothers takes a very surprising turn.

The multiple flashbacks are the strength and the weakness of the feature: the intercutting results in a languid rhythm where nature is often involved as a healing source, while, at the same time, the audience is somehow frustrated by just another plot twist. The half hour spent on the Kuriharas’ pondering their childless status before finding a solution is certainly worth a re-edit. Although this clearly underlines the gravity for some viewers, for natural parents it might seem tedious. And Kawase could have concentrated more on the titular protagonists, particularly since Aju Makita (whom we saw in some minor roles in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s recent features) is brilliant in being the centre of a melodrama, whilst Nagasaku is really convincing in her proprietary approach, as the mother, who has ‘waited’ too long for a child. DoP Yuta Tsukinage uses a sunny, limid colours, dwelling long on detail, with wonderful expressive close-ups. With a little less self-indulgence by Kawase, this could have been a real masterpiece. AS

TRUE MOTHERS | CURZON home cinema | 16 April 2021

 

 

 

 

 

Catch Us if You Can (1965)

Dir: John Boorman | Wri: Peter Nichols | Cast: Dave Clark, Barbara Ferris, David Lodge, Robin Bailey, Clive Swift, Marianne Stone, Ronald Lacey, Yootha Joyce, David de Keyser,

John Boorman’s calling card for Point Blank wasn’t a straight-up musical biopic of the famous early 1960s band (whose 1964 hit ‘Glad All Over’ knocked the Beatles off the top of the UK Singles Chart) but something altogether more interesting, the DC5s music providing the score for a ‘Youth Culture’ escapade. Taking its title from another band hit Catch Us if You Can starts in London then broadens out into an eventful auteurish travelogue of the West Country in an E-type Jag, captured by Manny Wynn’s evocative black and white camerawork. There are some memorable turns – particularly from Barbara Ferris as a model running away with a stuntman (played by Clark) while filming a promo for an ad agency – who then capitalise on the caper. The Five boys don’t have the chops, but they certainly held the tunes – and add a certain cocky verve as ‘Beatle competitors’, and Ferris is amusingly perky as Dinah. Watch out for Yootha Joyce, Clive Swift, Michael Gwynn, Peter Nichols (who wrote the script) and a mellow David de Keyser (who is still with us) as the quintessential Sixties adman adding a touch of edgy class. MT

NOW OUT ON BLURAY, DVD, DIGITAL PLATFORMS – 5th April 2021

The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1934)

Dir: Edward Ludwig | Cast: Joan Bennett, Claude Rains, Lionel Atwell, Juanita Quigley | US Drama 80′

The few people likely to be familiar with this title today will probably already know enough of the plot to be aware of the spectacular final retribution taken by Claude Rains against Lionel Atwill and assume that it was a follow up to Rains’ auspicious talkie film debut the year before as Universal’s new horror star in the title role of The Invisible Man.

However, Rains had already played the role on Broadway – under that title – the year before he made The Invisible Man, and the film is actually a very thirties pacifist diatribe (albeit garnished with an eye-catching title and plot gimmick) set in France just before and during the first year of The Great War.

No attempt seems to have been made to dress the cast convincingly in period attire, probably to heighten its topicality to the troubled 1930s, when fear of lethal new weapons ran hand in hand with munitions manufacturers in wing collars rubbing their hands with poorly concealed glee at the prospect of the vast fortunes to be made out of another war.

Director Edward Ludwig’s only other brush with political filmmaking ironically appears to have been John Wayne’s red-baiting love letter to the HUAC, Big Jim McLain, nearly twenty years later. ©Richard Chatten

 

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

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

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

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

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

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

Wilderness (2021)

Dir.: Justin John Doherty; Cast: Katharine Davenport, James Barnes, Sebastian Badarau, Bean Downes; UK 2017, 84 min.

The first feature for Justin John Doherty, scripted by Neil Fox, is a melancholic tract on the impossibility of true love. Set during the 1960s Wilderness is two films in one: a passionate and playful love affair influenced by Godard’s wordy confrontation of the genders in Contempt all coupled with a brilliant jazz score reminiscent of Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’echefaud .

John (Barnes), a black jazz musician, who shuttles between Europe and the US, meets Alice (Davenport), the two of them stealing moments between concerts and travel. Their relationship is fired by a palpable physical attraction that powers their idealistic affair. This loved-up dynamic changes when they spend a long weekend beachside in Cornwall meeting strangers and friends only to discover (like the audience) they hardly know each other beyond a sexual bond.

At a drunken party with John’s friend Charlie (Baderau) and his partner Francis (Downes), the tenuous nature of their relationship becomes obvious. Alice starts dancing rather too intimately with Charlie, and then joins Francis in criticising ‘men’ for keeping old affairs to themselves.

While Alice is interested in finding out about John – particularly his past – John is often unable to voice his feelings. Alice is shown as a rather moody character, her randomness often leaving John bewildered. “Are we over?” he asks at one point. But that would be too easy for Alice who involves John, not for the first time, in a game of strip poker. Side by side on the floor, they mourn the loss of their idealised passion. Gender and race politics raise their heads but are integrated into the narrative.

Shot with four professional actors and the same number of filmmakers, Wilderness feels very much a work in progress, and this has pro and cons: the poetic, non-linear element of the first part confidently reflects the more daring student element, but the rather wobbly second part, particularly the clunky dialogue and the lack of visual strength, might have been avoided by a more self-critical crew. Overall, Wilderness feels like a promising feature in its draft process, the completed version still waiting to be unveiled. AS

WILDERNESS IS ON 5 APRIL 2021 ON SKY STORE, iTUNES, AMAZON, GOOGLE, and BT

An Impossible Project (2021)

Dir.: Jens Meurer; Documentary with Dr. Florian Kaps, Oskar Smolokowski, Slava Smolokowski; Austria/Germany/UK 2020, 99 min.

The Digital age may be upon us but humans are still analogue. Austrian documentarian Jens Meurer (Public Enemy) has chosen sides and this bid to champion and hold on to everything analogue is quietly amusing and informative.

Paradoxically Meurer was responsible for the very first digital entry at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2002. His 99 minute uninterrupted digital shot for Alexander Sukuorow’s Russian Ark (2002) was filmed on Sony Cine Alta HDW-F90.

Science and politics dominate and in keeping with his sentiment everything is shot on 35mm film (Arricamera), even the score by Haley Reinhart was recorded direct onto vinyl. In 2008, whilst techno-freaks were celebrating the first i-Phone, Dr Florian Kaps, a former biologist, known as Doc, was invited to Enschede (Netherlands) to the closure of the last Polaroid factory.

Instead of last rites, the Doc proscribed a resurrection somehow managing to scrape together 180 000 Euro to keep the factory going. And while he persuaded the workforce to co-operate, the first products were rather disappointing. Even if their artistic value was cool – the forty minute development time was certainly not. The machines did work again, but the chemicals and formulas for the development of the famous instant photos had been lost. Doc was unperturbed, and the worldwide community of Analogue fanatics helped as much as possible.

Kaps was not allowed to use the name Polaroid for a long time, and called the enterprise ‘Impossible’, with its HQ in Berlin. Meeting the New York based photographer Oscar Smolokowski and his investor father Slava, turned out to be a poison chalice for the Doc: the duo helped to launch a fully functioning Polaroid revival (in 2018 over one million films were sold), but the Doc had the same fate as Steve Jobs: he had to leave the company, the reasons not really explained.

Undeterred, Kaps soon found a new project, the Viennese Grand Hotel Moleskine, build in 1900. At the end, Haley Reinhart and the Sascha Peres Orchestra perform in the presence of the Doc in the restored hotel ‘Ball Saal’ – directly recorded for Europe’s largest Vinyl company, contributing to a yearly sale of 300 million vinyl records in 2019.

Even though Meurer introduces some polemic: “Digital is not real, it’s just a simulation of reality”. There is something to be said for regaining the use of our senses, all five of them – not just the two that are digital, but also taste, smell and touch because they make us happier and healthier”. Overall there is enough humour and self-deprecation in coming to terms with the fact that humans are the most analogue beings on the planet. AS

NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS

The Terror (2021)

When it comes to TV drama this surreal and sinister epic is a real corker with its gripping plot lines and creeping sense of dread all handsomely shot in Northern Canada.

Of course Ridley Scott put his money behind it, and it shows with a sterling British cast – shame that Ciaran Hands drops out in the early episodes, leaving Jared Harris and Tobias Menzies at the helm of The Terror with its crew inspired by a real life Royal Naval expedition.

Tobias Menzies as James Fitzjames – The Terror _ Season 1, Episode 3 – Photo AMC

 

Nive Nielsen as Lady Silence – The Terror _ Season 1, Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/AMC

 

Based on Canadian writer Dan Simmons’ best-selling novel it follows the fated mission led by three captains, Sir John Franklin (Hinds) Francis Crozier (Harris) and James Fitzjames (Menzies), who venture out into to explore the Arctic’s fabled treacherous Northwest Passage in 1847, but instead discover a monstrous polar bear-like predator, a cunning and vicious Gothic horror that stalks the ships in a desperate game of survival. The men reach out in desperation to a mysterious Inuit woman Lady Silence (played by Greenlander Nive Nielsen) who may or may not be the key to the horrifying and macabre death toll.

As morale amongst the men deteriorates and rations putrify, a terror of a different kind rears its head in the shape of Cornelius Hickey a self-seeking villainous member of the crew who causes a seething mutiny amongst the men as, one by one, they are picked off in a terrifying ordeal that invariably ends in death as they battle the elements, the supernatural and eventually – their own crew-members,

Stunning to look at and compelling throughout, the standout performances comes from the three captains and their medic Paul Ready as a doc with a really human touch who falls for Lady Silence’s luminous charms. Even without the monster this is a compelling and memorable drama series.

Following its run on BBC Two, The Terror is on Blu-ray, DVD and digital debut on 3 May 2021.

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CINEMAS FROM 23 SEPTEMBER 2021

 

Firebird (2021) Bfi Flare 2021

Dir: Peeter Rebane | Cast: Tom Prior, Nicholas Woodeson, Diana Pozharskaya, Oleg Zagorordnii | US Drama 107′

Firebird runs along similar lines to the recent South African services drama Moffie, this version inspired by late Russian actor Sergey Fetisov’s memoir and set in the Soviet Air Force during the Cold War.

Screening as part of the Hearts strand of this year’s Bfi Flare Festival, the lavishly mounted feature debut draws on the director’s own experience of growing up in Soviet occupied Estonia, yet fails to mine the incendiary potential of a dramatic episode in European history.

Tom Prior co-wrote the script and stars as the unsettled soldier Sergey who is drafted into the services but really has dreams of being an actor. He soon gets involved in an illicit love triangle with a dashing fighter pilot Roman (Oleg Zagorodnii) who invites him to see Stravinsky’s Firebird at the opera. But Roman is also kindling a desire for his female comrade Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya) amid the high octane backdrop of a Soviet Air Force Base.

A friendship across the ranks soon sparks into an amorous escapade involving all three comrades in arms, once again highlighting the risks of love affairs in the time of war, this one spiced up by its forbidden nature, punishable by five years in a hard labour camp. The men’s interest in photography is brought to life by the vibrant aesthetic of Mait Maekivi’s colour-drenched camerawork.

Firebird certainly looks impressive with its authentic settings and lush production values but the film never quite generates enough heat to make us care for its underwritten characters who remain cartoonish and rather glib throughout, Luisa hardly getting a look in as a staid and sketchy also-ran in this so-called menage a trois.

Clearly Prior – so affective in Kingsman – has been brought in to lend star power but here joins the rest of cast of rather robotic stormtroopers bringing to mind Kraftwerk’s heroes rather than real people who we can empathise with in their tortured love lives. MT

FIREBIRD is premiering at BFi Flare

 

 

Groundswell (2020) Earth Day 2021

Dir.: Johnny Goran; Documentary with Mark Ruffalo, Nuala McNulty, Olivia Mitchell, Kate Ruddock, Joe McHugh; ROI 2021, 80 min.

Activist and filmmaker Johnny Gogan’s Groundswell explores how Ireland banned the practice of fracking (releasing oil or gas from shale rock) and how Northern Ireland still faces a prospect that has led to tremors, and poisoned water in NE Pennsylvania, where fracking is common.

Gogan guides us through his powerful film showing what is possible with direct action on the ground from his base in Fermanaugh. Political campaigner Nuala McNulty started the fight against fracking in Northern Ireland after the Irish Parliament, the Deil, had given licenses for exploratory drillings to Canadian company Tamboran Resources, whose agent Tony Bazley promised that no chemicals would be used in the process.

Jamie Murphy from ‘Love Leitrim”, remembers the police action in the Northern Irish fight against Shell, one of their slogans was “Farming, not Fracking”. Later a moratorium was reached in the Deil, pending the feasibility study into gas mining in the licensed areas near the border. The area was still suffering confrontations during the “Troubles”.

Arlene Foster, a staunch Fermanaugh activist and Northern Ireland’s First Minister, had an ambiguous relationship with fracking that drew criticism from the Irish border population. Meanwhile Gogan visited campaigners in NE Pennsylvania where diagnosis of cancer had almost doubled in the population, particularly in young people indicating a clear correlation with the fracking activities. The Good Energies Alliance Ireland (GEAI) joined the fight, as did Friends of the Earth: “Fracking is leaving more carbon footprints on the planet than coal.”

A Private Members Bill to legislate for the banning of fracking was introduced in the Deil, but was a victim of the General Election in 2016. Finally, a motion was passed in October 2016, to ban the import of gas gained from fracking, the only bill of its kind in the world. Nevertheless, not all is won: we listen to ex-president Trump announcing that the EU is planning to import fracking products, and in June 2019 Tamboran Resources was given permission to explore for Shale Gas in Northern Ireland – the decision of the restored NI executive is pending…

Gogan’s detailed chronicle is a laudable testament to the fight but instead of appealing to heart and minds, it often bogs the audience down with too much detail, names and organisations making Groundswell a valuable insider documentary rather than for mainstream entertainment. AS

Groundswell will be released on Friday 16th April, ahead of Earth Day 2021 and will be available via the Modern Films virtual cinema platform. It will screen theatrically later in the year.

 

 

 

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) TPTV

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

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

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

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

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV | AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Human Rights Watch Festival 2021 | Women have their say

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

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

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

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

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

Tove (2020)

Dir: Zaida Bergroth | Finland, Drama | 100′

This drama about Moomins creator Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is as enchanting as her hippo-like cartoon characters that are celebrated by kids and adults all over the world.

Finnish filmmaker Zaida Bergroth brings the Finnish bisexual artist to life in this delicately sensuous and affecting biopic that showcases her unconventional loves as much as her talent as an author, artist and creator, played here by a captivating Alma Pöysti and scored by evocative soundtrack of tunes from the era from jazz to swing, Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing being the musical motif throughout with Stefan Grapelli and Edith Piaf enlivening the Parisian sequences of the early 1950s.

Eeva Putro’s gracefully paced script focuses on the immediate aftermath to WWII in a discretely decadent Helsinki where Soviet bomb raids fail to spoil Tove’s fun at lively cocktail parties where champagne continues to flow during illustrious soirees. Home is a stylish bohemian milieu where Swedish is spoken. Tove is often put down by her renown but competitive sculptor father (Enckel), although her graphic artist mother (Kajsa Ernst) adores and encourages her creative potential.

Later at art school Tove is nudged by her father towards the more highbrow artistic expression of painting, but prefers illustrating and doodling cartoons for a subversive magazine, and this is where she will eventually make her name and earn a meagre living. All this creativity naturally spills over into amorous encounters. Soon Tove is involved with a married politician (Shanti Roney as Artos Wirtanen) and a wealthy female client Viveca Bandler (Kosonen) in dizzying sexual encounters, both leaving her troubled and unsatisfied as she seeks solace in her art. Bergroth keeps the tempo romantically-charged and touching rather than tortured or soul-searching. Artos eventually proposes but Paris beckons promising other opportunities on the horizon as well as a reunion with the past.

This is such a wonderful film about female creative and sensory expression made more so by its gentle, often handheld, camerawork in Helsinki and Paris – DoP Linda Wassberg often uses that atmospheric technique of fading out the scenes in slow-mo to an echoing soundtrack lending emotional depth and a dreamlike quality to the narrative leaving us contemplating what has gone before and appreciating the intensity of Tove’s artistic and emotional truth. MT

On release from 9 July 2021

Johnny Cool (1963)

Dir: William Asher | Wri: Joseph Landon | Cast: Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, Richard Anderson, Jim Backus, Wanda Hendrix | US Crime Drama 103’

Before Lee Marvin in The Killers and Point Blank there was Johnny Cool. The name ‘Johnny’ in the title usually means a romantic loner; but this Johnny was such a reptilian thug that by the end I was rooting for him to get what was coming to him in a way that I never did with the likes of Jimmy Cagney.

After possibly the worst title song I’ve ever heard (sung by Sammy Davis Jr., who also contributes a cameo as a dealer in a gambling den in an eye-patch and loud check jacket named “Educated”), what follows is a real curate’s egg vividly shot on location by Sam Leavitt in deliberately ugly black & white with an astonishing cast of cameo players (I particularly liked Mort Sahl’s contribution). The bewitching Elizabeth Montgomery is wasted as a bored socialite who takes a shine to Johnny after seeing him karate someone in a restaurant, yet seems a bit slow to realise that maybe he’s not really a very nice person. (She and director William Asher married the same year and together embarked the following year on the evergreen TV hit ‘Bewitched’, and she was lost to movies forever.)

That the Production Code was by now on its last legs is attested to by macabre details such as the fact that he takes a knife rather than a gun with him to settle one particular score; while he improbably uses a big heavy suitcase with a bomb in it to blow up one victim rather than simply shooting him. And how did he make his getaway after machine-gunning someone else through the top floor window of a high rise office block from a window cleaner’s cradle? However, the film is obliged to show sufficient restraint in its denouement to leave enough to the imagination to make the conclusion far more chilling than had we seen more. (And it’s refreshing to see Elisha Cook Jr. come out on top for once). ©Richard Chatten

 

Memories of My Father | El Olvido Que Seremos (2020)

Dir.: Fernando Trueba; Cast: Javier Camara, Juan Pablo Urrego, Nikola Reyes Cano, Patricia Tamayo, Maria Teresa Barretyo, Laura Londano, Elisabeth Minotta, Kami Zea; Columbia 2020, 136 min.

Memories of My Father in a spirited family saga set against the background of Columbia’s darkest days.

Based on the (auto)biographical novel ‘El Olvido Que Seremos’ by Hector Abad Faciolince, Spanish director Fernando Trueba and his brother David set their story in the city of Medellin, where fiery militias took the law into their own hands. Both novel and film are a tribute to the Columbian human rights advocate and doctor Hector Abad Gomez, by his son Hector ‘Quiquin’ Abad Faciolince.

The story opens in a monochrome Turin in the early 1980s where student Hector Abdad (Urrego) is watching a South American gangster movie with a girl friend. We hear him later on the phone to his mother Cecilia Faciolence de Abad (Tamayo) discussing his father’s rebellious nature. Glorious colours then flood the screen as we revisit Hector’s ‘Quiquin’ (Cano) childhood world, dominated by his compassionate father (Camara) and his four sisters: teenage Mariluz(Barreto), Clara (Londano), Marta (Zea) and Vicky (Minotta.)

Medellin was a turbulent place to grow up: bombs went off regularly, right-wing militia terrorised the population, drug cartels fought it out, and at university fascist professors made life difficult for Abad Gomez. At home, matriarch Cecilia keeps the family finances in order, whilst Clara changes boyfriends regularly and Marta sings melancholic songs, playing the guitar.

Quiquin and his school friend are up to no good – throwing stones at the window of a Jewish family living next door. The school boys are victims of a reactionary aunt, a nun, who tells Quiquin that the Jews killed Jesus Christ and should be punished. Father Hector takes his son to the neighbours and makes him apologize. The same school friend asks Quiquin “if his father was gay” – since Hector senior likes to cuddle his only boy. The youngster is soon fed up with religion and God, and is ordered by his father to attend church to please his mother. The grandmother is sent to a care home, and Cecilia’s brother, a bishop, warns Hector to be more careful with his critique of the government and militia.

But the lack of sanitation in the poor quarters is appalling, and the doctor is the only one, who cares to get prosthesis’ for the victims of bomb attacks.  On the radio, the family listens to accusations against the patriarch, he is branded a Marxist, soon having to leave the country to teach abroad. Then tragedy strikes at the heart of the family and life is never the same.

The feature then circles back to 1983 and black-and-white footage seeing Hector returning to Medellin, where father and son are more and more estranged, since the young man does not understand his father’s social engagement. The first grandchild in the family is born, and Doctor Gomez announces that he is going to run for mayor of the city in 1987. After family tragedy, the scene is now set for confrontation.

DoP Sergi Ivan Castano can take much credit for this engrossing family saga, sometimes told in the style of a tele-novella. The black-and-white images are wonderfully lit, and the colour scenes at the heart of the feature are so vibrant in their crystalline intensity you almost have to squint. The directors avoids a political treaty, focus on the emotional conflicts. Memories is a testament to a man of passion and compassion. ©AS

CURZON HOME CINEMA exclusively from 26th March 2021

 

Viy (1967) and Sveto Mesto (1990) | Bluray

Dirs: Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov | Cast: Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Aleksey Glazyrin, Nikolay Kutuzov, Vadim Zakharchen | USSR Fantasy/Horror 77′

In 19th century Ukraine a young priest is forced to undergo a macabre test of his faith in this whimsical gothic ‘folktale’ based on the 1835 novella by Nikolai Gogol – more Arthur Rackham or Grimm’s than Tarkovsky in feel – inviting us to reflect on the temptations of Lent, with a twist that taunts Russian Orthodoxy with its nihilistic overtones.

Surprisingly avoiding censorship due to Gogol’s revered status in Russia, this first slice of Soviet fantasy horror vividly brings to life the writer’s atmospheric prose and erotic and fantastical elements spiced with a little irony, all glowingly designed by communism’s answer to Walt Disney, Aleksandr Ptushko whose special effects in the delicately creepy haunting scenes make this particularly enjoyable, and include a 360-degree camera movement to create the illusion of a protective circle around Khoma, all enhanced by Karen Khachaturyan’s evocative score.

The film was previously adapted by Mario Bava as Black Sunday (1960) in the same simple storyline. As the purple twilight of a midsummer evening descends three lost novices bed down for the night in a remote wooden farmhouse after persuading the old lady who lives there to give them sanctuary from the wolves. Later she overpowers Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) in a bid to seduce him, literally riding him broomstick-style into the twinkly night sky as she turns into a witch. Beating her to death after landing, Khoma sees the crone morph into a dark-haired maiden (Natalya Varley) who later emerges as the dead daughter of a local nobleman who begs him, on pain of a flogging, to pray for her soul on three nightly vigils in the locked church, each ending with the crowing of a rather handsome cock.

Viy could be set in the 15th century of Andrei Rublev with its medieval-looking peasant farmers, but the grotesque humour of Khoma’s weird dance routine echoes Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers – made in the same year – and also based on a 19th legend in Transylvania. Romanian actress Natalya Varley is alluring in the role of the young temptress, at just under five feet tall.

Djordje Kadijevic‘s Serbian gothic film Sveto Mesto (A Holy Place) (1990) is a distinctly more scary and unsettling South Slavic take on Gogol’s story, directed as a straightforward gothic drama here by Djordje Kadijevic and starring the darkly alluring Dragon Jovanovic (as the priest Toma), the real life partner of Branko Pujic who plays his onscreen temptress Katerina.

Kadijevic loses the humour but sexes up the storyline of his version where Katerina is an altogether more nasty character: in a lesbian tryst with her maid, an incestuous one with her father, she also castrates one of her manservants after seducing him in a barn.

After dark, Katerina turns into a wailing banshee, needless to say, Toma goes grey. These chapel scenes are really quite terrifying, not to mention the wincingly brutal finale where Toma gets it in the neck and somewhere even more painful, in contrast to Khoma fate in Viy’s wittier fantasy style.

Sveto Mesto was made during the wartorn era of Balkan history when audiences were not looking for more horror in their lives so the film more or less sank without trace, only to re-emerge in recent years to serve as a worthwhile companion piece to Viy. Although technically less innovative, Kadijevic had a much tighter budget than the Soviets, and a dimmer view of society in general. His trump card was to secure as DoP Alexandar Petrovic, one Yugoslavia’s most talented filmmakers of the era, who gives the film a baroque visual style. Particularly choice is the line of dialogue “every woman who grows old becomes a witch”. MT

On Blu-ray from 15 March 2021 courtesy of Eureka

The October Man (1947) Talking Pictures TPTV

Dir: Roy Ward Baker | Wri: Eric Ambler | Cast: John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey | UK Drama 85′

John Mills has the good fortune to attract the interest of throaty-voiced enchantress Joan Greenwood (like Alec Guinness in ‘The Man in the White Suit’, also playing an industrial chemist, but one far less assailed by doubts and far less appreciative of her) in this atmospheric psycho-drama vividly designed by Alex Vetchinsky, gothically lit by Erwin Hillier, personally produced by Eric Ambler from his novel and marking an auspicious directorial debut for Roy Baker. ©Richard Chatten

ON TALKING PICTURES TV

Enfant Terrible (2020) BFI FLARE

Dir: Oskar Roehler | Cast: Oliver Masucci, Hary Prinz, Katja Riemann, Felix Hellmann, Lucas Gregorowicz | Germany, Biopic drama 134′

German film director and novelist Oskar Roehler (The Untouchable/Die Unberührbare) certainly has the provocative passion of his countryman Reiner Werner Fassbinder to judge by his incendiary homage to one of Germany’s greatest filmmakers screening at this year’s London annual Bfi Flare Festival festival.

Roehler has blazed a trail through New German cinema of the 1990s – and fires this visually alluring biopic with a wild and wilful ardor that would make Fassbinder proud. The German ‘wild child’ comes alive like never before in his heyday of the late 1960s-1980s when he made 41 films in 14 years.

Roehler has had to tread carefully because the source material belongs to the Fassbinder estate, the RWFF, fiercely guarded and controlled by Fassbinder’s editor and “widow” Juliane Lorenz, who is feared and respected in the industry for protecting the director’s reputation, so Roehler and his producers have had their work cut out to remain accurate while also not treading on anyone’s toes.

Successfully sliding under the skin of the private man behind the public facade, this is a biopic that feels uproariously nihilistic rather than uplifting, showcasing a driven and passionately rebellious provocateur addicted to love and politics and whose passions spilled out into his short but prolific career – Fassbinder was dead by the time most of us get going career-wise. At times it feels like Roehler identifies himself with his subject  veering into a romantic longing for his wild boy. This heady production certainly echoes Fassbinder’s milieu in taught, neon-lit scenes of sexual jealousy, megalomania and power play in a seedy Berlin’s underworld of1967, crisply lit and shot by Carl-Friedrich Koschnick as a play within a film in the confines of a studio designed by Berlin Babylon’s Markus Schutz.

All trussed up in a leather jacket, fedora and Aviators (and occasionally considerably less) Oliver Masucci – who played Hitler in Look Who’s Back – certainly fills the part of the Enfant Terrible in a beltering performance. Like his fellow mavericks Kubrick, Hitchcock and Von Trier, Fassbinder was utterly committed to his art and demanded the same from his crew and actors: “Why is the idiot looking at the camera? What are you doing man?? We’re shooting a movie here!

Fassbinder enjoyed turbulent relationships with men and women (he was once married to a woman after coming out at the age of 15) but the focus here is on his male partners and collaborators, and he greets a tousled haired besuited Ulli Lommel (Lucas Gregorowicz) when he offers his services, with a snide acknowledgement: “If you don’t want to keep doing your TV shit”

Masucci plays him as a chain-smoking, moustachioed mensch of explosive laughter, sneering repartee and excessive appetites who embraced life with gusto. For Fassbinder his life was his work and he existed in a collective with his collaborators sealed off from the rest of the world, everything playing out within the confines of this interdependent – often toxic – dynamic. Were his collaborators merely there to fire up his own personal narrative or was he just the train-crash victim of theirs? Arguably the former judging by Roehler and his co-writer Klaus Richter. Fassbinder once stated in an interview that it was this “exploitability of feelings” that fascinated him most. And he certainly comes over as a colourfully robust figure who would do anything to get what he wanted for his art. Interleaved with dramatised scenes of many of Fassbinder’s films it’s an entertaining, accomplished and beautifully made feature. MT

NOW SCREENING AT BFI FLARE 2021 | OTHER TITLES AVAILABLE AT

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Strange Journey | El Extrano Viaje (1964)

Dir: Fernando Fernan Gomez | Cast: Carlos Larranaga, Tota Alba, Lina Canalejas, Rafaela Aparicio | Spain, Drama 92’

It’s a wonder this very black comedy got past Franco’s censors in the first place. After the premiere it received only a very limited release, but has since enjoyed considerable acclaim. Based on the notorious unsolved death of two brothers found dead on a beach in Mazarrón in 1956, in the film they have become brother and sister; a pair of moon-faced simpletons completely under the thumb of their terrifying big sister Ignacia. The setting is a small coastal town in which old women in black shawls cluck with disapproval at swinging young sixties chicks in leopardskin slacks; while Ignacia presides over a Gothic old house deliberately reminiscent of the Bates mansion in Psycho.

Described by Pedro Almodóvar as an “accursed masterpiece”, the film’s director Fernando Fernán Gómez (1921-2007) was best known in Spain as an actor, and fleetingly appeared as Penelope Cruz’s senile father in Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (1999).

After Tota Alba’s Ignacia discovers passion she undergoes a startling visual transformation from the housekeeper in The Cat and the Canary into a dead ringer for one of Almodóvar’s short-skirted, big-haired cougars of the eighties and nineties. And as if the film wasn’t already weird enough, her downtrodden brother Venancio is played by international sleazemeister Jesús Franco, who although he often played small parts in his own films, here makes an extremely rare appearance in a substantial acting role in a ‘respectable’ film. ©Richard Chatten

 

Night World (1932)

Dir: Hobart Henley | Cast: Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, Dorothy Revier | US Drama 58′

The opening montage of this delirious slice of pre-Code life amounts virtually to a declaration of intent, as various New Yorkers hit the town in pursuit of sex, booze and violence. You can practically hear the scratch of pencils from the bluestockings in the audience whose increasingly persistent calls to put a stop to the depiction of just this sort of depravity would soon, alas, be calling the shots in Hollywood.

In just 58 minutes, Night World depicts illegal booze (“they can make it faster than you can drink it”), homosexuality (in the flouncing form of “MISTER Baby”, played by a very young Byron Foulger before he grew his moustache) and adultery as facts of life; and comes dangerously close to condoning the latter in the scene in which Hedda Hopper appears as Lew Ayres’ ghastly mother who shot his father for an improbably innocent dalliance with another woman. (It also takes a rather callously casual view of violent death when the bullets start seriously flying in the film’s finale).

A couple of previous reviewers have compared Night World to a low rent Grand Hotel; with Merritt Gerstad’s extraordinarily mobile camera weaving it’s way throughout the joint picking up one set of characters and then another rather as Robert Altman would later do. Presiding over ‘Happy’s Place’ is a tall, lisping, English-accented proprietor called “Happy” MacDonald, played by – of all people – a third-billed and fascinatingly miscast Boris Karloff. The women all look magnificent – all that bobbed hair and bare shoulders! – and a sweet blonde Mae Clarke is permitted a sunnier characterisation than we are accustomed to seeing her get a chance to play. It’s a blast to see her actually dancing in the lineup on the floor show (with appropriately lascivious choreography courtesy of Busby Berkeley himself)!

The name of the prolific Hobart Henley often crops up in filmographies from the early thirties, but after Night World he only directed one more film. On the strength of this I’d sure like to see some of his others. ©Richard Chatten

 

Night Games (1966)

Dir: Mai Zetterling | Cast: Ingrid Thulin, Keve Hjelm, Lena Brundin, Jorgen Lindstrom | Sweden, Drama 105′

Even in her days working in the Hollywood mainstream as Danny Kaye’s leading lady Mai Zetterling always had an air of menace about her; which she more than amply confirmed when she finally got behind the camera herself. Night Games was in its day considered the last word in shocking, but is today largely forgotten; and it’s hard to figure out just how seriously we’re supposed to be taking it all until the Hal Roach-style slapstick and music behind the end credits finally clinches it: we’re not.

Zetterling’s second feature film as a director evokes Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) both through its elegant shifts back and forth between the hero’s childhood and adulthood; and by the presence of Ingrid Thulin as the hero’s long-dead mother whose hedonistic lifestyle has left him marked for life, and of Naima Wifstrand (who had played Isak Borg’s terrifying mother in Wild Strawberries) as Jan’s dotty old aunt (while Jörgen Lindström, who plays the young Jan, had been Thulin’s nephew in Bergman’s The Silence).

Most of the mother’s entourage disport themselves more like characters out of TV commercials than recognisable human beings; recalling the orgiasts of late Fellini and the decadent weirdos who invade Tony’s home at the conclusion of Joseph Losey’s The Servant. For good measure, the final sordid scramble for expensive goodies resembles the conclusion of The Magic Christian; before Jan finally purges himself once and for all of a lifetime of Oedipal baggage by dynamiting the palatial family home to kingdom come. ©Richard Chatten

 

Lost in La Mancha (2020)

Dir.: Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe; Documentary with Terry Gilliam, Amy Gilliam, Nicola Pecorini, Lena Mossum; UK 2019, 84 min.

After more than 20 years and multiple setbacks, Terry Gilliam finally got his dream project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, to the big screen. This is the story behind the project that started with Lost in La Mancha back in 2002 and has now been remastered.

With production costs halved from the original budget of 32 million dollars, and minus Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradise and Jean Rochefort  Rochefort (who had to leave because of illness) – a tornado destroyed some equipment and rain changed the colour of the sand from the earlier scenes. Then John Hurt, who was to play Don Quixote, was diagnosed with his fatal cancer. 

It’s good to see DoP Nicola Pecorini, costume designer Lena Mossum (who had kept all the designs from the original shoot) and PD Benjamin Fernandes back together again with Gilliam – they celebrate after shooting day seven: none of the cast had ever made it thus far. Fulton and Pepe decide on a rather sombre tone. After freely admitting to the two of them: “I don’t actually like making films”, and “I have done the film too often in my head, is it better to leave it there?” One has to respect his sheer perseverance, a quality that is often more valuable these days than talent.

And in the 2018 interviews he talks about the ageing of Quixote: “An older man, with one last chance to make the world as interesting as he dreams it to be.” And about himself: “Did I get to change the world?“ Gillian looks, quite reasonably, irritated during the shoot, not helped by a kidney problem that required him to move around with a bag of blood, draining from a catheter, strapped to his leg. Even when it all comes together in the last day of shooting, Gilliam is vehement: “this is my last film. Then there’s a great void ahead of me, and that scares the shit out of me”.

Lost in La Mancha is padded out with clips from Gilliam’s successful features Brazil, Time Bandits and Baron Munchhausen; and the endless comparisons between Gilliam and Quixote become tiring. Interviews on the subject, given by Gilliam since 2000, give the feature even more of a disjointed feeling: There is so much to say about the filming of The Man who killed Don Quixote – but with neither Driver nor Pryce having their say, much remains untold. DoPs Lou Pepe and Jeremy Royce succeed in showing the film within a film: their lively camerawork is certainly a reason to watch it. 

The ending is rather elegiac: a still of with Gilliam taking the applause at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where the premiere was beset by legal controversy over the rights, The Man was screened at the Closing Night, is possibly the best way to remember this documentary – but somehow it feels like Terry Gillian deserved more. AS

Now on release

Zana (2019) digital release

Dir: Antoneta Kastrati | Cast: Adriana Matoshi, Astrit Kabashi, Fatmire Sahiti, Mensur Safqui | Serbia Drama 93′

The legacy of a war on a Kosovar woman’s life are insightfully portrayed in this hauntingly lyrical debut feature from Kosovo-born, LA-based writer/director Antoneta Kastrati.

Lume (Matoshi) lives with her loving husband Ilir (Kabashi) in a farming village of Kosovar Muslims, dominated by rituals and superstitions and caught between the past and the present in the lush Albanian countryside. Psychological scars run deep years after the war is over and Lume is suffering the double blow of losing a child and being unable to conceive another. Her bereavement is made all the more insufferable as she is defined by her childlessness in a community where family is the entire focus of a woman’s life.

Lume experiences the emotional fallout in all kinds of ways: nightmares and hallucinations – involving dead or wounded animals and a mysterious bloody corpse – and these are cleverly woven into the narrative providing a constant reminder of the atrocities of the 1990s – while daily village life sees grotesque interference from her mother in law, Lume emerging a detached and morose figure lost in a world of hopeless misery and indignity.

So backward is the set-up here that the family believe Lume to be possessed by an evil spirit rather than needing medical advice. But she soon resorts to village healers in the hope of a much desired pregnancy, and these intimate scenes are evocatively captured and contrast with the bucolic images of farming in the Balkan countryside that could be set in the 18th century.

Ilir is the most likeable character supporting his wife with genuine love and concern even when Lume’s father threatens to burn the couple’s house down when his daughter asks to come home after a visiting her mother. And this is where Kastrati makes us aware of the superstitious attitudes that are still very much alive, with constant talk of spells, curses and Black Magic freely banded around by a community still locked in the past, mobile phones their only acknowledgement of contemporary life.

Lume keeps her calm distance throughout until Ilir takes her to a witch doctor to rid her of ‘inner demons’. And she objects to his violent methods. But life improves dramatically when Lume finally conceives and once again we experience the full force of traditional rituals, her mother in law dominating family life and undermining her in every way. And gradually as winter sets in, the trauma of the past catches up with the present in a grim reveal which finally clarifies Lume’s rich dream life in a deeply felt tribute to Kastrati’s own family. MT

ON CURZON HOME CINEMA, BFI PLAYER AND BARBICAN CINEMA ON DEMAND from 2nd APRIL 2021

 

 

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) TPTV


Dir: Seth Holt | Starring Andrew Keir, Valerie Leon | UK | 1971 | 89 mins

Adapted from Bram Stoker’s mystical thriller The Jewel of the Seven Stars, this supernatural shocker is one of Hammer’s most enduring classics.

A British expedition team in Egypt discovers the ancient sealed tomb of the evil Queen Tera but when one of the archaeologists steals a mysterious ring from the corpse’s severed hand, he unleashes a relentless curse upon his beautiful daughter. Is the voluptuous young woman now a reincarnation of the diabolical sorceress or has the curse of the mummy returned to reveal its horrific revenge?

Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb was plagued by the sudden deaths of director Seth Holt and the wife of original star Peter Cushing, leading to rumours of a real-life curse. Michael Carreras completed the movie that made a Scream Queen of Valerie Leon as the Mummy who, in a titillating twist, forgoes the usual rotting-bandages and is instead resurrected sporting a rather recherché negligée.

Extras: New featurette – The Pharaoh’s Curse: Inside Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb | NOW ON TALKING PICTURES TV

The Columnist (2020)

Dir.: Ivo van Art; Cast: Katja Herbers, Bran van der Kelen, Claire Porro, Genio de Grot, Achraf Koutet; Netherlands 2019, 86 min.

A writer gets her own back in this provocative ‘woman-sees-red’ dramady that is funny up to a point, going for the jugular in an all out revenge movie that may give some viewers the wrong idea.

In his first big screen feature TV director Ivan van Art cleverly opts for a topical theme that kills two birds with one stone: trolling and female empowerment. The woman in question is journalist and author Femke Boot (Herbers) who is in the firing line from both her editors and readers. A typical day will include sordid e-mails from the public, and readers of the popular rag The Volksrant (a Dutch Daily Mail) calling for her resignation on the grounds of ‘paedophilia’ – she once dated a sixteen-year-old boy three year’s her junior, back in the day. To make matters worse her latest book is in the doldrums becalmed by writing block and a looming deadline.

So Femke strikes back with some online research, and it soon turns out one of the trolls is a neighbour. At this point spoilers are inevitable  – Femke pushes him off the roof, and symbolically, severs his middle-finger. Surprisingly she then falls for the laid back Steven Dood (van der Kelen), who runs a popular cookery website, and moves in with Femke (funny how men are always looking for somewhere to live) and her daughter Anna (Porro) and soon, writing side by side, creative juices finally begin to flow.

Strangely though, and this is a questionable plot point – Dood’s positive influence makes no impact on Femke’s state of mind. Her bloodlust powers on, hardbitten by Megxit-style revenge – her next victim is Anna’s teacher who censures a poster penned by the students.

At this point the narrative spins into overdrive with a ludicrous killing spree that seemingly knows no end. DoP Marttijn Cousijn handles the ultra-realism with imagination as the film – scripted by Daan Windhorst – tracks Femke’s decent into darkness. Arbers feels very real as a woman pushed over the top, Porro is also convincing as the apple falling not too far from the tree. There is a surprise ending as the The Columnist endlessly peddles itself as full-throttle entertainment, but you can’t help feeling there’s a subtext here, and it’s not just about the serious conflicts arising from internet trolling. AS

IN UK AND IRELAND from 12 MARCH 2021

Senso (1954) DVD/blu-ray

Dir: Luchino Visconti | Cast: Farley Grainger, Marcella Mariani, Alida Valli, Massimo Girotti, Heinz Moog, Rina Morelli | Italy, Drama 123′

Visconti’s first film in colour and his first with a patrician 19th Century backdrop, Senso is a squalid tale of base animal passion with an epic grandeur that raises it to the pantheon of Great Screen Romances by courtesy of Visconti having robed his sixth feature in the trappings of the momentous historical backdrop of the Risorgimento of 1866, Venetian locations, plush interiors, immaculate costumes and Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony (which wasn’t actually composed until fifteen years later).

The plot actually has marked similarities to Joseph Losey’s The Sleeping Tiger, made concurrently in drab monochrome in postwar austerity Britain; in which refined Alexis Smith (married to decent but dull Alexander Knox) completely loses her head over delinquent Dirk Bogarde. Ten years earlier, Visconti himself made a much more unadorned treatment of greed and destructive passion with Ossessione (1942) an adaptation of James M. Cain’s sweaty tale of blue-collar adultery and murder, The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Maria Callas had been Visconti’s first choice for the part of Countess Livia Serpieri – a society wife who becomes infatuated with good-looking creep Lieutenant Franz Mahler (played in a gleaming white uniform by an obviously dubbed Farley Granger), but she had too many theatre commitments to take time out for the shoot which eventually took nine months to complete, and Ingrid Bergman was too wrapped up working with her husband Roberto Rossellini, so the role eventually went to Alida Valli. Still stunning, but already perceptibly older than during her late forties Hollywood sojourn, in the arms of Lt. Mahler Valli discovers an erotic fulfilment entirely new to her; but to Franz she’s just another notch on his bedpost, and someone to sponge off.

Marcella Mariani (who died in a plane crash aged 19, just six weeks after Senso‘s premiere) is rather sweet and vulnerable as the young prostitute Clara who is spitefully exploited by Franz to further rub Livia’s nose in his rejection of her. Rina Morelli has an eye-catching cameo flitting about Livia’s villa in Aldeno as her maid, who seems to be actively enjoying the thrill of her mistress’s affair. But the most blackly comic element in the film is the way that as momentous historical events escalate around them, she and her idealistic cousin Roberto Ussoni (played by Massimo Girotti) are shown to be completely oblivious to what is making the other tick.

Under the impression that Franz is waiting for her at an address to which she has been followed by her stuffy husband (Heinz Moog) she melodramatically declares, with her back to the door, that YES SHE HAS A LOVER!!!, only to discover the place occupied by Roberto and his revolutionaries eagerly making plans; as oblivious of the turmoil raging inside Livia as she is by now indifferent to their cause. She commits treason by sheltering Franz from the Italians, and then gets even deeper into corruption by helping him to avoid combat by giving money meant for The Cause to him. One of a number of loose ends in the plot is that we never find out what happens when it’s discovered that 200,000 florins have gone missing from the fund intended to finance The Revolution, has been filched by yours truly.

As her grip on sanity loosens, Livia’s wardrobe (the work of Marcel Escoffier & Piero Tosi) becomes more and more buttoned down and severe, the black dress she wears in her final scenes making her resemble some ferocious bird of prey. The distinguished Italian cameraman G.R. Aldo was killed in a car crash during filming (this was also his first colour production); and the opening scene in Venice’s Fenice Theatre is the work of his successor Robert Krasker, who himself walked out on the production after falling out with Visconti, leaving the film to be completed by Giuseppe Rotunno. Whoever shot the amazing close-ups of Valli – her eyes wildly darting from side to side as she becomes more and more unhinged – merits particular kudos. During the final confrontation in the hotel you’re expecting her to produce a gun and shoot Franz; but she achieves the same end by more deliciously vindictive means, and he ends up in front of a firing squad assembled at remarkably short notice while she careens into the night to a very uncertain fate.

Having ended with a bang, the final credits still have one more surprise to serve up when the first two names we see after Visconti’s turn out to be those of the future directors (on this occasion humble assistants), Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli.

Senso was shot in English, and there are a couple of excerpts on YouTube from the truncated 94 minute English-language version, ‘The Wanton Countess’ which enable you to hear Granger in his own voice speaking dialogue written by no less than Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles (thus confirming suspicions that we are witnessing a Venetian variation on A Streetcar Named Desire).

By the 1970s Visconti could finally make a film truer to his own inclinations in Death in Venice (1971), with Dirk Bogarde – once the object of infatuation himself in The Sleeping Tiger, but now the one smitten – in a production again dressed up to the nines, handsomely set in period, again using beautiful Venetian locations and this time almost entirely dispensing with dialogue in favour of Mahler, his favourite composer; whose name he had co-opted for the young officer in Senso (who had been called Remigio Ruz in Camillo Boito’s original novella). Richard Chatten.

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD on AMAZON + CRITERION COLLECTION

The Little Things (2020) Digital release

Dir: John Lee Hancock | Cast: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Chris Bauer | US Crime thriller 128′

John Lee Hancock proves that casting three Oscar winners isn’t always guaranteed to set the night on fire in his pensive police potboiler that ignites in the final hour.

The Little Things is a workmanlike Neo-Noir thriller that sees Denzel Washington’s Deputy Sheriff Deke Deacon join forces with Rami Malek’s Sargent Jim Baxter to track down a serial killer in a moody retro Los Angeles (the 1990s). And the sultry cinematic scenes are what makes this moody cat and mouse procedural watchable thanks to John Schwartman’s stylish visuals that keep us amused while the action gets going. Chemistry-wise Sargent and Sheriff are a mismatched pair who seem to be in different films that suddenly fuse once catalyst Jared Leto (Albert Sparma) appears as the scary suspect of their investigation.

Jim Baxter is basically an awkward bugger with a long-suffering wife, and troubled by past memories stoked up by the serial killer haunting the streets of downtown LA. And he lets it get to him. Deke has seen it all before and is far too laconic to allow ‘the little things’ to bother him, plodding along placidly before he pounces like a jaguar on his pray. Of the two you’ll be rooting for Deke.

These well-crafted characters feel real and believable but they just don’t gel – or at least that’s the impression given by Hancock’s rather loose script and treatment. Support comes in the shape of Chris Bauer’s genial Detective Sal Rizoli, and a cute little cop played by Natalie Morales.

As the net closes in around Sparma, Baxter’s mental instability gets in the way of the investigation, and Deke puts his foot down, tired of the suspect taking the law for a ride in the confines of the interrogation suite. Photos of the victims are bandied about but there’s no suspense to speak of – this is more a film about the cats than the mice, although Leto creates an unsettling crim with his haunting eyes, Robert Peston style vocal delivery, and a strangely incongruous pot belly.

The Little Things leaves us with too many unanswered questions as it trundles into a rather subdued character study of midlife crisis: Baxter’s coiled anger and petulant navel-gazing and Deke’s avuncular musings. The likeable Deke has no backstory as such but he’s living in a trailer in his run up to retirement, and making tentative advances towards Judith Scott’s calm and confident pathologist (far the most interesting and powerful female character of the piece) who doesn’t encourage him, so no love interest to speak of. What starts as a promise of Noirish excitement eventually finds its way into the crowed annuls of ‘also-rans’ as an everyday story of world-weary perfunctoriness that provides decent entertainment but certainly nothing to challenge your heart rate. I quite liked it. MT

THE LITTLE THINGS IS AVAILABLE TO RENT AT HOME ON PREMIUM VIDEO ON DEMAND

The Frightened Man (1952)

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

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

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

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

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO | TALKING PICTURES TV

Fukushima 50 (2020) Digital release

Dir.: Setsuro Wakamatsu; Cast: Ken Watanabe, Koichi Sato, Shiro Sano; Japan 2020, 122 min.

Japanese director Setsuro Wakamatsu pays tribute to fifty courageous workers who averted a Chernobyl-style meltdown when a natural disaster hit a power plant in 2011. This is a blockbuster without any villains – the government and utility executes got away Scot-free, as we soon discover. All the characters are fictional, apart from Watanabe’s Masao Yoshida, the plant’s superintendent, who died – as a national hero – of cancer unrelated to the accident of 11.3. 2011 two years later.

Based on The Inside story of Fukushima Daiichi’ by Ryusho Kadota, Fukushima 50, takes its title from the fifty heroes who stayed to face the music after an earthquake (scale 9 on the Richter Scale) and a massive Tsunami threatened to wipe out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and the devastation of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.

All the men in the plant are tough and selfless (unlike today’s young generation in Japan), there are references to the WWII generation, “who lived for others”. Japan’s military forces are also featured, fighting from the front in great numbers. Toshio Isaki (Sato), the shift supervisor, is the embodiment of these attributes: he would have liked a more active role, but his men ask him to stay behind, whilst they try to cool the reactors down with seawater, or reduce the pressure so that the reactors do not explode.

The seawater solution, brought forward by Yoshida, is one of the few pivotal passages of the film: the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), who owns the plant, gives orders to Yoshida not to cool the reactors this way to the plant being damaged by seawater, but the superintendent goes against his orders. Heated arguments add a scintilla of drama but even the Prime Minister (Sano) gets away with a limp performance,oscillating between weakness and bullying.

The lack of a central villain reduces the film to a well meaning fight ballade, everyone striving for heroism. We never find out the cause of the disaster, nuclear power is never questioned, nobody asks if the disaster preparations were adequate or if the country needed to re-think their economic or cultural strategy – after all, idea of WWII being a time of heroism has been successfully propagated by the Japan’s Liberal Party which has been in power since WWII, with the exception of a handful of years.

Compared with the dark and eerie images of Chernobyl, which went for a systematic critique of the Soviet Union, Fukushima does not hold anybody responsible for the disaster – despite the collusion between regulators, government and TEPCO. Meanwhile law suits have been piling up amid ongoing international investigations, the report of the Japanese Parliament (DIET) calls the disaster “man-made”. Nothing has changed since March 2011, and the Japanese Anti-Nuclear movement has lost much of its urgency.

The blockbuster treatment leaves us with good production values (DoP Shoji Ehara), spirited performances by the saviours, but a hapless happy-end, with Isaki being re-united with his family, an unruly daughter and a critical father. Fukushima shows nothing has changed since March 2011, styling his actioner as a boys-only adventure story – thrilling and triumphant with the cherry blossom finale promising an uncritical pastel future where governments turn a blind eye. AS

FUKUSHIMA 50 OUT NOW ON ALTITUDE FILMS and all digital platforms across the UK & Ireland

https://youtu.be/yJ-RSrg3DeI

 

Five Films for Freedom | BFI Flare 2021

During the FLARE LGBTIQ+ BFI’s annual celebration of all things gay five festival films have been selected to screen free internationally from 17-28 March

Five Films For Freedom 2021 sees filmmakers exploring emerging sexuality, trans-activism, homophobia and genderless love at a time when people may have been adversely impacted by the pandemic.

In a new twist for 2021, audiences will be invited to nominate their Five Films Favourite via a British Council web poll, the winners will be announced via British Council social media channels prior to 28 March. Voting opens 17 March via the #Five FilmsForFreedom homepage.

The FIVE FILMS FOR FREEDOM campaign has been going since 2015 and over 15 million people from more than 200 countries have engaged with it particularly in places where homosexuality can be prosecuted and, in some cases, punishable by death.

Five Film For Freedom programme 2021:

 

Bodies of Desire (India/Dir. Varsha Panikar & Saad Nawab/3 mins), directed by Varsha Panikar and multi-award-winner Saad Nawab, uses Indian poet Panikar’s work as the basis for a visual, poetic film capturing four sets of lovers in a sensual celebration of genderless love and desire.

Land of the Free (Sweden/Dir. Dawid Ullgren/10 mins) – Ullgren’s tense Swedish drama follows the fictional David and friends as they celebrate his birthday with a nightly swim at the beach. The good mood swiftly changes after two straight couples walk by and laugh – was the laughter directed at them, or something else? Who owns the truth of exactly what happened?

 

Pure (USA/Dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris/12 mins) is the fictional debut from 2020 Directors Guild of America Student Film Award winner Natalie Jasmine Harris, centring on a young Black girl grappling with her queer identity and ideas of ‘purity’. The film is written, produced and directed by Harris – a filmmaker passionate about the intersection between filmmaking and social justice.

Trans Happiness is Real (UK/Dir. Quinton Baker/8 mins) – a moving documentary from first-time filmmaker Quinton Baker – sees transgender activists take to the streets of Oxford, England to fight anti-trans sentiments using the power of graffiti and street art.

Victoria (Spain/Dir. Daniel Toledo/7 mins) follows a bittersweet reunion between a trans woman and her ex, sparking tension and long buried resentment. Directed by award-winning filmmaker, Daniel Toledo, Victoria also features acclaimed trans actress, writer and director Abril Zamora (The Life Ahead, The Mess You Leave Behind).

All films will be available to view from 17 – 28 March 2021 via the British Council Arts YouTube channel as well as being part of the BFI Flare digital programme on BFI Player and associated platforms.

My Father and Me (2021)

Dir.: Nick Broomfield; Documentary with Maurice Bloomfield, Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill, Barney Bloomfield; UK 2019, 97 min.

British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield (Marianne & Leonard – Words of Love) has created a loving portrait of his father, Britain’s pre-eminent industrial photographer Maurice (1916-2010), Despite their ups and downs what shines through here is a genuine warmth and filial respect My Father also serving as a social history of the British working class since the end of WWII.

Maurice’s photos and Nick’s creative output makes this an especially enjoyable father and son portrait: Maurice Broomfield (1916-2010) started his working life on the floor of the factories in Derby where he was born. Taking a degree in photography at night school, he became the chronicler of the excellence of British production, be it Phillips Nuclear Power or Rolls Royce – his brilliantly-crafted photos showed a glamorous, even romanticised image of the workplace, with the craftsman in midst of his products.

Maurice was a contentious objector in WWII and remained a pacifist all  his life, but he was still able to see the positive factors in life and work. In 1947, he married Sonja Lagusova, a Jewish emigrant from Czechoslovakia, who had lost half her family in the Nazi concentration camps. She hardly ever talked about her Jewish identity and Nick, born in 1948, only learnt the stark facts that had traumatised his mother for life, in his twenties. In Derby, Maurice’s parents had already picked a local girl for him to marry and were nonplussed at his choice of Sonja,  relations between them never recovering. Nick, like his father, was not a good student at all, he was expelled and later went to boarding school. Afterwards, he joined his father on his photographic tours around Britain’s factories, and had his first crush on Maurice’ assistant Barbara. Nick’s grandfather Gogo worked on the film about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and he and his daughter were somewhat critical of Maurice’s rather optimistic attitude towards society and life in general.

Nick’s work, on the other hand, shared the more critical attitude of his mother’s side of the family. “My Dad and me were competing for Sonja’s approval”. Meanwhile, Maurice tried hard to “unlearn’ his working class accent, his first studio was located in the grounds of the  Lady Crossfield’s estate; he even met the Queen. The gulf between father and son widened after Nick married fellow documentarian Joan Churchill (now divorced), the couple have a son, Barney. Their documentary Juvenile Liaison (1976), about an eight-year old boy who stole a toy pistol, and is then shown the inside of a jail by a policeman who frightens the child with dark stories, was banned for thirty years, and could even then only be shown to criminologists.

Maurice did not accept that his son had a different outlook on society, after the private showing of Tattooed Tears (1982), he simply left the screening room without saying a word. After Sonja died at the age of 59 of skin cancer, Maurice fell into a long depression. Father and son reconciled in the wake of Maurice finding a new life with Suzy, who re-kindled his lust for life, taking on painting, and losing his inhibitions. The family saga ends with Maurice, Nick and Barney (who is one of the DoPs of Father) sitting happily together on a bench “talking about nothing in particular”.

The writer/director combines the generational conflict with a short history of how Britain changed from the hopeful new beginnings of 1945 to the social divisions that now face the country. Unfortunately, we are still far away from the reconciliation and mutual acceptance of the three generations of Broomfields. AS

The V&A museum will host a Q&A screening on 4 November of Nick Broomfield’s MY FATHER AND ME exploring his relationship with his father, photographer Maurice Broomfield, to tie in with a display of photographs and book Maurice Broomfield: Industrial Sublime opening at the V&A on 6 November.  BBC Four will also air the film in November and stream on BBC iPlayer. More info below and V&A info here – Link

 

     

Ballad of a White Cow (2021)

Dir: Maryam Moghadam, Behtash Saneaeeha | Cast: Maryam Moghadam, Alireza Sani Far, Pouria Rahimi Sam, Avin Poor Raoufi | Iran/France, Drama 105′

Black clothed women make their way mournfully through grim corridors in this doleful drama from Iranian filmmaker Maryam Moghadam who also plays the main character Mina. It could be medieval times but this is modern day Iran, a million miles away from the thriving colourful capital it was during the 1970s. The film paints a dour fate for women, now at the bottom of the scrap heap, dogs don’t even get a look in, while men hold sway in modern attire, smoking and drinking tea together. And you can go to the cinema.

But like its deeply-religious Western counterpart Texas, Iran still carries the death penalty. Mina (Moghadam who co-directs with Saneaeeha) is distraught because her husband Babak is condemned to death for a crime he did not commit in a miscarriage of justice. Thus begins Mina’s fight for the truth in a tense modern parable.

Ballad of a White Cow is social realism at the coal face, a restrained and thoughtful second feature fraught with hand-ringing introspection contemplating justice and the plight of women in a broken system, down on its knees and dominated by red tape, religious dogma and a corrupt judicial. And with an unexpected sting in the tail. Elegantly framed in long takes the dour monochrome monotony shows Tehran as a a grey place where Mina works in a factory to support her mute daughter Bita. Meanwhile Babak’s brother wants custody of the little girl and his father has her thrown out of their home.

Then along comes wealthy businessman Reza (Sani Far) who has friends in high places and takes pity on Mina offering her a lovely bright flat even helping her to move in. But Reza is a dark horse and Mina’s crisis is far from over. Just when Reza comes into her life with friendship it transpires he has problems of his own erupting during a spring storm and adding a welcome touch of drama, Mina rushing to his rescue, only to discover Bita is also in trouble. And then bad penny Babak’s brother is back.

Moghadam is simply staggering as a put upon woman struggling to do her best for her friends and family, clearly she needs help of her own, and we feel for her. There’s a wonderfully thoughtful scene where she opens her heart to Reza in a subtle display of vulnerability, but it falls on deaf ears. What could she expect? The finale comes like a bolt from the blue.  MT

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 10 FEBRUARY 2022

 

The Last Forest | A Ultima Foresta (2021) Berlinale Panorama 2021

Dir.: Luiz Bolognesi; Documentary with Davi Kopenawa Yanorami and members of his indigenous community; Brazil 2021, 75 min.

The Yanomami tribe have lived in the Brazilian Rain Forest for over a 1000 years. Survival is the focus of this indigenous tribe, who are extremely smart, despite their primitive way of life. In his ravishing docudrama Luiz Bolognesi dives deep into the jungle on the borders of Venezuela and Brazil to uncover their story.

Bolognesi has already filmed the Yanomami back in 2018 gaining the trust of a group with the help of their Shaman and elder Davi Kopeneva Yanomami, who reveals the history of a tribe whose existence predates Brazil as a nation, by 500 years. But there is a new strand to their struggle. Since taking power in 2019, right-winger Jair Bolsonaro has sanctioned continuing deforestation of the Amazon encouraging gold prospectors who dig up the land occupied by the Yanomami, polluting the waters with Mercury and bringing disease, including Covid-19, into the community.

Above all this is a film to watch and marvel at, its enchanting images show an atavistic tribe unalloyed by the march of time, both men and women contributing to their daily subsistence by hunting with bows and arrow and poisoned darts. But there is an important message in Bolognesi’s narrative, and that’s the real thrust of his film.

Legend has it that there were two brothers, Omama and Yoasi who purportedly dug up the forest ground creating rivers and lakes. But the bothers were lonely and longed for women. Then Omama met the water goddess Thuëyoma, who came out of the river to join him, later admitting she had also slept with Yoasi who had treated her badly. Omama found his brother, rubbing his miss-shaped penis against a rock and banned him from the land to the other side of the ocean. “You are not my brother any more”. And Yoasi went away for good, and created death. Yoasi became the spirit of evil, whilst Omama buried the gold deep into the earth, so that Yoasi’s spirit could not be awoken to bring back the smoke of disease, which made us mortal.

Davi has lived with the ‘white men’, but he was lonely, and their ‘products’ put a spell on him. Making use of modern technology, he looks out of place making a phone-call, but this is all for the good of the tribe to organise resistance against the gold prospectors who have already made their negative presence known: In 1986 over 45000 gold prospectors forced the Yanomami deeper into the rain forest, killing between 1500-1800 natives. Six years later, despite of a change in the law granting this territory to the Yanorami. During the infamous Haxima massacre sixteen people lost their lives at the hands of the ‘white people’.Meanwhile back in the village, one woman mourns the loss of her husband: she believes the water goddess has taken him into the river with her, and begs the Shaman to help retrieve her husband.

Despite their primitive credentials the women here are very enterprising and have formed a co-operative to improve production of baskets which they can barter for food from the men, making them less reliant. Davi too is highly intelligent, demonstrating nous and a grasp of capitalism: “Gold prospectors dream a lot, but only about money. But it is the business men who keep the money, the ones who come here, the workers stay poor. It is all about greed”. He also remembers the plight of his relatives’ further north, whose water was poisoned with mercury.

The Yanomami are savvy and sociable people. DoP Pedro Márquez, who also photographed Ex-Shaman (2018), talks of their willingness to facilitate the making of the film, but ensuring they never looked into the  camera, believing it would steal their souls. The filmmakers’ hope is that they can persuade investors who work with the Bolsanaro administration, upholding the 1986 law so that the Yanomami can return to their way of life. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 

 

Voyagers (2021) Coming soon…

VOYAGERS stars Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp and Colin Farrell coming soon to UK cinemas.

Sounding very much like a remake of Claire Denis’ 2018 Sci-Fi outing High Life  Voyagers sees the future of the human race at stake, and a group of young men and women, bred for intelligence and obedience, embarking on an expedition to colonise a distant planet. But when they uncover disturbing secrets about the mission, their training plan is soon abandoned in favour of exploring their most primitive natures, only to be consumed by fear, lust, and the unsatiable hunger for power.

VOYAGERS coming soon

 

Introduction (2021) Best Screenplay Berlinale 2021

Dir: Hong Sang-soo | South Korea, Drama 66′

Hong Sang-soo serves up his first slice of suggestible social drama for the year, at Berlinale’s 71st edition. Along with his muse (Kim Min-he) the usual sympathetic suspects join the party, the title has us hoping there may be a sudden dramatic epiphany but we’re not surprised when no such breakthrough occurs as the narrative soft-peddles enjoyably through to the end.

This is another short and sweet story, running at just 66 minutes, but make no mistake, the script is rich enough to stretch along for much longer, although the welcome brevity will always keep us coming back for more. No film festival would be complete without the South Korean master’s lightness of touch and teasing humour, and Introduction is no different.

Korean society is so coy and polite reflected once again in this delicate intergenerational piece, that will see the lowkey conflict play out between mother and son, and son and father. In one early scene a young couple meet again ever so formally after spending the previous one together. Maybe they are playing some sort of seductive game by adding an air of detachment to the rendezvous, a ploy that is always guaranteed to add a frisson of sexual tension to each new meeting. They are obviously in love. We have become accustomed to these winsome moments which are part of the director’s idiosyncratic cinema language but why this is called Introduction remains an enigma, and it could just be for no reason at all.

The film drifts peripatetically from South Korea to Germany. But one of the most interesting interludes involves the likeable Young-ho (Shin Seok-ho) who we first meet visiting his father (Kim Young-ho) at his acupuncture clinic in Seoul. The two clearly don’t see eye to eye and his father is under great emotional stress as he desperately tries to take a moment to relax in his private office, before placing strategic needles in one of his patients, famous actor (Ki Joo-bong), who, it soon emerges. dated Young-ho’s mother (Cho Yun-hee), and could be the reason for their marriage breakdown.

Meanwhile Young-ho’s timid girlfriend Ju-won (Park Mi-so) is off to study fashion in Berlin where she stays in a flat owned by a leading artist, and a friend of Ju-won’s mother (Seo Young-hwa), another rather fraught character who wants the best for her daughter in the rather controlling way mothers often do. Young-ho is also at odds with his own mother over his choice of acting as a career. Clearly she disapproves.

The film is full of these moments of tension that are so delicately appealing in their self-containment and so deftly handled with the director’s usual lightness of touch. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | Best SCREENPLAY

Petite Maman (2021) Berlinale Competition 2021

Dir: Celine Sciamma | Cast: Nina Meurisse, Margot Abascal, Josephine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Stephane Varupenne | Drama France, 72′

Petite Maman shows France’s Celine Sciamma at the height of her powers with an enchanting ghost story contemplating loss and longing through young eyes.

In competition at this year’s Berlinale, the French auteuse once again evokes the subtle sensibilities of human dynamics through her cast of child performers capturing naiveté but also resilience in the wake of a family bereavement.

The director showed a keen appreciation of childhood dynamics in her 2011 film Tomboy. Here the focus is little Nelly and how she copes in the aftermath of her grandma’s death as the family clears out the home so familiar and comforting in the first years of her life.

Avoiding sentimentality Sciamma maintains a pensive ambiguity for most of this almost spellbound drama that sees solemn 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) wondering into the nearby woods where she meets  Marion (played by identical twin sister Gabrielle), the two striking up a tentative friendship as they build a tree house. These two are so po-faced they almost resemble the couple in Kubrick’s The Shining with their chilly demeanour, but we are far removed from any horror story here in a style that is best described at fantastical realism.

Mature beyond her years Nelly views her bereft mother with detatchment although she cares for her in the days after her own mother’s death, doing chores around the house with her father (Varupenne) who she regards with scepticism chiding him over his chain-smoking smoking. Sciamma gradually abandons enigma in the second half but also keeps us guessing as the story gradually unfolds in an eerie and suspended moment in time.

Building a gentle but detached camaraderie throughout the Sanz sisters give captivating debut performances that evoke confidence but also vulnerability. Meurisse is full of sensitivity as Nelly’s mother carrying her grief with a doleful dignity. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 |

 

 

The End of St Petersburg (1927) DVD

Dir: Vasevolod Pudovkin, Mikhail Dollar | Cast: Aleksandr Chistyakov, Vera Baranovska, Ivan Chuvelyov, V Obolensky | USSR Drama 87′


Despite the grandiose and specific title, and crammed with the usual magnificent images one expects of Soviet silent cinema (aided by Pudovkin’s regular cameraman Anatoli Golovnya), this worm’s eye view of the Revolution is as frustrating to watch as Spielberg’s remake of The War of the Worlds in electing to show momentous events from the perspective of a humble onlooker (Ivan Chuvelev) stuck at the back with a rather poor view of what is unfolding, and assumes a detailed knowledge on the part the audience (which may well have existed in 1927) of – say – the role of the First World War in the fall of the Romanov dynasty to fill in the gaps.

Pudovkin, like Eisenstein, had considerable resources at his disposal when he made this tenth anniversary celebration of the Russian Revolution, and the money’s up there on the screen, but without the cinematic exhilaration of Eisenstein’s October. No film about the Revolution seems complete without its visit to the Winter Palace, however, and The End of St.Petersburg concludes with Pudovkin’s original ‘Mother’, Vera Baranovskaya, wandering into the Palace and up the central staircase without encountering a single other person. How many authentic proletarians in 1917 really wandered about the building so casually in the Revolution’s aftermath? (Just as how many shareholders ever actually visit the sweatshops from which their wealth derives, like the guy in the Hitler moustache and stiff collar who introduces himself to the hero while he’s stoking a furnace?) Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

Tina (2021) Tribute to Tina Turner

Dir: Daniel Lindsay, T J Martin | With Tina Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Angela Bassett, Kurt Loder | US Doc 118′

The most surprising quality about Tina Turner, according to Dan Lindsay and T J Martin’s revealing biopic about the superstar, was her sheer determination, given her crushing start in life. This new film chronicles Turner’s early rise to fame, her personal and professional struggles and her musical renaissance in the early 1980s. There are snatches of her iconic stage moments, with the American singer’s performance of her dynamite R&B hit:- River Deep…Mountain High being the most notable. The hit marked a move away from her controlling partner Ike, thanks to producer Phil Spector.

And there are snatches of Rolling Down the River, Heartbreak Tonight and Simple the Best – but mostly the focus is on the singer herself, revisited via the original interview audio tapes as well as commentary from the famous celebrity journalist Carl Arrington, in conversation in her Swiss lakeside chateau. Kurt Loder (the Rolling Stone editor), Angela Bassett (who played her in What’s Love Got to Do With It ), Oprah Winfrey and playwright Katori Hall, who wrote the book for the musical, are the most informative talking heads in a film whose first half is, appropriately, still haunted by the shadow of Ike.

She – who died on 24 May 2023 – was born in 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee, the child of cotton farmers. Her parents fought endlessly and her mother hit back – a defiance that clearly gave Tina her get up go after the two eventually disappeared leaving her and her siblings with a cousin. They never came back.

And she speaks out about her turbulent life and marriage to Ike who beat her with coat hangers, even when she was pregnant, during those Motown years. She admits to being “insanely afraid of him” so much so she attempted suicide two or three times due to his womanising and cruelty, and she finally left him-  ironically on the 4th July – finding salvation in Buddhism which changed her life and set her free to be resilient and self-determining – not a victim  – during her fifty year career in music. She left her marriage to Ike with nothing but her ‘name’ which is now a brand. So she had to go back on the road to make some money.

The turning point came in the 1980s when she came into contact with the engaging Australian manager Roger Davies who asked her how she saw a new solo career. She told him she wanted to be “the first female roll’n’roll singer to fill a stadium”.

And so he sent her to Britain for a new chapter in her life, setting off with a song she at first detested ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’, written by Manchester born Terry Britten (and originally recorded for Bucks Fizz) that became the breakout number in an album ‘Private Dancer’, that sold out in two weeks and went on to spawn 50 concerts. Tina was 50. At this point manager Kurt Loder suggested she author a book to ward off the tacky stories that still dogged her time before and after Ike. And they didn’t go away – although the book ‘I, Tina Turner’ became a bestseller.

Restyled and booted, Tina’s terrific body and gyrating hips – not to mention her dynamite vocal delivery – made her a stunning stage presence and the film captures this jubilant wave of female emancipation that lit up London’s Wembley Arena and everywhere else she played.

The final scenes are gilded with a blissful aura as Tina reveals the love in her life in the shape of German music pro Erwin Bach, whom she met in 1986 and married 27 years later. And it’s these golden moments that really shine in a biopic that quietly reflects on the past and joyfully celebrates the tremendous feminine force of nature that was Tina Turner. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | Premiere

Ted K (2021) Berlinale Panorama 2021

Dir: Tony Stone | Cast: Sharlto Copley, Drew Powell, Amber Rose Mason, Travis Bruyer, Megan Folsom, Andrew Senn | USA 2021 121′

We’ve all felt stressed out by noise and leaf blowers or that Tesco doesn’t stock our favourite break anymore but terrorist Ted Kaczynski took things a stage further killing three people and injuring 23 in his attempt to bring about “a revolution against the industrial system”.

“Yesterday was quite good, the only disruptive sounds were nine evil jets.” wrote Ted, a Harvard Maths professor, in his diary of 25,000 pages penned in the seclusion of a wood cabin in deepest Montana and his sanctuary after dropping out of a society he had grown to hate with a vengeance, Ted is the infamous Unabomber.

Tony Stone’s study of mental disintegration is a slick and engaging procedural drama that moves tensely through its paces to show how a brilliant albeit emotionally disconnected son and brother become a domestic terrorist, prompting the largest manhunt in FBI history. The film focuses on the final seven years from the late 1980s to his capture in 1996 and is screening in Berlin’s Panorama section at this year’s festival.

But Ted K never uncovers what drove Kaczynski  into isolation in the first place although we certainly get a glimpse of his family background, through fraught conversations, particularly with his mother who had possibly played her part in his complex personality disorder, and he rails at her in one phone booth conversation, blaming her for his dysfunctional relationship with the opposite sex, claiming to have never touched a woman despite being, by now, well into his forties.

Sharlto Copley makes a formidable lead as the geekishly sinister ‘Basil Fawly’ type character. An unknowable action man who vehemently competes against the elements in the stunningly photographed landscapes of the Big Sky Country on the borders of Canada. There’s a distinct retro feel to the small-town locations where Ted arrives on his easy rider bike to research his victims in computer shops, where one assistant shows him how to correct a sentence on a new-fangled word processor. You can feel the anger coiled like spring beneath his well-formed physique – Christian Bale could have been another contender for the part – although Copley has a meaner look to his craggy features and although irritated by noise and machinery, we see him carefully blow-drying his hair in the mirror after hitting himself on the nose with a brick. And there’s a fascination to watching him go about his daily tasks, often swearing under his breath in terse exchanges, especially when confronted by women.

Stone clearly speculates about Ted – clearly he’s no charmer in the style of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dharmer who were more intimately concerned with killing their victims. Ted K is all about reclusiveness but he still talks of the tremendous relief at ‘getting his own back’ after after sending mail bombs to his imagined adversaries. Ted’s concern is a more ‘noble’ one aimed at those he blames for destroying nature and allowing technology to take over society’s wellbeing. Rather than intellectually engaging with those causing the damage, he strikes back like a wounded animal, killing them.

Stone makes atmospheric use of an electronic score by Blanck Mass that alternates with soothing classical vibes from Schubert’s No 2, Op 100 (that Kubrick memorably used in Barry Lyndon) But Copley makes no attempt to embroider or dress up the banal evil of his character playing him as a straightforward Mr Angry from Montana whose dour prickly introspection does lighten up a touch when a pleasant woman smiles at him in a shop. Stone’s portrait is more fascinating than thrilling but he doesn’t attempt to fashion it into an arthouse extravaganza – in the style of The True History of the Kelly Gang, and in some ways this is to film’s credit in portraying Kaczynski’s ordinariness and social dislocation. He is a deeply wounded man crying out for attention and rehabilitation. Or at least that’s what comes across in this watchable study of loneliness and desperation. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

I’m Your Man | Ich Bin Dein Mensch (2021) Best Leading Performance Berlinale 2021

Dir: Maria Schrader, Wri: Maria Schrader, Jan Schomburg, Emma Braslavsky | Cast: Dan Stevens, Maren Eggert, Sandra Hüller, Hans Löw, Wolfgang Hübsch, Annika Meier, Falilou Seck, Jürgen Tarrach, Henriette Richter-Röhl, Monika Oschek | Sci-fi Drama Germany 105’

Dan Stevens plays a sycophantic male escort in Maria Schrader’s darkly comic Sci-fi drama screening in competition at Berlinale 2021.

Slick, sophisticated and satisfying this dating movie with a difference sees things from a distinctly female perspective exploring love and desire in a scenario may remind you of another recent German comedy Toni Erdmann which also starred Sandra Huller as a put-upon professional. Here Maren Eggert plays a similar character, a hard-working scientist at the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin, struggling to care for her dementia-ridden dad (Hubsch). She accepts an invitation to participate in an extraordinary experiment that will fund her research. For three weeks, she is to live with a humanoid robot. And this is where Dan Stevens comes in as ‘Tom’ a dating machine in human form, with the intention of fulfilling her dreams. But although Tom’s artificial intelligence has been designed to allow it to morph into the man of Alma’s dreams, sadly it is on the spectrum feelings-wise, unable to appreciate human emotion, forcing the couple to seek professional help, from a relationship counsellor in the shape of Sandra Huller.

Maria Schrader, who won a Silver Bear for acting and is the director behind breakout TV mini series Unorthodox and award-winning biopic drama about Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, directs with supreme confidence adapting her script from a book by Emma Braslavsky, and adding a suggestive cinematic spin to her intuitive grasp of the subtle dynamics of love and dating, and the chemistry behind acting, in a film that reflects the reality that love relies just as much on the lows as the as the highs to be emotionally fulfilling for the human psyche. Maren Eggert is superb as the thinking woman’s love interest in a performance that is fraught with emotion as well as thoughtful dignity, never resorting to histrionics or melodrama. Benedict Neuenfels makes this a pleasure to look at with his lush summery landscapes of Germany and Denmark.

But the film belongs to Dan Stevens who gives a nuanced performance in a difficult role as a robot that teeters between the ideal emotionally intelligent man and a geeky robotic guy you may even and have dated yourself and eventually grown to love – and even fancy – for his truly masculine take on life. I’m Your Man shows a bright future, where women (and men!) can get what they really want. But do they really know what it is? MT

IN CINEMAS FROM 13 AUGUST 2021 | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

Blast of Silence (1961) DVD

Dir: Allen Baron | Cast: Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter Clune | US Noir Thriller 77′

The most valuable asset to an ambitious young filmmaker of the 21st Century would probably be a time machine capable of returning you to the year 1960. Clocking in at just 77 minutes but seeming much longer, Blast of Silence is further evidence that in those days it would have taken genius for an independent filmmaker NOT to create a classic city ‘noir’. Just make sure there’s film in your camera and take your pick from all the breathtaking compositions – complete with vintage cars and sharply dressed passers-by – constantly forming around you; even Michael Winner couldn’t fail to turn in a black & white urban gem three years later with West 11 (1963).

It certainly anticipates Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) – but then so do Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss (1955) and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) – and plenty have been seduced by Blast of Silence’s aura of monochrome period cool into extravagantly overpraising it. Allen Baron’s inexpressive performance as hit-man Frankie Bono (he resembles a young George C. Scott) certainly provides a perfect blank slate on which to inscribe any profundities or angst that grab you. In his capacity as writer-director Baron at some point late in production evidently felt the need to do just that, calling upon two eminent blacklistees whose services at the time would have been available at an affordable price.

The insistent narration reminiscent of Mark Hellinger’s in The Naked City was written under the pseudonym Mel Davenport by Waldo Salt (who later won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home), while the rasping voice of Lionel Stander is uncredited but unmistakable on the soundtrack, providing the glue which with Merrill Brody’s photography holds the film together. Unfortunately much of what Stander keeps telling us on the soundtrack doesn’t really need to be spelled out so relentlessly; while Meyer Kupferman’s jazz score is extremely effective in moderation, but gets very noisy in places.

Despite supposedly being such a pro, Frankie Bono’s murder of Big Ralph (played by Larry Tucker, who I recognised from Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor) is remarkably amateurishly executed, his long-anticipated hit of Troiano no big deal, and he proves remarkably easy to ambush at the film’s conclusion. Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) Netflix

Dir: Joseph Sargent | Cast: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, James Broderick, Dick O’Neill, Lee Wallace | US Thriller 104′

A depressing sign of the times is that Ridley Scott’s underpowered 2009 remake of this classic thriller has far more posts on IMDb, after ten years, than the original after twenty. Mind you, even older viewers would be hard-pushed to recall the name of the actual director. But Joseph Sargent (whose long career in TV included James Cagney’s final role in Terrible Joe Moran) put his long career directing actors to good use in his one major cinema release, filmed in New York with a cast recruited largely from Broadway (including Rudy Bond – who played the judge in the opening scene of 12 Angry Men – as the police commissioner).

A slow-burner with a terrific score by David Shire (whose other films include The Conversation and Zodiac). During filming everyone knew they were making a winner, but at the box office back in the day failed to come up trumps, and the thriller rarely showed up on tv during the eighties. It was eventually resurrected twenty years later as a cult movie after inspiring Reservoir Dogs, which turned the film inside out by not actually showing the caper itself, dealing instead which its planning and aftermath.

In Reservoir Dogs we instead see the squabbling among grown men over who gets what colour, while the black suits worn in Tarantino’s film reflect the simple but effective disguises employed by the original desperadoes (it comes as quite a shock when Mr Grey turns out to be bald underneath his hat).

Frederick Raphael cited the use of the word ‘Gesundheit’ and its implications in the final scene as exemplary of the high standard of the writing; evident throughout the film as when one of the security men observes that “You’d think a million dollars would look like more” or when Garber is surprised to discover that Inspector Daniels is black. The one major flaw is when Blue behaves wholly out of character by going back into the tunnel to kill the plainclothes man solely so that he can get caught (Matthau’s line that they don’t “at the moment” have the death penalty in New York State shows just how long ago this film was made). The scene where Blue kills the guard is genuinely shocking since we have come to care about him, but demonstrates just how ruthless Blue is and justifies his own sticky ending. Richard Chatten

NOW ON NETFLIX

Gunman on the Streets (1950) DVD

Dir: Frank Tuttle | Cast: Dane Clark, Simone Signoret, Fernand Gravey, Robert Duke, Michel Andre | US Noir thriller 86′

Atmospherically shot by the veteran Oscar-winning cameraman Eugen Schüfftan, Gunman in the Streets is the English-language version of a co-production released in France as Le Traqué. The French version is now even more obscure than this, and since it had a different credited director (Borys Lewin, normally an editor) may be substantially different from this one. All those obviously Gallic types speaking English seem a little incongruous and it would be easy to imagine this with subtitles (Dane Clark and Robert Duke were presumably dubbed). Jean-Pierre Melville probably saw Le Traqué, and Fernand Gravet’s police commissioner, suavely hot on Clark’s trail, strongly resembles Paul Meurisse’s Commissaire Blot in Le Deuxième Souffle (1966).

The English-language version bears the name of blacklisted Hollywood veteran Frank Tuttle (before he yielded in 1951 to pressure to name names to the HUAC), which may be why it was never released theatrically in the United States. But it can’t have helped that it’s so relentlessly sordid, grim and claustrophobic, with a hero unlikeable even by Dane Clark’s usual charmless standard.

It starts like Odd Man Out, with Clark on the run on the streets of Paris with a bullet in his shoulder after shooting his way to freedom. He contacts former girlfriend Simone Signoret, curtly informs her that he needs 300,000 francs pronto to get out of the country, and they hole up in the apartment of a creepy admirer of Signoret’s (Michel André) who Clark handles predictably roughly. What Signoret (then in her absolute youthful prime) ever saw in this vicious little runt was beyond me; I guess he must have been dynamite in the sack. Richard Chatten

NOW ON DVD FROM AMAZON

The Mauritanian (2021) Amazon Prime 2021

Dir: Kevin Macdonald | Cast: Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Levi, Saamer Usmani, Baya Belal | US Thriller 129′

Tahar Rahim plays a longtime Guantánamo Bay detainee accused of masterminding 9/11, in Kevin Mcdonald’s worthy biopic, based on the memoirs of one Mohamedou Ould Slahi – aka The Mauritanian.

The film’s opening scenes unfold in an exotic North African desert location where a tented wedding ceremony is reaching its climax. But not for the white-robed Slahi (Rahim) who is whisked away and later brutally tortured in scenes of extreme violence, after his incarceration. Next we meet ‘no nonsense’ lawyer Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) tasked with batting for Slahi in his habeas corpus case, after he fails to be charged or given a trial. Her opponent in the ensuing courtroom potboiler is prosecutor Stuart Couch (Cumberbatch rocking a Louisiana accent is the highpoint of the film) and they make a formidable pair investigating what really happened to Slahi in the infamous prison. Denis Menochet, Shailene Woodley and Zachery Levi offer strong support but feel sadly underused in the scheme of things.

There’s incendiary dramatic potential here, and considerable humanitarian clout – not to mention a fabulous cast – and some swanky locations: New York, Cape Town and Mauritania itself – but somehow Macdonald delivers and underwhelming thriller whose finger-wagging script is so focused on the parlous state of US Democracy it starts to feel preachy rather than powerful in convincing us to care about those affected, particularly Slahi himself. And he comes across – mostly in flashback – as rather a glib character which is disappointing considering his stunning track record in a variety of roles. MT

PREMIERS ON PRIME VIDEO 1 APRIL 2021 IN THE UK | Premiered at Berlin Film Festival 2021

BERLINALE SPECIALS 

 

 

 

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)

Dir: Radu Jude | Drama, Romania, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Croatia 2021 | 106 min| Romanian | Cast: Katia Pescaru, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Malai, Nicoldim Ungureanu

The moral of Radu Jude’s latest film is simple: don’t put anything incriminating on film. But Bad Luck Banging addresses far wider concerns that its title suggests: hypocrisy, misogyny, tyranny, racism and of course sex are the elements of this intoxicating, indigestible cocktail – you may even feel sick by the end. If not, you’ll be left with a real mouthful to chew over. This thematically thorny Golden Bear winner is not for the timid, and unfolds in three distinct parts.

Known for his unbridled dramas, snide social satires and several sombre documentaries, the Romanian provocateur delivers a mordant social satire laced with his usual brand of dark and irreverent humour and set in a crumbling Bucharest. Jude describes his treatise as a sketchbook, a work in progress, an unedited collage of ideas. It’s demanding, aggressive and visually stimulating – and opens, appropriately, with a bout of raunchy sex, between school teacher Emi and her partner Eugen.

Emi, (Katia Pescariu, who ironically last played a nun in Beyond the Hills), finds her career at stake when a video of her carnal encounter, shared on an adult only porn site, ends up on the general Internet. Discovering her flirty faux-pas Emi flees through the streets of Bucharest. And this febrile odyssey fuels the film’s extensive second part which starts as an enlightening architectural tour of the centre, its crumbling facades and landmarks such as the Roman Orthodox cathedral and Nicolae Ceausescu’s Palace, but soon widens into an opportunity for the director to air his outspoken views on the state of the nation in a piquant pot-pourri of archive footage that reeks of subversion with its salacious snapshots and facts from the capital’s colourful past. These include Jewish and Roma atrocities, Orthodox Christian ceremonies, folklore and fables. As images flash before us – a row of pigs heads and a woman performing fellatio contrast with icons and ancient texts – and more or less anything the director could lay his hands on to back up his view that society as a whole is hypocritical, pornographic and deeply misanthropic.

The third act takes us back to Emi who must now face the music in a socially distanced kangaroo court of teachers, religious officials, random citizens, and a man in an unfeasibly large teacosy, who all watch the tape – some quite attentively (especially the males) before holding forth with their vehement views in raucous and melodramatic debate on the rights and wrongs of Emi’s behaviour, working up to the film’s over-excited finale. This is an exhausting film to watch, but one that presents Romanian society as intelligent, fervent in its beliefs and proud to stand by them. And although we never really get to know – or even like – Emi as a woman, she serves the narrative as a fearless self-determining female of the future who refuses to take things lying down. MT

NOW ON RELEASE | WINNER GOLDEN BEAR 2021

 

 

Eye of the Storm (2020) Glasgow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Anthony Baxter | UK Doc 78 mins

“In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king” Desiderius Erasmus

James Morrison (1932-2020) was one of Britain’s finest Scottish landscape painters and a founder member of the Glasgow Group of artists. A new documentary set to premiere at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival paints a lively and amusing portrait of the painter himself and his vision of climate change that became his focus in the final years of his life when failing eyesight putting an impressionistic spin on what many regard as his finest work. Apart from offering insight into the painter’s substantial body of work and methods, this is the fascinating story of his greatest challenge. With his eyesight failing, one of Britain’s greatest landscape painters attempts one final masterpiece.

Hooking us in with its climate change credentials Eye of the Storm offers much much more. Entertaining and enjoyable, this artist’s impression of our changing world, also works as a mini Scottish travelogue, brought to the screen by Anthony Baxter (You’ve Been Trumped) who shows how the laid back and likeable character was inspired to paint Glasgow’s shipyards, and the countryside of Scotland, France and South Africa, and a series of works reflecting the impact of climate change after travelling to the Arctic. The artist had long be fascinated by the changing face of his native Scotland and the countryside in general was an issue close to his heart.

In his bright and airy studio the tousled haired Morrison shares his horror of not being able to paint – his eyesight dwindling – in the build up to a retrospective of his work in The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. His watercolour Green Valley (1972) will feature, amongst other works, in an exhibition dedicated to Angus landscapes. He began to paint the Angus outdoors in the 1970s ‘The Rolling Landscapes of Angus (1973). The following decade would see him moving to the north-west Highlands where he befriended a number of local artists, including the renowned figurative painter Joan Eardley. Yet even his famous landscapes avoid human presence:”I don’t want people, they seem an irrelevance to what the landscape is about”.

After studying art in Glasgow under David Donaldson, who taught him a technique of using a spent match (struck on his shoe heel) to get a head start on his life drawing classes, quite literally starting from a top down approach. Then after consciously moving away from the leftwing vibe of his early fellow painters in Glasgow. Morrison describes how he became increasingly drawn to painting the city’s built environment – some areas which no longer exist – and these sequences are enlivened by archive footage of tenement demolition, along with animated drawings and inter-titles featuring quotes from Cezanne, and pictures of Matisse.

In 1960 a move to the ancient East Coast town of Catterline (Scotland’s answer to St Ives with its artist community led by Joan Eardley) saw Morrison being drawn to seascapes with the fishing boats a frequent subject, a painting from the era ‘East Coast Fishing Boat’ (1962) describes in monochrome detail the magnificent fishing vessels which had already done decades of service in the unforgiving North Sea.

In 1971 Morrison found himself moving down the coast to teach at Dundee’s wellknown Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art where he made the next twenty years of his life about opening the horizons for those learning to paint, rather than setting a curriculum. During these exciting years, Morrison gave his students as much scope as possible. And it was in Dundee that he started painting ‘en plein air’ like the original impressionists, with their famous technique of getting the paint straight onto the canvas, after painting out the white, and without preparatory sketching. His hands on approach included mixing his own paints and stretching his own canvases, and it’s here that we get an impromptu visit to the famous French paintbrush shop Sénnélier in Paris.

His first visit to the Arctic came about after he met a biologist, Dr Jean Balfour (who suggested he should paint there), and these sequences are beautifully brought to life by Catriona Black’s animations and archive footage of Morrison at work. The documentary reaches its finale with a sense of anticipation as the artist goes ‘into the eye of the storm’ with his much anticipated, triumphant final work.

Talking heads include Catriona Black who animated key moments of Morrison’s life for the film, his art historian son Professor John Morrison, and the Montrose writer Dennis Rice. MT

EYE OF THE STORM is released in virtual cinemas from 5th March 2021 

McManus Gallery, Dundee

The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus Egon Christus (2021) Berlinale Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2021

Dir.: David and Sasa Vajda; Cast: Paul Arámbula, Sascha Alexander Gersak, Roxanna Stewens, Angelo Martone, Benjamin Stein, Zora Schemm; BR Deutschland 2021, 51 min.

David and Sasa Vajda’s debut feature is an uneasy docu-fiction hybrid that follows a motley crew of drug addicts who have found refuge in an evangelical psychosocial support group at the outskirts of Berlin. Rumour has it that one former member Angelo (Martone) was a Mafia boss. Run by a self-proclaimed priest, a self-confessed junkie himself, who often insults and humiliates his ‘flock’, there is no structure in their day-to-day life, just an endless flow of psychotic people, left more or less to themselves.

Egon (Arámbula) is the main focus. Recently new to the group he does his best to fit in having to repeat even short utterances at least twice as he is sinks further and further in his psychosis during the filming. When Ben (Stein), beats the priest at chess, Egon compares him to Michael Jordan: “Ben is a Pro”. It soon emerges that Ben nearly overdosed, and that Egon avoids having a shower, apparently sharing his reluctance with Jesus to clean himself (clearly this is the key to the film’s title).

Egon is full of the usual gestures common to his particular mental illness. Out on the street he waves at the cars flying by, “allowing” them to pass. When a dumpster lorry stops to collect rubbish, Egon gracefully permits the men to get on with their work. Pinky (Schlemm) sings badly into a microphone, before declaring that Jesus is dead. Egon grabs the micro from her, sharing his ‘encounter’ with Jesus the previous night. “He said, he loved me, and does not like to shower. And he smoked cigars. And I said to Jesus, ‘laugh, at least once’.” As the film plays out Egon refers to himself increasingly in the third person singular – a sure sign of an impending split in his personality. He asks the priest if he will go to Heaven. “I want to know now”. At one point during dinner, the priest asks Egon to hoot like an owl, and the latter acquiesces.

We suddenly cut to a Super 8 home movie with the young Jenny (Stewans), who had been sexually abused by her father since the age of ten. Her torment went on for years. The voice-over also confesses Jenny and the family watched TV, a broadcast featuring child prodigies, one of them could remember all street names in Oslo.

DoP Antonia Lange contributes with her very realistic images to this perturbing and very unsettling narrative. Clearly all participants are suffering from major psychosis, and should be looked after in a proper psychiatric unit. The filmmakers’ neutrality is somehow infuriating – even though they stay true to their fly-on-the-wall cinema-verite approach. Benjamin Stein died and the feature is dedicated to him. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL

Natural Light | Termeszetes feny (2021) Silver Bear | Best Director | Berlinale 2021

Dir: Dénes Nagy | Cast: Ferenc Szabó, Tamás Garbacz, László Bajkó, Gyula Franczia, Ernő Stuhl, Gyula Szilágyi, Mareks Lapeskis, Krisztián Kozó, Csaba Nánási, Zsolt Fodor | Hu/Latvia /France/Ger | War drama Hungarian, Russian | 103’

“My subject is War and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity’ Wilfred Owen.

Natural Pine is an unusual name for a Second World War film but refers here to the vast snowbound forests of deepest Russia during the long winter of 1943 where Hungarian director Denes Nagy takes us for his powerfully evocative debut feature, screening in competition at this year’s Berlinale.

If ever there was a film to be enjoyed on the big screen it is this one, its inhospitable landscapes, incandescent skylines and sombrely lit scenes of grim human endurance install a feeling of unsettling gloom from the outset as we are plunged into a Russian heart of darkness. The story is simple, the emotional toll is the main focus. Hungarian farmer turned infantryman István Semetka (Ferenc Szabo) is part of a Hungarian task force sent out on a gruelling eight month stint in the snowy wastelands, looking for partisans. This is no action movie but a thoughtful and cinematic contemplation of the moral dilemmas he faces along with his comrades face, and the emotional and physical repercussions that follow. It’s a unique war film. And one that commands respect.

While heading towards a remote village, the company falls under enemy fire and their commander is killed. So as the highest ranking officer, Semetka must take over, guiding his men through a swamp to an occupied village where they regroup and begin to question the locals. In time Sergeant Major Koleszar (Bajko) arrives to take over, his story of a bear attack is restrained and moving. Several villagers escape and, at his own risk, the courageous Koleszar stays on with the weapons and seven of the men, sending Semetka back to base with those injured. At a solemn meeting with his commander in chief, he is ordered to take two weeks leave with his family before returning to his ordeal.

This meticulous film takes its sober subject seriously in portentous, slow-burn sequences that convey the pity of war in the faces of the characters. There is a intimate reportage quality to the way Tamas Dobos’ camera reflects and lingers on the human face of the conflict, alighting on details: an insect on a civilian’s ear, a baby bawling in its mother’s arms, a woman begging for food – echoing the style of Don McCullin or Robert Capa. Each frame brims with restrained feeling. A picture conveys a thousand words. And it’s these painterly frames that carry most weight in Sbabo’s impressionistic first feature. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | BEST DIRECTOR | Denes Nagy

Minari (2021)

Dir/Wri: Lee Isaac Chung | Cast: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Yuh-Jung Youn, Alan S. Kim, Will Patton, Noel Kate Cho | Drama

Lee Isaac Chung’s endearing portrait of a Korean-American family, Minari won the hearts and minds at this year’s Sundance, taking home both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, and Yuh-Jung Youn went on to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

The pace is gentle and upbeat as Chung unspools his autobiographical immigrant story – mostly in English- that feels real in its depiction of rural American in the 1980s (filmed in Oklahoma) then quite a difference place than the albeit modern Korea of his birth. Brimming with warmth and a touch of nostalgia, this is a universal experience of adjustment but the details are personal, imbued with the Korean sense of humour, and always delivered with a lightness of touch.

Originally starting off in California, farming-minded father Jacob (Steven Yeun) decides that the wide open spaces of Arkansas may be a better option for his family of four — mother Monica (Yeri Han), daughter Soonj (Noel Kate Cho) and son David (Alan S. Kim) — and they soon settle into a prefab with fifty acres in the hope of building up  a small-holding. With this idea in mind, Jacob and Monica take a job in the agricultural sector separating male and female baby chicks (or “chicken sexing”).

Monica is the only one who finds this new life a strain, the kids are only too happy to amuse themselves with plenty of land to play on. Grandma’s arrival helps to lighten things up providing a welcome buffer zone between Monica and Jacob – who are now barely talking – and helping with the kids who are the focus with their cheeky antics and naturalistic performances.

Jacob teams up for company with the local Bible-fearing eccentric (Will Patton) who spends a great deal of his time channeling Jesus, dragging a full-sized wooden cross along the main road. Feeling back-footed in his attempts thus far in providing for the family, Jacob’s business hunch finally shows signs of potentially coming good. But dramatic heft and gentle tension is provided when little David is in need of emergency medical treatment. No NHS to help here in the wilds of rural America. And although Minari doesn’t come through with a satisfactory conclusion to all the issues it raises, charisma and a real feelgood factor carries it through, along with winning performances from an impressive cast. MT

Now on release nationwide from 17th May | Oscar Winning for Best Supporting Actress: Yuh-Jung Youn |  Glasgow Film Festival 2021

 

 

 

 

From Where They Stood | À Pas Aveugles (2021) Berlinale Forum

Dir.: Christophe Cognet; Documentary with photos by Rudolf Cisar, Jean Brichaux, Georges Angéli, Wenzel Polack, Joanna Szydlowska, Alberto Errera; France 2021, 110 min.

In his groundbreaking new documentary French director/writer Christophe Cognet shines a light on photographs taken by inmates incarcerated in the Nazi camps of Dachau, Buchenwald, Mittelbau Dora, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz Birkenau. This creative act of resistance is another testament to the horror of the Holocaust.

The film’s French title From Where they Stood is best translated as “Shot Blindly”: Photographers had to work quickly – and undercover – as detection would have meant certain death. Newspapers or odd items of clothing came in handy for their covert reportage of their experiences – a sort of photographic message in a bottle – showing what they all went through during those tragic years.

Cognet unearthed the treasure trove, carefully locating and enlarging the images, before mounting them, framed, on a mini-dolly, so they could be matched with the help of trees to the exact positions in each camp.

Dachau survivor Rudolf Cisar made an album of 50 photos, today housed in the National Archives of Prague. During his time in Dachau Cisar led the resistance group ‘Ruda’ and shot his images of the camp’s sordid SS Museum, providing a day-to-day glimpse of life in the camps. The photos of the overcrowded infirmary, packed with typhoid sufferers, are particularly moving. Cisar also photographed the empty camp during Sundays, a day off, when most inmates stayed in their barracks, with only a few venturing out to talk to friends.

In Dachau Cisar chronicled executions, well aware that he could easily join the victims should he be caught. Jean Brichaux snapped French prisoners arriving and being put into barracks, they were joined by the Spanish writer Jorge Semprun, who had fled his country for France. Georges Angéli’s photos of the Brothel and the Cinema are particularly cruel when you consider that women from Ravensbrück camp were forced here into prostitution, having arrived in cattle trucks. The Germans used the cinema as a torture chamber, a macabre memory of their soullessness.

In Mittelbau Dora camp, Czech prisoner Wenzel Polack recorded the underground factory where inmates where forced to work day and night. His images serve as a courageous act of resistance that saw the inmates take back control of what really happened, even if doing so could have cost them their lives.

In Ravensbrück, Polish inmate Joanna Szydlowska recorded the terrible injuries she, and two of her friends suffered during medical experiments in the “hospital”. Dressed up in the best clothes possible, she bravely tries to smile while showing the long gash in her leg. Szydlowska later gave the photo to the French inmate Anise Postel-Vinay, who stood a better chance of surviving. In the end, both women survived, with Postel-Vinay taking the photos to Paris in 1945.These women were known as “rabbits” – the German word for Guinea Pig is “Versuchskaninchen” (Test Rabbit). The women were injected with gas to provoke gangrene, they were then re-injected with the bacilli, before the wound was sewn up. Prisoners’ limbs were repeatedly broken, severed muscles slashed, the results of these experiments would all be recorded.

Alberto Errera, a Greek-Jewish officer and camp resistance member, took part in the preparations for the Sonderkommando Uprising of 1944 – the same year he was murdered – his photos featured the interior of Crematorium 5 from inside the Gas Chambers, through the very same opening used by the SS to drop deadly gas capsules into the void where inmates would be sealed. The Sonderkommando (featured in Son of Saul) was a special unit of Jewish prisoners, whose task it was to clear the gas chambers, stack up the corpses and take them to the Crematorium to be burned (Sonderkommando members were always executed after a certain time limit by the SS, as not to have any witnesses). Whilst Errera was taking the photos, prisoners watched his back.

From Where They Stood avoids sensationalism at all costs, the filmmaker and his team treat the subject matter with the utmost respect and dignity, echoing Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah: Cognet lets the images tell the story, the trial-and-error attempts of the film team to pinpoint the locations adding a sense of tension to the ensemble as viewer is transformed into a first-hand witness. Another utterly compelling tribute to man’s will to survive and tell the real story. AS

BERLINALE FORUM 2021

 

Apache Drums (1951)

Dir: Hugo Fregonese | Wri: David Chandler | Cast: Stephen McNally, Coleen Grey, Willard Parker, Arthur Shields, James Griffith, Armando Silvestre | US Western 76′

Growing older makes you release just how shockingly young some of cinema’s luminaries were when they passed on (I have now outlived Max Ophuls by seven years, for example) and that Val Lewton was practically a boy when he exited film history aged a mere 46.

Lewton’s next move would have been to join Stanley Kramer at Columbia, but (having just tread water with two duff programmers for Metro) he went out on a high note with this, his only western, for Universal, that strikingly anticipates Zulu (right down to those under siege bursting lustily into ‘Men of Harlech’) and Assault on Precinct 13.

It was also his only Technicolor production and the potential for colour to heighten thrills is adroitly exploited in judiciously applied splashes of colour, like the green dress heroine Coleen Gray wears and the war paint the attackers come covered in when dramatically hurling themselves through the windows. Those almost expressionistically stylised windows (often visible in the background preparing us for attacks that don’t necessarily come) gradually change colour as the sky goes orange from Spanish Boot ablaze, and night becomes dawn (like the Manhattan skyline in Hitchcock’s Rope) until the door itself is finally devoured by flames when the final onslaught eventually arrives. Richard Chatten

NOW ON PARAMOUNT

Iorram | Boat Song (2021) Glasgow Film Festival 2021

Dir: Alistair Cole | UK Doc 96′

The first ever film in Scots Gaelic and none the worse for it, the native tongue – which has possibly only a year to live in its native setting – adding considerable atmosphere and poignancy to this impressionistic and informative portrait about fishing past and present before globalisation, climate change and Brexit decimated the stock. This film will certainly be meat ‘n bread (and possibly fish?) for dear old Nicola Sturgeon who is very much the poster girl for her country’s fishing industry. Livelihoods are at risk, not to mention the Scottish cultural heritage.

Back in the good old days fishing was the main industry up in the Western Isles around Barra, Vatersay and Cape Wrath, over a hundred miles North of Glasgow where the film screens at this year’s festival. The inhabitants of the islands today are observed on land and on water going about the business of fishing, while the ghostly voices of their ancestors tell stories and sing songs about life at the mercy of the sea.

In the mid-20th century, with the advent of portable sound recording, researchers started visiting the Outer Hebrides to preserve the voices of the islands for future generations. These were the first recordings to capture the oral history of Scottish Gaelic culture which stretches back thousands of years, and once covered the whole of Scotland, but now survives mainly in the island communities off the west coast.

Iorram is a second feature documentary for Alistair Cole whose work explores the link between language and the environment, as here where the evocative seascapes of the Outer Hebrides light up every frame. Music and fishing go very much hand in hand with being a sailor, songs and shanties keeping up the spirits and camaraderie during long or arduous forays into the blue yonder, and award-winning folk musician Aidan O’Rourke provides the film’s entrancing soundscape. Interestingly the word for rabbit sounds similar to the Spanish ‘conijo’.

Gaelic was once spoken across most of Scotland, but sadly Scottish Gaelic has now only around 11,000 habitual speakers, mainly in the Outer Hebrides, according to a recent study by the University of Highlands & Islands. Ironically, interest in Scots Gaelic is booming, with Gaelic schools flourishing in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and world interest in learning the the language has come via the internet and a ‘phone app (Duolingo has more than 560,000 registered learners worldwide signed up to Scots Gaelic).

Alistair Cole works as his own DoP to create stunning 4k observational footage of island life today. While the sailers prepare their creels to set out for the lobster and langoustine catch, and these action sequences are combined with imaginative land and seascapes captured on the widescreen. Meanwhile the film’s narration is composed of archive sound recordings of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides from the 1940s to 1970s reminiscing about the past when fish were so plentiful that the boats were often out all summer, and the locals time on land was spent busy with the harvest and looking after livestock. Holidays were never even considered, let alone taken. Other filmed footage shows local woman going about the meticulous preparation of the prized catch destined for restaurants all over Europe and these contrast with the lilting voices of the past sharing magical tales of fairies, mermaids and patron saints of the islands keeping the folklore alive.

Over the past decade, the School of Scottish Studies Archives has digitised and restored these recordings. Cole has selected the most emotional and lyrical voices in exploring the often fraught relationship between the fishing community and the stormy Atlantic Ocean.

World Premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 28th 2021, followed by a virtual UK theatrical release from March 5th 2021 via the Modern Films ( in collaboration with key independent cinemas across the UK, and other partner organisations.

 

 

 

The Girl and the Spider (2021) Best Director Ex-aequo | Berlinale Encounters 20201

Dir: Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher | Cast: Henriette Confurius, Liliane Amuat, Ursina Lardi, Flurin Giger, André M. Hennicke, Ivan Georgiev, Dagna Litzenberger Vinet, Lea Draeger, Sabine Timoteo, Birte Schnöink | Switzerland 2021German 98’

The Girl and the Spider is an ambiguous puzzle of a film exploring the anatomy of a messy break-up. Dreams and anecdotes keep us entertained, while pets – a cat and a dog – steal the limelight.

This second feature from Swiss twins Ramon and Silvain Züricher (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen) sees Lisa (Amuat) leaving Mara (Confurius) to stay in their polyamorous flatshare. Chaos reigns throughout, Lisa’s mum (Ladri) flirts with removal man Jurek  (Hennicke) while overseeing the move. Mara swears “Fuck you!”, with Lisa answering “Later, first I move out”. suggesting that all may not be lost.

Clearly though the relationship has hit rock-bottom when Lisa insists on taking the dishwasher, telling Mara “you will never leave this dump, you’ll kick the bucket here”. To complicate matters Jan (Geiger) and Kerstin (Litzenberger-Vinet) also share this female centric ‘love-in’. Jan seems to be keen on Mara. Then there is Nora (Draeger), who spends a great deal of her time in bed asleep.

A young boy and a girl, possibly neighbours, add to the mayhem. And  Mrs. Arnold (Schoch), who stole the neighbour’s cat (who is now biting through cables), but has since returned it. The piano will stay in the flat as it belongs to the chambermaid (Schnöink), who once owned the place and is now working as a cleaning supervisor on a cruise ship – not that her short story makes anything clearer.

DoP Alexander Haßkerl conveys the general claustrophobia of this polyamorous set-up that takes place entirely within the confines of the cramped scenario, an obvious nod to the pandemic age, its residents and relationships in continual flux. The titular Spider story creates a constant formal tension in an aesthetically convincing, jumbled mayhem, but the lack of a satisfying narrative arc leaves us wanting more. AS

BERLINALE | SILVER BEAR | Best Director Ex aequo | ENCOUNTERS

 

 

Brother’s Keeper (2021) Berlinale Panorama 2021

Dir: Ferit Karahan | Cast: Samet Yıldız, Ekin Koç, Mahir İpek, Melih Selçuk, Cansu Fırıncı, Nurullah Alaca | Turkey / Romania 2021 | Turkish, Kurdish | 85’

Ferit Karahan’s stunningly captured second feature takes place in a draconian boarding school deep in the snowbound mountains of Anatolia. Bringing back memories of many British public schools where caning and freezing cold showers were commonplace, this study of cold-hearted repression serves as an artful metaphor for the ongoing conflict between Turks and their Kurdish underclass whose cultural identity has been repressed since the 1980 coup.

In this chilly hellhole – and the cold here is palpable – Turkish teachers subject the poor but gifted Kurdish pupils to regular beatings in spartan conditions where internet connection is random. Once a week, the boys are allowed to shower, and on one such occasion twelve year-old Memo catches a chill in the freezing dorm and by the morning is very ill indeed. His friend Yusuf tries to alert the masters to the boy’s plight but they carry on their collective neglect of Memo’s condition – so desperate are they to keep up the macho facade – until the boy becomes unresponsive, along with the mobile connection to the emergency services.

The tension is spiked by moments of hilarious situational humour – one involving a repetitive slipping sequence, another sees a puppy repeatedly trying to suckle its recalcitrant mother – Karahan – himself a Kurd – uses his largely non-pro cast to impressive effect. Elegantly framed and bitingly relevant this tightly packed drama unfolds in 85 enjoyable minutes. My Brother’s Keeper is an intelligent piece of film-making that makes impressive use of a low budget to create a memorable gem. At the heart of the story is Samet Yildiz’s haunting performance as Memo’s friend Yusuf, a boy whose knowing expression and sad eyes seem to speak volumes for the continuing plight of the Kurdish people. MT

BROTHER’S KEEPER won the FIPRESCI prize at Berlinale 2021 |

BEST SCRIPT, BEST FILM, ANTALYA FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

Herr Bachmann and his Class (2021) Jury Prize Berlinale 2021

Dir: Maria Speth | with Dieter Bachmann, Aynur Bal, Önder Cavdar, Schüler*innen der Klasse 6 b, Schüler*innen der Klasse 6f | Germany, Doc 217’

A teacher nearing retirement decides to do his bit for international entente cordiale in Maria Speth’s immersive look at contemporary schoolroom dynamics. In Stadtallendorf, a German city with a complex history of both excluding and integrating foreigners, genial teacher Dieter Bachmann believes that social integration starts at grass roots level, offfering his ethnically diverse pupils a welcome entree into modern Germany

Aged between twelve and fourteen, these pupils come from twelve different nations; some have not quite mastered the German language, so Bachmann adopts a kindly approach to confidence-building, eager to inspire them with a sense of curiosity for a wide range of crafts, subjects, cultures and opinions.

Teaching is not just about loving your subject – it’s about being able to convey information clearly and engagingly. And Dieter Bachmann certainly has the emotional intelligence and patience to inspire his kids helping them to understand that discussion and dialogue is the way forward when dealing with others. His vision of utopia sensitively conveyed here in by Maria Speth and her cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider, is a testament to something quite ordinary and yet so vital for children everywhere. MT

BERLINALE | COMPETITON 2021

Tag der Freiheit – Unsere Wehrmacht | Day of Freedom (1935)

Dir: Leni Riefenstahl | With Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler | Germany, Doc, 28′

As we approach the much awaited days of freedom the renowned German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was focusing on a Day of Freedom of another kind. Tag der Freiheit marked Riefenstahl’s third and final visit to Nuremberg for the rally of September 1935. Although she would doubtless have preferred for it to have  remained missing; the film resurfaced in the 1970s to further challenge her claims of being present at the rallies merely as an impartial observer.

The early 1930s saw her limbering up to film the 1936 Olympics, and both the photography and editing of Tag der Freiheit mark considerable advances on its ponderous predecessor Triumph of the Will; and watching this bellicose display of military machismo it’s again extraordinary to reflect that a woman was directing it.

Subtitled ‘Unsere Wehrmacht’ (‘Our Wehrmacht’), the emphasis is this time squarely on the armed forces rather than the NSDAP, and the film was shrewdly sneaked into cinemas as part of the supporting program for the popular costume drama Der höhere Befehl – thus ensuring plenty of people saw it – as well as screened it in schools until 1938.

The ‘freedom’ to which the title refers to here is from the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles, the disarmament clauses of which had been denounced by Hitler the previous March and which are here shown being brazenly flouted by an aggressive display of military might with cutaways to the Führer looking on in approval. (The fellow with the monocle on Hitler’s left is the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Werner von Fritsch, later forced to resign on 4 February 1938 following trumped-up accusations of homosexuality by Himmler and Goering.) Exactly where all the bullets and shells supposedly being fired are ending up within the confines of the zeppelin field on which it was staged is alarmingly unclear. For the sake of the spectators and the aircraft shown being fired at, hopefully they’re all firing blanks.

Triumph of the Will had begun with the arrival on the tarmac at Nuremberg of a lone private plane carrying Germany’s new saviour. Tag der Freiheit by contrast ends with the sky filled with military aircraft flying in formation (including a swastika), soon to be deployed in the Rhineland, which showed the direction in which the new Germany was now decisively and irrevocably moving. Richard Chatten.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AS A BOX SET

Gatecrash (2021) Digital release

Dir: Lawrence Gough Cast: Olivia Bonamy, Ben Cura, Anton Lesser and

Adapted from a play by Terry Hughes, Gatecrash is a slick home invasion thriller that retains its stagey claustrophobic credentials by keeping things mostly indoors, thus keeping the budget down. As usual with these contempo British indie films, the female character is the victim.

Samuel West has been persuaded to join the decent cast of what is a slim but effective four-hander that ultimately leaves too many questions unanswered. It sees a French woman Nicole (Olivia Bonamy) trapped in an abusive relationship with her hard-edged and controlling husband Steve (Ben Cura). After a night out in their flashy car the couple return to the confines of a plush garage where a vicious row breaks out. Clearly something has gone wrong and they both blame each other, although Steve is clearly the culprit and coerces Nicole to keep schtum.

But it gets worse. Two other characters know what’s happened and they’re not going to let Steve get away with it. As the innocent party, Olivia’s feelings of isolation and fear intensify grow as the pair are increasingly pressurised to fess up – at any cost. MT

Gatecrash will be available for rent or Digital Download from 22nd February in the UK and Ireland.

A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (2021) Berlinale

Dir: Shengze Zhu | China, Doc

“it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.” Italo Calvino

Chicago based Chinese filmmaker Shengze Zhu follows her Tiger award-winning documentary Present. Perfect (2019) with this acutely personal almost Proustian love letter to the past. Serving as a paean to pre-pandemic times but also a poignant reflection on how the world continues to change, not always for the better. It also serves as a humble apology for a town she never particularly liked anyway. The town is Wuhan.

Several years ago no-one had ever heard of the infamous city that sprawls along the Yangtze River in Northern China, and whose wet markets would soon breed a global health crisis that would help to decimate our lives. Many of us now feel a complete dislocation from our pre-Covid past. The life we knew, before the pandemic took hold of ‘normality’, is changed forever. The innocence of spontaneity is also gone, another nail in the coffin of freedom – rather like that of post 9/11.

Back in 2010 when she left for America, Shengze remembers the burgeoning industrial metropolis of Wuhan as ‘a stage on which people perform in various ways’ a landscape formed by nature and then dramatically assaulted by roaring machines and rapidly rising infrastructure. A place where ‘memories are buried. The lost place’. But it’s the little things that count here, rather than Wuhan itself. The shop that sold her favourite spicy beef noodles, has shut down, the friendly owner moved away.

In her restrained and strangely alluring treatment Wuhan is very much a character who she remembers – but not always with pleasure. Casting her mind back to the past Shengze avoids nostalgia, instead reflecting on consequences in this contemplation of the past and the lost in a bid to revaluate what happened, and what could still happen.

Five years in the making the film starts in the very recent past, recorded on surveillance footage that pictures empty streets gradually filling again after April 2020 with figures standing in tacit obedience. The images of ‘before’ in the empty streets play out in a series of vignettes held for several minutes in a static camera, a ‘symphony without music’ is how Shengze describes them. Her decision to use the distant ambient soundscape is a wise one, making this so much more transcendent in its eerie beauty, picturing the bustling metropolis with surprising grandeur. There are also scenes of meditative calm – the neon lights of the suspension bridge are strikingly beautiful as they shimmer in the darkness.

A River is imbued with a vague feeling of wistful regret, the whirring neon-lit industrial present slowly pans out into the purple past in the fields beyond where buffalo still graze in contented torpor. And the Yangtze River is the endless glowing connective tissue that keeps on flowing, renewing, cleansing. No one can imagine just how vast Chinese cities are until they visit. But Shengze conveys some of this enormity in a way that never feels frightening or aggressive. Her memories are now locked in the past but the future keeps on coming. A reflective, positive, graceful film that brings hope from so much tragedy. MT

BERLINALE FORUM 2021.

The Good Fairy (1935)

Dir: William Wyler | Wri: Preston Sturges | Cast: Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan, Cesar Romero, June Clayworth | US Drama 98′

In her short life, the ethereally radiant Margaret Sullavan (1909-1960) did not last the night, but the lovely light she briefly gave is preserved for posterity in charming mementoes such as this. Deeply touching in drama, Sullavan’s best remembered comedy role was in Ernst Lubitsch’s evergreen The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which was the second romantic comedy she made set in Budapest. ‘The Good Fairy’ was the first.

Scripted by Preston Sturges from a play by Ferenc Molnár produced on Broadway in 1931, The Good Fairy would have been a very different film indeed but for the introduction of the strict new Production Code of June 1934 just three months before shooting commenced. Sturges had to keep one step ahead of the film throughout production as he extensively rewrote the script, which has the Hays Office’s fingerprints all over it; as well as a generally disjointed feeling – such as the early disappearance of Alan Hale from the narrative, never to return; and the late appearance of Herbert Marshall, never to leave – and a LOT of talk. The droll film-within-the-film which reduces Ms Sullavan to tears which was added to the script by Sturges is among a number of hints earlier on in the film that we were going to something sharper and more sophisticated than the bowdlerised romcom that we actually get. (The same plot played as drama might have made better use of Ms Sullavan’s talents and made a more interesting film).

Sullavan plays Luisa Ginglebusher, a charming, accident-prone orphan who is vastly more innocent and unworldly than the sweetly manipulative little vixen played on Broadway by Helen Hayes. Rather bizarrely plucked from the orphanage to become a cinema usherette – for which Luisa is kitted out in a magnificent uniform that looks more like one of Marlene Dietrich’s cast-offs from ‘The Scarlet Empress’ – as Miss Ginglebusher ventures out into the big wicked city, one initially fears for the safety of this seeming cross between Prince Myshkin and a more garrulous version of Chauncey Gardner.

But salvation is at hand in the form of Detlaff, a brusquely kind-hearted waiter played by Reginald Owen; who looks younger than I’m used to seeing him and gives the most engaging performance I’ve ever seen him give (he befriends her while cautiously removing her knife when she reveals to him during dinner that she was released from an asylum that morning, but quietly returns it when it turns out that the asylum was for orphans); and takes it upon himself to protect her from the wolves that prowl the city (an extremely wolfish-looking Cesar Romero puts in a brief appearance as one such).

The film, unfortunately, soon tires of giving us a heroine who’s just a simple working girl (we never actually see where she lives, for example), and is irrevocably derailed by the introduction of Frank Morgan as Konrad – one of those vague, benevolent millionaires encountered so often in Hollywood movies – who agrees to become Sullavan’s sugar daddy without ever suggesting he might eventually be expecting some sugar in return. Ironically, considering he is today principally remembered for later playing the title role in The Wizard of Oz, Morgan actually describes himself at one point as “a wizard” and offers to demonstrate his magic powers to Luisa by pulling out his cheque book to enhance the life of the non-existent husband she has just made up to ward of his advances.

I agree with ‘kyrat’, who said in an earlier IMDb review nearly fifteen years ago that it would have been more fitting to have bestowed Konrad’s windfall upon her own good fairy Detlaff rather than just randomly take a name from the ‘phone book; and the romance that develops between Luisa and the thus gifted Dr. Sporum (Herbert Marshall in a goatee and wing collar) – whose greatest excitement at his sudden good fortune is that he can now afford a proper office pencil-sharpener – seems dictated by Hollywood convention rather than any actual chemistry between them. (Surprise! Surprise! the film ends in a wedding; and I would have liked to have had a better look at the very striking wet-look art deco bridal gown we fleetingly see Ms Sullavan walk down the aisle in just before the end credits.)

As the film progresses Luisa frankly comes across as a bit of a simpleton rather than just a pure simple soul; and the 25 year-old Sullavan is playing a girl nearly ten years younger than her real age surrounded by middle-aged men whose motives all remain impeccably but rather improbably chaste (there’s some supposedly innocent but I found decidedly creepy horseplay in Konrad’s hotel room with him pretending that he’s a mountain lion and Luisa’s a lamb).

But this is all A-grade Hollywood hokum done to a turn by rising young director William Wyler (who ran off with Sullavan to get married in the middle of production), and all very pleasant if you don’t take it too seriously; which I’m sure nobody involved in the production did. Richard Chatten

NOW ON AMAZON

The Ace of Hearts (1921)

Dir: Wallace Worsley | Wri: Gouverneur Morris, Ruth Wightman | Cast: Lon Chaney, Leatrice Joy, John Bowers, Raymond Hatton, Hardee Kirkland | US Silent, Drama 65′

At noon on 16 September 1920 the United States suffered the most destructive act of terrorism yet committed on American soil when a bomb believed to have been planted by Italian anarchists exploded on Wall Street, killing 30 people outright and injuring hundreds of others.

Already in cinemas, Wallace Worsley’s The Penalty (1920), had recently starred Lon Chaney as the head of a gang of anarchists plotting a spectacular robbery; and a year later the director and star released a similarly themed follow-up based upon another novel by Gouverneur Morris.

Obviously a pot-boiler compared to The Penalty (but like its predecessor handsomely shot by Donovan Short), Chaney has top billing but a very secondary role as a member of a secret society who resemble the anarchists in Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), the conspirators in Thorold Dickinson’s Secret People (1952) and the vigilante judges in Peter Hyams’ The Star Chamber (1983). They decide to rid society of a vile plutocrat (Raymond Hatton, called “The Menace” in the cast list but referred to throughout the film as “The Man Who Has Lived Too Long”) by cutting cards to choose the assassin. This scheme is complicated by an extremely uninteresting love triangle comprising Farallone (Chaney), Forrest (John Bowers) and the intriguingly named Lilith (Leatrice Joy); the last being the brotherhood’s only sister, a prig whose infatuation with “the Cause” means she has zero interest in romantic matters.

Although selected on the basis of cutting cards (an obvious nod to Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Suicide Club’), Forrest should have been the obvious candidate to carry out the assassination in the first place; since for the past three months he’s been working as a waiter in the restaurant where The Menace has breakfast every morning at 9.00, and thus perfectly placed to shoot him in the head at point blank range.

Instead their chosen method of execution takes the form of an entirely indiscriminate act of terror employing a bomb capable of destroying an entire building; which it should already have been obvious to Forrest and his associates would mean that The Menace would not be the only casualty (like the little Kenyan girl in Eye in the Sky). Sure enough, when it finally dawns upon Forrest that there will be collateral damage the entire operation is compromised.

The bomb itself looks like a cigarette case and neatly fits into a jacket pocket: yet another example of movie technology far in advance of anything available in real life. The Wall Street bomb itself had had to be brought to the site where it exploded on a horse-drawn wagon.Richard Chatten

NOW ON YOUTUBE

 

Film Memories from Korea: Five of the Best

Sweet Dream (Lullaby of Death) (1936) Yang Ju-Nam

One of the few lost films from the Japanese colonial era (1910-45) that has been rediscovered in recent years tells the story of Ae-sun, the vain wife of a middle-class man who has no interest in looking after her family and is chased out by her husband, only to find out her lover is not the prosperous entrepreneur she thought he was but a poor student and criminal.

Madame Freedom (1956) Han Hyeong-Mo

Films of the 1950s confronted some of the key issues facing Korean society as it rebuilt itself again. Madame Freedom, an adaptation of the decade’s most scandalous serial novel, centred on a woman whose troubled marriage symbolises the tension between collapsing traditional values and the influence of Western capitalism, as she goes from one torrid encounter to the next. The box-office success of this film encouraged a renewed flow of investment into a film industry hit hard by the war.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring (2003) Kim Ki-duk

A sublime, poetic, transcendental trip that explores the essence of the human condition with wit and poignancy. Sadly Kim Ki-duk died in December 2020 but his often provocative award-winning work defined Korean arthouse cinema at the turn of the 21st century, with often striking visual allure.

Thirst (2009) Park Chan-Wook

An intelligent take on Zola’s Therese Raquin this opulent and topical vampire melodrama seethes with irony in its Grand Guignol lyricism. A priest offers himself up to be infected with a virus that eventually takes over forcing him to abandon his ascetic existance. 

In Another Country (2012) Sang-soo Hong

This low budget comedy drama starring Isabelle is one of funniest Korean films I’ve ever seen and competed for the Palme d’Or in 2012. Huppert plays three different versions of a French woman who visits a small fishing village, the humour lying in the ‘lost in translation’ situational comedy in her interactions with various locals.

NOW ON YOUTUBE | ON DEMAND | DVD/BLU

The Wheel of Fantasy and Fortune | Guzen to Sozo

Dir.: Ryusuke Hamaguchi: Cast: Kotone Furukowa, Katsuki Mori, Kyohiko Shibukawa, Ayumu Nakajima, Hyunri, Shouma Kei, Katsuke Mori, Aoba Kawai, Fusoko Urabe; Japan 2021, 121′.

Director/writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour) weaves three short stories into an emotionally powerful and visually alluring film with narrative that could easily spin out into three more full length dramas, if desired.

In chapter One, ‘Magic – Or Something Less Assuring’, two actresses, Meiko (Furukawa) and Tsugumi (Mori) drive home in a taxi after a shoot. Tsugumi tells Meiko all about a guy called Kazu (Nakajiima). She’s has clearly fallen in love. She also tells Meiko about his emotional trauma with an ex who cheated on him. Little does Tsugumi know that her friend Meiko is the woman in question. And once Tsugumi has got out of the taxi, Meiko goes straight round to Kazu’s office. Clearly things are not over for the couple. When Tsugumi and Kazu meet up in a cafe Meiko casually walks by the window. She is invited in, and the audience are invited to choose one of two alternative endings.

Episode Two – Door Wide Open – follows a humiliated college student, Sasaki (Kei) take revenge on his professor, Segawa (Shibukawa) with the help of his lover Nao (Hyunri) also a ex-student of the professor, and  now married with a daughter. Together they hatch a plan that sees Nao walking into Segawe’s office at the university with the aim of securing incriminating evidence of the professor’s unseemly behaviour. She reads him a pornographic excerpt from his prizewinning novel, but despite his reluctance to be drawn into the trap the poor man ends up becoming involved in a salacious encounter, Nao taping the incident and sending the evidence to Segawe’s university mail address, losing hum his job. Nao and Sasaki meet by accident five years later, and all has changed.

The third – Once Again – is by far the most intriguing segment that sees three characters involved in a lose love triangle originally meeting in college and going on to live their lives before becoming involved again in a drama of mixed identities and role play. Natsuko Higuchi (Kawei) meets up with her class of 1998. She is obviously an outsider, hardly bothering to socialise. Next day in Tokyo she meets Aya Kobayashi (Urabe). Natsuko is convinced Aya is really her ex- Mika Yulli, a girl she wanted to spend her life with, but who decided to marry a man. It takes Aya ages to convince Natsuko she is not Yulli. Aya is married with two children before the virus Xeron ruined electronic communications, and sent the world back to mailed post and telegrams. Aya is helpless, before she decides to participate in a role play in which she plays Yulli. Natsuko tells ‘Yulli’ how much she was hurt by her decision to leave her. Now Natsuko regrets the past, she has never fallen in love again. After the women re-bond Aya agrees to play the role of a girl in her class, Nozumi, a boyish girl, on whom Aya had a crush. Aya and Natsuko part as friends, having created a romantic past.

The is an elegantly crafted romantic drama full of twists and turns, a mature masterpiece, with Hamaguchi effortlessly playing all emotional nuances in a satisfying trilogy of different passionate styles. Apart from being a master class in narrative structuring, Wheel is also full of ambiguity and ambivalence: human emotions being shown as destructive as well as healing. Outstanding. AS

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE from  7 FEBRUARY 2022 | BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | GRAND JURY PRIZE  2021

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (2021) Berlinale Competition 2021

Dir: Dominik Graf | Cast: Tom Schilling, Saskia Rosendahl, Albrecht Schuch, Petra Kalkutschke, Elmar Gutmann, Aljoscha Stadelmann, Meret Becker, Michael Hanemann; Germany/Austria 2021, 176 min.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs is the second big screen adaptation of Erich Kästner’s 1931 novel Fabian: Die Geschichte eines Moralisten, and much more successful than Wolf Gremm’s rather facile 1980 attempt.

Directed and co-written by German veteran director Domink Graf (The Invincibles) it does justice to the novel and its author. Erich Kästner (1899-1974) best known for his children books, which often found their way into screen versions, like Das Doppelte Lottchen, filmed as The Parent Trap in 1961. Fabian was his only mature adult novel. His poems and lyrical texts are rather whimsical in their romanticism echoing the of his contemporary Kurt Tucholsky, who emigrated to Sweden where he committed suicide in 1935

But Kästner stayed in Nazi Germany, even though he was present when his books (with many others) were burned as ‘Entartete Kunst’ by the Nazis. The author visited exiled colleagues, but “wanted to remain in Germany as a chronicler”. Unable to write anything but children books, he was not even allowed to join the ‘Reichsschriftstumkammer’, the global Nazi organisation for writers, but nevertheless managed to write (uncredited) the scripts for Munchhausen (1943) and the adaption of his own novel ‘Der kleine Grenzverkehr’ as Salzburg Comedy, also in 1943, under the pseudonym of Berthold Burger.

Kästner was an individualist not given to joining groups in the post-war Federal Republic, he nevertheless remained true to his pacifism demonstrating on the ‘Easter Marches’ against re-militarisation and nuclear weapons, and later against the Vietnam War. Fabian‘s two leading male characters correspond quite closely to the author’s personality .

Fabian is set in and around Berlin in the final years of the Weimar Republic, where Dr. Jacob Fabian (Schilling), in his twenties, works in an advertising agency, enjoying a nightlife of sexual escapades. He meets Irene Moll (Becker) whose husband pays other men to sleep with his wife – if he approves of them beforehand. Fabian will meet Irene on two more occasions: on the first, she gives him work as her assistant in a brothel offering female sex workers for heterosexual men. Later on in a train to Dresden, she offers to take him to Budapest for another sexually charged enterprise. Fabian’s close coterie of male friends includes Dr. Stephan Labude (Schuch) an emotionally unstable intellectual champagne socialist who is writing his post-doctoral thesis on Lessing. Fabian, on the other hand, avoids politics, devoting his time to his lyrical writings. All this changes when he meets meets the young Cornelia Battenberg (Rosendahl), an aspiring actress.

The two fall in love, and their magical nighttime foray in Berlin is one of the film’s highlights, before the two return to the cheap pension where they both live. But money will be their downfall, and after visiting Labude at his posh family estate, Fabian finds himself dismissed from the agency on the grounds of his lack of focus. Enter Cornelia’s more illustrious suitor, the film producer Markart (Stadelmann). At a lunch with Fabian’s mother, Cornelia leaves her lover and sits at Markart’s table. This is the beginning of the end for their relationship, and both struggle to maintain contact.

But worse is to come for the romantically inclined pals who are both subsumed by their political and amorous ideals. Labude falls foul of a prank at the university where the Nazi Germany had considerable support: far from being the party of the underdog the Nazis were a major contingent of the intellectual establishment.

Meanwhile Fabian returns to his parents in Dresden where he continues his life supported by regular phone calls with Cornelia, who visits their favourite cafe every afternoon to wait for him. Having ignored countless public posters of “Learn to Swim”, Fabian ignores them, and goes to the rescue of a boy who jumped from a railway bridge into a river. The boy survives and uncovers Fabian’s bag, full of writings and personal memorabilia.

The is a visually alluring drama despite some tricksy multi-screen images which feel out of place in the period setting. DoP Hanno Lentz and PD Klaus-Jürgen Pfeiffer recreate the era with avantgarde flair. Schilling and Rosendahl have chemistry and make for a believable couple caught in the midst of a ‘coup de foudre’.

But it’s Graf’s direction that really wins the day, creating a German epos full of contradictions, but with universal appeal. Yes, the running length is questionable, the overbearing sex scenes are filmed with the male gaze, women are either total victims or scheming traitors (like Cornelia), – but overall Graf comes close to Bernhard Wicki’s 1989 masterpiece of  Spider’s Web, set in the same period in Germany, and based on the novel by Joseph Roth who, like Kästner, was an immigrant with addiction issues. Graf pulls off the “double-suicide” of two romantic idealists unable to face a world that did not reflect their longings. AS

IN COMPETITION BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

Courage (2021) Berlinale Competition 2021

Dir.: Aliaksei Paluyan; documentary with Maryna Yakubovich, Pavel Haradnizky, Dzianis Tarasenka; BR Deutschland, 89 min.

A spirited and heartfelt documentary debut from Belarusian director Aliaksei Paluyan who explores the aftermath of last year’s presidential election that saw the country’s authoritarian incumbent Alexander Lukashenko (their first and only elected president since 1994) simply staying in office despite mounting mass demonstrations on the grounds of vote rigging. Paluyan anchors his story in the experiences of three actors three from the Free Theatre of Minsk, who left the State Theatre 15 years ago to combine art and politics.

Maryna lives with Dzianis and their baby – the father resentful at having to work as a car mechanic: “I have betrayed art and I am aware of it. Three years ago I left, because the play was only on for eight days before it was censored for Satanism.” Pavel, the third of the actor’s trio, lives with Nadya, the two discussing a way out of the situation: “Everyone in the Free Theatre is blacklisted by the Secret Police”.

During the mass demonstration after the August election, the theatre has to plan their protests carefully: “Not every member of the theatre can demonstrate, leaving only one person in charge of care parcels and lawyers”. The only way they can all show their disdain for the Lukashenko is by building up mountains of lavatory paper in front of the Presidential Palace. Meanwhile the President is safely ensconced behind the walls guarded by the OMON, a Special Police Force inside the Militsya.

A demonstrator shows off his “gentleman’s travel bag”: toothpaste, toothbrush and 3 changes of underwear”. The OMON throws stun grenades at the crowd, who shout back “Join us, for Belarus!” The few who put their shields down are hugged by demonstrators. Maryna and Dzianis discuss breaking headlines that accuse OMON of using live munition in Brest (on the border with Poland) where one man was killed. Obviously their priority is the baby. Dzianis discusses the news with his father, a former OMON member. It’s very much a case of the load being passed down to the next generation. But naturally Dzianis does not want his child to carry the baggage he leaves.

The only route to freedom is through Poland and Lithuania, who accept political prisoners from Belarus, so the actors discuss an escape plan. Meanwhile we join rehearsals in the Free Theatre where the play’s director – Nikolay Khalezin, watched up with the production on Skype from London – one tense scene features an interrogator officiously demanding a confession from a demonstrator. When asked ‘why’ by the defendant, the secret policeman answers: “Because my job is necessary, yours is not.”

These fraught scenes are juxtaposed with more mellow ones – Pavel and Nadya trying to let a wasp out of the window of their pokey flat: in Belarus even insects want to be set free. Every weekend there are mass demonstrations all over the country, OMON answering with charges, huge military vehicles and water cannons. And finally, we see Maryna on stage in “Discover Love”, the story of Iryna Krasaouskaya whose husband was one of the first who “disappeared” and was found murdered in 1999. The number of forced disappearances in authoritarian states all over the world are read out: a staggering figure runs that into millions.

DoPs Tanja Hanrylchik and Jesse Mazuch follow the action with their handheld cameras, taking us to the heart of the crisis with febrile footage desperately conveying these troubled and tumultuous times. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | COMPETITION

 

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky (2021)

Dir/Wri: Alexandre Koberidze | Cast: Giorgi Bochorishvili, Vakhtang Panchulidze, Ani Karseladze, Oliko Bakradze and Giorgi Ambroladze | Georgia, drama 126

Love at first sight is one of those strange human miracles. And this serendipitous occurrence lights up everyday life in a Georgian city in this whimsical sophomore feature from Georgia’s Alexandre Koberidze.

The lovers in question – Lisa and Giorgi – meet in their home town of Kutaisi (north west of Tbilisi) agreeing to see each other the next day – someplace, same time – without exchanging numbers. But a stranger has cast the evil eye on their happiness, completely changing their appearance.  When they finally get together, the feelings of passion are still there under the surface, but they desperately try to recapture the magic of that first flirtatious flight of fantasy. They are still the same people, but they look completely different.

Koberidze keeps the action light-hearted and playful, making use of magic realism to show how the lovers (now played by different actors) both fall into new jobs in a local cafe. Meanwhile, we get a glimpse of life in this cathedral city on the banks of the Rioni River, in a series of vibrant vignettes that spill out one after the other, anticipating the excitement of the forthcoming World Cup. There’s an intoxicating feeling of camaraderie but also a hint of wistfulness in the air giving the film a gently poetic feel. We never get to know the protagonists and so they remain distant, locked away in this modern fairy tale.

Intoxicated by its own joie de vivre the bittersweet docudrama tries hard to keep us engaged but rather overstays its welcome at well over two hours. DoP Faraz Fesharaki does his best to entertain and delight with glowing images, using a static camera to enhance the film’s more sober final sequences. In a world with so much tragedy, conflict and seriousness, Koberidze shows us there is still room for dreams if we let our imagination loose. MT

ON RELEASE FROM 25 NOVEMBER | PREMIERED AT BERLINALE 2021 

 

The High Bright Sun (1965)

Dir: Ralph Thomas | Wri: Ian Stuart Black, Brian Forbes | Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Susan Strasberg, George Chakiris, Denholm Elliot, Colin Campbell | UK, 96′

Dirk Bogarde’s ninth and final film for Betty Box and Ralph Thomas. Although King & Country (from which Bogarde went straight into this slick, good-looking guilty pleasure) had been set during the Great War, and this as recently as 1957, this seems more of a throwback than Losey’s film.

The whole thing takes place during Cyprus’ war of independence from Britain in 1957/ Strasberg is Juno Kozani an American archeology student who gets caught up in conflict not only with war but also between a local guerrilla fighter (George Chakiris) and Bogarde’s British Army Intelligence officer who tries to protect her.

Despite the glossy sixties veneer, James Bond-style bouzouki & trumpet score by Angelo Lavagnino (and bona fide Cypriots George Pastell & Paul Stassino in supporting roles who both appeared in Bond films) this is more like one of Bogarde’s fifties war films. One of them, They Who Dare (ironically made by the director of All Quiet on the Western Front), also co-starring Denholm Elliot, had actually been made in Cyprus. Obviously Cyprus was out this time round so the picturesque backdrop is provided by Italy.

In the final scene on the flight to Athens I had long assumed the blonde BOAC stewardess was in league with the bad guy, and it was quite a while before I realised the significant looks she kept throwing his way during the flight were those of a concerned innocent bystander rather than a confederate.) Richard Chatten.

DVD AVAILABLE

 

Jack’s Ride | No Táxi do Jack (2021) Berlinale Forum 2021

Dir: Susana Nobre | Cast: Joaquim Calcada | Portugal, 87′

Portuguese director Susana Nobre won the prestigious La Femis Scholars’ Award with her short film Provas, Exorcismos. She comes to Berlin with her unusual first feature No Táxi do Jack which is part road movie part ethnological portrait of small-town rural Portugal but there’s a sting in the tale to the concentric narrative.

Jack’s Ride seems quite straightforward at first as we follow the main character Joaquim Calçada, 63, now semi-retired and back home in his village after spending his working life as a taxi driver New York. Joaquim’s day is full of the usual chores, organising his pension arrangements and shopping for food. Nobre establishes the milieu of this rural backwater with its industrial outcrop and traditional neighbourly values, more 1970s in feel than the present day, and this is reflected in the film’s rather florid visual aesthetic, Joaquim is locked in a time warp looking like a character from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver with his dyed black hair, leather jacket and lifts. That said he is a decent, respectful man who cares for his wife, his long-dead parents, and his blind friend, a wheelchair user with diabetes. Nobre paints a portrait of a contented but rather backward place where traditional values still matter.

The rather mundane daily drama plays out against the more intriguing narration by Joaquim – and here there is a dramatic trip over New York’s skyline, provided by archive footage, as he reminisces about his old emigrant days in New York’s mean streets where life was tough as he struggled to make it in the urban jungle, particularly when the law of the jungle saw him challenging someone he thought was his friend. MT

BERLINALE | FORUM 2021

 

Social Hygiene | Hygene Sociale | Best Director | Berlinale Encounters 2021

Dir: Denis Cote | Maxim Gaudette, Eve Duranceau, Eleonore Loiselle, Larissa Corriveau, Kathleen Fortin, Evelyne Rompre | Drama, Canada,

Singular, original and always refreshing Canadian auteur Denis Cote continues to push cinematic boundaries with a body of work that avoids convention in its freedom of expression.

His latest film – screening in this year’s Berlinale Encounters section – is another curio that defies categorisation, it is certainly highly individual it its style. In a bid to fly in the face of Covid restrictions the film is appropriately set in the wide sweeping landscapes of Cote’s verdant homeland of Canada, this beautiful bucolic setting very much playing a leading role of its own.

Dressed up as a filmed play, the characters pronounce their lines at the top of their voices competing with ambient birdsong in the forest setting, and the dialogue itself is delivered like a piece of 17th century French theatre – in the sonorous style of Racine or Molière – it could almost be Le Misanthrope (with Antonin being the philander Philinte), its characters each representing a distinct point of view. Some members of the cast wear period costume, but not always. Essentially a series of long shots like scenes in a play are broken by an interlude where a young man walks aimlessness across the screen, ‘the play’ then continues its story about a hapless loser Antonin (Gaudette) who looks to his female friends and consorts for guidance and savvy advice.

His sister Solveig (Corriveau) wears modern dress most of the time, whereas Antonin’s ex-wife Eglantine (Rompre) is dressed in period garb. And although the play is delivered in a 17th – or even early 18th – century style the content is very much contempo with its social media allusions and references to the present day.

Eglantine, it turns out, is now involved with another man, but flirts with Antonin suggesting she is opens to rekindling their relationship, on condition that he mends his ways. Meanwhile Antonin still carries a candle for another love, in the shape of Cassiopee (Duranceau), although she has apparently moved on to pastures new. Various other characters highlight Antonin’s crimes and misdemeanours: Rose (Fortin) claims he has not paid his taxes and Aurore (Loiselle), that he has stolen from her car.

Social Hygiene will certainly be remembered as a film made during the time of Covid. But what this comedy of manners is satirising is open for interpretation. MT

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021| Best Director Ex-AEQUO with The Girl and the Spider.

District Terminal (2021) Berlinale Encounters 2021

Dirs: Bardia Yadegari/ Ehsan Mirhosseini | Drama, Iran/Germ 117′

In the near Tehran future will be reduced to a broken down backwater. At least that’s the view envisaged in District Terminal a rather stylish but overlong social and political drama from first time Iranian filmmakers Yadegari and Mirhosseini, screening in the Encounters strand in this year’s 71st edition of Berlinale.

This vision of dystopia and existential angst is seen from the perspective of a mother and her junkie son Peyman (played by Yadegari) who are struggling to make sense of their daily lives as they face a grim and uncertain future in a pokey flat near Tehran’s eponymous transport hub. A lethal virus, possibly the result of environmental pollution, has brought the city to its knees and their local neighbourhood has been placed under round-the-clock surveillance by quarantine officers.

The film’s premise is universal, especially in these Covid times, but District Terminal feels distinctly Iranian in flavour, making use of use of his exotic poems written (and he often chants them in hushed tones in Farsi) on the peeling walls of his bedroom. The junkie moments are given an artful spin by the cinematographer.

There’s nothing unusual about this doom-laden scenario. While his long-suffering mother gets on with the business of running the domestic side of his life, the self-obsessed loser Peyman spends his time shooting up and listening to jazz; over-thinking the status quo (and these moments are envigorated by menacing archive footage of ecological disasters); attending his alcoholics support group; and Skyping a skanky-looking woman in the USA who he has married to get a visa, and who is hoping for great things from this ‘marriage’. Meanwhile Peyman is desperately learning English, while his teeth are falling out one by one.

Sometimes his daughter swings round to see him, chanting Amy Winehouse songs and rocking a beanie – rather than a headscarf – she confesses to her father that she loves dating “assholes” and promptly leaves in a white Mercedes.

His two closest friends Ramin and Mozhgan seem the most edifying companions but Peyman is also in hopelessly involved in an illicit love affair. There’s absolutely nothing appealing about these any of these characters who are locked, almost contentedly so, in their aimlessly existence. After a while living in lockdown does induce people to settle for the lowest common denominator, but there’s also something deeply irritating about the way these characters refuse to aspire to anything more than their days of emptiness, drug-taking and navel gazing. MT

BERLINALE | ENCOUNTERS 2021

 

Bloodsuckers – A Marxist Vampire Comedy (2021) Berlinale

Dir.: Julian Radlmaier; Cast: Aleksandre Koberidze, Lilith Stangenberg, Alexander Herbst, Corinna Harfouch, Andreas Döhler, Anton Gonopolski, Daniel Hoesl, Mareike Beykirch; Ger/France/Switz 2021, Drama,125 min.

A tour de force of German cinema of the 1960s and 70s slips through the cracks in this riotous summer seaside sortie that sees a penniless Soviet refugee in thrall to an exotic vampire and her love-sick manservant a decade after the First World War.

Gloriously set on the verdant Baltic coast in 1928, Bloodsuckers channels the wacky humour of Woody Allen’s Love & Death with a touch of Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay thrown in. Just falling short of self-parody in a bizarre two hours, this is high-octane stuff intellectually-speaking; a nuts and bolts grasp of Marxism or the ins-and-outs of Soviet film history will partly explain Radlmaier’s arcane comedy caper and third feature. That said, you’ll either love it, or hate it – to death.

The film unfolds in three chapters with incomprehensible titles but the settings are sumptuously photographed, although not always in keeping with the era costume-wise – occasionally striking a bum note that gives the film the amateurish look of a high school production. Another scene featuring modern Mercedes cars also sticks out like a sore thumb.

Breaking away from an earnest beachside chat between members of a Marxist study group we witness a more intriguing rendezvous taking place between rich heiress Octavia (Stangenberg) and the ‘soi-disant’ Count Ljowushka (Koberidze), who shares his sob story of starting life as a poor factory worker before being discovered by filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (Gonopolski), who cast him as Trotsky. (Unfortunately, the real Trotsky fell out with Stalin and Ljowushka’s part ended up on the cutting room floor, along with his budding romance).

The Countess invites the young man to stay in her lushly appointed villa where Jakob (Herbst) serves a supper of snails, before they repair to bed. In the dead of night the impoverished Count attempts to crack open the safe but is nipped in the bud by Jakob, and the Countess graciously excuses him – in the spirit of true Marxist values – before the two hatch plans to make a film together in the villa’s ample grounds. Unknown to the Count, Octavia is a vampire (not the only one) and Jakob does the honours with daily supplies of his blood.

Various characters join in the fun including a Chinaman whose stock in trade is a healing ointment for vampire bites, that naturally none of the workforce can afford. The exploitative factory owner turns out to be one Dr. Humburg (Döhler), whose own father is rather tight-fisted with the family purse strings, and is being egged on by his aunt Erkentrud (Harfouch) to marry Octavia and get his hands on her money. Meanwhile Rosa falls for Jakob who isn’t the slightest bit interested and is too taken up with Octavia, desperately trying to impress her by reading Proust, (quite apart from offering her his own fresh blood).

A certain Bonin (Hoesl) then fetches up at the villa, Ocatvia and Auntie had met him on a skiing holiday in St. Moritz. Filming gets under way with Jakob behind the camera and Octavia and the (false) Count cast as the lovers, where the jealous Jakob eats a poisonous mushroom and dies.

Chapter Three  (A Wrong Life cannot be Lived Rightfully) brings the feature to a close with Döhler, who is also a vampire, attempting to tap the Russian ‘Count’. Döhler invites Octavia to come on a capitalist-themed jaunt to Budapest, to invest in a sort of early television. A costume ball provides a showcase showdown, with Jacob coming back to life, remembering that famous day in 1917 when the revolution set him free from his serfdom. The Study Group makes a re-appearance, but their leader is shot dead by some fascists, after everyone has watched the Vampire film.

There are some interesting ideas to be had in this ambitious third feature for Julian Radlmaier, who doesn’t quite pull off the comedy element in a film that’s more weird than funny. Performances are game and high-spirited throughout, DoP Markus Koob successfully conveying the painterly feel of the Baltic seaside in summer. AS

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021

 

The Kentuckian (1955)

Dir: Burt Lancaster | A B Guthrie Jr | Cast: Burt Lancaster, Diana Lynn, Dianne Foster, Walter Matthau | US Action Drama 104′

An attractive slice of Americana shot in rich autumnal colours and in widescreen to accommodate all Burt Lancaster’s teeth. Making this adaptation of Felix Holt’s 1951 novel ‘The Gabriel Horn’ (“with his own face in front of the camera most of of the time”, as the Allans disrespectfully put it) thereafter largely cured Lancaster of his yen to direct.

Set in the 1820s the film follows Lancaster’s Texas-bound Kentucky frontiersman gamely trying to raise his young son while desperately fighting off the evils of liquor and the charms of women, not to mention Walter Matthau’s whip-cracking local businessman.

With an appropriately recherché score by Bernard Hermann, the supporting cast includes John McIntyre as Lancaster’s brother (only their mother could tell them apart) and two blue-eyed elfin charmers in the form of Una Merkel and Diana Lynn. Villainy was supplied by Walter Matthau – looking older and heavier here in his film debut than he did ten years later; while Douglas Spencer & Paul Wexler as the cold-eyed Fromes brothers are a pair of ghouls that look like models for Grant Wood executed by Charles Addams.

The scene depicting the time it actually took to reload a shotgun in those days should be seen by all modern advocates of the Second Amendment. Richard Chatten.

NOW ON PRIME VIDEO

Against the Tides (2019) VOD

Dir: Stefan Stuckert | UK Doc 87′

Let go of what’s stopping you. Let go of the doubt. 

Extreme swimming fans and psychologists, this is for you. Professionals go one step further and call long-distance sport ‘challenge’ swimming, and Beth French is a pro. Some may call her a fanatic. She is certainly courageous and comes across as extremely plucky and high-active in this Stefan Stuckert’s griping documentary that follows the self-employed, self-funding single mother of one as she takes on the Oceans Seven – a mammoth swimming challenge that could cost her life. It takes in seven terrifying open sea channels across the world, from New Zealand and Hawaii to Japan and Northern Ireland. And Beth will tackle them all in one year.

The sea between Northern Island and Scotland (for one) is certainly no walk in the park. One of the coldest stretches of water in Europe, it is fraught with marine craft not to mention marine life: if the tankers don’t get you the jelly might. And then there’s the inclement weather, tides and currents. During the endurance course she will be followed by a small boat and a canoe.

But there’s more to Beth than just swimming. And soon we begin to understand what motivates to seek out extreme and often dangerous challenges in the water. And it seems that a childhood illness that left her in a wheelchair is the key to her – some may say, fanatical – obsession with endurance swimming.

But that’s not all. Beth believes her young son could also be on the autistic spectrum, but it can’t be easy for a little child to live in constant fear of its only parent dying tragically albeit doing what she loves best. Beth obviously reassures her boy that everything will go according to plan, but she is so driven and single-minded her son takes a back seat, much to the concern of her mother at home in Somerset. Her support buddy Martin eventually parts company with Beth and leaves during the trip.

Beth lavishly shares her thoughts and feelings throughout the feature yet always remains a detached and unreachable character who clearly needs to prove herself, push herself ever harder, an enigmatic soul who seems haunted by a need to keep running, and Stuckert never really gets under her skin. There is clearly a family back story here but are left in the dark experiencing only the emotional fallout rather than the root of the trauma. It’s a shame that Beth never opens up fully about the past. This is a striking and intriguing film but one that leaves so many questions still open.

AGAINST THE TIDES IS ON DEMAND IN THE US/UK from 1st March 2021

UK iTunes link:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/against-the-tides/id1552700437

US iTunes links

Against the Tides – iTunes pre-order

Against the Tides – AppleTV pre-order

 

 

Tabija – The White Fortress | (2021)

Dir.: Igor Drljaca; Cast: Pavle Cemerikic, Sumeja Dardagan, Jasmin Geljo, Kerim Cuyana, Bilal Halilovic, Irena Mulamuhic, Farah Hadzic, Ermin Bravo; Canada/Bosnia and Herzegovina, 85 min.

Writer/director Igor Drljaca follows his 2018 feature The Stone Speakers with another from his native Bosnia-Herzegovina, an alluring and bitter-sweet teenage love story showcasing the elegiac beauty of Sarajevo in lush widescreen images. The White Fortress is an intensive character study, the social background playing a major role.

Teenage Faruk (Cemerikic has the same soulful fragility as Christopher Walken), scratches a living collecting scrap metal with his uncle Mirsad (Geljo). At night he works with his neighbour Almir (Kerim Cutura) ferrying sex workers around for the big boss Cedo (Bravo), who fancies himself as a star gangster, making the two boys bark like dogs in a cafe, to bolster his ego.

Sharing a home with his grandmother (Mulamuhic) who spends her days in bed, revisiting recordings of Faruk’s mother, a concert pianist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic. She died when he was very young, and having never known his father, the young man is at a loss, sleeping with different girls to try and make up for the emotional deficit and hiding his vulnerability with bombastic behaviour.

When he meets Mona (Dardagan) in a shopping mall, it seems like another casual encounter, but the slightly older Mona falls for Faruk. After one of Cedo’s girls (Minela/Hadzic) dies of an overdose after he drove her to a gig, Faruk decides he’s done with the overbearing boss. Mona too is getting tired of her parents, both work as ‘bureaucrats for hire’ for any party who wants them. Mona moans her parents only live together for professional reasons, shouting at her Mum, “you don’t even know where he spends the nights.” Later Mona tells Faruk that her parents have formed a sort of company, where they exchange favours for feelings they do not have at all

Meanwhile the ongoing election campaign echoes along in the background seemingly making no impact on the locals. The reason for Mona’s anger is her parents’ intention to make her move to live with relatives in Toronto. This plan for next year has been forwarded, and deep down Mona knows that she will go. Faruk, whose Hawaii posters on his bedroom wall signal his romantic wanderlust, is also a romantic and both wander around the countryside, on bright sunny days, Mona expressing a desire to live deep in the woods where Faruk will hunt for her with a pack of wild dogs .The romantic leanings of the couple seem to crash with the social reality in a crumbling Sarajevo caught between crass materialism and poverty. But Faruk’s own future looks likely to be dismal, inheriting his uncle’s van, and taking over his business. Meanwhile the pragmatic Vreco wants Faruk to continue pimping for Cedo ,

Backlit nightscapes create a dreamy poetic setting in a Sarajevo that echoes and glows in perpetual twilight, the long poetic panning shots in the streets of the city unfurl like a love letter to a wartorn victim, on its last legs, but with so much still to tell. One can only hope one day the Sarajevans can rediscover laughter and happiness, like in The Book of Fairytales the young lovers are drawn to. Scored by delicate occasional piano music often by Schumann, this elegiac, languid love story, filmed with a fine eye for detail and a magical finale is a gleaming gem.

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2021|

 

The World After Us | Le Monde Après Nous | Berlinale Panorama 2021

Dir.: Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas; Cast: Aurelien Gabrielli, Louise Chevilotte, Sadia Bentaïeb, Jacques Nolot, Leon Cunha Da Costa, Mikhaël Chirinian, Noémie Schmidt, Hyacinthe Blanc; France 2021, 84 min.

Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas’ first feature is best described as ‘Truffaut for the 21st century’. The struggling main protagonist, a young writer, suffers all sorts of setbacks and a strained parental relationship but it will all come together (rather too) neatly in the end. Well acted and photographed by Amine Berrada in realistic images of the two main cities of France, this is a surprisingly tame debut.

Young Labidi (Gabrielli) has written a successful short story and his much older friend Vincent (Chirinian) drags him to off to a publisher, who signs an option for the forthcoming novel after reading the two first chapters. But Labidi, who spends much time in the cafe run by his parents (Bentaïeb/Molot) falls spontaneous in love with another cafe habitué in the shape of student Elisa (Chevilotte).

Love at first sight is a challenge for Labidi, forced to share his living space with the obese but caring Aleksei (Da Costa), so he decides to  an expensive flat for some privacy with his new love, although his work for Deliveroo doesn’t even cover the rent, and the writing slips to the back burner in a frantic search for new income streams.

After pulling off a successful insurance fraud, he gets work at an optician where his superior Suzanne (Schmidt) tests his knowledge on customer service. Elisa then go back to live with her mother, and his father dies leaving him with a huge guilt complex: he’s lived off the bank of Mum & Dad for most of his life.

Aleksei turns out to be a really good friend after Labidi suffers more bad luck, Vincent accidentally viewing Labidi’s autobiographical sob story – rather than the putative novel. Vincent is particularly infuriated by the title of the outpouring  – which happens to be the film’s title: “This is a title for a bloody French independent film!” While Labidi makes a last ditch attempt to get Elisa back, Aleksei complains about his girlfriend Hyacinthe (Blanc) never giving him a ring. Asked by Labidi “When did you speak to her last”, Aleksei responds “Two hours ago, but I think of her more than she thinks about me”.

The witty dialogue is very amusing but there’s something missing here – and it’s a general lack of social context and thematic monotony. The characters live in a bubble with Labidi’s need for money being the only source of tension; no mention is made of wider-ranging themes. Nowadays a feature debut where the narrative is so disengaged from the general zeitgeist is unusual, particularly in a world where there is so much dramatic potential to be mined and where gender stereotypes are seen as unfashionable. AS

BERLINALE | PANORAMA STRAND.

 

Breeder (2021) Digital/Bluray

Dir: Jens Dahl | Cast: Signe Egholm Olsen, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen | Thriller, Denmark

This brutal survival horror outing from Denmark’s Jens Dahl’s – who actually wrote Nic Winding Refn’s drug thriller Pusher – is set in rather sophisticated surroundings in a smart part of Copenhagen.

‘Women beware women’ is very much the order of the day here as female themselves are the victims of a curious bio-hacking experiment, run by a ruthless businesswoman (Signe Egholm Olsen) who is using her health supplement company as a front for selecting and abducting them as part of an experiment to reverse the ageing process, which most of the female population could end up benefiting from if only they could survive.

The central character Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, Borgman) tries to get to the bottom of it all and ends up trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and Mia realises she is not alone in all this. But does she have the will to survive and escape from the nightmare? Or do we really care?

Dahl has some interesting ideas but lacks the directing experience to pull it all off successfully, and despite his considerable talents as a writer he relies on a  script by Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. Slack pacing and an unremarkable cast are supported by Nikolai Lok’s camerawork that certainly looks impressive, but you can’t rely on images alone to make a gripping horror film.

Clearly Dahl is harking back to the New French Extreme films at the turn of this century from filmmakers such as Gaspar Noé’s, Catherine Breillat and Leo Carax but Breeder is rather a pale rider in comparison to Polar X, Baise Moi or even Trouble Every Day. MT

NOW ON BLURAY & DIGITAL from MONTAGE PICTURES

From the Wild Sea (2021) | Berlinale Generation 2021

Dir: Robin Petré | Doc, 77′

Weather conditions are becoming much more extreme. Marine animals are needing emergency care due to injuries caused by the effects of climate change on tides and changing oceanography.

The caring efforts of marine conservationists are at the heart of this cinematic nature doc From the Wild Sea from Danish documentarian Robin Petré known for her unconventional short nature films (Pulse, Stream and Distant Water) that push the borders beyond the norm. Along similar lines to Leviathan and Bird Island (2019) this deeply sensory film shows how vets in coastal regions are building up a strong support system of rescue centres to rehabilitate mammals and sea birds.

The sheer power of an image is all that’s needed to convey the tragedy of our changing climate which has given rise to powerful storms raging into Europe from the Atlantic, bringing with them injured and confused animals such as seals, dolphins, whales and seabirds. The film is swift to point out that untrained human interference in nature – however well-intentioned – is not helpful. Moving injured animals that have been washed up on the shore should be avoided at all costs. The changing tides have had a deleterious effect on seal mammals who rely on echolocation to get their bearings and forage of food: One such seal recently lost its its sense of direction and headed to Morocco, wildly off course. After rehabilitation in Cornwall it made its way back north, then took a wrong turn at the Continental Shelf and headed South again only to be re-homed in the Cornish sanctuary. The release of these healthy seals into back into the wild is the film’s highpoint.

copyright Tanya Haurylchyk

Although the work being done in animal rehabilitation is an admirable labour of love, this is a really upsetting film to watch: we see seals in great distress – some of them uttering almost human cries as they struggle to breathe – their airways caught up with plastic or infection – as the trained staff work to help them recover. We watch another seal gradually losing its fight for life, flippers twitching as it cries out in pain, it’s mottled fur coat is a thing of exquisite beauty, its soulful eyes speak volumes of the tragic marine odyssey that has led to its death.

Many animals are suffering the effects of starvation. One seal enjoys a basinful of fish, while another waits patiently for attention by the side of a ceramic bath. It’s extraordinary to imagine that an animal that spends most of its time under the sea can demonstrate so much awareness of a human setting on dry earth. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that thousands of years ago we too came from out of the sea. Whales fare particularly badly: we watch as 19-metre-long whale lies beached like a massive, punctured tyre, off the coast of Cornwall. The team rushes to help but it’s already too late. The animal will not just die from its bleeding injuries but because its sheer weight will crush its organs, unless the tide favours its transport back into the sea. Many whales die due to head-butting from a boat, or multiple injuries from propellers. An autopsy takes place on the beach itself, it must be one of the few times the pathologist actually gets inside a body to do his work. We also witness a fascinating autopsy of a small 4-5 year-old dolphin who has been terribly badly scarred by marine craft and survived and healed, before finally dying of other injuries.

Birds are particularly difficult to handle, and a white swan hisses savagely when it is given a bubble bath to wash off black marine diesel in the clinic, and here the camera offers intense close-ups of the meticulous cleaning process, including a blow-dry to return the bird to its snow white beauty before release. Frequently the camera pulls out to pan the coast in widescreen images of waves crashing down on the raging ocean. Nicholas (de) Montsarrat was not wrong when he called his 1951 war novel: “The Cruel Sea”.

Robin Petre maintains a respectful distance from her subject matter avoiding anthropomorphism at all times while filming with a deeply humane perspective.  A really immersive film for those interested in animal welfare and suitable for all the family (except for the very young). MT

FROM THE WILD SEA | BERLINALE GENERATION

The Lesson | Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2021 | 18-26 March 2021

Dir: Elena Horn | Germany, Doc 60′

It is often said that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. At the age of 14 every school child in Germany is taught about the atrocities that occurred under Nazi rule. Filmmaker Elena Horn returns to her hometown in rural Germany to follow four of these children as they first learn about the Holocaust.

Five years in the making (2014-19), the film touches upon important social and political issues including the resurgence of the far-right, xenophobia, the fractured, disparate collective memory of National Socialism, and the surprising lack of intimate knowledge of the younger generations on the subject.

Screening at this year’s HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL the documentary opens as the camera pans over the summer countryside where a girl from a village in West Germany (where not much has changed since 1932) recalls talking to a tall, dark athletic American after an evening out with college friends. He turns to her and says: “your grandparents killed my grandparents” this was her first meeting with a Jewish guy and she was 21.

Screening during this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, the documentary goes on to explore with archive footage and clips from the contemporary German classroom how despite the perceived exemplary educational system, new generations are growing indifferent to their nation’s dark past and unwilling to apply the lessons learned to the realities of today. Filmed against the backdrop of changing political scenery during five years of production, in Germany and across the world, the film subtly suggests the urgency and importance in tackling the uncomfortable modern reality of truths therein. MT

Elena Horn is a young German filmmaker who started her career as a media psychologist researching the framing effects in the news coverage of the Iraq War in the US, Britain, and Sweden. Today she is working as a story producer for ZDF, WDR, SKY and SPIEGEL TV Wissen. Elena’s films focus on questions around education, migration, working culture, love, and ethnic conflict, employing visual inspirations from the world of music and dance. As a director, Elena is a fellow of the Logan Non-Fiction Program in New York. Her short documentary Pizza, Democracy and the Little Prince, co-directed with Alessandro Leonardi, earned the “Best Short Documentary Award 2019” at the Sedona Film Festival. Currently Elena is working as a director for ARTE, a French-German culture channel.

SCREENING DURING HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021

ALL FILMS AVAILABLE TO SCREEN 

 

Spotlight on Pietro Marcello

Pietro Marcello was born in Caserta in Campania in 1976. He began by studying painting at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. Self-taught, he cut his teeth on “participative videos” shot in the prisons where he was teaching. From 1998 to 2003, he programmed the Cinedamm film events, at the Damm centre in the Montesanto district, of which he was one of the founding members. It was in this context that he directed his first short films Cartaand Scampia (2003). In 2004, he completed Il cantiere, a documentary that won the Libero Bizzarri Prize. The following year, he directed La Baracca. His first feature-length film, Crossing the Line (Il passaggio della linea, 2007), won many accolades. But it was in 2009 with The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo), which won awards at Turin and at the Berlinale (Forum section), that he gained international recognition. In 2011, he paid tribute to Artavazd Peleshian in The Silence of Pelesjan (Il silenzio di Pelesjan), while Lost and Beautiful (Bella e perduta, 2015), in selection at Locarno and the Grand prix du Jury at La Roche-sur-Yon, brought him a wider audience. In 2019, Martin Eden, adapted from the eponymous Jack London novel, was presented at the Venice Film Festival and met with great critical acclaim. Moreover, the film embodies the move of Marcello’s work to fiction, while keeping a very strong link with the documentary genre. His new opus For Lucio (Per Lucio) premiered at the 2021 Berlinale.

MARTIN EDEN IS NOW IN CINEMAS

All Eyes Off Me | Misheshu Yoav Mishehu | Berlinale Panorama 2021

Dir.: Hadas Ben Aroya; Cast: Elisjeva Weil, Hadar Katz, YoavHait, Leib Lev Levia; Israel 2021, 89 min.

The sophomore feature of Israeli writer/director Hadas Ben Aroya is as enigmatic as the title suggests but after a while you may recognise an ultra modern low-powered version of Schnitzler’s La Ronde.

 

Ben Aroya explores personal freedom, commitment and generational dynamics but also questions a society permanently in conflict with itself. The story centres on a group of glib polyamorous characters who seem caught up in their trivial lives but emotionally disengaged from the world at large, and each other.

First up is the appropriately named Avishag who enjoys sexual encounters of the brutal kind, as we later discover. Then there’s Danny (Katz) who becomes fascinated by a dying butterfly on the way to a party in Tel Aviv, and contemplates taking it to the vet. She’s off to join her boyfriend Max (Levia) with a surprise announcement, but is greeted with an earful about the after-effects of another girl’s self-induced abortion when Danny reveals her own pregnancy .

Max, meanwhile, seems unfazed by Danny’s wonderful news. His focus is now on Avishag (Weil) and has surprising news of his own. He and Avi are planning a holiday to the Sinai peninsula. And while Danny tries to appear cool, telling Max not to do anything rash, she is clearly upset. But the next scene sees him in bed with Avishag. Post coitus, she confesses her love of rough sex, and this seems to make Max even more keen to satisfy her needs, bruises and all.

Later Avishag meets up with her neighbour Dror, an overweight man in his forties, and his out of control dog Bianca. Dror talks about growing up in a kibbutz and later attending a religious school where he found himself actually losing faith, to the chagrin of his ultra-religious parents who were furious when he left without finishing his studies. Suddenly, Avishag pounces on him, smothering him with kisses, clearly she has an ulterior motive but poor Dror falls for her advances, he’s so insecure about his body.

Meanwhile Danny is back at the party, still pondering the medical care of  butterflies. We know all this talk is meant to hide the film’s real motives. Danny’s encounter with Max proves the point. When Max tells Avishag he really prefers young boys, she remains unfazed, trumping this with by asking for more rough sex, just to keep him keen. But Avishag is content to submerge her sexual desires for the security Dror could provide in his Art Deco villa with its swimming pool and lush gardens. Avishag is only too ready to flee from responsibility, and into the welcoming arms of this pot-bellied father figure, who seems overjoyed that a young woman might want to bed him. These unreachable and unappealing characters remain casual bystanders throughout, seemingly part of a society which “plays” at being at peace, but has turned the conflict in on itself.

DoP Meidan Arama showcases the intimate close-up of the social merry go round, contrasting the casual party atmosphere of the opening scenes with the interiors where the narrative unfolds. Dror’s upmarket home is a world away from the chaotic student flat where Max and Avishag hang out. Everything is flip, lightweight and interchangeable in this pastel-coloured world where integrity has been air-brushed out of sight. AS

BERLINALE | Berlin Film Festival | Panorama 2021

Any Day Now | Ensilumi (2021) Berlinale Generation 2021

Dir: Hamy Ramezan | Cast: Lumi Barrois, Laura Birn, Shabnam Ghorbani, Muhammed Cangore, Pezlman Escandari | Drama 82;

Iranian first time director Hamy Ramezan recalls his own start in a new country with this touching drama that sees an Iranian family waiting to make their new home in Finland.

Ramezan has persuaded Asghar Farhadi regular Shahab Hosseini (The Salesman) to add firepower to this upbeat project but the star turn is his onscreen son Ramin (Aran-sina Keshvari in debut) the only Finnish speaking member of his family who must be responsible to the authorities while also enjoying his first Finnish fling on the school dancefloor.

Any Day Now feels very much a passion project for Ramezan and a way of thanking the Finns for their kindness and hospitality, the family befriending an elderly couple played by veterans Kristina Halkola and Eero Melasniemi who act as mentors when they first arrive.

What stands out here is the way the locals readily accept the new family into their midst (providing stylish accommodation in the detention centre where Alvar Aalto’s legendary cane chairs grace the family dining table). The family adapt well to their new environment and make great efforts to socialise with the rest of the detainees, although it’s not all plain sailing and Ramezan and his co-writer Antti Rautava shows their anxiety and disappointment in a scene where their bid for asylum is rejected. But drama wise there little tension here Any Day Now playing out as more of a cinema verite piece than a real drama,  Arsen Sarkisiants creates a lush sense of place both in the rural summer setting and approaching winter when the family experience their first snowfall. This is a lovely positive first feature suitable for all the family. MT

BERLINALE | GENERATION 2021

I Live in Fear | Ikimono no kiroku (1955) Bfi player

Dir: Akira Kurosawa | Wri: Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa | Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Eiko Miyoshi | Japan, Drama, 103′

Akira Kurosawa’s reputation both at home and abroad continues to rest mainly upon his samurai films rather than his modern dramas; and this very contemporary family saga addressing the traumas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ten years earlier – and a critical success – was one of the biggest financial flops he ever made and remains one of his least known films. (It didn’t open in America until 1967.)

although one of his films in which Kurosawa personally took most pride

For me, its timely message acquired additional resonance years later when George W. Bush became president of the United States, and continued to reverberate with the publication of the Chilcot Report into the conduct of the invasion of Iraq. Originally proposed to Kurosawa by his distinguished collaborator, the composer Fumio Hayasaka (who died during production), as a satire akin to Dr Strangelove; the film retains a grimly comic quality that was ahead of its time and anticipates much that has followed since – including Losey’s The Damned, Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast and even the seventies sit-com The Good Life – and still has much to say to us today.

Appropriately shot while Tokyo was experiencing a heatwave, 35 year-old Toshiro Mifune gives a towering performance as usual (unusually cast even for him in heavy makeup, greyed hair and spectacles) as Kiichi Nakajima, a 75 year-old iron foundry owner who stuns his entire family by announcing that he is going to sell his business and relocate to Brazil taking them all with him in order to be safe from nuclear war. Their dilemma in many ways resembles the quandary in which Tony Blair fairly rapidly found himself when Bush Jr. became president.

Jean Renoir famously declared that “Everyone has their reasons”; and one can empathise with both sides of these two dilemmas. Nakajima’s family understandably don’t want to give up the comforts of life in modern Japan for an uncertain future in Brazil. But is Nakajima’s obsessive fear of nuclear weapons (or that of nuclear terrorist Professor Willingdon in Seven Days to Noon) really any crazier than the suppression of that fear by ‘normal’ people, one that enables them daily just to get on with their lives? (The central paradox of the Atomic Age is that people today enjoy the highest standard of living that homo sapiens has ever known; while being saddled with the constant anxiety that it could all evaporate in an instant at the push of a button.)

Just as Nakajima’s family desperately want to keep the old man happy for the sake of a quiet life – but the only thing that will shut him up is the one thing that they have absolutely no intention of doing – so when George W. emerged triumphant from the shambles of the 2000 presidential election, it was Tony Blair’s ardent wish to be the new president’s new best friend. (If a freak result had somehow put Charles Manson in the White House, Blair would doubtless have been just as eager to extend HIM the hand of friendship.)

But when Boy George swaggered on to the White House lawn the whole world knew he had unfinished business with pappy’s old nemesis Saddam Hussein to attend to; and that any attempt to remain friends with him would sooner or later mean receiving extremely awkward requests concerning Iraq.

As in many awkward situations the short-term desire to avoid unpleasantness simply by saying ‘Yes’ can have very unpleasant long-term consequences. I saw this film over thirty years ago but remember it as if it were yesterday. Richard Chatten

 

Azor (2021) Berlinale | Encounters Berlinale 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL | Encounters 2021

 

Dr Crippen (1962) DVD | Talking Pictures

Dir: Robert Lynn | Wri: Leigh Vance | Cast: Donald Pleasence, Samantha Eggar, Coral Browne, Donald Wolfit, James Robertson Justice | UK Drama 98′

Along with Himmler in The Eagle Has Landed this is the role Donald Pleasence was born to play; although ironically Coral Browne, who stars as his abrasive wife, later married Vincent Price who landed the part originally written with Pleasence in mind, of Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (1968).

Nic Roeg is behind the camera here and the focus is Crippen’s love life in a storyline that opens at the start of the doctor’s trial in the Old Bailey, flashbacks fleshing out the gruelling desperation of his marriage to failed performer Belle (Browne), whom he later leaves to elope with his young secretary and mistress Ethel Le Neve (Eggar) only to be arrested on boarding the vessel bound for freedom – and death in 1910.

George Orwell once observed that it shows what society really thinks of the institute of marriage that whenever a woman gets murdered the first person police suspect is always the husband. Making a welcome change from the usual theme of petty crime and bank robberies that British cinema at that time became known for, Robert Lynn’ macabre ‘true crime’ drama followed swiftly on the heals of the Lady Chatterley’s trial that showcased the subject of sexual incompatibility within marriage. Dr Crippen carried an ‘X’ certificate due to its raw depiction of unfulfilled married life, rather than its murderous subject; and in order to potray a very contemporary problem on screen it was necessary to do so in the guise of a famous criminal case over a half a century earlier. Richard Chatten.

ON DVD and TCM | TALKING PICTURES TV

 

Verdict (2020)

Dir: Raymond Ribay Gutierrez | Drama, 126′

 

 

18th and Grand: The Story of the Olympic Auditorium (2020) Slamdance 2021

Dir.: Stephen DeBro; Documentary with Aileen Eaton, Gene Le Bell, Mike Le Bell, James Ellroy; USA 2020, 83 min.

A new film pays homage to Los Angeles’ well known sports arena and the promoter Aileen Eaton (1909-1987) who ran one of the most famed boxing bowls between 1942 and 1980.

Aileen is the focus of Stephen DeBro’s first feature about the only female (so far) inducted into Boxing’s Hall of Fame, an extraordinary achievement and all the more admirable in an era when women, let alone single mothers, were the target of abject discrimination: widowed early on in her marriage Aileen was brought up two sons who would follow her into the family business.

The Olympic Auditorium was built in 1924 and opened a year later in August. It was a great social event in the presence of – among other luminaries – Rudolph Valentino and Jack Dempsey. During the 1932 Olympic Games the venue was used for wrestling, boxing and weightlifting competitions. Los Angeles was a centre of strained race relationships and some of the fights between Latinos and the LAPD turned into riots, and this atmosphere of prevailing violence would shape the history of the stadium.

Aileen had never even seen a fight when she took over the boxing business in 1932, and the sport was in decline. Gangland LA controlled the territory and many bouts had been rigged. Aileen’s sports and entertainment empire extended all the way to the border with Mexico – how she held sway when  Mickey Cohen fancied the same turf, is a miracle – her nickname “The Dragon Lady” was well earned.

But boxing was not the only sport staged at the Olympic: Roller Derbies with the LA Thunderbirds were very popular. These encounters were anything but peaceful, serious injuries were common. Director Norman Jewison based much of the action for his 1975 feature Rollerball on these LA skating fights. Staying with the movies, countless films were shot partly in the Olympic: The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the Rocky Trilogy, Raging Bull, Ready to Rumble and Sting II.

Aileen’s son Gene Le Bell was a wrestling champion and stuntman, his brother Mike, rather more sedate, took care of the wrestling empire from a desk – like his mother. On the scene were also Dr. Bernhard Schwartz, ring doctor and bass player, as well Dick Lane, B-movie actor turned wrestling announcer. Mexican fighters dominated the early bills of the boxing events, with Manelo Ramos, Carlos Palomino and Manuel Ortiz three of the World Champions looked after by Aileen. And then there was the legendary fight between Mohammed Ali and Archie Moore in November 1962.

Blues Concerts were regularly staged. The punk movement was headlined by raves when Mountain Jack and Ten Years After performed in the Grand Olympic. GBH, The Exploited, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and New Regime brought in crowds that saw the place fit to bust and overflowing into the surrounding parking lot of the building. The Survivors’ promo video  ‘Burning Heart’ was shot in the building in 1985, Bon Jovi was the guest for ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ a year later, and in 1987 Kiss filmed the music video of the namesake track of their album ‘Crazy Nights’. Later in the mid-1980s, the venue was closed for eight years, before reopening in 1993.

But by 1980 Aileen had already gone. And while commercial considerations clearly played a part, the main reason for her leaving was the death of Welsh boxer Johnny Owen. Owen (‘The Match-Stick Man’) had fought the Mexican Lupe Pintor for the Bantam Weight Championship of the World on 19.9.1990. Owen lost and died in November, a few weeks later. For Aileen, this was a bridge too far: In the 50s and 60s fight pairings were billed with massive posters on the outside of the arena with the feisty warning: “Loser will leave town”. But the brutal reality of Owen’s death forced her wisely into retirement.

Strewn with archive footage and photos to satisfy fan’s nostalgic longing this is an informative piece of filmmaking enlivened by a flood of “Talking Heads” who provide social and psychological context, crime writer James Ellroy’s insight is particularly worthwhile. DoP Tony Peck concentrates on the faces of the survivors, many of whom died during filming. Since 2005 the former arena has been recommissioned as “The Glory Church of Jesus Christ in LA”, a Korean evangelical congregation. Rather like our own Golders Green Hippodrome in London – a 3000 seat music hall that once billed Marlene Dietrich – now serves as an ‘Islamic Centre’ in another religion-based switchover. It seems the world has turned into a much more serious place.  AS

SCREENING AS THE FESTIVAL CLOSING FILM | SLAMDANCE 2021

 

La Mif (2021)

Dir.: Fred Baillif; Cast: Claudia Grob, Anais Uldry, Kassia Da costa, Esther Ndayisenga, Charlie Areddy, Amélie Tonsi, Amandie Golay, Sara Tulu, Amadou Sylla; Switzerland 2021, 110 min.

Swiss director/writer Fred Baillif (Tapis Rouge) explores a few weeks in the life of a temporary children’s home, where the most vulnerable receive special care.

Part fiction, part documentary, the stories told by the children aged 10 to 16, belie the home’s statement that this is their ‘new family’. This staff are certainly overwhelmed and overworked so the centre’s manageress Lora becomes the focus of this startling expose. Bailiff sometimes cuts a scene, only to repeat it later with a proper ending. This technique serves to make the audience pay greater attention to the sometimes confusing non-linear narrative, and helps to set up a proper dramatic arc.

We start with a chaotic scene where police arrive at the home in response to an alarm call that one of the residents Audrey (Uldry) had slept with a minor boy, an offence of statutory rape. Lora (Grob) has too justify the incident in front of a panel of panel of superiors. She is defensive, but agrees that going forward, the policy of co-education will cease and the home will only accommodate girls. But she insists: “A children’s home is not a prison”. Novinha (Da costa) is enraged, shouting at the staff: “You are all manipulative bastards. You call the police when something serious happens.”

Audrey is left clearly aggrieved at being reprimanded for sleeping with a more only three months younger than the legal limit, claiming “my pelvis examination has been like a rape too”. There are grievances all round. New arrival Precieuse (Ndayisenga), who has also apparently been raped, by her father. Another girl Justine (Areddy) complains about her childhood memories and resists going back home, after her stay even though both her parents want her back. Later Justine will admit to another girl: “I had a younger sister, Magali, and when my parents went out one evening, I had to look after her. I run a bath for her, put her in the bath tube and went down to make supper, Then I went back upstairs…” Tamra(Tulu) has had her third appeal against deportation refused. Lora more or less asks Tamra to run away and stay with friends. Alison, (Tonsi), and Caroline (Golay), whose father has just died, go out and get drunk and are brought back by the police.

Later, Caroline threatens to commit suicide, knife at the ready. Fortunately Oumar, a staff member talks her out of it. Caroline will be looked after in a psychiatric ward, she has been flirting with male members of staff. Audrey loses her placement job, because she overslept.

But we always return to Lora, who is been told by other members of staff, that “she has come back too early”. Finally her backstory is fleshed out by her own moving confession: her daughter had committed suicide in her late thirties, and naturally this admission will be used against her by the children: “You said, you want to protect us, but you could not even protect your own daughter”. Precieuse’s mother comes to see her daughter, but Lora denies her access, the mother making an insulting, ageist remark to Lora, who slaps her. Not a good move since Lora is White and the mother Black.

Lora then faces another ‘trial’ by her superiors, Precieuse confesses her father never raped her, but that she was sick of doing all the chores, her being too lazy to do any housework. The staff don’t know what to make of this, and an open fight breaks out – not unlike the one witnessed involving the children. Finally, Lora’s whole story unfolds, round the campfire, the kids looking on.,

La Mif makes for very uneasy viewing, it’s a brutal portrait of an institution, and an alarming revelation of a system intended to help the victims of child abuse. But the “helpers” themselves are often from troubled or dysfunctional backgrounds. The result is chaos, and feeds into the children’s own trauma: their carers have too much of their own psychological baggage to be effective in providing a stable environment. DoP Joseph Arreddy’s often handheld camera captures the febrile setting where continuous psychological warfare unfolds between staff and kids in a cauldron of dysfunction. Honest, raw and disturbing Baillif delivers a shocker. AS

LA MIF is released in UK & Irish cinemas on 25 February 2022 

Jungle Street (1960) Talking Pictures

Dir: Charles Saunders | Wri: Alexander Dore | Cast: Jill Ireland, David McCallum, Kenneth Cope, Brian Weske, Vanda Hudson, Edna Dore | UK Thriller 89′

A short-haired Jill Ireland already caught the eye as a dancer in ‘Powell & Pressburger’s Oh…Rosalinda!! in 1955. A few years later we discover her as a glacial hussy flaunting herself in tights in a strip club called the Adam & Eve (along with several other girls, one of them Black) in this vividly sleazy record of a Britain sixty years ago between the end of the Chatterley ban and The Beatles’ first L.P.

Her leading men were later TV stars David McCallum (then looking very lean ‘n hungry and married to Ireland, who later dumped him for Charles Bronson), and Kenneth Cope, introduced in what was then the traditional manner of leaving Wormwood Scrubs.

Noirishly photographed by Walter J. Harvey from a story by exploitation producer Guido Coen, and with an appropriately trashy jazz score by someone called Harold Geller, it vividly evokes a world sixty years ago when £50 was worth committing robbery with violence for, despite it then being a hanging offence. Richard Chatten.

(P.S. Ignore the date given by the IMDb, according to Gifford’s ‘British Film Catalogue’ it was released in October 1961, and 1961 is the date in the credits.)

DOING THE ROUNDS ON TALKING PICTURES TV

 

Lost Boundaries (1949)

Dir: Alfred J Werker | Wri: Ormond Dekay | Cast: Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer, Susan Douglas Roubes, Robert A Dunn, Richard Hylton | US Drama 99′

During the immediate postwar period Hollywood developed a new maturity and a social conscience on racial matters given expression in 1947 by two dramas about anti-Semitism, Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement. Two years later, Lost Boundaries was one of at least four films released in 1949 addressing discrimination against Black Americans preceded by Home of the Brave and followed by Pinky and Intruder in the Dust.

The issues addressed by Lost Boundaries anticipated Imitation of Life and the British Sapphire by ten years, but Imitation of Life itself was already based on a 1933 novel that had been filmed before in 1934. The 1934 version of Imitation of Life is possibly unique in that the daughter who ‘passes’ was actually played by a Black actress, Fredi Washington (1903-1994), who is superb, and whose failure to go on to a fruitful career in Hollywood speaks volumes. The topic remains hot today, with the White House having been recently occupied by the man who sponsored the ‘birther’ campaign against his mixed-race predecessor (who himself once raised eyebrows by describing himself as a ‘mutt’); while in 2015 the whole situation was turned on its head when Black activist Rachel Anne Dolezal was ‘outed’ as White.

Crossfire was actually based on a novel in which the original murder victim had been a homosexual, and the issue of ‘passing’ for straight for the sake of a quiet life also remains a live one, as Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993) testified. (Richard Hylton – who plays the son in Lost Boundaries – ironically returned to the stage after Fox declined to renew his contract due to rumours about his sexuality, and eventually committed suicide in San Francisco in 1962.)

Mounted by Louis de Rochemont to resemble a documentary, Lost Boundaries depicts a world unfamiliar even today to many White audiences of America’s Black professional class, and is based on the case of Dr. Albert C. Johnston (1900-1988), a Black radiologist who along with his wife Thyra (1904-1995) passed as White in 1930s New Hampshire (and was even chairman of his local Republican Party) until his cover was blown when the USN withdrew his commission in 1940 after learning that he was part Black.

The story of Dr. Johnston and his family was the subject of a Reader’s Digest article in 1947, followed in 1948 by a book, Lost Boundaries, by William L. White (author of Journey for Margaret and They Were Expendable) before being turned into this film, which won the award for Best Screenplay at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival and was banned in both Atlanta and Memphis. (Dr. Johnston himself continued to work in Keene, N.H. until moving to Hawaii in 1966).

For modern viewers more used to seeing Mel Ferrer in escapist Hollywood fare like Scaramouche and Lili his role in this is a surprise; but he is in fact one of several actors making their debuts in the feature, notably Richard Hylton – whose discovery that he’s Black just as he was about to enter the navy has a power equivalent to the plight of the daughter in Imitation of Life – and a charming and impossibly young-looking Carleton Carpenter in a smaller role.

The fact that the son’s situation is far from unique is revealed when a Black police lieutenant observes, “Ohh, one of those cases, eh? Some times they really do go screwy”. Canada Lee is excellent as usual as Lt. Thompson, and it’s yet another of the film’s many ironies that when he died of a heart attack three years later at the age of 45 he was at the time being hounded by the HUAC. Richard Chatten.

ON DVD AND TCM in the US 

https://youtu.be/1u-YnihAzf0

Moon, 66 Questions (2021)

Dir: Jaqueline Lentzou | Cast: Sofia Kokkali, Lazaros Georgakopoulos | Greece, Drama 105′

A troubled father and daughter relationship is the focus of Jaqueline Lentzou’s feature debut that has its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale. Running along similar lines to Sally Potter’s recent Roads Not Taken this is a less accessible but ultimately much more rewarding arthouse drama that sees two people embarking on a voyage of rediscovery and redemption during one stifling slow-burn summer in Greece.

Artemis is a single 24-year-old living in France when a frantic phone call from her divorced mother calls her back home to Athens — where her father Paris is suffering from multiple sclerosis and has been admitted to hospital.

Annoyed and resentful – the two never saw eye to eye – Artmesis (Kokali) gradually gets to know him again and begins to understand what went wrong.

The story of Artemis’ return to the family circle unfolds in a series of dreamlike early sequences where the focus is the young woman’s fleeting reverie as she heads to the airport in a taxi. Once in the thick of the clinical environment, the gaze remains on Artemis and her thoughts and feelings as Lentzou establishes the gravity of her father’s situation, off camera, in snatched discussions with family members and medical staff.

Eventually Paris and Artemis are thrown together by force of circumstance, the father helplessly in need of his daughter’s care in the first days in hospital and when he moves back to the comfortable family house with its lavish setting. Frustrations emerge for an irritated Artemis who must work through her negative feelings with her sick father while at the same time drawing on her compassion as a human being. And in these scenes her character gradually thaws.

In what is essentially a two-hander, the other characters making only peripheral appearances, Lazoros Georgakopoulos is quietly likeable as her father, turning in a performance of extraordinary physicality considering he is actually not suffering from the disease. Sofia Kokkali copes with a difficult role, a justifiably embittered woman forced to be kind and helpful to a father who has clearly failed her on deep level is a tough call and one which she brings off with subtlety and a gently vulnerable appeal.

The reveal comes as a bombshell rather than a quiet awakening, and takes the film into its final, acceptance phase where child and parent must bond and repair the damage, Artemis is seen taking her anger out on her mother who mutely takes the force of the blame. MT

RELEASED IN CINEMAS ON 24 JUNE

BERLINALE | ENCOUNTERS STRAND 2021

The Great Adventure | Det stora äventyret (1953) Netflix

Dir: Arne Sucksdorff | Cast: Arne Sucksdorff, Anders Nohrborg, Kjell Sucksdorff, Gunnar Sjoberg | Sweden, 93′

The Great Adventure is a lyrical Swedish cinema verite drama that pictures a year on a farm in remote Sweden seen through the eyes of the family who live in the heart of the forest, the director doubling up as the pipe-smoking father.

 

Arne Sucksdorff’s film won prizes at Cannes (1954) and Berlin, appropriately taking a Silver Bear for the poetic way he combined truly magical wildlife photography with a gripping storyline and evocative score to create a nature tale that plays out like a thriller with touches of humour and sadness  – the feel is a cross between Tarka the Otter, My Life as a Dog and Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent. And all the time Arne is offering us a fascinating nature study with the most beautifully observed shots of owls, otters, pine martins, rabbits, squirrels and lynx, in their natural habitat, ever committed to celluloid film in the depths of 1950s Sweden.

Working with his composer Lars-Erik Larsson, and it took Arne two years to film and edit the material for his Berlin winner. Mysterious yet majestic the sly vixen is pivotal to the narrative, somehow emerging the tragic heroine with her family of cubs. Arne’s agile contre-jour camerawork following her antics from Midsummer’s white nights through to the snowbound winter, stealthily slinking through moonshine or broad daylight – one scene shows her toying with silk stockings on a washing line. Always fleeing at the last minute with a plump chicken she darts across swaying curtains of corn or flowery meadows, to feed the cubs.

Man is the villain in this rural adventure, determined to kill the beast, his shotgun poised at the ready. One scene sees the old fisherman springing a vicious iron trap, then opportunistically tracking an otter with an axe. As the otter bobs away across the twinkling snow drifts, the chase gains momentum, a fox cub joining in the chase. Eventually the kids come to the rescue (Kjell is Arne’s son) saving the otter from a burrow and keeping it as their secret pet. Sometimes the mood is upbeat, others more sinister, the animals unwitting players in this often nightmarish murder story, that often ends in tragedy, but there are surprises in store in this incredible journey. MT

THE GREAT ADVENTURE IS ON NETFLIX

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